Bitcoin has not been faring well in the past few months due to the crypto market crash. This development has caused many leading investors to do away with the digital asset class in recent times.
Vetle Lunde, an analyst at the digital asset analysis firm Arcane Research, explicitly explained in a Twitter thread that giant institutions had sold at least 236,237 BTC since May.
“236,237 BTC. That’s the amount of known selling of bitcoin since May 10th by large institutions. Most of the selling is related to forced selling, and some are not,” Lunde wrote at the beginning of the thread.
“The 236,237 BTC number is derived from massive institutional blow-ups and other large known selling seen in the last two months. Therefore, the number does not account for other natural capitulation and hedging activity usually occurring during crypto bear markets.”
Related: 7 Meme Coins to Invest in Despite the Dip
Analyst Blames Terra Boss for Market Irregularities Leading to Massive Bitcoin Sales
Lunde believed that it started with Terra selling over 80,000 BTC to save the Terra USD (UST) peg. On the other hand, public miners sold a total of over 19,000 BTC, selling about 4,400 in May and about 14,600 in June as the market conditions worsened, necessitating the sale of their BTC rewards to improve liquidity.
Additionally, the analyst estimated that the sale of 75% of their Bitcoin holdings by Tesla amounts to about 29,060 BTC. Notably, as Celsius revealed struggles with insolvency concerns, an unknown entity redeemed 24,510 BTC on the Canadian purpose ETF. Furthermore, in July, Celsius, through DeFi loan repayments, freed up 21,962 WBTC.
While Lunde believes that the selling during this period far exceeds his estimates, he understands that contagion-related selling is done now. Therefore, according to the analyst, he expects the markets to range in the short term.
Furthermore, Lunde adds that he expects macroeconomic conditions and crypto market correlation with US equities to be the key market drivers.
However, the analyst notes that correlation is likely to drop as large corporate institutions like Tesla reduce their stake in the market. After a difficult couple of months, the crypto markets staged a rally over the last few days, pushing the market cap above $1 trillion following an unexpected boost in social media sentiment.
The crypto market has currently gained 3.88% in the last 24 hours, sitting at the $1.07 trillion mark. Notably, Bitcoin is trading above the $23,440 price point, while Ethereum has clinched the $1,639 price point. Both are up 11.94% and 34.11%, respectively, in the last seven days.
Read more: Tesla Earning Reports Reveal That It Sold 75% Of Its Bitcoin Worth $936 Million.
