Bitcoin (BTC) remained in sell-the-news territory on Thursday when it plummeted 3.4% against the US dollar to its lowest point in over a month.
After hitting intraday lows of $40,700, a smattering of late-date recovery followed, while early-Friday trades remained relatively flat.
At the time of writing, bitcoin was swapping for $41,170.
Bitcoin has underperformed in the days following the landmark exchange-traded funds approvals in the US, as investors seek to take their profits following a prolonged bout of buying the ETF hype.
While bitcoin ETFs continue to see healthy trading volumes, Grayscale’s GBTC fund, the largest of the 11 currently trading on the market, is witnessing hundreds of millions of dollars in cash redemptions.
As such, GBTC’s discount to net asset value has widened to nearly 1% after closing the gap entirely after the $24 billion fund was up-listed eight days ago.
Bloomberg’s ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said it was “likely due to selling pressure”.
With a management fee of 1.5%, GBTC is considerably more expensive than every other bitcoin ETF on the market.
In comparison, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust charges an annual management fee of less than 0.2%, an enticing prospect for investors seeking out cheaper exposure to bitcoin.
Bitcoin is down more than 11% week on week – Source: tradingview.com
Ethereum (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency, was also sent lower on Thursday, falling 2.3% against the US dollar.
The ETH/USD pair was swapping for $2,473 at the time of writing.
Few blue-chip altcoins have managed to move the dial, with Poldadot (DOT), Avalanche (AVAX) and Cardano (ADA) leading the lossmakers with more than 10% wiped from their market capitalisations in the past seven days.
Solana (SOL) is down 4%, Ripple (XRP) 8% and Dogecoin (DOGE) 7%, with only Binance’s BNB token in the week-on-week green, albeit by only 1.3%.
Bitcoin dominance – a measure of its share of the global cryptocurrency market capitalisation – has fallen 280 basis points to 51% in the past seven days.
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