Bitcoin Rebounds Near $65K as Spot Selling Pressure Eases

Bitcoin News

Bitcoin (BTC) has clawed back toward the mid-$60,000s after a punishing first half of 2026, and one widely followed market analyst, Benjamin Cowen, argues the recovery fits a familiar template. In his latest read, Cowen maps the current Bitcoin structure onto the 2018 bear market, noting both cycles printed a February local bottom, a higher March–April low, and a May rejection at bear-market resistance. He expects a late-July or early-August retest of that band, followed by a historically normal give-back through August and September. His base case points to a final macro low around late September or early October.

The rebound follows a brutal drawdown that dragged Bitcoin as low as the $58,000 area earlier this year. A separate market checkpoint framed the question directly: is crypto still in winter, or merely searching for a floor? By mid-July, Bitcoin had recovered to roughly $62,500 at the time of that assessment, yet the analysis stressed the move did not confirm a durable uptrend. Broad buying across major assets remained absent, and the recovery looked more like a transition from freefall into a range than the start of a fresh all-time high chase.

On-chain data underscored why caution persists. Long-term holders — wallets that accumulated Bitcoin well before the 2026 slide — have continued realizing losses, a behavior typically seen deep in capitulation phases rather than at the start of recoveries. Recently entered investors are also locking in red positions. That combination of short-term and long-term holders selling below cost signals that the market has not yet cleanly reset, even as price stabilizes. Historically, elevated long-term-holder loss realization has marked the later innings of a downtrend, but rarely its exact bottom.

US spot Bitcoin ETF flows remained a drag on sentiment. A 30-day moving average of net flows, published July 8, showed the vehicles still bleeding capital on a rolling basis, with trading volumes running below levels seen during prior rallies. The persistence of net redemptions matters because these products became a dominant marginal buyer during Bitcoin's ascent; their reversal into outflows removes a key demand pillar. The altcoin complex has fared worse still, with capital declining to rotate down the risk curve.

Not all signals point lower. The same assessment flagged that spot-market selling pressure has measurably weakened, and the pace of ETF outflows has narrowed from its earlier peak. Investors positioning defensively for another leg down have grown quieter than during the worst of the sell-off. Taken together, these shifts suggest the market may be moving from a phase of accelerating decline into one of base-building — a stage where price grinds sideways while supply changes hands, rather than one that guarantees an immediate recovery.

Beneath the price weakness, real-world adoption kept advancing. Stablecoin settlement, tokenized real-world assets, and institutional blockchain deployment all progressed, with financial firms such as SBI and the Solana Foundation working toward on-chain capital-market infrastructure. This divergence — muted spot prices alongside expanding utility — is a recurring feature of crypto winters, where builders ship while speculators retreat. For long-horizon participants, the buildout of payment rails and settlement layers offers a fundamentals-based counterweight to the near-term chart, even if it does little to move price in the immediate term.

COINOTAG's proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine rates the $64,158 support at 93/100 (strong), driven by the confluence of a Fibonacci 0.114 retracement and stacked high-volume nodes, while the $67,167 resistance scores 82/100 on Keltner Upper and Fibo 0.382 alignment. With spot near $64,728 (+3.07% on the day), RSI at 54.97 and a bullish MACD, the tape reads neutral-to-constructive. Derivatives back this: funding sits mildly positive at 0.0056%, open interest holds near $12.9 billion, and the long/short account ratio of 1.35 (57.4% long) shows measured optimism. Yet a Fear & Greed reading of 25 (Extreme Fear) tempers it. A clean break above $67,167 opens $70,325; a daily close below $64,158 invalidates the bullish thesis and exposes $59,396.