The cryptocurrency market continues to witness a general downward trend, with Bitcoin falling below the $40,000 threshold, which it had been resisting for several days. Currently, Bitcoin is trading at just above the $40K mark , but experts believe this will not last long. The Main Reason Taking an overview, there has been an approximately 5% decrease in BTC price over a 24 hour period. The trend extends to altcoins as well, with many experiencing declines at rates comparable to Bitcoin. The main reason behind this decline is linked to the outflows by the Grayscale GBTC product, leading to substantial BTC sales. Recent developments reveal that the FTX bankruptcy management has sold around $1 billion worth of BTC since GBTC transitioned into a spot ETF. Following the sell-off, the GBTC product now holds 563,000 BTC, compared to the previous 613,000 BTC when it functioned as a spot ETF. Institutional Manipulation In terms of liquidations, the recent downturns have resulted in a total of $65 million in liquidation in the cryptocurrency market within a very short amount of time. Out of this, $63 million represents liquidations in long positions, while $2 million pertains to short positions. Breaking down the long position liquidations, $25 million occurred in Bitcoin, $12 million in Ethereum, and $4 million in Solana. Many believe that this is primarily because of BlackRock manipulating the price so they can buy more BTC for cheaper. Some have even said that there is little to no reason for a correction of this size at this time, as not a single catalyst can be named other than institutional manipulation.
