The recovery of bitcoin stalled on Tuesday even after Strategy (MSTR) bought more cryptocurrencies following its late May sale.
Bitcoin was recently trading near $62,600, little changed since Monday. This follows Sunday’s 4% bounce, which briefly took prices above $64,000 on some exchanges, including Coinbase.
Strategy, the largest publicly traded bitcoin holder, said on Monday that it had purchased 1,550 BTC for $101 million, bringing its total stash to 845,256 coins. While that is roughly 48 times the 32 BTC it sold in the final days of May, the purchase failed to alter the price of the token.
BTC’s immobility is also not doing the overall market any good. The CoinDesk DeFi Select Index is down 1.8% in 24 hours and the CoinDesk 80 Index is down 1.3%.
It is evident that the mood remains risk-averse and investors lack the conviction to chase the upside.
“Bitcoin’s recent rally shows there is still demand when prices decline, but investors are not committing capital with the same level of confidence we saw earlier in the year,” said Daniel Reis-Faria, CEO of ZeroStack, in an email.
“While a lot of attention has been paid to Strategy’s buying activity, the most important factor remains the broader economic environment. Investors are paying close attention to inflation and interest rate expectations ahead of next week’s FOMC meeting, as these factors influence the risk they are willing to take across asset classes, including cryptocurrencies,” Reis-Faria said.
Derivatives positioning
- Total crypto futures volume fell 1.3% to $190.7 billion in 24 hours, while open interest remained broadly stable at around $103 billion. Liquidations fell 48% to $301 million, a sign that the most aggressive leverage has already been removed from the system.
- ZEC stands out in the futures markets. Open interest is up about 5% to 2.47 million tokens, the highest level since May 26, as the token is trading at $472, recovering sharply from lows of less than $300 last week.
- Its 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) is positive, meaning buyers are driving the price action with market orders rather than passive limit orders. The problem is that annualized perpetual financing rates remain deeply negative, around -45%, meaning short sellers still firmly control positioning. This creates a potential short squeeze if prices continue to rise, as bears face increasing costs to maintain their positions.
- Open interest in WLD remains just shy of last week’s record high of 963.6 million tokens, indicating elevated positioning and greater potential for price volatility. Bitcoin and Ethereum open interest remains stable near Monday levels.
- The 24-hour CVD for most major coins, including bitcoin and ether, is negative, meaning the bears are leading the price action across the market.
- BVIV and EVIV (the 30-day implied volatility indices for bitcoin and ether) continue to retreat from Friday’s highs, suggesting the panic is easing. But first-week implied volatility in both is markedly elevated, pointing to higher expectations surrounding Wednesday’s US CPI release.
- On Deribit, the $60,000 put remains a focal point and is among the most actively traded strikes across multiple expirations in the past 24 hours. The one-week risk reversal is heavily skewed toward puts, with BTC puts trading at an 8 volume point premium to calls, a persistent sign that fears of a deeper price sell-off have not subsided.
symbolic talk
- Humanity Protocol’s H token plummeted more than 80% after attackers stole the private keys (the secret codes that control crypto wallets) from a member of the Humanity Foundation and drained more than $32 million from some 17 wallets, and losses continue to mount.
- The token fell from around $0.67 to around $0.13 and briefly touched $0.05, a drop of around 90% in 24 hours.
- The robbery still continues. The attacker has been selling the stolen H for ether and minted another 100 million H, worth about $11 million, on BNB Chain, pointing to greater selling pressure in the future.
- Humanity, an identity project based on palm scanning that presents itself as a rival to It told users to stop touching its bridge and liquidity pools as it works with security companies and exchanges.
- The attack fits the dominant 2026 pattern of thieves looking for keys rather than codes. Solana’s Drift lost about $285 million in April after attackers seized an administrative key, and Kelp DAO lost about $292 million the same month via a single validator bridge.
- Sahara AI’s SAHARA fell around 60% to around $0.016, near its all-time low of $0.01355. Around $215 million changed hands against a market capitalization close to $49 million, a turnover more than four times the size of the token and the mark of a capitulation event.
- Unlike Humanity, Sahara said there were no security issues with its contracts or products, the same line it posted verbatim on Nov. 29, 2025, when the token fell from about 7 cents to 4 cents. It blamed a pre-scheduled 600 million token transfer to its Chainlink cross-chain bridge and said team and investor allocations are not changed on-chain.
- SAHARA is down approximately 75% since its debut in June 2025.
