Bitcoin Magazine

VanEck: Bitcoin’s Summer Lull Masks a Tightening Supply Base

Bitcoin spent the past month in a holding pattern around $63,700, and VanEck’s latest Bitcoin ChainCheck reads the setup as a cautious pause rather than a bottom, with derivatives flashing fear, miner economics near multi-year lows, and long-term holders tightening their grip.

The mid-July report frames the moment as consolidation, not recovery. Bitcoin closed July 12 at $63,742, flat against a month earlier yet 33% off its six-month high and 14% below its 200-day moving average near a bitcoin price of $74,000. 

The pause caps two monthly declines, a 3.6% dip in May and a 20.5% drop in June. 

Trading thinned into the summer. Spot volume averaged about $5.1 billion a day over the 30-day window, down near 29% from the post-2019 norm, a softness the firm notes has marked June through August in each of the past six years. 

Realized volatility fell to 30.4% on an annualized basis, under the trailing-year 43% level and well beneath the long-run average near 81%.

Derivatives flash fear, not panic

VanEck reads the derivatives complex as defensive. The one-month put/call implied volatility skew widened to +11.4 percentage points, an 83rd-percentile mark since 2021, and traders appear content to fund put purchases with the sale of calls. 

The firm reads that as fear rather than capitulation. Total options premium eased 23% to $613.6 million, and the put/call premium ratio climbed to 1.49, against an average near 0.71.

Perpetual-futures funding tells a similar story. The rate sits near +4.5% on a 30-day average, about half the long-run +8.4%, a sign that positioning stays far from bullish after a spring stretch in which traders were paid to hold shorts. 

VanEck maps both signals to below-average forward returns across the 30-to-180-day window. It flags two markers of a true bottom that have not arrived: a skew past +15 points, or funding that flips negative. Until one appears, the firm sees near-term downside pressure over a quick rebound. 

VanEck has pointed to negative funding as a bullish tell in past notes.

Bitcoin ETP outflows and shaken treasury confidence

Demand ran negative on the month, a drop the report ties to exchange-traded product outflows. U.S. spot ETPs shed 40,010 BTC, worth about $2.40 billion, while corporate treasuries added 2,343 BTC and miners kept 1,204 BTC. Exchange balances rose to fill the gap. 

The report also charts shaken confidence among digital asset treasuries after Strategy used $1.38 billion to retire convertible notes, a move that left the company with a $900 million reserve and pushed it to its first bitcoin sales since 2022. Those sales, VanEck writes, fed the negative flows across the treasury cohort.

The on-chain picture cuts the other way. The share of bitcoin held longer than a year reached 60.8% of supply, a figure that has climbed through the price drop from 59.1% six months earlier. Another 17.7% of supply sits in the six-to-twelve-month band, coins that graduate into the long-term bucket if they stay put. 

VanEck projects the long-term share reaches about 62% in three months and nears 63% in six. Regimes with a long-term share above 60% and rising have lined up with above-average returns across horizons in the firm’s tests, an echo of its prior finding that whales kept holding through the selloff. 

Selling, the report finds, concentrates in the middle of the age curve, while the youngest and oldest coins stay still. Profitability metrics run cold, with net unrealized profit at the 17th percentile and 53% of supply in profit against a four-year average of 76%.

Miner economics near multi-year lows

Miner economics form the report’s grimmest section. Network hash rate held near record highs around 930 EH/s as price fell, a mix that pushed implied hashprice to about $30.6 per petahash per second per day, near multi-year lows. 

Daily miner revenue averaged $28.5 million, down 39.5% year over year, a level that puts lower-efficiency rigs at or below breakeven. Miner-held bitcoin stayed near 1.785 million, a sign of steady sales of new coins over capitulation.

The pivot to artificial-intelligence hosting runs through the section. VanEck highlights TeraWulf’s 20-year, $19 billion lease with Anthropic and CleanSpark’s $6.6 billion deal as top unlevered yields, part of a build-out the firm has tied to a $50 billion near-term funding gap. 

Miner equities have dropped about 42% from 52-week highs on higher rates, a New York pause on data-center construction, and doubt over AI returns. 

The firm keeps its conviction, and points to richer contract terms, new AI deals, and hyperscaler spending as reasons the de-rating overstates the risk. 

It also notes bitcoin correlation across the group has stepped down, a sign the market prices the names on their own merits. That optimism is not universal across the market; some analysts have argued an AI pivot alone will not rescue struggling miners.

VanEck sees a market that leans toward soft returns over the near term, held back by cautious derivatives and weak miner cash flow, yet supported by a supply base that keeps tightening. For patient holders, the firm writes, the structural picture stays constructive.

This post VanEck: Bitcoin’s Summer Lull Masks a Tightening Supply Base first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Falls Under $63,000 on U.S.-Iran Strikes and Trump’s China Charge, but Onchain Data Points to Buyers

Bitcoin price fell below $63,000 on Friday, as a fresh wave of U.S. airstrikes on Iran and a new political dispute between Washington and Beijing pushed investors out of risk assets.

Bitcoin price traded near $62,800, an extension of Thursday’s 1.4% slide from $65,000, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data. The token slipped under its 50-day simple moving average, a gauge of near-term momentum that many traders watch.

The bitcoin price retreat tracked a broad decline across global markets. Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 4% and entered a correction, a fall of more than 10% from its June 25 peak, as memory-chip maker Kioxia lost 16.1%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 2%, while the Shanghai Composite fell 3.1% to an 11-month low. 

Futures tied to the Nasdaq pointed to a decline of 1.6%, an echo of Thursday’s drop on Wall Street, where chip shares from Nvidia, Micron, Broadcom and Qualcomm came under pressure on fears that the AI rally has run past its earnings.

Bitcoin price, Iran escalations, and uncertainty in Washington 

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, citing the Hormozgan province governorate, said U.S. airstrikes hit five bridges in the southern province. 

A separate missile strike damaged the maritime control tower at Iran’s Chabahar port. WTI crude climbed near $79 a barrel, a rise close to 15% across five sessions, a move that revived concern about inflation and the path of interest rates.

A second front of uncertainty opened in Washington. President Donald Trump declassified intelligence reports that allege Chinese interference in U.S. elections and claimed Beijing obtained 220 million voter records, a threat he cast as a danger to democracy. China’s embassy denied the allegations. 

The dispute itself carries little market weight, though traders fear it could strain ties before Trump’s September meeting with Xi Jinping. The Australian dollar, a proxy for China-linked trade, weakened against the greenback.

Bitcoin price market dynamics

Against that backdrop, some analysts argue the sell-off masks a market whose core drivers have changed little. Nicolai Sondergaard, a research analyst at Nansen, said the bitcoin price tape reflects macro data more than a geopolitical hedge.

“The inflation and liquidity channel is doing more work here than the geopolitical hedge narrative,” Sondergaard said. He pointed to the June CPI report released July 14, which showed headline inflation of 3.5% against a 3.8% forecast and a core reading of 2.6% against 2.9%. The dollar index sank to near 100.77, a multi-month low, and the 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.57%.

The softer print reset Fed expectations. Odds of a rate hike at the July 28-29 meeting fell from above 40% to the low teens, according to CME FedWatch data. 

“The FOMC meeting on July 28 to 29 is the actual binary,” Sondergaard said. “If the CPI data holds and the Fed signals a credible pivot path, the conditions for sustained ETF inflows are back in place.”

Onchain flows support his read. Spot bitcoin ETFs drew $510 million across three sessions this month, an end to a $2.73 billion outflow streak, with BlackRock’s IBIT in the lead. Nansen’s data shows large wallets held their ground through the strike. 

“Net outflows hit -18.3 BTC in the strike hour, then reverted to a post-shock average of +0.67 BTC per hour, meaning buyers returned within the same session,” Sondergaard said.

Sondergaard framed positioning as constructive rather than fragile. Funding rates sat near zero, a sign that leveraged longs are not crowded, and smart-money long/short ratios ran at 1.58 with no rotation into stablecoins. Retail traders held a ratio of 1.79, a step ahead of the pros but in the same direction. Seven-day inflows concentrated in liquid staking, DeFi lending and decentralized exchanges, a risk-on allocation.

 Sondergaard said the sequence rhymes with past shocks. “Prior Middle East escalations produced the same pattern: short-duration flush, accumulation resumes,” he said.

“MVRV sits at 1.205 with realized price at roughly $53,000 and the long-term holder cost basis around $49,900, which defines the structural floor,” Sondergaard said. “That is not the profile of a market running on geopolitical sentiment.”

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is $62, 836.

This post Bitcoin Price Falls Under $63,000 on U.S.-Iran Strikes and Trump’s China Charge, but Onchain Data Points to Buyers first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin is “A Screaming Buy”: Standard Chartered Backs $100,000 Target, Shrugs Off Strategy (MSTR) Sell-Off

Standard Chartered maintained its end-2026 Bitcoin price forecast of $100,000 in a note to investors on Friday, arguing that the recent weakness reflects a failure by Strategy to explain a strategic shift rather than any deterioration in the company’s balance sheet.

Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, wrote that Strategy — the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with 843,775 coins, more than 4% of the 21 million that will ever exist — “appears to be pivoting from its ‘never sell Bitcoin’ mantra to a more complex approach.” 

Clear communication of that pivot, he wrote, will determine how fast the pressure on BTC lifts.

Between 2020 and mid-2025, Strategy’s mNAV — enterprise value divided by the value of its Bitcoin — traded above 1.0. That premium lets the company issue shares, buy Bitcoin, and grow its value by more than the value of the new stock. Convincing the market it would never sell was the load-bearing part of the model.

With mNAV near 1.0, that arithmetic no longer works. Kendrick said Strategy is pivoting toward holding Bitcoin as backing for STRC, its perpetual preferred stock, which functions as a credit product.

The STRC feedback loop

STRC pays a 12% annual dividend, settled twice a month in cash, with the rate reset each month to keep the security near its $100 par value. It has about $10 billion notional outstanding, the largest of the instruments Strategy has deployed.

A negative feedback loop took hold once STRC broke from par, hitting an intraday low of $71.25 on June 26. The divergence began after the June 1 disclosure that Strategy had sold 32 BTC the prior week. STRC still trades near $90, according to Standard Chartered. The USD reserve for STRC dividends stands at $2.55 billion, or 17.4 months of coverage.

Bitcoin is a ‘screaming buy’

The problem with “never sell,” Kendrick argued, is that it constrains how Bitcoin gets perceived. Strategy has announced a monetization program that lets it sell BTC from time to time, including up to $1.25 billion in proceeds for the reserve.

Given its Bitcoin backing, STRC is over-collateralized and should trade back toward $100, the note said. Kendrick compared the mechanism to a central bank promising to do “whatever it takes” and, through credibility, never having to act. 

Effective signaling, he wrote, should remove the need for Strategy to sell any Bitcoin. Kendrick treats the episode as noise rather than a signal about BTC’s medium-term direction. At $64,000, he calls the coin “a screaming buy.”

Strategy sold 3,588 BTC for about $216 million last week, its largest disposal to date, using the proceeds to fund preferred stock distributions and refill the reserve. JPMorgan analysts said the formal sale policy introduces “avoidable two-way risk” by making Strategy both buyer and seller. 

Strategy’s stock trades near $98 on Thursday. BTC traded above $64,400 on Friday.

This post Bitcoin is “A Screaming Buy”: Standard Chartered Backs $100,000 Target, Shrugs Off Strategy (MSTR) Sell-Off first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Vault of Air

Weight of a Name

For twenty-six years, I was a risk analyst for a mid-sized insurance company in Frankfurt. My job was to look at numbers and find the cracks. I spent my days reading actuarial tables, stress-testing portfolios, and telling senior management why their optimistic projections were wrong. I was good at it. I had to be. My wife and I had two children, a mortgage, and a plan for early retirement that depended on me being right about money. I knew how to read a balance sheet. I knew how to spot a bad investment. I knew that if something looked too good to be true, it usually was. I trusted what I could verify. I built my life on that trust.

When I turned fifty-five, I started thinking about what came next. My wife had been gone for two years, lost to a cancer that moved faster than anyone expected. My children had grown and moved to Berlin and Munich. The house felt bigger than it needed to be. I started looking for ways to make my savings work harder, to build something that would outlast me, to feel like I was still building toward something. I was careful. I was methodical. I didn’t take unnecessary risks. That’s what I told myself.

The email arrived on a Tuesday morning in May 2026. I was drinking coffee at my kitchen table, reviewing my portfolio, when my phone buzzed. The sender was “Suscap Advisors AG.” The subject line read: “Exclusive Fixed-Term Deposit Opportunity — 4.25% p.a. — Limited Availability.” I opened it. The email was polished and professional, the kind of communication I’d seen a thousand times from legitimate financial institutions. It talked about a fixed-term deposit of 140,000 euros with a 4.25% annual interest rate, a twelve-month term, and deposit protection up to 120,000 pounds. It mentioned Barclays Bank UK as the partner institution. It named a contact person: Michael Wittmann.

That name landed hard. I had spent my career evaluating risk, and here was a product that looked legitimate, felt legitimate, had the trappings of legitimacy. I clicked the link. The website was suscap-ag.de. It was clean, professional, and filled with the kind of language I expected from a wealth manager. It talked about regulatory excellence, institutional asset management, and a presence in Germany and Switzerland. It claimed to have been serving foundations, family offices, and institutional investors since 1908. It felt solid. It looked solid. It had the weight of history behind it.

I called the number on the website. A man answered. He introduced himself as Michael Wittmann. His voice was calm and measured, the kind of voice I’d heard from a hundred financial professionals. He asked about my goals, my timeline, my risk tolerance. He answered my questions with patience. He told me that the deposit was fully secured, that Barclays was a trusted partner, that the product was designed for people like me who wanted certainty in uncertain times. He sent me contract documents. They looked professional. They looked real.

I transferred 140,000 euros. It was a significant portion of my savings. But the returns were guaranteed, and the risk was minimal. That’s what I told myself.

The first month, nothing changed. The second month, nothing changed. I logged into the portal occasionally, checked my balance, saw the numbers sitting there. I told myself I’d made a smart decision. I told myself this was how wealth was built.

Then I tried to withdraw a small amount to test the system. The website said my request was being processed. A week passed. Nothing. I called Michael Wittmann. No answer. I emailed him. No reply. I called the main number. Disconnected. I sat in my kitchen staring at my laptop, and I felt the floor drop out.

I started searching online. That’s when I found it. The law firm ESER LAW had issued a warning about suscap-ag.de on June 23, 2026, just weeks after I’d made my deposit. The German financial regulator BaFin had no record of registration for Suscap Advisors AG. The Swiss regulator FINMA could not confirm any authorization. The domain had been registered only in May 2026, barely a month before I’d deposited my money. The “since 1908” claim was a fabrication. The Barclays partnership was a lie. The contract documents were professional forgeries.

I learned that a legitimate Swiss company called Suscap Advisors Ltd existed, registered in the Swiss Commercial Register under CHE-358.820.973. But suscap-ag.de had no connection to it. The website was an impersonation, a clone designed to look like the real thing. The names “Michael Wittmann” and “Hannah Bach” were almost certainly being used without permission. The entire operation was a fixed-term deposit fraud, a scheme designed to look legitimate long enough to collect money and disappear.

I stopped going to work. I stopped answering my phone. My neighbor, a retired banker named Klaus, found me in my kitchen one afternoon, still in my bathrobe at two PM, staring at a cold cup of coffee. He didn’t ask questions. He just sat down across from me and waited. I told him everything. The email. Michael Wittmann. The 140,000 euros. The silence. He listened without judgment. When I finished, he mentioned a firm called AY’RLP. Forensic investigators who traced financial fraud. He’d seen their name in a banking industry newsletter. I didn’t think anything could be recovered. But I called anyway.

The practitioner who took my case was a woman named Sarah. She was patient and never made me feel stupid. She asked for wallet addresses, transaction IDs, dates, and amounts. She asked me to describe the website, the documents, the conversations with Michael Wittmann. She explained their process: blockchain tracing, mapping the digital movement, identifying points where the funds had passed through regulated exchanges that could be compelled to freeze assets. She noted that the platform was an unlicensed entity operating without regulatory approval, and that BaFin and FINMA had flagged it. She noted that the claims of being a legitimate Swiss firm were entirely fabricated.

Weeks passed. I didn’t sleep well. I replayed every conversation with Michael Wittmann, looking for the moment I should have known. The way he’d been too accommodating. The way he’d deflected my questions about regulation. The way he’d rushed me to make a decision. Then Sarah called. They’d frozen a portion of what I’d lost. Not all of it. Some had been routed through anonymous channels and was gone. But enough. Enough to remind me that the world wasn’t entirely made of hollow promises.

I sat in my kitchen after she hung up. The sun was setting outside. I thought about Michael Wittmann. The voice on the phone. The man who’d never existed. I thought about the 140,000 euros I’d handed over to a ghost. I thought about all the years I’d spent telling other people to be careful.

I’ve started going back to work. I don’t talk about what happened. But I think about it every day. I have a new rule now. I verify everything. Every firm. Every registration. Every promise. But I also verify the people who make the promises. I ask questions. I listen for the gaps. I trust my instincts instead of my longing for certainty.

The grief hasn’t gone away. I don’t think it ever will. But it’s quieter now. It sits in the corner of my chest like a stone I’ve learned to carry. And when I feel that familiar pull, that hunger for something that feels safe and guaranteed, I remind myself that real security doesn’t come from a website or a voice on the phone. It comes from verification. From presence. From someone who stays.

Michael Wittmann didn’t stay. But I did. And that’s going to have to be enough.

Interest in Nothing was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.