A Bitcoin trader lost at least USD $2.5 billion in a single day as the cryptocurrency market collapsed by 16.5 percent on Saturday. In the early hours of Saturday morning, the mystery trader, who owns 288,000 Bitcoin, experienced massive losses.
On Friday, the trader had $16.29 billion in Bitcoin, according to BitInofCharts. The crypto market crashed on Saturday morning, lowering his crypto-asset value to $15.45 billion, then to $13.81 billion by the evening. In one day, the decline resulted in a $2.48 billion loss.
As the cryptocurrency market touched its recent high, Bitcoin lost a fifth of its value on Saturday, prompting some analysts to call the market meltdown “profit-booking” time. According to Reuters, Justin d’Anethan, the Hong Kong-based head of exchange sales at cryptocurrency exchange EQONEX, has been observing the rise in leverage ratios in the cryptocurrency markets as well as how major holders have been shifting their coins from wallets to exchanges. The latter is usually indicative of a desire to sell.
The market capitalization of the 11,392 currencies tracked by cryptocurrency analytics platform Coingecko fell over 15% to $2.34 trillion. Last month, when Bitcoin hit a new high of $69,000, its value temporarily surpassed $3 trillion. The drop comes after a tumultuous week in the global markets.
After statistics revealed that US employment growth slowed in November and the Omicron version of the coronavirus left investors on edge, global markets and benchmark US government yields fell on Friday.
The selloff comes ahead of hearing before the US House Financial Services Committee on December 8 by officials from eight prominent cryptocurrency companies, including Coinbase Global CFO Alesia Haas and FTX Trading CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
As policymakers deal with the consequences of cryptocurrencies and how to effectively regulate them, the hearing will be the first time prominent actors in the crypto markets will testify before US Congress.
Meanwhile, India is yet to introduce the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021 in Parliament’s Winter Session, which aims to outlaw all “private cryptocurrencies” in the country. It does, however, allow for some exceptions in order to promote cryptocurrency’s underlying technology and applications.