• Daily Avalanche transactions surged from 300K to 6.2 million in a year.
• A $23.3 million AVAX unlock could shape short-term price action.
• AVAX must hold $6.32 support to keep bullish momentum alive.

Avalanche enters a critical week with two contrasting forces shaping the outlook for AVAX.

On one hand, activity on the network has climbed sharply over the past year, highlighting growing usage across the ecosystem.

On the other, the market is preparing for a token unlock worth roughly $23.3 million on July 21, an event that could influence short-term price action as traders assess whether additional supply will trigger fresh selling.

At the time of writing, AVAX was trading at $6.58, up 2.1% over the previous 24 hours.

While the latest gains point to some buying interest, the token remains well below its historical peak, raising questions about whether improving network fundamentals can eventually translate into stronger price performance.

Avalanche network activity outpaces price performance

Avalanche has recorded one of its strongest periods of on-chain growth in recent months.

Daily transaction activity expanded dramatically over the past year, rising from roughly 300,000 transactions per day during the second quarter of 2025 to a peak of 6.2 million daily transactions in July 2026.

Although activity later cooled from that peak, the network was still processing around 2.62 million daily transactions, a level that remains significantly higher than a year ago.

The figures suggest that user activity has continued despite broader weakness across the cryptocurrency market.

The increase in network usage has also been accompanied by continued token burns.

Around 135.65 AVAX was recently removed from circulation through Avalanche’s fee-burning mechanism, showing that on-chain activity has remained active even during periods of price consolidation.

Liquidity across the ecosystem has also improved.

Stablecoin balances on Avalanche have expanded significantly over recent months, at one stage exceeding $2 billion, reflecting greater capital flowing through decentralised applications and blockchain services built on the network.

Despite those developments, AVAX has struggled to establish a sustained recovery.

The divergence between stronger blockchain activity and subdued price performance has become one of the key themes surrounding Avalanche in recent months.

FIFA partnership adds another long-term adoption milestone

Avalanche has also strengthened its position through one of the largest sporting organizations in the world.

FIFA selected Avalanche as the blockchain infrastructure supporting its dedicated Layer-1 network for FIFA Collect, bringing blockchain technology to a platform connected with millions of football fans worldwide.

The timing was particularly notable seeing FIFA World Cup is one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

The just-concluded 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament increased visibility for blockchain-powered digital collectibles and fan engagement initiatives.

Rising ticket prices linked to dynamic pricing models and travel restrictions affecting some international supporters attracted widespread attention.

Token unlock puts short-term price levels in focus

The immediate event drawing traders’ attention is the scheduled July 21 token unlock, which will release approximately $23.3 million worth of AVAX into the market.

Although the unlock represents only around 0.7% of the existing token supply available for trading, such events often receive close attention because they can increase short-term selling pressure if recipients decide to realise profits.

From a technical perspective, AVAX is approaching an important resistance level at $6.62, which aligns with the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement.

A decisive move above that level could shift attention toward the next upside target around $6.80.

On the downside, $6.32 remains the key support level. The price has managed to hold above that area so far, but a break below it would increase the possibility of a move back toward the recent swing low near $5.85.

Trading volume around the token unlock is likely to become one of the main indicators traders monitor as the additional tokens enter circulation.

When the Fed chair was asked whether the central bank would rescue crypto in a crisis, he avoided one topic with lawyerly care: Section 13(3), the emergency lending power behind every modern bailout. Here is what it is, how 2010 rewrote it, and why a stablecoin rescue through it is closer to illegal than unlikely.

Every modern financial rescue Americans can name ran through the same fourteen words of statute. Bear Stearns, AIG, the alphabet of 2008 facilities, the pandemic programs of 2020: all of them drew their legal authority from the third paragraph of Section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act, which permits the Fed, in unusual and exigent circumstances, to lend beyond the banking system it normally serves. So when Representative Brad Sherman asked the new Fed chair on July 14 whether crypto would get the treatment money market funds got in 2008, and Kevin Warsh answered that the Fed does not want to be in the bailout business while conspicuously declining to discuss his emergency authority, the exchange pointed directly at this provision. For readers tracking the exchange, crypto.news has also covered the testimony this statute sits under. Most of the crypto market has never read it. That is worth fixing, because what the statute actually says, especially after Congress rewrote it in 2010, changes the question from whether the Fed would rescue a stablecoin issuer to whether it lawfully could. The answer is narrower than almost anyone trading on the assumption of a backstop believes.

Where the power came from

Section 13(3) is a Depression artifact, and its origin explains its shape.

The Federal Reserve of 1913 was built to lend to banks against short-term commercial paper, a deliberately narrow design. The Great Depression broke the design’s assumptions: thousands of banks failed, surviving banks hoarded, and creditworthy businesses could not borrow at any price. Congress responded with the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of July 1932, adding a third paragraph to Section 13 that let the Reserve Banks lend to individuals, partnerships, and corporations, anyone, in effect, when circumstances were unusual and exigent, the borrower could post satisfactory collateral, and at least five members of the Federal Reserve Board approved. Historians of the provision note that its framers meant it to reach the real economy, not merely a weakened financial sector: it was a tool for lending to merchants when the banking system had seized.

Then it went to sleep. The authority sat essentially unused for three-quarters of a century, a loaded but forgotten instrument, until 2008.

What 2008 did with it

The financial crisis turned Section 13(3) from a footnote into the operating system of the rescue.

The Fed invoked it in two distinct ways, and the distinction is the entire modern debate. The first was broad-based: facilities open to whole classes of borrowers, created to revive whole markets. Programs for primary dealers, for commercial paper, for asset-backed securities, six facilities designed, five used, all justified as providing liquidity to the financial system rather than saving anyone in particular. The second was tailored: special assistance built for exactly one counterparty at a time. A $13 billion direct loan to Bear Stearns and roughly $30 billion more to grease its sale to JPMorgan. The AIG rescue. Support arrangements for Citigroup and Bank of America. Four firms the Fed judged too big to fail, each receiving a bespoke intervention under the same fourteen words written for Depression-era merchants.

The tailored rescues worked, in the narrow sense that the firms did not collapse, and they poisoned the politics of the authority, in the broad sense that Congress concluded a central bank should never again design a private rescue for a chosen firm. That conclusion became law.

How Dodd-Frank rewired it

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act did not repeal Section 13(3). It did something more interesting: it kept the power and removed the part crypto is implicitly counting on.

The amendments, implemented in a final Fed rule in 2015, impose five binding constraints. Emergency lending must be through a program or facility with broad-based eligibility, meaning open to a class of borrowers, designed to supply liquidity to the financial system, and explicitly not for the purpose of aiding a single failing financial company. Borrowers must be solvent; the Fed is required to maintain procedures prohibiting credit to insolvent firms. Collateral must be sufficient to protect taxpayers from losses. The Treasury secretary must approve any program before it launches. And the whole exercise runs under mandatory disclosure with a lag plus Government Accountability Office audit.

Read those constraints against the 2008 record and the intent is unmistakable: the broad facilities would have been legal under the new rules, and Bear Stearns, AIG, Citigroup, and Bank of America would not. Congress banned the bespoke bailout while preserving the market-wide fire hose. The 2020 pandemic response proved the surviving architecture works as designed: the Fed reopened its broad facilities and built new ones, corporate credit, municipal liquidity, Main Street lending, all broad-based, all Treasury-approved, several capitalized with Treasury equity that the Fed leveraged, and none of them a rescue of any single named firm.

Now apply it to crypto

Walk a stablecoin crisis through the modern statute and the market’s implicit assumptions start failing the text.

Scenario one: a major issuer breaks. Its coin depegs, redemptions surge, and its reserves, wherever they sit, cannot be liquidated fast enough. Crypto.news has explained what a run on an issuer looks like in stablecoin markets. Could the Fed lend to the issuer to bridge the run? Under post-2010 law, almost certainly not. A loan to one named issuer is precisely the single-firm assistance Dodd-Frank prohibits; a facility gerrymandered to reach only that issuer would be the same thing in costume, which the 2015 rule anticipates. And an issuer whose liabilities exceed the realizable value of its assets in the relevant window has a solvency problem, which triggers the categorical bar. The legal analysis is not close. The tool the market imagines, the Fed catching a falling Tether or Circle the way it caught AIG, was welded shut fifteen years ago.

Scenario two: the sector runs, not one firm. A generalized stablecoin panic forces mass liquidation of reserve assets, Treasury bills and repo, at fire-sale speed, and the stress starts transmitting into the funding markets banks and money funds share, which is exactly the channel the New York Fed’s staff research has flagged. Here a lawful path exists: a broad-based facility lending against high-quality reserve assets to a defined class of participants, justified as protecting the Treasury and money markets rather than any issuer. It would need Treasury sign-off, five board votes, taxpayer-protective collateral, and eventual disclosure, and it would look less like saving crypto than like the Fed defending the government securities market with crypto as an incidental beneficiary.

Which is the precise shape of Warsh’s July 14 testimony. His full stop, no bailouts, maps onto what the statute already forbids: firm-specific rescue. His hedge, mitigating extraordinary risks, maps onto what the statute still permits: broad liquidity defense of the system. The chair avoided discussing 13(3) not because the answer is embarrassing but because the answer is the law, and stating it plainly, we legally cannot save your issuer, and might flood the market it drowns in, is not a sentence any central banker volunteers.

One more concreteness is worth adding before leaving the crypto scenarios, because the abstract phrase broad-based facility hides real design choices that would decide who actually benefits. A lawful stablecoin-crisis facility would have to define its borrower class, and every plausible definition changes the politics. A facility lending to banks against Treasury collateral, the 2023 template, helps issuers only indirectly, by keeping the bill market orderly while they liquidate. A facility lending to registered stablecoin issuers as a class against their reserve assets would be legally defensible under the broad-based test once the GENIUS regime defines who a permitted issuer is, and it would instantly raise the question Congress fought over in 2008: why this industry’s liquidity and not another’s. A facility reaching exchanges or custodians would strain the financial-system purpose language and almost certainly fail the Treasury-approval gate. The unfinished GENIUS rulebook matters here too, in an underappreciated way: a facility for permitted payment stablecoin issuers is only definable once the licensing rules say who they are. The missed July deadline did not just delay compliance paperwork. It delayed the existence of the borrower class any lawful crypto facility would need, which means that today, in a crisis, even the legal path would begin with regulators improvising definitions, the exact condition emergency lending law was rewritten to prevent.

The rescue that confused everyone

One episode makes the market chronically overestimate the crypto safety net, and it deserves to be filed correctly: March 2023, when USDC broke and was made whole.

That was not Section 13(3), and it was not the Fed acting as lender of last resort to crypto. Circle held $3.3 billion of USDC reserves as deposits at Silicon Valley Bank; the bank failed; the coin fell to roughly 87 cents. What restored it was the FDIC’s systemic risk exception, the different tool that actually rescued crypto once, a separate authority at a separate agency under separate law, which allowed regulators to guarantee all SVB depositors, uninsured ones included, to stop a regional banking contagion. Circle was a depositor, so Circle was caught in the net, so the peg recovered. The Fed’s contribution that weekend was a new lending facility for banks, broad-based, exactly as Dodd-Frank prescribes.

The correct lesson is double-edged. Crypto’s one historical rescue was an accident, a spillover from the traditional system saving itself, and the specific channel it flowed through, uninsured issuer deposits at a bank, is precisely the exposure the post-2023 reserve reforms and the GENIUS Act’s rules are designed to shrink. The accidental-bailout pathway is narrowing by design. What remains, on the Fed side, is only the broad facility, with its political gate at Treasury and its solvency screen at the door.

The money market fund precedent, examined

The exchange that produced Warsh’s testimony began with a specific historical reference, Sherman asking whether crypto would get what money market funds got in 2008, and the comparison rewards a closer look, because it is simultaneously the strongest argument for crypto’s eventual rescue and the strongest argument against it.

What money market funds got in 2008 was not, strictly, a Section 13(3) loan to a failing fund. When the Reserve Primary Fund broke the buck after Lehman’s collapse and a run began across the industry, the response came in two parts. Treasury created a temporary guarantee program for money fund shares, backed by its own Exchange Stabilization Fund, effectively insurance conjured overnight for an uninsured product. The Fed, for its part, built broad-based 13(3) facilities that lent against the assets funds were dumping, restoring the markets the funds needed to meet redemptions. Firm-specific rescue never happened; system-wide liquidity and an improvised guarantee did, and together they stopped the run within weeks.

The parallel to a future stablecoin crisis is close enough to be uncomfortable. A stablecoin is functionally a bearer money market share: a claim on a pool of short-dated assets, promising par, redeemable on demand, held by users who treat it as cash. A sector-wide stablecoin run would look like September 2008 in miniature, mass redemption, fire sales of bills and repo, contagion through whatever the coins collateralize. And the toolkit that worked then maps onto what remains legal now: the Fed could lawfully build a broad facility against reserve assets, exactly as it did for the funds’ assets, and Treasury retains its own instruments outside the Fed’s statute entirely. Anyone reasoning from 2008 concludes that the system, pressed hard enough, finds a way, and that conclusion is not naive. It is the historical base rate.

But the aftermath of 2008 is the other half of the precedent, and it points the opposite way. The money fund rescue was followed by fifteen years of regulatory effort to ensure it never recurred: floating net asset values for institutional funds, liquidity fees, gates, reform fights in 2014 and again in 2023, all animated by the conviction that an uninsured product which received an improvised guarantee once must be restructured so it never needs one again. The rescue bought the industry survival and cost it the presumption of independence. Stablecoins are receiving the sequel in advance: the GENIUS Act’s full-reserve and holder-priority rules are the money fund reforms applied before the crisis instead of after, a legislature attempting to pre-position the orderly-failure machinery so the improvised-guarantee moment never arrives.

Which resolves the Sherman question more precisely than either a yes or a no. Would crypto get what money market funds got? The firm rescues, never, those are barred. The broad liquidity, plausibly, that door remains open by design. The improvised guarantee, only at the point where a stablecoin run visibly threatens the Treasury market itself, and the entire current regulatory project is an attempt to make sure the question is never asked, by making failure survivable before it happens. The 2008 precedent is real, and it comes with its own warning label: the products that used it spent the next decade paying it back.

Why the narrowness is the point

It is tempting to read all this as crypto being uniquely disfavored. The truth is closer to the opposite: crypto is being handed, in advance and in writing, the exact deal the rest of finance learned the hard way.

The GENIUS Act is the resolution regime that makes no-bailout credible. Its full-reserve requirement and its rule paying stablecoin holders ahead of other creditors in an insolvency are the components of orderly failure, the thing a system needs so that firms can die without rescues. A resolution regime and a constrained lender of last resort are complements: the first makes the second credible. The unfinished state of the GENIUS rulebook, all six agencies having missed the July 18 rulemaking deadline, is therefore not a side story. Crypto.news has also covered the unfinished rulebook behind the doctrine. Until redemption mechanics and supervisory triggers are final, an issuer failure would be improvised, and improvisation is historically where no-bailout doctrines go to die. The statute bars the tailored rescue; only a working resolution process bars the pressure for one.

For anyone holding or building in the sector, the practical summary is short. There is no lawful mechanism for the Fed to rescue your issuer, your exchange, or your custodian as such. There is a lawful mechanism for the Fed to flood the markets your issuer’s reserves live in, if a failure ever threatens those markets, and using it requires the Treasury secretary’s signature and a solvent counterparty class. Everything else, reserve quality, segregation, attestation, legal priority, is the actual safety net, and it is private. Section 13(3) is the most famous emergency power in finance, and the most important fact about it for crypto is fourteen years old: Congress already decided who it cannot save.

Frequently asked questions

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. It summarizes statutes and regulatory practice that are subject to interpretation and change, and no description here should be relied on as a prediction of official action. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 20, 2026.

Kevin Warsh held stakes in a stablecoin venture and a dozen protocols, called Bitcoin the new gold, and became the friendliest Fed chair crypto has ever had. Then Congress asked whether the Fed would rescue the sector in a run, and he said the one word the industry was not expecting.

The most consequential sentence in crypto this month was not said by anyone in crypto. It was said in a House hearing room on July 14 by a Federal Reserve chair two months into the job, answering a question from a congressman who has spent years as the industry’s most reliable antagonist. Representative Brad Sherman asked Kevin Warsh whether the Fed would backstop failing digital-asset firms the way it supported money market funds in 2008. Warsh, who sat inside the Fed during that crisis and helped design those rescues, answered: “We do not want to be in the bailout business, full stop.” He then added that the goal is a position where nobody gets bailed out, crypto included. The industry has spent a decade assuming that if the worst happened, the safety net underneath the traditional system would stretch, however grudgingly, underneath the digital one. The friendliest chair in Fed history just said it will not, and the fine print of how he said it matters more than the headline.

The man making the promise

Warsh’s biography is what makes the statement land, in both directions at once.

He took office on May 15 and presided over his first FOMC meeting in June. Before that, he was the youngest Federal Reserve governor in history during the 2008 crisis, serving under Ben Bernanke, where he helped construct the emergency programs he now disavows. He spent the following years as one of the loudest internal critics of the Fed’s expanding footprint, opposing large-scale asset purchases and the 2020 pandemic lending facilities. A chair who designed bailouts, watched what they did to incentives, and concluded the institution should never do them again is not making a casual remark when he says full stop. He is stating a career position.

The crypto side of the biography is what makes it remarkable. Before his confirmation, Warsh disclosed venture stakes in a Bitcoin payments startup, the crypto index manager Bitwise, and a stablecoin venture, plus exposure to more than a dozen blockchain protocols, all divested under the Fed’s ethics rules. He has called Bitcoin the new gold for investors under 40, and said at his April confirmation hearing that cryptocurrencies should not exist outside the financial system, a line the industry read, correctly, as an invitation inside. This is not a Powell-style institutionalist keeping crypto at arm’s length or a Warren ally hunting it. This is the closest thing to a crypto-native ever to run the world’s most important central bank, and he is precisely the official now telling the sector that its risk is its own.

That combination cuts both ways, and the market should hold both edges. From a sympathetic chair, no bailout reads as respect: the sector is mature enough to bear its own losses, and pre-committing against rescue is how you prevent the moral hazard that turns markets into wards of the state. From any chair, it reads as notice: the presumptive federal backstop that firms, custodians, and issuers have quietly priced in has been publicly disclaimed, by the one person with authority to disclaim it.

The hedge inside the full stop

The headline sentence was absolute. The full exchange was not, and the gap between them is where every serious question lives.

Immediately after the full stop, Warsh told lawmakers the Fed will do everything it can to mitigate extraordinary risks if and when they arise over the next four years. Pressed on the scenario Sherman actually posed, a run on one issuer spreading across a $310 billion sector, Warsh declined to offer an absolute pledge, and observers including American Banker noted that he did not rule out any future step-in. He also avoided specifics on the Fed’s Section 13(3) emergency lending authority, the legal machinery through which every modern rescue has actually flowed.

Read as a lawyer would, the position is: no bailouts as policy, discretion preserved as fact. That is not hypocrisy; it is how central banks talk, because a chair who genuinely forecloses intervention in all states of the world is writing a suicide note for some future crisis. But it means the practical content of the testimony is narrower than the market’s first reading.

What Warsh disclaimed is the routine expectation of rescue, the assumption that a large custodian or issuer failing would automatically summon the 2008 playbook. What he retained is the option to act when a failure stops being a crypto story and starts being a systemic one.

The dividing line, then, is the word extraordinary, and nobody knows where it sits. A mid-sized issuer breaking its peg and burning its own holders is, on this testimony, on its own. A run on the largest stablecoins, transmitting into the Treasury bills and repo markets where their reserves live, forcing fire sales that move the assets banks and money funds also hold, starts to look like exactly the sort of spillover a central bank exists to contain.

The New York Fed’s own staff work this year found that stablecoin activity can transmit liquidity stress to banks, which is the analytical groundwork you lay when you think the extraordinary scenario is possible. Warsh’s testimony draws a bright line for small failures and a deliberately blurry one for large ones, and the blur is the policy.

The history that tests the promise

The reason to take no bailout seriously, and the reason to doubt it, live in the same two precedents.

The first is 2008 itself, which Warsh watched from the inside. The lesson he draws from it is the standard post-crisis critique: rescues beget rescues, backstops get priced in, and institutions grow to the size of the guarantee behind them. The money market fund support Sherman cited is the perfect example, because it converted a product that promised to be cash-like into one the government actually made cash-like, and the industry spent the next decade fighting the reforms meant to prevent a repeat. A chair determined not to let stablecoins become the next money market funds, growing enormous on an implicit guarantee, has exactly one tool: refuse the guarantee loudly, early, and before the crisis, which is what July 14 was.

The second precedent points the other way, and crypto lived it. In March 2023, Circle disclosed that $3.3 billion of USDC’s reserves sat at the failed Silicon Valley Bank, and the coin fell to roughly 87 cents. What restored it was not crypto infrastructure or arbitrage; it was the FDIC’s systemic risk exception making SVB’s depositors whole, a rescue aimed at regional banking that happened to catch a stablecoin in its net. Crypto’s only bailout to date was an accident, a spillover benefit of the traditional system saving itself. The uncomfortable reading is that this is precisely how the next one would happen too: not as a decision to save crypto, but as a decision to save something crypto is plugged into, with the sector’s exposure riding along. Warsh can refuse to rescue crypto and still end up rescuing it, because the plumbing is now shared, which is the thing his own staff’s research keeps documenting.

The GENIUS Act complicates the picture further, in a direction that supports his position.

The law requires full liquid reserves and pays stablecoin holders ahead of other creditors in an issuer failure, which is a resolution regime, the thing you build so that failures can happen without rescues. On July 15, at Senate Banking, Warsh urged the agencies to coordinate their GENIUS rulemaking to prevent regulatory arbitrage and was described as racing to publish the Fed’s piece on time. Three days later, the statutory deadline passed with no agency finished. The sector is therefore in the strangest possible configuration: the backstop has been disclaimed, the resolution rulebook that justifies disclaiming it is unfinished, and the effective date that makes the rulebook binding, January 18, 2027, is fixed. No net, no manual, timer running.

What it means for who

For stablecoin holders, the testimony plus the FDIC’s confirmation that stablecoin wallets carry no pass-through deposit insurance settles the hierarchy of protection. A holder’s safety rests on the issuer’s reserves and the GENIUS priority rule, not on any federal guarantee, and the difference between those things is the difference between a strong legal claim in a bankruptcy and money that is simply there. Full reserves make failure unlikely; nothing now makes it costless.

For custodians and centralized platforms, the message is sharper. These are the entities whose business models most resemble the institutions 2008 actually rescued, and they are the ones whose presumptive backstop was disclaimed by name. The era in which counterparty risk on a large crypto platform could be waved off with an assumption of federal intervention, an assumption FTX’s creditors can testify was always fiction, now has a chair’s testimony attached to its falsity.

For self-custody, nothing changed, which is the point its advocates will make loudly and correctly. An asset held in your own keys was never inside the perimeter of rescue and never needed to be. The testimony is, among other things, an inadvertent advertisement for the sector’s founding design.

And for the Fed itself, the statement is a bet. If the next crypto failure is contained, Warsh banks the credibility of a promise kept cheaply. If the next failure is large enough to reach the banks, the money funds, and the Treasury market, he faces the choice every no-bailout chair has eventually faced, between the promise and the panic, and the historical record of that choice is not on the promise’s side. Bernanke did not want to be in the bailout business either. The business came to him.

The moral hazard ledger

Underneath the exchange with Sherman sits a genuine economic argument, and it deserves to be laid out straight rather than through slogans, because where you land on it determines whether the testimony reads as discipline or as bluff.

The case for the full stop is the moral hazard ledger from 2008, which Warsh watched being written. A backstop, once revealed, gets priced. Money market funds promised cash-like safety for decades; when the promise broke in 2008 and the government made it true retroactively, the sector internalized the guarantee, fought the reforms designed to remove it, and grew for another decade on an implicit subsidy. The same mechanism, applied to stablecoins, is easy to sketch: let the market believe the Fed stands behind the largest issuers and those issuers become utilities in expectation, their coins trade as insured deposits without the premiums, their reserve managers reach for yield the guarantee lets them reach for, and the eventual failure is larger for every year the belief compounds. On this ledger, the cheapest moment to refuse a bailout is now, loudly, before any crisis makes the refusal expensive, and a chair with Warsh’s history is exactly the official who would insist on paying early.

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Traders balked on Bitcoin (BTC) at $65,000 on Monday as crypto and risk-assets remained under pressure.

Key points:

• Bitcoin staged several unsuccessful attempts to break and hold $65,000.
• US stocks face pressure from both the Iran war and an ongoing institutional tech sell-off.
• Bitcoin traders stay positive on the odds of BTC/USD heading closer to $70,000 next.

Crypto stocks face “record pace” of US tech-stock selling

Data from TradingView showed BTC price volatility returning around Monday’s Wall Street open.

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

US equities faced multiple headwinds to start the week, with the US-Iran war quashing risk appetite and a tech-stock sell-off gaining strength.

Trading resource The Kobeissi Letter reported that hedge funds were selling tech stocks “at a record pace.”

“Hedge funds have sold information technology stocks in 6 of the last 8 weeks. This brings total 8-week sales to the largest in at least 10 years,” it said in a post on X, citing Goldman Sachs data.

US tech stock investment trend data. Source: The Kobeissi Letter/X

To be sure, the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite Index were both modestly higher at the time of writing, while the Dow Jones was down 0.3% on the day.

Oil prices remained above $80 per barrel as the Strait of Hormuz looked set to stay closed amid intensifying rhetoric from both the US and Iran.

CFDs on US WTI crude oil one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

In a post on Truth Social at the weekend, US president Donald Trump called for Iran to be included in a sanctions package initially focused on Russia.

Source: Truth Social

Bitcoin price upside hits $65,000 roadblock

BTC price action found little room for upside as the $65,000 mark became a point of repeated momentum failure.

Related: Trader maintains $67K BTC price target: Five things to know in Bitcoin this week

“The $65K level has capped price for the entirety of July so far,” trader Daan Crypto Trades wrote in an X post.

“But I do think the longer price spends here, the more likely the $65K level is to break. Especially with the higher lows being made over the past 3 weeks.”

BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Daan Crypto Trades/X

Daan Crypto Trades joined those who saw the next likely upside target at just above $67,000. He said this was where BTC/USD would “break into a bullish market structure.”

Others referenced seasonality directing current price behavior, with summer traditionally devoid of major moves up or down.

“The markets are in a summer break, it feels like,” crypto trader and analyst Michael van de Poppe told his roughly 819,000 X followers while discussing largest altcoin Ether (ETH).

In a separate post, Van de Poppe gave a BTC price target of between $67,500 and $69,000 for the “coming weeks.” Earlier, he saw August offering even higher levels of up to $80,000, a level last seen in mid-May.

BTC/USDT one-day chart. Source: Michaël van de Poppe/X

Veteran market analyst Peter Brandt believes Bitcoin’s next major drawdown will still have room to run—despite the recent bounce that has kept many traders watching the idea of a “cycle bottom” around the current price range. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Brandt pinned his expected low to October 4, 2026, arguing that markets rarely bottom without the kind of stress and capitulation that is typically absent when sentiment is merely “neutral.”

At the time of publication, Bitcoin was trading at $63,661, according to CoinMarketCap. Brandt’s stance is more cautious: he says price could drop below $50,000 and possibly into the high-$40,000s before the cycle low is set.

Key takeaways

• Peter Brandt expects Bitcoin to bottom on October 4, 2026, framing it as the cycle’s turning point.
• He warns Bitcoin may need to fall below $50,000 before buyers gain enough conviction to reverse the trend.
• Brandt says major bottoms historically align with panic and high volume, not neutral sentiment.
• He doubts the long-term durability of capital rotation into AI stocks and suggests balancing risk with Bitcoin and precious metals.
• Brandt projects a Bitcoin cycle peak in 2029, estimating a range of $250,000 to $300,000.

Why Brandt is waiting for more pain

Brandt acknowledged that calling the exact day of a market low is difficult, but he has maintained his October prediction for a cycle low for some time. His argument centers on both price-range expectations and how bottoms tend to form when traders are forced to reassess their positions.

He said Bitcoin could test levels under $50,000 and potentially trade in the high-$40,000 area before establishing what he expects will be the cycle low. Brandt also pointed to Bitcoin’s historical drawdowns, stating that each major bear market since Bitcoin’s inception has featured an 80% or greater correction. He linked this pattern to his view of where downside could travel if the current cycle follows precedent.

While a number of market participants appear to believe the market is close to a turning point near $60,000, Brandt’s view is that optimism at current levels is still too high for a true bottom to be in.

“Right now it’s neutral [sentiment]. Markets don’t bottom on neutral sentiment. Markets bottom on panic and volume.”

In Brandt’s framing, bottoms form when enough participants abandon the trade—when the most confident holders are forced out and new demand becomes possible. He contrasted “neutral” conditions with the kind of emotion-driven selling that typically accompanies capitulation.

“The same people that are saying Bitcoin’s bottom at some point in time will be giving up on Bitcoin, throwing in the towel, and saying we’re done with Bitcoin, we’re going on to other assets, the Bitcoin phenomenon is done,” Brandt says.

AI optimism vs. crypto’s expected timeline

Brandt also pushed back on the idea that the recent strength in artificial intelligence-themed trades is permanently redirecting capital away from Bitcoin. While some have suggested that the AI boom is pulling liquidity from broader crypto exposure, he does not believe that trade can keep compounding indefinitely.

In his view, investors who chase AI aggressively today may not feel rewarded several years from now. He did not offer specific benchmarks for that judgment, but he described a portfolio split he would make if he had additional funds at current prices: 50% Bitcoin and 50% precious metals.

Brandt’s reasoning is twofold. First, he believes precious metals are closer to a price bottom, implying the timing of entry may be less dependent on waiting for a macro-driven liquidation event. Second, he expects Bitcoin may be closer to a time-based inflection—meaning the market could have to play out before the cycle low arrives, rather than bottoming immediately at current levels.

This distinction matters for traders and investors deciding how to express conviction during drawdowns. If Brandt is right, waiting may not be about “buying lower” alone; it could also be about buying at the moment when sellers finally exhaust themselves.

Forecasts for Bitcoin’s peak and how they compare to major projections

Brandt’s comments extend beyond the expected cycle low. He projected Bitcoin’s next major peak in 2029, estimating a price range of $250,000 to $300,000. In his scenario, the market would have roughly a year to move from that peak range upward toward far larger targets often discussed by influential figures in the ecosystem.

Brandt’s framing also referenced widely circulated, more ambitious longer-term expectations. He noted that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood have projected a $1 million target for 2030. If Bitcoin does reach Brandt’s 2029 peak range, his timeline suggests a rapid escalation would still be required to bridge the gap to the $1 million narrative by 2030.

For readers, the key tension is not whether any single target is “correct,” but how different forecasts imply different pacing. A range-bound peak followed by accelerated upside has different risk dynamics than a smoother grind higher—especially for traders managing leverage, duration, and event-driven exposure.

What to watch before the October thesis is tested

Brandt’s view hinges on two practical signals: whether Bitcoin experiences the kind of panic and volume that historically accompanies major cycle lows, and whether sentiment truly shifts from neutral into capitulation. The most important question for investors isn’t just where prices trade next, but whether market behavior reflects forced selling rather than selective dip-buying.

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have seen a fresh wave of buying, with net inflows returning for a second straight week. However, traders and analysts say the pace of demand is still not strong enough to confirm that the rebound is turning into a durable trend.

According to SoSoValue, spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US recorded $75.7 million in net inflows for the week ending July 17. This followed $197.4 million in net inflows the prior week, lifting total inflows for July to $200.2 million.

Key takeaways

• SoSoValue data shows US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted net inflows for two consecutive weeks, totaling $200.2 million for July so far.
• Analysts caution that even multiple inflow days may only indicate easing selling pressure—not broad, sustained institutional buying.
• Bitcoin’s recovery has not yet produced the decisive price breakout some analysts say is needed to validate a new uptrend.
• Citi’s latest stance remains cautious, cutting its 12-month Bitcoin ETF inflow forecast to zero and lowering its Bitcoin price target.
• ETF analysts compare the product cycle to gold ETFs: rapid adoption followed by longer stretches of weaker performance.

ETFs return to inflows, but momentum remains limited

The renewed inflow streak comes after a difficult period. Cointelegraph previously reported that US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $4.5 billion in net outflows in June, leaving 2026 total net flows still negative at $5.2 billion. In that context, July’s partial rebound matters, but it hasn’t erased the bigger picture of persistent withdrawals.

Simon-Peter Massabni, head of business development at XS.com, told Cointelegraph that the return of inflows suggests selling pressure is easing. Yet he stressed that the current buying rhythm does not necessarily signal a broad institutional return.

“Four consecutive sessions of inflows should be interpreted as a sign that selling pressure is easing, rather than clear evidence that institutional investors have returned on a broad scale,” Massabni said, referring to the daily ETF flow data from last week.

Why the market still needs more than “a few green days”

Massabni connected the ETF flow improvement to Bitcoin’s price action. Bitcoin has recovered toward $64,000 after falling from higher levels seen in June, but the move has not yet met the threshold he associates with a convincing reversal.

He argued that Bitcoin needs to “decisively break above the $65,000–$65,500 range” to confirm a new uptrend. In his view, the recovery still “lacks real strength,” implying that spot demand visible through ETFs must align with broader market conviction.

From an investor’s perspective, this distinction is important: inflow streaks can reflect short-term positioning and relief from prior selling, while sustained, higher-volume inflows typically correlate better with durable trend changes. Readers watching the next leg of ETF flows will likely want to see whether weekly inflows continue to scale upward, rather than merely alternating with quieter periods.

Citi turns more cautious as institutional demand remains in question

While ETF flows have improved recently, Citi’s updated outlook underscores how uneven the institutional picture still appears. Massabni pointed to Citi’s revision to its Bitcoin ETF expectations, which he said is rooted in concerns about the strength of institutional demand.

On July 1, Citi cut its 12-month ETF inflow forecast from $10 billion to zero after weaker-than-expected flows and recent outflows. The bank also lowered its 12-month Bitcoin price target from $112,000 to $82,000.

Massabni argued that the market may not lack reasons to buy, but what remains missing is a sufficiently strong driver. “The market does not lack reasons to start buying Bitcoin,” he said, “what is still missing is a sufficiently strong catalyst—most likely a flow of capital large and persistent enough to turn the current rebound into a genuine trend.”

ETF cycles may resemble gold: fast adoption, then long drawdowns

Another lens on the current setup comes from ETF industry comparisons. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas has likened Bitcoin ETF behavior to that of gold ETFs, noting that both products saw rapid adoption followed by extended stretches of weaker performance.

In a post on X on Friday, Balchunas said Bitcoin ETFs may follow a similar pattern of “spectacular gains, painful drawdowns and recoveries,” and that each cycle could potentially set higher highs over time. The point for investors is not that drawdowns are inevitable, but that ETF performance can be nonlinear—driven by waves of positioning rather than straight-line progress.

As July inflows accumulate, the market will likely test whether this resembles the “recovery” phase of prior cycles or whether it remains a modest rebound inside a broader period of net outflows.

What to watch next for Bitcoin ETFs and the broader trend

For now, the most immediate indicators are whether weekly inflows persist and whether Bitcoin can clear the $65,000–$65,500 zone that Massabni highlighted as a confirmation level. The next few weeks of ETF flow data will show whether July’s demand is just a pause in selling or the start of a more sustained institutional bid.