Bitcoin Ignores Good Inflation Data as Demand Stays Absent: What's Going On?

Bitcoin spot trading volume have hit its lowest level since 2019 as sellers tire and buyers stay absent, leaving the market wound tight between $63,000 and $68,700.Glassnode analyst Frederik Theissen wrote in the firm’s weekly on-chain report that July CPI came in at 2.5% core, equities sit at record highs, and Bitcoin barely bounced.Flat inflation with policy on hold is about as benign a backdrop as markets get, and the fact that Bitcoin could not build on it points to one thing: demand is absent.Why Is BTC Price Stuck Between $63,000 and $68,700?Glassnode’s report put Bitcoin pinned between two cost-basis levels. The Median Realized Price at $63,000 has absorbed every test from above for more than a month.The Short-Term Holder Cost Basis at $68,700 sits overhead, representing the average entry price of the market’s most recent buyers who are currently underwater and historically quick to sell into any recovery.Price has spent nearly three months in this pocket as the two levels keep converging.Reclaiming $68,700 would flip recent buyers back into profit and open the first real test of overhead supply; losing $63,000 leaves little structure before the June lows.Why Sellers Are Tiring but Buyers Are Still MissingThe Seller Exhaustion Constant sits at a cycle low, among the weakest readings since 2013, and SOPR, which tracks whether coins move at a profit or loss, has tested breakeven nine times since October and failed each time.On the buyer side, ETF inflows turned slightly positive at the end of July but remain a fraction of any prior accumulation wave.Exchange inflows keep rising as sell-side supply builds with little institutional demand to absorb the pressure.Why the Leverage Situation Is the Real RiskGlassnode flagged that derivatives traders on Hyperliquid have been net long every single day since mid-March, a streak with no precedent in the platform’s history.At the same time, futures open interest has grown to exceed an entire day of futures volume, close to last September’s record, even as actual spot participation has dried up.The problem is that this leverage has built up in a market with increasingly weak support underneath.Resting bids have shrunk by roughly a third since July, meaning if price breaks the current range and heads toward the June low near $58,500, there is far less buying interest to slow the move than there was six weeks ago.Image: Shutterstock