Bitcoin dropped below $41,000 Monday morning, as its price continues to slip following the approval of multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. earlier this month.
Bitcoin is currently trading at around $40,760, down 2.4% on the day and 4.5% in the past week, per data from CoinGecko.
The decline in the price of Bitcoin has been linked to investors cashing out their gains following the approval, and exiting their positions in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) following its conversion to a spot Bitcoin ETF.
Before the fund was converted to a spot ETF, shares of GBTC were only available to accredited investors and subject to a 6-month lockup period after they were purchased.
With investors now able to redeem their GBTC shares for Bitcoin, more than $2.2 billion has left the fund in the last week, prompting Grayscale to move hundreds of millions of dollars in BTC to its custodian Coinbase in order to sell it. Those outflows have contributed to sell pressure on BTC, driving the price lower over the two weeks since U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs were approved.
Analysts have also argued that the ETF approval was “priced in”—meaning BTC wasn’t going to see dramatic or sustained gains after an approval—prompting crypto investors to “sell the news” in the aftermath of the ETF approvals.
The broader crypto market has slid in lockstep with Bitcoin, dropping by 2.7% over the past day, to $1.68 trillion, according to CoinGecko data. The global crypto market cap rose as high as $1.86 trillion the day after the SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs to begin trading. Of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, Solana and Cardano have slipped by the most over the past day, dropping 5.5% and 4.9% respectively.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
