Bitcoin Price Drops 3% to Fill Fresh Futures Gap as $10K Fails to Hold

Bitcoin fell below $10,000 once more on Feb. 24 after a gap in CME's futures trading implied downward pressure should characterize the start of the new week.

Data from Coin360 and Cointelegraph Markets showed BTC/USD rapidly lost 3% as Monday trading began.

Subsequently, local lows of $9,690 gave way to support above $9,700, with Bitcoin sitting at around $9,720 as of press time.

Traders' attention broadly focused on futures, these having previously dictated Bitcoin price movements with increasing accuracy.

The week prior, a considerably larger gap had appeared over the weekend - $500 between $10,495 and $9,990.

Markets only partially filled the resulting vacuum with upside action before an abrupt fall to $9,700.

On Feb. 20 CME revealed that open interest in its futures products had hit an all-time high of 6,512 contracts - equal to 32,560 BTC. "We also reached a new record of large open interest holders on February 11, now 59," the company reported on social media at the time.

Overall, exchange-based futures still hold the lion's share of open interest, with derivatives giant BitMEX's product alone generating almost $1.5 billion as of this week, according to data from Skew Markets.

Altcoins saw broadly heavier losses than Bitcoin as markets fell, with up to 5% disappearing from the top twenty cryptocurrencies by market cap.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap was $282.4 billion, with Bitcoin's share still circling multi-month lows of 62.8%.Keep track of top crypto markets in real time here.