Are we back?

In partnership with

Write docs 4x faster. Without hating every second.

Nobody became a developer to write documentation. But the docs still need to get written — PRDs, README updates, architecture decisions, onboarding guides.

Wispr Flow lets you talk through it instead. Speak naturally about what the code does, how it works, and why you built it that way. Flow formats everything into clean, professional text you can paste into Notion, Confluence, or GitHub.

Used by engineering teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. 89% of messages sent with zero edits. Works system-wide on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.

Try Wispr Flow free

A few issues ago, the mood was in Extreme Fear. This week, it flipped hard to Greed, and Bitcoin ripped from the low $60,000s to $79,000 in days.

That kind of move feels great if you are holding. It also tends to happen right when people make the mistake this issue is about: chasing a pump with more risk than they would normally take, just as the market gets most dangerous to overextend in.

Keep reading, because the fastest way to lose money in a week like this one is not the price dropping. It's what leverage does to you when it moves too far, too fast, in either direction.

📝 The Translation

Bitcoin just posted its sharpest rally in five months. Here's what actually pushed it there. 🚀

What happened: Bitcoin broke above $79,000 this week, fueled partly by a roughly $4 billion short squeeze, where traders betting against Bitcoin were forced to buy back as the price rose, pushing it even higher. 

The move also followed a U.S. Treasury announcement about doubling its long-term bond buybacks, which tends to loosen up money that flows into assets like Bitcoin.

Why it matters: A short squeeze can make a rally look and feel stronger than the underlying buying actually is, since some of the "buying" is forced, not chosen. That does not make the move fake, but it does mean part of it was mechanical rather than a wave of new believers.

The Compass take: Sharp, squeeze-driven rallies tend to give back some of their gains once the forced buying runs out. That's not a prediction of what happens next. It's a reason to enjoy the green candles without assuming they are the new normal.

Prediction markets flipped from confident to a coin flip overnight. Here's what that split actually tells you. ⚖️

What happened: On one prediction market, traders had been betting roughly 70% that Bitcoin would dump to $55,000 just days before this rally. After the price jump, those odds flipped to a near-even 68/32 split favoring a further rise to $84,000. Other prediction markets, tracking longer time horizons into next year, barely moved.

Why it matters: The near-term bets swung wildly. The longer-term ones did not. That gap is the tell: traders who got caught off guard by this week's move are scrambling to update their short-term bets, while people thinking further out are staying put.

The Compass take: A coin flip is not a signal; it is an admission that nobody's confident right now. When even the people putting money on outcomes are split 50/50, that's a good moment to stay calm rather than pick a side just because the price moved.

Jim Cramer just turned bullish on Bitcoin. Some traders see that as a warning sign, not good news. 📺

What happened: TV personality Jim Cramer told viewers to buy Bitcoin directly this week, reversing his early August call to sell Bitcoin over quantum computing concerns raised by IBM's CEO. His new bullish call came the same week Bitcoin crossed $79,000.

Why it matters: Cramer has a long, well-documented reputation among traders for calling market moves right before they reverse, enough that "do the opposite of what Cramer says" has become its own running joke in trading circles.

The Compass take: We are not saying to bet against a TV host, and we are not saying his call is wrong. A single person's public opinion, in either direction, is not a strategy. His flip from selling to buying in a matter of weeks is itself the more useful lesson here: even confident-sounding takes can change fast.

🔐 Security Walkthrough — Bitcoin just moved 25% in days. Here's how leverage turns fast moves into wiped-out accounts.

Whenever Bitcoin moves this fast in either direction, one group gets hurt the most: traders using leverage, meaning they borrowed money to bet bigger than they actually have. 

When the price swings hard against a leveraged position, the exchange automatically closes it out, often instantly and completely. That's called a liquidation, and this week produced a lot of them, in both directions.

Here's the part that surprises people: liquidations don't just happen to traders betting the price will fall. Last week's rally liquidated plenty of people betting against Bitcoin too, since a fast move up forces short sellers to buy back in at a loss, the exact short squeeze behind part of this week's jump.

Fast, sharp moves in both directions in the same short window sometimes produce a liquidation candle traders call a "Darth Maul wick," named for the double-bladed lightsaber, because it shows two aggressive spikes back to back, one down, one up, wiping out leveraged positions on both sides within hours of each other.

We may see more of these in the coming days and weeks as the market works out whether this rally holds or not.

The habit that protects you from all of it: don't use leverage you don't fully understand, and never risk money you would need back on short notice. If you are only ever holding actual Bitcoin, not the derivative product of it, none of this week's liquidation carnage can touch you. It's the entire reason we keep steering readers toward spot ownership and self-custody.

🔭 The Long View

We have seen sentiment flip this hard before, from extreme fear to greed in a matter of days, more than once since 2017. It rarely marks a clean turning point either way. It usually just means a lot of people who were scared a week ago are now excited, and a lot of people who were confident a week ago are quietly reconsidering. The price is the same asset either way. Only the mood changed.

🧐 Reader's Question

You may be asking: "If I don't use leverage, do liquidations even matter to me?"

Not directly to your own funds, but they matter to the price you are watching. A lot of the recent move was driven by other people's leveraged positions getting forced closed, not just organic buying and selling. Understanding that helps you read a sharp price move for what it actually is, rather than assuming it reflects some new consensus about Bitcoin's value.

📌 One Thing To Do

If you have ever used leverage or margin on an exchange, check your current positions today.

If you haven't, this is a good week to confirm you are not tempted to start just because the chart looks exciting.

👋🏻 The Close

Weeks like this one separate people with an actual plan from people just reacting to whatever the chart did that morning. Getting excited is fine. Getting liquidated chasing that excitement is the thing this whole issue exists to help you avoid.

Reply and tell us if you have ever been liquidated, or come close. And if this issue helped you slow down before a decision, forward it to the one friend who's been posting rocket emojis all week.

— The Bitcoin Compass
UseTheBitcoin.com · Trusted since 2017

If you want to sound smarter without doing more…

Read Morning Brew. 5-minute daily email. Day's most important news. Explained in simplest terms. Really, it’s a news experience you’ll actually enjoy.

At this point, it's not about trying Morning Brew's daily newsletter—It's about missing out.

Click below to join 4,000,000+ daily readers.

Check it out