Bitcoin climbs 3.5% to near $64,000 on chip rally, Iran talks

Bitcoin rose 3.5% to nearly $64,000 on Friday, recovering losses from Trump's Iran ceasefire comments as a rally in Asian semiconductor stocks drove gains.

"Once liquidations begin to drive price action, the market can move faster than real demand would justify," Shawn Young, chief analyst at MEXC Research, said.

The largest cryptocurrency traded as low as $61,850 before buyers returned, with roughly $28 billion changing hands over 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows. Bitcoin is up 4.2% over seven days that included an oil shock, a bond selloff and two rounds of U.S. strikes on Iran. Ether rose 2.6% to $1,760, while solana added 2.6% to $78. South Korea's Kospi jumped 4%, led by SK Hynix after pricing $26.5 billion of American depositary shares in one of the largest share sales this year. The dollar index declined for a third consecutive week, boosting the appeal of alternative assets.

A daily close above $64,700 could trigger further upside momentum, traders said. The next support sits at $61,000, with resistance at $65,500. US and Iranian technical delegations continue talks in Qatar and Switzerland under a 14-point memorandum of understanding signed June 17, though President Trump publicly questioned whether the ceasefire remains intact.

Nothing crypto-native moved bitcoin this week. There was no ETF flow of any size, no protocol event and no exchange failure. Instead, the gains were denominated in a weakening dollar — the greenback's third consecutive weekly decline is the macro signal to watch. If the dollar keeps sliding while the AI trade holds, the crypto tape will keep taking its cues from the semiconductor cycle rather than from anything happening on a blockchain.

Leverage explains the speed of the round trip. Traders cut positions on the Trump headline and reloaded within hours, a move too fast for real demand to have driven it. Open interest across major exchanges recovered to pre-selloff levels, with funding rates turning neutral after briefly flipping negative.

The compound risk from the Middle East remains. The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil supply daily, and every headline about military movements near the Gulf produces a measurable tick in crypto volatility. For now, the technical talks in Qatar have not been called off, and no high-level meetings between senior US and Iranian officials have been confirmed in the latest round.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.