Bitcoin's June Was So Bad, Even the Candlestick Forgot to Wick 🕯️

Bitcoin ended June with its worst monthly performance since June 2022, shedding roughly 20% to close below $60,000, with the monthly candle forming a near-solid red body and virtually no wicks — a configuration that signals uninterrupted seller dominance throughout the period. BTC was recently trading near $58,700 after spiking to $57,700, its lowest level since September 2024. Ether ($ETH) hovered around $1,580, while Solana ($SOL) gained more than 22% over the past week to trade near $81, leading major tokens. XRP rose above $1.09, adding more than 3% on the day.

The selloff was driven by a combination of macroeconomic and institutional headwinds. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs bled roughly $4.5 billion in June, their worst month on record per SoSoValue data, including a $691 million single-day outflow on June 26 — the largest since May 27 — according to Farside Investors. Annual growth in U.S. ETF Bitcoin holdings has slumped to "basically zero" for the first time since the funds launched in 2024, with the ETFs now adding to Bitcoin's supply rather than soaking it up, CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno told Milk Road Wednesday. CryptoQuant data also shows exchange reserves rising by a net 85,000 BTC since the start of 2026, with roughly 50,000 BTC sent to exchanges at a loss over the past 24 hours and the short-term holder market cap falling to $237.7 billion, its lowest since October 2024.

Derivatives markets reflected persistent stress. Over the past 24 hours, $395 million in crypto futures positions were liquidated, with bullish longs accounting for most of the tally, and bitcoin futures open interest climbed to 768,000 BTC from 740,000 BTC a day earlier. The 30-day 25-delta put-call skew climbed to 9.4 on Tuesday, the highest since March, according to Deribit data shared by Amberdata. Bitcoin options flows turned defensive, with a notable block trade targeting a $50,000 BTC put at the September expiry. On Deribit, roughly $10.6 billion in bitcoin options expired Friday, with the cryptocurrency trading far below the roughly $72,000 "max pain" level and about 80% of those contracts on track to expire worthless. The $60,000 mark "remains the definitive line in the sand," said Mike McCluskey, co-founder of tokenization platform tx, noting heavy put positioning at that strike.

A separate set of pressures compounded the slide. The Japanese yen slipped to 162.40 per U.S. dollar on June 30, its weakest level since October 1986, lifting the Dollar Index to 101.32 and weighing on risk assets. Strategy, the world's largest publicly listed BTC holder, authorized plans for a $1.25 billion "monetization program" that may include selling more than $1 billion of bitcoin, a pivot from founder Michael Saylor's longtime "never sell your bitcoin" stance. "The can has been kicked down the road for a year or two," Jeff Dorman, CIO of Arca, said on X. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's hawkish debut has kept rate cuts off the table, with the two-year Treasury yield ending Wednesday at 4.15%.

Despite the rout, on-chain signals suggested early-stage accumulation. Glassnode reported that long-term holders have swung back to accumulation and that spot orderbooks on Binance and Coinbase have turned bid-heavy, even as more bitcoin is now held at a loss than in profit. Analyst Chris Beamish described the conditions as "the early stages of a bottoming process." Crypto analyst Axel Adler Jr. observed that the Bitcoin long-term holder MVRV has compressed to 1.24, its lowest in three years, while the long-term holder average cost basis sits at $48,400. The Fear & Greed Index slipped to 11, marking "Extreme Fear." Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said on a Thursday AMA that Bitcoin's bull case "revolves on two things," the passage of the Clarity Act, and a Fed rate cut, and that until a fresh catalyst arrives, he sees Bitcoin range-bound. Friday's weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs report — 57,000 versus 115,000 expected — gave crypto a brief lift, with BTC topping $62,000 as over $602 million in positions were liquidated in 24 hours, $400 million of which were shorts.