Bitcoin sank below $66,000 on Wednesday morning after the Mt. Gox trustee moved $2.8 billion worth of its BTC into new wallets.
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price has rebounded to $66,408.24 after having sunk as low as $65,479.96 earlier this morning, according to CoinGecko data. But BTC is still trading 1% lower than it was this time yesterday. In the past day, traders have shifted $28 billion worth of BTC volume.
The broader market is lagging slightly as well. The global cryptocurrency market cap sank 1% to $2.53 trillion, according to CoinGecko data. In March, around the time that Bitcoin set a new all-time high above $73,000, the global market cap got the closest it’s been since November 2021 of surpassing $3 trillion.
Since early this morning, Mt. Gox has moved a total of 42.6 Bitcoin, worth approximately $2.8 billion. The largest transfer of $2.1 billion went into what appears to be a new wallet. But the most recent transfers were to centralized crypto exchange Bitstamp, which is one of the five firms that’s helping redistribute Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to Mt. Gox creditors.
The trustee sent the exchange two smaller test transactions before sending $25 million, according to data from blockchain analytics firm Akrham Intelligence. Another of its wallets sent $105 million to the exchange, meaning the exchange now has $130 million worth of Mt. Gox creditors’ funds. Earlier this month, Bitstamp told Decrypt that repayments will go out to creditors “as soon as possible.”
Still, analysts think there’s reason to believe that Bitcoin could move back into range of its all-time high before the end of the year.
“Bitcoin has returned to its comfort zone between $60,000 and $70,000—a multi-month consolidation range where the cryptocurrency has spent nearly half the year,” Ruslan Lienkha, YouHodler chief of markets, wrote in a trading desk note. “This year, BTC has reached the $71,000-$72,000 zone at least four times, suggesting we might see this price level again soon.”
But for the time being, investors seem a little hesitant, wrote Valentin Fournier, an analyst at BRN. He noted that Bitcoin ETFs saw the end of a 12-day streak of net inflows yesterday, but said there isn’t reason that wasn’t all fueled by traders reallocating into the new Ethereum ETFs.
“As we said yesterday, important price factors are awaited this week: Trump’s speech at Bitcoin 2024, and US GDP and PCE numbers,” he wrote, referring to the release of new gross domestic product and personal consumption expenditures data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis later this week. “These potential catalysts could provide a catalyst for Bitcoin to a new all-time high, especially if rumors that Trump will make BTC a strategic reserve asset are to be believed.”