Bitcoin Slides to $66K in Wake of Silk Road BTC Movements, Solana’s SOL Leads Majors Losses

Bitcoin’s price fell to $66,000 early Tuesday, erasing last week’s gains.

The decline came after the U.S. government moved $2 billion worth of Bitcoin, raising concerns about potential selling pressure.

Solana’s SOL reversed Monday’s gains to post major losses down 6%, while Ether showed relative strength despite recent outflows from newly launched spot ETH ETFs.

Bitcoin {{BTC}} surged toward the $66,000 level early Tuesday, reversing all of last week’s gains as a significant portion of the asset moved out of wallets linked to the U.S. government and eroded confidence among investors amid growing fears of impending selling pressure.

BTC has lost as much as 5% in the past 24 hours before recovering slightly after the U.S. Marshal Service shifted $2 billion worth of BTC to two new wallets. Tracking service Arkham speculated that at least one of those wallets was likely a custodial service.

Solana’s SOL led the majors in losses with a 6% drop, reversing Monday’s gains. As memecoin trading heated up on the network over the weekend, token prices rose and on-chain trading volumes surged above perennial leader Ethereum.

🚨BREAKING NEWS: @solana Exceeds the combined 24-hour DEX volume of Ethereum, Base, and Binance chains.

Solana’s DEX volume dominance hits an all-time high of 42%. pic.twitter.com/RVyqKlZ8z9

— SolanaFloor (@SolanaFloor) July 29, 2024

Other majors also showed similar losses during the bitcoin dump, with Cardano’s ADA down 5%, dogecoin {{DOGE}} and BNB Chain’s BNB down 4%, while XRP lost 3%.

On Monday, despite seeing net outflows of $97 million for the fourth day in a row, newly launched spot ETH exchange-traded funds (ETFs) fell 1%, reflecting Ether’s relative strength.

Analysts Warn of Losses

Market watchers said the lack of new catalysts along with macroeconomic decisions could have a negative impact on the markets, pushing prices down in the near term.

“The market received a boost last week as Trump was expected to mention BTC as a strategic reserve asset in his speech at the Nashville conference,” Alice Liu, research lead at CoinMarketCap, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.

Republican candidate Donald Trump on Saturday vowed to fire SEC chairman Gary Gensler and create a strategic Bitcoin reserve if elected, during a speech at the annual Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville.

The story continues

He also said he would be a “pro-Bitcoin” president and would not allow any of the 213,239 BTC seized by authorities and held in US government wallets to be sold. According to Trump, the US will be the crypto capital of the world.

However, Liu said that optimism reached its peak on the 27th and the “selling the news” phase was entered, adding that “there is no new sauce of optimism in the market right now.”

Liu also warned that the interest rate decisions to be taken by three central banks – the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve, and the Bank of England – on Wednesday and Thursday could further increase volatility in the cryptocurrency market.