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BTC Monthly Chart About to Close, Options Expiration Locks Battlefield at $64,000
Bitcoin followed risk assets higher on Thursday, briefly breaking through $65,000 intraday, up 10.52% for the month. Several Wall Street traders pointed out that BTC has shown extremely strong capital support around $63,000, while above $67,000 is a heavy resistance zone for short-term profit-taking.
Despite a significant rebound in U.S. tech stocks, it failed to drive a synchronous strength in the crypto market. The current crypto market lacks fresh U.S. dollar liquidity, and capital inflow remains weak. However, there is a positive signal from ETF flows: U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a net inflow of $233.1 million on Thursday, turning this week's ETF flows back to a net inflow of $203.8 million, with cumulative net inflows for July reaching approximately $438 million, potentially ending the large-scale outflows seen in the previous two consecutive months.
Today is the July monthly close, and the BTC options market battlefield is concentrated at $64,000. Data from Greeks.live shows that 149,000 BTC options expire today, with a maximum pain point at $64,000, representing a notional value of $9.6 billion. The combination of end-of-month expiration and the monthly close is "pinning" BTC's short-term price around $64,000. Market sentiment is leaning towards观望, lacking the willingness to heavily bet on a direction. BTC's weekly volatility is at its lowest level in two years, and the weekly 200MA, 200EMA, and bull market support band are converging. Daan Crypto Trades points out that a decisive weekly-level fluctuation of around 10% may occur in the future.
It is worth noting that Bitcoin closed with a negative monthly candle in August during the past three bear market cycles, with an average decline of 14.8%. Trader CGT Trader points out that based on historical statistical patterns and the current bearish technical structure, the probability of another negative close in August is relatively high.
Key Points for Today:
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YGG Play platform and games like LOL Land, Waifu Sweeper will cease operations on July 31st
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SBI Crypto will shut down its Bitcoin mining pool service on July 31st
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Ethereum L2 network Zero Network will shut down on July 31st, users need to bridge NFTs, ETH and other assets out
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FTX announces the fifth distribution of approximately $9 billion starting July 31st, with preferred shareholders receiving their second payment simultaneously
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Cardano ecosystem lending platform Levvy will cease operations on July 31st
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Wormhole: Moonbeam network will shut down on July 31st, users advised to bridge assets out
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Chrome updates App Store policy from August 1st: lists prediction markets as regulated goods, tightens control over extension data collection
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Solana-based NFT platform Exchange Art will cease operations on August 1st
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Sei ecosystem DeFi lending platform Oxium announces it will cease operations, plans to shut down frontend on August 1st
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Minnesota will allow banks and credit unions to provide crypto custody services starting August 1st
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SUI is down 82.8% from its all-time high, 13.72 million tokens worth $9.76 million will be unlocked on August 1st
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EigenCloud (EIGEN) unlocks about 36.82 million tokens, worth approximately $7.6 million
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Upbit 24-hour trading volume ranking: CFX, BTC, MMT, XRP, ETH
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Bitcoin Spot ETF: +$233 million
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Ethereum Spot ETF: +$13.2871 million
Top gainers among top 100 coins by market cap today: HASH up 22.5%, UB up 14.7%, UNI up 9.6%, M up 8%, PUMP up 5.3%.
U.S. Stock Index Futures Extend Rebound, Amazon Surges, Apple Drops in Pre-market
U.S. stock index futures extended their strong rebound sentiment, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 1.13%, Dow futures up 0.54%, and S&P 500 futures up 0.45%.
BIT night trading data shows that in U.S. stock night trading, semiconductor, memory, and optical communication sectors continued their rebound. Micron Technology rose 2.53%, SanDisk rose 3.37%, SK Hynix rose 6.27%, Storage ETF DRAM rose 3.55%, Semiconductor ETF rose 2.91%. BE and Nebius, which surged over 20% last night, rose 7.59% and 7.56% respectively.
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Amazon surged over 12% in pre-market after Q2 earnings: AWS revenue grew 37% YoY, fastest pace since 2021; full-year capital expenditure guidance raised to $220 billion;
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Apple fell about 8% in pre-market: Despite revenue and profit both exceeding expectations and iPhone revenue hitting a record high for the period, Q4 revenue guidance of only 9% to 11% dragged down by ongoing supply chain constraints, significantly below market expectations of 12.1%. If the stock decline holds, Apple may cede the title of "World's Most Valuable Company" back to Nvidia;
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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase fell 4.5% in pre-market: Also delivered lower-than-expected results, Q2 total revenue of $1.22 billion down 14% QoQ.
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Strategy faced slight pressure in pre-market, down 2.38%. The company recorded approximately $8.2 billion in Bitcoin-related losses in Q2, with cash reserves increased to about $3.75 billion, sufficient to cover over 2.1 years of dividends and interest payments. Brian Dobson of Clear Street believes the most important thing now is proving the company has liquidity to navigate the crypto bear market.
Microsoft Holds Up Half the Sky, Crypto Miners Reborn on AI Hype
Chips, memory, optical communication, and new cloud services exploded. Micron up 18.32%, SanDisk up 25.99%, AMD up 13%, TSMC ADR up 7.64%, Lumentum up over 15%, NEBIUS up 27.13%. Institutions like Wedbush and D.A. Davidson believe: Microsoft proves AI investment can still drive revenue and cash flow, leading to a correction in the panic selling of the chip supply chain.
However, the market internals are not healthy. While the S&P 500 rose, the equal-weight S&P 500 weakened, indicating gains remain concentrated in large-cap tech and the AI chain. Bloomberg strategist Michael Ball believes this rebound in tech and momentum stocks looks more like a short squeeze rather than a sustained return of risk appetite.
Furthermore, the "AI Stock God" Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness fund faced forced liquidation with leverage, becoming a symbolic event in this round of AI trade deleveraging. The fund once gained astonishing returns by betting on AI infrastructure, with assets under management once reaching tens of billions of dollars. However, forced to sell about $16 billion in publicly traded stock assets during the recent AI chain plunge, it was quickly taken over by Citadel. The market interpreted the "end of forced selling pressure" as a short-term buy signal.
Crypto-related stocks performed strongly. According to BIT U.S. Stocks data, only Robinhood fell 3.61% last night, while Strategy rose 4.73%, Circle rose 4.69%, and Coinbase rose 2.18%.
Mining companies were the brightest segment: IREN up over 30%, Cipher Digital up over 28%, Hut 8 up nearly 23%, Riot Platforms up over 21%, TeraWulf up over 18%, Bitdeer up 24.72%, CleanSpark up 21.07%, HIVE Digital up 18.34%. Morgan Stanley recently began covering several Bitcoin miners transitioning into AI infrastructure providers, noting that mining companies with large grid connections and power assets are in a favorable position amid surging demand for AI data centers.
Asian Markets Fully Recover, AI Trading Frenzy Sweeps Japan and Korea Again
The Korean market staged a historic rebound. The KOSPI index closed up 17.91% on July 31st, marking the largest single-day closing gain in history; however, it still accumulated a monthly decline of 22.4%, the third-largest monthly drop in history, and fell about 30% from its June peak.
The South Korean government plans to inject 20 trillion won, approximately $13.9 billion, into the Korea Investment Corporation for strategic investments in AI, data centers, and infrastructure. This marks the first time the sovereign wealth fund's mandate has been expanded to allocate to domestic assets. Meanwhile, foreign investors were net buyers of 7.2 trillion won worth of KOSPI stocks on Friday, a record high, becoming the key capital force driving the index surge.
SK Hynix rose 30%, hitting the upper limit, and Samsung Electronics rose nearly 27%, both刷新ing their historical single-day gain records. The leveraged ETF product by CSOP Asset Management offering 2x daily long exposure to SK Hynix also surged over 70%. Previously, this product's net value had fallen over 80% from its June high, with its size shrinking by nearly one hundred billion Hong Kong dollars. CSOP later urgently clarified, stating that under current market conditions, the product is expected to maintain its 2x leverage and will not actively reduce the multiplier, to平息 market concerns about "prolonged recovery periods for investors caught at highs."
The Japanese stock market was also strong. The Nikkei 225 index closed up 4.03%, once breaking through the 65,000-point level intraday, but still accumulated an 8% decline for the month. SoftBank Group surged about 15%, hitting the upper limit. Memory giant Kioxia surged 17.72%, with semiconductor heavyweights like Advantest and Tokyo Electron leading the gains.
The Bank of Japan maintained its policy rate at 1% unchanged in an 8-1 vote, in line with market expectations, but board member Hajime Takata supported a 25 basis point rate hike. The BOJ stated it will continue raising interest rates based on economic, price, and financial conditions. Governor Kazuo Ueda said action need not wait until inflation is completely stable at 2%, expecting CPI growth in the latter half of fiscal 2026 to be significantly above 2% year-on-year.
In the A-share and Hong Kong markets, robot concept stocks were active. Unitree Robotics' IPO on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board (STAR Market) has received approval for registration from the China Securities Regulatory Commission and will start subscriptions on August 10th, driving up Hong Kong-listed concept stocks like Sinopharm, Zhaowei Machinery, and Laifu Harmonic. The Hang Seng Tech Index and mainland tech sectors also明显 rebounded on positive policy signals released by the Politburo meeting. Market expectations for policies supporting technological breakthroughs and capital market信心修复 are升温.
What to Watch Next:
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August 1st South Korea July Export Data (Year-over-Year): Market expects around 59%, previous reading 70.9%. Korean exports are a high-frequency indicator of global semiconductor and AI hardware demand. If stronger than expected, it will reinforce the rebound in SK Hynix, Samsung, and the Asian chip chain; if significantly cools, profit-taking after today's KOSPI surge may accelerate.
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August 1st Deadline for Trump Administration AI Regulatory Framework Completion: The draft has been sent to institutions like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. The regulatory framework will affect the pace of U.S. AI model development, computing power, data centers, and enterprise adoption, potentially leading to valuation repricing for Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and the AI infrastructure chain.
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August 1st Microsoft Xbox Price Increase Takes Effect: Although not a major macro event, it will be used by the market to observe the price transmission capability of consumer electronics and gaming hardware, and will also affect marginal expectations for Microsoft's personal computing business.
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August 2nd OPEC+ Meeting: The market expects discussions on increasing production by about 188,000 barrels per day in September. If the increase materializes and Middle East risks do not escalate further, oil price pressure may ease,利好 inflation expectations and risk assets; if Middle East conflicts continue to spill over, rising oil prices will重新推高 long-term inflation concerns,压制ing U.S. stock valuations and BTC risk appetite.
