Bitcoin
Affairs
 
No. 089  ·  24 Aug 2026
 
MARKET SNAPSHOT
BTC / USD
$79,548
  24H CHANGE
+2.4%
 
ALL-TIME HIGH
$124,749
  FROM ATH
-36.2%
NEWS
6 STORIES TODAY
Treasury buyback plans widen as Bessent eyes nearly $1 trillion cash buffer
Yahoo Finance reported that Treasury is weighing the use of its roughly $950 billion Treasury General Account to help finance expanded buybacks of longer-dated bonds, a step that would go beyond the market’s assumption that bill issuance would fund the program. For Bitcoin, the significance is the same liquidity-and-debasement narrative that has already pressured the dollar and improved sentiment across hard assets and other rate-sensitive trades.
Rates  Macro
U.S.-Canada trade war deepens with new tariff threats and retaliation plans
Trade tensions worsened Monday after President Trump threatened 50% tariffs on Canadian automobiles, car parts and steel starting next year, while previously announced tariffs on other Canadian goods were already taking effect. Ottawa has promised dollar-for-dollar retaliation from September 8, raising fresh growth and inflation risks across North American supply chains.
Macro  Geopolitics
PCE and Jackson Hole now loom over a fragile bond-driven rally
This week’s macro calendar now centers on Wednesday’s U.S. PCE inflation report and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Friday speech at Jackson Hole, with bond traders looking for clues on whether policy will tighten further. AP noted that long-term Treasury yields remain a dominant market driver after last week’s buyback shock, making rates volatility a direct swing factor for Bitcoin and other risk assets.
Fed  Rates  Macro
Dollar sinks toward multi-month lows as debt fears bolster hard-asset trade
Reuters reported the dollar was hovering near multi-month lows Monday as investors questioned whether Treasury buybacks can contain long-dated yields without undermining confidence in the currency. The same move has strengthened gold and improved Bitcoin’s relative performance, reinforcing a broader hard-asset trade tied to debt and debasement fears.
Macro  Rates
Iran sanctions push rial to record low, keeping energy risks elevated
Iran’s currency hit a record low ahead of a fresh U.S. sanctions package, underscoring how the conflict is shifting from open warfare toward financial and energy coercion. For Bitcoin markets, the bigger implication is that Middle East supply and shipping risks remain unresolved, keeping oil and inflation tail risks alive even on days crude softens.
Geopolitics  Macro
Strategy raises $2 billion, pauses bitcoin buying, and amasses fresh cash
Strategy disclosed that it sold about 18.26 million MSTR shares for roughly $2 billion last week but did not buy or sell any bitcoin. Instead, the company lifted its USD Reserve to $5.1 billion and created a new $1.59 billion USD Cash pool, leaving 840,447 BTC on its balance sheet and giving investors a read on near-term treasury pacing.
Macro
COMMENTARY
VOICE FROM THE NETWORK
Quinten
@QuintenFrancois
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Imagine the pain of all the sidelined money waiting for a bottom in October 👀 https://t.co/1YWkc8HP2n
 
 
 
 
16 reposts    9 replies    217 likes
Adam Livingston
@AdamBLiv
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🔥WOW: BITCOIN IS ENTERING FACE-MELTING TERRITORY🔥

If you are bullish on Bitcoin, you're gonna want to check this out.

Bitcoin just started EATING SELLERS ALIVE.

I went looking for on-chain evidence that this week's move was actual seller exhaustion + demand absorption rather than another methamphetamine bear-market rally produced in a Telegram basement.

The on-chain data is ridiculous.

For the 14 days before the breakout:

1. aSOPR was below 1 on 13/14 days
2. Short-Term Supply SOPR was ≤1 on 13/14 days
3. Bitcoin went basically nowhere: +0.25%

So what does that mean, in English?

aSOPR tells us whether coins being spent across the network are realizing profits or losses.

Below 1 = coins are being sold at losses.

STS SOPR does the same thing specifically for short-term supply - the financially traumatized population that bought recently and has spent the last six months staring at a Ledger like it's a terminally ill family member.

For 2 weeks, those people kept realizing losses.

And Bitcoin stopped going down. Then something changed.

Over the latest 7-day window: BTC: +24.37%.

You might assume sellers simply vanished. Wrong!

Short-Term Supply Coin Days Destroyed actually increased 25.7% week-over-week.

STS CDD measures economically meaningful spending activity from younger Bitcoin supply.

Previous week: 8.31M STS CDD

This week: 10.45M STS CDD

MORE short-term coin-age was being destroyed.

MORE coins were economically active.

And BTC responded by launching from ~$63K to $78,325.

That's absorption. The market didn't need sellers to leave. It became strong enough to swallow them.

And then the profitability regime flipped.

Average aSOPR: 0.9927 → 1.0058

Average STS SOPR: 0.9971 → 1.0134

By Friday:

aSOPR: 1.0426
STS SOPR: 1.044

So Bitcoin went from absorbing short-term holders capitulating at losses…

…to absorbing short-term holders taking ~4% realized profits…

WITHOUT PRICE ROLLING OVER.

This is the important part. I built a simple metric:

SELLER ABSORPTION EFFICIENCY

7-day BTC return divided by short-term CDD, normalized against its trailing 365-day median.

Translation:

How much upward price movement are buyers generating relative to the amount of short-term supply actually being spent?

Current reading: 3.19

That's the HIGHEST IN 3 YEARS.

And the 4th highest in 5 years.

There is a bearish historical counterexample worth acknowledging.

February 2022 had even higher raw absorption efficiency.

But aSOPR/STH SOPR only managed:

1.009 / 1.008. Barely above breakeven.

Today: 1.0426 / 1.044.

This profitability flip has considerably more teeth.

And the closest modern structural analogue I find?

January 14, 2023.

That setup subsequently produced:

90D: +45.5%
180D: +50.1%
1Y: +99.0%

Analogue ≠ prophecy. But the mechanics today are extremely difficult to dismiss.

Loss sellers spent two weeks throwing inventory into a market that refused to break.

Then price exploded. Short-term spending INCREASED.

Profit-taking returned. And price accelerated anyway.

That's not an absence of sellers.

That's buyers walking into the slaughterhouse, buying the entire inventory, purchasing the building, firing the manager and asking if there's anything else in the freezer.

Seller exhaustion is when selling stops mattering.

And this week… it stopped mattering.
 
 
 
 
35 reposts    23 replies    475 likes
Seb
@seblfg
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No Bitcoin bear market has ever ended without S&P500 droping 10-20% first. https://t.co/T5nk2sUTSs
 
 
 
 
19 reposts    21 replies    275 likes
Coin Bureau
@coinbureau
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🚨BREAKING: Bessent to unleash a $1 TRILLION war chest to rescue the US bond market.

That is 250X the Treasury’s new $4 billion for a single long-term bond buyback operation.

According to CNBC, the Treasury could tap its nearly $1T Treasury General Account to fund expanded bond buybacks.

The move could lift bond prices and push long-term yields lower without requiring the Fed to intervene.

This comes after Treasury doubled buybacks from $2B to at least $4B per operation.

But the relief quickly faded and the 30Y yield returned to around 5.25%, showing that far more support may be needed.

Drawing down Treasury cash could also inject major liquidity into markets, potentially benefiting stocks and crypto.

The full $1T has not been committed, but it represents the Treasury’s potential firepower.

The bond market just learned how big Bessent’s bazooka could be.
 
 
 
 
369 reposts    133 replies    1.9K likes
The Kobeissi Letter
@KobeissiLetter
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The US Treasury Has Now:

1. Announced that Treasury buybacks would double from $2 billion to $4 billion

2. Announced that Treasury buybacks could "more than double"

3. Considered using its $950 billion General Account for these purchases

Meanwhile, the 10Y Note Yield is still ABOVE levels seen prior to their initial announcement on August 19th.

This is going to be a long battle.
 
 
 
324 reposts    168 replies    2.8K likes
Crypto Rover
@cryptorover
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🚨 THIS $BTC SUMMER SHORT SQUEEZE HAS HAPPENED BEFORE.

2018: summer squeeze → $300M liquidated → bear market resumed for 4 more months.

2026: summer squeeze → 5,000,000,000 liquidated.

A final flush is still possible.

I'm DCA'ing through the next 2-4 months. https://t.co/xpTkiENbSg
 
 
 
 
128 reposts    147 replies    1.3K likes