Bitcoin (BTC) returned to $64,000 after Monday's Wall Street open, extending a rebound from Sunday's weekly close, as US stocks gave way to gold and oil held steady despite the latest geopolitical escalation. Derivatives positioning, meanwhile, pointed to increasingly crowded long positions, with funding rates at 20-month highs.

Bitcoin inches up as US-Iran rhetoric spreads to Oman

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD gaining more than 2% on the day as it rebounded from Sunday's weekly close. US equities turned lower as the 60-day ceasefire agreed between the United States and Iran moved toward expiry, leaving the S&P 500 down 0.5% from the all-time highs it set on Thursday.

Speaking to Fox News, US President Donald Trump threatened Oman with military action amid an ongoing dispute over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz oil route, the narrow chokepoint between Iran and Oman through which a large share of the world's seaborne crude passes. "If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the s*** out of them," he told the network.

Oil markets appeared unfazed by the tensions, with WTI crude flat at $82.35 per barrel at the time of writing. Safe-haven gold was more volatile, gaining just over 1% to start the week and reaching a daily high of $4,427 per ounce. Cointelegraph earlier reported that a combination of retail and government interest has been fueling gold's multiweek highs.

Data from investment research platform Bytetree, which tracks the 30-day change in inflows to gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) — a widely followed gauge of investor demand for bullion exposure — put that figure at nearly $12 billion through Aug. 13. In a note on Monday quoted by Investing.com, Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett wrote that long gold remained the trade, describing it as the "still [sic] best hedge against dollar debasement, bond collapse, asset inflation, capitalist populism vs socialist populism politics of 2020s."

Funding rates hit levels not seen since late 2024

In its latest Market Color bulletin, published on Monday, trading company QCP Capital noted Bitcoin's continued ability to weather macro tailwinds without a major breakdown from its current range.

"Rather than treating individual price levels as directional signals, the more useful observation is that BTC remains close to the lower end of its recent range. A sustained move outside that range would provide more information about market positioning than the relatively contained moves seen within it," it wrote.

Cointelegraph previously reported expectations that a return to $61,000 would trigger an unwinding of BTC long positions — the forced closure of leveraged bets known as liquidations — adding to downside price momentum.

The latest data from CoinGlass showed liquidations remaining muted as BTC/USD returned toward $64,000, with 24-hour cross-crypto liquidations standing at $180 million.

In a sign of long BTC becoming an increasingly crowded trade, derivatives market funding rates — the recurring payments exchanged between long and short holders of perpetual futures, which run positive when long positioning dominates — hit 20-month highs of 0.022 on Aug. 14, per data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant.

"The derivatives market sentiment is positive within the current BTC price range, indicating that most traders are taking long positions," it commented on the readings.

CryptoQuant previously noted that futures trading volume on Binance was outweighing spot markets by almost eight times, meaning the bulk of trading activity sat in leveraged contracts rather than spot purchases.