Bitcoin just went vertical. After spending the entire session glued to the $77,200 to $78,000 zone, $BTC ripped through $80,000 and printed an intraday high of $80,477, trading at $80,301 at the time of writing. That is a gain of roughly $2,400, or 3.07%, against a previous close of $77,302.
The move was not a slow grind. It was a near straight line from lunchtime onwards, and it came with a very specific catalyst attached.
Why Did the Bitcoin Price Jump Above $80,000 Today?
The trigger came from Washington, not from crypto.
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller told a Reuters event on Thursday that he is inclined to support leaving interest rates unchanged at the September 15 to 16 meeting, provided August inflation data confirms that price pressures are still cooling. Waller pointed out that the three-month rate on the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge has fallen from 4.76% in February to 3.05% now, calling the speed of that decline encouraging. His line to reporters, “Give disinflation a chance. We can wait one meeting”, did most of the damage to the hawks.
Here is why that matters so much. Markets had been pricing a Fed rate hike in September, not a cut. After Waller spoke, the implied odds of a September hike collapsed to around 54.6%, down roughly 12 percentage points on the day, according to CME FedWatch.
The reaction across assets was immediate and consistent:
- The two year Treasury yield, which had pushed above 4.40% this week for the first time since January 2025, dropped as much as seven basis points to 4.30%.
- The dollar fell as much as 0.5% and lost ground against every one of its G10 peers.
- The dollar slid more than 2% against the yen to below 156, its weakest since late February, while gold added 2.3% and US equities opened strongly.
Lower yields, a weaker dollar and less pressure from the Fed is close to the ideal cocktail for Bitcoin. BTC simply did what a high beta liquidity asset does.
What Does the BTC Chart Say About This Breakout?
On the 3 hour Bitstamp chart, $Bitcoin had been trapped in a tight box since late August, roughly $76,000 on the low side and just under $82,000 on the high side. Today’s candle blew straight through the middle of it.
The level worth watching is $78,670. That has been the pivot the market kept rejecting off, and Bitcoin cleared it with a single expansion candle rather than the usual slow chop. Old resistance now becomes the first line of defence. If BTC holds above it on a close, the breakout has structural backing rather than just headline momentum.
Zooming out, the trend was never actually broken. The 200 EMA sits at $73,638 and is still sloping upward, which means price is trading around 9% above its longer term mean. That is healthy, but it is also the kind of stretch that invites a retest.
Is the Bitcoin RSI Flashing a Warning?
Yes, and it is worth taking seriously.
The RSI(14) has spiked to 72.13 from the mid 40s, while its own moving average is still sitting down at 46.63. That gap is enormous. It tells you this move happened faster than the underlying trend can justify, which is exactly what you expect from a headline driven repricing plus forced short covering.
Overbought does not mean “sell”. It means the easy part is done. Historically, when Bitcoin’s RSI detaches this violently from its signal line, one of two things follows: a sideways cool off that lets the indicator reset while price holds, or a sharp wick back into the breakout zone that punishes late longs.
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