Bitcoin held above $77,000 on Monday after one of its strongest weeks of the year, as Treasury market stress, forced short liquidations and recovering spot ETF inflows combined to lift the largest cryptocurrency by more than 20% over seven days.
The rally has put Bitcoin back within sight of its all-time high of $126,000, and at least one major bank is openly reconsidering how high prices could go by December.
A Bond Buyback That Backfired
A key catalyst came from an unexpected direction: the US Treasury market. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a $4 billion bond buyback intended to push long-term yields lower. Instead, yields stayed elevated and investors rotated into alternative stores of value, with Bitcoin and gold both surging in the days that followed.
The dynamic has revived talk of informal "curve control" — the idea that Washington will intervene repeatedly to suppress borrowing costs, degrading the appeal of long-dated government debt. Crypto markets have treated that narrative as fundamentally bullish for fixed-supply assets.
Ray Dalio added to the debate on Friday, urging investors to hold gold and "a bit of Bitcoin" over bonds. The Bridgewater Associates founder said the United States could face a debt crisis within roughly three years unless fiscal policy changes, recommending a 10% to 15% gold allocation while overweighting gold and Bitcoin relative to debt assets. It continues a notable drift for Dalio, who in 2022 called a 1–2% Bitcoin allocation "reasonable."
Standard Chartered: $100,000 Call May Be "Too Low"
Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered, wrote in a Friday note that for the first time this year there is a risk the bank's $100,000 year-end Bitcoin forecast is too low.
Kendrick said the rally has been driven largely by short liquidations, while inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs have started to recover. Low open interest in futures markets leaves room for more investors to return as prices rise, and he sees a potential acceleration toward the all-time high after October 6.
The note marks a sharp reversal from February, when Kendrick cut the bank's year-end targets to $100,000 for Bitcoin and $4,000 for Ether, and expected a drop to around $50,000 before recovery.
Jackson Hole Looms
Attention now turns to the Federal Reserve's annual Jackson Hole symposium, where Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is set to make his first appearance at the event since taking office. Markets are watching for any signal on the pace of rate cuts following last month's weak jobs report, which shifted odds toward easier policy.
The broad crypto market held the weekly rally into Monday. XRP posted its biggest weekly gain in 21 months — up roughly 46% — while Asian equity markets fell as Samsung and Alibaba slid, underlining the divergence between digital assets and traditional risk this month.