Excessive accumulated positions in futures led to massive liquidations before the ETF approval. We saw speculative movements. Now we are witnessing a slight melt of BTC amidst the normalization process of excessively profitable wallets. But how much longer will this continue? What awaits crypto investors for the remainder of January?
Is the Cryptocurrency Downturn Over?
The BTC price retreated to as low as $41,718 earlier today. This decline, which generally caused sales in altcoins, was fueled by the audacity of excessively profitable investors. When investors believed that prices should fall if there wasn’t a massive rise after ETF approval, they turned to selling, causing BTC to drop. We are living through interesting times.
Even more interesting is that the $41,800 support level is being tested for the sixth time in about the last four weeks. One of these tests was related to a report by Matrixport, which stated that spot Bitcoin ETFs with no fundamental backing could be approved in the second quarter. Despite the approval, BTC, which had fallen to $40,700, is lingering around $42,700 today.
Although the sixth test of the support and its current holding seems positive, the size of the rebound that will follow will be decisive for the future.
Some analysts remain cautious due to the transfer of 1 billion BTC to exchanges reported by CryptoQuant. According to them, these outflows by miners were the fundamental reason for the downturn. Bitcoin miners, who need to maintain strong cash reserves, seem to remember the hard days as they started selling at levels satisfactory to them while continuing to operate at high profitability.
Cryptocurrency Commentary
We were seeing an extra premium inflated by excessive demand in options due to ETF excitement. For now, since the spot Bitcoin ETF approval has arrived, we see that the premium for BTC futures has remained below 9% in the neutral zone, contrary to the rising momentum that lasted until January 12. This suggests that the days of excessive demand are over and the appetite will rebalance depending on entries into ETFs.
Monday was an official holiday in the US, and therefore Spot Bitcoin ETFs were not traded. Data coming from Tuesday onwards will help us see the sustainability of high volumes. If net entries continue, we may see fluctuations in the BTC price during the upcoming week (or the opposite if we see net exits).
