Bitcoin holders sold at heavy losses in market freefall - report

During the recent Bitcoin market collapse, many traders unloaded their holdings at lower prices than they bought them. However, they might have saved money in doing so.

Blockchain intelligence firm TokenAnalyst studies blockchain data and watches Bitcoin being moved in and out of exchanges. The assumption is that when Bitcoin comes from an exchange, it has just been bought, and when money is sent to an exchange, it is about to be sold. TokenAnalyst simply compares the two prices to get a bird’s eye view on the market.

According to TokenAnalyst, traders sold for an average loss of 1.5-7.7% during the market collapse. Which, when stacked up to a 50% drop in the price of Bitcoin, doesn’t seem too bad.

"As the price drops, consumers are moving large volumes of $BTC quickly to trade or exchange for fiat in order to mitigate losses. We saw a dramatic increase of BTC flowing from consumers wallets to exchanges as price dropped," the report stated.

In particular, TokenAnalyst observed a notable rise in inflows to crypto exchange OKEx. The exchange witnessed 11 deposits totaling approximately 23,000 BTC. Per the data, the BTC held a median purchase price of $12,815 and a deposit price of $6,459. TokenAnalyst figured that if traders sold their holdings then, losses would have added up to $146 million.

But one trader wasn’t worried about making a loss.

An amount of 10 Bitcoin, that was bought for just $9.10 in 2012, was deposited to Binance on March 4, when the price of Bitcoin was $8,769. If it was sold, the trader would have bagged $88,000, making a 96,262% return on investment. 

Not too bad for a Wednesday.