Bitcoin Could Face Downturn As Potential Redtember Looms

Crypto enthusiasts and Bitcoin (BTC) maximalists alike are bracing themselves for another tough September, with traders warning that another monthly drop could take place for the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

The ninth month of the year has been a historically tough time for BTC, with the month earning the nicknames of Rektember and Redtember due to its pattern of price drops.

Now, analysts are worrying that, whatever it is people use their BTC for, whether it is cashing out to exchange their coins for traditional fiat currency, buying other crypto, or even gambling at Bitcoin casinos, it could have far less value by the time the month ends.

Short-term Optimism, Medium-term Gloom

At the time of writing (September 3, 2025), however, the coin was up slightly from the start of the month, when it fell to $110,000, at about $112,000.

Nevertheless, despite its recent minor upturn, there are still worries about BTC’s immediate future.

There have been concerns that Bitcoin’s overall movement has been demonstrating a series of lower lows, suggesting an overall downtrend is taking place.

It could also be that plans for Tether’s USDT stablecoin to launch on the Bitcoin blockchain could have already been factored into the coin’s price, so any price rally has already, in a manner of speaking, taken place.

And, in fairness to Bitcoin, it is less than a month since its most recent all-time high on August 14, when, according to CoinMarketCap, it surged to more than $124,000.

The crypto is now worth about 10 per cent less than that, but, in some more optimistic news, BTC is up nearly double from the $57,000 it was trading at in early September last year.

Meanwhile, the crypto Fear and Greed Index, which measures market confidence, is currently at 42, indicating that the average trader is feeling on the more cautious side of neutral.

Bitcoin’s recent slump has seen the overall cryptocurrency market dip down from the $4.19 trillion it reached on August 14 and the $4.05 trillion it was worth on August 22, although it is still up somewhat from $3.72 trillion it traded at at the start of the month to stand at around $3.87 trillion.

One sign of Bitcoin’s problems comes in the shape of the way that Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have performed.

While money flowed into them throughout August in a reflection of Bitcoin’s bullish behaviour, things have not been going too well recently, with American spot Bitcoin ETFs suffering net outflows of $440 million last week. 

Better News Elsewhere

With Bitcoin being the largest cryptocurrency by quite some margin – as in, at $2.2 trillion, Bitcoin’s market cap is more than every other crypto’s put together – so what happens to BTC can have a significant impact on every other coin and token. 

However, one thing that might give some hope to people whose crypto investing stretches beyond Satoshi Nakamoto’s brainchild.

Ethereum ETFs have done well while Bitcoin’s have done badly, enjoying more than $1 billion, although this might be a sign that people are taking their money out of Bitcoin-related products and moving it into ones involving Ethereum rather than investing in things concerning altcoins.

Meanwhile, some cryptos have done notably well recently.

For example, MemeCore (M), the native coin of a blockchain dedicated to memecoins, only came out in July but has been on a rally lately, rising more than 130 per cent in the space of just one week as technical indicators suggest a breakout.

Meanwhile, Story (IP), which was first released in February, has also performed well. The coin, which is designed to help keep intellectual property on the blockchain, has gone up by around 35 per cent in the last week, spurred on by a buyback program and breaking a crucial resistance level.

A History Of Redtember

The whole concept of Redtember is based on the observation that the price of Bitcoin often falls during September. 

This has been the case in eight of the last 11 years, although the average loss is 3.77 per cent, according to data from crypto analytics site Coinglass.

The worst Redtembers took place in September 2019, when software as a service (SaaS) company Bakkt announced it was going to launch a Bitcoin futures, but ended up being something of a damp squib, sending the price of BTC down by 13.38 per cent, and in September 2014 when some early years volatility saw it fall by nearly 20 per cent, despite the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approving an over-the-counter swap product based on the value of one Bitcoin.

However, September isn’t always a bad time to be a Bitcoin investor. For instance, the last two Septembers have seen upturns. Last year, the market was recovering from a downturn which helped BTC rise by more than seven per cent, while 2023 saw a market correction after an August collapse triggered by Elon Musk’s SpaceX selling millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin.

It is also worth mentioning that September is often a poor month for traditional markets and that October – or “Uptober” as some in the cryptosphere call it – is often Bitcoin’s best month.