Bitcoin surged above the $80,000 mark this week following months of price stagnation.

Few, if any, saw this coming. With trading volumes flat, retail investors deserting crypto for the stock market, and some big-name Bitcoin treasuries even selling BTC to keep the lights on, most analysts have been talking about a long crypto winter, not a sudden recovery.

“Bitcoin spent much of the summer below $64,000,” Ryan Lee, Chief Analyst at Bitget Research, told Techopedia. “Perpetual trading activity fell to a three-year low earlier in August.”

But August 19 changed all that, with prices climbing by the hour on some exchanges.

United States financial decision-makers are responsible for the upward price movement, say experts. But this time, it is not the Federal Reserve, but the Treasury that has made a splash in the Bitcoin pond.

Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled plans to double the size of a buyback ​program for 10- to 30-year Treasury debt securities from $2 billion to at least $4 billion.

“The U.S. Treasury’s announcement decreased long-term [bond] yields,” Kadan Stadelmann, the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of the AI company Compance, and the co-founder of the blockchain firm Komodo Platform, told Techopedia. “That weakened the dollar. And it drove investors into perceived safe-haven assets like gold, as well as Bitcoin.”

Other experts agreed, including Michael Terpin, CEO of the blockchain firm Transform Venture. Terpin told Techopedia that the price rise was a “bump” and a “quick reaction” to the Treasury’s move.

“[It’s] a tiny but symbolic amount,” Terpin said.

A plethora of other factors may have also contributed to the rise, some say.

President Donald Trump held meetings with major crypto firms at the White House last week.

Top U.S. regulators have also promised a definitive end to crypto debanking events.

But much of the upward price movement “is just markets reacting to bold headlines,” Vladimir Tikhomirov, the co-founder of the decentralized finance firm Algebra, told Techopedia.

Bitcoin Price Growth’s Sustainability Question Marks

The question of whether or not there is any sustainability in this “bump” is proving divisive in crypto circles.

The last time BTC was trading above $80k was early May, which has some traders celebrating the “end” of the Bitcoin bear market.

“The bear market ended, Bitcoin entered what I call the Soft Bull Market, and congratulations to everyone who bought the fear with me over the last 30 days,” one jubilant Bitcoin trader proclaimed on X.

But many investors have warned the recovery is a “bull trap,” which will precede a drop to sub-$50,000.

Much will depend on how professional investors react in the days ahead, say some.

“The durability of the rally now depends on whether institutional buying continues after forced liquidations have cleared,” said Lee.

Lee said his team expects Bitcoin to trade “broadly between $74,000 and $81,000 in the near term.”

Stadelmann, meanwhile, said the rally was “likely to face consolidation between $70,000-$75,000.”

Both experts said much depends on “sustained institutional buying.”

“Follow-through” on the Trump administration’s pro-business regulatory promises is also a major factor that could make or break a recovery, Stadelmann said.

“For the growth to last, we need to see some action and real developments,” Tikhomirov said. “If actual regulatory progress followed as a result of Trump’s meeting, the trend would have grounds to go on. If not, then the current optimism could bleed out just as quickly as it appeared.”

Also in Crypto News

Price Rises Lures Investors Back to Bitcoin, Ethereum ETF Market

With Bitcoin prices rising, investors are flooding back to crypto exchange-traded funds en masse.

Spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in the U.S. both experienced inflow surges last week, with investors splurging around $2.5 billion on shares in funds like BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF.

The spending continued on Monday, with most major funds seeing a 24-hour rise in inflows of just under 3%, per Soso Value data.

August inflows are now experiencing their highest inflows since October 2025, the data shows, with several days of trading still left in the month.

The reversal follows several months of misery for crypto ETFs, which began in November last year when investors dumped shares worth almost $3.5 billion.

Weekly inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. have reached $1.9 billion, marking the largest weekly inflow since mid-October.

To date, crypto ETFs have accumulated a net inflow of almost $54 billion.

Exchanges Issue SAND Warning After Hacker Mints Millions of Coins

Crypto exchanges are rushing to issue warnings and suspend trading in SAND, the cryptocurrency of the metaverse project The Sandbox.

The Sandbox said it fell victim to security breaches on its Base and BNB Smart Chain (BSC) cross-chain bridge.

On August 22, the firm said it had “identified and fully contained” the breaches, adding that its tokens on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains were unaffected.

“Do not buy, sell, or trade SAND on Base or BSC,” the firm warned on X. “Liquidity on those networks is compromised.”

However, this did not stop a hacker from reportedly gaining access to token minting permissions and creating hundreds of millions of tokens.

The South Korean crypto exchanges Korbit and Upbit sent users warnings of potential price volatility, with its rivals Bithumb temporarily suspending SAND deposits and withdrawals.

Coinbase, meanwhile, said it will delist SAND and several other futures contracts later this week.

Ripple Eyes Institutional Lending Role for Its USD-Backed Stablecoin

The XRP issuer Ripple plans to use its US dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD to power an institutional lending platform for fintech and payments firms.

The platform will operate in Ripple’s XRP Ledger and comprise a credit fund backed by the stablecoin credit provider Cicada Partners and the decentralized finance firm Clearpool.

Ripple said the move will see RLUSD move away from its previous function as a tool of payment and toward a new role in institutional credit collateral.

“The model is currently in development and testing,” Ripple announced in a LinkedIn post.

The firm said it expects businesses to start using the XRP Ledger for “lending and settlement” in the near future.

Ripple launched the XRP Ledger blockchain protocol in 2012, championing it as an energy-effective alternative to “power-intensive mining” protocols like Bitcoin.

In the 24 hours following the announcement, XRP prices increased by approximately 16%. With Bitcoin and other altcoin prices also on the rise, the token is up almost 50% on last week’s prices.