Bitcoin spent Monday failing to hold $65,000, a level that has capped the price for all of July. The rejection came as US stocks battled two separate problems at once: a hedge fund exit from
Bitcoin spent Monday failing to hold $65,000, a level that has capped the price for all of July. The rejection came as US stocks battled two separate problems at once: a hedge fund exit from tech shares and a shooting war between the United States and Iran.
BTC traded near $65,447 at the time of writing, up about 1.3% on the day but unable to close above the $65,000 line with any force. Traders described the same pattern repeating for weeks: a push up, a fade back down, then another attempt.
Trader Daan Crypto Trades called $65,000 the level that has capped price for the entirety of July. He also noted that Bitcoin has been printing higher lows over the past three weeks, a detail that matters more than the failed breakouts themselves.
Higher lows during a flat top usually mean sellers are running out of supply. Daan Crypto Trades argued that the longer price spends pinned under $65,000, the more likely that ceiling eventually breaks. His next target sits just above $67,000, a point he said would flip the chart into a bullish market structure.
Analyst Michael van de Poppe gave a similar range, between $67,500 and $69,000 over the coming weeks. He had earlier floated $80,000 as an August target, a level Bitcoin last touched in mid-May. Van de Poppe also pointed to summer seasonality, a period that historically produces fewer large moves in either direction.
The bigger obstacle sits outside crypto entirely. Trading resource The Kobeissi Letter reported that hedge funds have sold information technology stocks in six of the last eight weeks, citing Goldman Sachs data. That stretch now represents the largest eight-week technology selling total in at least ten years.
This matters for Bitcoin because BTC has traded as a high-beta tech proxy for much of 2026. When institutional money exits Nasdaq names at a record clip, risk appetite tends to drain out of crypto too, even without any crypto-specific news driving the move.
Despite the selling pressure, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were both modestly higher on the day, while the Dow Jones was down about 0.3%. The divergence suggests the tech sell-off is a rotation within equities rather than a broad market collapse.
Alongside the tech unwind, the US-Iran war has kept a lid on risk appetite since fighting escalated. Oil prices have stayed above $80 per barrel, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed as rhetoric between Washington and Tehran keeps intensifying.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social calling for Iran to be folded into a sanctions package originally built around Russia. Wars and sanctions threats typically push investors toward cash and away from risk assets, and Bitcoin has felt that pull directly. ETF data showed $424.7 million pulled from spot Bitcoin funds in a single day last Monday, right after the conflict reignited.
The context that makes today's price action easier to read is what happened before it. Spot Bitcoin ETFs suffered eight straight weeks of outflows starting in early May, shedding more than $8 billion in total. June alone accounted for roughly $4.5 billion of that, the worst single month since the products launched in January 2024.
That streak broke in early July. A $221.7 million single-day inflow on July 3 ended a ten-day, $2.73 billion outflow run. BlackRock's IBIT then led a $209 million session on July 6, a detail analysts flagged because IBIT inflows tend to reflect longer-term institutional conviction rather than short-term trading.
Since then, ETFs have logged two consecutive weeks of net inflows: $197.4 million in the week ending July 10, and $75.7 million in the week ending July 18. That brings July's total to about $200 million. Year-to-date flows remain deeply negative at roughly $5.2 billion to $5.4 billion, so the rebound has recovered only a small fraction of what left the category since May.
Analysts are split on what this means. Simon-Peter Massabni of XS.com called the recovery still lacking real strength and said Bitcoin needs a decisive break above the $65,000 to $65,500 range to confirm any new uptrend. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas compared the pattern to gold ETFs, which have historically cycled through sharp drawdowns followed by recoveries that eventually reach new highs.
Citigroup took the more cautious side on July 1, cutting its 12-month Bitcoin ETF inflow forecast from $10 billion to zero and lowering its price target from $112,000 to $82,000, citing weaker-than-expected flows.
Bitcoin is caught between two competing forces. On one side, ETF inflows are returning after the worst outflow stretch in the product's history, and futures open interest has climbed to $47.6 billion from a low of $44 billion last month, both signs of rebuilding demand. On the other, a record tech stock sell-off and an active war are keeping a ceiling on risk appetite across every asset class, not just crypto.
The $65,000 level is the line separating these two stories. A clean break above it would support the case that BTC is rebuilding toward $67,000 to $70,000, as several traders expect. Continued failure at that level, paired with more war headlines or renewed tech selling, would argue that the ETF recovery is still too thin to matter.
