Stock traders (almost) every year cheer the so-called Santa Clause rally - in which a run of cash into the market during low-volume ‘party season to bolster year-end valuations - in the crypto markets coins and tokens suffered a ‘Grinch’ sell-off.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano and pretty much every major digital asset was lit in red on Monday in a mix of ‘risk-off' trading and likely pre-Christmas profit-taking from the long-term crypto ‘whales’.
Media reports in parallel with a sharp weekend sell-off described a spike in transfers of assets from personal crypto wallets to exchanges, where they could be sold into the public markets.
Crypto commentators say it signals a certain amount of cashing-out by high-value / longer-term holders.
At the same time, others – potentially talking their book – say the rapid price drop opens a buying opportunity for investors that felt that they’d “missed the boat” as crypto prices soared through the early part of the fourth quarter.
Bitcoin (BTC) was down 2.76% in Monday morning’s deals changing hands at US$47,600, is down 16.5% in the past week and remains some way below the recent highs of around US$65,000 seen in early November.
Ethereum (ETH) dropped another 4.9% to US$3,976, marking a 7.6% decline for the past week.
Alt-coins Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) were 8.75% and 5.8% respectively at US$179.67 and US$1.29 respectively – down 11.5% and 17.6% for the week.
The Ripple XRP token was 6.8% lower to US$0.7653 and is down 21.5% for the week.
Polkadot (DOT) lost 8.9% at US$25.59, down 28% for the past seven days.
Doggy meme-coins Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) gave up7% and 9%, at US$0.1622 and US$0.00003342.