The largest cryptocurrency by market cap fell by more than 8% on Saturday (17th of August), triggering almost $1,000,000 in liquidations and sparking fresh fears of a new bear market trend.
Following the previous week’s gradual negative price action, BTC dropped a further 9% in less than 15 minutes, seeing the price briefly drop to almost $25k before making a slight recovery in the following hours. BTC Nitro’s own bitcoin transaction accelerator also saw a significant increase in activity as users rushed to withdraw their funds from a number of trading platforms.
Altcoins including ETH also saw bearish price action whilst other coins including SHIB also felt the downward squeeze.
The sudden dip forced liquidations totaling close to a million dollars in open trades across many platforms. Bitcoin last saw prices at this level in June following legal action by the SEC against Coinbase and then Binance. That monthly low was then partially recovered with announcements of Bitcoin spot ETFs that still await SEC approval.
Approximately 80% of the liquidated positions were in Bitcoin trades whilst the bulk of the remainder were in ETH which also fell by 11%. Binances native coin, BNB, declined almost 7%.
Recent bearish activity comes against a backdrop of wider economic concerns as interest rates rise in the US where Treasury bonds have risen to 4.4%, a level not seen since 2011 where today’s base rate is just 1% away from it’s highest point in 15 years. This has seen high risk assets, crypto in particular, mostly declining in price as investors shy away from digital currencies.
Prices have seen some recovery in recent months following optimistic outlook by bitcoin enthusiasts that a bitcoin spot ETF could soon pave the way to safer crypto investments, however the SEC has yet to approve any of the pending applications, including BlackRock’s own proposed ETF.
This has spooked some institutional investors such as Elon Musk who also dumped SpaceX’s remaining bitcoin holdings.
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