Bitcoin’s value has experienced a significant drop, declining from over $62,000 to around $60,000 within the last 24 hours, with a brief dip reaching slightly below $59,000. This downturn in Bitcoin’s price can be attributed to several key factors:
Mt. Gox Distribution
Mt. Gox announced plans to start distributing over 143,000 BTC to its creditors, creating significant selling pressure and causing market panic.
Despite initial concerns, under Japanese law, the valuation of creditors’ claims was based on Bitcoin’s market price in April 2014, which was $483 per BTC, according to Reuters. This set the total approved claims at approximately 45.6 billion Japanese yen, or about $400 million.
Under Japanese law, any remaining funds are returned to shareholders after creditor payouts. Mt. Gox is 88% owned by Tibanne, which Mark Karpeles entirely owns. This means that any surplus would go to Karpeles, although he has stated that he doesn’t want them.
Mt. Gox’s wallet on Arkham still holds 141,687 BTC as of press time.
BTC Miner Sales
In June, miner sales reached a yearly high. In the first three weeks of the month, miners sold about 30,000 BTC worth $1.8 billion.
The last significant sale by miners occurred from mid-September to the end of December, during which Bitcoin’s price rose from around $26,000 to over $44,000.
The recent uptick in sales by Bitcoin miners may be linked to the latest halving event, which reduced mining profits and may have prompted a sell-off. Additionally, BTC miner holdings have reached their lowest levels in 14 years.
Spot Bitcoin ETF Outflows
Over the past two weeks, Bitcoin ETFs have seen a significant outflow of $1.3 billion, with Grayscale experiencing the largest withdrawal at $517 million. In contrast, BlackRock’s fund was the only one to report positive activity, registering an inflow of $43 million.
ETFs experienced outflows for seven consecutive trading days, and this trend is expected to continue.
This represents only a minor decline from the recent peak of 878,407 BTC on June 10. As of June 24, spot Bitcoin ETFs still maintain substantial holdings, totaling 867,878 BTC.
These factors have all caused significant selling pressure and massive forced liquidations.
German Government BTC Sales
Last week, the German Government transferred a total of 1,700 BTC to Coinbase, Bitstamp, and Kraken. Today, they transferred a total of 400 BTC to Coinbase and Kraken, worth about $24.34m.
Recently, German law enforcement confiscated approximately 50,000 BTC from operators of commercial piracy websites. This event marks their largest Bitcoin seizure to date.
