Bitcoin breaks $77K amid ETF inflows and short liquidations — Digital Asset News reviews what's next
A solo commentary by the Digital Asset News host reviewing Bitcoin's move past $77K, analyzing ETF flows, price prediction track records, and issuing a scam warning.
Summary
The Digital Asset News host opens by congratulating viewers who were buying during the downturn, noting Bitcoin's 22% rise over seven days to nearly $78K. He reviews the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF inflows that preceded the move, then walks through the historical four-year cycle data to arrive at a conservative personal price target of around $150K–$180K. He critiques a range of well-known analysts whose price predictions have consistently overshot, and closes with a warning about a physical mail scam impersonating the IRS and targeting crypto holders.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin breaks $77K — congratulations to buyers who held through the dip
Host: What a day it's been. The last 24 hours has been pretty great. We see Bitcoin rocketing past $77K, and I want to just say congrats to everybody who was buying along the way — you are reaping the benefits of what you've recently done. We're going to take a look at what's happening today, and then also potentially what could happen in the near future.
As you all know — because I know you've all checked your portfolios and the price probably every five minutes — it's been a nice day. $77K almost. I think we hit $78K at some point and almost $80K, but then it got rejected. That's a pretty good run-up in the last seven days. Bitcoin massive at a $1.5 trillion market cap, up 22% in seven days. Unbelievable. Ethereum at $2,400. BNB $680. XRP — and of course you know the rest, because it's been a pretty good day.
I have to tell you, we're going to get into what's potentially coming up, but to me, when I take a look at all the indicators that are out there — all the TA and everything else — that's good for short-term trading. But some days it just comes down to the whales and the people that are buying, and they know things behind the scenes. That's pretty much where we're at.
ETF inflows driving the move
I can take a look at the Bitcoin ETF flows over the last couple of days. Look at this — August 19th, $284 million for BlackRock. Then $500 million — half a billion dollars — on August 20th. It was just three or four days of positive inflows and everything just starts ripping. And here we are today, August 21st. Looking pretty good for the Bitcoin ETF flows, as well as the Ethereum ETF flows, which kind of surprised me. I didn't think we'd have this much of a push. But look at that — $122M, $173M, $219 million as of yesterday, $186 million the day before, $130 million on Wednesday. Looking pretty good for the ETF flows, with regular and institutional money actually coming in.
And of course, taking a look at the crypto market, we should also look at the traditional markets. The S&P 500 — wow, look at that. Hitting an all-time high around August 13th, almost at 5,800. They'll probably pass 6,000. We'll see if that actually goes through.
Four-year cycle context and the 200-week moving average
But again, I want to reiterate something — congratulations. This wasn't easy to do. When we talked about this, we can take a look at indicators and see how they worked out. The 200-week moving average was a pretty good time to buy. And I'm not saying we can't reverse, because I still believe we can have another downward trajectory. We are just one Trump tweet away from some massive catastrophe that can move the markets. The markets are very skittish and there's not a lot of resiliency everywhere. So I look at this and think, hey, it could happen.
But I also believe that the four-year cycles are intact and we could go down into October. Now, having said all that, does that mean I'm just going to wait for October? No. We've talked about this the last six, seven, eight months — I buy every single Monday on Cash App. I use dynamic DCA by taking a look at the risk levels, and as the Bitcoin price goes down, I double, quadruple, 8x more than what I would buy historically speaking. So this was just one of those days where you have to say, "I'll be damned. It worked out."
And taking a look at the 200-week moving average — boy, look at that, skyrocketing above it. I think we've just kissed the 150-week. Look at that. Unbelievable. So that's where we're at.
As a quick reminder, looking back to the last cycle in 2022, we went below the 200-week moving average, then the 250, then the 300-week, and we almost hit the 350-week moving average back in November of 2022. We had the collapse of everything — FTX being the big daddy, and then Celsius beforehand, Voyager beforehand, Three Arrows Capital, and of course Luna. Everything was just collapsing. That's why it went down so historically. But if we look at the cycle before that in 2018, we didn't even hit the 200-week moving average. Pretty crazy.
Indicators are indicators. But it is interesting how there's some variance, because as we've grown and gotten more mass adoption, we have actual support — even the SEC and CFTC are positive for us, nation states are positive as well. We had the ETF in 2024. If we take a look just four years back, we have way less volatility.
If this is your first cycle — congratulations. It wasn't too bad. You should have been here in 2017. Those were good times. Then 2018 — woo, it went down like crazy. 2022 was a big one. This one, not too bad.
You can find this on our website, Dan Teaches Crypto, 100% free, links in the description. Just take a look at the tools and click on the four-year cycle. You can verify this. Going back four years, we were 68% down from the 2021 all-time high — it was $67,000 down to $21,000 — and we still had another couple of months to go before we hit 77% down. Right now, we're only 38% down. We're 30% above where we were four years ago. So yes, the ROI isn't as great as people who invested in 2010 or 2011 and did ridiculously well, but it's not as volatile either. And that doesn't mean we can't go down tomorrow from some crazy happening. This is just what we actually see.
Price predictions — entertaining but mostly worthless
This leads me to my next point, which is: don't get too jazzed up. Don't think this is it — bull run for the next three years. There are going to be bumps along the way, and there are going to be people making a lot of price predictions, which are fine. They're worthless. Just take it with a grain of salt. I've been here since 2017 and very few people actually got it right.
This is Vaneck's Matthew Sigel, who was on CNBC. I want you to listen to his price prediction. It's always entertaining. Totally worthless, but fun.
CNBC anchor: $100K now, later in the future — could it go higher? But in all seriousness, what do you see as likely to be the next move? How high? When?
Matthew Sigel: "So far the move is all short covering. There's been $3 billion of short liquidations in the last 24 hours — that's an all-time record. So if we get the real money stepping in, maybe we go higher. Nothing is in a straight line. I told you guys $100K would be next year. Still believe that. And then long-term, 2029 — say we can hit $500K if the cycle plays out as usual."
Host: So, $500K by 2029. This will be the big story at some point. Cointelegraph will pick it up — "$500K by '29, $1 million, Michael Saylor by '29."
As a reminder and a little bit of a reality check — there's a link in the description where I talk about how everybody gets it wrong on price predictions. They do a great attempt at it and use a lot of data, but remember the business cycle predictions from months ago? And the M2 money supply tracking — which realistically is a driver as America and other countries debase their currency, that's true — but people would track the M2 money supply and say "this is exactly how it's going to play out." That didn't work out either.
There's a link in the description where I did two videos: one was "everybody was wrong in 2020–2021," and the next was "everybody was wrong in 2025." We can see stuff like Jeff Kendrick from Standard Chartered, who thought Bitcoin would be $100K in 2023. Matthew Hogan — smart guy, does a lot of data analysis — said July 2025 Bitcoin would be closer to $200K by end of year. He was right that December 2025 would be an up year, and in December 2024 he said it'd be more than $200K in 2025. Gautam Chhugani from Bernstein says Bitcoin at $200K by 2025. And here's Matt again — December 2024, Bitcoin will be at $180K during 2025. Well, it was two-thirds right. August 2025, Bitcoin will be at $180K by end of year 2025 — that wasn't even close. And December 2025 will be a top performer in 2026, which I guess, sure.
And then of course everybody's favorite — my favorite — Tom Lee: Bitcoin at $250K at end of year 2025. November 2025: it'll be $150K to $200K by end of year 2025. No, that's not exactly what happened. I don't understand — Tom Lee makes these predictions and that's fine, but really you should just be listening to Sean Farrell, who is his head of digital asset strategy at Fundstrat, where he says his base case is a meaningful drawdown in the first half of 2026 with Bitcoin falling to $60K–$65K and ETH at $1,800. He actually did a pretty good job.
So this is the problem with price predictions. You've got people on the left side — the Dan Penas and the Jamie Dimons — saying it's going to zero, and you've got people on the right side saying it's going to a cajillion bajillion dollars tomorrow. And it seemed like nobody is conservative enough to just say, "Yeah, it's going to do good, but not that good."
Historical cycle data and a conservative price target
Taking a look at midterm years — they usually just repeat. We're going to have another midterm year. This is one of them. We'll have another one in 2028. The foundation was pretty good last time: ETFs, institutional adoption, government support, the SEC and CFTC making new rules. Then we had a crypto-friendly president who also dabbled in some meme coins, made $1.4 billion, and you've got treasuries and momentum and all that good stuff.
So hear me out. I think we're all going to do great. But let's take a look at all-time lows to all-time highs, and all-time highs to all-time highs. This is where I come up with my number of $150,000.
All-time low to all-time high from 2015 to 2017: it took 1,068 days and you did a 116x. This is why there's so much volatility — people taking massive risks. It went from $172 at the bottom in 2015 to almost $20,000 in 2017. That's when I got in.
The next all-time low to all-time high was a 21x. You went from $3,217 in 2018 to $67,000, and it took 1,060 days — eight days less. And the next one, 1,062 days — only two days more — and you did an 8x.
So all-time low to all-time high: 116x, 21x, 8x. That's called diminishing returns. Makes sense, right? So if we extrapolate that and go with some ballpark conservative figures — maybe from the all-time low to the all-time high we do a 3x. What was the all-time low? So far it was on July 1st, 2026 — correct me in the comments — but I have it at around $58,121. Could we go below to $50K, $45K, $30K? Sure. I don't know. But if $58,000 was the low and we do a 3x from there, you're looking at around $180K. Not bad.
What about all-time high to all-time high? In 2011 we had $32. In 2013 we had $1,200. That's a 40x. Obviously you want to invest at the low times — buy low, sell high. Pretty easy philosophy, tough to execute. From 2013 to 2017, you took 1,477 days and did a 16x. The next one, almost the same timeframe — all-time high to all-time high from 2017 to 2021 took 1,424 days and you did a 3.4x. Still great. And 2021 to 2025 took 1,428 days — what does this remind you of? It's always the same thing repeating again and again. That was a 1.8x. Still not bad.
So let's be conservative. We don't have to go $500K or $1 million — it'll happen at some point because they're going to keep printing money to oblivion. I just don't think it's going to happen in the next four years. If we did a 1.5x from the high, that's roughly $189,261. Correct me in the comments.
As a reminder, bull market peak indicators — none of them have hit. I've been bulk buying at $60K. I think I'll probably be selling at $150K — probably about half — and at $170K, about 20%, unless something crazy happens like Bitcoin becomes the world reserve currency. We'll see what happens.
IRS impersonation scam targeting crypto holders
Now, lastly, a little public service announcement from Clinton Donnelly — good guy, definitely follow him. If you get this email, or actually a letter — a real physical letter — this looks legitimate. I've gotten many letters from the IRS unfortunately. They love to talk to me.
Anyway, this looks legit. It says, "Records received from a digital asset platform indicate you engaged in transactions involving digital assets." That's actually correct wording from what I've gotten before. And it says you need to enroll into this program to help you avoid fines and penalties — just scan this QR code and we'll walk you through it.
If you get something like this, do not scan that code. I'm guessing that once you do, if you have any kind of information on your phone, it'll take it — especially if you have any hot wallets, or maybe it grants access to your email because it's tethered to the different Gmail accounts you probably have. Just guessing. So if you get something like this, throw it away. Or if you're unsure, just contact the IRS. They'd love to talk to you anyway.
This is on top of the other ten thousand scams out there trying to steal your funds. I personally think the greatest investors are the scam artists, because they don't have to put in one dime — all they've got to do is put in time and they'll find somebody. There's a sucker born every minute, unfortunately, and they will try to take that hard-earned crypto away from you as fast as possible. Everything's a scam until proven otherwise.
Storage diversification and Q&A
So what do we talk about? If we're going to diversify our assets, I think we should also diversify our safety and our storage. I personally use iTrustCapital, Ledger, and ETFs, and you don't want to be like the cold card person who lost all their Bitcoin. Just use what I trust — Coinbase Prime. And with an IRA over at iTrustCapital, you can now do crypto, digital assets, and as of last week, stocks and ETFs as well. Not too bad. You can also do staking rewards for Ethereum and Solana through the IRA.
Live Q&A
All right, let's get to the Q&A. Jupiter might be right — get ready for a pullback this Sunday. You know, there should be a pullback at some point. We just had a pretty massive run. Everybody's feeling pretty good. I'm very happy. Those Monday buys are working out pretty well. I've taken some profits just because I try to be as regimented as I possibly can, but the vast, vast majority is waiting for the next two or three years to materialize.
Sniggy asks, "Who's manipulating the markets today?" Well, I don't know. But our market's not that big — we're around $2.3 trillion, all of crypto. Gold is $10 trillion plus, maybe $12–$14 trillion, I'm not sure. But even the precious metals market, you can spoof that market — just ask Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan, they'll tell you all about it. They can manipulate things in a much bigger market. And look at ours at $2.3 trillion. Whales want to move things around, they'll do it. I pretty much think the only way to actually combat and beat those guys and gals is just stick around, don't listen to too much hype, pick a number for what you need in your life, and phase in and phase out. That's how I see it.
I've been using Claude now — works tremendously well. I just want to see if Grok can keep up with that. Looks good though. I do like that.
OC Kavan says, "Remember when this live would have had 75–100 watching instead of 75?" Yeah, you know, it's just how it is. Everybody comes back in the bull because they're all excited and hyped up, and we welcome them in. You know, last cycle and the cycle before that, we told them: this is when all the money's made — it's in the bear market, when it's super boring and there's not much going on except going further down. But that's how it's done. And they come back when there's a bull market and everybody's happy and everybody starts calling me Dan. That's fine. Yeah, it always happens.
Kan asks, "Was the Bitcoin pump a spot buying type of pump or just a short leverage liquidation?" Well, a couple days ago we had the largest amount of shorts liquidated in roughly about a year. That plays a big role. Also, Scott Bessent came out and said, "Look, we're going to support treasuries and T-bills, and we're going to put in two to four billion just for liquidity of the market." And then he came out and said we're going to do what it takes to keep this market moving. That was a signal for all the big bankers and movers and shakers and big funds to go, "All right, we've got no problems here. It looks like America's going to back us up." Everybody got excited. You get two of those things happening and off you go. Again, the markets are still very skittish. They're just looking for anything to make crazy money.
The wolf asks, "Shortest bear market in history, or a pump before the dump?" I believe something similar happened in either 2018 or 2022 — August was kind of a bullish month and then we started to see a slow decline and then a big dump. In 2018 it was December, and in 2022 it was November. Not sure, but maybe this time it can maintain. We'll see how it works.
You have to understand — I'm actually rooting for it to go down. And we all know why. Because if my buys are going to fire off on Monday and in the next two or three years we're going to see a pretty big ROI increase, then why wouldn't I want the price to go down now so I can do the hard things — which isn't that hard anymore, it's just money that goes in, I buy stuff, and then two or three years later I get to look at my portfolio and go, "Wow, I bought during that crappy time."
Someone asks whether social metrics are even still relevant as retail traders become less relevant to Bitcoin performance. It's a good question. But I think when we have a lot of institutions, sovereign nations, and heads of state talking about Bitcoin and altcoins, you would think that would trickle down into the retail markets just a little bit as they get more exposure. My bigger question though is: as people are coming up, are they even on social media as much anymore, as opposed to just getting their information from Grok or ChatGPT or Claude? Maybe they're not even watching these types of videos anymore. Maybe it's just something else.
Social metrics check — still at historically low levels
Let's take a look at the crypto risk indicators. The social metrics are — the term is — "toilet." Social metrics at 0.22. What are the social metrics? This takes a look at certain aspects like Google Trends — what is Bitcoin trending at right now? The risk level, which means nobody is searching for it, is at 0.14. The lower the number, the lower the risk level. App ranking of Coinbase: 0.02. YouTube subscribers: straight up zero. I don't get subscribers — I just lose them. YouTube views: not even 0.1. X followers: there is a little bit of a split between X and YouTube and trends, but right now it's at 0.22 overall.
You can see how this changes when we start to go into blow-off tops. Let's go back to September–October — not that great. 0.3, but on-chain metrics at 0.5 and price was almost at 0.4. Let's compare that to 2021 — yeah, everybody loved Bitcoin and crypto back then. And then guess what happened? Everybody hates it. That's pretty much how it goes. In 2017, same thing. And then everybody hates it. That's just how it goes.
Someone says CZ wrote about this rally happening one day before it happened. I think he wants people to ape in. Maybe he's a philanthropist and wants to spread the wealth around. Yeah, we'll see how that works out.
Jimmy says, "Rob, did you mention the three billion in Tether inflows? Also, stablecoin dominance dumped hard." Yeah, the three billion — I got that message from you, Jimmy. It was Tether and Circle's USDC. Looks like they just minted $3 billion. It's like they know something. Those whales.
John Louise says, "Billionaire Ray Dalio suggests diversifying into gold, bonds, and a bit of Bitcoin. What's 'a bit'?" It could be whatever works out for you. Gold and bonds and a bit of Bitcoin — I can see all three of those, definitely. Especially if you have like $5 million and you can put it into bonds and just live off that for the rest of your life. A bit of Bitcoin for me is quite a bit. It is my second largest holding outside of real estate.
Someone asks about Cardano. Bears are getting stretched. Yeah, nothing wrong with being a little bearish. It protects us from being too crazy and going, "I'm just going to put everything into bananacoin or something."
Hey, look at that — somebody says, "Rob, I didn't take profits with you yesterday, but I did take some off the table at $75K." Very nice.
Rusty says, "I have charted Bitcoin all the way to summer of 2033 at the all-time high." Rusty, it's time to review.
Congratulations to all the Hyperliquid holders. Who would have thought that in a press conference at the White House they'd be talking about it? Pretty good.
Ben was right pretty much for 2025 as far as Q4, so it worked out pretty well. And I believe he did say that the second half of a midterm election year is a pretty good time to buy. Seems to be working pretty well.
The IRS never emails you. Period. They don't email you, but they do send letters. They love to send letters.
And as a reminder — I'll probably be selling at around $150K and $170K unless something changes. I think we're all going to do great. Just stay the course, keep doing the hard work, and as time goes on, you'll be rewarded. That's the long road.