TL;DR:
- Bitcoin is trading around $64,900 with a 1.3% gain in the last 24 hours, after briefly touching $65,000.
- Bitcoin’s price has been trapped between $61,500 and $66,900 since July 8; implied volatility is at multi-year lows.
- The yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond touched 5.333%, its highest level in nearly two decades, putting pressure on global markets.
Bitcoin is trading around $64,900 and has gained 1.3% over the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The move included a brief touch of $65,000, but resistance at that level halted any further upside and the price pulled back toward $64,000. Since July 8, the world’s largest cryptocurrency has been unable to break out of the range between $61,500 and $66,900, a six-week period in which short-term implied volatility fell to multi-year lows.
The main external factor is the sharp surge in global sovereign debt yields. The 30-year U.S. Treasury bond touched 5.333%, its highest level in nearly two decades. Meanwhile, the Japanese 10-year yield climbed to a 30-year high, the German 30-year bund reached levels not seen since 2011, and the French equivalent hit 2008 records. This environment weighed on equity markets: the Nasdaq 100 fell 1.3% on Tuesday, its largest single-day drop since early August, while the S&P 500 posted its third consecutive negative session.
Bitcoin Waits for a Catalyst
In the derivatives market, traders positioning reflects broad caution. Open interest in Bitcoin futures declined to $21.8 billion from a peak of $23 billion recorded on August 11. The drop, combined with Bitcoin’s sideways price action, suggests that positions are being unwound rather than built.
Funding rates remain slightly positive, with BTC’s open interest-weighted rate at 0.0049%, far from the levels that would indicate excessive leverage in long positions.
The largest single liquidation over the last 24 hours was a $23.35 million BTC-USD position on Hyperliquid. Total liquidations over the period reached $190.24 million, with short positions accounting for around $113.27 million of that total.
Federal Reserve Meeting
The minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting, released this Wednesday, could provide signals about the direction of U.S. monetary policy. At that meeting, officials voted to hold rates in a range of 3.5% to 3.75%, although three of the twelve voters leaned toward a hike.
The options market is concentrated at $64,000 to $65,000 strikes for the August 20 expiry, indicating that traders do not anticipate a significant directional move before the minutes are released.
