“The rise in crude prices is capping non-yielding assets, so Bitcoin’s rally has taken a bit of a pause,” said Kyle Rodda, senior financial market analyst at Capital.com, who expects Bitcoin to struggle for upside momentum while the energy risk persists. He reads the charts more favorably, describing price action as consolidation within a short-term uptrend.
Thahbib Rahman, research analyst at Block Scholes, made a similar point about how little Bitcoin has given up, in a note shared with Decrypt. It has held between $82,000 and $84,000 for a week and a half despite the macro backdrop and the Senate’s failure to advance the Clarity Act, he said, with institutional demand behind that resilience.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs have now taken in money for eight straight sessions, per Farside Investors data, a run Rahman put at roughly $3 billion. Monday’s contribution was slight: a net $31.07 million, according to SoSoValue, with $54.84 million into BlackRock’s IBIT and $10.32 million into Grayscale’s mini trust offsetting outflows of $23.19 million from GBTC and $10.90 million from Fidelity’s FBTC. The funds now hold $107.82 billion, equal to 6.42% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization.
Options traders are hedging their optimism. The 25-delta put-call skew for seven to 30-day tenors is close to neutral, Rahman said, which he reads as traders moving between buying downside protection and positioning for a rally.
Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy has kept buying. The company disclosed purchasing 1,665 $BTC for about $142.7 million between September 21 and 27, taking its holdings to 847,666 $BTC and past the 847,363 it held in June, a record.
This week’s U.S. data will settle the Fed argument either way. August core PCE lands on Wednesday, alongside the third estimate of second-quarter GDP. The measure ran at 3.3% year-on-year in July, and the Fed lifted its own 2026 projection for it to 3.4% at this month’s meeting. Friday’s September jobs report is forecast to show payroll growth of about 90,000, down from August’s 162,000, with unemployment holding at 4.1%, though Barclays chief U.S. economist Marc Giannoni puts September closer to 50,000. The Fed meets on October 27 and 28, three weeks after its first rate rise since 2023. Futures markets put the chance of another quarter-point increase at 70.3%, up from 55.4% a week ago and 17.7% a month ago, according to CME’s FedWatch tool. Traders on Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, price the same outcome at 69%, also up over the past week.
