Bitcoin whale games get traders nervous as 12K BTC appears for sale

Bitcoin (BTC) dipped below $60,000 at the Aug. 9 Wall Street open as traders eyed “unreasonable” whale moves.

Bitcoin order book moves spark suspicion

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed the latest BTC price uptick running out of steam after reaching $62,775 on Bitstamp.

Now down 3% versus the daily open, BTC/USD faced significant resistance above the $62,000 mark, with analysis suggesting that this could be intentional manipulation.

“Someone placed large sell orders from $61200-$62500, Total 12K BTC,” monitoring resource CoinGlass responded on X reviewing the Binance order book.

“This is somewhat unreasonable.”

Popular trader Daan Crypto Trades noted the imbalance between bid and ask liquidity, with buyers still lacking volume from the day prior.

“$750M in orders above & $300M in orders below price. And that's just on Binance,” he told X followers.

“This could temporarily cool off volatility for a while as price is stuck between these walls. Keep in mind, walls can get pulled at any time. Some consolidation makes sense I feel like.”

As Cointelegraph has reported, large-volume traders often place a series of orders above or below the spot price to move the market in a given direction. The practice, known as spoofing, is commonplace across crypto markets.

Mixed thoughts on BTC price status quo

Traders broadly remained at odds over BTC price strength.

While some expected another sizeable downward move, others looked to long-term trendlines as proof of a sustained recovery and potential further upside next.

“$BTC is back above the daily EMA 200 line. A reclaim of this line has always led to a sharp rise in prices in recent years,” popular trader Moustache commented, referring to the 200-day exponential moving average at $59,438.

Trader and analyst Rekt Capital hoped that bulls could muster a downtrend breakout by the daily close.

Luke Martin, host of the Stacks Podcast, noted that Bitcoin had its second-best day in history in terms of market cap growth on Aug. 8.

This grew from $1.08 trillion to $1.21 trillion in a single daily candle, while Bitcoin’s dominance of the total crypto market cap increased by around 0.4%.

Dominance hit a maximum of 58%, Cointelegraph reported, notching a one-year high in the process.