Bitcoin sees volatile start to final trading day of 2024

WEB DESK: The Bitcoin opened the final trading day of 2024 in the red, dropping from $92,740.96 to $92,679.35 at around 00:05 UTC, marking a decline of $61.61 in just five minutes of trade.

The situation worsened by 00:36 UTC when Bitcoin fell further to $92,337.99, a drop of $402.97 from its previous close of $92,740.96.

The third significant drop occurred at around 01:20 UTC, with Bitcoin declining by $572 to $92,168.06.

The downturn continued, and concerns arose that Bitcoin might fall below the $92,000 mark. By 01:31 UTC, it had slipped to $92,022.19, marking the day’s largest drop of $718.77.

By 05:06 UTC, Bitcoin managed to reverse some of the earlier losses but remained in negative territory at $92,450.43.

Ether also fell, down 0.74 per cent to $3,334.68, while Dogecoin declined by 1.30 per cent to $0.3098. As of now, one Bitcoin is approximately Rs25,833,371.79 in Pakistani currency.

Bitcoin ETFs get a lump of coal for Christmas

It wasn’t exactly a merry Christmas for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). After a month of steady gains, they finally took a hit, posting their first weekly loss in 30 days.

But before we get too caught up in the gloom, let’s put things into perspective. Despite this setback, the ETF industry had its best year yet. So, there’s still plenty to celebrate.

Now, back to the not-so-rosy Christmas week. It started off on shaky ground with BTC ETFs bleeding $564.94 million in the first two days. But then, something unexpected happened. On December 26, Bitcoin’s price surged back to the $98,000-$99,000 range, and investors got excited.

They poured $475.5 million into BTC ETFs, making it the best single-day performance since the downturn began.

Unfortunately, the party didn’t last long. On Friday, reality set back in, and outflows of $297.75 million brought the total weekly outflows to a whopping $862.69 million. That left Bitcoin ETFs with a net negative volume of $387.54 million for the week.

Fidelity’s FBTC took the biggest hit, with outflows of $208 million on Friday. That’s its second-worst single-day performance this month. BlackRock’s IBIT wasn’t far behind, with a negative net flow of $188.7 million.

Updated: 10:20 AM (PKT) / 05:20 AM (UTC)

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