The Chinese government has reportedly sold nearly $20 billion worth of Bitcoin. This move has added significant selling pressure to the cryptocurrency market. According to Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant, the treasury sold over $19.7 billion in Bitcoin leading up to January 23.
This Bitcoin was seized from the PlusToken Ponzi scheme back in 2019. Ju believes the funds were sent to exchanges like Huobi. He mentioned in a post on X, “China sold 194K Bitcoin already, [in my opinion]. […] The CCP said it was ‘transferred to the national treasury’ without clarifying if it was sold.”
This large sale comes more than four years after authorities confiscated $4.2 billion worth of crypto from PlusToken. So far, this has led to the arrest of at least 109 individuals involved in the scheme.
Despite this nearly $20 billion sale, Bitcoin managed to stay above $101,000 on January 23. However, the price of BTC did drop over 3.7% in the 24 hours leading up to 12:22 AM UTC, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro data.
Bitcoin's resilience can be partly attributed to ongoing purchases from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. They have been buying Bitcoin for five straight trading days. Notably, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF purchased $600 million worth of Bitcoin on January 21, marking its largest buy of the year, as reported by Arkham Intelligence.
At the same time, Bitcoin remains sensitive to economic developments, especially with no recent news on U.S. crypto regulation. Concerns about tightening monetary policy are likely to keep pressure on Bitcoin’s price. Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research, noted, “A recent dip and concerns over potential global interest rate hikes have created short-term bearish sentiment; however, institutional buying, particularly from World Liberty Finance, may stabilize prices.”
Currently, markets are anticipating the next U.S. interest rate cut to happen on June 18, based on the latest estimates from CME Group’s FedWatch tool.