Bitcoin Sees First Major Selloff of 2024 As Liquidations Surpass $655 million

Bitcoin (BTC) has given up the mild gains it accrued at the start of the year as rumors of a potential rejection of its spot ETF filled the ecosystem.

Bitcoin’s price slumped by 7% to a 24-hour low of $40,813.53 before bouncing back to its current level of $42,493.66. Though these erratic price moves are not uncommon in the crypto ecosystem, there are other highlighted factors influencing investors’ sentiment at the moment.

The Bitcoin drawdown has caused a 7% drop in Bitcoin’s market capitalization, which is now worth $826,945,714,859. However, trading volume is in the green, jumping by 23.1% in 24 hours to $42,743,080,514.

Justifying the Bitcoin (BTC) Price Slump

Prior to this current liquidation, Bitcoin recorded four consecutive bullish monthly closes that brought its total gains for 2023 to 150%.

Judging by this rapid price surge, experts in the industry supported the thesis that an ultimate correction was necessary, with some even setting a retracement price as low as $32,000 for the coin.

To complement this sentiment, Bitcoin miners also decided to go on a selling spree. As revealed by market analyst Ali Martinez, Bitcoin miners have sold approximately 4,000 Bitcoin worth more than $176 million over the past ten days.

The impact of these selloffs and the bearish report of the potential spot Bitcoin ETF application rejections has sparked more than $655 million in liquidations, according to data from CoinGlass.

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The majority of Long traders got liquidated, undermining their buildup for an expected bullish rally that might have trailed a potential approval of the ETF product later this month.

Many top voices in the industry are doing damage control now, as experts consider the slumped prices a good discount to buy BTC before the price ultimately shoots up in the near future upon approval of Bitcoin ETF.

Altcoin Season Stumped

With most altcoins still maintaining a correlation with Bitcoin, the fall in the price of the bigger coin has triggered a massive slump to derail the growth of some of these coins.

Ethereum is down by 7.52% to $2,203.03, Cardano has dropped by 11.28% to $0.5465, with Solana (SOL) also joining the bandwagon, slipping 13.70% to fall below the $100 support to $96.60.

With the current slump more encompassing unless any correction is seen in months, some altcoins like Maker (MKR) and Internet Computer (ICP) have jumped by 6.64% and 5.84% to $1,762.03 and $13.96 respectively.