Bitcoin clawed back above $80,000 on a wave of forced buybacks and easing Iran tensions, but the same combination lifted the price in late August before it collapsed within three days. One jobs report and a Senate procedural vote now…
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The Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) price climbed 5.5% to $81,491 on Thursday after hostilities between the U.S. and Iran paused. The Bitcoin price had spent the previous two sessions stuck between $77,000 and $78,000, then started climbing around dawn in New York and cleared $81,000 by mid-morning.
That takes Bitcoin back above the $80,000 it lost on August 28, when the August rally ran out of buyers and the price slid back into the high $70,000s. The whole crypto market gained 4.7% on the day to $2.82 trillion, with Ethereum up 5.2% and Solana up 5.9%.
So can the Bitcoin price hold $80,000 this time?
What Pushed Bitcoin Back Above $80,000
The Bitcoin price moved on news from outside crypto. U.S. airstrikes on Iranian targets over the weekend had pushed Brent crude above $96 a barrel and sent equities lower, since fighting near the Strait of Hormuz threatens the shipping lane that carries a fifth of the world’s oil. Higher oil feeds inflation, which keeps the Federal Reserve from cutting rates, and that pulls money away from assets like Bitcoin that pay no yield. When the fighting paused on Thursday, that pressure lifted at once.
Traders who had bet on Bitcoin falling were then forced to buy it back as the price rose, because a short position closes automatically once the loss on it exceeds the collateral behind it. About $164 million of those positions were liquidated in four hours, against just $7.3 million of positions betting the other way, and total crypto liquidations reached $510 million with $415 million of that coming from shorts. Each forced buyback pushed the price higher and triggered the next one.
Moreover, the odds of a Fed rate hike this month fell on the same morning, from 67% on Wednesday to 50.5% by Thursday evening.
Why the Rally Could Fade
The Bitcoin price has been here before, and recently. Bitcoin gained 25% in August, its strongest month since November 2024, and touched $81,138 on August 25 after a short squeeze that closed out between $1.4 billion and $4 billion of bearish bets. That rally also ran on forced buying, and the price gave back the $80,000 level within three days once the squeeze ended.
Short liquidations made up more than three-quarters of Bitcoin’s total liquidations over the past 24 hours, and forced buying stops once the shorts are gone. After that, Bitcoin needs buyers who want to hold it, and the ETF data does not yet show them. Bitcoin ETFs lost $236.5 million on September 1 and took in about $100 million on September 2, after $3.52 billion of inflows across August.
Meanwhile, the bond market has not moved. The 10-year Treasury yield stood at 4.79% on September 2, near its highest since January 2025. It had briefly fallen toward 4.6% after the Treasury expanded its bond buybacks on August 19, and it climbed back above 4.8% within eight sessions. A yield that high makes government debt a serious competitor for the same money Bitcoin needs, and nothing about Thursday changed it.
The August jobs report comes out on Friday morning. July payrolls fell by 23,000 and the prior two months were revised down by a combined 103,000, so a weak number would push the Fed toward cutting, and a strong one would push it the other way.
What the CLARITY Act Vote Could Do for Bitcoin
The Bitcoin price has one scheduled catalyst this month. The Senate votes on September 15 on whether to advance the CLARITY Act, the bill that would divide oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC and settle which tokens count as securities. That vote is on cloture, the procedural step that ends debate and forces the bill to a floor vote, and it needs 60 senators.
A cloture win would remove a question that has hung over the industry for two years and give Bitcoin a reason to hold $80,000 that does not depend on shorts being squeezed. A loss would push the bill into the autumn with no date attached, and the price would be left with the bond market and the Fed.
Can Bitcoin Hold $80,000?
The Bitcoin price most likely holds $80,000 into the jobs report on Friday, since the Iran pause and the drop in hike odds gave buyers a reason to stay and the squeeze has already cleared the shorts that were pressing on the price. However, the same setup failed on August 28, and the 10-year yield near 4.8% has not moved.
A close back under $78,000 in the next few sessions would mean Thursday’s buying was all short covering, and Bitcoin would be back where it started the month. If the level holds through Friday and cloture passes on September 15, $80,000 becomes the floor for the rest of September.
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