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Bitcoin is “caught between flow deterioration and macro relief”

Bitcoin is flat on Tuesday morning, hovering around $66,300, following a brief rally over the weekend on the news of a looming Iran deal. Yet, while the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and an end to the war would remove the macro overhang and support risk assets, analysts say it’s not to sustain a rally at this point.

“The market is caught between flow deterioration and macro relief,” Timothy Misir, Blockhead Research Network head of research, wrote in a note.

bitcoin is down 9.8% so far in June, according to Coinglass, the worst June for the asset since 2022.

Misir said that while bitcoin “won a short-term reprieve,” the institutional demand remains lackluster.

Bitcoin ETFs have been a key support of bitcoin price since the war began, but have already registered $2.1 billion in outflows so far in June. If this continues, it would put them on track to surpass May’s $2.4 billion exit, according to Coinglass.

They finally saw (meager) inflows on Monday, but reverted to outflows yesterday.

Jasper De Maere, a trader at Wintermute, said in a note that it’s worth remembering the last cycle began with bitcoin ETF approvals in early 2024.

“If the thesis is a blast back to $100k, the question is where that capital comes from, with institutions now sidelined and retail busy trading leveraged ETFs and single-name equities,” De Maere wrote.

Another overhang on the asset is that the recent rally was driven by seller exhaustion rather than genuine demand, Bitfinex analysts told Sherwood News.

They said that bitcoin is now trapped between two critical levels: the cycle floor at the Aggregate Realized Price near $54,000 and overhead supply from short-term holder cohorts, where it faces resistance near $68,000 and higher.

“For now the selling has stopped. The buying has yet to prove itself,” they said.

Looking ahead, Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh’s first FOMC meeting this week could also weigh on the asset. While the CME FedWatch tool places the odds of unchanged rates at 99.6%, all eyes are on Warsh’s tone during the press conference.

Lacie Zhang, research analyst at Bitget Wallet, told Sherwood that if the Fed delivers a dovish pause, bitcoin could retest the $68,000–$70,000 range. If the Fed sounds hawkish, it may briefly revisit $62,000–$63,000.

“Mid-term, lower energy costs and resilient institutional demand keep the broader setup constructive, but confirmation still depends on yields, the dollar, and sustained ETF inflows,” Zhang said.

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Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets, Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were very oversold following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.

Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop thats stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

$389M

US Attorney David Metcalf announced Thursday the arrests of Ruslan Igorevich Tkachuk and Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev, alleged senior members of AudiA6, a cryptocurrency money-laundering service believed to be responsible for laundering over $389 million.

The arrests coincided with a coordinated international takedown of AudiA6 and its infrastructure, involving the search of three properties, the seizure of servers and domains connected to the organization, as well as freezing cryptocurrency assets, according to a Department of Justice press release.

Tkachuk and Ledenev were “charged by criminal complaint with one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments and one count of sting money laundering,” the DOJ said. If convicted, they face a maximum possible sentence of 20 years of incarceration.

Per the criminal complaint, AudiA6 offered services to conceal the origin of cryptocurrency linked to criminal activity, charging fees of up to 5% of the amount laundered.

The two defendants are in custody of Republic of Georgia authorities, and the US Attorney’s Office aims to seek their extradition to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

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