Bitcoin Holds $64K as $435M Liquidations Flush Longs, Panic Selling Halves

Bitcoin News

Spot demand for Bitcoin firmed over a tight five-hour window, with roughly $18.64 million in net capital rotating into BTC as traders redeployed sidelined cash and stablecoin liquidity. Market-flow data shows about $13.48 million in dollar inflows entered the broader market, the bulk landing in BTC ($6.69 million) and USDC ($2.52 million). Tether movement was heavier still: of $17.47 million in USDT that shifted across assets, some $9.45 million flowed directly into Bitcoin. BTC led all inflows by a wide margin, ahead of Stellar ($2.32 million), Solana ($1.99 million), Zcash ($1.33 million) and Tron ($1.11 million), while Ethereum saw a shallow $2.95 million outflow.

Derivatives positioning has reset sharply after a wave of forced selling. Over the past 24 hours, market-wide liquidations reached $435.71 million, with long positions accounting for $307.62 million — about 71% of the total — against just $128.09 million in shorts. Bitcoin absorbed the largest share at $141.68 million, ahead of Ethereum’s $115.49 million, and BTC long liquidations of $97.54 million dwarfed the $44.14 million in shorts wiped out. Open interest slipped 2.8% to $108.5 billion, a classic sign of leveraged longs being flushed. With heavy short liquidity now stacked above $65,500, a reclaim of $65,000 could ignite a squeeze toward $66,000.

On-chain data points to capitulation easing rather than intensifying. The peak in realized losses during the June drawdown reached $1.4 billion, down roughly 46% from the $2.6 billion recorded in February’s correction, and has since cooled to about $558 million. The realized profit-to-loss ratio sits near 0.28, among the year’s lowest, signaling sellers are largely exhausted. Spot demand is filling the gap: order-book depth imbalance on the largest venue flipped to 0.8 in favor of bids, the strongest buy-side skew since December 2025. Meanwhile futures open interest there swung from a positive $258 million to negative $620 million, an $878 million deleveraging in a single day.

Price-distribution mapping frames the current range as a fresh equilibrium. The heaviest weekly volume cluster, or point of control, sits between $64,800 and $65,200, with a dense supply wall near $65,800 likely to cap any near-term rebound. Below the market, the $63,800–$64,300 zone is forming a new support base. Bitcoin now trades roughly 48.75% below its $126,038 all-time high, an improvement from the prior week’s 51% drawdown. Measured from the April 2024 halving, BTC is up just 1.17% over 790 days, while it remains about 310% above the November 2022 cycle low near $15,770.

Independent research flags a widening concentration risk across risk assets. Bitcoin slid from around $72,000 early in the week to below $65,000, and a 32 BTC sale by Strategy — worth roughly $2.5 million — drew outsized attention as the firm’s first disposal since 2022, more for its symbolism than its size. The deeper concern is fading marginal demand: spot Bitcoin ETFs have bled outflows even as the Nasdaq held firm on an AI-led rally, with technology now exceeding 39% of the S&P 500’s weight. Altcoins mirrored the strain, with Ethereum retreating toward $1,700 and Solana sliding near $70.

Builders are still pushing to make idle BTC productive. Merlin Chain, a Bitcoin Layer-2 project, is positioning Bitcoin DeFi as the answer to the asset’s longstanding paradox — the largest, most trusted token in crypto, yet among the least utilized, with most coins sitting dormant in wallets. Its pitch is to let holders earn yield, post BTC as collateral and deploy it in structured strategies without leaving the Bitcoin ecosystem. The ambition arrives amid a tougher backdrop, as some general-purpose Bitcoin L2 ventures have wound down, conceding that programmable BTC has struggled to find product-market fit while store-of-value demand dominates this bear market.

COINOTAG’s proprietary 42-indicator composite scoring engine rates the $64,214 support at 77/100, anchored by the confluence of the S2 pivot and a Fibonacci 0.214 retracement, with secondary defense at $61,918 (70/100, driven by the Keltner lower band and volume point-of-control). To the upside, the engine scores the $64,781 resistance at 77/100 (Fibonacci 0.236 and BB middle band), with $68,192 next at 72/100. With spot near $64,440, an RSI of 39.44 and a bullish MACD crossover against a broader downtrend, positioning stays cautious: funding holds at a thin 0.0029%, open interest spans $11.64 billion and the long/short ratio of 1.79 leaves crowded longs exposed. A Fear & Greed reading of 15 marks extreme fear; losing $61,918 would invalidate the recovery thesis.