Bitunix Analyst:This Week the Market Is Watching More Than CPI—the Real Question Is Whether the Global Cost of Capital Is Set to Reprice Higher
BlockBeats News, July 13th, Bitcoin has once again run into pressure near $64,000, with the near-term focus now on whether it can reclaim and hold $63,000. Should buyers fail to regain control, a further retest of the $60,000 round figure cannot be ruled out.
Global markets face a dense event week: US June CPI, PPI, and retail sales; Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's first semi-annual monetary policy testimony before Congress; and heavyweight earnings from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, TSMC, ASML, and Netflix. The market's focus is no longer just any single data point — it is whether these events collectively confirm that the current "high cost of capital" environment will persist.
Among these, Warsh's first Congressional testimony carries importance arguably equal to CPI itself. Markets will be watching whether he maintains his low-key, guidance-averse policy style, and whether he signals anything on recently rising hike expectations. Some Fed officials have already begun discussing the potential rollback of last year's rate cuts, and if June CPI comes in above expectations again, market pricing for further tightening will step up.
Meanwhile, the Middle East is deteriorating again. Iran has announced another closure of the Strait of Hormuz, US forces are continuing airstrikes on Iranian military facilities, and the conflict now spans multiple Gulf countries. Critically, the true driver of global inflation is not just crude prices — it is the ongoing wartime damage to global refining capacity. Between the Russia-Ukraine conflict, damaged Middle East refineries, and Hormuz shipping risk, refined product supply remains tight worldwide. Even as crude eases, gasoline and diesel end-consumer prices could stay elevated — making energy inflation meaningfully stickier than markets expect.
A separate but equally important thread is the AI capex race. Tech giants including NVIDIA, Amazon, and SpaceX have continued raising massive debt to fund AI infrastructure — but Wall Street is beginning to show clear absorption fatigue. The concern is not corporate credit, but that hundreds of billions of dollars in incremental debt supply will continue pushing corporate financing costs higher. AI investment is not cooling, but cost of capital is emerging as the next-stage valuation constraint — meaning global liquidity is simultaneously facing competition from both government issuance and corporate borrowing.
In addition, Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) plans to increase allocations to alternative assets — driving the yen higher and reflecting that large global capital pools are still actively reshaping their portfolios. If US rates stay high, Japanese capital rotates home, and AI financing demand persists in parallel, global risk assets will continue facing liquidity-reallocation pressure.
On balance, the question the market needs to answer this week is not just whether US inflation is reaccelerating — it is whether the global cost of capital will keep pushing higher. Against a backdrop of persistent AI capital absorption, unresolved energy supply uncertainty, and a still-unclear Fed policy path, risk assets will remain driven by the interplay of rates, liquidity, and corporate financing capacity — and this will ultimately determine whether Bitcoin can again challenge the $64,000+ zone or remain trapped in range-bound consolidation.
