VanEck dropped its July Bitcoin ChainCheck report on July 20, and Bitcoin closed at roughly $63,700, essentially flat month-over-month. The asset is sitting 33% below its six-month peak and 14% under its 200-day moving average.
Authored by Matthew Sigel and Patrick Bush, the report covers the derivatives market, the mining sector, and institutional flows.
The numbers behind the flatline
Bitcoin’s 30-day moving average landed at approximately $62,694, reflecting a 12.1% decline month-over-month on that metric. Realized volatility clocked in at 30.4% annualized.
The put/call implied volatility skew came in at +11.4 percentage points, meaning options traders are paying a meaningful premium to protect against downside relative to positioning for upside. The annualized perpetual funding rate sat at +4.5%, a figure VanEck flagged as signaling below-average expected returns in the near term.
Miners are feeling the squeeze
Hash prices dropped to around $30.6 per petahash per second per day. Daily mining revenue across the network totaled $28.5 million. VanEck characterized these figures as multi-year lows.
The report notes that publicly traded miners are advancing AI-related initiatives, pivoting their existing data center infrastructure toward artificial intelligence workloads. VanEck’s inclusion of it in the ChainCheck report signals that the firm views it as a structural shift rather than a passing experiment.
Institutional flows turn negative
Net outflows from US spot exchange-traded products totaled approximately 40,010 BTC, translating to roughly $2.40 billion leaving spot Bitcoin ETPs during the measurement period.
Long-term holder behavior showed reduced turnover among both the oldest and youngest holder cohorts. The oldest holders aren’t selling, but they’re also not accumulating aggressively. The youngest cohorts have similarly pulled back.
What this means for investors
Bitcoin trading 14% below its 200-day moving average is historically significant, as that moving average acts as a rough dividing line between bullish and bearish market regimes. The derivatives skew toward downside protection suggests that hedging strategies deserve more attention than usual.
Publicly listed miners with meaningful AI revenue streams may outperform pure-play Bitcoin miners during periods of price weakness, offering a way to maintain crypto-adjacent exposure with a more diversified revenue base.