Bitcoin closed May in the red. Will June be doom and gloom?
May was bad, but June is historically worse for bitcoin’s performance
Bitcoin had a rough May, closing the month down 3.41%, its first month in the red since February, CoinGlass data shows. And it’s starting June, historically a bad month for bitcoin’s performance, down 2.3%.
Bitcoin dropped below $71,500 on Monday morning, its lowest level since mid-April, following the news that Strategy sold bitcoin, raising $2.5 million. While this is a meager amount, the historic move could dampen sentiment.
Bitcoin ETFs, a key anchor of bitcoin’s price since the Iran war began, also had a bad month. They registered $2.43 billion in outflows in May, the largest monthly exit since November, according to SoSoValue. This latest exodus also represents the third consecutive billion-dollar week of outflows.
Nic Puckrin, cofounder of Coin Bureau, told Sherwood News that “momentum is not on bitcoin’s side this week,” adding that the outflows coupled with Strategy’s sale are putting too much downward pressure on the price.
Puckrin said this is surprising, as bitcoin is falling while the US stock market continues to hit new highs, suggesting the asset is being driven more by crypto-specific sentiment.
“And this is close to rock bottom right now,” Puckrin said, adding that having broken below the $73,000 support level, bitcoin now needs to hold above $70,000 to avoid a more significant slide lower.
“A deal between the US and Iran would offer some relief, but it would likely not cause a major bounce at this point in the cycle,” he said.
Rajiv Sawhney, head of international portfolio management at Wave Digital Assets, told Sherwood that the outflow streak has pushed year-to-date ETF flows negative for the first time since 2025 as capital rotates toward AI stocks, a behavior that may continue as capital looks for higher returns elsewhere in the short term.
On the technical front, Sawhney said that bitcoin has been locked between the 200-day moving average ($79,559) and the 100-day MA ($73,183), and it will continue to consolidate between these two in the short term, until we get a broader macro catalyst.
“The options front is causing us to pin within this range as well. In particular, as basis has collapsed since February, BTC funds and institutions have resorted to options to extract yield/returns on their BTC. Their preference has been selling out-of-the-money covered calls to earn the premium, pinning BTC within a range to the topside, given the positive gamma profile there,” he said.
Sawhney said that $70,000 to $72,000 is the material level at which he sees “decent negative gamma in the market over the next two weeks.”
So what’s left in June to drive bitcoin higher?
Despite the asset facing a few headwinds heading into June, Caroline Mauron, cofounder of Orbit Markets, told Sherwood that a potential driver are the recent large rallies in smaller-cap tokens like hype and NEAR. These could bring back retail interest, with profits eventually rotating back into bitcoin, she said.
Finally, key determinants of future price action will be geopolitical conflicts (or lack thereof) and a potential dovish shift by the Fed, Justin d’Anethan, head of research at Arctic Digital, told Sherwood.
“We need more liquidity and certainty for prices to rise and for investors, long-standing ones or new ones, to bet on higher levels,” d’Anethan said.
