Bitcoin Just Jumped 24% in Two Weeks. Our Own Indicators Don't Look Like a Bottom.

Bitcoin rose close to 24% in two weeks after nearly four months of going nowhere between $57,000 and $66,000. Here's the move with real numbers, checked against our own Score, MVRV, and Puell Multiple, and against the verified cycle-bottom pattern already published on this site. No price target, because we don't have one to give.

The move, in verifiable numbers

That broke on August 17. Over eleven days, price ran from $62,900 to an intraday high of $81,478 on August 28, a gain of roughly 29.5%. Counting through today's close ($77,706), the net move sits near 24 percentage points in two weeks, with some of the spike already given back.

According to Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Finance's ETF-flow coverage, the catalysts piled up in a matter of days: a White House meeting where Donald Trump voiced support for the Clarity Act, a 402-page "Regulation Crypto Assets" proposed rulemaking published by the SEC on August 18, a Treasury buyback of longer-dated bonds, and $517 million in net spot-ETF inflows on August 19, the strongest single day since May. As price climbed, roughly $1.5 billion in short positions got liquidated, about $700 million of it in a single minute per the same reporting.

That's a real, large move, not weekend noise. The interesting question isn't whether it happened, it did, with numbers anyone can check. It's what it says about where the cycle actually stands, using the same framework behind our own Score methodology.

What our own indicators say, beyond the price chart

The NodeWitness Cycle Score reads -8.4 ("Neutral / Transition") today. That's not a cycle-bottom reading, and it's not a top reading either: it sits close to dead center of the scale. Broken down:

• MVRV: 1.46-1.51 over the last several days. Nowhere near the ≤1 that has marked capitulation, and nowhere near the >3 that has marked past cycle tops (see Bitcoin's market tops and bottoms for the exact thresholds).
• MVRV Z-Score: 0.80-0.89, also mid-range, far from the extremes documented in our MVRV Z-Score chart.
• Puell Multiple: 0.89-1.07, sitting right around its own baseline. A long way from the <0.5 that has coincided with miner capitulation at past bottoms.
• Fear & Greed Index: 62, classified as "Greed," not the sustained extreme fear that has marked verified bottoms.
• Net exchange flow: net outflow on 3 of the last 4 days with complete data (Aug 27, 29, 30): a mild accumulation signal, not a stampede in either direction.

Why this doesn't match a verified bottom

In Bitcoin's market tops and bottoms, using the already-verified November 2022 case, we documented what actually coincided at past cycle lows: MVRV at or below 1, Puell under 0.5, sustained extreme panic, and price well below its 200-day moving average: several capitulation signals stacking at once, not just one.

None of those conditions are true right now. MVRV never touched 1 during the entire June-August range (the window's low was closer to 1.20), Puell held near its own average instead of collapsing, and sentiment flipped from Fear to Greed during the rally rather than before it. That doesn't prove no bottom is forming. It means that if one is, it doesn't carry the same on-chain signature as the bottoms we've actually verified with data. That's a real distinction, not a dismissal: the documented pattern is the only one we have real evidence for, and this rally simply doesn't reproduce it.

Three readings, none of them ours to pick

Market analysts themselves are split three ways on the same move, per CoinDesk's coverage: the start of a structural bull market, a derivatives-driven relief rally inside a bear market that's still alive (a "bull trap"), or an extension of a longer re-accumulation range. Analyst Mati Greenspan argued for the first reading: "This is generally what bottoms look like." Jason Fernandes pushed back: "I'd be cautious about calling this the end of the bear market."

None of the three can be settled by price alone. What can be done is naming what would need to show up in our own indicators for each reading to gain weight:

• If this is the start of a structural bull market: expect MVRV climbing sustainably above 2, ETF inflows holding up over several consecutive weeks rather than a single spike day like August 19, and net exchange flow settling into outflow instead of alternating like it is now.
• If this is a relief rally inside a bear market that's still alive: expect futures funding rates to spike well above today's still-modest 7-10 basis points as price keeps climbing, followed by MVRV drifting back toward 1.0-1.2 without ever clearly breaking above the May-July range.
• If this is an extended re-accumulation range: expect price to settle back into sideways movement at a higher band than June-July's, with the Score staying away from either the Accumulation or Distribution bands of the live verdict.

What to watch, not what to expect

The point of this framework isn't guessing which of the three readings is right: nobody can do that reliably with today's data. It's having a concrete list to check tomorrow, next week, and next month, instead of a loose opinion: the live Score, the MVRV Z-Score, the funding rate, and net exchange flow, all four free, with a public methodology, updated daily.

Bitcoin has only lived through 3-4 complete cycles since it exists, too small a sample to treat any pattern, including the bottom pattern we've documented, as a guaranteed law. The honest approach is the same one we apply on where the Score has failed: check what's checkable today, and correct the read when new data contradicts it. Nothing in this piece is financial advice or a price prediction.

You can follow these same readings updated daily, free and without signing up, on the live Score page and On-Chain Charts.

Last updated: August 31, 2026