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$BTC rose as high as $68,120.08 early Thursday morning. By mid-morning the Bitcoin price had settled to $66,828.32 after having gained 6% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
It's still not quite level with its price from a week ago—but then it was this time last week that Bitcoin soared past $73,000 to set a new all-time high.
Crypto prices tanked at the start of the week, due in part to some "unusual activity" by a trader on crypto exchange BitMex. A series of large and repeated sell orders caused the $BTC price to plummet as low $8,900 on BitMex's spot exchange.
"However this incident had NO impact on our billion-dollar derivatives markets," the exchange said in a statement released on X. "It did not move mark prices, and no liquidations were triggered by it because our indices are independent and battle-tested."
“Bitcoin down to $8,900 on BitMEX?" Well, not quite the whole picture.
Yes, we are investigating potential misconduct by traders on our Bitcoin-USDT Spot market (👀Did you even know we offer Spot trading?)
However, this incident had NO impact on our billion-dollar derivatives… pic.twitter.com/qWXXnyQxjw
— BitMEX (@BitMEX) March 19, 2024
BitMex added that its compliance team is still investigating the accounts and transactions that triggered the 10-minute flash crash.
But the turnaround hasn't shown up in spot Bitcoin ETF flows just yet.
Yesterday was the third day in a row that Bitcoin funds saw more withdrawals than deposits. Investors redeemed $261 million worth of Bitcoin ETF shares yesterday, bringing the week's total net redemptions to $742 million, according to CoinGlass.
But viewed in isolation, the withdrawals from Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) have been quite stark. Investors redeemed $387 million worth of GBTC shares yesterday, meaning the beleaguered fund has now seen a total of $1.5 billion worth of outflows this week.
The GBTC outflows—and continued deposits for BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)—mean that the spot Bitcoin ETF category could have a new leader of the pack soon.
At the time of writing, IBIT has 238 thousand $BTC compared to GBTC's 361.6 $BTC. If GBTC withdrawals and IBIT deposits were to continue at roughly the same rate they have, BlackRock could claim the top spot in early April.