The price of bitcoin plummeted at Saturday, falling $10,000 in roughly an hour to a temporary low of $42,000 before bouncing up to $47,000.
The largest digital token fell as low as $42,000.30 before paring some of the tumble. It was trading at about $47,500 as of 2 p.m. in Singapore on Saturday, so drop is about 11%. Ether, the second-largest token, fell as much as 17.5% before trimming the retreat to about 11%. The overall crypto sector has shed around a fifth of its value, sliding to $2.2 trillion, according to tracker CoinGecko.
According to CoinGecko, the overall market cap is currently hovering around $2 trillion. Spot market selling seems to have driven the cryptocurrency lower before triggering huge stop loss in the derivative markets.
“So far I’ve seen upwards of 4000 BTC being sold that pushed the market abruptly down,” Laurent Kssis, a crypto exchange-traded fund expert and director of CEC Capital. “In fact, 1,500 BTC alone was sold in less than a minute at the time of the drop.”
“The bitcoin denominated OI has now remained above 365,000 BTC for more than a month. It is not common to see such a high OI being sustained for such a long duration. This could suggest that the market is currently over- saturated with leverage,” Arcane Research’s weekly note published Tuesday said.
Meanwhile the nation of El Salvador purchased bitcoin as the price dipped, according to the country’s president, Nayib Bukele. Bukele wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning: “El Salvador just bought the dip!” 150 BTC at an average USD price of ~$48,670,” the president said, adding celebratory emoji and a Christmas tree. Funnily enough Bukele later added in another tweet: “Missed the f***ing bottom by 7 minutes.”
