(Bloomberg) — Bitcoin traded near the lower bound of its more-than-a-month-long trading range amid continued uncertainty about the fallout from the conflict in the Middle East.
Cryptocurrencies were lower across the board. Bitcoin – the largest by market value – dropped as much as 3.6% to $65,709 before paring the decline during New York trading. Ether fell as much as 5.9% and Solana dropped by a similar magnitude.
US President Donald Trump pledged in a speech Wednesday to continue the war on Iran, rattling energy markets as there’s little sign the Strait of Hormuz will reopen soon. Stocks and bonds fluctuated Thursday on expectations oil prices will stay higher for longer as US benchmark WTI crude oil surged to more than $111 a barrel.
“Trump’s latest comments on the war with Iran triggered a sharp selloff amid a lack of de-escalation signs,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, adding that Bitcoin’s price is consolidating at a range between $66,000 and $69,000.
“Bitcoin is largely following stocks’ direction, though in the past few weeks it has showed reduced sensitivity to both good and bad news,” said Caroline Mauron, co-founder of Orbit Markets.
Bitcoin had been weathering the war better than many assets. It ended March up 2% from the previous month, snapping a five-month losing streak. Gold, normally a safe-haven asset, ended March down more than 11% as concerns about energy-fueled inflation grew.
Still, demand for Bitcoin has remained weak. Despite March’s gain, the token is down 45% from a peak of $126,000 that it hit in October. Apparent demand, which measures the extent to which demand compares with new Bitcoin being mined, was negative by about 63,000 tokens as of late last month, according to a report Wednesday from CryptoQuant.
A lack of conviction among large Bitcoin holders, known as whales, has been one challenge. Those holders have turned into net sellers, according to CryptoQuant, offloading significant amounts of the token over the past year.
“Onchain data confirms what price action has been telegraphing: there’s zero conviction,” said Jasper De Maere, a trader at Wintermute.
Net flows to US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds turned negative on Wednesday, with investors pulling $174 million from the funds. March has seen about $1.1 billion in net inflows into the ETFs — a stabilization after four straight months on net outflows — but those allocations have proven sensitive to macro shifts.
–With assistance from Sidhartha Shukla.
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