Bitcoin Price: BTC Retakes $78,900 USD on August 31
Bitcoin retook $109,000 CAD on Monday while Canadian stocks fell again, and that split is the whole story of today’s crypto market recap. Bitcoin changed hands at $78,898.52 USD at 6:05 p.m. ET, up 1.37% from Sunday’s daily close of $77,830.29 USD, which is $109,409.53 CAD for a holder who thinks in Canadian dollars. Ethereum (ETH) moved almost in step, up 1.35% at $2,475.54 USD, or $3,433.97 CAD.
Here is the honest part. There is no crypto-specific catalyst dated August 31 behind that move. No ETF approval, no regulatory filing, no exchange incident, no macro data print. What we can point to is last Friday, and the fact that the majors spent Monday recovering from it while equities did not.
The tape at 6:05 p.m. ET
Crypto trades continuously, so the figures above are a snapshot taken at 6:05 p.m. ET, not a closing price. Read them that way, because the number on your screen tonight is already a different one.
Against that snapshot, the North American session closed like this: the S&P/TSX Composite down 0.78% at 36,270.48, the S&P 500 down 0.33% at 7,686.14 and the NASDAQ down 0.12% at 26,370.89. Gold went the other way, up 0.65% at $4,500.90 USD. Our full read of the equity day is in today’s TSX recap.
So Bitcoin and Ethereum both finished the North American session green on a day when Canada’s benchmark and the S&P 500 finished red. That divergence is the most useful fact of the day, and it deserves more attention than the size of either move.
One detail inside the crypto numbers is worth flagging: the two largest assets moved almost identically, 1.37% for bitcoin against 1.35% for Ethereum. There was no rotation between them today.
What we can attribute, and what we cannot
We cannot tell you why bitcoin was bid on Monday afternoon specifically. Nothing on the calendar explains it, and we are not going to reverse-engineer a reason to fill the gap.
What we can attribute is the hole it climbed out of. On Friday, August 28, Kevin Warsh delivered his first Jackson Hole keynote as Federal Reserve chair. To paraphrase the Federal Reserve’s published text of the speech rather than quote it, he said inflation remains too high, described the 2% goal as firm, and indicated the Fed may need to raise rates in the coming months. He also pulled back from offering detailed forward guidance. Bitcoin fell below $80,000 USD that day.
Monday’s shape fits that sequence. Crypto traded lower earlier in the session on higher US rate expectations, then recovered through the afternoon into the snapshot. That is a relief bounce and a stabilisation after Friday. It is not evidence of anything new, and we would not read 1.37% as a signal about direction from here.
The flow tape: one bad day inside a good week
The exchange-traded fund data says Friday was a genuine de-risking rather than a price wobble. According to Cryptobriefing, publishing August 31, US spot bitcoin ETFs recorded a net outflow of $201.9 USD million on August 28, which ended a nine-session inflow streak that had run past $3 USD billion. Money actually left on the day of the speech.
Zoom out one week and the picture inverts. For the week ended August 28, US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $924.5 USD million and spot Ethereum ETFs roughly $824 USD million, about $1.75 USD billion combined.
The most interesting number in that set is a split. BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for $938.3 USD million of the bitcoin total on its own, which is more than the entire bitcoin complex took in. The rest of the bitcoin ETF complex was net negative for the week. A weekly figure that reads as broad institutional demand was, underneath, one fund pulling and the others leaking.
The majors bounced. Breadth is another question.
Monday’s green was narrow, at least as far as our data reaches. Over the 24 hours to Sunday night, XRP, solana, cardano and dogecoin were all lower. We do not hold a Monday snapshot for those four, so we cannot tell you whether they joined the bounce, and we are not going to assume they did.
What we can say is that the recovery we can actually see is a Bitcoin and Ethereum one. Breadth underneath the two largest assets was thin going into Monday, and that is worth holding in mind before reading the day as a market-wide turn.
What this means for a Canadian holder
Two frictions sit between the headline and your account.
The first is currency. Your position is denominated in Canadian dollars while the tape that moves it is priced in US dollars, at CAD/USD 0.7218 as of the snapshot. That is a second, separate exposure inside every bitcoin position, and it means the move you feel rarely matches the move you read about.
The second is jurisdiction. The Bank of Canada decides Wednesday, September 2 at 9:45 a.m. ET with the policy rate at 2.25%, held there since October 30, 2025, and CORRA futures imply a hold. Watch the Fed for what your crypto does and the Bank of Canada for what your mortgage does. We unpack what Warsh actually said, and what a wider rate gap would mean, in Fed hike bets meet a Bank of Canada hold. They are not the same calendar.
And if the bounce tempted you into trading it, remember every disposal is a taxable event the CRA expects you to have tracked. Our guide to calculating your crypto adjusted cost base for the CRA covers the method before it becomes a filing problem.
What is next
The near-term catalysts for crypto are American: US rate expectations, and how the flow tape behaves now that the nine-session streak is broken. Whether Friday’s outflow was a single day or the start of something is a question the coming sessions answer, not this recap.
For a fuller look at the level itself rather than the session, we published today’s analysis of whether bitcoin is a buy right now.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Crypto prices are a snapshot taken at 6:05 p.m. ET on August 31, 2026; equity and commodity data are as of the August 31, 2026 close. Every figure is marked USD or CAD.
