Bitcoin exhibited muted price movement on Sunday, slipping marginally but staying above the $64,000 mark following a rebound from lows under $58,000 earlier in July. By 17:20 ET (21:20 GMT) the cryptocurrency was last quoted at $64,497.5, down roughly 0.4% for the session.
Options activity highlighted an asymmetric bet on higher prices into month-end. Traders bought 20,000 Bitcoin call options with a $70,000 strike set to expire on July 31, while simultaneously selling an equal number of $72,000 calls. Those paired positions - bull call spreads - represent about $2.5 billion in notional value. The structure of the trade benefits from a move above $70,000 but caps upside once Bitcoin reaches $72,000. The scale and format of the transactions point to institutional rather than retail participation.
The July 31 options expiry falls two days after the Federal Reserve is scheduled to deliver its July 29 interest-rate decision. Futures markets are pricing in a 75% to 80% probability that officials will maintain the policy rate in a 3.5% to 3.75% range, reflecting recent data showing easing price pressures in June. That outlook, however, faces potential complication - renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities and a rise in oil prices could revive inflation concerns and influence the policy path.
Outside price and derivatives flows, governance topics have resurfaced. Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) Chairman Michael Saylor warned that Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 could challenge the network’s neutrality. BIP 110 would introduce a one-year soft fork that restricts certain data-heavy transactions. Specifically, it would limit OP_RETURN outputs to 83 bytes and cap particular payloads at 256 bytes, while exempting outputs created before activation. Proponents of the change say the limits would cut arbitrary data storage and reduce the burden on node operators. Saylor countered that consensus rules should not be used to preclude otherwise valid transactions from access to block space.
Miner support for BIP 110 remains near zero, far below the proposal’s activation threshold of 1,109 out of 2,016 mined blocks. Both Saylor and Blockstream co-founder Adam Back have cautioned that attempting to enforce contested rules without broad backing risks splitting the network.
Related to governance, concentration in mining power is drawing scrutiny. A snapshot cited on June 23 showed four mining pools controlling more than 70% of Bitcoin’s hashrate: Foundry Digital at 31%, AntPool at 18%, ViaBTC at 13%, and F2Pool at 10%. A separate seven-day snapshot published July 16 placed Foundry at 27%, with F2Pool and AntPool each at 17.2%. Bitcoin’s Nakamoto coefficient stood at three in June, indicating that only three pools were required to account for more than half of blocks produced by the network.
In broader crypto markets on thin Sunday trading, altcoins produced modest moves. Ethereum rose 0.2% and XRP ticked up 0.1%. Cardano and BNB slipped 0.2% and 0.3% respectively, while Solana added 0.7%. Among memecoins, Dogecoin was down 0.2%.
The coalescence of sizable institutional options positioning, a major central bank decision on the calendar, and active governance debates around BIP 110 - coupled with concentrated mining power - highlight the multiple vectors that investors and network participants are monitoring as Bitcoin seeks direction near current price levels.
Reporting note: Anuron Mitra contributed to this article.