While bitcoin holds near $63,000, some data points to pain ahead for bulls

Bitcoin BTC$63,409.86 is trading near $63,000 after dipping to about $59,000 earlier this week, and some data points to pain ahead for bulls, with a possible drop to levels last seen in early 2024.

The largest cryptocurrency is now only 9% above its realized price of about $53,600, according to onchain analysis firm CryptoQuant. Realized price is the average of the prices at which the coins last moved. When the market price gets close, the average holder is barely in profit. That level has marked major bear-market floors in past cycles.

The problem, however, is demand.

Total bitcoin demand fell by 652,000 BTC last week, the largest contraction since January 2022, CryptoQuant said. Demand from ETFs is also shrinking at the fastest pace since U.S. spot bitcoin funds debuted in January 2024, showing the institutional bid that powered this cycle has turned into selling.

Sellers crystallized 187,000 BTC of losses over the past 30 days. That is painful, but still well below the 400,000 BTC loss spike in February and the 1.2 million BTC seen around the November 2022 cycle bottom.

So the setup is close to value, not confirmed recovery. Cheap prices can slow the selling, but a real turn still needs ETF flows to stabilize, large buyers to return and losses to wash out the remaining forced sellers.

Token Talk

• Velvet's VELVET more than doubled again, up about 125% in 24 hours to $1.76 and surging 1,400% over the past week, as the pre-IPO perps trade peaked on SpaceX's first day of trading.
• The token has jumped to No. 82 by market value from No. 128 in just a few days and is now worth about $745 million.
• The gap between price and usage keeps widening. The protocol holds about $840,000 in deposits, even with $108 million in VELVET changing hands in a day. The rally rests on the pitch of trading pre-IPO exposure to SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, not on money actually using the platform.
• The catalyst peaks today. With SpaceX publicly listing, the event driving the run has played out, which leaves "sell-the-news" risk. Lookonchain has already flagged controversy over the link between VELVET's spot and futures markets, and similar synthetic pre-IPO contracts have flash-crashed on other venues.
• XRP's mood has cratered. Santiment says its weighted sentiment, which scores social volume by the balance of positive and negative commentary, has fallen to its lowest since October 2025.
• The firm blames price weakness and fatigue over the lack of a catalyst after years of hype around Ripple's legal clarity and institutional adoption.
• Santiment frames that as contrarian. XRP's sharpest rebounds have often come when traders were most checked out, and it points to development, XRPL usage and tokenization still advancing under the gloom.
• The caveat is that sentiment extremes mark exhaustion rather than timing, and ledger activity does not necessarily translate into demand for XRP.

Derivatives positioning

• Crypto futures volume has dropped 9% to $180.9 billion while open interest has held steady at around $105 billion, suggesting traders are stepping back from making new bets rather than unwinding existing positions. In other words, the market is pausing rather than panicking.
• Open interest in DOGE futures has jumped by 5.7% to 12.70 million tokens, ending a recent spate of declines. The data shows renewed capital inflows into the memecoin, mostly betting on price gains, as perpetual funding rates and 24-hour cumulative volume delta point to a bullish mood in the market.
• Bitcoin, monero, and solana led the coins with the most positive CVD. That's a clear sign that aggressive buyers are dominating these markets. That is, they are lifting offers with market orders instead of waiting passively with limit orders.
• Meanwhile, TON, TRX and CC are displaying opposite CVD dynamics.
• Bitcoin's 30-day implied volatility index (BVIV) slipped further, to 43.8%, and nearly reversing the early month pump from 45% to nearly 60%. It shows that traders continue to price out uncertainty and bet on a price rise.
• In the bitcoin options market, long call butterflies continue to hit the tape, signaling a bias for a bounce to $75,000 followed by consolidation there till the end of July.