Bitcoin crashed on Friday down to $26,166 and continues struggling to break back above the $26,500 level. What gives?

Crypto market analytics platform CryptoQuant said the latest fall may be due to a coordinated FUD campaign against the primary cryptocurrency, which triggered a wave of liquidations this week. 

The US Government Did Not Sell Its BTC

In a post on Friday, CryptoQuant analyst IT Tech called attention to a wave of online, “coordinated fake news” related to the US government selling its Bitcoin earlier this week. 

He specifically called out a Twitter account called Whale Chart, which he deemed “one of the worst accounts to follow” due to publishing “fake news without sources.” 

https://twitter.com/WhaleChart/status/1656350642426740740?s=20

“Many accounts retweeted this news without any fact-checking, and as a result, we saw the second-largest long liquidations in 2023, with over $36M being liquidated within one hour,” wrote IT Tech. 

The US government is currently one of the world’s largest holders of Bitcoin, having seized billions of dollars in coins related to illicit financial activity over many years. Some of those funds are related to the online darknet marketplace Silk Road, while others were connected to the 2016 Bitfinex hack – the latter of which remains the largest-ever financial seizure.

According to the on-chain data platform