Bitcoin traded near the $77,700 mark on Monday as subdued selling and a tougher macroeconomic environment kept the recovery from extending beyond $80,000. The cryptocurrency was last seen trading at $77,732.

Over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin gained 0.3%, while Ethereum fell 0.3% to trade at $2,520. Among major altcoins, BNB, Solana, Tron and Dogecoin declined by less than 1%, while XRP, Hyperliquid and Cardano gained up to 1.3%.

Vikram Subburaj, CEO of Giottus, said US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $3.34 billion between August 19 and September 4. That demand helped BTC recover from about $62,000 to $82,000. The immediate risk is the September 16 US Federal Reserve decision.Subburaj further said investors should avoid high leverage before the Fed decision. Bitcoin’s $76,600 support and the deeper $71,000 level offer clearer reference points for staggered entries.

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The global crypto market capitalisation was up 0.4% to $2.71 trillion, according to Coingecko.

Over the last week, Bitcoin was down 2.7% and Ethereum was up 0.4%. Among the major altcoins, BNB, XRP, Solana, Hyperliquid, Dogecoin, and Cardano corrected upto were up 7.9% whereas Tron was up 0.6%.Prateek Gupta, Head of Business, Mudrex said Bitcoin remains range-bound between $76,000 and $77,000 after Friday’s volatility, as hotter-than-expected CPI data pushed Fed rate-hike odds above 85% and made investors more cautious.

Gupta further said that market signals remain mixed with on-chain data showing “extreme greed,” the highest since March 2024, while retail sentiment remains on the bearish end.

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The week ahead is crucial, with the Senate cloture vote on the CLARITY Act scheduled for tomorrow, followed by the FOMC meeting. These events could decide Bitcoin’s next move, Gupta also said.

Riya Sehgal, Research Analyst, Delta Exchange, said Bitcoin is attempting to stabilise after defending the $76,000 region, with the latest rebound pushing price back toward $77,800. Ethereum is showing relatively stronger short-term structure, reclaiming $2,500 and trading near $2,517.

With the FOMC meeting approaching and oil prices and Treasury yields remaining important macro variables, we expect headline sensitivity and volatility to remain elevated, Sehgal further said.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

1-Hour Chart Outlook

That makes the 1-hour chart a good place to see just how messy things have become. On Sept. 12, bitcoin’s price shot all the way to $79,837 before getting hammered down to $76,040, a $3,797 trip from top to bottom.

Since that shakeout, the fireworks have mostly stopped. BTC has spent its time squeezed between roughly $76,600 and $77,300, with the latest trades around $76,817-$76,819, and Sunday volume looking thin.

In other words, bitcoin ran a sprint and is now pacing around the locker room. Buyers have been showing up around $76,500-$76,600, while sellers keep leaning on the market around $77,300-$77,500. Escape above $77,500, and that $79,800 neighborhood comes back into view. Fall through $76,040, and suddenly $75,000-$74,000 doesn’t look so far away.

4-Hour Chart Outlook

The 4-hour chart makes that hesitation harder to ignore. Bitcoin’s spot price spent mid-August hanging around $62,470-$65,000 before blasting into the high $70,000s and eventually tagging $82,281. That was the fun part. Since Sept. 4, however, the market has been coughing up lower highs and slowly drifting back toward the mid-$76,000s.

The result is a chart that has gone from explosive to decidedly less impressive. Buyers now have a pretty important patch of ground to defend around $76,400-$76,600. Hold it, and another trip toward $78,000-$78,500 is entirely plausible. Lose it on a 4-hour close, and the tone changes quickly. Above that, $80,000 and then $82,000-$82,300 remain the bigger hurdles waiting for anyone betting that the old rally still has gas in the tank.

24-Hour Chart Outlook

Then you open the daily chart, and things get interesting. The same bitcoin that looks tired on the hourly and 4-hour charts is still miles above July’s $57,735 low. That’s the contradiction sitting at the heart of this setup. BTC has been rejected twice around $82,300-$82,800, but the larger recovery hasn’t actually broken.

Buyers have continued to defend the $76,000-$76,500 neighborhood, and another layer of support sits around $74,000-$75,200. Meanwhile, the market has a ceiling stretching from roughly $78,500 through $82,800. So while the shorter charts look like they’re running out of steam, the daily chart isn’t throwing in the towel. A convincing reclaim of $78,500 would put buyers in a much better position. A drop below $74,000 would be a considerably different story.

Oscillator Tape Highlights Neutral Signals

The daily chart’s oscillators are basically the market’s way of saying, “Don’t get carried away.” Most aren’t screaming anything at all. The relative strength index (RSI) sits at 53, comfortably neutral, while Stochastic is the lone bullish voice today at 17. The commodity channel index (CCI), average directional index (ADX), Awesome oscillator (AO), Stochastic RSI fast, Williams percent range, bull bear power (BBP), and Ultimate oscillator (UO) are all neutral on Sunday morning.

Then there are two troublemakers: momentum and the moving average convergence divergence (MACD), both of which are bearish. Add everything up, and the oscillator tape has two bearish signals, eight neutral, and just one bullish. That’s hardly a market falling apart, but it isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement either. Most of the dashboard is sitting on the fence while short-term momentum quietly leans toward the bears.

Moving Averages Showcase the Long Game

The moving averages (MAs) are where the plot twist arrives. Bitcoin is below its 10- and 20-period exponential moving averages (EMA), 10- and 20-period simple moving averages (SMA), and 20-period volume weighted moving average (VWMA), which explains why the market feels so heavy right now. Those averages sit roughly between $77,000 and $78,550, forming an overhead traffic jam that bulls have to push through. But travel farther down the list and everything flips.

Bitcoin remains above every listed 30-, 50-, 100- and 200-period EMA and SMA, while the hull moving average (HMA) is bullish and the Ichimoku base line is neutral. The MA clocked averages count nine bullish MAs against five bearish and one neutral. So there it is, bitcoin looks weak when you stand inches from the chart and considerably healthier when you walk across the room. Until BTC either muscles back above roughly $78,500 or cracks below roughly $76,000, this fight is still stuck in the middle. And right now, neither side gets to declare victory.

Bull Verdict

Bitcoin’s bigger trend is still standing even though the short-term charts have taken a beating. Holding the $76,000 area keeps bulls in the fight, but $78,500 is where things really get interesting. Take that level back, and suddenly the bearish momentum starts looking more like a nasty pullback than the beginning of something worse.

Bear Verdict

The bears have the short-term advantage, and bitcoin’s price keeps running into trouble before it can get back above $78,500. If $76,000 finally gives way, that shaky short-term picture gets considerably harder to shrug off, with the $74,000-$75,200 area waiting below. Until buyers prove otherwise, they’re playing defense.

Despite existing for less than a full quarter, the crypto launchpad Pons (PONS -14.30%) pulled in $11.4 million of fees on Sept. 5 alone. That made it the biggest launchpad by daily fees in all of crypto, a position it has held every day since Aug. 29. One big driver of its rapid success is that it operates on the new blockchain by Robinhood Markets, which also launched recently, in early July. Given that Pons is now the largest and busiest launchpad in Robinhood Chain’s ecosystem, it now has a tremendous tailwind from the future growth of the network it runs on.

So does that make this coin a screaming buy, or is there a catch?

This coin has already burned nearly a third of its supply

A launchpad is a platform that lets anyone create a new coin and open a market for it in minutes, with no coding required. As far as the business model, Pons enables anyone to deploy a new token on Robinhood Chain for a fee of about $1.

For the most part, users have been launching meme coins with that capability, with more than 255,000 new coins launched in its short lifetime so far. The platform also keeps a slice of the fees from every trade of those assets afterward, so it can potentially benefit from successful tokens for months or years after the launch — an important innovation over the launchpad projects that came before it.

Today’s Change

(-14.30%) $-0.09

Current Price

$0.55

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Key Data Points

Market Cap

$389MMarket cap calculated using publicly traded shares outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded shares. Implied market cap may vary.

Day’s Range

$0.54 – $0.64

52wk Range

$0.54 – $0.97

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Volume

52.2M

Around 80% of the protocol’s 30% cut of those trading fees is used to purchase Pons on the open market and then destroy it, which by Sept. 3 had resulted in 288 million of the original 1 billion tokens being taken out of circulation. That makes the prospect of holding it as an investment quite appealing. Instead of holding a coin that inflates its supply over time, diluting value, the opposite is happening, meaning that scarcity will be supporting its value.

Should you buy Pons?

Much of Pons’ growth is happening because Robinhood Chain is subsidizing demand in order to attract more users and their capital as part of its launching process.

Robinhood has so far covered its wallet users’ network transaction fees, but the subsidy will end on Sept. 29. Pons’ own charges won’t change, but once the underlying transactions stop being free, the cheapest speculation in crypto gets costlier. This will almost certainly mean less launch volume and fewer fees for Pons. Furthermore, in the crypto launchpad segment, there’s always a new player entering the scene anyway. Even when operating on different chains, the fact that launchpads tend to be mostly used to launch meme coins means that they compete for the same pool of highly speculative and highly mobile capital.

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Since the platform is also brand new, it doesn’t have enough of a use history for investors to confidently buy it in advance of the subsidy’s expiry, never mind in the face of as-yet unlaunched competitors. So it isn’t a screaming buy right now, and it won’t be until it’s proven to be resilient in ways it hasn’t had time to prove yet.