‘Liquidity’ has most affected Bitcoin’s price in the last year, according to trader Brian Krogsgard

Cointelegraph’s Crypto Trading Secrets podcast has published Episode 6, covering an array of content that should pique the interest of cryptocurrency traders. This episode’s guest is Brian Krogsgard, also known as Ledgerstatus on Twitter. Krogsgard is a trader and one of the co-founders of Flip.xyz, a nonfungible token (NFT) platform. He is also a podcaster in the crypto space. 

Among the questions fielded during the Feb. 16 recording, host Benjamin Pirus asked Krogsgard to give his opinion on what he thinks has most impacted the price of Bitcoin (BTC) over the past year. “Liquidity,” he responded. 

“People just do not have spare liquidity for a multitude of reasons. They have counterparties that went bankrupt, and that might have forced them to lose money. They got coins stuck on places that went bankrupt. Lost access to them, lost in trading, lost because of taxes, whatever.”

“Those are all challenges for liquidity, and you need liquidity for the healthiest of markets, and so that’s been a challenge,” he added. Amid the runaway train that was the 2022 crypto bear market, the space saw significant turmoil. Several cryptocurrency companies failed, including the likes of crypto exchange giant FTX. 

“I would actually say the problems go way before that with Bitcoin because we saw with FTX there was massive rehypothecation of Bitcoin,” Krogsgard continued. “Rehypothecation” is when entities use customers’ collateral for other activities, according to Investopedia. The collapse of FTX in November 2022 sparked numerous headlines, such as allegations of customer asset misuse by FTX and sister entity Alameda Research.

“So, the Bitcoin people thought they had on FTX was not there, and FTX was selling it to do other things. And that rehypothecation was actually a burden to Bitcoin’s price even in a bull market. And now that we have liquidity issues, it’s just been a consistent kind of drag on price and presented challenges for a year and then some.”

Krogsgard provided his thoughts and opinions on several other points during the episode and also chatted about his background.