Bitcoin Breaks Below $80K on PPI Shock: On-chain Reset Faces its Real Test

What the inflation print contained

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released April’s Producer Price Index on May 13, and the number landed hard. Headline PPI rose 1.4% month-over-month against a Dow Jones consensus of 0.5%, the largest single-month wholesale inflation gain since March 2022. Year-over-year, headline PPI reached 6.0%, above the 4.9% expectation and matching its highest reading since December 2022. Core PPI, stripping out food and energy, rose 1.0% for the month against a 0.4% forecast.

The composition of the print made it worse than the headline suggested. Final demand energy goods rose 7.8%, accounting for roughly three-quarters of the entire advance in goods pricing. Within intermediate supply chains, processed energy goods rose 7.8% and diesel fuel spiked 12.6%. These are input costs that compress business margins before they reach the consumer, and for crypto markets specifically, margin pressure at the producer level tightens the discretionary capital that flows into risk assets. Bitcoin dropped from approximately $81,500 toward $79,800 in the hours following the release, a move the rate-path repricing drove directly.

How the price chart absorbed the shock

The CoinPrice.Watch 1-hour chart on Binance, captured at 13:45 UTC on May 13, shows Bitcoin at $79,800.01, down 0.50% on the session with a low of $79,780. The current candle is printing 696 BTC in volume against a prior session total of 122 BTC, meaning a single candle in the breakdown has already moved nearly six times the volume the entire prior session produced. That comparison makes the directional commitment behind this move legible without requiring interpretation.

All three moving averages sit above price: MA50 at $81,008, MA100 at $80,957, MA200 at $80,858, all pointing upward and stacked correctly. The entire spread between the MA50 at $81,008 and the MA200 at $80,858 is 151 dollars; price at $79,800 sits 1,058 dollars below the MA200, meaning Bitcoin is more than seven cluster-widths beneath a moving average stack that has not yet begun to turn down.

Bitcoin’s RSI at 31.31, sitting 19 points below its signal line on volume of 696 BTC in a single candle, is not a reading that follows a modest macro reaction: it is a reading that follows a breakdown, and the gap between the RSI and its signal line is now wider than at any point visible on this chart. At 31.31, RSI

‘>RSI is approaching oversold territory on the hourly without yet reaching it, which means further deterioration remains technically available before a bounce becomes probable on this timeframe.

UPDATE: At 16:-00 UTC the price dropped under $79.000.

What the STH data says about the level now being broken

The CryptoQuant data from analyst Crazzyblockk gives the $80,000–$81,000 zone its structural meaning, and the price now sitting below it sharpens what the data implies.

Across three Bitcoin cycles tracked on Binance since August 2023, the Short-Term Holder profit/loss inflow ratio has served as a precise cycle phase indicator. At the 2023 bear bottom with Bitcoin averaging $27,680, profit and loss inflows into Binance were nearly equal, with a daily loss rate of $570K. When the bull broke in November 2023, profit inflows ran 7x over losses at $3.56M daily against $502K in losses. The pre-halving run of February–March 2024 maintained 3.8x profit dominance at $5.6M daily with Bitcoin averaging $59K. At the September–October 2025 cycle peak with Bitcoin averaging $113,775, daily inflow volume had compressed to 6,439 BTC but profit still ran 2.15x over loss: distribution at record prices, conducted without panic.

Then February 6, 2026 arrived. A single session at $67,410 produced $10.26M in realized loss inflows to Binance, the largest loss reading in the entire dataset. Since that peak capitulation, the daily loss figure has fallen 51x to $197K this week.

With Bitcoin near $81K earlier today, profit and loss inflows were nearly equal, the same structural configuration that defined the 2023 bear bottom. Crazzyblockk called it “a reset.” The breakdown below $80,000 on 696 BTC of hourly volume is now pressing against that characterization without yet invalidating it: one high-volume hourly candle establishes momentum, not structural failure, and structural failure requires a sustained close below the reset zone, not a single session print.

A PPI shock lands differently depending on where it finds the market: when it arrives into profit-dominant STH inflows, it triggers distribution; when it arrives into a breakeven STH structure, as it did today, it tests whether the reset is genuine or whether holders fold under macro pressure. The price is below $80,000 and the volume behind the move is real. Whether this resolves as a macro-driven extension of the reset range or the beginning of a secondary capitulation is what the next session will determine, not this candle.

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What the coming sessions will confirm or deny

A partial recovery would require a daily close back above the MA200 at $80,858 with RSI crossing above its signal line at 50.19; a full recovery would require the MA50 at $81,008 to be reclaimed on a daily close within the next five trading sessions. Either threshold, reached with RSI signal confirmation, would indicate the breakdown was a liquidity event rather than a structural failure of the reset zone.

A daily close at or below $79,780, extending the current session low, sustained on volume exceeding 800 BTC per hour across three or more consecutive candles, would confirm the STH reset structure has broken down under macro pressure and the market is entering a secondary capitulation phase, a condition that in prior cycles preceded a retest of lower accumulation ranges before any sustained recovery.

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