Bitcoin continues ranging as crowded longs meet soft inflation, the quietest tape since 2019: analysts

Bitcoin (BTC) stayed range-bound on Thursday, pinned below $64,000, as soft inflation data failed to lift crypto market sentiment.July’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), out Tuesday, was largely unchanged — core inflation slipped a tenth to 2.5% and the headline rate stayed flat. Soft wholesale inflation data on Thursday still failed to bring in any meaningful buying interest.Indeed, wholesale inflation gave the market nothing to fear on Thursday. The Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand was unchanged in July, with services up 0.2% and goods down 0.7%, and rose 4.7% over the 12 months ended in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Initial jobless claims rose to 209,000 for the week ending Aug. 8, above expectations of 202,000.The muted reaction concerns Glassnode analysts more than the data."A weak response to good news is itself a warning," Glassnode wrote, reading the failure to rally as a sign that demand remains missing.Pinned between two levelsThe reading anchors a market Glassnode describes as wound tight.According to the research firm, spot price sits just above the Median Realized Price at $63,000, the level that splits every coin's cost basis down the middle, and below the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis at $68,700, the average entry price of the most recent buyers.Price has spent nearly three months in that pocket as the two levels converge and volatility compresses.Liquidity has also thinned to an extreme, according to analysis. Spot exchange volume has fallen to its lowest level since Glassnode’s data series began in early 2019, and even excluding Binance it is scraping the lows of the 2023 bear market.Moreover, fewer bitcoins are changing hands than at any point in seven years, which the firm calls a clear measure of apathy in the market.The sellers are tiring, the buyers are missingBoth sides of the book have gone quiet, but not evenly. Sellers are visibly tiring, with supply in profit near past bear-floor territory and Glassnode's Seller Exhaustion Constant grinding to a cycle low.Adjusted Spent Output Profit Ratio (SOPR) tells the same story from the demand side: since the October 2025 peak, the seven-day average has returned to break-even nine times, and on each occasion sellers treated the level as an exit.Glassnode identifies $68,700 as key overhead resistance and $58,500 as support that will resolve the current standoff. A reclaim of the short-term holder cost basis on rising volume, followed by ETF inflows, would confirm a recovery.A loss of the range low into thin bids and crowded longs would invalidate the floor case.Notably, the buyers Glassnode looks for have not shown up. Net flows into U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs turned positive at the end of July for the first time in months, though at a fraction of past accumulation waves, and coins continue to land on exchanges on most days this year.Spot bitcoin ETFs shed $61 million on Wednesday as daily trading volume reportedly reached $1.19 billion, far below February's $14.7 billion peak.The macro overlaySimon-Peter Massabni, head of business development at XS.com, tracks a macro backdrop that points in the same direction.Bitcoin has been trapped between $60,000 and $65,000 as investors weigh the July inflation data against geopolitical tension in the Middle East, where optimism over a U.S.-Iran understanding on the Strait of Hormuz has faded, he said.Recent bitcoin sales by Strategy, one of the market's most prominent corporate buyers, have also added to the supply concern. In that lens, Massabni put the $60,000 area as the range's most important support."A clear break below this level could intensify selling pressure and open the door to a deeper correction," he said. Reclaiming $65,000 would be the first sign of improving momentum.Yet, not every desk reads the quarter as defensively. Martin Gaspar, senior crypto market strategist at FalconX, pointed to call activity and less aggressive put buying as evidence that participants may be less bearish than before, with long-term holder accumulation and improved spot ETF inflows helping support the price through the third quarter.The challenges he sees are macro, namely the latest gold rally and rising Treasury yields.Matt Mena, senior crypto research strategist at 21shares, read Thursday's data as a catalyst rather than a caution.Bitcoin was testing resistance at $64,000 after the cooler-than-expected PPI print, and paired with the in-line CPI, that could supply the push to break above $66,000, he said.Mena put a run toward the $70,000 to $75,000 zone by month-end as increasingly plausible, pointing to U.S. spot bitcoin ETF net flows that have turned positive in the third quarter and drawn more than $850 million since it began.He also surmised that the same risk appetite could spread across altcoins, citing roughly $587 million of net inflows into Ethereum (ETH) ETFs this quarter and a Hyperliquid (HYPE) platform that recently passed $5 trillion in cumulative trading volume.The total crypto market outperformed the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100 by 7.5% and 14.2% in July, he said, a setup he argued points toward a strong third quarter and brings $100,000 bitcoin and $3,000 ETH into view.Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. 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