In the last two weeks, the bulls have ceded control to the bears, relinquishing a $25,000 high only for BTC to tumble below $20,000. At the moment, Bitcoin's on track to record its lowest monthly close since August 2020.
Jerome Powell's speech at the annual Jackson Hole economic symposium didn't help; US stocks lost a combined $1.25 trillion on the day. This could be Bitcoin's worst August performance since 2015, and next month could be even worse.
September has historically been a red month, and a monthly close below $20,000 could see the price tumble to $16,000 - $17,000. However, there are a couple of positives.
Fundamentally, Bitcoin stays strong. The network difficulty is set to increase by 6.8% this week, the highest upward difficulty adjustment since January 2022. Furthermore, this will propel the difficulty to a new all-time high.
The hash rate is mimicking network difficulty, standing at 246 EH/s on Aug. 22, inches away from the all-time high of 251 EH/s.