BTC price stuck despite Fed cut bets; altcoins M, IP, PUMP show some strength
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Bitcoin’s price action over the past week has been anything but steady, with the leading cryptocurrency bouncing between $107,414 and $113,225.
The broad trading range confirms the uncertainty prevailing across global markets, where macroeconomic signals have largely dictated investor sentiment.
The total crypto market cap slipped about 2% over the week, settling at $3.899 trillion by Friday’s close.
Although there were flickers of optimism during mid-week trading, enough to briefly push the Crypto Fear and Greed Index into “greed” territory, the mood ultimately cooled.
By week’s end, the index had slipped back to a neutral reading of 48, as traders weighed the likelihood of a Federal Reserve rate cut this month.
Altcoins, meanwhile, posted mixed results. Most top-tier assets ended the week with only modest moves, with gains mostly concentrated in a handful of outperformers.
Why is the Bitcoin price stuck?
Bitcoin did manage to gather some momentum mid-week, climbing steadily after a clean bounce off the $110,000 support level.
That technical rebound sparked a short-lived rally, with BTC/USD briefly pushing to new September highs near $113,400.
But just as quickly as the rally came, it faded.
Bitcoin shed nearly $3,000 within an hour as profit-taking and fresh macro data sapped the upward push.
At the centre of this tug-of-war is the Federal Reserve.
Traders are currently pricing in more than a 90% probability that the Fed will cut rates by 25 basis points at its upcoming policy meeting on September 17.
That looming decision has already sparked a mild risk-on tilt across global markets, and Bitcoin, often seen as a high-beta proxy for speculative appetite, was among the early beneficiaries.
Lower borrowing costs typically create a more favourable backdrop for risk assets, and BTC has historically responded quickly to even hints of monetary easing.
The current sentiment is further reinforced by expectations of not just one, but at least two rate cuts by the end of 2025.
That kind of dovish policy trajectory is exactly the sort of macro setup in which Bitcoin tends to flourish.
ETF inflows this week added fuel to the optimism. Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw net inflows of $332.7 million on Tuesday alone, the highest in two weeks, according to CoinGlass.
It was a telling signal that institutional capital hasn’t lost interest, just waiting for the right macro cue.
However, markets were jolted by the latest US nonfarm payrolls (NFP) data, which came in significantly below expectations.
Only 22,000 jobs were added in August, well under the forecasted 75,000.
The dollar stumbled on the weak labour readout, while gold surged to new all-time highs, classic moves in anticipation of policy easing.
Yet Bitcoin, curiously, failed to fully capitalise.
Despite the data aligning with a rate-cut narrative, BTC’s reaction was underwhelming.
Prices dipped shortly after brushing September highs, a move that left many traders scratching their heads.
While the labour market data supports the case for looser monetary policy, which is typically bullish for crypto, the lacklustre price response suggests the market is still searching for conviction.
As trading resource The Kobeissi Letter pointed out, this was the second-lowest jobs report since July 2021, with downward revisions on prior months adding to the bleak picture.
Will Bitcoin price go up?
Zooming out, despite the late-week downturn that was unfolding at the time of publication, Bitcoin’s trajectory over the past 7 days has been upward.
However, the question now remains whether this trend will continue or we will see a price reversal.
To gauge that, analysts were observing certain critical areas that could potentially influence the upcoming direction.
One key zone under scrutiny is the 200-period moving average on the 4-hour chart—both the simple (SMA) and exponential (EMA) varieties.
Popular trader Daan Crypto Trades flagged this level as a crucial barometer for momentum in the short to mid-term.
In a post on X, he noted that these moving averages have acted as stubborn resistance for weeks and are now being retested again.
“These have both acted as resistance for the past few weeks and are now being tested again,” he wrote, hinting that a decisive break above could shift sentiment.
Fellow market watcher ZYN echoed the sentiment, pointing specifically to the $113,000 region as the threshold to beat.
“This is a very crucial level to reclaim for more upside,” he noted, adding that bulls would “be fully back” if Bitcoin could establish support above that zone.
That area—just before the NFP print—was widely considered the short-term battleground for control.
But not everyone is convinced that BTC may be out of the woods yet.
Bearish takes are still circulating, with some voices warning that the recent rally may have been more technical than trend-setting.
Investor and market analyst Ted Pillows reiterated his view that Bitcoin could slide further, especially if current support levels fail to hold.
Gaps in CME futures trading have historically acted like gravity wells, often pulling prices toward them when broader sentiment turns risk-averse.
And while gaps aren’t guaranteed to fill, they tend to loom large in technical forecasts, particularly during periods of heightened volatility.
When looking at the weekly liquidation heatmap for the BTC/USDT trading pair on Binance, some key support and resistance levels start to come into focus.
Heavy liquidation clusters can be seen forming just below the $111,000 level and again around $108,000, areas where both long and short positions were recently wiped out.
These bands of historical liquidations often act as soft support or resistance zones moving forward, as traders are cautious about re-entering positions too aggressively in areas of recent forced exits.
One particularly active region sits around $110,000, which aligns with the area Bitcoin bounced from earlier this week.
This level now acts as a psychological and technical anchor. Should BTC revisit this zone and hold, it could serve as a launchpad for another retest of the upper end of the range.
On the flip side, downside liquidity continues to build between $106,000 and $103,500, with visible liquidation interest thickening near $104,000.
If sellers manage to push price through the $108K–$110K soft floor, Bitcoin could be drawn into that zone, where aggressive liquidation of leveraged long positions could cascade into a deeper dip.
To the upside, multiple heat pockets are visible near $113,500 to $114,000, which is where Bitcoin recently topped out before its abrupt drop.
If BTC can reclaim and consolidate above $113K, a move toward $115,000 or even $117,000 isn’t off the table, but it will require strong bullish momentum and fresh catalysts, likely from macroeconomic data or institutional flows.
At press time, Bitcoin was trading above the $110k support area, with a little over 2.6% in profits booked over the past 7 days.
Altcoin market recap
The total market cap of all altcoins rose to a weekly high of $1.75 trillion before settling at $1.69 trillion, up 4.3% over the week.
Ethereum traded sideways this week as bulls and bears battled for control, with the price fluctuating between $4,250 and $4,450.
As of press time, the leading altcoin by market cap was trading at $4,282, down about 1% on the week, with a market cap of $516.5 billion.
Other large-cap altcoins like XRP (XRP), Solana (SOL), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Tron (TRX) also posted similar losses ranging between 1-3% in the last 7 days.
MemeCore (M) stood out as the leading gainer of the week with triple-digit gains of 242%, far outpacing Story (IP) and Pump.fun (PUMP), which recorded gains of 31.6% and 30.4% respectively.
Source: CoinMarketCap
MemeCore: MemeCore’s skyrocketing gains this week stem from investor hype and heavy community marketing around Korea Blockchain Week.
An X post from a community member revealed that the project rented out Seoul’s iconic Lotte World theme park for the final night of the event.
The park would be open to all KBW attendees and certified community testers.
However, pulling off such a costly arrangement suggests the project is deploying significant capital to build cultural relevance.
As many of these attendees also hold M tokens, community members are likely ramping up their holdings on the belief that the success of the theme park experience could largely depend on the token’s performance.
Story: The primary catalyst behind Story’s rally today stems from the official launch of Poseidon’s first application, a training data collection app for physical AI operations.
IP’s gains were also supported after Aria Protocol Labs and the Aria Foundation, both tied to the Story-based IP tokenisation platform Aria, revealed they had secured $15 million through their recent combined seed and strategic funding rounds.
Finally, community-driven activity has added fuel to the rally. With more than 1,000 tokens deployed on ip.world as of press time, the IP coin narrative is spreading rapidly as it gains grassroots adoption.
Pump.fun: PUMP’s rally this week was fueled by Pump.fun’s aggressive buyback of nearly $12.2 million worth of tokens from the open market over the past week.
More broadly, its gains were supported by Pump.fun’s newly introduced strategic overhaul, Project Ascend, unveiled earlier this month.
The initiative aims to empower creators on the platform while targeting scaling the ecosystem by 100x over the coming months.
The post BTC price stuck despite Fed cut bets; altcoins M, IP, PUMP show some strength appeared first on Invezz
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