Bitcoin (BTC) began the weekend on the front foot, but a 2% decline on Sunday sent the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation careening below $42,000 to close the session at $41,374.
Losses mounted again on Monday morning, with the BTC/USDT pair dipping another 88 basis points.
At the time of writing, bitcoin was swapping at nearly a flat $41,000, with the losing streak causing around $40 million worth of long-bitcoin liquidations in the futures markets.
Bitcoin’s week-on-week losses have climbed above 6%, though its dominance has held above 53%, suggesting a steady weighting of the benchmark cryptocurrency in the wider digital asset markets.
Bitcoin remains significantly higher year to date to the tune of 147%, though the cooling off of spot prices suggests that the Santa rally may have already come and gone.
The coin’s value has skyrocketed in the latter half of the year, encouraged by pending approval of spot-bitcoin exchange-traded products.
Bulls are still holding out for a late-December pump, but they may need to hold out for the new year, when the regulators make their final decision on these ETFs.
Bitcoin remains around 150% higher year to date – Credit: tradingview.com
Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency on the market, cut a similar path to bitcoin over the weekend, having gained on Saturday before plummeting on Sunday.
Monday morning ETH trades have been bearish, with the ETH/USDT pair dropping 1.75% to $2,158.
The wider altcoin space was a sea of red this morning, with Binance’s BNB token, Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP), Cardano (ADA) and Dogecoin (DOGE) all chalking up mid-single-digit losses.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation currently stands at $1.55 trillion after dipping 200 basis points overnight.
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