Bitcoin drops below $ 21,700 as 40,000 BTC are moved by US authorities

Today, BTC $98,767.85 Bitcoin 1.11% Market capitalization $1.95 trillion VOL. 24 hours $5.97 billion continued to fall, dropping below $ 21,700. Experts attributed the decline in the value of the flagship cryptocurrency to the actions of the US authorities, who moved about 40,000 BTC confiscated from cybercriminals. Of these, 9861 BTC seized from the founders of the Silk Road darknet were transferred to the Coinbase wallet.

It seems that traders expect the US authorities to start selling off the confiscated BTC. Currently, bitcoin is trading at $ 21,653, a drop of 2% over the past day and 8.5% over the week.

Conor Ryder, one of Kaiko’s analysts, shared his own point of view: «The transfer of the BTC confiscated from the Silk Road founders was carried out with the aim of selling the coins. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the short term it could affect the bitcoin rate.»

The global market capitalization fell by 1.4% over the past 24 hours, currently standing at $ 1.04 trillion. Another reason for the decline in the crypto market was the closure of the Silvergate crypto bank. There were rumors about the possibility of resuming its work, but the management decided to close Silvergate and return deposits to customers.

As a reminder, on March 8, BTC quotes fell to a three-week low. This happened after US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivered a message to the US Congress.