"It feels like BTC still doesn't know where to go."
The price of cryptocurrency king Bitcoin (BTC) maintained its position above $39,000 as the release of United States (US) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data for the fourth quarter last night saw growth of 3.3% compared to estimates of 2%.
Reportedly, the GDP data came out amid the possible expiration of billions of dollars in crypto futures which are a type of derivative used by investors to predict future movements of digital assets, commodities or currencies.
So it can be seen that today's expiration may be very significant where $3.7 billion in options notional open interest* BTC is set to expire, commented Deribit Chief Commercial Officer Luuk Strijers while adding that the options for Ethereum (ETH) are also at $2 billion.
*Reflects the amount of value controlled by the positions and how much value is represented by the derivative contract.
However, there are signs that many traders do not want to let the contract expire just like that, so traders are expected to roll their positions forward.
The incident has come after a hectic January when 11 different BTC spots were approved and then a massive outflow from Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) erupted after investors sold its previously locked-up shares.
On the other hand, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has pushed back the deadline to decide whether to approve Grayscale's ETH spot or not while asset manager Bitwise received a lot of donations in BTC and inscriptions after revealing the wallet address to the public.
Not only that, GBTC was found to have recorded an outflow of $429 million on January 24, 2024 which is the lowest amount since its launch on January 11 this year.
As of this writing, BTC price has plunged by 0.06% to $39,937 in the past 24 hours with a market cap of $783 billion and has recorded a 3.18% decline over the past week.
