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Rake Review: August 2026

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 15:26:12 +1000

Are You Ready For What's Next?

The end of a bear market catches more people out than the start of one. Not because they miss the rally off the low, but because they watch it happen, decide they've missed the boat, and shelve Bitcoin entirely. They come back when it's retesting all time highs, paying 60% more for the same coin.

We're Back, The Bear Market Is Over

Last month we raised the question of whether the bottom was in, and concluded that it didn't matter much either way. Waiting for confirmation was going to cost you more than being early ever would, because once the market turns and starts marching toward the forecasted $200k bull market target, the cheap entries don't come back.

We have now received that confirmation.

Bitcoin is up roughly 36% from its cycle low of $57,735, set at the start of July, and 24% from where price sat when we published last month's Rake Review. As of writing, it's trading just under $80,000.

Two things about this call sit slightly outside our own stated framework, and we'd rather flag them ourselves than have you spot them. First, price is still a touch below the $83,000 level we set as our bear market invalidation. Second, we're only ten months on from October's all time high, not the twelve that a textbook cycle usually needs before the turn. Neither is an oversight. Both are exactly why the rest of this piece exists.

The short version: the structural signals that have marked the end of every previous Bitcoin bear market have now fired, together, with volume behind them, and they've fired alongside a genuine macro catalyst. Waiting on a round number to tick over is how investors miss the first leg of a cycle.

Bear Market Over Signals

Source:https://www.tradingview.com/x/htzrqjaa/

The Trendline That Has Never Lied

The single cleanest signal in our framework is the bear market trendline, the descending line connecting every lower high since October's peak. We've been tracking it with clients for months. In the third week of August, Bitcoin closed a daily candle above it, then closed above it again the following day, then went vertical.

That matters because of what it has meant historically. In 2018 and again in 2022, once price closed back above the descending bear market trendline, the low was already locked in. Both cases saw some chop in the weeks that followed. Neither ever revisited the low. This is not a signal that appears often. Structurally, it happens about once every four years.

The daily chart supported it too. A textbook inverse head and shoulders had been building since June, and the break took price straight through neckline resistance around $65,000 without hesitation. On the shorter timeframe, price had been compressing inside a symmetrical triangle for weeks, and that break was exactly the kind of decisive resolution that setup eventually produces.

Source: Stormrake Research

The Moving Average That Calls The Bottom

The second signal is the 50 exponential moving average on the daily. A sustained break above it, supported by volume, has historically marked the end of the bear market.

The important word there is volume. Bitcoin has attempted this break plenty of times before and failed, and the failures share two characteristics. They either lacked the volume to sustain the move, or they came too early in the cycle, before enough drawdown had actually been worn.

In 2014/15, 2018/19 and 2022, the early attempts above the 50 EMA all rolled straight back over for one of those two reasons. It wasn't until the break came with real volume behind it that the bottom was in.

This time the volume showed up. That's the difference.

The Catalyst Nobody Was Watching

Technical signals need something to ignite them. In the third week of August, Bitcoin got it.

The US Treasury announced it will at least double the size of its liquidity support buyback operations for longer dated government debt, lifting the per operation cap from $2 billion to at least $4 billion across the 10 to 20 year and 20 to 30 year buckets. That followed a bond selloff that had pushed the 30 year yield to its highest level since 2007, with a buyers' strike running since late June.

The mechanism is simple. The Treasury becomes a large, price insensitive buyer in a market struggling for demand. Bond prices rise, yields fall, and every other asset competing for capital gets re-rated. When government debt pays less, capital moves further out the risk curve. Equities first, then gold, then Bitcoin. It also signals that the authorities will step in when conditions get strained, and markets read that as permission to take risk.

Worth being precise: this was the announcement only. The doubled operations don't begin until 9 September and run through to 4 November. Nothing has been bought yet. Markets never wait for the implementation date, they price the intent.

The derivatives market told the rest of the story. In the 24 hours that followed, crypto saw its largest single day of short liquidations on record, roughly $2.74 billion in shorts forcibly closed, making up over 90% of the day's total liquidations. That level of one sided positioning tells you how heavily the market was leaning the wrong way.

Readers will remember the mirror image. On 10/10 last year, close to $19 billion was wiped out, around $16.8 billion of it from longs. That day confirmed the top, and the market never took those highs back. What we've just seen is the inverse. Longs getting flushed confirms a top. Shorts getting flushed on this scale has historically lined up with a bottom.

A macro catalyst on one side, the largest short flush on record on the other. That's what lit the technical fuse.

Is There A Threat Of This Being A Fakeout?

Source:https://www.tradingview.com/x/vVyEVsyu/

It's the right question to ask, and we'd be suspicious of anyone who didn't ask it.

Bear markets are built on false hope. Bitcoin has produced counter trend rallies of 30% to 40% inside every major downtrend it has ever had, and this one was no exception. Each one arrived with the same confidence, the same headlines, and the same people declaring the bottom, right before another major leg lower. So who's to say this isn't just another one of those?

The signals above are the first part of the answer. The second is what the market did around the low.

In our Q3 Outlook, published the first week of July, we flagged that a swing low was the likely next move and put a $55,000 target on it. Price landed at $57,735. That's within $2,735, comfortably inside a 5% tolerance. Sometimes close enough is good enough, and the structure matters more than the digit.

We've seen this exact dynamic before. Heading into the 2022 bottom, the entire market was fixated on $10,000 as the level that would confirm the low. Bitcoin never gave it to them. It bottomed near $15,000 instead, accumulated quietly for two months, then launched to $25,000 and never looked back. Everybody waiting for their number missed the move.

Then look at how price behaved inside the accumulation range. Every single attempt to push back below the $62,000 to $61,000 higher low failed. Repeatedly. Each failed breakdown was the market saying the same thing, that sellers had run out of ammunition and the longer this dragged on without a new low, the more the odds tilted upward.

That's what separates this from a bull trap. A bull trap is a rally that fails at the trendline. This is a rally that broke the trendline, reclaimed the 50 EMA on volume, completed an inverse head and shoulders, and came on the back of a record short liquidation and a genuine macro catalyst. The traps had none of that. They were bounces inside a downtrend that never changed the structure.

The speed is also the tell, not the warning. Every major Bitcoin bottom has resolved the same way once the trendline finally broke, not with a slow grind but with a violent rally that leaves almost everyone behind. The 2018 break was followed by a 231% rally. The 2022 break by 83%. The 2026 break is up around 36% so far.

That speed exists for a reason. It's designed to inflict maximum pain on both sides at once. Late bulls chase a rally they swore they'd buy lower. Bears, freshly proven wrong, move their target down to a price we traded at two weeks ago and wait for a retest that history says never arrives. That mutual pain is what actually marks the start of a cycle. Not a headline, not a clean signal everybody agrees on, just exhaustion on both sides simultaneously.

Nothing in markets is certain, and we'd never present it that way. But a fakeout doesn't usually come with this much structure underneath it.

It Isn't Too Late, But The Window Is Closing

We covered the multiples last month. They've compressed since, and they'll keep compressing.

With Bitcoin at roughly $78,500:

To the prior all time high of $126,080: a 1.6x, or a return of about 61%
To our $200,000 bull market target: a 2.55x, or a return of about 155%

Round it to $80,000 and the maths to $200k is a clean 2.5x. That's the number to hold in your head, because it's the number that shrinks every week this rally continues.

Put that in context. To hit $200k, Bitcoin needs to reclaim its all time high and then add another 59% on top. That's a target many had pencilled in for the last cycle and never got. It is not a modest forecast, and we'd rather you weigh it as an estimate than a promise.

But the shape of the opportunity is the point. Two thirds of the return to $200k is still sitting on the table, and it's sitting there specifically because price hasn't reclaimed the old high yet. The moment it does, the narrative shifts, the headlines return, and the entry you're looking at now is gone.

Any pullback or sideways chop from here that lets you accumulate before six figures prints again is a gift, not a given. It's increasingly unlikely we see a sub $60,000 print again this cycle now the trendline has broken with force. If you're still waiting for that level, treat the window as closing rather than opening.

And if you've been dollar cost averaging through the drawdown, this is the moment to reassess the strategy rather than continue it on autopilot. DCA is built for uncertain or falling markets. It works against you once the market turns and starts moving higher.

The Debasement Trade Is Back On

Source:https://watcher.guru/us-debt

Every catalyst behind this month's breakout has been reported as its own headline. Step back from the individual events and a single thread runs through all of them, one Wall Street hasn't leaned on seriously in years.

The debasement trade.

What It Actually Means

Most explanations start with Roman emperors shaving silver out of their coins. It's a good story and it doesn't help much.

Here's a version that lands better.

You own shares in a company. The company decides it would rather print new shares than cut its spending. Your share certificate hasn't changed. The number on it is exactly the same. But your slice of the business is smaller, because there are more slices now. Nobody stole anything from you. You just got diluted.

That's debasement, applied to a currency instead of a company.

Once investors believe it's happening, they do a predictable thing. They move money into assets nobody can print more of. Gold, because you have to dig it up. Bitcoin, because the supply is fixed in code and no one can vote to change it.

That logic has always been true. The question was whether the market cared. This month it started caring again.

The Fortnight That Made The Case

Two numbers landed a day apart.

On 18 August, total US government debt passed $40 trillion for the first time. It came in at $40.047 trillion, more than double what it was in January 2017. It had only crossed $39 trillion five months earlier, back in March. July alone produced a $432 billion deficit, the fourth largest month in US history, and the shortfall for this financial year has already beaten the whole of last year with two months still to run.

The next day came the Treasury buyback announcement covered earlier, doubling the cap on purchases of long dated government debt.

One number said the debt is growing faster than anyone forecast. The other said the government will step in to keep yields down rather than let the market sort it out.

Investors put those two facts next to each other and drew the obvious conclusion about what comes next. It wasn't spending cuts.

And note what didn't move the market. Doubling a cap from $2 billion to $4 billion is a rounding error against a bond market worth tens of trillions, and the buying doesn't even start until 9 September. Not a dollar has been spent yet. What repriced it was the read on intent, which is the only variable that matters when you're working out how $40 trillion gets handled over the next decade.

Gold Moved First, Bitcoin Moved Harder

Gold is the reflex trade here, and it always has been. When investors start worrying about what a currency is worth rather than what it yields, bullion is the first thing they reach for.

It bottomed at $3,965 in late June, before the buyback announcement and before the debt headline. It now sits near $4,650. That's a gain of around 17% off the low and its best month since September 1999. The dollar went the other way, dropping to its weakest level since mid May and posting its third down week in four.

For clients who want that exposure without leaving crypto, PAXG is the cleanest way in and has tracked the move closely, sitting near $4,650. It's been on our Stormrake Spotlight in Stomrake’s Morning Note for exactly this reason.

But look at what happened next.

Bitcoin bottomed a fortnight after gold, at $57,735, and has since run to around $78,500. That's a 36% recovery against gold's 17%, measured from each asset's own low. Bitcoin arrived at the trade late and has already more than doubled the return of the asset that led it.

That's the part worth sitting with.

The Market Just Reclassified Bitcoin

Here's why all of this matters for the asset most of you actually own.

For most of this year, Bitcoin has struggled to sustain a narrative.

The risk asset argument stopped working first. The S&P 500 has hit 27 record highs in 2026 and is up around 13% for the year. Bitcoin spent that same stretch grinding lower and is still down about 10%. Whatever drove equities to record after record, Bitcoin wasn't invited.

The digital gold argument wasn't working either. Every time investors reached for safety this year, Bitcoin went the other way.

So it wasn't trading like a risk asset and it wasn't trading like a hedge. It answered to nothing, which is exactly what a bear market looks like when the story around an asset has run out.

August changed that. Bitcoin is up more than 25% on the month, printed $80,000 for the first time since May, and gained 23% in a single week. It did that in near lockstep with gold while the dollar fell.

A reason to own Bitcoin that actually works, after a year in which neither of them did.

And being the faster mover off the low is not the same as having caught up. Gold has recovered its whole year and sits around 17% below its January record. Bitcoin is still down about 10% for the year and remains roughly 38% below its all time high. Run those two facts together and the picture is straightforward. Bitcoin is moving quicker and still has considerably further to travel.

We've already called the bear market over, so we don't read that gap as a warning. We read it as Bitcoin being the faster half of a trade that has only just restarted.

There Is Only One Door Left Open

There are three ways out of a debt pile this size, and two of them are already shut.

Grow out of it. That isn't happening, because interest costs are now the second largest line in the federal budget and they're outrunning the economy. Cut spending or raise taxes. Politically dead, because the biggest items are pensions and healthcare and the population keeps ageing.

That leaves devaluing the money the debt is written in. Nobody announces it and nobody votes on it. It's simply what's left once the first two doors are bolted shut.

So this isn't really a trade. A trade has an entry and an exit. This is a direction of travel, and it only moves one way. The debt went from $39 trillion to $40 trillion in five months.

If a currency is headed one way over time, you own the things that can't be printed. Gold does that job, but its supply still grows every year as more comes out of the ground. Bitcoin's doesn't. Twenty one million, fixed in code, with no committee able to vote for more.

Every trillion added to the pile makes that argument stronger. The market spent this month remembering it.

August Delivered, Now For September to Continue the Momentum

Heading into August, Bitcoin was up for grabs. July had delivered the first green month since April, the bulls wanted to build on it, and the bears turned to history, since August is one of only two months with a negative average return across Bitcoin's history.

The bulls won, and it wasn't close. August has produced Bitcoin's largest single monthly gain since November 2024, the month of the Trump election win, currently sitting at 25% at the time of writing. As covered above, the breakout also confirmed the end of the bear market.

Source:https://www.tradingview.com/x/ggeMR6eo/

The chart shows the bulls in complete control. Resistance smashed, structure flipped, momentum firmly back in their hands.

Now the obvious question. September is historically Bitcoin's worst month, averaging -4.86% with just six green closes out of fifteen. On paper, that's a case for caution.

But look at which six. September has now closed green three years running, up 3.99% in 2023, 7.39% in 2024 and 5.16% in 2025, the last of those the third best September on record. The seasonal weakness everyone quotes is concentrated in years that look nothing like this one.

And here's the part worth holding onto. Even if Bitcoin delivers exactly its historical September average and gives back close to 5%, it would still be sitting near $75,000. The bulls would remain firmly in control and the bear market would still be comprehensively over. A red September wouldn’t change the mood or the structure.

We'd expect Bitcoin to ignore the seasonal script anyway, given how strongly the bulls are positioned. The target for September is the lower high at $83,000, the same level we set as our bear market invalidation. Take that out and the doubters run out of arguments, while Bitcoin clears the bulk of the overhead resistance sitting between here and the early $90,000s.

In the News

Australia Is Heading For Another Rate Hike:

The classic go to investment that has served Australians for decades keeps losing its appeal. We've already seen what the negative gearing changes did, with CBA expecting dwelling prices to end 2026 around 3% lower than they otherwise would have. Now borrowing is about to get more expensive again. July CPI came in hotter than forecast, with trimmed mean inflation holding at 3.6% and posting its largest monthly rise in a year. Markets doubled their odds of a September hike to 36%, and most major banks now expect the cash rate to move from 4.35% to 4.60% before Christmas. Higher borrowing costs into a market that just lost a major tax incentive points one way for house prices. In the meantime, Bitcoin has just completed its bear market.

Ray Dalio Advocates for Gold and Bitcoin:

The debasement trade has just picked up an endorsement from one of the most respected investors alive. On 21 August, Ray Dalio warned that a US debt crisis could arrive "in three years, give or take two" without a change of course, pointing to government revenue near $5.5 trillion against $7.5 trillion of spending and roughly $10 trillion of debt needing refinancing. His prescription is to underweight bonds, hold 10% to 15% in gold and add a bit of Bitcoin, because he expects monies that governments cannot produce to do relatively well. Dalio spent years as one of Bitcoin's more prominent sceptics. The sharpest minds in traditional finance have stopped debating whether Bitcoin belongs in a portfolio and started debating the size of the position.

Hyperliquid Begins To Lead Once More:

Bitcoin took most of the headlines this month, but Hyperliquid was right there beside it. HYPE printed a fresh all time high of $83.50 on 26 August, clearing its June record near $76. We've covered the fundamentals here for a long time, but the move that mattered came from the White House. On 19 August, President Trump named Hyperliquid directly, saying CFTC Chair Michael Selig was working to bring the exchange into the United States "in a fully compliant and legal fashion". HYPE was near $66 before those remarks and in the $70s within two days. There's no approval, no registration and no timetable yet, but if the CFTC really is being lined up as its regulator, the largest derivatives market in the world opens up.

Market Update

Here is the fast five of what you need to know about the market in August 2026:

Bitcoin is up over 25% in August
Ethereum has climbed 36% in August
XRP flipped USDC to become the 5th largest Cryptocurrency by market cap and HYPE has entered the top 10 once more
PAXG is up 13% in August
The entire crypto market cap grew by 25% in August

Video of the month

Coldcard Hack: $113M Stolen From Bitcoin Wallets | Bisher Khudeira on The Money Block™ Ep. 125

Education: The Coldcard Exploit And The Limits Of Self Custody

This deserves more than a paragraph in the news section. What happened to Coldcard owners at the start of this month is the most useful self custody lesson the market has produced in years, and the cheapest way to learn it is from somebody else's loss.

What Happened

At around 1:30am UTC on 30 July, Bitcoin started leaving wallets whose owners were asleep. Inside 25 minutes, roughly 594 BTC, about $38 million at the time, was swept from around 500 single signature wallets. The attacker sorted by balance and took the largest first, clearing more than $30 million in the opening ten minutes. One individual lost around $1.8 million. Three further waves followed, and Galaxy Research's running tally reached roughly 1,816 BTC, close to $116 million, drained from more than 5,200 addresses.

Nobody was phished. Nobody installed malware. Nobody approved a transaction. No device was ever physically touched. The only thing the victims had in common was the date their wallet was created.

What Caused It

Every Bitcoin wallet begins as a random number, and everything above it is derived from that one moment. Get the randomness right and the wallet cannot be guessed. Get it wrong and none of the cryptography above it matters.

Think of it as dice. A properly generated seed carries the equivalent of rolling a six sided die about 50 times and recording the sequence in order. Nobody on earth can guess that.

A build error in Coldcard's March 2021 firmware meant the device stopped drawing randomness from its dedicated hardware chip and quietly fell back to a basic software routine. It kept telling users it had rolled the die 50 times. On the older Mk3 it had effectively rolled it about 16 times, and about 28 on the newer models.

Sixteen rolls is roughly a trillion possibilities, a number modern hardware works through in an afternoon. The flaw shipped in March 2021 and survived every release until the emergency patch on 31 July 2026. Five years, in open source code, in one of the most respected devices in Bitcoin, and nobody caught it. Worse, updating the firmware doesn't repair a seed already created weakly, so affected owners face a full migration rather than a patch.

What This Means Practically

This isn't a Bitcoin problem. It's a self custody execution problem, and it's exactly the kind of tail risk that sits quietly beneath "not your keys, not your coins" until the day it doesn't. Firmware, chip design and randomness generation are layers most holders never interact with directly, which is a great deal of trust to place in work you have no way to check. The bug was Coldcard's alone, but the dependency isn't.

This is not the first self custody solution to fail and it won't be the last. Stormrake custody removes that layer entirely.

Self Custody Is A Right, Not An Obligation

We believe in self sovereignty at Stormrake, and self custody is a genuine part of that. It's a right every holder has. But a right isn't a recommendation.

This incident cost people their entire positions through no fault of their own, and the setups that survived it demanded a level of technical discipline most holders simply don't have.

If your setup is one device, a seed phrase on the card that came in the box, and a quiet hope that the firmware did its job, you're carrying risk you have no way to measure. The honest question isn't whether you have the right to hold your own keys. It's whether the consequences of getting it wrong are ones you could absorb.

Where Stormrake Fits

For clients who decide the answer is no, our custody solution takes that entire class of problem off your plate. Seed generation, firmware risk, device security, backup integrity, none of it sits with you. No drawer, no single point of failure, and no wondering five years later whether the setup you did one afternoon was done properly.

It's a different trade off rather than no trade off. You're moving from a risk you personally carry to one managed under institutional process and oversight, which is the right answer for many holders and the wrong one for some. That's why it's a conversation rather than a product.

If you're running an affected device, or you simply want your Bitcoin somewhere secure while you work out your next step, speak to your dedicated Stormrake broker.

The most expensive lessons in this market are the ones learned first hand. This one is available second hand, for free.

Written by Alexandar Artis

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No Advice Warning

The information in this newsletter is general only. It should not be taken as constituting professional advice from the author - Stormrake PTY LTD.

Stormrake is not a financial adviser and does not provide financial product advice. You should consider seeking independent legal, financial, taxation or other advice to check how the information relates to your unique circumstances. Stormrake is not liable for any loss caused, whether due to negligence or otherwise arising from the use of, or reliance on, the information provided directly or indirectly, by this newsletter.

Disclaimer

All statements made in this newsletter are made in good faith and we believe they are accurate and reliable. Stormrake does not give any warranty as to the accuracy, reliability or completeness of information that is contained here, except insofar as any liability under statute cannot be excluded. Stormrake, its directors, employees and their representatives do not accept any liability for any error or omission in this newsletter or for any resulting loss or damage suffered by the recipient or any other person. Unless otherwise specified, copyright of information provided in this newsletter is owned by Stormrake. You may not alter or modify this information in any way, including the removal of this copyright notice.

Copyright © 2026 Stormrake Pty Ltd, All rights reserved

If Everyone Knows the Date, the Market Already Moved It

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:43:02 +1000

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An enormous number of people have all landed on the exact same date, the exact same theory, and the exact same plan. That’s usually the market’s cue to do something else entirely. Today we take a look into the one dominant thesis (and a pretty good one at that) which circulated all of social media about how this bear market would play out.

Everyone Called the Same Date. That’s the Problem.

The theory itself isn’t wrong on its face: measure 365 days from the previous cycle’s peak, and you land on October 5th or 6th, 2026. It’s a clean, mechanical, easy-to-repeat call, and that’s exactly why it went from a niche on-chain observation to a mainstream talking point. Once a theory gets that popular, the market has a long, consistent habit of front-running it. Positioning skews one direction en masse, and price tends to resolve itself before the crowd’s predicted date arrives, precisely so the fewest number of people possible are positioned correctly to catch the move. Bitcoin has never been kind to a widely agreed-upon calendar date, and there’s no particular reason to expect this time was the exception.

If the actual low already printed months before the date everyone was waiting for, that’s not a coincidence. That’s the market doing exactly what it always does.

Stack Up Everything That Went Wrong This Year

Here’s the case for treating this cycle’s low as already behind us, not still ahead. Run through what Bitcoin actually absorbed over the past several months, and ask honestly how much worse conditions would need to get to justify the $50,000-or-lower calls still floating around for October.

Strategy’s own chairman was a seller: Throughout 2026, and increasingly in the past few months specifically, Michael Saylor’s Strategy sold down meaningful portions of its Bitcoin treasury, formally abandoning its long-standing “never sell” posture. For a market that had spent years treating Strategy as the textbook example of unshakeable conviction, that was about as bearish a narrative as this cycle produced, and it got priced in in real time.

The Coldcard exploit was this cycle’s FTX: Not in scale, but in what it did to confidence. A firmware flaw silently draining self-custodied wallets people believed were completely secure struck at the exact foundation of why people hold Bitcoin directly in the first place. It was, for a meaningful stretch of retail sentiment, a genuine crisis of faith in the entire premise of ownership. And yet, critically, Bitcoin’s price made a higher low through it, not a lower one.

Iran conflict tensions rattled risk assets: Geopolitical shocks like this typically hit Bitcoin exactly the way they hit every other risk asset, sharp, fast, and painful, adding another layer of macro fear on top of an already fragile market.

Fear and Greed double-bottomed in the single digits: Sentiment cratered to among the lowest readings ever recorded on the index, roughly 5 out of 100, territory so extreme it stands alongside the COVID crash, Terra-Luna, and FTX as one of the handful of genuine “maximum fear” episodes in this market’s entire history.

And Still, It Held

Run all four of those through the market at once, a treasury company’s own founder selling, a self-custody crisis of confidence, geopolitical conflict, and record-breaking fear, and Bitcoin still could not close below $57,735.

Sit with that for a second, because it’s the actual point of this note. That’s not a mild list of headwinds. That’s close to a worst-case stress test playing out simultaneously, and the floor held anyway. For the sub-$50,000 calls still being made for October to actually play out, something meaningfully worse than all four of those events combined would need to show up from here. It’s worth asking plainly what that scenario would even look like, because the market has already been shown a genuinely brutal combination of catalysts, and it wasn’t enough.

What’s Left to Break It?

Crowded, popular, easy-to-repeat calls rarely play out on schedule, because the market’s whole function is to make the largest number of participants wrong at once. A theory this widely known, landing on a date this specific, was always more likely to get front-run than fulfilled. Combine that with a floor that held through a founder-level selling event, a genuine self-custody confidence crisis, geopolitical conflict, and the lowest sentiment readings this market has ever recorded, and the more interesting question isn’t whether $50,000 is coming in October. It’s what could possibly still be left to break the floor that already survived all four of those at once.

Stormrake Spotlight: Pax Gold (PAXG) ($4,600)

PAXG has maintained it’s strength whilst also coming back to retest $4,600 - previously resistance, now acting as support. If bulls can keep up the momentum, it’s possible we see yet another leg higher in gold. Invalidation would be a small bounce, however followed by lower highs and lower lows - in this scenario, it could mean secondary accumulation is needed before continuing higher. As it stands currently though, trend is up and all-around in the bull’s favour.

BTC/USD Key Levels and Price Action:

BTC continues to trade above the $80,000 mark, and is now channeling in an upwards trajectory since last Friday’s first attempt to push into this price range. If bulls can get a strong push above $81,277 with strength, then a continuation move into the mid-80’s could come quickly again, however if we see some more cooling off here, then bears getting BTC below $77,635 would mean setting up for another round of re-accumulation, albeit at higher prices this time, likely in the mid-70’s region.

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*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

Written by James Ryan

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No Advice Warning

The information in this newsletter is general only. It should not be taken as constituting professional advice from the author - Stormrake PTY LTD.

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Bitcoin and Gold Are Moving Together Again

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:39:17 +1000

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The debasement trade is back. Here is what it means, and the one number that complicates the story.

Last week we covered the catalysts behind the breakout. The Treasury buyback, the record short liquidation, the Trump comments on Hyperliquid.

Step back from the week, though, and something bigger is going on. Bitcoin and gold are rallying together, the dollar is falling, and Wall Street has dusted off a phrase it has not used seriously in a while. The debasement trade.

What The Debasement Trade Is

When a government runs large deficits and finances them by expanding the monetary base, the currency loses purchasing power. Investors who believe this is happening move capital into assets the government cannot print. Gold, because there is only so much in the ground. Bitcoin, because the supply schedule is fixed in code.

The name is historical. Roman emperors and English kings used to shave the silver out of their coins while insisting the coins were still worth the same. Same face value, less metal.

The Numbers

Gold is up close to 15% on the month and has climbed for five straight weeks, putting it on track for its biggest monthly gain since 1999. It is back in the green for the year, up around 8% after being down roughly the same at its June low.

Bitcoin is up more than 25% on the month and touched $80,000, its highest since May. Last week alone it added 23%.

The dollar went the other way, hitting three month lows and recording its third down week in the last four.

Hard assets up, dollar down. That is the trade in one line.

The Signal Was Bigger Than The Size

Here is the part most coverage has missed. The buybacks themselves are small. Doubling the cap from $2 billion to at least $4 billion sounds significant until you hold it against the size of the Treasury market, where it is a rounding error. Stephen Coltman, head of macro at 21Shares, made exactly this point last week. The purchases are trivial. The signalling effect was enormous.

Markets did not reprice because $4 billion moves the bond market. They repriced because the announcement told them something about intent. When authorities show they will intervene to hold long term yields down, investors draw a conclusion about how the debt gets managed from here. Not through austerity. The national debt recently crossed $40 trillion, and that number is doing a lot of the work in this rally.

Ray Dalio put it bluntly last week, writing that the government’s financial condition is at an inflection point and suggesting gold could justify as much as 15% of a model portfolio.

Tying It Together

Last week’s move had catalysts. This month’s move has a thesis, and the thesis is about deficits and the assets that sit outside the system.

Note what is unusual here. Gold and Bitcoin spent most of 2026 struggling at completely different times, and they are now moving in lockstep. If that correlation survives a proper stress event rather than just a rally, it tells you something new about how the market classifies Bitcoin.

Gold has already recovered its year. Bitcoin, down around 10%.

We have already made our position clear that the bear market is behind us. On that reading, the gap is not a warning. It is Bitcoin lagging an asset it has historically led, in the early part of a move that has further to run.

Get in touch with your Stormrake broker if you want to talk through how this fits your position.

Stormrake Spotlight: Pax Gold (PAXG) ($4,605)

PAXG lost close to 1% yesterday and is retesting the key support zone. We can expect buyers to step in and see a bounce from this level before price rallies once more and heads for the green target zone above.

BTC/USD Key Levels and Price Action:

Bitcoin had a flat day, moving less than 0.2% from the open, whilst altcoins are enjoying some green as they try to catch up to BTC. It is consolidating just below the key level it failed at earlier in the week. Nothing is bearish at this point in time. Even if we see a pullback into the mid 70k region, it should be viewed as constructive for the next move higher.

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*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

Written by Alexandar Artis

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Return of the Institutions

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:52:30 +1000

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Bitcoin traded above $80,000 this week for the first time since May.

This rally has a clear driver, and it is not retail. It is the return of institutional money on the back of the debasement trade. The Treasury is buying back long-dated debt, long-end yields are being suppressed, and large allocators are doing what they always do when they lose confidence in the denominator. They rotate into assets that cannot be printed.

Gold caught that bid. Bitcoin caught it too.

Consecutive Green Streak

The flows tell the story better than the price does.

On 19 and 20 August, the US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in over half a billion dollars on back to back sessions. That is the first time in over three months we have seen two consecutive days of that size.

In coin terms it lands even harder. Those two sessions absorbed close to 17,000 BTC between them. The network only mines around 450 BTC a day. So two days of institutional buying took more than a month of new supply off the market.

And it did not stop there. The 21st added another 4,200 BTC. Monday the 24th added 4,300 more. This is not a one day spike that gets revised away. It is a streak.

That is what a genuine bid looks like. Not leverage chasing itself in circles, but real money buying real coins and removing them from circulation.

Retail Are Still Not Back

Here is the part most people are missing.

Look at the weekend just gone. After a monster week, volume was remarkably thin. So thin that Bitcoin actually gave back a little ground on Saturday and Sunday, purely through the absence of buyers.

Then Tuesday arrived. The ETF window reopened, the institutions began buying again, and Bitcoin cracked $80,000.

Read that sequence again. The rally stalls when the institutions clock off and resumes the moment they clock back on.

If retail were driving this move, weekends would be the strongest sessions of the week. Weekends are when retail trade. They are not strong. Retail are simply not here yet.

They will be. Retail always arrive. They just arrive late, they arrive loud, and they arrive after the chart has already gone vertical and the story has already been written for them.

Smart Money Is a Mindset, Not a Bank Balance

This is where people get confused, so let us be direct about it.

Smart money does not refer to how much sits in your account or what you have available to spend. It is not a threshold you cross or a club you get invited into once your portfolio reaches a certain number.

Smart money is an approach. It is buying while the tape is quiet and the headlines are boring. It is doing the work before the move instead of after it. It is being willing to act without a crowd around you for reassurance.

Any reader of the Morning Note can be considered smart money. That is entirely dependent on you.

So the question is straightforward. Are you going to buy now, while the institutions and your fellow smart money investors are buying? Or are you going to wait, and join the retail crowd on the way in, buying the same asset if it is trading back above $100,000?

That is the cost of waiting. Not a missed opportunity in the abstract, but a materially worse entry on the exact same coin. Confirmation only ever arrives once the move is already behind you, and by then you are paying for it.

Stormrake Spotlight: Pax Gold (PAXG) ($4,646)

PAXG had a red day yesterday, but the bulls stepped in intraday and price bounced from the key zone that is now support. That bounce is a clear sign the bulls are in control and looking to push higher.

BTC/USD Key Levels and Price Action:

The first attempt at the key level of $80.9k was met with resistance, and Bitcoin is now undergoing a slight pullback. It is trading below the key moving averages, which would normally not be a good sign.

But a pullback is necessary, and the bulls should not feel threatened even if we see a move back to the mid 70k region. These pullbacks should not last long before they are bought up and price heads higher.

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*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

Written by Alexandar Artis

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This Isn't the Trap. This Is the Turn.

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:46:57 +1000

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If you’re staring at this rally wondering whether it’s another bull trap or fake-out, today’s note is for you.

The bear market is over. What’s played out over the past week isn’t a fake-out stitched into a longer downtrend, it’s the confirmation signal that the bottom is already behind us. This isn’t a hunch dressed up as conviction, rather there’s real structure underneath it, and historical data has said the same thing before.

Believe it or not; this Breakout is Textbook

In our Q3 Market Outlook published the first week of July, we flagged that a swing low was the likely next move, and that’s precisely what played out. Price came within $2,735 of our $55,000 target, landing at a new low of $57,735 before the market quietly slipped into accumulation. Being within a < 5% (+/-) tolerance, sometimes close is close enough.

This has happened before, and it’s worth remembering exactly how it played out last time. Heading into the 2022 bottom, everyone was fixated on $10,000 as the level that would confirm the low. Bitcoin never gave it to them. It bottomed near $15,000 instead, went under the radar, accumulated for two months, then launched to $25,000 and never looked back. The people waiting for the exact number they’d predicted missed the move entirely. The structure mattered more than the precise digit, and that’s exactly the situation we’re in again now.

The Pattern Underneath the Move

The accumulation phase that followed our $57,735 low built out as a textbook inverse head and shoulders, and the tell was in how price behaved inside it. Every attempt to push back below the higher low range between $62,000-$61,000 failed. Each failed breakdown was the market quietly telling us the same thing: high volatility was coming, and the longer that choppiness dragged on without a new low, the more the odds tilted toward a break to the upside rather than another leg down.

That’s exactly what happened.

Why the Rally Off a Generational Low Is Always Fast and Violent

Look at the chart. Every major Bitcoin bottom in this asset’s history has resolved the same way once the bear market trend line finally broke, not with a slow grind higher, but with a sharp, fast rally that catches almost everyone off guard. The 2018 trend line break was followed by a 231% rally. The 2022 break was followed by an 83% rally. The 2026 break we’re inside right now is already up ~33%, and by history’s own pattern, that number isn’t finished growing.

This speed is the entire point. A rally this fast off a generational low is designed to create maximum pain, and Bitcoin has done this at the bottom of every single cycle.

This is the window where bulls who missed the actual low chase the hype mid-rally, buying into confirmation but miss capturing the early gains. It’s also the window where bears, having just been proven wrong, start targeting a different price now, that we were at just two weeks ago - unfortunately, history says this never actually arrives. Both sides end up positioned eventually, but usually not at the price they initially wanted. This is why investing without emotion, especially in Bitcoin is so crucial.

What follows is the point where both bulls and bears take the hardest hit of the entire cycle simultaneously, late bulls chasing a rally that will likely keep running over the coming months, whilst bears are waiting on a retest of $60,000 that never comes. That mutual pain is what actually marks the start of the next cycle, not a headline, not a clean signal everyone agrees on, just exhaustion on both sides at once. From there, the market moves into its next sideways accumulation phase, except this time at meaningfully higher prices than the low everyone was arguing about weeks earlier.

This is Why Most Investors Miss Buying the Bottom, But It’s Not Over Yet

Every cycle bottom in Bitcoin’s history has looked messy in real time and clean only in hindsight. The exact number rarely matters as much as the structure around it, a swing low close to where it was flagged, a base that refuses to make a new low no matter how many times it’s tested, and a trend line break followed by a rally violent enough to leave both sides of the market wrong-footed at once.

That’s not a bull trap. That’s what the beginning of the next cycle has looked like every single time before this one. You haven’t missed out, but it’s also an excellent idea to speak to your dedicated Stormrake broker before the market keeps showing signs that we’re back - and with a fresh headline narrative, providing a tailwind to keep this rally going in the years to come.

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*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

Written by James Ryan

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The Bear Market is Over, What Next?

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 13:03:08 +1000

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We’re calling it, the bear market is over.

Now this doesn’t mean you’ve missed the opportunity to buy Bitcoin. We urged readers to unload the clips when Bitcoin was sub $60k, heck even below $70k. Even if you haven’t bought yet, it isn’t the end, nor have you missed the boat. But it’s worth being honest about where we are in the cycle: the longer you wait from here, the more of the move you give up.

Estimates have Bitcoin’s next bull market target around $200k, a level many had pencilled in for the last cycle but which fell well short. With Bitcoin currently sitting sub $80k, there’s still substantial room left on the table. A reclaim of the prior all-time high near $126k represents a return of roughly 64% from here. Push through to our $200k bull target and you’re looking at a return closer to 160% from current levels. Two different milestones, two very different numbers, and both still ahead of us, for now.

Bear Market Invalidation

If you read our Q3 Outlook, you’ll know we flagged a close above $83k as our formal bear market invalidation trigger. We’re calling it ahead of that print, and here’s why we’re comfortable doing so.

Last week we laid out the technical case in “You Travelled Through the Fire and the Flames, and Now We’re Here,” and the signals we flagged there haven’t just held, they’ve confirmed. The 2026 bear market trend line, the descending line connecting every lower high since October’s peak, has been broken with a high volume close, and price has held above it since. Historically, once that line breaks with volume behind it, the bottom is already in, and price has never revisited those lows. That’s exactly the pattern we saw in 2022, and the structural pattern on the chart is tracking eerily close to that bottom, with price action no longer making the lower lows that defined the bear phase.

The parallels are hard to ignore. Both cycles show the same shape into the low: a sharp capitulation leg, a failed breakdown attempt, then a reclaim through the level that had been capping price for weeks. In 2022 that reclaim held and never looked back. The setup into this bullish level around $83k is tracking the same way.

The structure backs it up too. A textbook inverse head and shoulders has formed since June, with price breaking straight through neckline resistance around $65k. The 50 EMA, the moving average that has marked every prior bear market bottom once broken with volume, has now been decisively reclaimed, with real volume behind it this time rather than the fading, low-conviction attempts we saw earlier in the year.

So it isn’t one signal, it’s five confirming together: the trend line break, the inverse head and shoulders, the 50 EMA reclaim, the shift in sentiment from capitulation to accumulation-grade indifference, and the clearest tell of all, buyer behaviour. Every sell-off since the bottom has been bought, aggressively, and the sellers who once controlled every bounce simply aren’t showing up anymore. That combination is what gives us the confidence to call this ahead of the formal $83k confirmation rather than waiting for the print.

The Accumulation Phase (or Early Bull Market):

Historically there’s been a distinct period between the bear and bull markets. Price doesn’t flip a switch from bear to bull, it transitions through a phase first.

Whether you call this the Accumulation Phase or Early Bull Market is largely semantics. The label matters less than what it represents: a sustained period of price appreciation off the low. Whichever term you prefer, the direction from here is the same, and that’s the part worth focusing on.

For this cycle, we’re marking that period as running from current price up to $97k. If you want a timeframe attached, we’d estimate the next 6-12 months to play out across that range.

This period also tends to be where altcoins and individual sectors put on their moves. We saw it earlier this year with HYPE, and we’ll no doubt see it again through whatever narrative captures the market’s attention next. Double digit returns and coins doing multiples aren’t unusual in this phase, and it can be tempting to chase them.

But it’s important not to get distracted. The goal here is Bitcoin accumulation. Altcoin rotations come and go, and for every winner making headlines there are far more that don’t. Stay focused on the primary trade.

This is also the point worth being clear-eyed about. Once Bitcoin moves through the accumulation and early bull phases, the next leg tends to kick in fast, and it’s historically not been a market that waits around for latecomers. You want to be fully allocated before that happens, not scrambling to catch up once it’s already underway. This window, right here, is the last real opportunity to build your position before the broader market catches on. The longer you wait, the worse your entry, and the worse your eventual returns.

If you think this is just another bull trap and aren’t ready to buy into the breakout, stay tuned, we’re tackling exactly that in tomorrow’s Morning Note.

Stormrake Spotlight: Pax Gold (PAXG) ($4,602)

PAXG has edged above the key resistance zone, trading just above $4,600, marking the start of the bulls’ next move up to the lower high we pointed out last week. $4,758 is the target for this week, which is likely to be achieved.

BTC/USD Key Levels and Price Action:

Bitcoin spent the weekend undergoing a slight pullback as some profit taking played out on low weekend volume. Price came back to the key 50 EMA and has bounced from there. As the week starts, we can expect institutional buying to return and fuel the price rally once more, with a retest of the key level just above $80k on the cards.

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*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

Written by Alexandar Artis

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The Move Happened. Here's Why.

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:19:03 +1000

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Yesterday we took a deep look into the breakouts and key signals for the bear market from a technical perspective. Today we’re diving into the fundamental reasons behind the move that ignited them.

Bitcoin is back. People are shouting that the bear market is over. Commodities are rallying. The US president is praising other cryptocurrencies. It’s been a big week, and none of it happened by accident, there were two very specific catalysts behind it.

The Treasury Buyback

On Wednesday, the US Treasury announced it will at least double the size of its liquidity support buyback operations for longer dated government debt, lifting the per operation cap from $2 billion to at least $4 billion for securities in the 10 to 20 year and 20 to 30 year buckets. The move came after a bond selloff pushed the 30 year Treasury yield to its highest level since 2007, with the government stepping in to steady a market that had seen a buyers’ strike since late June.

Why does this matter for Bitcoin? When the Treasury buys back its own bonds, it’s effectively becoming a larger, price insensitive buyer in a market that had been struggling to find demand. That pushes bond prices up and yields down, and lower yields change the calculus for every other asset competing for capital. When government debt offers a lower return, investors are pushed further out on the risk curve in search of yield, and that flows through to equities, gold, and eventually to Bitcoin. It’s also a signal, whether intended or not, that the authorities are willing to intervene to support market functioning when conditions get strained, and markets tend to read that as a green light for risk taking more broadly. Lower long end yields also ease pressure on the US fiscal picture and reduce one of the bearish arguments that had been weighing on risk assets throughout the year.

The market reaction was immediate. Yields fell, stocks rallied, gold and silver rallied, and Bitcoin caught a strong bid. That was the move which delivered a 7% increase in Bitcoin on the first day, and we’ve now added another 5% on top of that over the following 24 hours. Bitcoin is up 12% in two days, and now sits nearly 30% above the cycle low we saw at the start of July.

It’s also worth being precise here, this was just the announcement. The doubled buyback operations don’t actually begin until September 9 and run through November 4. Nothing has been bought yet. But markets don’t wait around for implementation dates, they price in the intent. This is a genuinely bullish structural announcement, and the market did exactly what markets do with bullish news, it front ran it immediately rather than waiting for the mechanics to kick in.

The Short Squeeze

The scale of the reaction becomes clearer when you look at what happened in the derivatives market. In the 24 hours following the Treasury announcement, the crypto market saw its largest single day of short liquidations on record, with roughly $2.74 billion in short positions forcibly closed out. For context, shorts made up over 90% of the total liquidations on the day, an unusually one sided outcome that tells you how heavily the market had been positioned for further downside.

Many readers will remember exactly where this sits in contrast to 10/10 last year. That was crypto’s worst day for liquidations on record, close to $19 billion wiped out in total, with around $16.8 billion coming from long positions and $2.5 billion from shorts. That day effectively confirmed the top was in, an overwhelming wave of leveraged longs got flushed out in one violent move, and the market never recovered those highs.

What we’ve just seen is, in a lot of ways, the inverse of that event. Instead of longs getting wiped in a top confirming flush, it was shorts getting wiped in what looks like a bottom confirming flush. The bears, who had been leaning heavily short through months of chop and downside, got caught entirely wrong footed and forced to cover in bulk. Just as 10/10 all but confirmed the cycle top was in, this kind of one sided, record setting short liquidation is the sort of event that has historically lined up with a cycle bottom.

Trump and Hyperliquid

We’ve covered Hyperliquid countless times this year, and we’ve made no secret of our appreciation for the project and our bullish take on it. It’s been one of the best performing assets of the year, and now we have more bullish news to add to the pile. President Trump referenced it directly during a White House speech on Wednesday, saying CFTC Chair Michael Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the US in a fully compliant and legal fashion. Hyperliquid currently blocks US users entirely, so a genuine regulatory pathway would be a meaningful shift for the platform.

The market reaction was immediate. HYPE rallied more than 20% on the day and is up close to 6% over the last 24 hours, putting it within touching distance of its all time high and on the edge of open price discovery territory. It’s another reminder of how quickly sentiment can shift when the regulatory backdrop turns supportive, and another data point that this administration is leaning towards bringing more of crypto onshore rather than pushing it away.

Tying It Together

Put together, a Treasury actively supporting bond market liquidity and easing yields, alongside a White House signalling openness to bringing major crypto infrastructure onshore, gave the market exactly the kind of one two punch needed to ignite the technical breakouts we covered yesterday. The trend line break, the 50 EMA reclaim, the inverse head and shoulders completion, all of that needed a catalyst to actually trigger the move, and this week we got two of them on the same day.

If you’re reading this and feeling like the move has already happened and you’ve missed it, it’s worth remembering this is still early. We are not talking about chasing a top, we’re talking about a market that has just shown its first real signs of turning after a long and difficult bear market. Get in touch with your Stormrake broker if you want to talk through what this means for your position, there’s still plenty of runway here.

Stormrake Spotlight: Pax Gold (PAXG) ($4,512)

PAXG has firmly pushed into the key zone and bulls are in full control, with both momentum and structure on their side. We expect this zone to break, and once it does, it should flip from resistance to support as PAXG looks to target the next lower high, sitting at $4,759.

BTC/USD Key Levels and Price Action:

No, you don’t need to rub your eyes or take a second look, this is the real Bitcoin chart. It’s gone straight up, blowing through a number of key levels along the way. BTC is up over 5.5% in the last 24 hours and now sits above $73,000. We’re at a point where the bulls are so firmly in control that any pullbacks from here are likely to be shallow and fast, bought up quickly before price pushes on to higher levels.

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*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

Written by Alexandar Artis

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You Travelled Through the Fire and the Flames, and Now We're Here.

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:39:59 +1000

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Today’s morning note is a tad longer than usual, but it’s a must read for anyone tracking Bitcoin price and the search for the cycle low. I’d urge you to stick around and read it in full.

For readers who’ve been with us for close to 12 months, you may recall the Morning Note welcoming everyone to the bear market. That call was based on key technical analysis that has historically signalled the start of past bear markets.

We may not be far from the point where that same analysis flips to confirm the bull market. Today we’re covering similar technical signals that have historically marked the end of a bear market, and for the first time in this cycle, the weight of evidence is stacking up in the bulls’ favour. The case is building fast, and it’s looking increasingly hard to bet against.

The Bear Market Trendline

There’s genuinely bullish price-action on the charts this week. Bitcoin has begun crossing the 2026 bear market trend line we’ve been tracking with clients for months - the descending line connecting every lower high since October’s peak. For the first time since this bear market began, Monday’s daily close popped through it, and yesterday’s close held above it too - now we just launched above it. Historically, that high volume cross has meant something specific: once a Bitcoin bear market trend line breaks, the bottom is already in, and price has never gone back below the recent lows.

The daily chart backs this up structurally as well as a textbook inverse head and shoulders has formed since June. Monday’s candle broke straight through the trend line and just blew past the neckline resistance ~ $65,000. On the shorter timeframe, price had been compressing inside a symmetrical triangle for weeks, and that Monday buying candle is exactly the kind of decisive move triangles like this eventually resolve with, which you’re now seeing today.

The strong move higher from support here is the exact setup flagged in last Friday’s note titled “The Return Australian Housing Would Need to Match Bitcoin’s Next Cycle” we signalled that if we saw more chop sideways, then a sharp turn up, this potentially could be the sign that continued price appreciation with rising volatility were next to come, potentially seeing a move towards $70,000 and beyond - which we identified would likely happen quickly, because that’s what a Bitcoin cycle bottom has always looked like.

This morning we’ve all just woken up to this reality, Bitcoin just zipped up to a high of exactly $70,033, a whopping near +10% move overnight when measured from low to high in just 24 hours.

The market delivered precisely our signal. Price failed to lose $62,000 over the weekend despite sellers pushing for it, then Monday’s strong buying candle closing at $64,500 confirmed the shift. That failure to break lower, followed immediately by strong conviction buying, was the market’s own signal that this cycle’s leg to the downside is done.

Any pullback or sideways price-action to allow investors the ability to further accumulate before we see a breakout of $100,000 on the print over the coming six to twelve months is a gift - not a given. If that plays out, it would be an extremely strong entry, and it’s increasingly unlikely a sub-$60,000 print happens again this cycle now that the trend line has broken with force in favour of the bulls. Investors waiting for that level to come back should treat that window as closing, not opening.

History backs the framework too. The 2018 bear market trend line and the 2022 bear market trend line both marked the exact same pattern, once price closed back above that descending line, the low was already locked in for good. Some chop followed both crossings in the weeks after, but neither cycle ever revisited those lows again. The 2026 trend line just did the same thing this week.

Trend line breaks with massive buying force like this don’t happen often, in-fact it’s only once every four years. Bitcoin’s own history says they mean exactly what they look like, the bottom is behind us. Between the inverse head and shoulders setup, the symmetrical triangle compression, and last weekends failed breakdown followed by Monday’s reclaim and today’s follow through, the pieces are lining up the same way they did in 2018 and 2022. If you’ve been waiting on the sidelines for a lower entry, this is the moment to talk to your Stormrake broker about it, as that window may already be closing.

The Moving Average That Dictates The Bear Market

The key moving average that has determined the end of past bear markets is the 50 exponential moving average on the daily timeframe (the green line on the chart below).

A sustained break of the 50 EMA, supported by volume, has historically marked the point where the bear market ended. The moves that failed to hold shared two things in common. Either they lacked the volume to sustain the breakout, or they came too early in the cycle, before enough pain and drawdown had actually played out. A fakeout without volume, or a fakeout that hasn’t earned its stripes through a proper flush, has never been the real thing.

We’re now ten months on from Bitcoin’s all time high. In our Q3 Outlook we estimated a bottom was likely to form within this quarter, and it’s looking like close enough is good enough. This week we’ve finally seen the decisive move above the 50 EMA, and this time volume is supporting it rather than fading away like the earlier attempts did.

The same pattern has played out in every major cycle. In 2014/15, 2018/19, and 2022, the early breakout attempts above the 50 EMA lacked the volume to hold, and price rolled back over each time. It wasn’t until the break came with real volume behind it that the bottom was actually in and the next leg higher began.

Source: Stormrake Research

Historically, this exact combination, a sustained 50EMA break with volume behind it, has marked the bottom of the last three major cycles. We’re watching now for that same pattern to confirm and hold.

Watching, Not Waiting

This is an extremely important period to be paying attention to. Between the trend line break, the inverse head and shoulders, the failed breakdown below $62,000, and now the 50 EMA reclaiming with volume behind it, the signals are stacking up in a way we haven’t seen since the last two cycle bottoms. We’re not calling it just, but the pieces are lining up quickly.

If this move holds and confirms the way it has in 2018 and 2022, the article welcoming you to the bull market looks to be right around the corner.

However, as a buyer, sitting on your hands entirely is what tends to cause the most damage. History shows the moves off these lows happen quickly, and hesitating too long is usually what costs investors the upside once the bull run is confirmed.

For those who have been dollar cost averaging while waiting for lower prices, it’s worth remembering that DCA is a strategy built for uncertain or falling markets. It works against you once the market turns and starts moving higher. We’ve seen this pattern play out time and time again. Investors waiting for a lower entry end up missing a significant part of the move, or in some cases don’t get back in at all. If you’re still waiting for lower prices or currently dollar cost averaging, get in touch with your dedicated Stormrake broker as soon as possible to talk through your options.

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*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

Written by Alexandar Artis and James Ryan

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Inside the Zone: What Bitcoin's Production Cost Tells Us Now

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:37:10 +1000

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Last week we covered the AI pivot underway among Bitcoin miners, where rising energy costs are pushing some miners to switch part of their operations over to AI computing instead of mining Bitcoin. Today we’re digging into the idea behind that story: Bitcoin’s cost of production. What it is, why it matters for price, and how it can help us spot a bottom.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $64,600, which puts it inside what we call the cost of production zone. It’s below the top end of that zone, but still above the middle. We’ll explain exactly what that means below.

What Is “Cost of Production” and Why Does It Matter?

Mining Bitcoin costs money. Miners need to buy hardware and pay for electricity to run it, and that adds up to a real dollar cost for every Bitcoin they produce. Think of it like the cost of digging gold out of the ground: if the gold price falls below what it costs to mine it, miners lose money and eventually shut down.

The same thing happens with Bitcoin. When the price falls close to what it costs to produce, the least efficient miners start losing money and switch off their machines. Fewer miners means the network adjusts, and it becomes cheaper again to mine relative to the price. This tends to create a floor under the market.

It’s not a hard floor though. Miners can run at a loss for a while before they give up, and the cost of production itself moves around depending on Bitcoin’s price, energy costs and mining difficulty. So it’s best to think of this as a zone, not an exact line.

Checking Two Different Sources

We’re tracking the model above from Simple Mining, and also checked it against data from Cambridge University’s CBECI (Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index), a well respected academic source. Both currently agree that Bitcoin is trading within this cost zone:

The model above: average estimate of $50,821, with an upper bound of $67,526
Cambridge (CBECI): estimated at $43,256, with an upper bound of $75,922

At $64,600, Bitcoin is sitting well above the Cambridge estimate and below the upper end of the model’s range. The two sources broadly agree on the general zone, which gives us more confidence that Bitcoin genuinely is in this cost of production territory, rather than it being a quirk of one particular model.

One thing worth flagging: Cambridge’s number only accounts for electricity costs. It doesn’t include things like hardware, rent or staff wages, which real miners also have to pay. That’s a big part of why its estimate runs lower than the model above, and why the true cost for many miners is likely higher than the Cambridge figure alone suggests.

What History Tells Us

Bitcoin has spent time in this cost of production zone before, and both previous major bottoms happened here:

December 2018: Cambridge estimated the cost of production at around $3,269
November 2022: Cambridge estimated the cost of production at around $14,704

Both of those turned out to be major cycle lows.

There’s also a longer term pattern worth noting. Each bear market low has landed a bit higher up in the cost of production zone than the one before it, rather than falling further below it. In the early days, Bitcoin’s price would crash well under the bottom of the zone before turning around. More recently, it has tended to bottom closer to the middle or top of the zone instead. This pattern has held consistently since 2015.

That matters for how we read the current situation. Just because Bitcoin is in the cost of production zone now doesn’t mean it has to fall further. If the historical pattern continues, a shallower bottom within the zone is more likely than a deep crash below it.

The Key Points

Bitcoin is currently trading in the cost of production zone, with two independent data sources in agreement.
Time spent in this zone has historically lined up with major market bottoms.
Cost of production should be thought of as a zone of support, not an exact price.
Over time, bottoms have tended to land higher up in the zone rather than lower, so the current setup doesn’t automatically point to further downside.

Zooming out, periods where Bitcoin trades in this cost of production zone have historically coincided with the later stages of past bear markets, both in 2018 and 2022. That’s the pattern worth watching, whichever way this cycle plays out.

Stormrake Spotlight: Pax Gold (PAXG) ($4,331)

The bears have reminded PAXG that they are still there and in for the fight, sending it down 2% over the last 24 hours. It still remains above key moving averages, so there’s nothing to worry about yet and the momentum stays bullish, though the bears remain a threat to stop this move at the resistance zone.

BTC/USD Key Levels and Price Action:

Whilst Bitcoin has only increased by 0.34%, it’s incredibly constructive. Commodities and traditional markets have pulled back whilst BTC is looking to sustain this breakout. This current breakout is a must hold for bulls across multiple timeframes. The longer BTC stays above and continues higher without coming back to the $63.8k level, the better.

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*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

Written by Alexandar Artis

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Disclaimer

The Line Between Betting and Investing Is Blurring

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:30:58 +1000

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A recent study covered by Bloomberg is worth sitting with for a moment. Citing new survey data from Betterment, it showed that 24% of Americans have redirected money earmarked for investing into sports betting at least once in the past year. Among Gen Z, that figure jumps to 52%. Even more striking, a quarter of Gen Z respondents said they treat sports betting as a deliberate part of their long term financial strategy, more than double the overall population rate of 12%.

Millennials are not far behind, with 31% having diverted investing funds into betting and 14% calling it part of their financial plan. Gen X and Boomers, by comparison, barely register.

The reporting included an example that made the trend feel less abstract. A 32 year old from Huntington, New York, described how he applies the same discipline to sports betting that he once reserved for stock picking. He does research before placing wagers, sticks to $100 a time, and this year has turned a profit of roughly $2,500, enough to fund a holiday. His own words were telling: he sees it as being smart about gambling, not as a hobby.

So What Actually Separates Investing From Gambling

The instinctive answer is that investing involves an underlying asset with a claim on future cash flows or utility, while gambling is a bet on a discrete outcome with no productive value attached. A share in a business represents part ownership of real earnings. A bet on a football match represents nothing beyond the result of that match.

That distinction holds up reasonably well in theory. In practice, it has been getting blurrier for years, and prediction markets are the clearest example. Platforms now let people take positions on elections, interest rate decisions, weather events, award shows and celebrity gossip. Wrap it in the language of markets and odds, and suddenly wagering on the outcome of a political race looks and feels a lot like taking a view on a stock. The mechanics are functionally identical to sports betting. Only the framing has changed.

The Uncomfortable Comparison

Here is where it gets harder to draw a clean line. How different is a same game multi/parlay from buying a penny stock with no revenue, no product and a market cap built entirely on story? How different is going in on a memecoin from putting $100 on an underdog at long odds? Both are bets on a low probability, high payout outcome, priced by sentiment rather than fundamentals.

The uncomfortable truth is that a large share of activity inside crypto already sits closer to gambling than investing. The memecoin cycle on Solana was pure speculation where 99.99% lost, and the data on the vast majority of altcoins outside Bitcoin is not kind. Most of them spend most of their existence grinding lower, a slow bleed toward zero punctuated by short bursts of hype. Buying into that cycle on the hope of catching the next 100x is not fundamentally different from a multi/parlay. It might be dressed up as investing, but the behaviour underneath is speculation on an outcome, not allocation to an asset with a thesis behind it.

None of this is a moral judgement on people who bet or trade small and speculative positions. The point is simply that the label someone puts on the activity, investing or gambling, often matters less than the process behind it.

What Actually Makes Something Investing

The real dividing line is not the asset. It is the approach. Investing means having a thesis you can explain, a time horizon measured in years rather than a weekend, and a position sized so that being wrong does not derail your plan. Gambling, whatever the venue, is defined by the opposite: no thesis beyond hope, no horizon beyond the next result, and sizing driven by emotion rather than a plan.

That is the real test worth applying to any allocation, sports bet, prediction market position, penny stock or altcoin included, but time horizon on its own is not enough. A long holding period is a necessary feature of investing, not a sufficient one. Holding a zero revenue altcoin or a failing penny stock for two years without a genuine thesis does not turn the position into an investment, it simply turns a short term gamble into a long term bagholding exercise.

The sharper question is whether the position has a claim on something productive: earnings, cash flows, revenue or structural utility that can compound over time. That is what gives an allocation a genuine chance of a positive outcome. A bet on a sports result, a same game parlay or a token with no revenue and no adoption path is a wager on a discrete or zero sum outcome, and stretching the holding period to two years does not change the underlying maths. It only delays the result.

This is also why Bitcoin sits apart from most of what gets lumped in with it under the crypto umbrella. Its fixed supply schedule, growing adoption through spot ETFs, and emerging role as a neutral global settlement layer give it a structural thesis that most of the market does not have. Positioning around Bitcoin does not rely on a single catalyst or a discrete outcome. It rests on a case for genuine long term value, which is the actual definition of investing, and it is worth remembering the difference the next time the line between the two starts to blur.

Stormrake Spotlight: Pax Gold (PAXG) ($4,409)

Another positive day for PAXG, up nearly 1% over the last 24 hours as it sustains the move above the key moving averages and looks to prepare itself to challenge the overhead resistance zone. Things are looking bullish for PAXG.

BTC/USD Key Levels and Price Action:

A strong move for Bitcoin over the last 24 hours has seen it climb over 2.2% and back above the key level of $63.8k; the bulls are back in control of the momentum. This move is a real test to see how strong the bulls are, and it feels like this could be the beginning of the move to break the consolidation and put the bears to bed…

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*All prices are denominated in USD unless stated otherwise*

Written by Alexandar Artis

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No Advice Warning

The information in this newsletter is general only. It should not be taken as constituting professional advice from the author - Stormrake PTY LTD.