Bitcoin Bulls Buoyed by Report of FTX's $1B GBTC Sale
Bitcoin's poor price performance since the debut of U.S.-based spot ETFs on January 11 is partly due to significant sales of bitcoin from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). GBTC's bitcoin holdings decreased from nearly 620,000 to about 567,000 between the ETF launch and January 19. The new spot ETFs have accumulated over 94,000 bitcoin and $3.9 billion in assets under management, but it's suggested that 53,000 of these tokens may be from GBTC holders transferring their money to the lower-cost funds. The bankruptcy estate for the failed crypto exchange FTX sold its entire 22 million share holding of GBTC, equivalent to almost 20,000 bitcoin, for nearly $1 billion. This indicates that over one-third of GBTC sales were due to one non-economic actor and there was nearly $1 billion more of new investment into the spot ETFs than previously thought. Despite this, bitcoin sellers continue to dominate, with the price dropping by 2.8% over the past 24 hours to $40,400.
