Bitcoin's price eclipsed $40,000 at different points on Wednesday but largely hovered just below that mark, as market watchers continued to observe the selling off of Grayscale's spot bitcoin ETF.

The price of the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was $39,672 at 4:37 p.m. ET, according to The Block's Price Page. While it's up 1.3% over the past 24 hours, bitcoin's price has declined nearly 14% over the past two weeks.

Trying to summarize why the asset has been sliding since the launch of spot bitcoin ETFs earlier this month — the price surpassed $48,000 on the first day the new products started trading — Bitwise executive Matt Hougan said on Tuesday that there has been an "expectations-led" sell-off in recent days.

"This is not strictly speaking an ETF-led …