Bitcoin Prints a Cycle Low at $57,735, Then Reclaims $60,000

Bitcoin fell to $57,735 early on July 1, the lowest price of the current cycle, and then climbed back through $60,000 before the session was out. The recovery left it roughly 3% higher over 24 hours, with an intraday high of $60,475 and a full trading range of just under $2,750. According to news.bitcoin.com, a surge in spot buying at around 8:50 a.m. EST drove the break back above $60,000, a level bitcoin had lost during June's decline. The move carried bitcoin's market capitalization back above $1.2 trillion and lifted the combined value of all crypto assets to $2.15 trillion, up 2.4% on the day. The same session closed the books on a first half in which bitcoin lost approximately 30%.

The Session: A Low Before Mid-Morning, a Reclaim After It

The reclaim was quick once it started. Buying concentrated in the spot market — purchases of the asset itself, rather than leveraged futures positions that borrow to take exposure — pushed the price through $60,000 shortly before 9 a.m. EST, and bitcoin held above the line into the high at $60,475. That is a round number the market has watched all summer, and on the first day of the second half it was taken back from below rather than defended from above.

The rest of the market moved further than bitcoin did. Altcoins, the catch-all term for crypto assets other than bitcoin, posted gains exceeding 7%, more than double bitcoin's 3%, and the total crypto market capitalization rose 2.4% to $2.15 trillion on the day. Bitcoin's own market value crossing back above $1.2 trillion is the cleaner measure of the reversal: it had spent the closing stretch of June beneath that figure. The day's gains, though, were recovered from a low rather than built off a base.

The Number: Two Records of the Low, $15 Apart

The exact bottom is recorded two ways. news.bitcoin.com logged the intraday low at $57,735, while CoinDesk has repeatedly cited the July 1 low as $57,750 — a difference of $15, or about 0.03%. Discrepancies of that size are ordinary when data providers draw on different exchange feeds and different timestamping conventions, and neither figure changes the shape of the day. It is worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over, because a cycle low becomes a reference point that gets quoted for months afterward, and the two numbers in circulation are not identical.

The Half-Year: Down About 30% Since January

Bitcoin closed the first half of 2026 down approximately 30%, and the route there ran through a June that repeatedly tested the $60,000 line. The level first gave way in early June, when bitcoin broke below $60,000 for the first time in the selloff, and it was still the pivot the market traded around four weeks later. The lowest prints of the whole decline came in the last week of the month, at the capitulation low set in late June, before the July 1 session took the price marginally lower still and then reversed. A drawdown of that size over six months means the second half opened with bitcoin far from where the year began, regardless of what a single green day did to the 24-hour column.

What Is Unresolved: Whether the Line Holds From Above

Reclaiming $60,000 and holding it are separate questions, and July 1 answered only the first. Whether $57,735 — or $57,750, depending on the record — stands as the floor of this cycle is knowable only in hindsight, and a single 3% session on spot buying is thin evidence either way. The more immediate test is behavioral: bitcoin traded below $60,000 for much of the back half of June, and the level would have to start acting as support rather than as a ceiling before the reversal counts as more than a bounce. The half-year mark also resets the comparison table, so from July 2 onward the drawdown gets measured from the new starting point rather than from January's.