Bitcoin dropped to less than $62,000 in price after the much-anticipated debut of Hong Kong’s Exchange Traded Fund (ETFs) failed to live up to expectations.
According to Coindesk, Bitcoin faced selling pressure during European hours after data showed poor performance of the newly launched Hong Kong ETFs tied to bitcoin and ether.
The leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization fell nearly 2% from $63,300 to under $61,000 in 60 minutes, according to CoinDesk data.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, slipped 2.8% to $3,066.
The six ETFs that commenced trading in Hong Kong performed very poorly, pulling in a trading volume of only $11 million out of the expected $100 million.
Bitcoin ETFs accounted for $8.5 million of the tally while Ether ETFs contributed the rest.
Hong Kong’s ETFs performance is a wide mark of the United States ETFs performance which launched on January 11 and pulled in $655 million on its first day of trading.
The US ETFs has gone on to pull in nearly $12 billion in investor funds since its launching. Inflows have slowed down recently stalling Bitcoin’s upward trend.
The numbers from the Hong Kong ETFs show a weak demand from investors, thereby negatively affecting Bitcoin price and pushing it below $62,000.
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What To Know
- The Hong Kong spot ETFs tied to Bitcoin and Ether is Asia’s first Spot ETFs and the second major ETFs after that of the United States.
- Spot ETFs allow investors to take exposure to cryptocurrency without having to own it. They are considered a better option than futures-based ETFs, which are subject to rollover costs.
- Ether Spot ETFs is yet to be approved in the United States following the success of spot Bitcoin ETFs.
