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Bitcoin recorded its strongest monthly gain since November 2024 during August, but Fidelity said the advance does not prove that the latest crypto bear market has ended.

In its fourth-quarter crypto market outlook, Fidelity said Bitcoin, Ethereum and several altcoins recorded their strongest positive months since late 2025. Bitcoin gained more than 25% during the third week of August alone.

Ethereum rose 34.1% during the same period, while Solana advanced 28%, according to Fidelity. The gains followed relatively subdued market activity from June through the middle of August.

However, Fidelity warned that the rally could represent either the beginning of a sustained recovery or a temporary move within a continuing bear market.

Bitcoin bear market faces a November cycle test

Some investors are watching November 2026 as a possible market-bottom period based on Bitcoin’s historical four-year cycle. Bitcoin’s previous major bear-market bottom occurred in November 2022.

Applying the same approximate interval would place the next potential bottom around November 2026. Fidelity stressed that historical cycles have never followed precise four-year schedules and cannot reliably identify market turning points.

The firm said Bitcoin may have already reached its low in July. It could also decline again and establish another low during November or later.

“Despite the recent push higher in price, there is no guarantee the bear market is over,” Fidelity said.

Chris Kuiper, vice president of research at Fidelity Digital Assets, said adoption has historically occurred in waves that can help sustain market cycles. He argued that a longer holding period has generally proved more useful than attempting to time exact bottoms.

That view remains an observation based on historical performance. It does not establish that Bitcoin will repeat an earlier cycle or continue appreciating.

Volatility shift offers a possible recovery signal

Fidelity identified Bitcoin’s transition from lower volatility to a sharp upward expansion as one possible sign that sellers were becoming exhausted.

Kuiper said digital assets experienced relatively low volatility between June and mid-August. Fidelity’s analysis placed assets such as Bitcoin near the lower, or “value,” end of their historical ranges during that period.

The subsequent rally resembled volatility patterns seen near some previous bear-market endings. Bitcoin’s rapid advance above $80,000 was followed by a retreat toward $79,250, as crypto.news reported in its analysis of overbought conditions increasing short-term pullback risks.

That technical reading did not establish a new bear market. It showed that Bitcoin had risen rapidly enough to increase the probability of consolidation after the advance.

Kuiper also noted that developments which might previously have pressured prices, including a hardware-wallet security incident and delays surrounding the CLARITY Act, did not reverse the August rally.

This resilience “could further strengthen the case” that cryptocurrencies are near a bottom, Kuiper said, while stopping short of confirming one.

Adoption continued while cryptocurrency prices weakened

Fidelity said digital-asset adoption remained resilient during the earlier market decline. Stablecoin transaction volume, tokenized real-world assets and institutional participation continued growing even as the broader market capitalization weakened.

The firm described network adoption measures as comparable to fundamental indicators used when evaluating traditional businesses. Rising transaction activity can demonstrate continued use, although it does not guarantee higher token prices.

Institutional investment products also showed mixed allocation patterns before Bitcoin’s August rally. In related coverage, crypto.news reported that Ethereum funds attracted more capital than Bitcoin funds during July.

Bitcoin exchange-traded fund demand subsequently recovered during August. Fidelity listed stronger institutional adoption among the factors that could support another bull market, alongside regulatory changes, monetary policy and new blockchain use cases.

U.S. policy decisions remain key fourth-quarter catalysts

The U.S. regulatory calendar could provide two major tests during the fourth quarter. The CLARITY Act remains pending in the Senate after the Senate Banking Committee advanced it by a bipartisan 15–9 vote in May.

A procedural vote is scheduled for Sept. 15 and requires 60 votes to advance the bill toward debate. The legislation would divide elements of digital-asset oversight between the SEC and CFTC. However, passage remains uncertain, and further amendments could require additional House consideration.

As crypto.news reported, the bill now faces a tight congressional timetable before the midterm elections.

Separately, the SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets on Aug. 18. The proposed framework would create two securities-registration exemptions for qualifying crypto investment contracts.

The SEC’s formal proposal would allow eligible offerings of up to $5 million over four years or $75 million during a 12-month period, subject to specific conditions. Public comments are due by Oct. 20.

Crypto.news previously examined how the proposed exemptions would reshape token fundraising. The proposal is not final and may change following public feedback.

These policy proceedings, monetary conditions and institutional participation could shape Bitcoin’s fourth-quarter direction. None provides confirmation that the bear market has ended, leaving price action and adoption data as continuing tests of the August recovery.

Bitcoin BTC$81,074.17 isn’t just rising in dollar terms, it’s also outperforming gold, a hard asset with a centuries-long track record, at a time when concerns about government finances across advanced nations dominate headlines.

The bitcoin-to-gold ratio, which measures bitcoin’s dollar price per coin against gold’s dollar price per ounce, has climbed to 18.17, the highest since January, according to TradingView data. In plain terms, one bitcoin now buys a little over 18 ounces of gold. In dollar terms, the cryptocurrency is currently priced at around $81,000 across major exchanges, according to CoinDesk.

Both assets have been rallying after lagging the AI-driven stock market boom in the U.S. and parts of Asia. Analysts have pointed to growing fears that governments, including the U.S., may lean on debasing or devaluing their currencies to inflate away their debt.

Every major advanced economy except Switzerland now carries a debt-to-GDP ratio above 100%, and the U.S. leads the pack on primary deficit, the shortfall once interest payments are stripped out, which gives a cleaner read on how much a government is actually overspending before debt-servicing costs pile on.

The urgency comes from what OpenAI disclosed on Monday. Its new Astra model can find previously unknown software flaws and turn them into working attacks without a human guiding each step, crossing a cybersecurity threshold that until recently belonged largely to expert hacking teams, as CoinDesk reported.

Read More: OpenAI says its new ‘Astra’ AI can build attacks without human help

Eligible organisations apply through the Daybreak website. OpenAI said it intends to extend the model to partner countries in the coming weeks.

The pledge comes amid a tepid stretch for crypto applications and network technologies. In August, a flaw in BTCPay Server, open-source software merchants use to accept bitcoin payments, exposed the credentials controlling Lightning nodes, and attackers drained funds before a fix went out.

Core Lightning, one of the main programs for running the Lightning network that moves small bitcoin payments cheaply, told operators last week to disconnect their machines after a wave of AI-generated vulnerability reports turned up several real flaws.

Separately, Coldcard, a hardware wallet that stores bitcoin offline, shipped new firmware after a $114 million theft, saying frontier AI models had helped catch bugs unrelated to the original problem.

The series of exploits culminated in more than three dozen companies, such as heavyweights Coinbase, Block, BitGo, Blockstream, ARK Invest, among others, publish an open letter to AI labs seeking early access to their strongest models for security work. The firms stated that AI labs were vetting who gets their strongest models while attackers obtained them regardless — leaving the people maintaining Bitcoin’s code with weaker tools than the people attacking it.

Solana ($SOL) has broken above the $103 resistance line, trading at $105.22, having gained 5.5% in the day. This marks a major development in terms of the UTXO Realized Price Distribution (URPD) chart. $103.25 was the price at which 39 million $SOL were exchanged, making it a massive threshold to cross in the attempt to establish strong bullish momentum.

Solana faces two barriers to attain $150

Now, according to the same chart, the next overhead resistance lies at $123 and thereafter $132. Both these prices saw about 20 million $SOL acquired and are therefore significant barriers to overcome.

After that, the next major supply zone would be near $150, a price last achieved in mid-November 2025.

Source: Ali Charts

Other than upward market movement and positive sentiment, the recent rally has also been supported by several accumulation metrics.

The number of wallets holding at least 10,000 $SOL (whales) has increased by 1.58% in the past week. Additionally, the number of $SOL on exchanges has declined by 4.91% in the same period. This signals a shift to self-custody wallets or decentralized staking, effectively reducing the overall sell-side pressure.

Even more, Solana spot ETF flows turned positive on September 3, averaging 43,000 $SOL in inflows.

Source: CoinGlass

The outlook

At 59.25, the Relative Strength Indicator (RSI) shows $SOL is in a neutral-to-bullish territory. Buyers have a slightly larger monopoly at the moment.

Meanwhile, the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram remains above zero at 5.56, confirming the buildup of upward acceleration.

Source: TradingView

At this pace, Solana could be primed for $150 should it break above the two ceilings noted and maintain positive whale and institutional uptake.

There are only 21 million $BTC, and some of the coins that are now in circulation have been lost, misplaced, or thrown away by their owners. These coins will never be moved again, despite the fact that they are worth a lot of money; they are essentially permanently out of reach. These stories are just as noteworthy as those of people who have made fortunes by holding bitcoin all this time, and the following is a closer look at some of bitcoin’s most unfortunate stories.

James Howells and the Landfill Hard Drive

Back in the early days, Howells said he was mining $BTC in 2009, and the Newport, Wales resident, threw out his laptop’s hard drive at a landfill when he was cleaning the house. The catch; his private keys were inside the drive, which held an estimated 7,500 to 8,000 $BTC. That’s around $578 million of value using current bitcoin prices. Howells’ story is one of the most famous of the bunch due to the fact that he spent more than a decade trying to get permission to excavate the site, and he never succeeded.

Stefan Thomas and His 2 Guesses

Thomas was a programmer who decided to store his private key on an encrypted Ironkey USB drive. He lost the paper, which stored his password to bypass the encrypted wallet to access 7,002 $BTC worth around $540 million. The Ironkey gives the user ten chances to get the password correct, and Thomas has unfortunately already blasted through eight guesses, leaving only two left. Reports say he’s stopped guessing and decided to stop rather than risk the last two.

9,000 $BTC Frozen in a Stranded Change Address

According to an old bitcointalk.org post, an individual had an old backup of his bitcoin wallet and continued to use the wallet after the backup was created. After restoring the $BTC wallet’s old copy, it did not log the newly created change addresses. This left the user with a loss of 9,000 $BTC, worth $694 million, that he could monitor using a blockchain explorer, but had no way to retrieve them.

A Missouri Farmer’s Mysterious Refund

According to a posted Substack called Shehan’s Blog, a client of the author named Samantha reportedly lost 100,000 $BTC. That’s a whopping loss of $7.7 billion, using today’s exchange rates. The story is that Samantha accepted a large bitcoin refund in 2010 from a European vendor for veterinary medicine. Samantha said she had zero knowledge of how to manage the 100,000 $BTC and lost all the keys during a phishing incident. Samantha, a Missouri farmer, thought she was talking with tech support when she handed over her private keys.

Campbell Simpson’s Tossed Hard Drive

Back in 2017, Bitcoin.com News reported on an Australian media/IT figure who threw out a hard drive holding his bitcoin wallet while discarding his belongings. Simpson acquired the coins in 2010 and explained how he was paid in the relatively unknown crypto asset for some work. One day, he decided to toss out “USB sticks, 3D glasses, USB cables, PC components. All that sort of literal junk. A pile of junk that went into a skip.” Approximately 1,400 $BTC, worth $107 million today, went in the trash with the so-called literal junk.

A Brother’s Belongings

In 2020, a Reddit user named Shotukan said he lost 533 $BTC valued at roughly $41 million when he gave a laptop holding a bitcoin wallet to his brother years earlier. His brother passed away in 2019, and he went through his belongings, but the specific drive was never found. Shotukan noted that the laptop was likely discarded among disorganized possessions. He acquired the $BTC by buying the crypto asset in 2010.

Reformatting a Colleague’s Hard Drive

According to one Barbadian entrepreneur’s story, 800 $BTC was lost when a fellow employee accidentally reformatted his laptop. Gabriel Abed had his private keys stored on the laptop. Reports say Abed acquired his bitcoin long ago in 2011, and reportedly, it was only a portion of his total holdings, which he had distributed across multiple wallets as a safety precaution. Still, his 800 $BTC is now worth $64.76 million using today’s exchange rates.

The Deleted Encrypted File

Another tale of lost bitcoins involves a Ukrainian politician and member of parliament (Verkhovna Rada), known as Davyd Arakhamia. He accidentally encrypted his file that contained his $BTC private keys, which resulted in the loss of 400 $BTC or around $32 million, half of what Gabriel Abed lost. The businessman accepted crypto assets in the early days, and he says the file he encrypted was thought to be a movie file.

Knowledge, Education, and a Better User Experience Still Need More Attention

These stories show the downside of having full control over your own crypto, especially when you do not possess enough knowledge about self-custody wallets, precautions and best practices. The fact of the matter is, people forget passwords, lose devices, and make serious financial mistakes, but Bitcoin’s immutable blockchain doesn’t give second chances.

Better recovery options could make crypto safer and easier for everyday users and since these losses happened, the industry has improved this environment modestly. We all know Satoshi’s famous line, and that lost bitcoin can reduce supply and might increase its value, but for the people who lose it, the cost can be huge.

Are Bitcoin investors falling for the market’s “September Trap”?

In terms of positioning, traders are becoming more long biased on Bitcoin, implying they expect a bullish move that the technical formation has yet to confirm.

Because from the technical standpoint, $BTC has been trading below $80k for more than two weeks, which keeps the risk/reward equation in check.

However, the setup on the chart below implies that the bulls are willing to risk a lot for a big reward.

According to CoinGlass data, Bitcoin’s funding rates are positive, and the long/short ratio has jumped to 1.08 from below 1 over the past week. Moreover, it is the highest ratio of long positions since the mid-August cycle.

In essence, the traders are expecting a breakout above Bitcoin’s current resistance.

However, it must be noted that not everyone is optimistic.

An analyst on X posted asking for a $BTC short, claiming that $BTC could reach the $52k level and then turn around and head back up. This divergence in viewpoints can only contribute to $BTC price’s volatility and put more pressure on its current consolidation.

In this context, it becomes critical to take a closer look at the on-chain situation. And so far, it’s suggested that there is even a clear bias forming.

The catch, though? Either way, Bitcoin [$BTC] stands at serious risk of creating a September trap.

Bitcoin rally meets weak sentiment

Bitcoin enters September with bearish positioning and weakening market signals.

According to Santiment data, Bitcoin closed August nearly 25% higher than it opened; however, the sentiment did not follow suit. $BTC price climbed from roughly $64.7k to $78.3k, marking one of its strongest August performances.

And yet, Santiment’s Sentiment Balance averaged only +32, compared to +72 that was recorded in July, when Bitcoin traded at around $63k. So, in contrast to the strong rally, market participants remained rather bearish.

While this alone supports the ongoing “September trap” narrative, $ETH/$BTC is adding yet another layer to the setup. The pair closed the month above its 20-month moving average, which suggests that Ethereum could be gaining momentum against Bitcoin.

If this trend holds, Bitcoin dominance could come under further pressure, creating another headwind for $BTC in September.

With this in mind, the analyst’s Bitcoin short call makes more sense. Weaker on-chain data, negative sentiment and a stronger $ETH/$BTC setup point to more downside risks for $BTC.

So, could this positioning be an early signal that Bitcoin’s “September trap” is in play? As the chart above shows, bullish Augusts have often set the stage for a weaker September. Should this be a repeat performance, then $BTC could face another correction as the month progresses.

Final Summary

• Bitcoin rallied in August, but weak sentiment and on-chain data are raising downside risks.
• With $ETH/$BTC gaining strength, $BTC could be heading into another “September trap.”

Since 2012, bitcoin has formed this exact pattern, the 50-day average crossing above the 200-day average, 12 separate times.

Three of them delivered big, sustained gains. The first, on Feb. 9, 2012, was followed by a 306% gain over the next year. One in October 2015 stayed intact for over two years and rode bitcoin to what was then a record high near $19,800 in December 2017. Another in May 2020 gained 312% over the following year, with bitcoin later touching nearly $64,900.

Others barely survived long enough to mean anything. Two separate crosses, in July 2014 and July 2015, were wiped out by an opposing death cross within two months of forming, before there was even enough time to measure a three-month return.

A few recent ones produced strong three-month gains, in some cases over 40%, only to be invalidated by a death cross well before the one-year mark. One in September 2021 barely moved at all, gaining just 1.5% before dying out a few months later, shortly before bitcoin fell more than 70% from its highs over the following year.

Add it all up, and a clearer pattern emerges. Across the nine crosses where a three-month return could actually be measured, the average gain was 24.9%. But only three of the twelve crosses survived a full year without being broken by a death cross first, and across those three, the average 12-month gain was 250%. In other words, the signal has a decent record over three months, but making it to the one-year mark intact has been the exception, not the rule.

US-based investment and cryptocurrency platform Robinhood has launched the $PONS token on its platform. The listing increased investor access to $PONS within the Robinhood ecosystem, causing a brief but sharp price surge.

Following the listing, $PONS saw a remarkable surge in price. According to market data, the token’s price increased by approximately 15% in just two minutes. However, the rise was not sustainable, and $PONS quickly gave back most of its gains.

It was noted that the token’s current price has significantly fallen back to levels seen before the sudden surge triggered by the listing. This movement once again highlighted the short-term impact of listing on crypto assets on a new exchange or trading platform.

Robinhood’s listing of $PONS is seen as part of the platform’s recent steps to expand its cryptocurrency ecosystem. $PONS stands out as one of the prominent projects in the Robinhood Chain ecosystem. The token has attracted investor interest, particularly due to its token launches and decentralized finance activities on the network.

Robinhood Chain has recently experienced significant growth in terms of trading volume and total value locked, and $PONS’s market capitalization reportedly rose rapidly in August. Making the token available to a wider investor base could contribute to increased trading volume and liquidity.

However, the rapid rise and subsequent pullback in $PONS price after its listing demonstrated that new listings can create high volatility in the crypto market. In particular, sharp price movements in a short period of time indicate that investors may face significant price fluctuations.

With Robinhood’s listing of $PONS, the token’s reach across various markets is expected to expand, and investors are anticipated to closely monitor price movements and changes in trading volume. $PONS’s post-listing performance is also expected to be a significant indicator of its position within the Robinhood Chain ecosystem.

*This is not investment advice.

Grayscale, a crypto asset management company, stated that the record-high share of equities in US household financial assets could turn the cryptocurrency market into a new portfolio diversification opportunity.

According to Grayscale’s assessment, approximately 46 percent of US household financial assets are currently held in stocks. The company also noted that price-to-earnings ratios for stocks are historically close to high levels. This means that the risks associated with investor portfolios being concentrated in a single asset class may increase.

In contrast, Grayscale argued that the cryptocurrency market is in a different position. According to the company, after a prolonged bear market, a significant portion of the leverage in the market has been cleared, and investors’ positions have been rebalanced. These developments could signal the beginning of a new recovery cycle in the crypto market.

Grayscale emphasized that investors don’t need to completely replace their stocks with crypto assets. According to the company, the real opportunity may lie in diversifying portfolios that are overly concentrated in stocks by spreading them across different asset classes.

Grayscale noted that the fundamental dynamics of the crypto market continue to improve, and that the current price levels being lower compared to previous periods of the market cycle could also create an advantage in terms of diversification.

The company stated that adding crypto assets to portfolios does not mean completely exiting stocks, but rather allows for the inclusion of assets with different risk and return characteristics within the same portfolio.

Grayscale’s assessment comes at a time when high exposure of US households to equities is a major concern. The company believes that reduced leverage levels in the crypto market and a rebalancing of investor positions could pave the way for a new bull cycle.

However, Grayscale noted that crypto assets carry high volatility and investors should consider their risk profiles. The company’s approach positions crypto not as an alternative to traditional assets, but rather as a complementary diversification tool for overly concentrated portfolios.

*This is not investment advice.

Bitcoin is trading at $77,755.77, up 1.1% over 24 hours, as the broader crypto market cap sits at $2.7 trillion, roughly flat on the day with $73.5 billion in trading volume. Bitcoin’s share of the total crypto market has grown to 59.7%, its highest recent level, as BTC continues outpacing altcoins in overall market weight. Ethereum dominance sits at 11.2%, while the remaining assets across the market make up 29.1% of total capitalization.

Weak Labor Data Adds to Rate Cut Bets

Private payrolls rose by just 38,000 in August, according to ADP data, below the 47,000 forecast and down from July’s 46,000 reading. The softer print has strengthened the case for a Federal Reserve rate cut, a scenario that would typically support stocks and crypto while pressuring the dollar and Treasury yields.

Markets are now focused on Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report, with economists expecting a gain of 53,000 jobs and unemployment holding steady at 4.1%.

Expert Take

According to market analysis from Vikram Subburaj, CEO of Giottus.com, Bitcoin is trading in a largely range-bound market as investors wait for clearer signals from Friday’s employment data. Markets are currently pricing in roughly a 66% probability of a rate move from the Fed, a level of uncertainty Subburaj said continues to cap risk appetite across crypto.

On-chain data paints a mixed but not weak picture, Subburaj told Coinpedia. Around 68% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply remains in profit, and the short-term holder cost basis sits near $71,000, meaning most recent buyers are still in positive territory.

However, he flagged that ETF demand has become less consistent following a strong August, suggesting institutional buying is no longer providing the same steady, one-directional support it did earlier in the rally.

Large-cap altcoins remain subdued alongside Bitcoin, with Ethereum trading near $2,383 and Solana around $100, broadly in line with current CoinMarketCap pricing of $2,404.20 and $100.90 respectively.

Levels to Watch

Subburaj’s advice for traders heading into Friday’s data was to avoid aggressive leverage, and favor staggered accumulation with disciplined position sizing instead. He flagged $76,200-$76,500 as the immediate support zone for Bitcoin, with $77,700-$78,300 as the resistance range to watch in the near term.