BTC falls over 4%, value is below 62,000 USD

In a steady downtrend over the past week, BTC fell another 3% on Monday, dropping its value below $62,000 and wiping out all of last week’s gains. The crypto market lost about 7% in value. ETH, ADA, and BNB saw roughly the same losses as BTC, at over 4%. SOL fell 7%, and memecoins overall fell 5%.

Analysts point to ongoing selling activity by miners who continue to liquidate their rewards following the Bitcoin halving. Whales and miners have sold over $1.2 billion worth of assets in the past two weeks – this number will only rise as more wallets liquidate their reserves.

The sharp price declines also led to the liquidation of about $150 million worth of long positions on Monday. Long trades speculating on BTC price increases were liquidated as traders’ positions recorded losses and did not have enough funds to offset the falling price. Short bets speculating on falling BTC price movements led to liquidations of about $9 million.

In addition to the activity of miners and whales contributing to the drop in BTC’s price (as around 50,000 BTC have already been sold since January), the sale of BTC by the German government is also contributing to the drop in value. A German government agency, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), recently sold around 3,000 BTC and still has around 47,000 more coins to sell. It seized these assets from a piracy site in 2013 and is now finally liquidating them by putting them on exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase.

Furthermore, a strong dollar performance and investors shifting to less risky options such as the booming US tech index market have limited BTC’s momentum and caused its price to plummet. As BTC loses value, BTC ETFs listed on US markets have also seen major outflows, with over $1 billion being withdrawn from the instruments in the past week.

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