Déjà Vu

Chart of the Day

Another dramatic sell-off unfolded over the weekend, with the price of BTC shattering its support at the $53k level before dropping by nearly $10,000 in a mere hour to test the previous lows that formed during the September correction. This sell-off, similar to the ones that took place on Sept. 7 and May 19, was largely caused by a combination of excessive leverage in the futures market, and the prevalence of negative sentiments in the global financial markets. Thankfully, since the liquidation cascade on Saturday where most leveraged positions ended up getting flushed out, BTC has slowly managed to climb back up above the $48k level in spite of disappointing levels of trading volume caused by general investor passivity. As of the time of writing, the price of BTC has dipped to around $47k and is moving sideways, waiting for a clearer direction. On the on-chain front, data reveal that short-term BTC holders have suffered the worst blow from this retracement. This particular piece of information comes across as rather jarring when we consider the fact that this is happening only within a month of massive profit-taking activities by short-term BTC holders when BTC was at its new all-time high on Nov. 5.

Talk of the Town

On Saturday, crypto exchange BitMart reported that it has lost a staggering $150 million worth of cryptocurrencies to a hack. Based on a tweet by BitMart CEO Sheldon Xia, the security breach was allegedly caused by a stolen private key that compromised two of the exchange's ETH and BSC hot wallets. In spite of the massive amount that was lost, Xia has come out to reassure BitMart users that the drained funds only constitute a small percentage of the exchange's total assets, with the majority of said assets remaining secure and unharmed.