Bitcoin Rally May Be Over before It Barely Got Started

Bitcoin (BTC) pushed to $61K on Tuesday after a healthy retail sales report came out for the month of August, but it looks like the bull run might be over already.

The crypto market has slowed back down, and Bitcoin has retreated to $59,949 (BTC/USD) for the moment. The coin retained some of its gains it made during the rally, and it could still surge despite the pullback, but it looks like the main thrust of this trend has died down.

Over the past week, Bitcoin has gained 5.57%, but the vast majority of that progress happened on Tuesday when the market went bullish following the retail sales report. Those numbers turned out better than expected, showing gains of 0.1% for overall retail sales in the US for last month and a 0.3% increase for core retail sales for the same month. On top of that, new data came in for the previous month and showed that the numbers there were better than originally thought.

The Assassination Attempt Effect

There is some speculation that Bitcoin surged as well because of the second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, but that does not seem to hold much water because of the delay between the news of that attempt and the time of the price surge. That attack happened on Sunday, and the Bitcoin surge occurred on Tuesday, so even though there was a crypto market bump after the first attack in July, it does not look like a similar effect is happening here.

What to Expect from Bitcoin

Bitcoin and the larger crypto market are certainly going to be seeing some effect from the Federal Reserve decision later today on interest rate cuts. Those cuts have been coming for a while, and even the anticipation for them has shifted the crypto market. If the cuts are very deep, they are likely to hurt Bitcoin, but the more likely scenario is that the cuts will be minor to minimize the effect on inflation and the markets

Bitcoin is still sticking close to $60K, and we expect it to continue to do so for a little while. The coin has carved out a comfortable trading range for itself there that it looks to stick to for the short term.