Bitcoin's Best August Since 2017 Remains 38% Below October Record

Anyone who bought Bitcoin at its record last October is still down by almost 38%. The best August since 2017 has barely dented that loss. Bitcoin traded at $78,729 (£57,702) late on Monday 24 August, up 22.6% in a week. That is its strongest seven-day gain since November 2024.

Forced buying started this rally, not fresh enthusiasm. Some traders had borrowed Bitcoin and sold it, betting the price would fall. When it rose instead, their exchanges shut those bets down automatically, and shutting one means buying the coin back at whatever it now costs. That buying pushes the price up again, which closes more bets. Coinglass counted more than $2.75B (£2.02B) of such positions wiped out on Wednesday 19 August.

Three pieces of news arrived in the same week. The United States Department of the Treasury said it would at least double how much long-dated debt it buys back, which pushed down the interest those bonds pay. Safe bonds paying less makes riskier assets look better, and Bitcoin is about as risky as they come. The Securities and Exchange Commission also published a crypto proposal, and Donald Trump met crypto executives at the White House.

Forced Buying Is Spent, and Fund Money Has to Replace It

Shawn Young, chief analyst at the research firm MEXC Research, told The Block: 'Crypto is giving the Treasury's intervention far more credit than it deserves.' Those three developments, he argued, flushed short sellers out faster than they improved the case for owning Bitcoin. Forced buying also runs dry. Every trader forced to close a losing bet has already bought, and none of them can be squeezed a second time.

Fresh money did arrive alongside the squeeze. American exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that hold the coin directly for ordinary share dealers took in $606.3M (£444.4M) on 20 August. Roughly $1.92B (£1.41B) has arrived across the run. Those ETFs now have to do the work the short sellers were doing.

A Buyer at the October Record Needs a 60% Rise to Get Even

One weekly percentage hides the distance back to that record. Bitcoin would have to climb 60% from Monday's price to reach $126,198 (£92,493) again, because undoing a 38% fall takes a bigger rise than the fall itself. A single 22.6% week does not come close. Samir Kerbage, chief investment officer at Hashdex, told CoinDesk that hardly any trading history exists between $80,000 and $90,000, so 'price tends to move through thin zones quickly, for better or worse.' Thin stretches break either way.

Kerbage would rather see Bitcoin settle in the $75,000 to $83,000 band first. A base built there gives the next attempt something to stand on. Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research, sees $74,000 to $81,000 over the coming weeks. Joel Kruger, market strategist at the trading firm LMAX Group, puts the next meaningful level at $83,000.

Strategy Raised $2B Last Week and Bought No Bitcoin

Bitcoin's largest corporate holder sat the whole week out. Strategy, the software firm turned Bitcoin treasury run by Michael Saylor, told the Securities and Exchange Commission it neither bought nor sold a coin between 17 and 23 August. The company holds 840,447 Bitcoin in total. It paid an average of $75,385 (£55,251) for each one, which leaves the entire position barely 4% above what it cost.

Raising money was the week's business instead. The same filing shows Strategy sold 18.26 million of its own shares for net proceeds near $2B (£1.47B). Some of that went on buying back preferred stock, some into a dollar reserve, and the rest into a new dollar account called USD Cash. A firm built on owning Bitcoin raised billions in Bitcoin's best week for two years and bought none.

Three dates shape what happens next. The Treasury's enlarged buyback programme begins on 9 September. Congress is expected to vote around 15 September on the Clarity Act, a bill that would settle which regulator polices crypto trading. Comments on that Securities and Exchange Commission proposal close on 20 October. Each date could move the price alone.

For a holder who bought at the top, the arithmetic has barely shifted. Bitcoin is worth far more than it was three weeks ago. It is also worth about $47,000 (£34,400) less than it was on 6 October. Those two facts hold at the same time. The next fortnight decides which one the market starts pricing.

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