⚡ Why an 11% oil collapse fuelled a four-week crypto rally, and why it has already stalled
📊 A price check on the majors now that BTC has slipped under $63,800
🗓️ The Fed decision, PCE print and CLARITY Act deadline all landing in the next 96 hours
🎁 How to grab a free Nike share from XTB, and a 3 BTC giveaway closing July 31
📰 This week’s biggest CryptoTicker reads (plus a trivia to test yourself)
The story of the week did not come from crypto at all. It came from a barrel.
WTI crude collapsed from $94 to $84, an 11% drop, after the US paused its strike campaign against Iranian targets and Oman stepped in to host peace talks. Risk assets exhaled. Bitcoin rallied hard and Ethereum ripped toward $2,000, printing a 55-day high of $1,980 and a 30% gain over 30 days. That rally has since stalled.
Here is the mechanism, because it matters more than the headline. Cheaper oil means cooler headline inflation. Cooler inflation means a Fed that has slightly less reason to stay hawkish. And a less hawkish Fed means liquidity for the assets that sit furthest out on the risk curve, which is exactly where crypto lives. Oil is not competing with Bitcoin. It is setting the temperature of the room Bitcoin trades in.
The move had legs: BTC put in its fourth consecutive weekly gain, and DeFi majors like AAVE and ONDO led the 24-hour board on Monday. Bitmine also kept adding to its Ethereum treasury, which explains part of why ETH outran BTC by roughly 4 to 1 on the week.
The catch: the market has given a chunk of it back. Bitcoin is at $63,400 and ETH at $1,881 as traders de-risk ahead of the Fed. Fear & Greed is parked in the high-20s to low-30s. That is not panic. That is a market sitting on its hands until Wednesday afternoon.
Where the majors sit right now:
$BTC $63,400 (down ~2.7% on the day, still up double digits from July’s low)
$ETH ~ $1,881 (down ~4.2%, but up ~30% on the month)
$XRP ~ $1.05
$SOL ~ $73
$SHIB the week’s meme standout, up ~28% over seven days on a $590M single-day sector expansion
Fear & Greed: high-20s to low-30s, cautious
BTC market cap: hovering around $1.28T to $1.3T
The level that matters right now: $63,800. Bitcoin has slipped under it, and reclaiming it before the Fed speaks is what keeps the July recovery structure intact. Stay below and $61,000 comes back into view. On the upside, the bullish trigger is a clean close above $66,500 with a successful retest.
Prices move fast. Check live before you act.
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Four catalysts, four days. Here is the order they hit.
Wednesday, July 29, 2:00 pm ET: the Fed decision. Consensus says hold at 3.50% to 3.75%. This is a non-SEP meeting, so there is no dot plot and no new forecasts, which puts unusual weight on the statement wording and on Chair Kevin Warsh’s press conference at 2:30. A hold with cautious inflation language could push BTC back toward $66,000 to $68,000. A hawkish surprise puts $61,000 in play.
Thursday to Friday: June PCE. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, and the number that either confirms or kills the “oil crash cools inflation” thesis. Core PCE has been running well above the 2% target at around 3.3% to 3.4%. A hot print stacked on top of a hawkish Warsh would lock in the higher-for-longer regime and pin Bitcoin. A soft print is the week’s biggest upside surprise.
All week: the CLARITY Act recess clock. The Senate leaves for August recess on the 7th and the House is already gone until September. The bill is still deadlocked on ethics enforcement, Majority Leader John Thune has openly said he does not expect passage before the break, and prediction markets put 2026 odds near 35%. If it slips past recess, US crypto stays governed by discretion rather than statute for months, potentially past the November midterms.
Also on the tape: Coinbase and Strategy report Q2 earnings, and Zcash and Stacks both ship protocol upgrades mid-week. Month-end flows plus thin summer liquidity means late-week moves can get exaggerated in both directions.
Looking to August: Bitcoin faces two fork events, a planned eCash hard fork around block 964,000 and a possible accidental soft fork via BIP-110. Holders get a 1:1 copy on each chain at the split, but that is duplicated ownership, not free money, and custodial wallets may not credit forked coins at all. We will have a full explainer before it lands.
🛢️ Oil Crashes 11%, Bitcoin Price Retakes $65K: What Now? WTI collapsed from $94 to $84 after the US paused strikes on Iran. Bitcoin reclaimed $65,000 and ETH neared $2,000. Here is why oil now drives crypto.
📈 Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH Rips 30%, Is $2,000 Next? Ethereum just printed a 55-day high of $1,980 and is up 30% in 30 days. Here is what the 3H chart says about $2,000 and the targets beyond it.
💀 Top 5 Crypto Coins That Promised the Future and Are Now Almost Dead Two full cycles came and went. Five altcoins that promised to run the future now sit at least 97% below their all-time highs.
Not a crypto play, but free is free. Open an XTB account as a new user and claim a free Nike share. Real stocks and ETFs, 0% commission on monthly volumes up to €100,000, and no trades required to collect it.
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Investing involves risk. Only invest what you can afford to lose.
Oil is on everyone’s mind this week, so here is one from the other side of the barrel.
In which year did WTI crude oil futures trade at a negative price, and how low did they actually go?
Scroll for the answer…
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April 2020. WTI’s front-month contract settled at minus $37.63 per barrel on April 20, 2020. Sellers were paying buyers to take delivery because storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma were full and nobody had anywhere to put the physical oil. Traders who had never thought about warehouse capacity learned about it very quickly. Something to remember the next time somebody tells you an asset “cannot go below zero.” 🛢️
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Crypto assets are volatile and unregulated in many jurisdictions. Always do your own research.
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