Bitcoin price sinks further as Evergrande defaults on US-dollar debt
The last 30 days have seen Bitcoin register substantial losses of around 28%.
- The ETH/BTC pair has continued to hover around its 4-year high value, suggesting an increased amount of decoupling between the 2 assets.
- Bitcoin's market dominance index (DI) has slipped from 40% to 38% over the last month alone.
- Since 1 November, the total market capitalisation of the crypto industry has dipped from AUD$4.15 trillion to AUD$3.33 trillion.
Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalisation, has continued to exhibit an immense amount of financial turbulence after having seemingly accrued solid support around the AUD$68K–$69K range. At press time, BTC is trading at a price point of AUD$67,605.
The flagship crypto's ongoing dip may have been spurred by news of Chinese property development firm Evergrande defaulting on its massive US-dollar debt. That said, analysts are still quite confident about Bitcoin's near term future, with many pundits noting that the asset's current price action is closely mirroring its performance witnessed back in 2013 and 2017 – 2 time windows when BTC forged a remarkable run taking the currency's price to relative highs.
However, with approx. AUD$3.5 billion liquidated from the crypto sector over the last 7 days, it seems as though the near future could continue to remain rough on investors. Not only that, with a sizeable AUD$1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin options set to expire on Friday, there are clear indications that bears may once again be in control of the market.
What lies ahead for Bitcoin?
Even as bearish pressure continues to mount, CEO of fintech giant Microstrategy Michael Saylor revealed that his firm had added another 1,434 Bitcoin to its coffers – between 29 November and 8 December – at an average value of around US$57,477. As a result, the company owns a total of 122,478 BTC, with its holdings now lying at US$5.9 billion and its crypto gains standing at a handsome US$2.2 billion.
Also, American asset manager WisdomTree noted that it had made some amendments to its proposed ETF filing by naming a major US banking institution – i.e. the US Bank National Association – as a custodian for shares of its Bitcoin (BTC) trust in hopes of getting its offering approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at the earliest.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
