Bitcoin pauses near $77,100 on Monday morning, right after a 21% weekly surge, its strongest since 2023. Risk appetite is back, yet nobody wants to commit before Friday. That day, Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole speech as Fed chair. The crypto market is waiting to learn which way he will tilt monetary policy.
Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin pauses at $77,100 after a 21% week, its strongest since 2023
- Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole speech as Fed chair on Friday
- XRP gained 46% on the week and Ethereum 28% as altcoins joined the run
The Strongest Week Since 2023 Stalls at $77,100
Bitcoin pauses around $77,100 on Monday morning, marginally lower on the day. Over seven days, the gain tops 21%. The price started the stretch near a $63,500 floor, which makes it the strongest weekly run since 2023.
The week’s peak came on Friday at $79,500. The move extends directly from the breakout past $75,500 that had already lifted the price to its highest level since May. Every session since then has squeezed short sellers a little harder.
Altcoins amplified the move. XRP trades just under $1.50 after a 46% weekly jump. Ethereum adds 28% over seven days to $2,442, and Solana is up 24% at $94 despite a small dip on Monday. The rally reached the entire risk end of the market, well beyond Bitcoin alone.
Regulated products confirm the picture. Spot Bitcoin ETFs collected $1.9B in net inflows over the week, ether funds another $697.2M, and the combined $2.6B marks their strongest weekly haul since October 2025. That money moves slower than leveraged bets, in both directions, which gives the current level a firmer floor than a pure short squeeze would.
When Bitcoin pauses like this after such a run, it reads as hesitation, not reversal. More than $4B in short positions have been liquidated since last Wednesday, and the fear and greed index climbed from 41 to 72 in four sessions. After a move that fast, the real question is what triggers the next leg.
Kevin Warsh Faces His First Market-Moving Exam
That trigger has a date and a venue. The Jackson Hole symposium runs August 27-29 in Wyoming, as laid out in the official program published by the Kansas City Fed, and Kevin Warsh takes the podium on Friday for his first speech there as Fed chair.
Crypto traders watch him closely, and history explains why. The youngest governor the Fed ever had, serving from 2006 to 2011, Warsh has already rattled this market in 2026, most notably during the episode where he ruled out rate cuts and sent Bitcoin down to $58,000.
The opposite scenario is just as documented. When the Fed chief softened his tone in the spring, his dovish pivot was enough to push the price back above $60,000. Two speeches, two opposite directions, the same man at the podium: that is why nobody wants to front-run Friday.
Observers flag two specific files in his address. His stance on shrinking the central bank’s balance sheet comes first, his reading of Treasury and Fed coordination comes second. A clear signal on either would hand the market its direction ahead of the September meeting.
The last time the institution spoke, the market had already shown its resilience. In July, the central bank held a hawkish line and Bitcoin steadied above $64K without giving up ground. The setup has changed since then. The price now sits $13,000 higher, positioning is far more crowded after a week of forced short covering, and so is the sensitivity to every single word from the podium.
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Treasury Buybacks and Politics Fueled the Run
The main engine of the past week did not come from crypto. The US Treasury doubled the size of its long-bond buyback operations, from $2B to $4B each. That easing in yields had already produced the initial jump that carried Bitcoin to $69,749, before the move started feeding on itself.
Washington added a political layer. A White House meeting gathered crypto and finance executives around the Clarity Act, whose first procedural vote in the Senate is expected on September 15. The SEC, for its part, opened its Reg Crypto proposal to a 60-day public comment period. The rally now runs on a political calendar as much as a monetary one.
Friday’s equation is easy to write down. If Warsh validates the easing already under way, the run gets a green light to extend. If he shuts the door, the market will test how far the Treasury’s $4B buyback operations can hold against rising rates. Bitcoin pauses in the meantime, and that stillness mostly says the market has understood what is at stake.
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