Bitcoin (BTC) slipped into Friday's Wall Street open, with traders increasingly bracing for a price breakdown as the cryptocurrency held below $63,000 and edged toward fresh August lows while US equities extended their record run.

Market data from TradingView showed BTC/USD down 1.3% on the day at $62,570, near its lowest levels month-to-date. The decline came despite encouraging US inflation figures that lifted risk assets and reduced the perceived odds of further interest-rate hikes. Bitcoin, however, failed to follow US equities, which closed Thursday's session at all-time highs; the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index were both in the green at the time of writing, up 0.11% and 0.14%, respectively. The divergence stands out because Bitcoin has at times traded in close step with tech-heavy equity benchmarks, a correlation that was particularly pronounced during the 2022 tightening cycle.

Weekly close in focus

Commenting on Bitcoin's performance, trader and analyst Rekt Capital warned that Sunday's weekly close needed to hold above $63,220.

"A Weekly Close below the orange level would probably set price up for a breakdown," he wrote in a post on X.

The analyst added that $63,000 was now failing as support after weakening throughout August, having previously noted that the 50-month exponential moving average (EMA) at $65,827 had flipped back into resistance — a pattern he compared to the 2022 bear market. Moving averages calculated on monthly timeframes, such as the 50-month EMA, act as long-horizon trend gauges, which is why analysts treat flips between support and resistance at that scale as potential signals of a broader trend shift.

Cointelegraph has previously reported on the rising probability of a long liquidation event for Bitcoin as it approaches an area of liquidity around $61,000, amid growing open interest (OI) in derivatives markets. Liquidations occur when exchanges forcibly close leveraged positions that no longer meet margin requirements, and long liquidations in particular can compound downward moves by feeding forced selling into a falling market; open interest — the total value of outstanding futures contracts — is a standard gauge of how much leverage has built up.

"Traders have added substantial risk, most of it long, into a market that shows no matching demand," onchain analytics platform Glassnode summarized in the latest edition of its regular newsletter, The Week Onchain.

PCE in focus as Bitcoin shrugs off inflation relief

In its latest analysis, trading and investment firm QCP Capital highlighted crypto markets' refusal to rally on improving US inflation conditions — a phenomenon it described as "increasingly important."

"Last week, BTC demonstrated resilience in absorbing several negative headlines without a sustained breakdown," QCP wrote, adding:

"This week has reinforced the distinction between resilience and momentum: the range remains intact, but softer inflation data have so far generated only a muted response from crypto."

The firm added that macro traders are now focused on the August 26 release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, known as the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge. The index's most recent print, in July, marked its first monthly decline since 2020, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. As a market that trades around the clock, crypto prices adjust to US data releases outside traditional equity hours, making the PCE print, alongside Sunday's weekly close, one of the next scheduled checkpoints on traders' calendars.