Bitcoin witnessed a sharp sell-off on Monday, with its overnight performance losing more than half of the gains made last week.
Over the course of the day, the world's largest #cryptocurrency gained just over 4.8% to 93,000, with a total drop of more than 44,800 on Monday. By comparison, that's more than 8,100% more than last week's rise55.
However, analysts say the move is likely part of traders rebalancing their positions ahead of the end of the year, especially at the end of 12 months, which has been a profitable month in the past.
"We're seeing a combination of two catalysts that are temporarily driving the #bitcoin price down,
"We have a lot of money to invest, Ryan McMillin, chief investment officer of cryptocurrency fund Merkle Tree Capital, told Decrypt.
He pointed to a wall of selling just below the "psychological barrier" of ¥100,000, saying traders have capitalized on the explosive gains since President-elect Donald Trump's victory three weeks ago.
On Monday, #MicroStrategy announced a $5.4 billion purchase of bitcoins, bringing its total assets to 386,700 #BTC , or 37.6 billion pounds. This is the largest bitcoin purchase in the company's history, both in terms of total BTC and its value in US dollars. The latest purchase, made in the last week, was MicroStrategy's largest bitcoin purchase since the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based company began accumulating B...
McMillin also noted that the increase in the number of people betting on leveraged long positions or rising prices are "too attractive" for market makers not to take advantage of them.
In other words, market makers who promote liquidity may intentionally lower prices to trigger liquidation of these leveraged funds.
On Monday, liquidations rose to 555,000, 70% of which were long positions. This repeats a similar trend seen on Sunday. However, according to McMillin, this is only a small part of normal market behavior.
said McMillin.
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