Bitcoin falls below $40K
What's being bought and sold*
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*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 23rd January 2024.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
U.S. Stock Market Blows The Doors Off
U.S. stocks are roaring. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped $38,000 for the first time ever. The S&P 500 also reached a new all-time high.
For a decent stretch of the past few years, equity and crypto moved in lockstep, a sort of risk-asset buddy system involving an air hose connected with interest rates.
But that kindred spirit is sure not on display lately – because, man, crypto just got absolutely hammered.
What's down
Grayscale's BTC Bloodbath
The total global market capitalization of all digital assets, as tracked by CoinGecko, as of 6:57 a.m. (EST) today fell 5% to $1.58 trillion. Some $300 billion worth of crypto market value has been wiped out over roughly the past two weeks.
Much of the damage can be attributed to the correction in the price of Bitcoin, down 16.6% in the past 14 days.
Spot BTC has declined 4.6% in the past 24 hours, relinquishing a coveted $40,000 handle, taking refuge in a bomb shelter tucked beneath the crumbling sidewalk of $39K.
The BTC sell-off is being blamed on mass dumping by GBTC, the spot BTC ETF run by Grayscale, which fought for years to convert GBTC from a closed-end trust fund that traded obscurely by appointment into an open-end, publicly traded ETF.
Per CoinDesk sources, a massive chunk of the outflows from GBTC appear to connect with an FTX estate sale taking place since the SEC green lit ETFs which started trading on Jan. 11. Bankrupt FTX has, via a court-approved trading partner (Galaxy), unloaded 22 million GBTC shares worth nearly $1 billion.
Yesterday, Grayscale sent an estimated $700M worth of BTC to Coinbase, according to Cointelegraph.
Bloomberg analysts warned such a pile was much too much to be absorbed into the market, even when including possible buying among ten other ETF players.
Pundits are now underscoring the presumably one-time nature of the FTX dump event.
What's next
New Altcoin Heartthrob Flashes Over, Reignites
Big, popular altcoins, such as Solana and Avalanche, have been sheared like highland sheep, with SOL and AVAX each shedding 20% or more of valuation over the past 14 days. Their December ‘23 high peaks have faded from view with a dense fog settling over the glen.
Amidst a Bitcoin ETF "sell-the-news" stampede pummeling the wider market, savvy crypto denizens continue to scour for new fields in which to roam freely.
Take UMA for example. Only a few days ago, UMA was $2. The token is tied to Uma, an optimistic oracle (OO) project; as in, freakishly optimistic. Between early last Thursday and late Friday, UMA tripled in price. Crypto can run hot, as we all well know, so it wasn't a stretch to assume that ... would be that. UMA, over the weekend, promptly retraced, right on cue. But then it shifted, bounced – and just now shot up again.
With a market cap of $476 million, UMA is now the 121st-largest digital asset. UMA describes itself as a "decentralized truth machine" that can help smart contracts settle on-chain data disputes.
A social media campaign has been hyping Uma's impending Oval launch, an update billed as a solution for safeguarding lending protocols from routine slippage costs that until recently were simply chalked up as the price associated with relying on third parties to produce blocks.
