A Chinese multi-billion dollar scam known as PlusToken is moving their holdings of Bitcoin once again. In 2019, when the price of BTC dropped to the $6,000s, analysts attributed the fall to the dumping of funds by the fraud.<\/p>\n
Throughout 2019, venture capital investor Dovey Wan said that the Chinese scam had a significant impact on the Bitcoin price. She argued that it could have been the main catalyst for both the bull and the bear market that occurred during the year.<\/p>\n
The amount of Bitcoin that is allegedly being moved by the individuals behind the scam amount to about $117 million.<\/p>\n
For a market that processes billions of dollars in daily trading volume, even if the fraudsters dumped the entire 10,000 Bitcoin stack onto the market, it should not have a severe impact on prices. The problem is that most of the volume of Bitcoin on paper are highly leveraged and are derived from major margin trading platforms like BitMEX.<\/p>\n
Whales, who have control of large amounts of bitcoin, criticized the recent upsurge of bitcoin from the $8,000s to $10,000, describing it as manipulated.<\/p>\n
If the entire rally was based on highly leveraged buy orders and spoof orders, the upside movement is likely still treading on a weak footing. In such an environment, an abrupt dump of over $100+ million in Bitcoin could have a severe impact on the market.<\/p>\n
A major whale on Bitfinex that trades tens of millions of dollars in volume wrote:<\/p>\n
OTC, I have fairly good visibility into. Many of them Asian\/Chinese as most Chinese trading is OTC nowadays. There was some pick-up in inflows before Chinese New Year but not enough to justify the latest PA. Yes, the move is driven by Chinese players. Their motives are murky atm.<\/p>\n
Simply put, a market sell of $117 million is not enough to singlehandedly trigger a steep pullback in the Bitcoin market. However, when it is combined with the fact that the recent upsurge has seen a lack of fiat inflow in both spot and over-the-counter (OTC) markets, it could cause an issue for the market.<\/p>\n
Currently, on higher time frames like the 3-day chart, the bitcoin price is under a heavy level of resistance at $9,975.<\/p>\n
The $9,975 level has also been a level of multi-year resistance dating back to 2018, leaving some traders cautious for a major pullback in the short-term. With Bitcoin having traded above $10,000 for only about 24 hours in total this year, it remains to be seen where the price of Bitcoin will go in the short-term.<\/p>\n
The Bitcoin reward halving in May is still considered to be a key variable for the dominant cryptocurrency, and there are hopes that it would act as a much-needed catalyst to help BTC breakthrough major resistances at $9,975 and $10,500.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin, currently ranked #1 by market cap, is down 0.26% over the past 24 hours. BTC has a market cap of $178.31B with a 24 hour volume of $34.24B.<\/p>\n
Chart by CryptoCompare<\/p>\n
Bitcoin is down 0.26% over the past 24 hours.<\/p>\n
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