Bitcoin Price Drops 17%, Large CME Futures Gap Filled, BTC Spot Markets Rebound

On January 4, 2020, the price of bitcoin slid to the lowest point of the year dropping from Sunday’s high of $33,800 per unit to $27,734 a few minutes after 5 a.m. (EST). In fact, the price dip filled CME Group’s large futures gap after the regulated exchange has seen six consecutive gaps since the run-up. Meanwhile, a number of other cryptocurrencies have seen significant gains and they did not drop as much as the leading crypto asset.

Bitcoin (BTC) prices took a hit on Monday morning losing a total of -17.94% from 1:30 a.m. to 5:15 a.m. (EST). On Sunday, BTC’s daily high was around $33,800 per unit and by 5:15 in the morning the next day, the price dropped to a 2021 low at $27,734 per coin. Since then, the price has rebounded (15.38%) and jumped back above the $32k region. Coincidentally, the drop had filled one of CME Group’s large bitcoin futures gaps as well.

For instance, yesterday the bitcoin trader since 2013 dubbed “Lowstrife” told his 21,000 Twitter followers that CME’s 6th consecutive gap had formed. “This is the 6th consecutive gap up for the CME bitcoin futures,” Lowstrife tweeted. “4 of these have been large(>6%) gaps, 2 of these have been small (<1%) gaps,” the trader added.

Trading gaps form because CME Group is a regulated market that only operates Monday through Friday, and if the price of bitcoin spikes or drops significantly, after the last price call on Friday throughout the weekend, traders may see a gap where the futures market had stopped. News.Bitcoin.com reported on a very large CME bitcoin futures gap that formed between $23,790 to $26,525. It was one of the largest CME bitcoin futures gaps ever recorded. The misaligned trading discrepancies between spot prices and futures market prices made CME temporarily stop trading.

Futures gaps happen often and there are quite a few on the BTC/USD chart between spot prices and futures market prices. The gaps may remain for long periods of time and never get filled. However, traders do think gaps are meaningful in the sense that they show some bottom indicators, prior to the actual spot market price bottom. The large gap that news.Bitcoin.com reported on last week remains unfilled.

Michael Hall, cofounder, and CIO of Nickel Digital is not stressed by the recent dip, and he stressed this morning that the long-term perspective is still quite solid. “Due to the inelastic supply of bitcoin, it can suffer from upside volatility in thin markets, giving rise to spikes which resolve quickly but usually at higher levels, as has happened several times in recent months, most notably around Thanksgiving,” Hall explained. The Nickel Digital executive added:

We see no reason to change our constructive long-term view on bitcoin, and the recent wave of institutional engagement supports this. We have also always been clear that bitcoin exposures should be carefully managed to low single-digit percentages in multi-asset portfolios.

Moreover, while BTC shed some dollars during the early morning trading sessions, a number of other coins saw losses but not nearly as deep as BTC. Ethereum (ETH) is back up above 14% today trading for $1,044 per unit. Bitcoin cash (BCH) jumped over 5% and is currently swapping over the $410 price handle. Cardano (ADA) is up over 9% as each ADA is trading for $0.21 per unit at the time of publication. The entire market capitalization of all 7,500+ crypto assets in existence still hovers at around $841 billion on Monday.