Cryptocurrency markets dropped value significantly at the start of the week, with billions of dollars shaved off the cryptocurrency economy’s capitalization. Despite this, cryptocurrency derivatives are surging, with interest in BTC futures commandeering almost $19.1 billion on Tuesday.
Bitcoin price continues to show the volatility
On Sunday, BTC hit an all-time high of $58,354 per coin but could later drop below 50K to a bottom of $44,846 per BTC. Although heavy losses have been reported across the industry, a Luno and Arcane Research report shows that trade volume on Tuesday was the largest. The intraday movement of the digital assets shows that BTC’s price fluctuations are erratic, with the Luno report indicating that there were intraday moves of up to 20% in two days running.
The report states that at the start of the wee BTC volatility was more than usual with intraday moves of 18%. BTC dropped to $46,000 from $57,000 before recovering $54k. The volatility continues, but this is not reflected on daily metrics yet since they are based on daily close prices.
MicroStrategy buys more BTC taking its holding to 90,000 coins.
More institutional investors are dipping in by acquiring BTC. For instance, MicroStrategy is foraying into the crypto industry, and it pushed its BTC holding past 90,000 bitcoins at $2.17 billion. The company said that it paid around $52,765 for almost 20,000 tokens last week after issuing $1.05 billion convertible bonds. MicroStrategy will continue acquiring BTC using excess cash and could issue additional debt to finance the purchases.
BTC whale moves 100BTC after a decade of dormancy
There is much activity going on, and analysts have identified the movement of 100 bitcoins mined in June 2010. The stash, held by a veteran miner, was moved into two wallets that have been dormant for almost a decade. Before the transaction, the wallets hadn’t witnessed any activity since they received 50 BTC Coinbase reward almost 11 years ago. However, in the last six months, the address received two transactions of around 0.00000547 BTC each.
Interestingly, the February 25 transaction has two mining address outputs which indicate that the wallets belong to the same person. Notably, there was only a couple of hours between the mining of the two blocks in June 2010.
Thailand introduces new rules for opening BTC accounts
There is a need for regulation of the crypto industry, and countries are introducing legislation to govern the sector. In Thailand, authorities are introducing new rules for retail bitcoin investors for those wanting to open accounts. The Thai financial watchdog is likely to require local bitcoin exchanges to ask investors to show proof of income before they open accounts.
Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol, the financial watchdog’s secretary-general, said that those not allowed to trade BTC through their accounts can still invest through licensed managers. She said that there has been a concern since most of the investors on domestic crypto exchanges are teenagers and students who are investing in these risky assets.
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