Live updates: Bitcoin slips under $66,000 as oil’s surge sacks strength from risk markets

Benchmark’s Mark Palmer reiterated his buy rating on Hut 8 (HUT) and lifted his price target to $195 from $165 following the company’s signing of a second $9.8 billion, 15-year lease at its Beacon Point data center campus.

That would be nearly 80% upside from HUT’s close last night of $108.98.

“Our revised price target is based on a sum-of-the-parts (SOTP) analysis that includes (1) our estimate of the value of HUT’s contracts at River Bend and Beacon Point, (2) the market value of its 60% ownership stake in American Bitcoin Corp., and (3) the market value of the 10,667 bitcoins held on its balance sheet as of March 31,” wrote Palmer.

HUT is lower by 1.35% pre-market.

Bitcoin’s direction still comes down to the same three macro drivers, the U.S.-Iran conflict, risk appetite through earnings season and the Fed’s policy path, said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com, in a message to CoinDesk.

On the charts, she flags $63,000 as an important support level, an area where buyers have repeatedly stepped in. Holding above it would suggest the recent correction is stabilizing, while a decisive break below could trigger another wave of profit-taking.

To the upside, she sees $65,000 to $66,000 as the level that matters. A move back above that band would improve momentum and strengthen the case for a push toward recent highs.

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs extended their winning run, adding $203 million on Tuesday and taking the streak to six days of net inflows. That’s the longest run of gains in three months, according to SoSoValue data. Ether ETFs pulled in $37.5 million.

While the bitcoin ETFs added $930 million during the six-day advance, that’s less than half the $2.5 billion that exited in the eight-day outflow at the end of June. Total assets are now just shy of $81 billion, the most since the middle of last month.

Bitcoin (BTC) rose about 2.8% over the period, climbing as high as $66,900 on Tuesday, the highest since June 16, according to CoinDesk data. It was recently trading around $66,950.

Bitcoin traded near $65,900 on Wednesday, holding just below the two-week high it touched earlier, up 1.5% on the week, per CoinDesk data.

The pause matches the broader market, where a two-day rebound in chip stocks stalled as traders waited on Alphabet’s results after the U.S. close.

Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.8% and South Korea’s Kospi trimmed strong early gains, with tech lagging in Europe too.

The trigger is Alphabet, which said last quarter it would more than double capital spending to as much as $190 billion this year. Investors want evidence that spending is generating returns, and the report lands just as chipmakers have been whipsawed by fears the pace of AI investment cannot hold.

Bitcoin has moved with the AI trade all month, up when the chip complex is strong and down when it wobbles, because the same risk appetite drives both and because bitcoin miners have rebuilt into AI data-center operators.

The majors were quiet otherwise. Ether held near $1,917, up 2% on the week, while Hyperliquid lagged at down 2% over seven days. The Fed meets July 28 and 29, six days after Alphabet gives the market its first hard look at whether the AI build-out is still worth paying for.