Bitcoin price is holding a risky position near $65,000 Wednesday, down roughly 12% over the past seven days and trading at its lowest level since February as a broad rotation out of crypto into competing speculative trades chips away at the foundation of its recent bull run.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency touched a bitcoin price of $64,987 earlier in the session before a partial recovery, but analysts and strategists say the weakness runs deeper than any single catalyst.
The most popular explanation — that Strategy’s (MSTR) first bitcoin sale in four years triggered the slide — is being challenged by a growing chorus of market voices.
Charles Schwab director of digital currencies research and strategy Jim Ferraioli that the issue in simpler terms: bitcoin is losing its status as the market’s dominant momentum trade.
“Bitcoin has been in a bear market since October,” Ferraioli said according to CoinDesk reporting. “There’s a lack of a reason to be buying here when there’s other things you can choose.”
A broader sentiment in the bitcoin space is that the asset class is facing a competition problem, not a confidence problem.
Capital that once poured into crypto in search of high-octane returns is rotating toward artificial intelligence stocks, gold, and a wave of high-profile IPOs from private tech firms including SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Those offerings represent some of the most anticipated market events of the year, and investors appear to be freeing up liquidity to participate.
Wall Street bank Citi reinforced a similar structural concern Wednesday. Analyst Alex Saunders estimated that spot bitcoin ETF flows account for roughly 45% of weekly BTC price variation — the clearest real-time gauge of investor demand.
Those flows have turned negative. Saunders also flagged diminishing prospects for the Clarity Act, a U.S. crypto market structure bill that many in the industry viewed as a potential catalyst for fresh institutional inflows.
Without that regulatory tailwind, the bank sees sentiment remaining muted.
Strategy’s sale of 32 BTC for approximately $2.5 million in late May did rattle markets. The transaction marked a rare departure from Executive Chairman Michael Saylor’s longstanding “buy and hold” approach and sparked concern that one of bitcoin’s most prominent corporate backers could shift from buyer to seller.
Strategy attributed the move to a tax-optimization plan disclosed during its first-quarter earnings call.
Citi said the sale was anticipated and does not change the firm’s broader strategy. Ferraioli described it as a convenient narrative attached to a trend already underway, noting that many ETF investors sitting near breakeven are treating the current price level as an exit opportunity rather than a buying opportunity.
Are the U.S. and Iran tensions causing a bitcoin price dip?
Another theory gaining traction in analyst circles points to U.S. sanctions on Iran’s digital asset ecosystem as a source of persistent selling pressure.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the freezing of more than $1 billion in Iranian crypto assets last week, and the U.S. sanctioned Nobitex, Iran’s largest crypto exchange, on Tuesday for alleged ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
From a technical standpoint, the bitcoin price at $65,000 level is critical. This level is a test of year-to-date lows around $60,000. Bitcoin Magazine Pro data points to an initial support in the $63,000–$64,000 bitcoin price range, where bids emerged in February and March, with a bitcoin price of $60,000 representing the next major psychological floor and $58,000 beyond that.
This marks the third test of bitcoin price’s February 6 panic low. The prior two — on February 24 and March 29 — produced sharp recoveries above $70,000. Seasonal weakness, historically concentrated in summer months, gives bulls little immediate help.
With AI assets outperforming, IPO pipelines absorbing speculative capital, and legislative catalysts receding, bitcoin’s path back to momentum-driven price discovery depends on investor attention returning — and right now, that attention is pointed elsewhere.
At the time of writing the bitcoin price is near $65,300.