Investing.com — Bitcoin on Tuesday slid to a two-month low, extending recent losses after top corporate holder Strategy sold its holdings for the first time in nearly three-and-a-half years.
Crypto markets were also quashed by weak risk appetite in the face of heightened uncertainty over the U.S.-Iran war, amid increasingly mixed messaging on the state and extent of peace talks between the warring parties.
At 17:20 ET (21:20 GMT), was down 4.6% to $67,724.1, its weakest level since early April.
“Bitcoin is confirming a breakdown today below support from the daily cloud model in a short-term setback, suggesting its pullback may deepen in the near term,” Fairlead Strategies’ Katie Stockton said.
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Strategy sells Bitcoin for first time since late-2022
Strategy on Monday disclosed it had sold 32 Bitcoin between May 26 and May 31 at an average net price of $77,135 a coin, to raise $2.5 million.
Shares of the Michael Saylor-led firm slid nearly 6% after the disclosure, given that the sale was Strategy’s first such move since late-2022, even though it represented a fraction of its overall holdings. The stock extended losses on Tuesday, falling more than 9%.
The company holds 843,706 Bitcoin.
Saylor had largely telegraphed the sale, stating that the company would consider selling some of its holdings to meet its steep debt obligations. Strategy’s Bitcoin purchases were funded chiefly through debt and the issuance of preferred shares, with the company now facing interest payments and dividend obligations for the funding.
But Saylor had also assured investors that Strategy would buy back an even greater amount of Bitcoin. Still, the company’s sale sent a bearish signal to markets, especially given that it came during a time of already heightened selling pressure on Bitcoin from institutional investors.
Investors dumped over $3 billion in Bitcoin exchange-traded funds over the past three weeks, data from SoSoValue showed.
Strategy’s Bitcoin sale marks start of ETH outperformance, analyst says
Strategy’s latest Bitcoin sale may signal the start of ether outperforming bitcoin, according to Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered.
The amount sold was “ridiculously small,” but the market reaction was telling, said Kendrick.
“I see yesterday as being the start of ETH outperformance v BTC,” he said.
Kendrick pointed to the price action as a potential inflection point, projecting the ETH-BTC ratio would climb to 0.040 by year-end from around 0.028 at present. He said that outlook would hold even if Strategy moved quickly to repurchase bitcoin at a far larger scale than what it recently offloaded.
“I think this will be the case even if (as is likely) MSTR this week buys a large multiple of the 32 BTC it sold last week,” Kendrick said.
Crypto price today: altcoins fall as Iran uncertainty weighs
Broader crypto prices also largely fell on Tuesday, as risk appetite was largely quashed by uncertainty over the state and extent of peace talks between Washington and Tehran.
Iran’s Fars News Agency on Tuesday reported that there was currently no exchange of messages with the U.S., citing an informed source. The agency said the exchange had been stopped for at least a few days in order to reach a preliminary memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran, citing the source.
“Fake News Reports that the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the U.S.A., stopped speaking a few days ago are false and erroneous. The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago, and today,” President Donald Trump later said on Truth Social.
“Where they lead, one never knows, but as I told Iran, ’It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal. You’ve been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer!’” the president added.
“We are in talks,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier said in a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
World no.2 crypto slid 4.3% to $1,906.59, while shed 5% to $1.2277.
and declined 5.4% and 6.1%, respectively, while was down 4.2%.
Among memecoins, slipped 5.5%, while fell 2.6%.
Ambar Warrick and Vahid Karaahmetovic contributed to this article
