Bitcoin falls below $41,000 — ETF’s “selling on news” group is the winner | CoinDesk JAPAN

The Bitcoin (BTC) price further fell by 4.5% on the 18th, dropping to a one-month low of $40,800 (approximately 6.12 million yen, equivalent to 150 yen per dollar). The decline is roughly in line with the CoinDesk 20 Index, which tracks the performance of the 20 largest crypto assets by market capitalization, which is currently down 4.6% over the past 24 hours.

Since the newly approved Bitcoin Spot ETF in the US began trading on January 11th, the price of Bitcoin has skyrocketed in a very short period of time, but has since fallen by about 13% to date.

Net increase in Bitcoin ETF was 28,000 BTC

Looking at data updated as of the 17th, the company that issued the new spot ETF added more than 68,000 BTC in its first week of trading. However, Grayscale’s GBTC was reduced by approximately 40,000 BTC, resulting in a net increase in the amount held by the Bitcoin ETF to approximately 28,000 BTC.

K33 Research analyst Vetle Lunde noted that many physical Bitcoin products were already being traded around the world long before U.S. regulatory approval. In fact, there are currently more than 864,000 BTC held in exchange-traded financial products (ETPs) around the world, and so far the increase in Bitcoin in US Bitcoin ETFs has been relatively small in the grand scheme of things. .

In addition to the ongoing sell-off in GBTC, Runde also noted that Canadian and European ETPs have shed large sums of money in the past week as investors take profit or put money into cheaper U.S. ETFs. It was pointed out that a leak had occurred.

Outflows from futures put pressure on Bitcoin

There is also the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), whose assets under management recently exceeded $2 billion (approximately 300 billion yen). Although the futures-based BITO does not hold any Bitcoin, it accounts for 36% of the open Bitcoin contracts on CME Group exchanges, Lunde said. He further explained that the total futures-based Bitcoin ETFs account for 48% of CME’s total Bitcoin open interest.

Runde noted that BITO and other futures-based funds are seeing outflows, which could force them to unwind (sell) long positions in the futures market, putting further pressure on Bitcoin prices. .

｜Translation and editing: Rinan Hayashi
｜Image: Chris Liverani/Unsplash
｜Original text: Bitcoin Plunges Below $41K as ‘Sell the Bitcoin ETF News’ Wins the Day