Bitcoin Becomes "One of the Biggest Bull Markets" as July Gains Top 20%

Bitcoin (BTC) made a breakout towards six-week highs heading into July 31 as a reckoning for both the weekly and monthly close looms.

It showed BTC/USD canceling all its gains from the start of the weekend, falling from $24,670 to $23,555 within hours. The resulting chart structure looked very familiar to long-term market participants, forming a "Bart Simpson" shape on hourly timeframes. However, liquidations remained manageable, with the cross-crypto tally totaling $150 million in the 24 hours to the time of writing, according to data from analysis source Coinglass - less compared to previous days. In one of several posts on Twitter over the weekend, Material Scientist, creator of on-chain analytics resource Material Indicators, noted that funding rates on derivatives platforms are turning increasingly positive and there is a very strong consensus that prices could rise uncontrollably. "Negative funding has almost completely reset, just like at the end of March. We may even see positive funding on some alts soon," he wrote. However, BTC/USD is on track to post a monthly gain of nearly 19% in July, a stark contrast to other months of the year so far. According to Coinglass' data, July's returns are on track to be Bitcoin's best since its all-time high in 2021. Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, left little doubt about how Bitcoin in particular will perform, considering the potential performance in the second half of 2022. Hints that the Federal Reserve will consider rate hikes on a "meeting-by-meeting basis," as Chairman Jerome Powell did this week, "could be a turning point for #Bitcoin to continue its trend of outperforming most assets," he said on social media. "July was the month with the sharpest discount to its 100- and 200-week moving averages in Bitcoin's history, which requires Bitcoin to rebound," he added about the 200-week trendline: “I see risk vs. reward tilted favorably for one of the greatest bull markets in history.”