Bitcoin Nears $58K as Market Slides Ahead of Busy Data Week

A slide in bitcoin (BTC) led to a wider crypto market selloff over the weekend as some traders looked for cues ahead of a busy week to determine positioning.

BTC sunk 4.8% in the past 24 hours trading just above $58,500 in Asian morning hours on Monday, CoinDesk Indices data shows, with the broader crypto market tracked by CoinDesk 20 (CD20), falling 5.2%. Ether (ETH) lost 3.5%.

U.S.-listed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking the assets recorded outflows on Friday. BTC ETFs lost $89 million, while ETH ETFs saw $15.7 million in outflows, according to market data.

Solana’s SOL and toncoin (TON) led losses among majors with a 7% slide. BNB Chain’s BNB lost 3%, dogecoin (DOGE) dropped 6%, while Cardano’s ADA and xrp (XRP) slid 5%.

Elsewhere, tokens of blockchains Aptos (APT), Arbitrum (ARB), and metaverse The Sandbox’s SAND dropped as much as 7% ahead of unlocks in the week, which will cumulatively release more than $120 million worth of the tokens in the open market, data shows. These tokens belong to the team and early investors.

Some market watchers warned of a further BTC decline in the coming weeks citing technical weakness, but pointed to upcoming traditional market releases that could provide upward pressure.

“Crypto prices will likely be rangebound with a bias to the weak side,” Augustine Fan, head of insights at SOFA.org told CoinDesk in a Telegram message. “However, the technical damage and sentiment drag remain, with on-chain cost models and MVRV models suggesting further possible shake-out before Jackson Hole.”

“Crypto markets lack a clear anchor and are susceptible to continued position adjustments. We continue to see muted ETF inflows for BTC and ETH over the past few sessions,” Fan added.

Both the U.K. and the U.S. will release July’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) readings on Wednesday. Australia’s consumer confidence, which tracks sentiment around family finances, and Japan’s Producer Price Index (PPI), a measure of price developments of goods traded within the corporate sector, are scheduled for a Tuesday release.

Later in the week, retail behemoths Alibaba Group and Walmart will release earnings on Thursday, while Hong Kong and Taiwan will publish updated gross domestic product (GDP) on Friday.

Traditional market events tend to move crypto prices as they reveal spending behavior and the state of the general economy. Favorable releases tend to sway prices upward as investors are expected to bet more on riskier assets, such as technology stocks or cryptocurrencies, while an earnings or data miss tends to drive assets lower, as investors shift to safer bets.