Bitcoin (BTC) is starting the new week at around $63,000, but bear-market history continues to repeat with weekly close below a key long-term trend line.
Key points:
- Bitcoin has been trading in a range between $57,700 and $67,300, but last week’s close came with a drop below the key 200-week moving average at $64,216.
- Markets are pricing in near-70% odds of a hold by the Federal Reserve in September, as July meeting minutes are due this week.
- Japan Q2 GDP figures fall short of expectations at 1.1% as analysis warns of “global tightening” that could impact Bitcoin and risk assets.Â
Bitcoin sees weekly close below 200-week moving average
Bitcoin price action enjoyed a modest rebound after Sunday’s weekly close, seeing local highs of $63,655 on Bitstamp.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Data from TradingView shows BTC/USD continuing to tread water as the week begins, failing to challenge either side of a narrow trading range.
Analyst Benjamin Cowen, however, drew attention to the fact that BTC/USD is now back below its 200-week simple moving average (SMA). As Cointelegraph reported, this moving average was a defining feature in the 2022 bear market, when it turned resistance in August before BTC entered its long-term bottoming phase.
“What is interesting is how in both summer 2022/2026, Bitcoin capitulated below the 200W SMA, then bounced, then gave it up in mid-August,” he wrote in a post on X.
BTC/USD one-week chart with 200 SMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Commenting, trader and analyst Rekt Capital added that price had failed to reach his own weekly-close target of $63,220, thus positioning for further downside in future.
“A rejection from $63,220 would fully confirm the breakdown and send price lower within the current ~$58,000-$66,000 Range (blue-blue)” he told X followers alongside an explanatory chart.
BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com
Fed minutes due amid policy dissent
Friday sees the release of preliminary Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data for the manufacturing and services sectors. The data has recently been in an uptrend diverging from relatively weak employment figures, which have seen several months of downward revisions.Â
Last week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) releases, meanwhile, painted a softer-than-expected picture of US inflation trends. This sparked a rethink on future interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.Â
The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool shows near-70% odds that the Fed will hold rates at their current 3.50-3.75% range, compared with 42% odds a month ago.
Fed target-rate probability comparison for September FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
“A pair of reports showing moderating inflation is helping keep the outlook for monetary policy from turning too hawkish,” trading resource Mosaic Asset Company summarized in analysis released on Sunday.
Mosaic noted that while CPI came in at 3.4% year-on-year, this was still far above the Fed’s 2% target — a goal that chair Kevin Warsh continues to state will be achieved. On Wednesday, the Fed will publish the minutes of its July meeting. Rate hikes were paused in the prior meeting with the largest split among officials over the move since 1970.
Last week, Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank president Beth Hammack, who was one of three dissenting voices calling for a 0.25% rate hike in July, questioned whether public patience would tolerate it if the return to 2% rates took several years.
“Maybe we’d get there, but if it takes another three to four years to get there, is that OK? Is that enough?” she said at an event with the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce in Kettering, Ohio, quoted by Bloomberg.
Japan on the radar as GDP disappoints
Japan’s central bank is on the radar for risk-asset traders this week after Q2 GDP figures significantly missed expectations. Quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year GDP increased 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively — below the anticipated 0.5% and 2.0%.
The timing of the print comes as markets see the Bank of Japan (BoJ) hiking rates from current 1.0% levels in September amid surging bond yields and continued weakening in the yen. Previously, Cointelegraph reported on a rare joint intervention in yen currency markets by Japan and the US after JPY/USD weakened to new 40-year lows.
BoJ interest-rate probabilities (screenshot). Source: RateProbability
The GDP print, meanwhile, included the first drop in private consumption in eight quarters, signaling that existing stimulus measures were failing to prop up consumer confidence.
“The boost to consumption from policy measures is already fading, and inflation will increase in H2 as firms will pass on increased costs, deteriorating consumers’ purchasing power,” Norihiro Yamaguchi, lead Japan economist at Oxford Economics, told CNBC.
The yen avoided major volatility on the back of the GDP data, lingering near 159 per dollar on Monday.
USD/JPY four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Responding to the aftermath, Axel Adler Jr., a contributor to onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, noted potential implications for risk assets to come. Japan’s 10-year bond yield hit 2.93% on Monday, its highest levels since 1996.
“For now, this is not a signal to sell risk assets. But the market is approaching an important point: JGB > 3% + further BOJ rate hikes + a stronger yen + rising US Treasury yields,” he wrote in an X post.Â
“If these factors align, Japan’s rate normalization could turn into a global tightening of financial conditions and hit stocks and Bitcoin.”
Japan 10-year bond yields one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Bitcoin forgotten as consumer sentiment lows contrast with stocks gains
Rising stocks paired with record-low consumer sentiment are flashing a new warning sign for Bitcoin, which is increasingly being overlooked.
In the latest edition of its regular newsletter, The Week Onchain, crypto analytics platform Glassnode revealed a striking divergence between Bitcoin and equities in terms of sentiment.
“Consumer Confidence remains among the weakest readings of the past decade even after two consecutive improvements, while the US Stock Market Index set a fresh all-time high on August 7 and holds just beneath it,” it summarized.
The softer US inflation prints helped send the S&P 500 to all-time highs of 7,816 on Thursday. At the same time, the consumer sentiment survey by the University of Michigan is expected to drop 7.6% in August.
“Weak sentiment next to record prices looks like a contradiction until the driver is named: households that expect living costs to rise and the economy to soften are moving out of cash and into assets. The equity market, carried above all by the AI trade, is where that capital lands,” Glassnode commented.
US consumer sentiment data. Source: University of Michigan
Bitcoin continues to be left out of this capital rotation. A sign of change, Glassnode argued, would be a sustained rebound in institutional inflows to the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Last week, these saw net outflows of $267.2 million, per data from UK-based investment company Farside Investors. Just one out of five trading days finished with net inflows, totaling a mere $7.8 million.
US spot Bitcoin ETF netflows (screenshot). Source: Farside Investors
Exchange BTC reserves grow with whale inflows in focus
Bitcoin supply dynamics are the latest troubling feature for its price trajectory, CryptoQuant analysis reports.
Related: Here’s what happened in crypto today
Whales have started to dominate exchange inflows, exacerbating an existing absence of retail interest and causing exchange BTC reserves to reverse higher. Binance’s whale ratio reached 0.71 on Aug. 10, its highest since early March.Â
“Exchange deposits do not necessarily mean immediate selling, but they increase the amount of BTC available for trading or hedging,” CryptoQuant commented.
Binance exchange whale ratio. Source: CryptoQuant
Binance’s BTC reserves totaled 674,332 BTC on Sunday, up 2.57% month-to-date and at their highest since November 2025.
“The long-running trend of BTC leaving exchanges may therefore be weakening,” CryptoQuant continued.
Binance BTC reserves. Source: CryptoQuant
As Cointelegraph reported, exchange activity has been driven by derivatives markets as BTC/USD trades in a tight range since early June. On Binance, futures trading volume was eight times that of spot markets in early August.