Bitcoin wipes nearly a week of gains in 20 minutes, falling under $41K

The price of Bitcoin briefly fell below $41,000 on Dec. 11 at 2:15 am UTC, following a sudden 6.5% drawdown from $43,357 to as low as $40,659 in a span of 20 minutes. At the time of publication, Bitcoin was trading slightly up from the local low at $41,960 per TradingView data. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, also witnessed an abrupt decline, falling more than 8.9% in the same time frame. The price of ETH has since stabilized and is trading for $2,233, down 5.3% on the day. Other large-cap crypto assets including Binance Coin, Ripple and Solana also posted losses. According to data from CoinGlass the brief drop caused more than $270 million worth of long positions to be liquidated. The decline also wiped out some $1.2 billion in open interest on BTC, and is currently sitting around $17.9 billion.

The drawdown, funnily came only minutes after Wolf of All Street’s Scott Melker noted that Bitcoin had just closed its 8th green weekly candle, adding the remark: “When correction, sir?” The drawdown marks the largest single-day decline for Bitcoin in over a month, with the asset having grown more than 12% over the course of the last 30 days. However, Bitcoin has rallied more than 150% since Jan. 1 this year. The uptrend has been primarily driven by the expectation that the United States SEC will approve several spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF), allowing large institutions to gain significant exposure to the asset for the first time. Adding to Bitcoin’s rally has been the wider market expectation that the United States Federal Reserve will begin cutting interest rates mid-way through next year. Investors are also preparing for the next round of inflation data as well as the final FOMC meeting of this year, with most analysts expecting improvements in core inflation and are betting that the Federal Reserve will hold rates where they are now.