U.S. August CPI data pushed markets to reprice the Federal Reserve’s next move and sent crypto through another sharp round trip. Bitcoin fell toward $76,000 after the release, then climbed to $79,837 before retreating again. Ether briefly traded back above $2,600 and outperformed Bitcoin on an intraday basis.
According to CoinGlass, total liquidations across the crypto market reached $674 million over the past 24 hours as of publication, affecting about 94,000 traders. Ether led with $311 million in liquidations, followed by Bitcoin at $184 million. The largest single liquidation was an ETH-USD position on Hyperliquid worth about $20.28 million.
Headline CPI matched estimates, but core monthly inflation ran hotter
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday that headline CPI rose 3.4% year over year in August and 0.4% from the previous month, both matching market expectations. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, slowed to 2.4% year over year, the lowest reading since March 2021, but rose 0.3% month over month, above the 0.2% expected by the market.
Gasoline prices increased 3.9% from the prior month and accounted for more than one-third of the monthly rise in the headline index. The energy index rose 2.1% on the month.
Stocks, Treasuries and oil all repriced after the release
Before the CPI print, Asia-Pacific equities were already under pressure. Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed down 1.93%, South Korea’s KOSPI fell 1.76%, and China’s four major A-share indexes all opened lower and ended the session in the red.
After the data, U.S. stocks opened higher, gave back part of the move, and still finished up on the day. The S&P 500 rose 0.9%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite each gained about 1%. Even so, all three major indexes still posted weekly declines.
In rates, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield settled at 4.974%, close to the 5% mark, versus 4.783% a week earlier. Brent crude closed at $104.61 a barrel and was up more than 8% for the week. The report cited Houthi attacks on Saudi energy facilities and shipping risks around the Strait of Hormuz as factors that continued to lift oil prices.
Fed hike odds climb to 80%, but next week’s decision still carries uncertainty
The market had already elevated the importance of the August CPI report before it was released. Bank of America analysts had said earlier that August nonfarm payrolls were more of an appetizer and that CPI remained the main course for the Sept. 15-16 policy meeting. The bank argued that unless the labor market data showed a clear downside surprise, payrolls alone would be unlikely to decide whether the Fed hikes. It kept its call for a September increase. August payrolls later came in at 162,000, roughly triple expectations in the framing cited by the report, which pushed the hiking discussion forward again.
After CPI, Polymarket data showed traders assigning an 80% probability to a 25-basis-point rate increase at the Fed’s Sept. 16 meeting. The probability of no change stood at 21%, the chance of a move larger than 50 basis points was about 1%, and contracts tied to rate cuts were all below 1%. Before the inflation release, no change had been the highest-probability outcome for a long stretch. That shifted rapidly around the time the data hit.
China International Capital Corporation said August CPI had already reached the Fed’s threshold for another hike and forecast a 25-basis-point increase on Sept. 16. It also said the Fed may lower its unemployment-rate projection, raise its inflation forecast and send a tighter policy signal. Financial blog Zero Hedge focused on hotter core inflation and even hotter supercore inflation, saying prices for education and communication services saw historic increases, including a record jump in mobile communication services.
Goldman Sachs economist Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo said the CPI report looked, on the surface, like the result investors wanted to see, but actually raised uncertainty around next week’s rate decision. In her view, the data did not fully capture some of the inflation pressures that have emerged recently, and there was little evidence that inflation was on track to return to target in the near term.
Energy remained the outside variable in that equation. The report said attacks on Saudi energy facilities by the Houthis, shipping risks in the Strait of Hormuz, and Saudi Arabia’s closure of the East-West crude oil pipeline all added to supply concerns. With oil prices and interest rates both elevated, Wall Street’s question has shifted to how long high rates may last and whether policy can contain inflation without causing obvious damage to the economy and corporate earnings.
RBC Capital Markets has changed its path for this year from earlier expectations of rate cuts to a forecast of three rate hikes, arguing that higher rates could put more pressure on corporate earnings and equity valuations. Nick Timiraos, often described as a Fed messenger, wrote in his latest piece that investors have largely concluded the Fed will deliver its first rate increase in three years next week. The harder question is what happens after that.
The report also said almost no one inside the Fed believes a single 25-basis-point increase would be enough to bring inflation down. If the Fed hikes next week, many investors would read it as a sign that the earlier level of rates had itself been off the mark, making the move look more like the start of a correction than a one-off step. Since the 1990s, the Fed has rarely raised rates just once and then stopped.
Walsh said in July that he did not believe the Fed was good at fine-tuning. Analysts cited that view to argue that a chair skeptical of fine-tuning is unlikely to declare the job done immediately after a 25-basis-point increase. The market now expects at least three cumulative hikes by June next year, above the previous expectation of two.
For risk assets, Friday’s rebound was attributed mainly to a clearer policy path rather than any real easing in inflation pressure. Lower policy uncertainty helps explain why U.S. stocks still finished higher even as rate-hike expectations moved up. In the report’s framing, the real pricing moment still lies in the Sept. 16 decision, the dot plot and Walsh’s press conference.
Bitcoin’s daily golden cross appeared briefly, then vanished
Crypto reacted more violently than traditional markets. In the four hours after the CPI release, Bitcoin dropped to $76,000, rebounded above $79,000, and then fell back toward $77,600. CoinGlass data showed $471 million in liquidations across the market in that four-hour window alone, including $348 million in short liquidations and $123 million in long liquidations, a clear two-sided wipeout.
Trader Killa cited data showing that after each of the last three U.S. CPI releases, Bitcoin gained more than 5% within eight days. He said the market has already priced in bad news and that a bear trap is in place.
Over a longer stretch, CoinGlass data showed Bitcoin rose 24.95% in August, its best month of the year so far. Momentum weakened in September, with the token down 1.83% for the month.
Spot ETF flows and listed treasury activity moved in different directions
Fund flow data showed a split between spot Bitcoin and spot Ether ETFs. According to SoSoValue, spot Bitcoin ETFs posted $463 million in net outflows for the week, with net assets of about $97.58 billion, corresponding to a Bitcoin price of roughly $77,286. Spot Ether ETFs recorded $197 million in net inflows over the same period, with net assets of about $16.31 billion, corresponding to a price of roughly $2,539.
Among listed treasury companies, SoSoValue said the pace of Bitcoin accumulation slowed sharply as of Sept. 8 U.S. Eastern Time. Excluding mining companies, net Bitcoin purchases by listed firms totaled $267 million last week, down 48% from the previous week. Aggregate holdings among listed companies stood at 1,119,973 BTC, down 2.38% week over week, with a market value of about $87.77 billion, equal to 5.6% of Bitcoin’s circulating market capitalization.
Strategy’s most recent purchase came on Aug. 31, when it bought 4,600 BTC, bringing total holdings to 845,050 BTC. The report said the company is currently sitting on a slight unrealized profit. Strategy’s latest 8-K filing showed it has raised about $20.9 billion this year, ranking fourth in U.S. equity issuance, behind only SpaceX, Alphabet and Intel.
By contrast, Ether treasury company Bitmine continued to add to its position. It bought another 28,086 ETH last week, bringing total holdings to 5.9292 million ETH at an average cost of $3,347. Based on current prices, the position is sitting on an unrealized loss of about $5 billion.
$82,000 emerges as a closely watched resistance zone
On Sept. 12, Bitcoin rose to as high as $79,837, briefly pushing the 50-day moving average above the 200-day moving average on the daily chart. The price then retreated and the golden cross disappeared almost immediately. The report described it as Bitcoin’s first daily golden cross since November 2025 and also the fastest failure on record, with short-term momentum cooling at the same time.
It added that similar golden crosses in 2021, February 2023, October 2024 and May 2025 were all followed by pullbacks first, making the signal look more lagging than predictive. By the time it appears, a meaningful part of the advance has often already happened.
On-chain positioning data was also cited. Analyst Murphy said short-term holder supply is concentrated between $59,000 and $81,000. A break above $82,000 would put that cohort broadly in profit and could create room for profit-taking by short-term capital. The most concentrated cost basis for long-term holders also sits in the $81,000 to $82,000 range, including coins that became long-term holdings only after investors were trapped and held on. As price approaches cost, those holders may be more inclined to exit.
Murphy added that whale cohorts holding more than 100,000 BTC are concentrated in two pockets around $40,000, while most of the rest of their supply is stacked between $78,000 and $82,000.
Glassnode said Bitcoin is currently facing long-term holder supply pressure around $83,000 to $85,000. If the asset falls below this newly formed concentration zone, $75,000 becomes a key level to watch, and a deeper move could send price back toward the accumulation platform near $60,000.
CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. said the share of Bitcoin supply in profit has recovered from about 47% at the end of June to about 69%. The 90-day change also swung from about -19% in early August to roughly 41%, one of the faster recoveries in Bitcoin’s history.
Fed week overlaps with the U.S. crypto policy calendar
Next week’s policy calendar for crypto overlaps with the Fed meeting. Grayscale Head of Research Zach Pandl said the CLARITY Act, a U.S. bill intended to establish a comprehensive rulebook for the crypto market, will face a procedural vote in the Senate on Sept. 15. The measure needs 60 votes to advance, while Republicans currently hold 53 seats, meaning Democratic support would still be required.
Pandl said that even if the bill does not pass this year, the regulatory framework around stablecoins, token issuance, tokenized securities and perpetual futures will continue to become clearer.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said Bitcoin reaching $400,000 by 2030 remains a reasonable target and that, in his view, the bottom of this cycle may already be in place. He also said that regardless of the Sept. 15 vote outcome, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are already prepared to move ahead with rulemaking under their existing authority, which means the industry may still get new regulatory clarity around the vote.