We Are So Back! Bitcoin's 23% Rally on US Debt Policy: Hodler's Digest

The first 200-day moving average crossover since November 2025

Barchart flagged on Thursday that Bitcoin's price had crossed above its 200-day moving average for the first time since November 2025, a technical signal widely watched to confirm longer-term trend direction. Moves above the indicator are typically treated as evidence that bullish momentum has overtaken the medium-term average, and the timing here matters: the last time the line flipped, in late 2025, it preceded a multi-month advance. The article frames this crossover as the moment many in the industry decided the cycle had "finally flipped positive," a phrase that captures both the relief and the uncertainty that had hung over crypto since the 2025 highs.

The price action backed the technical read. Bitcoin briefly topped $79,000 on Friday before settling around $77,559, while Ethereum gained 31%, Solana gained 28% and XRP surged an astonishing 53% on the week. Spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs absorbed more than $2.61 billion in inflows between them, a sign that the move was not just retail enthusiasm but institutional repositioning. Strategy's average purchase price through Michael Saylor's accumulation program has crossed the $75,385 breakeven point, returning the company to a fully unrealized profit and removing one of the more prominent overhangs on sentiment.

The rally also bled into equities tied to the crypto complex. Canaan, Metaplanet, Coinbase and Robinhood all posted double-digit gains for the week, suggesting that traditional brokers and listed miners are once again trading as high-beta expressions of the spot crypto tape. Polymarket's odds of Bitcoin reaching $90,000 before 2027 hit 48% at the time of writing, almost coin-flip territory for a price level that would imply another roughly 16% leg up from the Friday peak.

The $40 trillion debt pile and Ray Dalio's three-year clock

The Kobeissi Letter attributed the simultaneous surge in precious metals and crypto to a familiar cocktail of inflation, deficit spending and US Treasury policy. The US debt pile crossed $40 trillion this week, and the article notes there is no plan to balance the budget beyond a vague aspiration to grow the economy. Annual debt service has already exceeded the cost of Medicare, making interest payments the federal government's second-largest expense after Social Security. The Treasury Department's pledge to at least double the size of certain debt buyback operations to $4 billion added a liquidity channel that the Kobeissi Letter argued was directly supportive of hard-asset prices.

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, used the moment to restate a portfolio recommendation he has been refining for years: roughly 15% in gold and "a bit of Bitcoin" as a hedge against what he sees as an inevitable reckoning with the country's debt trajectory. "My guess, which I suppose will be a bad one, is that [a US debt crisis] will come in three years, give or take two, if the course we're on is not changed," Dalio said. The framing positions Bitcoin not as a speculative asset but as a savings instrument, a rhetorical shift that has been gaining traction in the institutional world since the spot ETF launches of 2024.

The interesting structural detail is the simultaneity. Gold and crypto rarely move in lockstep, but a debt-driven macro shock is one of the few narratives that forces both central bank reserve managers and crypto-native holders to act in the same direction. Whether the move sustains depends less on the chart and more on whether the Treasury's buyback policy and the deficit trajectory remain unchanged through the next debt-ceiling negotiation.

The September 15 procedural vote for the CLARITY Act

The policy backdrop moved as much as the price. US President Donald Trump hosted Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss at the White House, and used the meeting to call for passage of the CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill that passed the House in July 2025. A procedural vote is scheduled for September 15 and will require 60 votes in the Senate. Trump described the bill as "very bipartisan," but Senate Democrats have signaled they will not move without further concessions on ethics provisions associated with the president. "The president doesn't just get to decide what level of regulation he gets," said Senator Ruben Gallego.

The Trump meeting also produced an unexpected beneficiary. The president told the room he understood CFTC chair Mike Selig was "working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion," a comment that pushed the Hyperliquid token up roughly 20% on the spot. It is a striking example of how a single off-the-cuff sentence from a White House meeting can move a specific token, and it sets up Selig, whose agency is already exploring leveraged and margined crypto trading and developer protections, as a key figure regardless of how the Senate vote goes.

In parallel, the SEC opened a 60-day comment period on a new crypto regulatory framework that would exempt token issuers raising up to $5 million over four years, with a $75 million ceiling over 12 months under stricter reporting rules, and create a safe harbor exempting cryptocurrencies from being treated as investment contracts. Commissioner Hester Peirce framed the proposal as ending a situation in which "a whole generation has struggled" with rules "inapt" for crypto. The two tracks, SEC rulemaking and the CLARITY Act, are now running on parallel timelines, and whichever lands first will shape how the next leg of the cycle is underwritten.