Bitcoin steadies above $64,000 as traders watch $100 billion SpaceX unlock

Bitcoin held above $64,600 on Thursday, up marginally on the day and 0.5% on the week, while the rest of the majors offered little in the way of direction.

Attention is also on Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, where roughly $101 billion of stock becomes tradable Thursday as the first lockup expires. The company holds 18,712 BTC, worth about $1.1 billion at the end of June.

Ether rose over 1% to $1,904 but remains down 0.7% over seven days. XRP was the weakest of the group, falling almost 3% to $1.04 and 3% on the week. BNB slipped over 1% to $595 though it still leads the majors over seven days at 3.5%.

Solana fell almost 1% to nearly $74 and dogecoin the same to 7 cents. Tron was flat at 33 cents. Hyperliquid’s HYPE was little changed at $56 and is up over 4% on the week, the best weekly performance among the majors.

Alex Kuptsikevich of FxPro said in an email that bitcoin has gained momentum since Monday, when buyers stepped in during the dip toward $62,500 and pushed price back above the 50-day moving average. Optimism is centred more on bitcoin than on the wider market, he said, which is typical of the early stages of a long-term shift.

The equity backdrop turned less helpful. The MSCI All Country World Index snapped a five-day run to fall 0.2% as chipmakers retreated on both sides of the Pacific. Korea’s Kospi, a bellwether for the AI trade, dropped 4.4% with SK Hynix and Samsung leading losses.

S&P 500 and European futures edged higher.

Meanwhile, Gold rose 0.4% to its strongest since June as traders trimmed rate-hike expectations, with Brent under $80 a barrel after Iran said it had reached an agreement with Oman on a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.

SoftBank reports later Thursday. It has put $34.6 billion into OpenAI through Vision Fund 2 since September 2024 and owns chip designer Arm, so its numbers are read as a gauge of whether the private side of the AI trade is holding up.