In a constant downward trajectory over the past week, BTC dropped by another 3% on Monday, taking its value below $62,000 and wiping out any gains it recorded last week. The crypto market lost about 7% in value. ETH, ADA, and BNB recorded about the same losses as BTC at over 4%. SOL dropped by 7%, and memecoins collectively fell by 5%.
Analysts point to continuous miner selling activity as they continue liquidating their rewards after the Bitcoin halving. Whales and miners have sold over $1.2 billion worth of the asset within the past two weeks – that number will only go up as more wallets liquidate their reserves.
The steep price drops also liquidated about $150 million of longs on Monday. Long trades speculate on the price rises of BTC. They got liquidated as trader positions recorded losses and did not have enough funding to cover the falling price. Short bets speculating BTC’s downward price movements saw about $9 million getting liquidated.
Alongside miner and whale activity adding to BTC’s price fall, with about 50,000 BTCs sold already from January, the German government selling BTCs also contributes to the declining value. A German government agency, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), sold around 3,000 BTCs recently and has about 47,000 more coins to sell. It seized these assets from a piracy site in 2013 and is finally liquidating them by taking them to exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase.
Furthermore, a strong dollar performance and investors moving to less risky options like the booming US technology index market have also been limiting BTC’s momentum and causing its price to fold. As BTC witnesses value reduction, the BTC ETFs listed in US markets have also registered large amounts of outflows, with the past week witnessing over $1 billion moving out of the instruments.
