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Bitcoin (BTC) price challenges Monday’s rejection level as ether (ETH) looks to break its streak of lower highs

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The crypto market took another leg higher on Friday with bitcoin trading at $64,400, up by 2% since midnight UTC.

The largest cryptocurrency is currently at the price it failed to penetrate on Monday. If it can break past this level, it will likely advance toward the June 15 high of $67,250.

Ether (ETH) outperformed bitcoin, rising 2.6% to $1,790 as it looks to snap a trend of sequential lower highs and lower lows.

There were also notable gains across the altcoin sector ahead of the weekend, typically a period of lower liquidity. Zcash (ZEC) and aave both rose by around 5% as optimism is slowly crept back into more speculative bets after months of waning sentiment.

Crypto diverged from U.S. equities, with S&P 500 index futures and Nasdaq 100 futures falling 0.1% and 0.4%, respectively.

Derivatives positioning

  • Crypto derivatives markets are showing signs of stabilization, with speculation easing and longer-term positioning increasing.
  • Volume over 24 hours fell 7% to $140 billion, while open interest (OI) rose 3% to $110.52 billion. This shift suggests the recovery is being driven more by strategic positioning than by high‑frequency speculative activity.
  • Cumulative OI in bitcoin’s USD- and USDT-denominated futures on major exchanges has picked up slightly, from 262K to 272K, as the spot price topped $64,000. When read alongside positive funding rates and positive 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD), the OI increase indicates a growing bias for bullish bets.
  • Ether has yet to see a meaningful rise in futures OI, a sign that traders are still staying away from leverage.
  • In the broader market, most tokens have positive 24-hour CVDs, a sign that buyers are becoming more aggressive, trading market orders rather than passive limit orders. This set expectations for continued price rises ahead.
  • Confirmatory signals come from options-based implied volatility indexes tied to BTC and ETH, which continue to drop. It’s a sign of traders expecting market calm, a feature of rallies. BTC’s index, BVIV, fell to 38.5 early today, the lowest since June 6.
  • In the options market on Deribit, put skews continue to weaken as the price rally eases downside concerns. Calls at $62,000, $65,000, and $67,000 are among the most-traded instruments, along with the $56,000 put. A call represents a bullish bet on the market.

Bitcoin Tries for New July Highs Amid Falling Oil, Dollar Strength

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Bitcoin (BTC) eyed new July highs on Friday as US-Iran peace momentum kept oil lower.

Key points:

  • Bitcoin bulls keep upside momentum going as BTC/USD seeks a new multi-week record.
  • Declining oil prices and US dollar strength contrast with crypto market rebound.
  • $65,000 is now “crucial resistance” to be tackled, says analysis.

Bitcoin reaches $64,350 as dollar strength, oil drop

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD climbing above $64,000, coming within $400 of new three-week highs.

BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Amid ongoing hopes that the US-Iran peace deal could be salvaged, US WTI crude oil stayed lower after rejecting from $76 per barrel.

CFDs on US WTI crude oil one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

US dollar strength fell for a third straight day, with the US dollar index (DXY) approaching its lowest figures since mid-June.

US dollar index (DXY) one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Commenting on the current macro landscape, trading company QCP Capital warned that risks to economies were still growing. It specifically highlighted the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

“With no monetary cushion coming, the physical buffers matter more. In oil, Doha talks ended with no shipping deal and missiles struck two tankers on 7 July, with Hormuz flows still well below normal,” it wrote about recent Iran events. 

“The reserve looks thinner still: the SPR is at 319.5mb, its lowest since 1983, leaving just 19.5mb before the 300mb stress zone.” 

US SPR one-week chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

QCP added that recent BTC sales by business intelligence company Strategy showed that the instability had spread to crypto.

“It’s clearest in private credit, where redemption requests have blown through the 5% quarterly gates across several funds,” it added.

Crypto markets looking “better day after day”

More optimistic on the longer-term outlook, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter noted that the odds of US inflation passing 4.5% in 2026 had fallen below 20%.

Related: Bitcoin ETFs end ‘most overwhelming’ $2.7B sell-off amid new $85M net outflow

“Just 7 weeks ago, there was an 85% chance of inflation rising above 4.5% this year,” it wrote in an X post on Thursday alongside data from prediction service Polymarket. 

“Inflation expectations are coming down again.”

Source: The Kobeissi Letter/X

Continuing, crypto trader and analyst Michaël van de Poppe noted the oil-price trend as one key factor for “a lot of upside” across markets.

“The markets look better day after day,” he told X followers on Friday. 

“Bitcoin attacking the crucial resistance of $65,000 again. If this breaks, then we’re flipping many downtrends on many Altcoins into uptrends.”

Strong in USD, lagging in yen

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Early today, traders received Japan’s producer price index for June, which came in at 7.1%, the fastest annual increase since March 2023. The spike in wholesale inflation reinforced expectations for further Bank of Japan rate hikes. A former central bank official said Thursday that the BOJ may hike rates faster, potentially pushing them above 2%.

Note that the Japanese yen and Bitcoin have developed an unusually strong positive correlation, often moving in lockstep against the U.S. dollar. If that correlation holds, yen upswings may ultimately prove positive for bitcoin in general, even as BTC/JPY (and other crypto/JPY) pairs continue to lag in relative terms.

The GPIF Risk

The Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) of Japan manages roughly ¥277 trillion ($1.87 trillion) in assets, making it the world’s largest retirement fund. It invests heavily in global stocks and bonds.

Now the Japanese government wants the GPIF and other pension funds to invest more in local assets. Such a rotation could trigger volatility in global financial markets.

“The fund, one of the largest pension pools in the world, held 293.4 trillion yen, or roughly 1.81 trillion dollars, in assets at the end of December, maintaining roughly equal allocations across domestic equities, foreign equities, domestic bonds and foreign bonds,” analysts at InvestingLive said in a market update.

Bitcoin ETFs bleed again while ether funds snap a five-day inflow streak

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U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs lost a net $95 million on Thursday, per SoSoValue data, while ether ETFs shed about $52 million, ending a five-day inflow run that had been the steadier side of the market.

Fidelity’s FBTC drove the bitcoin outflow with roughly $63 million, followed by ARKB at about $40 million. BlackRock’s IBIT was flat, neither adding nor losing money, and VanEck’s HODL and Morgan Stanley’s MSBT were the only funds in the green. Total bitcoin ETF assets sit near $77 billion.

Ether’s reversal was broader. Fidelity’s FETH lost about $34 million and BlackRock’s ETHA roughly $13 million, with Bitwise and BlackRock’s second fund also negative. No ether fund posted an inflow, and net assets held at about $9 billion.

The flows are lagging the tape. Bitcoin rose 3.5% on Friday to nearly $64,000 and is up 4.2% on the week, recovering everything it lost when Trump warned that strikes on Iran could intensify.

Ether added 2.6% to $1,760. The rally came out of Asia, where South Korea’s Kospi jumped 4% on renewed AI-demand optimism and SK Hynix priced $26.5 billion of American depositary shares.

Institutional money has now sat out most of a month in which bitcoin has traded between roughly $59,000 and $66,000 without breaking either way.

EU Parliament Passes Message-Scanning ‘Chat Control’

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The European Parliament has passed legislation allowing tech firms to scan messages for child sexual abuse material until 2028, a controversial law dubbed “chat control” by critics.

EU lawmakers on Thursday largely voted against extending the regulation, dubbed “Chat Control 1.0,” but stopping it required 361 lawmakers to reject it. Only 314 voted to stop the law, and 276 supported it.

The vote advances reviving the “chat control” rules that expired in April, and has been a controversial topic among privacy and cryptography advocates, as the originally designed law breaks the principle behind encrypting messages.

Parliament, however, passed an exemption to exclude “communications to which end-to-end encryption is, has been or will be applied,” handing a small win to cypherpunks.

Pirate Party MEP Markéta Gregorová, whose party put forward the amendment to exempt end-to-end encrypted messages, said its success was “a bittersweet victory.” 

“Protecting encryption was one of our priorities, and I am therefore glad that we managed to secure an absolute majority for an amendment that at least preserves encryption. At the same time, however, voluntary mass scanning unfortunately passed,” she said.

The law’s supporters argue it is vital to protect children and combat the spread of abusive material.

The parliament’s laws with amendments will be sent back to the Council of the EU, a body of ministers from the bloc’s member nations who will approve or reject the legislation.

Chat Control battle “just getting started”

The vote on Thursday comes after the European Parliament voted through a rarely used urgent procedure on Tuesday that brought lawmakers back to vote on whether to extend a legal framework for the laws that expired in April.

Since the framework expired, messaging platforms such as WhatsApp have been allowed to take their own voluntary measures to seek out those sharing abusive material.

In March, Parliament had rejected a temporary extension of the scheme while a new permanent version of the law, dubbed “Chat Control 2.0,” was under discussion, before the European People’s Party, the largest group in Parliament, revived the extension in the urgent procedure vote on Tuesday.

The party had largely voted against extending the laws in March because of amendments that restricted the scope of scans, but its leader, Manfred Weber, has been looking for ways to push through the extension without changes.

Related: EU committee advances digital euro bill after key vote

Breyer, the former MEP, said the “political battle over the permanent ‘Chat Control 2.0’ is just getting started.”

“The resistance we saw in Parliament today was so strong that finding a majority for permanent, suspicionless mass scanning in future negotiations is a complete pipe dream,” he said.

Negotiations for the permanent law, or “Chat Control 2.0,” will resume in September, with lawmakers disputing whether message scanning should be targeted or applied broadly.

Features: Crypto industry looks to stablecoins and DeFi revisions in MiCA 2.0

Bitcoin’s gets bullish signal from MACD. Next stop above $70,000?

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Traders typically do not rely on a single indicator to determine market trends. But this particular MACD has proved reliable as a standalone gauge through the price crash from the record high of $126,000. Since October, negative crossovers have reliably marked the start of steeper declines, while positive crossovers have preceded meaningful recovery rallies – including the December–January bounce and the February–May bounce.

The latest bullish crossover therefore points to a notable bounce ahead, though not necessarily the start of a full-blown new uptrend. That bigger move would need more confirmation, which is why the key resistance levels below are now in focus.

Key levels ahead

The first level to watch is the 50-day simple moving average, currently around $65,434. This is simply the average bitcoin price over the past 50 days (roughly two months).

Traders in both crypto and traditional markets watch this line closely to gauge near-term momentum. A clear move above it is often seen as a sign that upside strength is building.

The second key level is $67,292, which was the mid-June high. This is where bitcoin staged a brief recovery from early June lows near $60,000, only for sellers to step in aggressively. That resistance turned the price lower again. Breaking above $67,292 would be another win for buyers, showing they have overcome the previous area of strong selling pressure.

Ether Bridged To Robinhood Chain Tops $70M in First Week

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The amount of Ether bridged to Robinhood’s new layer-2 blockchain exceeded $70 million in just the first week, according to Token Terminal. 

Robinhood Chain, an EVM-compatible Arbitrum-based layer-2 network that uses ETH as its native gas token, launched on July 1 with the company describing it as “AI-native and purpose-built for real-world assets.” 

“If adoption continues, the chain could become a meaningful new source of demand for ETH,” said Token Terminal on Thursday. 

Robinhood has also offered tokenized stocks to customers in more than 120 countries, responding to a surging demand for tokenized US equities. Ethereum and its layer-2 scaling networks have been a popular choice for tokenized real-world assets (RWA) with more than 50% market share, according to RWA.xyz, and this move could cement that position even further. 

Turning liquidity into economic activity

“Robinhood Chain is rapidly turning liquidity into economic activity,” said Token Terminal in a separate post on X. 

Robinhood Chain’s daily active users reached 194,000 while daily revenue has grown to $39,000, equivalent to a $14 million annualized revenue run rate, within the chain’s first week, it said. 

DefiLlama, a decentralized finance data platform, shows similar figures, showing Robinhood Chain has a total value locked of 46,748 ETH, worth around $83 million at current market prices. Thursday’s inflows alone totaled 31,855 ETH, or around $55 million.  

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams said Friday that most of what is happening on the Robinhood Chain is ETH-denominated. 

“It’s the base pair for trading, the highest volume asset, and the gas token to pay for blockspace. It also burns ETH on L1 to pay data storage fees,” he added. 

ETH bridged to Robinhood Chain tops $70 million. Source: Token Terminal 

Andri Fauzan Adziima, research lead at Bitrue Research Institute, told Cointelegraph that it was “strongly bullish” and early volume “validates the L2 flywheel,” as a “meaningful new demand sink.”

“By using ETH as the native gas token on this high-velocity Arbitrum L2, every transaction I track creates direct, recurring demand while locking capital and onboarding Robinhood’s massive user base.” 

Related: L1s face decentralization ‘tug-of-war’ as adoption grows: Injective CEO

Tim Sun, HashKey Group senior researcher, said it was “a clear, structural positive for ETH.”

“For Ethereum, the most direct benefit is that Robinhood Chain uses ETH for gas,” he said. “As bridged assets, wallet addresses, and on-chain transactions grow, new demand for ETH is generated.”

“However, the deeper significance lies not just in how much gas is consumed, but in Robinhood’s choice to build its own on-chain financial ecosystem within the Ethereum network. This further solidifies the Ethereum mainnet’s position as the ultimate settlement layer and liquidity foundation for tokenized assets.”

Bulls argue Ethereum’s long-term growth thesis comes from RWA tokenization, agentic AI payments, institutional adoption and network upgrades, such as Glamsterdam, expected before the end of 2026, which is expected to increase layer 1 capacity. 

ETH prices ticked up on Friday to reach $1,775 but remain at multi-year bear market lows, down 64% from their August 2025 peak. 

Features: The biggest blockchain upgrades still to come in 2026

BitGo Adds Quantum-Risk Controls To Bitcoin Custody

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BitGo Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: BTGO) introduced a set of tools to help institutions measure and reduce the quantum-computing risk tied to their Bitcoin holdings. The digital asset infrastructure company said the features apply to UTXO-based wallets and its multi-signature custody service.

The release builds on BitGo’s multi-signature architecture, which the firm pioneered for Bitcoin to reduce single points of failure. The new controls give clients more visibility into wallet-key exposure, better handling of unspent transaction outputs, and workflows for institutional wallet operations.

At the center of the launch is a Quantum Risk Score, an in-platform system that rates potential quantum exposure across supported Bitcoin wallets. A Fix Exposed Addresses Workflow guides clients through moving funds from addresses with elevated exposure into new addresses with stronger key hygiene. 

A new UTXO Selection Method groups and prioritizes coins by address to limit the exposure that partial spends create. Updated default address-type controls steer wallets away from transaction patterns that raise quantum concerns.

Bitcoin could face quantum attacks

The risk stems from how Bitcoin addresses work. An address whose public key has appeared on-chain could, in a future with capable quantum machines, face attack. 

Estimates place 6.9 million Bitcoin in addresses with exposed public keys. Funds in address types that reveal a public key from creation, such as Taproot or Pay-to-Public-Key, fall outside the scope of the application and need separate remediation.

“We believe the safest key is one whose public key has never been revealed on-chain,” said Mike Belshe, CEO and co-founder of BitGo. “These capabilities give institutions a practical way to understand and reduce quantum exposure while continuing to rely on the proven security of multi-signature.”

BitGo said no quantum computer can break Bitcoin at present. Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream and BSTR, framed the timing as a reason to act. “Nobody has a quantum computer that can touch Bitcoin today, but that’s exactly why the work should start now, while it’s calm and optional rather than urgent and forced,” he said.

The company described the tools as a complement to future protocol-level post-quantum signature upgrades to Bitcoin, rather than a replacement. 

The features cover supported UTXO-based assets and multi-signature configurations.

XRP price jumps 2% on bitcoin strength as buyers push through $1.10 resistance

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• The main breakout came around 01:00 UTC, when volume jumped to 43.51 million XRP, about 88% above the 24-hour average.

• The move carried XRP to an intraday high of $1.1065 before price stabilized near $1.1020-$1.1040.

• A later 60-minute spike reached 14.17 million in volume, pushing XRP from $1.0958 to $1.1052 before profit-taking slowed the move.

Technical Analysis

• The key development is that XRP cleared the $1.0950-$1.1000 area after several sessions of range-bound trading.

• The breakout was supported by volume, which gives the move more weight than the earlier low-volume attempts above resistance.

• Higher lows through the session show buyers are stepping in earlier, with $1.0880 acting as the main support level during pullbacks.

• The post-breakout hold near $1.1020-$1.1040 is constructive because XRP did not immediately lose the $1.10 area after the spike.

• The next test is whether buyers can keep XRP above $1.10 long enough to challenge $1.1065 and then $1.13.

What traders should watch

• $1.10 is the immediate support level after the breakout.

• $1.0880 is the next level to watch if XRP slips back into its prior range.

• $1.1065 is the first resistance after marking the session high.

• $1.11 is the next psychological level, followed by $1.13 if momentum continues.

Bitcoin’s New Debt Machine Is Facing Its First Major Test

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Public companies kept stacking Bitcoin in June, but the month’s real story played out in a corner of the market that did not exist a couple of years ago: the preferred shares that treasury firms now use to fund their coin purchases. 

A new report from BitcoinTreasuries.net calls June the first true stress test for this “digital credit” market, and the results offer a mixed but telling verdict on where corporate Bitcoin adoption goes next.

First, the buying. Public treasuries added close to 9,000 BTC before sales in June, or about 7,300 BTC on a net basis, worth some $427 million at the month-end price of $58,398. That counts as moderate growth, and two names did most of the work. 

Michael Saylor’s Strategy added 3,625 BTC net, and Strive added 3,364, with each company spending in the neighborhood of $200 million. 

Strip out those two and the rest of the field bought about 2,000 BTC. For the full second quarter, the report estimates 110,000 BTC in net additions, a pace that beat the two quarters before it.

The context matters here. Bitcoin sat well below its October 2025 peak near $126,000 and dipped under $60,000 during the month. That backdrop set the stage for the drama in digital credit.

Preferred shares to fuel bitcoin

To understand why that drama matters, it helps to know how the model works. Companies such as Strategy no longer rely on their own cash to buy Bitcoin. They issue preferred shares that promise investors a fixed or variable dividend, sell them near a $100 par value, and route the proceeds into coins.

Strategy’s flagship product, STRC, and Strive’s version, SATA, became the two biggest of these instruments. For a stretch, they traded in a tight band around par, and investors treated them as a place to park money at a healthy yield.

That calm bred risk. As the report explains, a long run near par let leverage build inside STRC as buyers borrowed to amplify the trade. When Bitcoin’s price slid, that leverage turned into a trigger. 

Starting June 18, STRC and SATA fell below their $100 par. Leveraged holders got margin-called, forced sales pushed prices down, and STRC bottomed near $75. SATA weakened from a mix of its own pressures and spillover from STRC. 

This was not a crisis of the underlying dividends, which kept flowing, but a crisis of positioning, the report framed.

The recovery came fast enough to reassure the faithful. By July 2, STRC changed hands near $87 and SATA near $97, prices that held into the report’s July 9 publication. Neither Strategy nor Strive missed a dividend. 

Strategy’s bitcoin holdings

The report notes that Strategy held 847,363 BTC at an average cost near $75,651 and had a $1.1 billion dollar reserve in mid-June, while Strive kept an 18-month dividend reserve. The pitch: these are cash-flow questions, not solvency questions.

Strategy did not sit still. Saylor’s firm rolled out share and digital-credit buybacks, raised STRC dividends, and set up a dollar reserve, a package meant to steady prices while it keeps buying coins. Saylor framed it as a balance between commitment to Bitcoin and the “liquidity, discipline, and active capital management” the credit strategy demands.

Since then, Strategy has sold $3,588 and now holds 843,775 bitcoin. 

The market voted with volume. Combined STRC and SATA trading topped $10 billion in June, a monthly record for each, and that came without new at-the-market share sales feeding the pipeline. Demand for the paper, in other words, did not vanish when the price broke.

BitcoinTreasuries.net polled its readers, an audience it concedes leans pro-digital-credit, and found more optimism than fear. A slim majority, 52%, did not see the price drop as a major problem. Most holders sat tight, and 52% of all respondents bought STRC or SATA after June 18. 

At the same time, three-quarters expect price swings to recur, so nobody is calling the risk gone. Looking ahead, 77.8% expect the digital-credit supply to grow by the end of 2027, and about a fifth expect it to clear $50 billion.