Bitcoin Falls Below $26,500 Amid US Government BTC Sale Rumors ⋆ ZyCrypto
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has seen a significant drop in value, falling below the $26,500 mark amid rumors of a US government sale of BTC.
Bitcoin has plunged over 10% in the past week, posting its second-worst week since its price hit a 10-month high of $30,000 last month. The latest decline comes amid rumors that the US government is planning to sell off a large amount of Bitcoin from its reserves, potentially flooding the market and further reducing prices.
As ZyCrypto reported, on March 14, the US government sold 9,861 Bitcoins, worth approximately $215 million, seized from criminals involved in illegal activities on the Silk Road website. According to a court filing in April, the US government revealed that it plans to sell an additional 41,490 BTC related to Silk Road in four separate batches this year. The online marketplace facilitated illegal activities and was seized by law enforcement agencies in 2013.
This week has been enough to spook investors and send prices plummeting, with approximately $44 million worth of BTC being liquidated in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, independent analysts and research firms refuted the sales claims, with CryptoQuant describing the rumors as “coordinated fake news.”
“Coordinated FAKE NEWS about US government selling Bitcoins leads to second largest long liquidations of 2023. Many accounts retweeted this news without any fact checking and as a result we saw the second largest long liquidations of 2023, with over $36 million liquidated within an hour” Cryptoquant tweeted on May 11.
Arkham, another onchain crypto analytics firm, also distanced itself from FUD, labeling recent claims showing said sales with purported data from the site as false.
“Users on Arkham’s platform can manually add and remove labels for their own private instances. Our platform offers Arkham Entities that can be edited by users in their own sessions. These do not reflect associations with wallets created by the Arkham Team.”
That said, while the US government’s potential sale of Bitcoin has caused a ripple effect in the market, investors should take the news with a grain of salt, considering that this is not the first time that rumors of the US government selling BTC have circulated.
At press time, the cryptocurrency was trading at $26,301, down 3.30% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.
