Bitcoin
Steady at $61K as Mt. Gox sales approach By Investing.com
Investing.com – Bitcoin’s price moved marginally on Wednesday and suffered steep losses last week as fears of selling pressure from distributions from defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox weighed on sentiment.
Dollar strength weighed on broader cryptocurrency prices as traders remained broadly tilted towards the greenback in anticipation of key US inflation data this Friday. A readout on first quarter economic growth is also available.
rose 0.7% in the last 24 hours to $61,465.7 at 08:29 ET (12:29 GMT). The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell to $59,000 earlier this week as risk appetite remained largely negative.
Mt. Gox liquidators say Bitcoin sales will begin in July
Liquidators of defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, which collapsed due to a hack in 2014, said this week they will begin distributing tokens stolen from customers in the first week of July.
Liquidators earlier this year mobilized around $9 billion worth of Bitcoin from cold wallets — an event that was expected to precede a potential distribution. They did not specify in their announcement this week what the scale of the distributions will be.
Customers who receive their stolen assets will now do so at a much higher price, which could lead them to offload sales. Such a scenario presents enormous selling pressure on Bitcoin.
which will also be distributed by Mt Gox, also suffered heavy losses this week.
The token was already under pressure from reports suggesting that German authorities had also begun selling thousands of Bitcoins confiscated from a piracy website.
Broader sentiment towards cryptocurrencies was already under pressure due to waning risk appetite as traders turned to more stable assets such as the dollar amid fears of high US interest rates.
Crypto investment products, specifically Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, were experiencing two weeks of sharp outflows.
Crypto Price Today: Altcoins See Some Bids as Bitcoin Sentiment Worsens
Among the broader crypto markets, altcoins posted some gains this week as the potential for increased selling pressure on Bitcoin spurred some flows into other crypto assets.
The world’s No. 2 token rose 0.2% to $3,378.09, while and added 0.3% and 0.6%, respectively.
also lagged behind, falling 0.5%.
Among meme tokens, it rose 0.8% while adding 0.6%.
Crypto markets could see volatility as $10 billion worth of Bitcoin and Ether options expire
Crypto markets could face increased volatility later this week as a significant amount of Bitcoin and Ether options are set to expire on major derivatives exchange Deribit.
Specifically, BTC and ETH options worth $6.68 billion and $3.5 billion respectively will expire on Friday at 08:00 UTC. This represents more than 40% of the current accumulated open interest, which exceeds 23 billion dollars.
Large quarterly expiries often lead to increased volatility due to higher trading volumes and the closing or rolling of positions.
“As we approach Friday’s big quarterly expiration, potentially influenced by ‘quadruple witching’ and related volatility in US equity markets, more than 25% of Deribit’s open interest is expected to expire in the money, equating to more than US$2.7 billion. The total notional maturity size is more than US$10 billion”, said the CEO of Deribit in an interview with CoinDesk.
Options are derivative contracts that give the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date.
A call option gives the right to buy, while a put option gives the right to sell. On Deribit, each option contract represents one BTC or ETH.