Bitcoin drops after a run at $64,000, shrugging off Strategy's $213 million BTC sale

Bitcoin held in the low $63,000s on Tuesday after an overnight push above $64,000 faded, a round trip that left the token roughly flat on the day but still up about 6% over the week.

Bitcoin traded around $63,170, per CoinDesk data, after touching $64,400 in the early hours and slipping back. The move came despite Strategy's disclosure this week that it sold 3,588 bitcoin for about $216 million, its largest sale since abandoning its never-sell stance, which the market largely absorbed without breaking the recovery.

Ether held near $1,770, up 11.6% on the week, while XRP and solana kept most of their weekly gains at $1.13 and $80. Most majors were little changed on the day after leading the prior week's advance.

The recovery has firmed even as its footing stays thin. Bitcoin fell to a 21-month low near $58,000 at the end of June and has clawed back into the low $60,000s, a bounce rather than a breakdown after a first half it closed down about 20%, with its first weekly close below the 200-week moving average, a long-term trend line, since 2023.

Some derivatives traders read the washout as late-stage rather than early.

“The institutional bid has all but vanished,” said Yusuf Fakhro, partner at ARP Digital, pointing to CME futures open interest at a 32-month low and a term structure at its tightest since early 2023.

He added that six-month options skew, a measure of how much traders pay to protect against a drop, has spiked to its fourth-highest on record, with the only parallels in June and November 2022, both of which came near major cycle bottoms.

When downside insurance gets this expensive, he said, the market is paying up for protection just as the worst may already be priced in.

Oil re-entered the picture overnight. Brent crude rose 0.6% to about $72.45 a barrel after a laden liquefied natural gas carrier was struck by a projectile near the Omani coast as it left the Strait of Hormuz, according to Bloomberg, a fresh attack that tests the peace deal reached in late June.

Energy shocks tied to the Iran conflict drove crypto's selling earlier this year before the truce eased them, and a renewed flare-up is the kind of macro risk that had faded from the market's view.

Elsewhere, Asian shares fell as technology stocks came under renewed selling, with South Korea's Kospi down 6.7%, according to Bloomberg. Samsung Electronics slid 8.3% even after quarterly profit surged, and SK Hynix fell the same as it began marketing a U.S. listing. U.S. futures pointed lower, suggesting Monday's Wall Street rebound may not carry.