The economist – outspoken critic of Bitcoin – posted on his social media site X: ‘ETF investors are buying the great Bitcoin scam. The stupid money buys the dips in the ETFs, while the smart money sells the Bitcoin directly in the spot market.’ Pettersson has observed similar patterns. ‘We recently saw a strong sell-off by whales and bots when Bitcoin briefly broke below $50,000, which triggered stop-loss orders on lower timeframes pattern-driven traders,’ he told me. ‘At the same time, we saw a surge in buying from US ETFs, and the DXY started to rise, indicating strong dollar sentiment.’ Does this mean that ETF investors will end up holding the bag? ‘We saw something similar last year,’ Pettersson said, ‘when the majority of those who bought the Bitcoin ETFs were in the red. It’s even worse this time around, because Bitcoin trades at $54,000 today, compared with $38,000 last year. The losses will be substantial, and they will be even much larger if Bitcoin retraces to $38,000.’ But Schiff thinks that he and his bleak-outlook friends are on to something.
But Schiff’s prediction also highlighted another source of weakness: the recent debacle involving the Tokyo-based crypto exchange Mt Gox, which could trigger more sell-offs of Bitcoin. An ‘I told you so’ comment if I ever heard one. ‘I think the bear market is not over,’ Schiff said. And if Bitcoin prices fall, U S-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs could be the biggest casualty of all According to the outflows data, investors have tried to unload their exposure in Bitcoin as quickly as possible – a final stampede taking place on 3 March when a net amount of $143 million was withdrawn from U S-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs.
At time of writing, Bitcoin’s price was down a little from the grand heights it had reached the previous day, now at $54,694.25, a 5.64 per cent drop over the past 24 hours. ‘Obviously, you saw what an awful, horrible experience Bitcoin investors have had today,’ said Schiff. ‘Obviously, from a market-dynamic perspective, not the greatest time to be a new Bitcoin investor, to bet on Bitcoins through an ETF, because you can’t lose money faster.’
Source: Yahoo! Finance
