Investing.com– The price of bitcoin barely moved on Wednesday and suffered heavy losses over the past week, as fears of selling pressure from distributions from defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox weighed on sentiment.
The dollar's strength weighed on broader cryptocurrency prices as traders remained largely biased toward the greenback in anticipation of this Friday's key US inflation data. A reading on first quarter economic growth is also available.
rose 0.9% in the last 24 hours to $61,597.0 at 01:30 ET (05:30 GMT). The world's largest cryptocurrency had fallen as low as $59,000 earlier this week as risk appetite remained largely negative.
Mt. Gox liquidators say Bitcoin sales will begin in July
Liquidators of the now-defunct Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange, which collapsed due to a hack in 2014, said this week that they will begin distributing stolen tokens to customers in the first week of July.
Liquidators had earlier this year mobilized around $9 billion in Bitcoin from cold wallets, an event that was expected to precede a potential distribution. They did not specify in their announcement this week what the scale of the distributions will be.
Customers who receive their stolen assets now will do so at a much higher price, which may incline them to dump liquidations. Such a scenario presents massive selling pressure on Bitcoin.
which will also be distributed by Mt Gox, also suffered heavy losses this week.
The token was already under pressure from reports suggesting that German authorities had also started selling thousands of Bitcoin confiscated from a hacking website.
Broader sentiment towards cryptocurrencies was already under pressure from declining risk appetite, as traders turned to more stable assets like the dollar amid fears of high US interest rates.
Crypto investment products, specifically Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, were experiencing two weeks of heavy outflows.
Crypto Price Today: Altcoins See Some Bids as Bitcoin Sentiment Deteriorates
Among the broader crypto markets, altcoins posted some gains this week as the potential for further selling pressure on Bitcoin spurred some flows into other cryptoassets.
The world's No. 2 token rose 0.2% to $3,382.25, while adding 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively.
fell behind, falling 1%.
Among meme tokens, they increased by 1.5%, while adding 2.1%.
