(Global – Reuters) – Bitcoin headed for its biggest weekly drop in more than a year on Friday as traders worried about a likely dumping of tokens from defunct Japanese exchange Mt.Gox and fresh selling by debt investors following the cryptocurrency’s strong run.
The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency fell 8% on the day to $53,523, the lowest level since the end of February.
It was aiming for a weekly drop of more than 12%, the biggest since early November 2022.
Rival token Ether lost 9% to $2,841, more than a two-month low.
Media reports say that Mt.Gox, the world’s leading cryptocurrency market before it collapsed a decade ago, may begin returning bitcoins to creditors seen as likely sellers since the token was worth just hundreds of dollars in 2014.
“Selling pressure continues to be associated with lender sales of the failed Mt Gox market,” said Tony Sycamore, market analyst at IG.
“However, the downward acceleration suggests that the market is trying to outpace lender flows.”
Analysts also expressed concern that Joe Biden could be replaced as the Democratic presidential nominee by someone less sympathetic to cryptocurrencies after his poor performance in a debate against Republican candidate Donald Trump.
“What’s amazing about this bitcoin crash is that it’s happening when US stocks and global stock indexes are at or near all-time highs — the correlation between bitcoin and total capital is collapsing,” Nexo co-founder Anthony Trenchow told the platform. .
Bitcoin got off to a good start to the year following the launch of US exchange-traded funds, hitting a record high of $73,803.25 in mid-March. However, problems have arisen since then.
“With an asset that has been in the same trading range for quite some time, and recently at the bottom of that range, there are a lot of positions that are not participating,” said Justin D’Anetton of digital asset market maker Keyrock. .