Bitcoin’s rebound toward $80,000 has as much to do with the U.S. bond market as with crypto, Gordon Grant, head of derivatives at Bitwise, said on Bits + Bips on Monday. He argued that the Treasury’s push to expand long-end debt buybacks worked mainly as a signal, and that the same volatility unsettling long-dated Treasurys is what is pushing Bitcoin higher.
The backdrop is a strained bond market. The 30-year Treasury yield had climbed to a 19-year high above 5.3% before the Treasury said on Aug. 19 it would double its long-end buybacks to at least $4 billion per operation beginning Sept. 9. Bitcoin, which had fallen about 37% from its October record near $124,820, climbed back to roughly $79,000, while spot Bitcoin ETFs took in about $1.9 billion over the week.
Grant said on Bits + Bips that Bitcoin was “the last of the large cap liquid assets, ex crypto, to pick up on the volatility bug” spreading through macro markets. The buyback was small against a roughly $32 trillion Treasury market, he noted, but “signals can be as effective as sizes,” he said on the show.
Why Volatility Cuts Both Ways
Grant described a long end where “excess variance” had triggered a “buyer strike,” leaving the market “seasick.” That instability, he argued, does the opposite for crypto. “High vol in Bitcoin gets people excited about it because it starts to inflate the right tail of distribution. In rates, it kind of works the other way,” he said on the show. The same forces denting Treasury market stability, in his telling, are what is driving fresh momentum into Bitcoin.
A Dissent on the Panel
Not everyone agreed the intervention was needed. Ram Ahluwalia, CEO of Lumida, said the Treasury may have made things worse. “I don’t think Bessent even needed to intervene. Markets were settling of their own accord. His intervention might have actually spooked investors,” he said on the podcast. The relief proved brief, with long-dated yields rebounding within a day. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, tapped to run Treasury partly for his pro-crypto stance, has since said the operations could exceed $4 billion each, leaving open how far the government will go to defend the long end.
Related Listen: Why Bitcoin May Not Run Until Saylor ‘Gets Blown Up’ : Bits + Bips
The post Bitwise’s Gordon Grant Says Treasury Volatility Is Fueling Bitcoin’s $80K Run appeared first on Unchained.
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