Bitcoin climbed past $81,000 on Monday for the first time since January before easing back, a move that has market observers asking whether the debasement trade is back.

The largest cryptocurrency was recently trading at $79,098 on Tuesday morning in New York after hitting $81,160 the evening before. Over a 24-hour period, the coin sits essentially unmoved, but zooming out over seven days it has jumped by 23%.

Bitcoin has benefited from news that the Treasury would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. The announcement last week hurt the dollar, while non-yielding assets have benefited. The Treasury began conducting regular buybacks of this kind in 2024 to shore up liquidity in the U.S. government bond market, so a larger program means still more liquidity in the financial system.

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That has some asking whether 2025's much-talked-about debasement trade is back. The strategy — in which investors buy an asset as a way to hedge against a currency losing value — has in the past benefited Bitcoin along with precious metals, because such assets cannot be endlessly printed. Gold, the classic hard-asset hedge, set a run of record highs during the trade's 2025 heyday, the clearest expression of the theme at the time.

Analysts frequently touted the trade last year, but following Bitcoin's decline since October, it became less discussed as traders turned their attention to stocks related to artificial intelligence.

Still, with the dollar becoming increasingly weaker, Bitcoin could be attracting longer-term and "smart money" investors, market observers have said.

U.S. investors last week piled back into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds; the investment vehicles had their best week since October, with nearly $2 billion in inflows. The spot Bitcoin ETFs, launched in January 2024, have since become one of the main routes for U.S. investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin's price, making their weekly flows a closely followed gauge of institutional demand.

Bitcoin notched a new record of $126,080 in October before the biggest liquidation event in crypto history hurt its price. It continued to dip in 2026 on negative macroeconomic headwinds and fears that the Federal Reserve would not lower interest rates.

Even so, the cryptocurrency has become increasingly less volatile and so far has suffered its shallowest bear market, according to analysts.

This article was written by Mathew Di Salvo and first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.