Macro

Brent settled at $94.65 and about $115 million of leveraged longs were closed inside an hour. The oil price, not the strikes, is what bitcoin is actually trading on.

A Treasury liquidity operation announced on 19 August, not a monetary pivot, triggered the biggest three-day bitcoin move since 2023. Short bitcoin positions built through months of range-bound trading were forced out at whatever bids remained.

The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield crossed 5% for the first time since July 2025 on Thursday morning, and bitcoin is already paying for it. BTC slid back under $76,000 as institutional capital rotates into yield-bearing dollars.

Implied volatility on bitcoin options has fallen to its lowest level since January even as March CPI is expected to hit 3.4% year-on-year, up from 2.4% in February, driven by the Iran war energy shock.