Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin hit $80,935 after trading near $76,400 a day earlier.
- Crypto shorts lost $183 million in one hour as forced buying accelerated bitcoin’s move.
- Bitcoin now faces its next major test near the $81,700-$83,000 resistance zone.
Bears Had a Pretty Good Week, Until They Didn’t
Bitcoin’s price spent most of the week giving bears plenty to work with. The CLARITY Act failed to advance in the U.S. Senate on Sept. 15, the Federal Reserve raised rates by 0.25 percentage points the next day, and bitcoin slipped toward $75,000-$76,000.
Then Japan delivered another hike, lifting its policy rate to 1.25%, the highest in 31 years. Except the feared sell-off never arrived. Bitcoin climbed above $78,000, hung around for hours and then went off the rails in the other direction. Buyers blasted through $80,000, eventually pushing the price as high as $80,935.
$183 Million in Shorts Get Caught Flat-Footed
The speed of the move tells the more interesting story. Traders had piled into leveraged shorts expecting bitcoin to keep falling, but once the price moved against them, exchanges began closing those positions automatically.
Closing a short requires buying back the asset. Those purchases pushed bitcoin higher, which liquidated more shorts, creating another round of buying. In one hour, roughly $192 million in crypto positions were liquidated, with more than $183 million coming from shorts. Bitcoin accounted for about $119 million, while ethereum shorts contributed another $36 million.
In other words, roughly 95 cents of every liquidation dollar during that hour came from traders betting prices would fall.
The Bank of Japan Lit the Fuse
Interestingly, another interest-rate hike helped set the stage. The Bank of Japan voted 7-2 to raise its policy rate by 0.25 percentage points, but markets had largely expected the decision and the yen didn’t deliver the shock some traders feared.
Bitcoin moved toward $77,400-$78,000 afterward. U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds also recorded about $159 million in inflows on Sept. 17, adding genuine spot demand beneath the leveraged fireworks. Then $80,000 broke. Momentum traders and algorithms joined the chase, volume picked up sharply, and a market that had spent hours grinding higher suddenly covered several thousand dollars almost vertically.
Bitcoin Finds Its Next Wall
Bitcoin isn’t out of the woods yet. The cryptocurrency remains far beneath its October 2025 all-time high near $126,200, while the area immediately overhead contains plenty of resistance.
The 365-day moving average sits around $81,700, with another test stretching toward $83,000. Bitcoin was hovering near $80,848 after touching $80,935, leaving buyers sitting directly beneath that zone. On the other hand, losing $80,000 would put the upper $79,000s back into play. Holding it would leave bitcoin facing the $81,700-$83,000 band next.
Either way, Friday produced one of crypto’s stranger recurring spectacles: traders spent days betting bitcoin would fall, only for those same bets to become part of the machinery that sent it above $80,000. Despite the CLARITY Act vote failure, bitcoin seems to be shrugging it off.
