Bitcoin climbs to July high as stock rally reaches records

Bitcoin rose to a fresh July high on Friday, putting the largest crypto asset back near a technical level traders often use to judge longer-term momentum. For retail investors tracking crypto alongside stocks, the move showed Bitcoin moving with the same rate-sensitive trade that has been lifting risk assets.

TradingView data showed BTC/USD reaching $62,295 on Bitstamp, its highest level since June 24. The move came during the U.S. Independence Day holiday period, when American stock markets were closed.

The backdrop was strong across broader markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had closed at a record high the previous day, and The Kobeissi Letter said on X that global stock market capitalization also reached a new all-time high. The market capitalization of global stocks is the combined value of publicly traded equities worldwide.

Traders focus on resistance near $62,500

Several crypto market commentators pointed to the same near-term area: roughly $62,000 to $62,500. Exitpump, an X-based market commentator, described the buying on exchanges as controlled and gradual, while saying the $62,000 to $62,500 range remained a strong resistance area.

Resistance is a price zone where sellers have often appeared before, making it harder for an asset to keep rising unless buyers absorb that supply. It is a trading term, rather than a guarantee that price will reverse.

Daan Crypto Trades, another market commentator on X, highlighted Bitcoin’s 200-week simple moving average, which he put at $62,652. A simple moving average is a rolling average price over a set period. In this case, the 200-week version is a long-term trend line watched by some traders to gauge whether Bitcoin is trading above or below a major historical reference point.

Daan Crypto Trades said Bitcoin needed to hold the breakout and preserve its short-term bullish market structure, calling the current area important. Short-term market structure refers to the pattern of recent highs and lows that traders use to assess whether buyers or sellers are in control over shorter time frames.

Rate expectations helped the risk trade

The rebound also followed weaker U.S. nonfarm payrolls data, according to Mosaic Asset Company. Nonfarm payrolls measure monthly job creation in the U.S. economy, excluding farm workers and some other categories.

Mosaic said investors initially pushed stock index futures higher after the jobs report because weaker economic data can reduce pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. Higher rates can be a headwind for crypto and other risk assets because they make safer yield-bearing assets more attractive and can reduce appetite for volatile investments.

CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed markets pricing roughly even odds between a pause and a rate hike at the Federal Reserve’s September meeting, with rates expected to remain at current levels until then. The FedWatch Tool estimates rate expectations from futures market pricing, so it reflects market-implied probabilities rather than a Fed decision.

Mosaic described the payrolls report as a balanced outcome for stocks: soft enough to cool rate-hike concerns, while not weak enough to spark sharper worries about growth.

For Bitcoin, the immediate question for traders was whether the move above July’s prior levels could stick near the 200-week average and the $62,000 to $62,500 resistance zone. The confirmed move so far is a nine-day high, set against record global equities and a still-uncertain path for U.S. interest rates.

This story draws on original reporting from Cointelegraph.