Bitcoin held near $64,000 on Wednesday as traders awaited the July U.S. inflation report, the session's main macro event. A separate exploit on the Harmony blockchain sent its ONE token to a record low, while bitcoin's own trading activity has sunk to a three-year low even as leverage stays elevated.
Bitcoin added 0.23% since midnight UTC to trade at around $63,979. The Fear and Greed index read 38, and total crypto market capitalization held at $2.19 trillion. The July Consumer Price Index print, due at 12:30 UTC, is the day's focal point for risk assets.
Harmony exploit rattles altcoins
Harmony, a layer-1 blockchain network for DeFi protocols and marketplaces, confirmed it had been hit by an exploit early in the Asian trading day. An attacker minted roughly 4 billion ONE tokens through empty blocks, equal to about 26% of the token's circulating supply.
Around 2.8 billion of those tokens were quickly funneled to exchanges, pushing ONE down as much as 40% to a record low. Bitcoin itself absorbed the episode quietly, but the shock still rippled through sentiment across smaller tokens.
Trading activity sinks even as leverage builds
Bitcoin's own market tells a quieter story. The 30-day average combined trading volume for BTC/USDT perpetuals on Binance and Bybit fell to $10.8 billion as of Aug. 10, according to K33. Only 5% of days since January 2021 have recorded lower 30-day average volumes across the two products, K33 said. Spot activity has thinned as well, with average daily bitcoin spot volume dropping 18% over the past week to $1.8 billion, the lowest one-week average since February 2024.
Yet thin trading hasn't come with thin leverage. Open interest in bitcoin perpetuals has averaged around 300,000 BTC between June 1 and Aug. 11, above the 2026 average of 288,000 BTC, leaving the market exposed to sharper liquidation-driven swings once the CPI print lands.
Inflation data collides with oil supply fears
Economists polled by Reuters expect headline CPI to rise 0.1% month over month and 3.4% year over year, with core CPI seen up 0.2% month over month and 2.5% year over year. Markets are pricing roughly a 50% chance of a 25-basis-point hike at the September Federal Reserve meeting heading into the release.
Brent crude traded near $90 a barrel after fresh Houthi attacks on shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and a U.S. strike on a vessel in the Gulf of Oman, complicating the inflation outlook. Optimism over a U.S.-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz has also waned, with Tehran denying that talks with Washington had taken place.
Bitcoin has traded between roughly $60,000 and $80,000 for six consecutive months and remains near a 50% drawdown from its October 2025 all-time high.
Sources: CoinDesk, The Block, Investing.com
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