TOPSHOT – This illustration photograph shows a screen displaying Bitcoin logos, in Mulhouse on December 5, 2025. (Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP via Getty Images)
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“Bitcoin now projected to reclaim $80,000 by end of year. >60% chance,” the prediction market Polymarket posted on X on the evening of August 20. By the next morning the bracket read 85% and bitcoin had printed $79,500, easing to just under $77,000.
“What an amazing week for BTC and ETH,” Eric Trump posted to 415,000 views, a day after his father pushed the stalled Clarity Act with crypto executives at the White House.
“Crypto and gold rip as treasury doubles debt buybacks,” the newsletter Beluga led its roundup, counting “$1.14 Billion in Crypto Shorts Get Rekt in an Hour” among the headlines.
“My thesis is now: -Bears liq’ed -Trapping late longs -Dump towards $60k and liq’ed them -Pump towards $80k,” the trader stormdotXBT posted on August 20, with bitcoin then near $72,000.
“I think there could be a nasty short squeeze comming in BTC next. This caught everyone off guard,” the trader Connor Blanco posted, putting the next stop at $85,000 to $90,000.
“Investors should now be positioning for a move to $100,000 by year-end 2026,” Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets research, wrote in a note as bitcoin squeezed past $69,000 on August 20.
‘A Band-Aid On A Gushing Wound’
“We’re going to increase the size of the buyback,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on August 20, a day after the Treasury said it would double buybacks of long bonds to at least $4 billion per operation. “I would note that it could be more than the $4 billion per issue.” Federal debt passed $40 trillion the same week; Bessent said there is “nothing magic about the $40 trillion figure.”
“The U.S. is doubling it’s purchases of it’s own debt,” the crypto trader Ran Neuner posted, as SoSoValue counted $517 million into the spot ETFs on August 19 and $606 million the day after, mostly BlackRock’s IBIT. “Buybacks and broader intervention are likely to be much larger than markets expect,” The Kobeissi Letter added. “This is a band-aid on a gushing wound.”
Michael Terpin, the Transform Group founder, said on the On The Margin podcast: “Now it’s my mom and she uses it so that she can buy stable coins or she has it in an ETF or whatever and she made good money in it last year.”
‘Bitcoin Hasn’t Bottomed Yet’
“Bitcoin hasn’t bottomed yet,” the account doubledragon35 replied under Eric Trump’s post.
Glassnode had bitcoin braced for $58,500 as recently as August 18, and traders in Forbes coverage of the $70,000 break saw a bull trap flushing toward $44,000. The Glassnode note was blunter: “Buyers are absent.”
Crypto Jebb, a YouTube analyst with 251,000 subscribers, wants the 20-week moving average held before any bull-run call. The skeptic under Eric Trump’s post was specific: “Now 70k area or high then drop in October to 35k.”
‘If So 80k Will Be Fast’
“We are still resoundingly bulls on Bitcoin,” Anthony Scaramucci, the SkyBridge Capital founder, said in a clip that spread as the squeeze began.
He counts this as a bear market, just a shallow one next to the 75% to 80% wipeouts of earlier cycles. “And yet, we’ve only had a 55% drop,” he said.
Terpin, who says he has been through every cycle, added on the same podcast: “And that always happens in terms of the bull market. You never see a rapid uptake during the bear market, right?”
Polymarket’s bitcoin price prediction market puts 85% odds on $80,000 by December 31 and 25% on $100,000. “Bitcoin, a way to store wealth without a central authority, was built to allow investors a way to avoid this type of intervention,” Kendrick wrote. It is “exactly the type of thing bitcoin loves.”
Kevin Warsh’s first Jackson Hole keynote as Fed chair is expected August 28, and the Treasury’s bigger bid starts September 9. Bitcoin cleared stormdotXBT’s $74,000 tripwire within a day of the post. “For this to be wrong btc needs break $74k and trade above that,” the post read. “If so 80k will be fast.”