Bitcoin price slips 5% amid $3.5bn profit-taking sweep
- Traders booked profits as Bitcoin set a new price record.
- The price tumble wiped out millions in long positions.
- Market analysts say bullishness remains.
Bitcoin fell 5% on Tuesday, just a day after reaching a new all-time high price above $123,000.
The sharp drop may have been triggered by a single wallet, a longtime Bitcoin holder, that moved about 40,000 Bitcoin to Galaxy Digital, an institutional broker, on Monday.
That’s $4.8 billion worth of potentially mobile Bitcoin, a sale large enough to spook the market.
And, data from Onchain Lens has linked the sender to the owner of a major wallet that shuffled 90,000 Bitcoin, currently worth $9.6 billion, last week, after 14 years of being inactive.
“This marks the first cash-out in his Bitcoin history,” the crypto tracking platform said on X.
Spooking the market
There’s precedence for large Bitcoin sales spooking the market.
Almost exactly a year ago, Germany’s government sold 50,000 Bitcoin, worth $2.3 billion at the time, and the price slumped 20%.
The unknown Bitcoin whale who has now started to move their assets holds almost twice the hoard Germany once did and could sell at double the price.
Adding to the unease is a predictable wave of short-term profit-taking that followed Bitcoin’s new price record.
Around $3.5 billion in gains were swept off the board after Bitcoin topped $123,000, according to Glassnode data. It’s not surprising, the scale of the profit-taking, given that market data before the climb to a new all-time high showed nearly every holder was sitting on profits.
Tuesday’s slump triggered more than $450 million in crypto liquidations, with the bulk of the wipeout affecting traders with long positions, positive bets on cryptocurrency prices.
Roadblocks
Still, market watchers like Eric Demuth, CEO of Bitpanda, a crypto exchange, said Bitcoin is set to rise to higher levels as institutional investors and sovereign states are still piling into crypto.
In the last 24 hours, Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, has added $472 million worth of the asset to its balance sheet.
“The roadblocks are gone,” Demuth said in comments shared with DL News, while adding that it’s no longer a question of whether Bitcoin can reach a particular price.
“We will see a gradual convergence with gold’s market capitalisation in the coming years,” Demuth said. “And from that point on, we’re no longer talking about [$116,000 or $230,000] per Bitcoin, we are entering an entirely new price regime.”
Crypto market movers
- Bitcoin is down 4% in value over the past 24 hours and is trading at $117,027.
- Ethereum is also down 2.2% in the same period to $2,978.
What we’re reading
- Tornado Cash dev Roman Storm begins criminal trial with fight over chat records — DL News
- SharpLink Buys 10,000 ETH Directly From Ethereum Foundation — Unchained
- There’s a new crypto narrative in town — Milk Road
- Liquid Restaking Platform Inception Shuts Down — Unchained
- Crypto poised for transformative week as Congress votes on bills and Roman Storm trial begins — DL News
Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. Got a tip? Please contact him at
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