Bitcoin has been sold off in large quantities by the German government, while Golem appears to have sold a nine-figure amount of ETH.
The cryptocurrency market rebounded on Monday after a major sell-off late on Sunday.
Bitcoin (BTC) recovered losses on Sunday after dropping 7% on July 7. The bounce suggested a double bottom formation near the $54,000 support, which caused BTC to rise 3.7% from $55,640 to $57,850 within the hour as $65 million worth of short positions were liquidated.
Ethereum (ETH) similarly rebounded above $3,040 after testing $2,800 early Monday morning, with Solana and Polkadot each posting a 0.5% gain.
Among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap in the past 24 hours, Celestia (TIA), Starknet (STRK), and Notcoin (NOT) were the best performers, increasing 14.8%, 9.8%, and 7%, respectively.
NOT was also the best-performing asset over the past seven days, posting a 21.2% gain. Only five digital assets are currently posting weekly gains.
Notably, short crypto positions were liquidated more than long positions in the past 12 hours, accounting for $159.4 million of the $202.1 million in margin calls. Of the $350.4 million liquidated in the past 24 hours, $184 million was also short, according to CoinGlass.
Around 88,240 traders were hit with margin calls in the past day.
Spot Ethereum ETF looms
The market volatility comes as analysts continue to delay their expectations that the Spot Ethereum ETF will receive final approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). While the SEC approved the fund's Form 19b-4 in May, the regulator has yet to approve the S-1 registration statement from the prospective issuer.
Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute, predicted the fund would launch within two weeks of the SEC requiring issuers to file amended documents by July 8.
“Spot ETH ETF [are] “No trading for next 2 weeks,” Djerassi tweeted.
“Later next week [is] Possibly, but let's consider the week of July 15th. [is] It's more likely.”
While analysts have suggested the launch of a spot Ethereum ETF is imminent, data from Arcam Intelligence has confirmed that Golem, an Ethereum-based decentralized computing protocol that had its IPO in November 2016, has moved more than $115 million worth of ETH onto centralized exchanges in the past 37 days.
Golem has been moving assets to Binance, Coinbase and Bitfinex over the past 37 days, and this movement is likely contributing to the selling pressure that has plagued the Ethereum market recently.
German government sells 17,500 BTC in 20 days
Bitcoin appears to be absorbing even larger sales, with wallets believed to be controlled by German authorities selling large amounts of BTC every day since early July, according to Arkham Intelligence.
German police announced in January that they had seized 50,000 BTC from an individual who worked for Movie2k, a popular website that distributed pirated films between 2008 and 2013. The individual, who had been in custody since his arrest in 2019 on money laundering charges, agreed to transfer the bitcoin to authorities.
BTC began flowing out of the wallet last month and has accelerated in recent days. On Monday, the wallet transferred 2,206 bitcoin ($123 million). The wallet now holds 32,488 BTC, worth just $1.86 billion, down from $3.2 billion when the flow began on June 19.
Mainstream markets see slight decline
Meanwhile, in mainstream markets, U.S. stock futures were slightly lower on Monday morning as investors awaited key inflation data. S&P futures were down more than 0.1%, while futures tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.19%. Nasdaq 100 futures were down about 0.14%.
However, if the June Consumer Price Index figures due on Thursday and the Producer Price Index figures due on Friday show a slight improvement, this could have an impact on market expectations.
