bitcoin It was trading lower on Sunday as geopolitical risks resurfaced after US Vice President JD Vance said peace talks involving Iran held in Pakistan had failed.
But beyond the macro noise, cryptocurrency-specific drivers continued to point towards a possible move towards $88,000 and higher, although outcomes remain dependent on how broader risk conditions evolve.
Bullish flows
Starting with market flows, sentiment remains constructive. Strategy, the world’s largest publicly traded bitcoin holder, said it bought $330 million worth of bitcoin last week, bringing its total holdings to 766,970 BTC. Some estimates suggest that Strategy’s STRC-related activity has added approximately 8,000 bitcoins so far this week.
If that weren’t enough, US-listed spot bitcoin ETFs, widely considered a proxy for institutional demand, saw net inflows of $787 million this week, according to data from SoSoValue. This marks the strongest weekly entry since early March. Since then, these funds have attracted nearly $2 billion in cumulative investor capital.
“These are still not massive flows in absolute terms, but direction and persistence are important: with MicroStrategy buying and ETFs absorbing supply, downside risk is structurally limited as long as these flows and the technical picture hold,” Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, said in a note to clients on Sunday.
Thielen’s base case is now a rally towards $88,000, driven not only by flows but also by oversold signals from technical indicators such as stochastic oscillators, along with improving risk appetite in related markets, including mining stocks and equities in general.
Publicly traded miners such as TeraWulf (WULF), Bitdeer Technologies (BITDEER), and IREN Limited are up 10% to 30% this month. US stocks in general have also recovered: the S&P 500 is up 4%, while AI heavyweights such as Nvidia gained around 6%.
“The recent performance of bitcoin miners, particularly those that are leaning toward hosting AI, indicates that the market is returning to the theme of capex and AI growth, and that Iran-related risk increasingly appears to be a sideshow,” Thielen said.
“Taken together, this shifts our base case firmly to the upside, with $88,000 as our primary near-term target. Confluence is rare: technicals are constructive, flows are positive and widening, and the market is demonstrating a clear willingness to look through the geopolitical noise,” he noted.
Other widely followed demand indicators are also showing signs of support. For example, the Coinbase Premium index, which measures the price difference between bitcoin on Nasdaq-listed Coinbase and offshore exchange Binance, has risen to 0.0586%, its highest level since October, according to data from Coinglass.
The move suggests relatively greater buying pressure from US investors compared to offshore markets, a dynamic often associated with bullish phases in crypto markets.
act of clarity
Matt Mena, senior cryptocurrency research strategist at 21Shares, said the potential passage of the Clarity Act later this quarter provides a “well-defined structural path” to further upside in cryptocurrency markets. The legislation, which aims to establish clearer jurisdictional boundaries between the SEC and CFTC and define when a digital asset is a security or commodity, is widely seen as a key regulatory milestone that could reduce long-standing uncertainty for bitcoin and the broader crypto sector.
Polymarket traders are currently pricing in a 65% chance that the Clarity Act will be enacted this year. While the bill passed the House in July 2025, it is currently stalled in the Senate.
“With the potential passage of the Clarity Act later this quarter, the structural path for significant expansion is well defined. Claiming $73,000 clears the runway for a test of $75,000, which would likely provide the firepower for a rapid move through $80,000 toward the $90,000 corridor. Combined with a neutral inflation backdrop, a $100,000 milestone for end of the second quarter remains a possible outcome,” he said in an email.
Inflation and chain dynamics
On the macroeconomic front, recent inflation data was generally mixed, but tilted weaker due to underlying pressures. The consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.9% month-on-month, raising the annual rate to 3.3%, largely driven by a 10% increase in energy prices.
However, the core CPI (which excludes food and energy) rose only 0.2% month-on-month and 2.6% year-on-year, both 0.1 percentage points below expectations. The impression suggests that underlying price pressures remain subdued even as headline inflation is distorted by volatile energy costs.
For markets, that distinction is important. If inflation continues to moderate below the surface, the Federal Reserve could overcome temporary energy-driven spikes and maintain a looser policy stance later this year. A stable or more accommodative rate path typically supports liquidity conditions, which tends to benefit risk assets such as stocks and cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin.
Finally, Vikram Subburaj, CEO of India-based and FIU-registered Giottus exchange, pointed to supply dynamics that suggest prices are unlikely to face any resistance between $70,000 and $80,000.
“Supply distribution data indicates that only about 1 percent of Bitcoin in circulation is between $72,000 and $80,000. This suggests that a sustained break above current resistance could lead to relatively faster price discovery due to overall tighter supply,” he said in an email.
Together, these factors suggest that while geopolitical risks continue to dominate the headlines, the underlying structure of the crypto market continues to support bitcoin’s potential upside, assuming broader risk conditions do not materially deteriorate.
