Akshita Jhalani
Crypto Analyst
I have been watching Bitcoin trade sideways near $61,000 since yesterday's drop, and honestly, the flatline makes sense. The market is sitting at the intersection of multiple major events this week and nobody wants to make a large bet before any of them resolve.
Bitcoin has been trading sideways for the last 24 hours since falling near $61,000 yesterday.
The chart is telling you exactly what I am feeling covering it, this is a market waiting, not a market recovering.
The CPI Print That Could Break Everything Today
The single most important event on Wednesday is the Consumer Price Index release. I have seen multiple analysts frame this as a make‑or‑break moment for Bitcoin's near‑term direction.
Risk assets are under pressure, with the Invesco QQQ and Bitcoin both down more than 1% before the opening bell, reflecting growing concerns that stronger inflation could delay the Federal Reserve's path toward lower interest rates. Headline CPI is forecast to rise 4.2% year over year, up from 3.8% in May, which would mark the highest inflation reading since April 2023. The CME FedWatch Tool is currently pricing in a 25‑basis‑point Federal Reserve rate hike by December.
If CPI comes in hot, a Fed rate hike becomes a near‑certainty and Bitcoin faces another significant leg down. If it surprises to the downside, the market could see genuine relief buying for the first time in weeks.
SpaceX Pre‑IPO Signal Is Quietly Bearish
The SpaceX perpetual contract on Hyperliquid has been my go‑to read for risk appetite all week, and what it is telling me right now is cautiousness.
A 5x‑leveraged perpetual contract on Hyperliquid, trading under the ticker SPCX, has fallen about 27% from its mid‑May launch. Despite the slide, SPCX still trades above SpaceX's fixed $135 IPO price, implying an expected first‑day premium of roughly 16%, down from about 60% in May.
The premium has collapsed from 60% to 16% in three weeks. That is the market's confidence in the SpaceX trade cooling significantly, and it has drag‑on implications for crypto sentiment given how tightly the two have been correlated.
Bitcoin's Chart Is Technically Damaged
David Nicholas, CEO of XFUNDs by Nicholas Wealth, describes the current bitcoin market as technically damaged. Bitcoin is trading roughly 20% below its 50‑day moving average, a situation he describes as a "broken chart." According to him, at least a 20% recovery is needed to turn bullish on BTC, yet even that move would still leave price action well below the 200‑day moving average.
I think he is right. The 50‑day sits at $75,020. Bitcoin is at $61,400. That is a $13,600 gap that needs to be closed before anyone can responsibly call this a bull market again.
Mining Difficulty Is About to Drop 11%
One piece of data that the broader market is underreporting is what is happening to Bitcoin's mining network.
Bitcoin's mining difficulty is expected to decline by roughly 11% on June 14, marking the largest downward adjustment since February. The seven‑day moving average of Bitcoin's hash rate has fallen to around 910 exahashes per second, down from its all‑time high of 1.1 zettahashes per second recorded in October. Rising energy costs linked to geopolitical tensions with Iran and mining companies redirecting capital toward AI infrastructure have driven the decline.
The Anthropic IPO Is the Story Crypto Traders Should Actually Be Watching
This is the angle I find most interesting this week, and it is not getting enough coverage in the context of crypto markets.
Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 on Tuesday, its most capable public model running on Mythos, as it pursues a fall listing it has already filed for confidentially alongside OpenAI and SpaceX. An Anthropic listing, after its $65 billion round at a $965 billion valuation, would hand index funds and retail traders a single AI‑lab stock to pile into. Crypto already moves with the AI trade, and giving that trade its own ticker only tightens its grip.
AI‑linked tokens caught a modest bid on Fable's launch while bitcoin barely moved, because model releases are narrative for the sector's small caps while the majors now trade on what the AI trade does to risk appetite, not on the models themselves.
TradFi Is Still Building Regardless
The one genuinely encouraging signal in an otherwise difficult morning is what institutions are doing beneath the noise.
Morpho raised $175 million in a round co‑led by Paradigm, a16z crypto and Ribbit Capital. The company operates an open credit network that allows institutions and fintech firms to build lending products on blockchain rails. This raise is a signal that TradFi doesn't care what the market is doing, they see the potential of blockchain technology and will continue to build for the future, bear market or not.
That is the real Wall Street takeover story. Not buying everyone's bags at current prices, but quietly building the infrastructure that will matter when sentiment eventually turns.