Bitcoin traded above $80,000 on Thursday. Traders were positioning ahead of Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s first Jackson Hole keynote, a speech arriving on the heels of a week that added roughly 10% to BTC and lifted it to its highest level since early August.
Spot venues showed BTC changing hands around $80,200 to $80,800, up about 2% over 24 hours, according to Bitcoin Magazine. The intraday high hit $80,793 during New York trading. Decrypt listed spot separately at $80,526, up 1.9% on the day after an open near $79,023.
The rally traces to Washington, not the charts. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced last week that the Treasury would double the size of its long-dated bond buybacks. Long-term yields fell. So did the dollar. Bitcoin Magazine framed the mechanism plainly: lower long-term yields reduce the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold, and generally support risk-on appetite. Decrypt attributed the same dynamic to a revival of the “debasement trade,” where investors buy scarce assets as a hedge against currency weakness.
That backdrop puts Warsh’s Friday address at the top of the calendar for macro-sensitive assets. The Kansas City Fed’s annual symposium runs August 27 through 29 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This year’s theme is “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy,” which the KC Fed’s own materials say covers a “dramatic increase in innovation in financial intermediation and payments,” including cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. Decrypt called it the first Jackson Hole symposium in roughly 40 years built around crypto’s own turf.
Warsh was nominated by President Trump and is now delivering his first major speech as Fed chair. He has made pro-Bitcoin statements in the past. Bitcoin Magazine noted he is also described as reluctant to lower interest rates, a tension with Trump, who has pushed since last year for lower borrowing costs. Traders are pricing September rate-hike odds at roughly one-in-three heading into the speech, per Decrypt.
The technical picture is stretched. BTC rejected near $81,265 earlier this week. The 50-week moving average at roughly $81,085 capped the push. Decrypt placed price about 2.5% below $82,538, the level that capped a prior breakout attempt. Relative strength index sat at 82.4, deep in overbought territory. Price held above both the 50-day and 200-day averages. The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index read 71, in the “Greed” band.
Regulatory tailwinds added to the bid. Bitcoin Magazine reported that bitcoin’s run started last week after positive regulatory news and the Treasury announcement, and noted that a Senate vote on the Clarity Act, which would establish a framework distinguishing digital assets as securities, commodities, or payment stablecoins, was delayed until September. Trump last week called the bill “very, very powerful” legislation, according to Bitcoin Magazine.
The White House has also teased the possibility of the United States accumulating more bitcoin, per Decrypt. That signal reinforced the rally’s macro framing even before Warsh takes the podium.
What the speech actually says is not yet known. All three sources are pre-keynote. If Warsh leans dovish on the payments-innovation theme or signals comfort with looser policy, Decrypt’s analytical read is that the combination of falling yields and a weaker dollar is precisely the environment that powered BTC’s move this month. If he stays hawkish, the overbought RSI and the $81,000 rejection give sellers a nearby reference.
Traders, as ever, disagree on which one prints first.
