Bitcoin decreases 12% to below $42k following spot ETF hype

Following the anticipated launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs and the expectation of a price surge, Bitcoin has seen a pullback to $41,825, according to a Jan. 18 post on CoinGecko.

Bitcoin (BTC) had initially made headlines for hitting $49,000 for the first time since December 2021, as trading opened for spot BTC ETFs across major U.S. exchanges. However, the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency has since decreased in what some predict might be the start of a larger pullback.

The approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs on Jan. 10 was recognized as a major step forward for the industry, given that the first application was submitted 10 years ago. However, even before the announcement, the hype around the approval, or lack thereof, had influenced market pricing, including a false approval.

However, as an analyst highlighted a day earlier, the technical charts had been showing signals of a massive pullback that might pull the rest of the market into the red, which might have been attributed to Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (gBTC) sellers trying to exit their positions following the most recent pump.

In a follow-up thread, CoinGecko highlights that at the time of writing, 632,000 BTC is held in U.S. spot ETFs, which accounts for approximately 3% of the total supply of the cryptocurrency. The study shows that these ETFs hold $27 billion as of Jan. 17. GBTC holds the majority of Asset Under Management (AUM) at $25.3 billion.

At the time of writing, the price of BTC has dropped further to $41,349, a 3.1% decrease in the last day.