Bitcoin closed the week near $62,600 after failing to reclaim $65,000, and traders point to thin trading rather than panic selling. ETF inflows have flipped to outflows, spot volume has hit its lowest level since November 2023, and a Coldcard firmware exploit drained roughly $89 million from self-custodied wallets.
Bitcoin traded near $62,700 on Monday, down 3.5% on the week, after the market again failed to push back above $65,000. Yusuf Fakhro, a partner at Bahrain-based ARP Digital, reads the move through the market's plumbing rather than the Fed headline that nudged the price lower.
A market that stopped showing up
The ETF bid that powered July's recovery has stalled. Spot bitcoin ETFs flipped to net outflows of nearly 4,000 BTC on the week, reversing a run of steady inflows. July logged the lowest average daily spot volume since November 2023. CME open interest sits at 2023 levels, and perpetual-futures positioning has stalled near 300,000 BTC.
According to CoinDesk, Fakhro said: "It's a market that has stopped participating". Even Strategy, the biggest structural buyer, has paused its bitcoin buying for a fifth straight week. Meanwhile, the July 29 Fed meeting held rates and offered no easing signal, stripping out a catalyst bulls had leaned on.
Thin books, not panic
However, the volume data back the thin-market read. Crypto Briefing found that 24-hour trading volume during the decline came in at approximately $25.2 billion, well below the two or three times that size Bitcoin typically sees during genuine sell-offs. About $600 million in positions were liquidated in a single day, with the overwhelming majority coming from longs — a fraction of the multi-billion-dollar cascades seen in the May 2021 crash and the November 2022 FTX collapse.
The broader crypto market cap fell toward $2.25 trillion during the decline. Bitcoin also remains inside the range that has held since summer: Finance Magnates puts the boundaries at roughly $58,100 and $67,000, with a descending trendline and the 50-day EMA continuing to cap recovery attempts.
A separate custody exploit also hit self-custodied wallets this week. A Coldcard firmware flaw dormant since 2021 was exploited to drain roughly 1,367 BTC, about $89 million, from thousands of self-custodied wallets, and some holders have since moved coins back onto exchanges and into regulated products.
Fakhro's next checkpoint is the ETF flow print: if fresh outflows can't push Bitcoin under $60,000, the sellers really are done.
Sources: CoinDesk, Crypto Briefing, Finance Magnates
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