Bitcoin Price Drives Toward $80K as Economist Warns of 'Massive QE'

Market Recovery and Bitcoin Price Swings

Bitcoin nearly tapped $80,000 on Monday as the cryptocurrency market appeared to recover from a weekend slump, which saw several high-cap altcoins back off from multi-month highs. Market data shows that after briefly dipping below $77,000 two hours before midnight, bitcoin rebounded and largely trended just below $77,500 until around 7:30 a.m. EST.

Shortly afterwards, bitcoin’s price echoed last week’s bull run by spiking to just under $79,200 before a quick sell-off pulled it back to $78,200. A secondary surge pushed prices higher, reclaiming $79,000 and reaching a new August peak bitcoin price of $79,989. However, a second wave of profit-taking quickly dragged the cryptocurrency back to $79,200.

Despite this, the bitcoin price action during the 24-hour period, left it with daily gains of approximately 3% and pushed its market capitalization to $1.59 trillion. The latest gains also brought bitcoin’s year-to-date losses below 10% for the first time since mid-May, exciting investors who have been steadfast in their belief that the cryptocurrency will close 2026 in the green.

On the derivatives market, a familiar pattern emerged: Liquidated short positions outpaced liquidated long positions. However, Coinglass data shows the value of short bets wiped out in 24 hours was markedly lower than the hundreds of millions liquidated seen last week. According to the data, liquidated short bets topped $98 million versus $45.3 million in long bets. Overall, cryptocurrency market liquidations topped $396 million, with wiped-out short bets reaching $222 million.