Bitcoin Falls Below $40,000 as Grayscale Unwind Continues

Par Mat Di Salvo

Bitcoin (BTC) has continued to drop in price and is now trading for below $40,000 per coin.

CoinGecko data shows that the price of the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap is now priced at $39,754, having shed nearly 5% of its value in 24 hours.

In the past week, it's dropped by over 7%.

The price dip comes less than two weeks after long-awaited investment vehicles that bring crypto to Wall Street were approved: spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

10 Bitcoin ETFs, which allow investors to buy shares that track the price of the digital asset, started trading on January 11.

Analysts were torn over whether the price of BTC would shoot up or sit still as a result of the long-talked about approval.

One day after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the funds, BTC nearly touched $49,000 for the first time since 2021.

But it has since taken a nosedive.

BTC's current dip widely attributed to money coming out of the ETFs—particularly Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust. Before, the fund traded like a closed-end investment vehicle, and it was difficult for investors to redeem their shares.

Though following its conversion to a spot BTC ETF and investors have been cashing out fast. Grayscale is sending billions of dollars in BTC to its custodian, Coinbase, which is leading to downward pressure on the price of the cryptocurrency.

The rest of the crypto market isn't looking good, either. Ethereum (ETH) is down more than 6% in the past 24 hours, and is trading hands for $2,336.

While Solana (SOL) has shed more than 9% of its price in a day. The coin—which is the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market cap—is now priced at $83.86.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

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