Bitcoin Tops $86,000 as Analysts Declare Crypto Winter Over

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds attracted nearly $1 billion U.S. of capital on Sept. 21 as the rally in cryptocurrencies strengthens. About a dozen U.S. Bitcoin ETFs registered a combined net inflow of $998.95 million U.S., the largest one-day intake since Oct. 6, 2025, when BTC hit a record high of $126,000 U.S. The inflow was the ninth-largest one-day total since the ETFs began trading on Jan. 11, 2024, according to data from SoSoValue. The Sept. 21 inflow has taken the month-to-date tally to $1.31 billion U.S. during September, building on August's $3.52 billion U.S. capital inflow to Bitcoin ETFs. The renewed institutional interest comes as Bitcoin's price has surged 44% over the past month to trade at $86,000 U.S. on Sept. 22, though owing to big redemptions earlier in the year, spot Bitcoin ETFs remain down $450 million U.S. in 2026.

Anthony Scaramucci said on CNBC's Squawk Box on Tuesday that Treasury Secretary Bessent's signal of support for the long end of the curve, not the Clarity Act, is what drove Bitcoin's recent rally. Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, argued that a pledge to step in at the ten- or thirty-year maturities tells investors something about the fiscal and monetary conditions requiring intervention, making a fixed-supply asset more attractive. He set the Clarity Act aside, saying it would have helped tokenization and some layer-one tokens but that Bitcoin stands alone as a digital store of value. Bitcoin traded at $85,732.79 as of 13:42 UTC on September 22, 2026, up 14.37% over one week from $75,584.17 on September 15, but still down 23.32% over one year and 1.20% year to date. Scaramucci also said he sold Bitcoin on September 15 to pay taxes, with proceeds hitting his JPMorgan account in about ten minutes, and attributed part of the recent move to a short squeeze over the past three weeks.

Coinbase suffered a roughly 70-minute service outage on Sept. 21 that blocked customers from buying, selling, trading, or viewing balances across its website, mobile app, and Advanced Trade, striking just as Bitcoin surged past $85,000 for the first time in eight months and later climbed above $86,000. The exchange first acknowledged the problem at 4:21 p.m. PDT, implemented a fix at 5:23 p.m., and declared the incident resolved at 5:31 p.m., saying customer funds remained safe and not disclosing the technical cause. The rally came with a major derivatives shakeout, as nearly $919 million in crypto short positions were liquidated, including more than $557 million tied to Bitcoin, while US spot Bitcoin ETFs drew fresh money and Bitcoin posted its first weekly close above its 50-week moving average in roughly 45 weeks. COIN shares finished Monday 3.5% higher at $201.05 on volume of roughly 14.4 million shares. Coinbase has not said how many customers were affected, though it reported $246 billion in assets on its platform as of June 30 and a 10.3% share of crypto trading volume under its methodology.