First Mover Americas: BTC Slides as U.S. Government-Linked Selling Pressure Looms

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Bitcoin has inched toward $66,000, paring all gains from last week, with sentiment dented as a significant amount of the asset was moved from U.S. government-linked wallets, raising concerns of looming selling pressure among traders. BTC lost as much as 5%, before slightly recovering, in the past 24 hours as the U.S. Marshals Service shifted $2 billion worth of BTC to two new wallets. Tracking service Arkham estimated that at least one of the wallets was likely to be a custodial service. Bitcoin was trading around $66,550 at the time of writing, a drop of 4.3% from 24 hours ago. The wider crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index, is 3.5% lower.

Spot ether ETFs saw negative net flows in their first week as massive outflows from the incumbent Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) overwhelmed interest in the competing products. The equivalent bitcoin funds, which debuted in January, raked in $1 billion in net inflows during the first four days, even as they too suffered sizable outflows from a previously existing Grayscale fund. Overall, the spot ETH ETFs lost $340 million in net outflows with more than $1.5 billion exiting from the Grayscale Trust, according to Farside Investors. Ether has outperformed the wider digital asset market following Monday’s slide. ETH is priced at $3,330, a drop of 1.67% compared with the CD20’s 3.5%.

Donald Trump’s crypto pledges may mean the near-term bitcoin price is tied to the likely outcome of November’s presidential election, investment bank Jefferies said. Trump promised to maintain a strategic bitcoin reserve and never sell the government’s seized bitcoin (BTC) at BTC 2024 in Nashville on Saturday. “His overtures to the industry to install crypto-friendly regulators may have the effect of near-term BTC price being tied to the outcome of the U.S. presidential election,” analysts Jonathan Petersen and Joe Dickstein wrote. Jefferies notes that Trump pledged to pick crypto-friendly regulators, to create a crypto industry presidential advisory council, and to make the country the “crypto capital of the planet.”