(Kitco News) – Bitcoin’s bad week got even worse in early trading on Friday as the top cryptocurrency by market cap was down over 6% at one point, dragging the digital assets ecosystem lower with it.
Equities, for their part, ended the week on a high note with the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq all finishing in positive territory while posting gains of 0.54%, 0.17%, and 0.90%, respectively.
King Crypto was able to hold above the 57k level for much of the trading day Thursday, but after failing to break above $57,400 multiple times during overnight trading, BTC finally broke definitively downward shortly before 11:00 pm EDT, falling from $56,792.80 to just below $56,000 in only 10 minutes.
The next hour saw Bitcoin grind to the low 55k level, and shortly after midnight, it saw its next sharp decline, taking the price to $53,802.52 in another 10 minutes. After setting the session low of $53,785.92 on the 24-hour chart at exactly 1:00 am EDT, Bitcoin traded sideways in the high 53k’s until around 5:00 am, where it began its slow climb up from the lows.
BTC managed to break back above 56k shortly after 11 am EDT, and apart from a brief breach in the middle of the afternoon, that support level has held through late Friday trading.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $56,407.13 for a loss of 1.11% on the daily chart.
Mt. Gox drags crypto lower
Analysts at Secure Digital Markets were breaking down the factors behind Bitcoin’s weekly decline on Friday.
“Bitcoin's price plummeted over 6% within 24 hours, hitting $53,500—a low not seen since late February,” they wrote. “This drop was driven by investor reactions to the $9 billion payout to users of the defunct Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox. The broader cryptocurrency market also took a significant hit, losing over $170 billion in market capitalization during the same period. Recently, more than 47,000 bitcoins, valued at $2.7 billion, were transferred from an offline Mt. Gox wallet. This morning, the Mt. Gox bankruptcy trustee announced the commencement of repayments in BTC and BCH to some creditors via designated crypto exchanges.”
SDM also pointed out that Bitcoin miners are now facing substantially higher operational costs. “Only five mining rigs remained profitable as Bitcoin's price fell, indicating a potential ‘local bottom,’” they said. “The rest of the miners are operating at a loss, with costs exceeding their rewards.”
Major altcoins also saw steep declines amid the Bitcoin selloff, they noted. “ETH dropped over 10%, while SOL and ADA fell by 8%, and DOGE plunged nearly 18%,” they wrote. “Data from Coinalyze revealed that bullish bets worth over $580 million were liquidated, including a single ETH trade valued at $18.4 million.”
Altcoins’ creaming continues
Indeed, there was no respite for the battered altcoin market, as losses continued across the digital assets ecosystem again on Friday. Still, six tokens in the top 100 managed to post daily gains in excess of 2.00% on the daily chart.
Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360
Elrond (EGLD) led the gainers with an increase of 5.12% on the 24-hour chart, followed by dogwifhat (WIF) 4.70% which rose 4.70%, and Tezos (XTZ), which gained 3.22%%.
Core DAO (CORE) led the losers with a decline of -17.10%, followed by a -13.97% drop for Ordinals (ORDI) and a fall of --12.51% for Arbitrum (ARB).
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.06T, a 3.36% decrease over the last day, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate rose 0.20% on Friday to 53.99%.
