Bitcoin Struggles to Recover After Near 10% Drop

Bitcoin struggled to rebound from a precipitous drop which sent the largest cryptocurrency falling as much as 9.22% earlier in the week.

Bitcoin had rallied to a 21-month high on Jan.2, ahead of ahead of an upcoming Jan. 10 deadline. (Bloomberg)

Bitcoin struggled to rebound from a precipitous drop which sent the largest cryptocurrency falling as much as 9.22% earlier in the week.

The token was little changed on Thursday morning London time, trading at around $43,056 and marking a partial recovery from Wednesday's low, but still 6.2% away from the year's high. 

Bitcoin had rallied to a 21-month high on Jan.2, ahead of ahead of an upcoming Jan. 10 deadline, that could see the US Securities and Exchange Commission approve the first exchange-traded fund tied directly to the asset's spot price.

The token, along with the broader crypto market crashed suddenly on Wednesday, which some speculated occurred after Matrixport analyst Markus Thielen wrote in a note that he expects the SEC to reject all Bitcoin ETF proposals this month.

The drop led to the liquidation of more than $600 million in positions across all cryptocurrencies on major exchanges, according to data by Coinglass. It's the largest amount of liquidations since Dec. 11.

Responding to reaction to the report, Matrixport's founder Jihan Wu wrote on X, formerly know as Twitter, that its “unrealistic to believe that a Matrixport report could trigger a trillion $ size market to crash.”

“Looking at Bitcoin's history and its future prospects, the current volatility and the potential approval uncertainty of a Bitcoin ETF in January 2024 are ultimately of no importance,” Wu wrote in another post.