Bitcoin’s (BTC) price is trending down on Wednesday as investors continue to take profits following recent gains, while a surging U.S. dollar has put pressure on risk assets across the board.
Data provided by TradingView shows that after hitting a high of $43,578 late on Tuesday, Bitcoin has drifted lower and currently trades near support at $42,350, with bears looking to push the price action lower.
BTC/USD Chart by TradingView
But there are positive signs to note, including the first-ever “golden cross” between the 50-week simple moving average (SMA) and the 200-week SMA, which indicates a positive shift in Bitcoin’s price.
The price action for BTC has been volatile and trending down since last week’s approval and launch of the first spot BTC ETFs in the U.S.
According to Bloomberg Intelligence senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, through the third day of trading, the various ETFs have seen a total rolling net flow of +$728 million, with the new ETFs making up for the exodus of flows from Grayscale’s GBTC, which has seen outflows of $1.2 billion.
Balchunas said the top nine new ETFs now have more than $2 billion in assets under management, have seen $4.5 billion in organic volume, and have processed a total volume of $10 billion.
Let me put into context how insane $10b in volume is in first 3 days. There were 500 ETFs launched in 2023. Today, they did a COMBINDED $450m in volume. The best one did $45m. And many have had months to get going. $IBIT alone is seeing more activity than the entire ’23 Freshman… https://t.co/wV1zQFtPW1
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 16, 2024
The ETFs from Grayscale, BlackRock, and Fidelity have accounted for 90% of the trading volume. The initial burst in demand now appears to be subsiding, however, as the total volume traded on Tuesday was $1.8 billion, a notable decline from the $3 billion seen on Friday and the $4.6 billion in volume recorded on their first day of trading.
While crypto proponents have heralded the launch of a spot BTC ETF as a historic development that brings greater legitimacy to digital assets, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon continues to hold a negative view of the asset class.
“There are cryptocurrencies that do something, that might have value. And then there’s one that does nothing. I call it pet rock. The Bitcoin, or something like that,” Dimon said during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “It has some use cases. Everything else is people trading among themselves.”
“I’m not trying to make a joke here; there are use cases: AML, fraud, Anti-Money Laundering, tax avoidance, sex trafficking,” he added. “Those are real use cases and you see it being used for hundreds – maybe $50-$100 billion a year for that. That is the end use case.”
Dimon did admit that cryptocurrencies with embedded smart contracts have something to offer society, alluding to the growing trend of tokenization, but said value-carrying tokens like Bitcoin don’t have much use.
“I defend your right to do Bitcoin; it’s ok. I don’t want to tell you what to do. My personal advice is to not get involved. But I don’t want to tell anyone what to do. It’s a free country,” he said. “But this is what makes a market – people have opinions, and this is the last time I’m ever going to state my opinion.”
At the start of the conversation, Dimon declared that he would not mention Bitcoin on the network again and asked presenters to “stop talking” about it.
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