Bitcoin Just Had Its Best 10-Day Run of 2026, Yet Traders Remain Skeptical

Bitcoin shot up more than 20% this past week. It touched $81,255 at one point, then dropped back to $78,026 today, that’s down about 1% in the last day. The whole crypto market dipped about the same amount. What happened? People took profits after that big 28% run in August. Then leveraged bets got crushed, over $300 million in long positions got wiped out when the price turned. Yet despite the BTC price pushing to a three-month high, traders are not showing the level of excitement you would expect from a rally this strong. Bitcoin Price Rises as Crowd Sentiment Turns Negative Santiment’s numbers show why some traders aren’t buying the hype. Bitcoin went from $62,800 on August 16 to $78,900 on August 26, up 25% in ten days. That’s the best ten-day run we’ve seen all year. But here’s the weird thing. Sentiment turned sour right as prices peaked. On August 26, the weighted sentiment score dipped to -0.023. That’s the first time it went negative since this whole rally started. For comparison, the seven-day average sat at +0.009. Just a day earlier, on August 25, it had been +0.020. So people got more pessimistic even as Bitcoin kept climbing. That doesn’t usually happen. Its strongest reading during the move was +0.054 on August 19, the day news broke that the U.S. Treasury would double the size of some long-duration bond buybacks. Normally, a 25% Bitcoin price rally would bring much stronger optimism across crypto social media. That has not happened here. Price has climbed, but sentiment has remained restrained. What the Santiment BTC Chart Shows The chart makes this disconnect clear. The green line tracks the Bitcoin price, moving from roughly $58,000-$60,000 in late July toward $79,000 by August 26. The biggest upward move came after August 19, with BTC breaking higher and eventually reaching above $80,000. BTC is up about 25% in ten days and sitting near its highs. The crowd still has not bought it. Price went from about $62,800 on Aug 16 to about $78,900 on Aug 26, the strongest ten-day stretch of the year. Weighted sentiment turned negative again today, at about -0.023,… pic.twitter.com/S9IFevczKY — Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) August 26, 2026The bars underneath track weighted sentiment. Green bars represent positive sentiment and red bars represent negative sentiment. The largest positive reading appears around August 19 at +0.054. From there, sentiment weakened even as the Bitcoin price continued higher. By August 26, the reading had fallen to -0.023. That is the key point behind Santiment’s analysis: BTC buyers pushed the price higher, but the broader crowd did not become euphoric. Related Bitcoin News: Silver Price at a Bitcoin (BTC) 2015 Moment?