Bitcoin Price Finds Hard Floor Following 26,000 BTC Sell Order

CoinDesk takes a look at movements in the price of bitcoin over the past seven days.

AccessTimeIconOct 6, 2014 at 12:18 p.m. UTC
Updated Mar 6, 2023 at 2:58 p.m. UTC
10 Years of Decentralizing the Future
May 29-31, 2024 - Austin, TexasThe biggest and most established global hub for everything crypto, blockchain and Web3.Register Now

After buyers snapped up $7.8m worth of bitcoins that were selling for $300 each on exchange Bitstamp on Monday, bitcoin’s price appears to have found a hard floor in what has been a largely unpredictable trading period recently.

On Sunday, bitcoin’s price dropped through the 18-month average purchase price of $337.60, signalling uncertainty to many traders in the market. Then, in the early hours of the Asian morning on Monday, a sell order of 26,000 BTC at $300 that was placed on exchange Bitstamp brought a temporary halt to the volatile price and narrowed bid-ask spreads between the four exchanges in CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).

By the time of the European morning however, buyers had snapped up the entire order and the BPI jumped up into the low-to-mid-$320s.

“When the sell order for 26,000 BTC came onto Bitstamp, the price dropped from $317 to $300 in two seconds. I’ve just bought back in now that block has been lifted,” said Adam O’Brien, CEO of BTC Solutions, a Canada-based provider of ATM exchanges and leveraged trading services for bitcoin.

Investor tactics

O’Brien said that Monday’s unprecedented BTC offer on Bitstamp was most likely a single investor looking to artificially move the price lower and buy back bitcoin later at a reduced price, probably in the low $200 range.

Instead, buyers swarmed the offer. For market participants, the recent volatility has presented a welcome opportunity to make big sums of money trading bitcoin in large volumes, mostly through the practice of arbitrage trading or by taking fees for providing trading enhancements such as BTC Solutions’ leveraged product offering.

With this offering, and for a cost of 0.3% per day, buyers and sellers can obtain immediate execution on trades for as much as eight times their nominal investment. In the one-week period, as prices have fluctuated from a high of $384 to a low of $290.83 on the BPI while exchange volumes have cooled off, traders have positioned themselves in over-the-counter (OTC) markets among various regional counterparties with different supply and demand preferences. This enables them to capture the impacts of the see-sawing drop in bitcoin’s market capitalisation.

“The increase in OTC volumes particularly on Sunday gels with a lot of the activity we are seeing over here too,” said Ron Hose, CEO of Coins.ph, an exchange and wallet service in the Philippines, which has just opened a sister service in Thailand.

Bitcoin for remittance

Hose explained that, for the many Asians who work overseas and send money back home, bitcoin is increasing in popularity since individuals have until now had to fork out large sums for services such as Western Union to transfer money between borders. Bitcoin makes these costs obsolete, Hose explained.

Due to the lack of available financial services providers open over the weekend periods in their home markets, OTC services can be appealing to these investors, said Hose. As the price has continued to decline, exchange-traded volumes have dropped as many buyers and sellers have instead chosen to enter into OTC transactions with buyers or on a peer-to-peer basis.

In the previous seven-day period, volumes averaged around 30,000 BTC per day, according to data supplied by Bitcoinity, which relies on exchanges to report their own numbers. That amounts to just half the amount of volume they have received on their best days over the past month and indicates a return to the volumes of trading seen over the summer period.

Update: A previous version of this article included references to an OTC trader. These have been removed pending further research.

DisclaimerReaders ought to be aware that all OTC traders report their own trade volumes, and that dealing with OTC traders, while potentially more profitable, carries an additional level of risk.

This article should not be viewed as an endorsement of any of the companies mentioned. Please do your own extensive research before considering investing any funds in these products.

Disclosure

Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information has been updated.

CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated, digital assets exchange. The Bullish group is majority-owned by Block.one; both companies have interests in a variety of blockchain and digital asset businesses and significant holdings of digital assets, including bitcoin. CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence. CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive options in the Bullish group as part of their compensation.


Learn more about Consensus 2024, CoinDesk's longest-running and most influential event that brings together all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Head to consensus.coindesk.com to register and buy your pass now.