#夏日创作营 On Saturday, July 18: In-depth BTC market analysis
On July 18, Bitcoin initially surged during the day to probe the $65,000 level, but then came under pressure and pulled back. Throughout the day, it remained in a high-range consolidation pattern. The current price is trading in the $63,500–$63,900 range. Over the past 24 hours, it is slightly down by 0.19%. The market’s long and short sides are locked in a stalemate, with today’s Bitcoin options worth about $1.2 billion reaching expiry in a concentrated manner. The key pain-point strike price is $63,000. Derivatives positioning battles have directly squeezed the available room for one-way intraday price movement. The call-to-put ratio is 0.9. Traders’ willingness to hedge downside risk has clearly increased, and short-term chasing rallies to go long has cooled sharply.
Tug-of-war in macro policy expectations is the core factor constraining an upside breakout. Previously, the U.S. June CPI print turned negative on a month-over-month basis, and the temporary cooling in inflation led the market to sharply cut the probability of a Fed rate hike in July to 15%. However, recently multiple Fed officials have released hawkish remarks in a concentrated fashion, repeatedly emphasizing that inflation persistence has not been eliminated. Combined with the ongoing escalation of the Middle East geopolitical conflict, which has driven an international oil price surge, the market worries that energy prices could push U.S. inflation higher again. The probability of the Fed delivering another rate hike within the year has rebounded to 55%-60%. U.S. Treasury yields on the short end have slightly rebounded, and Bitcoin’s valuation—lacking interest-bearing attributes—has been temporarily suppressed by tightening liquidity expectations. Long-side momentum to push for a breakout to the upside is clearly insufficient. Last night, global tech equities closed lower across the board. Global risk-off preferences weakened, and risk assets faced simultaneous pressure; Bitcoin also passively followed the broader market, consolidating and adjusting. However, the U.S. Dollar Index remains broadly stable and has not shown a one-way strengthening trend, which to some extent offsets the impact of the negatives.
Long-term institutional capital is still supporting the market with bottoming reinforcement. Yesterday, the spot Bitcoin ETF saw net inflows of $132 million. The main buying is concentrated in BlackRock’s IBIT product. Institutional long-term funds have continued to maintain a low-level positioning rhythm and have not exited in large scale due to short-term consolidation. Meanwhile, on-chain “mega whales” have continued withdrawing large amounts of coins from exchanges to accumulate holdings, and the long-term base remains very solid, substantially compressing the downside space in this round of price action.
From a technical perspective, the first short-term overhead resistance is locked at $64,500, which is also the pressure zone around the 50-day moving average. Unless there is a sudden positive catalyst with breakout volume, it will be difficult for the long side to regain control of the market. The $65,000 round-number psychological level remains the core strong resistance of this rebound; in the past two attempts, prices met heavy, dense sell pressure there. Only by holding that level can the short-term rebound structure be fully repaired. The key late-session defensive support is $63,000. It also sticks to the dynamic support of the 30-day moving average and is the largest pain-point price for this options expiry—short-term longs’ final line of defense. If bearish sentiment materializes effectively and the market breaks down below $63,000, this rebound driven by inflation expectations will be effectively over, and price would likely move further down to probe the $62,500–$62,000 range for support. If the $63,000 support holds and stabilizes during the day, then the market would likely maintain a narrow-range consolidation and “washout” pattern between $63,000 and $64,500. On the four-hour chart, the MACD red histogram continues to shrink on declining volume, indicating a clear weakening in upside momentum. RSI has fallen back to the neutral midpoint line around 50. The Bollinger Bands have tightened and narrowed, and overall the chart lacks clear guidance from a one-way trend. The direction of the next leg will need to wait for macro news to land before it can be confirmed further. In terms of strategy, the overall recommendation is to maintain a wait-and-see, defensive posture—do not blindly “buy the dip” to bet on a rebound. $BTC
