Bitcoin Golden Cross Flickers Off as Rate-Hike Bets Firm Up

Bitcoin's short-lived confirmation of a daily golden cross unraveled Friday as intraday selling pushed the 50-day exponential moving average back below the 200-day. The session produced a wide intraday swing—opening near $76,529, spiking to about $79,837, then falling to roughly $76,040—before settling around $77,438, still up about 1.2% for the day but well below the session peak. The move coincided with a sharp repricing in interest-rate expectations after U.S. inflation data showed the monthly core CPI at 0.3%, above the 0.2% analysts had forecast. CME FedWatch odds of a 25-basis-point hike at next week's Fed meeting rose from roughly 69% immediately after the print to about 86.5% within hours, reflecting a more hawkish market view that tends to increase pressure on risk assets. Technically, the daily picture is now indecisive: the two EMAs sit very close together, so a single volatile session can flip the label between bullish and bearish. That narrow spacing helps explain how the golden cross briefly formed—Bitcoin hadn't recorded one on the daily chart since last November—but then failed to hold. Still, trend-strength metrics on the daily chart remain meaningful; the Average Directional Index sits near 45, indicating a substantive trend, and the RSI is in neutral-to-bullish territory around 55.5. On shorter timeframes the structure is mixed. The 4-hour chart retains its 50-over-200 EMA alignment, preserving a broader bullish framework established since late August, yet momentum has weakened: the 4-hour RSI sits around 43.3, the 4-hour ADX hovers at about 25.1 (just above the usual trend threshold), and the Squeeze Momentum indicator recently fired as volatility expanded roughly 3.95%, accompanying a downside leg. Taken together, the charts show that while the bigger-picture trend still leans bullish, nearer-term momentum and macro-driven rate expectations have cooled the rally and left the daily golden-cross signal vulnerable to further whipsaws.