Bitcoin Holds Above $64K as $2.5B Options Position Builds Ahead of Fed Decision, While Mining Concentration Draws Attention

Bitcoin traded above $64,000 on Sunday, easing 0.4% to $64,497.5 after recovering from below $58,000 earlier in July. According to CoinDesk, activity in the options market reflects expectations among some derivatives traders for a potential move toward the $70,000–$72,000 range ahead of the Federal Reserve's upcoming policy decision.

The reported strategy involved the purchase of 20,000 BTC call options with a $70,000 strike price expiring on July 31, while simultaneously selling 20,000 call options at a $72,000 strike, forming a bull call spread with an estimated $2.5 billion in notional value. The strategy is designed to benefit from a moderate price increase while limiting upside beyond the higher strike price and is generally associated with larger institutional market participants.

Upcoming market events include:

1. July 29: Federal Reserve interest rate decision. Futures markets currently imply a 75–80% probability that policymakers will keep rates unchanged at 3.5%–3.75%, following softer inflation data in June.
2. July 31: Expiration of the options position, two days after the Fed announcement.

Meanwhile, ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and higher oil prices continue to add uncertainty to the broader macroeconomic outlook, particularly regarding inflation expectations and monetary policy.

Attention has also remained on Bitcoin's mining landscape. A June 23 snapshot cited by CryptoSlate showed four mining pools accounting for more than 70% of the network's hashrate: Foundry Digital (31%), AntPool (18%), ViaBTC (13%), and F2Pool (10%). A subsequent update on July 16 placed Foundry at 27%, while F2Pool and AntPool each held around 17.2%.

According to the same data, Bitcoin's Nakamoto coefficient stood at 3 in June, indicating that three mining pools could theoretically coordinate to control block production. Industry observers have highlighted this concentration as a factor relevant to discussions about network decentralization.

Separately, Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor criticized the proposed BIP-110 soft fork, which would limit certain non-monetary blockchain data by capping OP_RETURN outputs at 83 bytes for one year. Saylor argued that protocol changes should be adopted through broad community consensus. As of the latest available data, miner support remained well below the 1,109-of-2,016-block activation threshold.

Major altcoins were mixed during relatively quiet Sunday trading. Ether rose 0.2%, XRP gained 0.1%, Solana advanced 0.7%, while Cardano and BNB each declined between 0.2% and 0.3%.