Bitcoin finishes worst half-year in 12-year history; what's in store for H2?

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) experienced its worst first half of a year in its 12-year history, dropping 60.3% in the first half of 2022, according to CoinMarketCap data. That compares with bitcoin's (BTC-USD) second-worst half in 2018 (-54.7%) when retail investors jumped out of the world's largest digital token by market cap as quickly as they hopped in it, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Since bitcoin's (BTC-USD) peak of $68.8K in November, the token has since fallen around 65%. Some $2T of global crypto market cap vanished, bringing it down to just $853.9B as of June 30, as per CoinMarketCap. The slump in crypto comes in the wake of shrinking liquidity and tighter financial conditions. A raft of prominent crypto-focused firms like Celsius, BlockFi and Three Arrows Capital have been trying to survive crypto winter in recent months amid liquidity issues. Looking at different time frames, bitcoin (BTC-USD) is off -59.2% on a Q/Q basis and -40.2% M/M, according to CoinMarketCap. Across the crypto market, many tokens are seeing similar drawdowns as investors keep shunning riskier assets. Ethereum (ETH-USD), the largest altcoin by market cap, is down a whopping 73% in the first half of this year; -70.6% Q/Q and -47.3% M/M. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, bitcoin (BTC-USD), on a purely technical basis, could bottom out in July as the weekly and monthly charts point to a possible trend reversal, Mark Newton, head of Technic...