Thank you! It's incredible how once BTC lost the $20k support, it fell down to the next nice round significant-ish number, ~$19k. The psychology of this seems to be very powerful.
OP here. Per the article, it's not "psychology" - it's a whole lot of borrowing on the defi markets that will automatically be liquidated if the number goes too low. You could actually watch these guys in real time, pumping scarce actual-dollars into the market to pump the price. And then sellers dumping directly into the pump. "Thanks for the exit liquidity!"
I don’t understand why the dumpers need the pumpers’ actual-dollars to dump. I thought, when you sell on an exchange, the exchange is obligated to give you actual-dollars no matter what?
the dumpers didn't want the price going under $20k either, but they did want the ~$20k
it has less to do with that and more to do with forced liquidation numbers
People set up automatic sell orders for when a thing falls below X. And people generally prefer round numbers, for reasons that are not very mysterious.