Bitcoin Bleeds 20% in June While Wall Street Yawns and Whales Whisper "Bottom" 🐳

Bitcoin closed June with a roughly 20% monthly loss, its worst June performance since 2022, after dipping to $57,700 on Wednesday, its lowest level since September 2024, before rebounding above $62,000 to around $61,800 in early Thursday trade, according to CoinGecko. The largest cryptocurrency remains approximately 52–53% below the record near $126,080–$126,198 it set in October 2025. Ether (ETH) climbed to about $1,701, and Solana (SOL) reached roughly $81, with each up nearly 5% on the day.

The selling drew in over $1 billion in leveraged liquidations across the worst stretch of the month, with longs again absorbing the bulk of forced closures. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs bled roughly $691 million on June 26 alone, their largest single-day outflow since May 27, and shed about $4.5 billion in June overall, the worst month on record for the products. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded nearly $1.79 billion in net outflows during the week ending June 29 and roughly $6 billion over the past month, per SoSoValue, while ETF issuers have sold approximately 160,000 BTC since reserves peaked in late October 2025, representing more than $11 billion in losses. Roughly 50,000 BTC was sent to exchanges at a loss over a 24-hour stretch, short-term holder market cap dropped to $237.7 billion, and CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno told Milk Road that annual growth in U.S. ETF Bitcoin holdings has slumped to "basically zero" for the first time since the funds launched in 2024.

On the options side, Deribit's June 27 expiry included about $10.6 billion in Bitcoin contracts, with some 80% set to expire worthless as BTC traded far below the roughly $72,000 max pain level. A separate monthly expiry on June 29 saw roughly $11 billion in contracts settle, with heavy put open interest near the $60,000 strike pinning price action. Flows since turned defensive: a notable block trade targeted $50,000 BTC puts at the September expiry, and puts trade at a premium to calls across all timeframes on Deribit, with the bitcoin BVIV index briefly reaching 47%.

Macro headwinds added to the drag. The Japanese yen slipped to 162.40 per U.S. dollar, its weakest level since October 1986, lifting the Dollar Index to 101.32. Strategy, the largest publicly listed BTC holder, authorized up to $1 billion each in buybacks of its preferred and Class A common shares and launched a $1.25 billion "monetization program" that may involve selling over $1 billion of bitcoin, a pivot from founder Michael Saylor's longtime "never sell" mantra. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh declined to signal the policy direction at his Wednesday appearance, with rate traders pricing roughly even odds of a hold or hike at September and a 64% chance of some hike by October per CME FedWatch, after softer ADP private payrolls of 98,000 and a cooler ISM prices-paid gauge of 73.

Despite the bearish tape, on-chain data points to tentative accumulation beneath the surface. Long-term holders have swung back to accumulation, Binance and Coinbase spot orderbooks have turned bid-heavy, the long-term holder MVRV has compressed to 1.24, and roughly 50,000 BTC moved onto exchanges at a loss, classic late-stage capitulation signals. Glassnode analyst Chris Beamish described the conditions as "the early stages of a bottoming process," while warning that a final capitulation spike cannot be ruled out, and Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said Bitcoin's bull case "revolves on two things," the passage of the Clarity Act and a Fed rate cut, with the war in Iran having "slowed the cutting cycle down." Historical seasonality offers modest encouragement, with BTC averaging a 7.6% July return and 10.3% in U.S. midterm years, leaving analysts watching whether the bounce toward $62,000 holds into the next monthly open.