The Bitcoin price KOSPI selloff dynamic played out in full on 28 July, with BTC sliding to $63,490 as South Korean equities triggered a marketwide circuit breaker and spot ETF outflows extended into a second negative session.
KOSPI circuit breaker adds fuel to the Bitcoin price KOSPI selloff
The Korea Exchange circuit breaker was activated at 10:13 a.m. local time on Tuesday after the KOSPI fell more than 8% from the previous session’s close. At that moment, Samsung Electronics was changing hands at 230,000 won, down 9.45% on the day. Trading across the full market was suspended for 20 minutes.
Selling resumed after the halt. The KOSPI fell close to 10% on the session, with Samsung and SK Hynix both losing more than 12%. The pressure centred on AI capital-spending concerns, financing risks and competitive pressure from Chinese semiconductor firms.
Japan’s Nikkei dropped roughly 4% on the same session, following a 2.2% decline in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index and a 5% fall in Nvidia during Monday’s US session. The South Korean circuit breaker mechanism operates in three tiers: Level 1 triggers at an 8% decline held for one minute, Level 2 at 15% (also a 20-minute pause), with a Level 3 as further escalation. The mechanism cannot be activated in the final 40 minutes before close.
The selloff did not stop there. On 29 July both the KOSPI and KOSDAQ triggered Level 1 circuit breakers simultaneously for a second consecutive day, an event described as unprecedented in South Korea’s financial history. The KOSPI fell more than 12% intraday that day, raising fears of the first-ever Level 2 activation.
Bitcoin dropped from near $65,000 to around $63,200 during the initial Asian session before a partial recovery. The 24-hour range sat between approximately $63,055 and $65,546, with BTC down 2.85% at the time of writing. Ether, XRP and Solana also weakened.
ETF outflows and whale accumulation pull in opposite directions
US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded combined net outflows of $11.64 million on 27 July, according to SoSoValue data. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust posted the largest individual fund outflow at $8.82 million. That follows a far larger $240.08 million withdrawal on 24 July, making two consecutive negative sessions.
For context, a prior five-day streak tracked by CryptoBriefing saw US spot Bitcoin ETFs pull in $853.5 million in net inflows, with BlackRock’s IBIT accounting for $693 million, roughly 81% of the total. The contrast illustrates how uneven institutional demand remains.
On-chain data from Santiment tells a different story at the larger-holder level. Wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 BTC accumulated 19,696 coins over the most recent eight-day period tracked, while wallets holding less than 0.01 BTC showed weaker dip-buying activity. Large addresses can represent custodians, exchanges or funds rather than a single actor, so the cohort data is directional rather than conclusive.
Fed holds at 4.25–4.5% as Bitcoin awaits GDP and PCE
The Federal Open Market Committee met on 28 and 29 July. According to the Fed’s own 29 July statement, the Committee voted to hold the federal funds target range at 4¼ to 4½ percent. The snippet described the prior meeting rate as 3.5%–3.75%; the Fed’s records show that level was set at the December 2025 FOMC meeting, not June 2026. The article uses the Fed’s own figure.
Ahead of the decision, rate markets had assigned roughly 38% probability to a 25-basis-point increase. Thursday’s session brings the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s advance Q2 GDP estimate and the June Personal Income and Outlays report, which contains the PCE inflation figures the Fed uses as its preferred gauge.
A rate hold paired with cooler PCE could give BTC room to test $65,000–$66,000 again. Hotter inflation or a more restrictive statement lifts the probability that the $61,000 Fibonacci level identified by analyst Crypto Patel becomes relevant. The MACD histogram on the daily chart sits at approximately minus 104.93, with the MACD line near 219.58 running below the signal line around 324.51, per crypto.news chart data as of 28 July. The RSI reads 46.77, below its moving average of 53.49, consistent with momentum that has softened without reaching oversold territory.
Analyst Ali Martinez noted that Bitcoin’s three-day Bollinger Bands were entering a squeeze, a period of compressed realised volatility that can precede a larger directional move. The Thursday macro releases are the clearest near-term trigger for that expansion. A daily close above $66,000 flips the short-term structure; a close below $60,000 opens the June lows near $58,000.
