Bitcoin (BTC) enters September still struggling against crucial resistance as markets turn hawkish on Federal Reserve policy.

Key points:

• Markets see a 60% chance of the Fed hiking interest rates in September, with key jobs data due this week.
• Oil has seen renewed volatility amid fresh US strikes on Iran and an unprecedented US-Venezuela oil-supply deal.
• Bitcoin remains stuck below a critical patch of resistance stretching toward $86,000 heading into the August monthly candle close.

September rate-hike bets return after Jackson Hole

The week ahead brings the release of multiple US employment indexes, each likely to shape expectations for Federal Reserve policy changes. The Fed is already under scrutiny after last week's Jackson Hole economic symposium, which featured the first keynote speech from new chair Kevin Warsh. Warsh stayed characteristically tight-lipped on policy cues, describing forward guidance — a fixture of Fed communications for decades — as having "overstayed its welcome."

On inflation, Warsh said current data remains too high, despite July's lower-than-expected results for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index.

"Each of these broad inflation measures have fallen significantly from their highs of a few years ago, but progress through the past couple of years has been more modest, and while this summer's PCE and CPI readings were better than expected, they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved," he said.

Markets responded by raising expectations of interest-rate hikes, returning to majority odds for a 0.25% hike at the Fed's September meeting, per data from CME Group's FedWatch Tool. At the time of writing, those odds stand at just below 60%, up from 41.4% last week.

Rate expectations could be tempered, however, by labor-market data. Friday brings the August nonfarm payrolls report, with the economy expected to have added 50,000 jobs last month, compared to a loss of 23,000 in June. Private-sector employment numbers precede nonfarm payrolls on Wednesday, followed by initial jobless claims on Thursday.

"All eyes are on the labor market," trading resource The Kobeissi Letter summarized on X, noting that this would be the last batch of jobs data before the September rate decision.

Kobeissi flagged major downward revisions to employment figures, with weak labor-market conditions forming a potential hurdle to Fed policy tightening. Citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), it reported another 79,000 jobs removed in the 12 months through March this year.

"This follows last year's record -911,000 revision and marks the 4th consecutive annual downward adjustment, matching the streak that ended in 2010 after the 2008 Financial Crisis," it added, describing the labor market as being "weaker than initially reported for years."

Oil spikes on US-Iran escalation

Oil markets sit at the forefront of macro volatility this week thanks to a combination of geopolitical catalysts.

Renewed US strikes on Iran sent Brent crude back above $90 per barrel on Monday, nearing its highest levels in a week. US WTI crude passed $85 per barrel and was up 2.5% on the day at the time of writing.

European stocks came under pressure as a result, with Germany's DAX down 0.7%. US president Donald Trump implied that Iran's Kharg Island oil hub was once again a target. In a post on Truth Social, Trump uploaded an AI-generated video that appeared to show the bombing of oil infrastructure, describing the island as "being blown to smithereens."

The strikes followed news of a major energy deal granting the US significant control of Venezuela's oil reserves. Figures from Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodriguez, quoted by CNBC and others, referenced a daily oil-output target of 1.5 million barrels, with total reserves involved at 65 billion barrels, currently worth around $5.4 trillion. In a Truth Social post, Trump described the takeover as the "biggest oil deal in history."

Bitcoin battles multiple 50-week trend lines

Bitcoin saw late sell pressure into Sunday's weekly close, briefly dipping below its 50-week exponential moving average (EMA) at $77,269, per data from TradingView. Price defended the trend line — previously flagged as important support — for a second consecutive week. Following its recent rally, BTC had managed to reclaim the moving average with a weekly close for the first time since November 2025.

In his latest market observations on X, Rafael Schultze-Kraft, cofounder of crypto analytics platform Glassnode, drew attention to the equivalent simple moving average (SMA) at $80,307. Here, BTC/USD still lacks a reclaim on the weekly time frame — something that has preceded additional price upside in the past, he showed.

Monthly close faces stiff resistance

Heading into the August monthly close, Bitcoin bulls face a key test as monthly gains for BTC/USD hover near 25%, per data from CoinGlass. Despite the biggest crypto short liquidation event ever recorded, buyers have so far failed to reclaim key resistance above $80,000, analysis warns. That leaves the market entering a new month with macro policy and liquidity conditions still acting as an important backdrop for trader positioning.

"Bitcoin is still hovering beneath the Macro Downtrending resistance, having upside wicked briefly beyond it," trader and analyst Rekt Capital summarized in his latest analysis on X. "Still the pivotal resistance and by staying below it, Bitcoin continues its series of Macro Lower Highs."

Rekt Capital argued that a breakout above this resistance would have major implications for the four-year BTC price cycle, as it would mean that the latest bear market would have been shorter than those before it.

Beyond the trend line, additional resistance has already formed thanks to thickening ask liquidity on exchange order books. As Cointelegraph reported, this extends to $86,000, requiring even more buy-side momentum to effect a lasting breakout.

"Every overhead structure we track now sits between $81K and $86K; that band is where the recovery's demand meets its test," Glassnode wrote in research last week.

Larger buyers seen as pivotal to BTC price upside

Glassnode calculated that 1.05 million BTC owned by long-term holders have a cost basis between $83,000 and $86,000. Long-term holders refer to wallets holding a given amount of BTC without selling for six months or more.

In additional findings this week, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant drew attention to the potential impact of large-volume investors heading into September. Its data showed these entities were behind buyer appetite this month, while smaller investors took profit or exited the market after their holdings returned to breakeven.

"From 1–30 August, wallets with 100+ BTC added about 60,000 BTC. Wallets with 1–100 BTC sold about 33,000. Wallets under 1 BTC sold about 14,000," it wrote in a blog post on Monday. "That split is the month. Large holders absorbed the breakout. Smaller holders used the rally as an exit."

CryptoQuant added that the view of large-investor accumulation would require reassessment should those entities begin selling recently acquired supply below $80,000.