Elon Musk’s SpaceX Liquidated $373 Million Worth of Bitcoin Holdings, BTC Price Crashes 8%
On Thursday, August 17, Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk’s SpaceX has liquidated $373 million worth of its Bitcoin holdings. The news was enough to send the Bitcoin price come crashing down by 8% over the past 24 hours.
The WSJ report notes: "SpaceX wrote down the value of Bitcoin it owns by a total of $373 million last year and in 2021 and has sold the cryptocurrency”. In 2021, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, made a public announcement about the company's acquisition of a specific quantity of Bitcoin. This announcement came after an official filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Tesla, another company co-founded by Musk, intended to invest $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency.
On Thursday, the Bitcoin price crashed by more than 8% thereby tanking under $26,000. As of press time, BTC is trading 7.59% down at a price of $26,477 with a market cap of $516 billion.
Along with Bitcoin, the entire cryptocurrency market has come crashing down by more than 7% followed by more than $800 million in liquidations. During Thursday afternoon Eastern Time, the remainder of the cryptocurrency market also experienced declines. Ethereum, the second-largest digital asset in terms of market capitalization, has decreased by almost 10% within the last day, currently being traded at $1,640. At its lowest point on Thursday.
Several other cryptocurrencies, including Ripple (XRP), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and Litecoin (LTC), have all undergone declines of at least 14% over the past day. These three tokens had all witnessed considerable price increases in the preceding weeks.
However, Elon Musk’s SpaceX selling Bitcoins is not the only reason behind the BTC price fall. There are other macro factors at play as well. As we know, Bitcoin was facing subdued volatility over the past few weeks missing price action and liquidity.
But earlier this week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announced that the US central bank could be looking for interest rate hikes considering the stick inflation conditions in the country. These comments have also dampened the market sentiment with US equities falling for the past three consecutive trading sessions leading to yesterday’s fall in the crypto space as well. Thus, the weakness in the global markets has percolated to crypto as well!
On the other hand, the unfolding of the Evergrande crisis in China is sending tremors across the global markets. Another major macro risk is the continuous devaluation of the Chinese Yuan that’s trading at the weakest levels since 2007.