Bitcoin slumped on Friday morning, with its price dropping about 3.5% over the past 24 hours to around $64,700 as volatility fears came home to roost.
In the last hour alone, Bitcoin has lost nearly 1.2% of its value, extending a troubling trend that has seen it dip nearly 9% over the past two weeks.
Many believe the slump was triggered by German authorities dumping seized Bitcoin assets. Europe’s biggest economy recently began selling off portions of a hefty stockpile of Bitcoin valued at about $3 billion that was confiscated from Movie2k.to, a movie piracy website, in 2020.
German police seized 50,000 BTC from the piracy website in January, which it described in a press release as the “most extensive security of Bitcoins by law enforcement authorities in the Federal Republic of Germany to date."
The country has sold off about $325 million worth of Bitcoin in the past 48 hours, with the huge possibility of a further sale, blockchain analytics firm Arkham said yesterday on Twitter.
“Having seen a slippage in the price of BTC, the German government is releasing significant tranches of BTC and has taken a view that the price of BTC is to soften for a while to come,” Robert Quartly-Janeiro, chief strategy officer at crypto exchange Bitrue, told Decrypt. “It’s worth remembering that the BTC being sold was seized due to illicit activity, so what’s more interesting is what the German government is planning to do with the capital once sold.”
In March, Bitcoin spiked to an all-time high of $73,797 before pulling back. But then it slumped to $56,527 in May before recovering.
Bitcoin’s recent decline is not solely due to the German sell-off. The bearish turn came at a time when major indices such as the S&P 500 also slumped amid wider negative sentiments in the financial markets.
Earlier attempts to push Bitcoin’s price towards $66,000 were thwarted by sellers, leading to significant liquidations of long positions. The past 24 hours alone saw about $150 million in total liquidations, 73% of which were long positions.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.