Bitcoin prices fell on Friday, with one expert cautioning that further declines were on the horizon for the world’s most popular digital asset.
In afternoon trade, a single bitcoin BTCUSD, +1.13% was fetching $3,560.90, down 0.3% since Thursday’s level at 5 p.m. Eastern time on the Kraken crypto exchange. The digital currency has struggled to capitalize on last week’s move to a two-week high above $3,700.
What are analysts saying
“Bitcoin continues bouncing around in the upper $3K range. But we saw this same behavior at $9K support, $8K support, $7K, $6K, $5K and $4K,” according to Jani Ziedins of the Cracked Market blog.
“By now the pattern is pretty obvious. Investments that are oversold bounce quickly and sharply from those grossly unjustified levels. The lack of a decisive bounce tells us that bitcoin is not grossly oversold yet. That means lower prices are still ahead of us.”
Altcoins and futures
Altcoins — cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin — were mostly lower on Friday. Ether ETHUSD, +1.46% fell 0.4% to $120.09, Bitcoin Cash BCHUSD, +1.25% was down 0.4% at $120.00 and Litecoin LTCUSD, +4.56% was up 0.2% to $41.64, while XRP XRPUSD, +1.13% fell 1% to 30 cents.
Bitcoin futures ended mostly unchanged on Friday. The Cboe Global Markets March contract XBTJ9, +0.15% finished up less than 0.1% at $3,557.50, and the CME Group February contract BTCG9, -0.14% ended the session unchanged at $3,565.