Bitcoin traded in a narrow range around $63,700 over the past month, and VanEck's latest Bitcoin ChainCheck report characterizes the setup as a cautious consolidation rather than a confirmed bottom — with derivatives signaling fear, miner economics near multi-year lows, and long-term holders continuing to accumulate.

The mid-July report frames the current moment as a pause, not a recovery. Bitcoin closed July 12 at $63,742, essentially flat versus a month earlier but still 33% below its six-month high and 14% under its 200-day moving average near $74,000.

The stagnation follows two consecutive monthly declines: a 3.6% dip in May and a sharper 20.5% retreat in June.

Summer Trading Thins Out

Spot volume averaged roughly $5.1 billion per day over the trailing 30-day window, representing a decline of approximately 29% from the post-2019 norm. VanEck notes this seasonal softness has been a recurring pattern during June through August in each of the past six years.

Realized volatility dropped to 30.4% on an annualized basis, below the trailing one-year level of 43% and significantly under the long-run average of approximately 81%. Lower volume and lower realized volatility can make directional signals harder to interpret, particularly when price is also trading below longer-term moving averages.

Derivatives Signal Fear, Not Capitulation

VanEck interprets the derivatives market as defensive in posture. The one-month put/call implied volatility skew widened to +11.4 percentage points, marking the 83rd percentile since 2021, as traders appeared willing to fund put purchases through call sales.

The firm reads this dynamic as fear rather than capitulation. Total options premium declined 23% to $613.6 million, while the put/call premium ratio rose to 1.49, well above the historical average near 0.71.

Perpetual-futures funding data reinforces the picture. The 30-day average funding rate sits near +4.5%, roughly half the long-run average of +8.4% — an indication that positioning remains far from bullish following a spring period in which traders were effectively paid to hold short positions.

VanEck associates both signals with below-average forward returns across the 30-to-180-day window. The firm identifies two markers of a genuine bottom that have yet to materialize: a skew exceeding +15 percentage points, or funding flipping negative. Absent either signal, VanEck sees near-term downside pressure as more likely than a rapid rebound. The firm has previously identified negative funding as a bullish indicator.

ETP Outflows and Treasury Jitters

Demand turned negative during the month, a shift the report attributes to outflows from exchange-traded products. U.S. spot ETPs shed 40,010 BTC — approximately $2.40 billion — while corporate treasuries added 2,343 BTC and miners retained 1,204 BTC. Exchange balances rose to absorb the difference.

The flows matter because spot ETPs, corporate treasuries, and miners have become visible balance-sheet channels for bitcoin demand and supply. When ETP redemptions exceed treasury accumulation and miner retention, more coins can move back toward exchange inventories rather than into longer-duration holders.

The report also documents eroding confidence among digital asset treasury holders following Strategy's use of $1.38 billion to retire convertible notes. That move left the company with a $900 million cash reserve and precipitated its first bitcoin sales since 2022. According to VanEck, those sales contributed to the negative flow trend across the treasury cohort.

Long-Term Holders Tighten Their Grip

The on-chain data tells a different story. The percentage of bitcoin supply held for longer than one year climbed to 60.8%, up from 59.1% six months earlier — an increase that occurred even as prices fell. An additional 17.7% of supply sits in the six-to-twelve-month cohort, coins that would graduate into the long-term holder category if they remain stationary.

VanEck projects the long-term share will reach approximately 62% within three months and approach 63% within six. In the firm's testing, regimes where the long-term share exceeds 60% and is rising have correlated with above-average returns across multiple time horizons — consistent with its earlier finding that whales maintained their positions through the selloff.

Selling activity, the report finds, is concentrated in the middle of the coin-age curve, while both the newest and oldest coins remain largely unmoved. Profitability metrics remain subdued: net unrealized profit stands at the 17th percentile, and only 53% of supply is currently in profit, compared to a four-year average of 76%.

Miner Economics Near Multi-Year Lows

The mining section presents the report's most challenging picture. Network hash rate remained near record levels at roughly 930 EH/s even as the bitcoin price declined — a combination that pushed implied hashprice down to approximately $30.6 per petahash per second per day, near multi-year lows. Hashprice is a closely watched measure of miner revenue per unit of computing power, so falling hashprice directly tightens operating margins for miners with higher power costs or older machines.

Daily miner revenue averaged $28.5 million, representing a 39.5% year-over-year decline and placing lower-efficiency mining rigs at or below breakeven. Miner-held bitcoin held steady near 1.785 million, suggesting gradual sales of newly mined coins rather than wholesale capitulation.

The pivot toward artificial-intelligence hosting features prominently in the analysis. VanEck highlights TeraWulf's 20-year, $19 billion lease agreement with Anthropic and CleanSpark's $6.6 billion deal as examples of top-tier unlevered yields — part of a broader infrastructure build-out the firm has linked to a $50 billion near-term funding gap.

Miner equities have fallen approximately 42% from their 52-week highs, pressured by higher interest rates, a New York state moratorium on data-center construction, and skepticism surrounding AI returns.

VanEck maintains its conviction, citing richer contract terms, new AI partnerships, and continued hyperscaler spending as evidence that the market de-rating overstates the underlying risk. The firm also observes that bitcoin's correlation across the mining group has diminished, suggesting the market is beginning to value individual companies on their own merits. That optimism is not universally shared, however; some analysts have argued that an AI pivot alone will not be sufficient to rescue struggling miners.

Outlook

VanEck sees a market biased toward soft near-term returns, constrained by defensive derivatives positioning and weak miner cash flows, yet underpinned by a supply base that continues to tighten. The key tension in the report is that liquid demand and miner economics look weak, while coin-age data points to reduced circulating supply from longer-term holders. For long-term holders, the firm writes, the structural outlook remains constructive.

This article is based on a report originally published by Bitcoin Magazine, written by Micah Zimmerman.