Bitcoin continued its price drop, sliding below $60,000 for the first time since May 3. The price of the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin was last down 7% at $59,562.54, as per report. Earlier, Bitcoin price fell as low as $59,021.42, about 19% from its March record. In the past week, it’s fallen nearly 11%.
Losses are piling up in the crypto market after its second-worst weekly decline of 2024. This is reflection of cooling demand for Bitcoin EFT (exchange-traded funds) and uncertainty over monetary policy.
Bitcoin price drop
Bitcoin saw its price drop to as much as 8.1% to $58,528 on Monday, the biggest intraday decline since April 13. The leading token by market value has been buffeted by two weeks of outflows from exchange-traded products holding the cryptocurrency. A crypto market decline was seen with more than $210 million worth of bullish bets in crypto were liquidated in the past 12 hours, as per report.
Increased selling pressure
A gauge of the largest 100 digital assets fell about 5% in the seven days through Sunday, the steepest such slide since April.
Adding to fears of increased selling pressure, the rehabilitation trustee of Mt. Gox the Japanese crypto exchange that was hacked more than a decade ago announced that it would start repayments of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash in July.
“Given the Mt Gox announcement, it seems there are market participants positioning themselves short,” Stefan von Haenisch, head of trading at OSL SG Pte. “Crypto markets struggling to catch a bid at the moment.”
Fear of interest rates cut
The cracks in crypto come amid doubts about the Federal Reserve’s scope to cut interest rates quickly from a two-decade high. For some analysts, the retreat in digital assets is a warning sign for broader risk appetite.
The current crypto market dynamic is “characterized by low volatility, soft volumes, and orderbooks getting unbalanced when prices start to move to the edges of their range,” David Lawant, research head at FalconX, wrote in a note.
The run of weekly declines for Ether and Solana are the longest since last year and 2022 respectively.
That’s even as fund companies prepare to launch the first U.S. ETFs investing directly in Ether, the second-ranked cryptoasset. Solana, meanwhile, was very recently a favorite for a variety of digital-asset hedge funds.
Bitcoin price support
Bitcoin hit a record of $73,798 in March but is trailing traditional investments such stocks, bonds and gold this quarter. The 200-day moving average at about $57,500 is in focus now as a possible zone of support for the price, as per report.
“A bearish mood seems to be setting in,” said Caroline Mauron, co-founder of digital-asset derivatives liquidity provider Orbit Markets. “The market is finding it hard to digest any large sell orders.”
Bitcoin investment products
Bitcoin investment products saw around $600 million in outflows for a second consecutive week, the most over a two-week period since the U.S. approved EFTs to hold the largest cryptocurrency in January.
Overall, digital asset products were hit with $584 million in outflows in the week ended June 21. Bitcoin products accounted for the majority, with $630 million in outflows coming in the wake of another $600 million the prior week.
Crypto market decline
Cryptocurrencies broadly tumbled with bitcoin. Ether lost 4%, while the token tied to smart contracts platform Solana fell 2%, along with payments token XRP. The meme token dogecoin dropped almost 6%.
In equities, Coinbase and MicroStrategy declined 6% and 7%, respectively. Nearly all miners were in the red.
