Bitcoin (BTC) experienced significant volatility following the launch of the first spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States.
BTC surged above the $49,000 threshold, marking its highest level since December 2021, immediately after these ETFs began trading. However, the cryptocurrency rapidly declined almost 4% within the one-hour candle, plummeting to around $46,000, as per CryptoSlate data.
This turbulent price movement resulted in the liquidation of trading positions exceeding $50 million, held by crypto traders engaged in speculation on digital currency prices during the hour. Coinglass data indicates broader losses, with speculators seeing $120 million evaporate within four hours and $175 million over the past 12 hours.
Notably, most of these losses were incurred by long traders or investors who had anticipated further price appreciation for the primary cryptocurrency.
Additionally, BTC’s spot trading volume had exceeded $60 billion as of press time—further indicating the asset’s high trading activity during the reporting period.
Bitcoin ETFs record trading volume
Meanwhile, the newly launched spot Bitcoin ETFs are attracting massive attention, with their trading volume exceeding $2.3 billion.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart pointed out that these ETFs crossed $1.2 billion in trading volume during the first 30 minutes of trading.
“No way to know how much of this is flows. We will potentially know this evening. Though I would bet a significant portion of it is indeed flows. Would also bet that a lot of the GBTC trading volume is outflows,” Seffart clarified.
Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said Grayscale’s new spot Bitcoin GBTC ETF and ProShares’ futures-based Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) are among the top 10 ETFs in trading volume today. Additionally, BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC are in the top 25 ranking.
Meanwhile, Yahoo Finance shows that BlackRock’s IBIT and Grayscale’s GBTC are among the trending tickers for the day.
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