Strategy Sold 3,588 BTC for $216M. Bitcoin Yawned, Wiggled, Kept Climbing 🎢

Bitcoin traded near $63,170 on Tuesday after an overnight push to $64,400 faded, leaving the largest cryptocurrency little changed on the day and up roughly 6% on the week, according to CoinDesk data. The round trip 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 policy — a transaction the market absorbed without breaking the recovery.

Ether held around $1,770, climbing 11.6% over the week, while XRP and solana retained most of their weekly gains at $1.13 and $80, respectively. Most major tokens were little changed in 24 hours after leading the prior week's advance.

The rebound from late-June lows near $58,000 has firmed even as its underlying trading thins. Bitcoin on Friday closed below its 200-week moving average for the first time since 2023, capping a first half in which $BTC fell about 20%. Some derivatives traders read the action as a late-stage washout rather than an early breakdown. "The institutional bid has all but vanished," said Yusuf Fakhro, partner at ARP Digital, noting that CME futures open interest has fallen to a 32-month low and the futures term structure is at its tightest since early 2023. He added that six-month options skew, a measure of how much traders pay for downside protection, has spiked to its fourth-highest level on record, with parallels only in June and November 2022 — both periods that sat near major cycle bottoms.

Macro risks returned overnight after a laden liquefied natural gas carrier was struck by a projectile near the Strait of Hormuz, lifting Brent crude 0.6% to about $72.45 a barrel and testing a late-June ceasefire framework as Asian technology stocks sold off again, even as bitcoin has recently traded independently of declining AI and chip names.