WHAT'S NEXT FOR BITCOIN?

Every Monday morning, analysts jump on a call to discuss what they're watching for the week ahead and how they're thinking about their portfolios.

This Monday, the mood was cautiously optimistic. Bitcoin has had a strong run, but analysts aren't popping champagne just yet—they're cautiously watching the market.

The key support level John is watching closely is $82,000. That's the bull market support band. It's the price level that separates "we're in an uptrend" from "something's wrong."

John's two key retrace levels if things cool off: $74,000 first, then $71,500 if that doesn't hold. Those are the spots he'd start getting more interested in.

The reason for caution is some sell pressure in the market. The Kingdom of Bhutan and Wintermute (one of the largest crypto trading firms in the world) have both been moving Bitcoin onto exchanges recently.

When large holders move crypto onto exchanges, it usually means one thing: they're getting ready to sell.

But so far, it's been absorbed. Bitcoin ETFs have been pulling in enough fresh money to soak up the selling. The bulls are holding the line.

The Milk Road Show features a discussion on "Ethereum Is Setting Up for Something We Haven't Seen in 10 Years."

Additionally, there's a bold prediction: Bitcoin will be over $100K by the end of this year.

U.S.-Canada trade talks collapsed Friday night, triggering 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, including wine, cement and dairy products.

• Unlike earlier rounds of Trump tariffs, the new duties don't spare goods compliant under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, eliminating an exemption that had kept much of the bilateral trade relationship untouched.
• Trump announced that the U.S. will double car and truck tariffs to 50%, though the duties won't take effect until 2027.

It was a swift reversal—Trump announced that the two countries were nearing a deal three days earlier.

Canada's retaliation doesn't take effect until Sept. 8, leaving time for an off-ramp. But right now, neither side sounds interested in restarting talks.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the decadeslong path toward greater U.S.-Canada economic integration was over. "In short, they asked too much and they offered too little," Carney said. He accused the U.S. of introducing last-minute demands that would restrict Canada's ability to strike trade deals with other countries, calling it a "power play" that raised questions of Canadian sovereignty.

Canada is preparing to retaliate against U.S. steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is announcing a new round of sanctions focused not just on Iran itself but on other countries and entities that do business with the nation. President Trump has described the action as "economic D-Day," per a Reuters report.

The Treasury Department intervened in the bond market last week, looking to lower long-term rates by buying back longer-term debt and effectively swapping it for shorter-term debt.

CNBC's Steve Liesman reports that the Treasury could use its $950 billion account with the Federal Reserve—essentially the U.S. government's checking account—to fund further repurchases of longer-term bonds.

• It amounts to a bigger stash of financial ammunition than the planned $4 billion Treasury intervention that was announced last week.
• Bonds rallied on the CNBC report, with the yield on 30-year Treasuries falling 0.04 percentage point this morning, to 5.23%.

Leopold Aschenbrenner built one of the most concentrated leveraged AI portfolios on Wall Street through his fund Situational Awareness.

As of June 30, the fund held $20.2B in U.S. equities. More than 55% of the entire book was concentrated in two memory names: SanDisk (28%), Micron (27.5%), Bloom Energy (9.6%), TSMC (6.4% plus $24M in calls), Nebius (6.1%), and CoreWeave (3.7%).

The fund was running leverage as high as 4x. Meaning for every $1 of actual capital, the fund controlled $4 of stock.

AI and semiconductor stocks sold off sharply in July. Under 4x leverage, the portfolio reportedly lost roughly 67% of its value in a single month falling from a peak near $45B down to around $10B.

The entire leveraged public equity portfolio was liquidated to Ken Griffin's Citadel in late July for a reported 40 to 50 cents on the dollar.

On August 11, Citadel disclosed it had already unloaded more than 80% of the distressed position through over 100 block trades.

To put that sequence plainly: Citadel bought a distressed portfolio at 40-50 cents on the dollar → Called the bottom publicly two weeks later → Then sold most of it directly into the rebound it had just announced.

Private equity group Apollo said Friday that hackers breached its IT systems earlier this summer and stole personal information. The looted data includes names, birthdates, home addresses and Social Security numbers. Apollo did not detail how the breach occurred, except to say it was the result of a "social engineering incident." That typically refers to tactics where attackers manipulate people to gain access to a system, such as phishing messages or phone calls posing as tech support.

Reuters reported earlier this month that hackers have set up websites intended to steal passwords from private equity firms, while the Financial Times reported hedge funds Point72, Citadel and Millennium Management have been targeted by cyberattacks. Apollo is offering those impacted by its breach complimentary credit monitoring and third-party identity protection services.

Fed chairman Kevin Warsh is slated to give his inaugural address to the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, where central bankers, Wall Street power brokers and government officials are hosted annually by the Kansas City Fed.

Since he became Fed chair in May, Warsh has made clear that he believes, with interest rates now well above zero, the central bank should play a quieter role, returning to the more circumspect posture of longtime chair Alan Greenspan. "Financial markets perform best when they react to incoming data," he said at a June press conference. "Financial markets work less efficiently when they ask a question: How will the Federal Reserve react to that incoming information?"

While Warsh has kept mum on what scenarios could spur the central bank to change interest-rate policy, Fed watchers and investors still hope he addresses inflation. The shocks of the Covid pandemic, global tariffs and the Iran war have kept inflation well above the Fed's 2% target for years.

Bitcoin is seeing a big structural breakout on the global exchanges. Overall open interest is at five-month lows, and perpetual funding rates are still totally suppressed. This is not a brittle, leverage-fueled move, it's a spot-driven, organic expansion. Coinbase institutional buyers are aggressively taking liquidity, turning the premium positive after its longest negative streak this year.

The global macro backdrop is shaping up for a pivotal week of volatility. U.S. Treasury yields are higher after recent declines, prompting markets to reassess upcoming Federal Reserve policy and debt issuance. Equities semiconductor stocks are gearing up for big earnings that will be a test of broader risk appetite. According to crypto on-chain data, capital is rotating out of cash and directly into Ethereum and revenue-generating altcoins.

Bitcoin is advancing on unusually clean positioning. Price has climbed into the high $77,000s on a roughly 20-22% move while open interest measured in BTC terms fell to multi-month lows. BTC premium has flipped from its longest red stretch toward positive territory, and the 200-day moving average has been reclaimed after an extended period below it. This is a spot-driven advance with limited leverage left to unwind.

Ethereum is leading the rotation, printing relative strength against Bitcoin and sitting at the front of the typical early-cycle sequence. Treasury yields have returned near pre-intervention levels as Bessent holds press conference centered on the toughest Iran sanctions package yet and signals that longer-dated buybacks may need to scale further.

Ethereum is leading the rotation, printing relative strength against Bitcoin and sitting at the front of the typical early-cycle sequence. The combination of restrained crypto leverage and potential incremental liquidity is seen as constructive by market participants.

Cough, cough. Feeling a little bit under the weather? You're not alone. Today, Aug. 24, is the most popular day of the year for US employees to call out sick, according to a survey by PTO management software company Flamingo. It even tops America's second-sickest day of the year, Feb. 13—which suspiciously usually lines up with the day after the Super Bowl.

Markets: Wall Street will get a temperature check on inflation, the AI market, and Iran sanctions this week, all while investors keep an eye on the bond market following the US Treasury Department's intervention. Those bond worries have given gold some of its luster back as investors search for safe havens. The metal hit its highest level in three months last Friday.

A long-predicted energy shock is finally showing up in sky-high prices for diesel fuel.

Why it matters: Diesel fuel is a key input for virtually anything grown or transported throughout the U.S., making it a potentially inflationary force.

Between the lines: It means the market's relief over crude oil's relatively muted reaction to the Iran war could be misplaced.

• "The market is out to lunch, looking at crude oil prices," Jeff Currie, a former commodities analyst with Goldman Sachs and Carlyle, tells Axios. "Look at diesel prices."

The latest: Futures prices for diesel have soared to roughly $100 above those of crude oil, the divergence between prices for the two products reflecting a dearth of diesel refinery capacity worldwide.

• This refinery shortage has been a growing issue since Ukraine launched a highly effective drone campaign targeting Russian refineries, resulting in a collapse of Russian production of refined product, shortages and a government ban on exports.
• That's a big deal because Russia is one of the world's largest exporters of diesel.
• The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has also curtailed global supplies of refined products previously exported by Gulf states.

Zoom in: This isn't just a story of abstract geopolitical choke points. The cost of diesel will likely filter down to everyday life.

• The cost of diesel accounts for between 3% to 5% of production costs for major U.S. crops like wheat, soybeans and corn, putting upward pressure on prices for those items as well as other agricultural products that use them as feedstock.
• Diesel is the key fuel for trucking, and its surge has already raised the costs of truck transportation for goods throughout the economy, which is gradually getting passed down the food chain.

Case in point: Performance Food Group, a distributor of food products to restaurants and convenience stores, said on a recent earnings call that it faced some $16 million in additional costs related to diesel prices during its recently completed quarter, telling analysts its "team worked to manage the increase in diesel prices through our surcharge program."

• In other words, price increases.

The bottom line: "Diesel is the cost base of everything. Every container, every tractor, every locomotive, every mine truck - you get the idea," with pass-through reaching into trucking, food and producer prices.

Oil price changes in response to the president's social media posts about the Iran war have been shrinking over time, an Axios analysis shows.

Why it matters: Oil price changes in response to political developments suggest market sentiment is shifting as traders may be becoming desensitized to rhetoric or reassessing geopolitical risk premiums.