Bitcoin (BTC) pushed back above $64,000 on Monday as Donald Trump threatened to bomb Oman and gold extended a two-week rally.
Key Points:
- Bitcoin traded above $64,000 during Monday's New York session, gaining roughly 2% from Sunday's weekly close.
- Trump warned he would strike Oman as the 60-day U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding lapsed without talks.
- Gold rose more than 1% to about $4,424 an ounce as Bank of America again backed the metal.
Bitcoin Rebounds As Trump Threatens Oman Strike
Exchange data showed BTC/USD climbing more than 2% through Monday's Wall Street open, recovering ground it had surrendered into Sunday's weekly close.
Equities went the other way. Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz had slowed to a near standstill over the weekend, with only three vessels transiting the waterway on Sunday, according to tracking firm Kpler.
Trump told Fox News the United States would bomb Oman if the Gulf state got in the way, remarks that landed on the day a 60-day memorandum of understanding with Iran expired. Hours earlier he posted on Truth Social that Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon.
Oil barely moved. West Texas Intermediate crude held near $82.45 a barrel, and the S&P 500 slipped about 0.2% from the record it set last Thursday. Iran's foreign ministry said the deadline had become irrelevant because negotiations never opened, though it added that Tehran and Muscat had agreed on a navigation map for the strait.
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Gold Outpaces Bitcoin As Hartnett Renews Metal Call
Spot gold climbed more than 1% to about $4,424 an ounce, building on two straight weekly gains. Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America, wrote in a Monday note that the trade is long gold, describing the metal as the best available hedge against dollar debasement.
Gold funds pulled in $6.3 billion last week, the largest weekly haul since January, alongside $25.4 billion into cash and $23.8 billion into bonds.
Softer inflation and retail sales data have cut the odds of a September Federal Reserve rate hike to roughly one in three, down from nearly 50%. The XAU/BTC ratio has meanwhile reached its highest level since June 9, a 10-week peak that shows the metal beating Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Funding Rates Signal Crowded Long Positioning
Funding rates on derivatives venues hit a 20-month high of 0.022 on Aug. 14, per data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, which treated the reading as evidence that most traders now sit long. Liquidations stayed light, with 24-hour cross-crypto totals near $180 million.
Bitcoin has spent August pinned between roughly $62,000 and $65,000, a band it has not cleanly broken. It slid to about $62,200 early in the month, recovered on hopes of a Hormuz reopening, then drifted back once those talks stalled and Tehran hardened its terms. Trading company QCP Capital said a sustained break of that range would reveal more about positioning than any single price level does.
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