Bitcoin fell below $27,000 for the first time in more than two weeks, erasing an earlier gain posted after a report showed that US inflation moderated slightly.
The largest cryptocurrency fell as much as 3% to $26,835 as of 1:31 p.m. in New York. The digital asset also breached the lower end of the roughly $30,000 to $27,000 range that it has been in trading in for the past month.
“We are currently in a really low liquidity environment. And in large part it’s been caused by the withdrawals of market makers from the market, because the regulatory picture in the US has gotten so hazy,” said Henry Elder, head of decentralized finance, Wave Digital Assets.
Jane Street Group and Jump Crypto — two of the world’s top market-making firms — are pulling back from trading digital assets in the US as regulators crack down on the industry. Jane Street is going even further by scaling back its crypto ambitions globally because regulatory uncertainty has made it difficult for the firm to operate the business in a way that meets internal standards, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
