On January 10, Bitcoin saw the approval of eleven spot ETF applications, with trading commencing the following day. While some investors anticipated a price increase, others argued the event was already priced in. Bitcoin’s price surged to $48,900 on Binance on January 11 but plummeted to $41,500 the next day.
Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, revealed that Grayscale transferred 21,400 BTC to multiple addresses over the last 30 days, indicating that this outflow might not be the sole reason for the price drop. Following the start of spot ETF trading, the Coinbase Premium Gap, which measures the price difference between Coinbase’s BTC/USD and Binance’s BTC/USDT pairs, began to decline, suggesting a potential sell-off by U.S. investors.
The falling premium was seen as a bad sign for Bitcoin bulls on the next trading day, January 16. Analysts turned to Bitcoin’s liquidation heat map to predict future price directions, as high liquidity pockets can indicate potential trend reversals.
Critical levels for Bitcoin were tested, with a liquidity pool between $48,000 and $48,200 prompting a sharp reversal around $49,000 on January 11. Downward levels of interest include $50,200, $51,200, and $52,400.
The region between $39,200 and $40,000 is dense with major liquidation levels, with even more liquidations expected at lower levels of $35,000 and $33,800. These levels could mark local market bottoms in the coming weeks or months, making a further drop in search of liquidity more likely than a rise above $50,000.