Bitcoin Briefly Hits $85,600 After Soft PCE, Then Slips to $84,350

The muted follow-through matters more than the initial pop: a soft inflation print gave crypto a brief macro tailwind, but the pullback suggests positioning, not fundamentals, drove the move. The liquidation mix — shorts squeezed on the way up, longs flushed on the way down — points to a two-sided, leverage-heavy market where spot demand is not yet strong enough to hold a breakout. For RWA and crypto desks, the question is whether softer inflation data keeps feeding risk appetite, or whether each print now produces only a fleeting spike followed by a fade.