Bitcoin Magazine
Bitcoin Price Rises Above $65,000 as ETF Outflows Slow, Iran Deal and Fed Pull in Opposite Directions
Bitcoin price climbed above $65,000 Monday morning, caught between a sixth straight week of spot ETF outflows, a hawkish Federal Reserve debut, and a U.S.-Iran peace deal that gave risk assets a short-lived lift.
The move higher came as U.S. and Iranian officials reported progress at peace talks in Switzerland, building on last week’s signed memorandum of understanding that formally ended more than 100 days of conflict.
The deal reopened the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil flows, and sent crude prices to three-month lows. The initial geopolitical relief pushed the bitcoin price to $66,230 late last week before the macro picture reasserted itself.
That reassertion came in the form of new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, whose first FOMC meeting landed as a hawkish reset. Warsh expressed a strict commitment to returning inflation to the 2% target — a stance shaped in part by May CPI coming in at 4.2%, well above target.
CME FedWatch now puts the probability of a rate hike at the July meeting at roughly 36%, with markets pricing at least one 25-basis-point increase before year-end. The U.S. dollar index recovered to the 100.6–100.8 range in the wake of the Fed’s tone, a headwind that has historically weighed heavily on the bitcoin price.
Against that backdrop, spot bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. logged a sixth consecutive week of net outflows. Funds bled $226.8 million in the week ending June 18, according to SoSoValue data, bringing the six-week total to $5.94 billion — the longest consecutive weekly outflow streak on record. U.S. spot ETFs have now shed a record $6.35 billion over the past 30 days, per Galaxy Research.
The pace of outflows, however, has slowed. The first week of June saw $1.72 billion leave the funds; last week that figure dropped to just over $226 million. Bitfinex analysts note that funding rates remain subdued and leverage has not expanded, pointing to spot order books — not speculative positioning — as the driver of recent price action.
“Investors remain cautious given the shift in the macro regime, while institutional and treasury-style buyers continue to provide the marginal bid,” Bitfinex said in a note to Bitcoin Magazine. “That combination points to an under-positioned market rather than an overheated one, leaving room for further upside if spot demand strengthens.”
Bitfinex also flagged a pattern in its margin data: BTC/USD margin longs have been building in a range tracking 10–25% off the recent downside, a positioning pattern that has historically preceded medium-term bottoms, according to the note.
Strategy and Strive stack some sats
Corporate buyers showed no signs of pulling back. Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) disclosed Monday that it acquired 520 bitcoin last week for approximately $35 million at an average bitcoin price