A market note from PANews and BIT US Stocks said Bitcoin has taken hits this week from both a legislative headline and a rate decision, yet it has still held above its Tuesday low. Attention is now shifting to the Sept. 25 quarterly options expiry.
Bitcoin fell from around $79,600 near Monday’s open and briefly slipped below $75,000 after the procedural vote on the CLARITY Act failed. Volatility picked up again on the day of the Federal Open Market Committee decision, and the sharper downside move came after comments from Waller. Price later consolidated around $77,500.
Key Bitcoin levels traders are watching
The report said many traders now treat the area around Tuesday’s low near $75,000 as the reference bottom for the current pullback. Buying interest was described as visible around $75,500, with several market voices saying that level has held for now.
On the upside, the $77,300 to $78,500 range has flipped from support into resistance. The $78,200 to $78,600 zone was repeatedly identified as the area Bitcoin needs to reclaim. If it fails to move back above that band, the report said price could retest current lows and possibly move lower.
Some traders are looking at a support band between $73,500 and $74,500, as well as the short-term holder cost basis area around $70,000 to $71,300, and still view a move into those levels as a healthy correction. Below that, $68,000 to $70,000 was described as a warning zone where market structure could weaken further.
Sept. 25 options expiry is the next major event
The note said the Sept. 25 quarterly expiry is the next major catalyst. According to the report, about 43% of Bitcoin open interest is tied to that date, more than double the scale seen at the end of August.
Max pain sits near $72,000, while a clear call wall is in place around $85,000. As expiry approaches, dealer hedging could keep price swinging around key levels. Once settlement is out of the way, the market may get a cleaner directional move.
Positioning and on-chain signals remain mixed
Funding and positioning have not fully turned. CryptoQuant’s bull score dropped from 80 to 60, though it remains slightly above neutral. The Fear and Greed Index stayed at 69 in the greed zone, which the report said suggests positioning has not been fully cleared out.
Glassnode said listed-company treasuries added only about 5,900 BTC over the past three months, far below the same period last year. The average corporate cost basis was put at about $80,500, with spot price still slightly below that level, pointing to weak new demand overall.
Daniel Yu, head of asset management at BIT, said the core issue in this meeting was not the rate hike itself but a “duration shock.” In his view, the dot plot lifted the median 2027 rate from 3.6% to 4.1%, effectively extending the high-rate environment by another year. He said that clashes with the earlier narrative that framed Bitcoin as a hedge against currency debasement.
Yu added that if oil keeps falling below $100, the certainty around one more hike implied by the dot plot could ease. If the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield climbs back above 5%, Bitcoin support may need to shift lower. With next week’s macro calendar relatively light, the Sept. 25 expiry is likely to be the main driver of volatility, and the scale of pinning effects and hedge unwinds is far larger than at the end of August.
Crypto market items highlighted in the note
- Binance will delist four USDC spot pairs — BREV, COOKIE, LA and QNT — on Sept. 18.
- LayerZero (ZRO) is unlocking about 25.72 million tokens worth about $27.51 million.
- Lista DAO (LISTA) is unlocking about 33.44 million tokens worth about $2.6 million.
- Bedrock (BR) is unlocking about 40.63 million tokens worth about $10.4 million.
- Upbit’s 24-hour trading volume ranking: XRP, BTC, ETH, FOLD and NEAR.
- Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $159 million in net inflows.
- Spot Ether ETFs saw $39.2445 million in net outflows, extending the streak to three straight days.
- Among the top 100 tokens by market capitalization, the biggest gainers were NEAR up 26.1%, UNI up 25.8%, ARB up 25.1%, APT up 15.4% and WLD up 14.5%.
U.S. futures were firm, but triple witching remains a risk
U.S. equity index futures were broadly higher overnight as sentiment kept recovering after the rate move. Dow futures rose 0.24%, Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.66%, and S&P 500 futures added 0.35%.
BIT overnight data showed continued strength in technology and semiconductor names. SOXL rose 3.57%, Intel gained 2.72%, Micron added 1.48%, AMD rose 1.39%, and Nvidia was up 0.85%. Crypto-linked names also traded higher, with Strategy up 2.57% and the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF up 1.43%. The silver trust ETF gained 2.42%, while Tesla and Google also moved higher.
The note also warned about Friday’s triple witching session, when stock index futures, stock index options and single-stock options all expire on the same day. More than $2 trillion in settlements are involved. The report said that in 12 of 14 comparable triple witching sessions since 2012, the S&P 500 closed lower. It added that even with decent fundamentals, options expiry can intensify intraday swings, and a break below key S&P 500 support could trigger panic selling.
Oil eased, AI stocks rallied, and an SEC exemption lifted crypto-linked names
U.S. stocks snapped a three-day losing streak overnight. The Dow rose 0.62%, the S&P 500 gained 1.14% to 7,637, and the Nasdaq climbed 1.69%. The report tied the move to a two-day pullback in oil prices and a retreat in Treasury yields from above 5% to about 4.93%, ending a nine-day climb.
AI and chip stocks led the rebound. At an event in Scotland, Jensen Huang said Nvidia’s chip sales next year could reach twice this year’s level and that supply, not demand, is the bottleneck. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3%. Nvidia gained 2.54%, Intel rose 7.67%, AMD added 6.36%, and Micron climbed 5.50%. Power equipment and compute cloud names also advanced. Generac jumped more than 18% after signing a backup generator agreement with Amazon worth up to $8 billion.
Goldman Sachs’ trading desk activity score was only 4/10. Citadel Securities strategist Scott Rubner said the move looked more like short covering and position repair. He said September could still be choppy, though AI stocks may stabilize first in October.
Crypto-related equities were almost uniformly higher. According to BIT US Stocks data, Robinhood rose 5.16%, Coinbase gained 5.75%, Circle added 5.77%, and Strategy climbed 4.81%. Miners outperformed: Riot Platforms rose 7.52%, Terawulf gained 7.02%, Marathon Digital added 5.43%, CleanSpark rose 4.38%, and American Bitcoin climbed 8.48%.
On the regulatory side, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission granted a five-year exemption for tokenized stock trading. The note described that as a direct positive for trading platforms and on-chain financial infrastructure. The market has treated it as a testing window for bringing traditional securities on-chain, and with Bitcoin stabilizing, capital has moved back into crypto-linked assets.
Japan and South Korea: semiconductors led the move
The Bank of Japan raised rates by 25 basis points to 1.25% as expected, the highest level since 1995 and the sixth hike since ending negative rates in March 2024. The decision passed 7-2, with two members dissenting. The statement did not signal a sharper hawkish turn, and Governor Kazuo Ueda said there is no preset path for future hikes and that decisions will be made step by step based on the economy and prices.
Markets read the two dissenting votes and the lack of guidance on faster tightening as a sign that the Bank of Japan will normalize policy cautiously. The yen weakened in the short term, with USD/JPY up 1.15% to about 157.8, while the Nikkei 225 closed up 1.38%. Semiconductor and technology shares led. Kioxia jumped 9.40%, Tokyo Electron rose 4.20%, and SoftBank gained more than 1% after increasing its margin loan backed by Arm shares to $25 billion as it kept adding to AI exposure.
South Korea’s KOSPI closed up 2.68%. Semiconductor stocks led there as well, with SK Hynix up 6.41% and Samsung Electronics up 3.36%. Korean media reports said delivery times for key semiconductor equipment components have more than doubled, and some Japanese parts now carry wait times of 40 months. That could delay expansion projects in Pyeongtaek for Samsung and Yongin for SK Hynix. Even so, the report said AI demand continues to support chip sentiment, leaving the market to balance a near-term supply squeeze against a longer-term capital spending story.
Hong Kong and mainland China equities also rebounded
All three major Hong Kong indexes closed higher. The Hang Seng Tech Index rose 2.2%, while the Hang Seng Index and the China Enterprises Index gained 0.6% and 0.61%, respectively. AI and semiconductor names led the move. MiniMax-W surged nearly 19%, Axera rose 16.6%, Iluvatar CoreX climbed 11.95%, and Zhipu gained 5.4%. In semiconductors, HG Semiconductor, GigaDevice, Montage Technology and SMIC were all strong. Lenovo rose 9.5% and hit a fresh stage high.
Mainland A-shares also recovered broadly. The Shanghai Composite rose 0.94%, the Shenzhen Component gained 1.72%, the ChiNext Index added 2.25%, and the STAR Composite rose more than 3%. More than 4,200 stocks advanced. Semiconductors, GPUs, memory chips, communications equipment and computer hardware led, while property stocks also strengthened in the afternoon. Coal, autos, oil and gas, and banks lagged.
What markets are watching next
- Sept. 18, Friday: U.S. triple witching. Stock index futures, stock index options and single-stock options expire together, which usually lifts trading volume and late-session volatility. This one comes right after the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan decisions, raising the risk of larger swings.
- Deadline for consultation on the Hang Seng Tech Index expansion and revamp. The plan would expand the index to 50 constituents and introduce a high-growth factor, which could affect passive flows into Hong Kong technology stocks. AI, software and high-growth tech names are in focus.
- iPhone 18 Pro launch. The release will test demand for Apple’s new product line and could affect sentiment across the Apple supply chain, consumer electronics, memory, optics and semiconductors.
- Huawei Connect runs from Sept. 17 to Sept. 19. Markets are watching the Ascend 950 supernode, new AI compute products and partner plans. Domestic compute, servers, optical modules, liquid cooling and data center supply chains could see a catalyst.
- Semicon India runs from Sept. 17 to Sept. 19. Global semiconductor and policy leaders are attending. Markets are watching India’s chip manufacturing, packaging, testing and supply-chain policy signals, which could affect expectations for the global semiconductor industry layout.