The crypto market slid into the week in a holding pattern, with price action grinding sideways and positioning increasingly tethered to one catalyst: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell\u2019s remarks at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium. \u201cThe only big, big event is going to be this,\u201d said analyst Josh Olszewicz in his August 18 Macro Monday stream. \u201cEverybody\u2019s going to be watching this, talking about this, analyzing this\u2026 What Jay says [on Friday]\u201d will likely swing rate expectations and risk sentiment. The symposium runs August 21\u201323, 2025 in Wyoming, under the theme \u201cLabor Markets in Transition: Demographics, Productivity, and Macroeconomic Policy,\u201d a backdrop almost tailor-made for clarifying the Fed\u2019s path into autumn.<\/p>\n
Olszewicz framed the setup as seasonally and structurally tricky for crypto. Commitment of Traders (COT) positioning<\/a> on CME shows commercials\u2014the cohort he views as \u201cnormally right for any market historically\u201d\u2014not convincingly long, while basis trades remain attractive and open interest has crept higher across CME futures and options, including on Solana. That mix, he argued, limits upside follow-through in the absence of a macro spark. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be harder to push higher based on what we\u2019ve seen historically and based on this futures positioning data,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cwhen commercials are long, price tends to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n Flows underscore the crosscurrent. He tallied \u201calmost a $4 billion\u201d net week for crypto ETPs globally\u2014most of it in the US\u2014with Ethereum notching \u201can all-time high<\/a> weekly flow,\u201d while Bitcoin\u2019s intake looked \u201cmodest\u201d by comparison and Solana and XRP showed a pickup. Yet he cautioned that even healthy fund flows do not erase tactically heavy positioning and the lack of a clear macro impulse ahead of Powell.<\/p>\n MicroStrategy\u2019s equity policy change<\/a>, which allows at-the-market issuance below a 2.5\u00d7 mNAV premium, has also become a talking point in the pre-Jackson Hole chop. Olszewicz noted that MSTR\u2019s BTC accumulation \u201chas slowed down quite a bit,\u201d and that the share\u2019s mNAV premium is being actively arbitraged by traders \u201cshort MSTR, long spot [BTC],\u201d further muting momentum when the underlying coin is directionless. In his view, \u201cwhen the underlying is momentumless, there\u2019s no reason to seek leverage,\u201d which helps explain why MSTR \u201cis going to have a harder time doing well\u201d until either BTC trends or corporate accumulation re-accelerates.<\/p>\n Technically, he described the near-term as \u201ca giant, giant nothing burger.\u201d For Bitcoin, he pointed to a $120,000\u2013$122,000 zone as the threshold for a cleaner long setup, and for MicroStrategy he flagged \u201canything above $410, and it\u2019s go time,\u201d while conceding that the stock\u2019s momentum is \u201cslipping away quicker and quicker.\u201d Across crypto equities, he saw little that was \u201cscreaming\u201d long: exchanges and brokerages looked momentumless on his cloud models; miners\u2019 recent strength owed more to AI\/HPC stories than to crypto beta; and even the prominent ETH-linked equities that surged since spring now show \u201crecord volumes\u201d but a \u201cmore neutral\u201d low-timeframe picture. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason to force trades when they\u2019re not there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The macro guardrails he\u2019ll watch into Powell\u2019s speech are familiar to crypto traders. On the US dollar index, he wants continued \u201cchop neutral\u201d and firmly below the daily cloud\u2014\u201cyou don\u2019t want this above 99, 100\u201d\u2014because a resurgent DXY<\/a> \u201cwould be very careful with longs on BTC.\u201d On rates, the 10-year Treasury \u201cdurably below 4.25\u201d would be a tailwind, while \u201cabove 5% everybody\u2019s in trouble.\u201d He also flagged plumbing dynamics: the drawdown of reverse repos toward zero and the concurrent refill of the Treasury General Account\u2014flows that could net out, but that, at the extremes, might nudge the Fed toward a policy response if liquidity strains emerged.<\/p>\n All roads, however, lead back to Powell. As of Tuesday, broader markets were leaning toward a September rate cut, with futures-implied tools like CME\u2019s FedWatch reflecting a high probability of a 25 bps move. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing 83% for a cut at the next meeting,\u201d Olszewicz said of the market\u2019s starting point, adding that if expectations \u201cshift towards no cut, I\u2019d expect the markets to be very angry,\u201d whereas a surprise 50 bps \u201cis probably unlikely\u201d but would be greeted \u201cin a bullish, happy way.\u201d<\/p>\n For now, Olszewicz is content to wait. \u201cI would love to just wait to see what this looks like in October. I\u2019m not expecting anything in September,\u201d he said, consistent with his view that crypto\u2019s Q3 seasonality is a headwind and that meaningful trend signals often re-emerge in Q4<\/a>.<\/p>\n Between now and then, the Chair\u2019s tone on inflation progress, labor-market cooling, and the possibility of pre-emptive easing will determine whether this week\u2019s \u201cnothing burger\u201d becomes the base for a new leg higher\u2014or a reminder that macro still has the final say at the top of crypto\u2019s risk cascade. And with Jackson Hole\u2019s explicit focus on labor markets this year, Powell\u2019s framing may do more than nudge September probabilities; it could reset how investors think about the entire path of policy into 2026.<\/p>\n At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.84 trillion.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The crypto market slid into the week in a holding pattern, with price action grinding sideways and positioning increasingly tethered to one catalyst: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell\u2019s remarks at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium. \u201cThe only big, big event is going to be this,\u201d said analyst Josh Olszewicz in his August 18 Macro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":89570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/89570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How Will Financial Markets React?<\/h2>\n