BTC struggles around $65,000, altcoin market is in a bloodbath

The crypto market retreated across the board on Tuesday, with Bitcoin falling below the $65,000 support level in the short term and several major altcoins falling by double digits.

According to Bitpush data, Bitcoin opened at $66,665 that day, and then started a downward trend, once falling to $64,300. It rebounded from the $64,000 support level after lunch. As of press time , the trading price was $65,056, down 2.36% in 24 hours.

The altcoin market was hit by a sell-off, with only six of the top 200 altcoins by market cap seeing gains over the past 24 hours.

Convex Finance (CVX) and aelf (ELF) rose 14.6% and 14.1% respectively, and FTX Token rose 7%. 80 of the top 200 tokens saw double-digit declines, with Conflux (CFX), Core (CORE), and cat in a dogs world (MEW) suffering the biggest declines, down 19.7%, 19.4%, and 19.2%, respectively.

Data from Coinglass shows that in the past 24 hours, about $372 million in crypto leveraged long positions were liquidated, and short positions were liquidated at a total of $61.8 million.

The current overall market value of cryptocurrencies is $2.32 trillion, with Bitcoin accounting for 54.5%.

In the U.S. stock market, Nvidia surpassed Microsoft to become the world's most valuable listed company. At the close, the S&P and Dow Jones indexes rose 0.25% and 0.15% respectively, and the Nasdaq index was basically flat. Analysts said: "Driven by the continued growth of high-tech corporate profits and economic expansion, stock prices are still rising even without interest rate cuts."

Spot premium is high, and funding rates have turned negative for the first time in months

Analysts at Secure Digital Markets said: " The market is showing a clear spot premium, indicating a reduction in speculative activities among market participants. Earlier, the BTC order book showed that buying volume was concentrated around $65,000, and has now dropped to around $64,000. Bitcoin is still below the 50-day moving average, which puts pressure on the medium-term trend."

For users who sold at a loss, market analyst CrediBULL Crypto called for patience, tweeting: "Backwardation is back in force, funding rates are negative for the first time in months, and BTC is still hovering above the 'best' long zone of 62,000-63,000 . There is no doubt that BTC is forming a bottom above 60,000, just a little patience is needed."

On the other hand, investors can gauge market sentiment by measuring the long-short ratio of top traders. By integrating positions in perpetual contracts and quarterly futures contracts, it is possible to infer whether traders are leaning toward a bullish or bearish stance.

Coinglass data shows that the long-short ratio of large traders on Binance rose to 1.52 from 1.32 on June 13, indicating that demand for leveraged long positions remained strong despite Bitcoin's failure to maintain support at $68,000. On OKX , the indicator rose to 1.78 from 1.65 on June 13, indicating that whales and market makers increased their net long positions when Bitcoin fell below $67,000.

Signs of hope

CryptoQuant analysts said in a report today that traders have not yet increased their Bitcoin holdings, demand growth from large investors or "whales" remains weak, and stablecoin liquidity continues to slow, with the growth rate being the lowest since November 2023, and "the market lacks bullish momentum."

Because Bitcoin founder and CEO Max pointed out that what the market is seeing has happened in previous cycles.

He wrote on Twitter: “Bitcoin and altcoins continue to repeat what they have done in each previous cycle, the upper curve in the figure is BTC, and the lower curve is OTHERS.D ( other tokens).”

He analyzed: "Think of OTHERS.D as a measure of altcoin performance. If it goes up, altcoins are more worth holding than BTC. If it goes down, then BTC is more worth holding than altcoins."

Max noted: “As you can see in the red shaded area – as BTC rushed towards its last cycle’s ATH, we typically see altcoins underperform, and in the previous two cycles, OTHERS.D fell sharply during this phase of the cycle; just like what is happening now. Looking at the longer time frames, the market structure here still looks solid.”

Market analyst Rekt Capital said that “the current price action is comparable to the 60-day trend following the previous halving,” stressing that Bitcoin has been in a “persistent downtrend” throughout June, and said that a breakout of this downward trend line “will trigger a price reversal.”

Veteran trader Peter Brandt pointed out that the current Bitcoin chart is similar to the daily chart fractals of gold performance in 2008-2009 and 2020-2024, and the emergence of the "Inverted Head and Shoulders" indicates positive trends in the future.