Bitcoin and XRP on the decline: Recreation over?

Is the bull run imminent or still a long way off? There’s no denying that recent events have been in bitcoin’s and XRP’s favor, with many believing that the bull run was finally upon us. But if recent events are anything to go by, the crypto community still needs to be patient.

Bitcoin declines again

When BTC broke the $20,000 barrier in mid-January, the cryptosphere was abuzz with predictions of prices approaching 6 figures. Even CZ, the head of Binance, delivered a bull run bitcoin prediction that would only take twenty months to materialize.

And then came the re-qualification of XRP by Analisa Torres, the judge in charge of the Ripple vs SEC case. When the judge ruled that XRP is not a security, BTC set an impressive record a few hours later: 31,890 per coin.

With performances like these, bitcoin has reached a new high since June 2022. Analysts have occasionally argued that, with XRP, The King is boosting the bull market.

Except that cryptocurrencies have one characteristic that investors fear so much: volatility. No sooner had July 14 come to a close than bitcoin was already trading at $30,100.

At the time of writing, the queen of cryptos was valued at $30,345.

XRP, the party’s over

The XRP also had its share of praise on July 13. It was close to $0.82 after Judge Torrès declared that it is not a security. More than 60% up, enough to motivate US exchanges to relist the Ripple crypto.

XRP has also ceased to amaze its fans, with Bitcoin Sistemi reporting a 12% drop.

Worrying liquidation data

In just 4 hours, $130 million was liquidated on the cryptocurrency market. 116 million of these were long positions. All the more reason for the price declines mentioned above.

For bitcoin, this amounted to $22.65 million. Ethereum followed with $11.73 million. XRP came 3rd with $4.33 million and litecoin with $3.31 million.

Also of note is bitcoin’s open interest-weighted funding rate of +0.0058%. This confirms that there are more long positions than short positions at the moment.

BTC’s volume-weighted funding rate stands at over 0.0079%. As this is well below bitcoin’s open interest-weighted funding rate, it’s fair to say that volume on exchanges with a lower funding rate is ahead of that on exchanges with a higher funding rate.

In other words, bitcoin futures are experiencing lower liquidity.

Last but not least, this decline is said to correlate with the layoff of a thousand employees at Binance. The sale of 9,825 bitcoins by the US government is also a factor.