Bitcoin Slips Back Under $80K as Gold Cools and Stocks Shrug Off a US-Canada Tariff Spat

The $80,000 level is proving easier to visit than to hold. Bitcoin fell as low as $78,111 into Tuesday's Wall Street open after printing fresh 14-week highs at $81,265, with the pullback arriving in tandem with gold — which dropped nearly 2% from its own three-month highs to lows near $4,605 an ounce.

The two hard assets sold off as US equities ticked up, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq adding 0.2% and 0.5%. That inverse dance — stocks under pressure while crypto and gold rallied last week, now the mirror image — has become the session-to-session texture of this market.

The macro undertow

US government bond yields continued to slide across the curve, extending the move triggered by the Treasury's expanded buyback program. Falling yields and a softer dollar remain the rally's foundation; Tuesday's wobble was rotation, not reversal, with traders booking profits in the week's winners to chase equities.

The headline risk du jour came from trade policy. Negotiations between Washington and Ottawa have reportedly broken down, with President Trump accusing Canada of "ripping off" the US to the tune of $60 billion a year on Truth Social and pledging: no more. Equities largely looked through it — for now, markets treat tariff brinkmanship as noise until proven otherwise.

Levels doing the work

Traders had long flagged the $80,000 zone as dense with sell pressure, and it is behaving exactly that way: each probe above has been sold within hours. Below, the reclaimed $76,000-$77,000 area is the first test of whether dips still get bought. The pattern of higher lows since mid-August survives unless that floor gives way — which is why a boring consolidation day like Tuesday is, structurally, the most bullish thing this market can do.