Bitcoin (BTC) closed lower on Thursday and has continued to fall this Friday morning, with around 1.5% knocked from the BTC/USDT spot price so far.
Though bitcoin has been largely unaffected by the dramatic trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former boss of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, his guilty verdict coincides with this morning’s dip in prices.
Traders may be spooked by the spectre of tighter crypto market regulation following the trial, which found Bankman-Fried guilty of mass fraud and money laundering.
Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ:COIN)’s third-quarter results also presented a few red flags for the crypto market, with consumer trading volumes at the Nasdaq-listed exchange declining year over year from $26 billion to $11 billion, while institutional trading volumes fell from $159 billion to $76 billion.
Low volumes have been a persistent headwind for bitcoin, underscored by this Coinbase report.
Elsewise, Bitcoin may simply have seen a sell-off after hitting a year-to-date high on Thursday.
At the time of writing, BTC/USDT was swapping for $34,590, right in the middle of the 1k trading range eked out at the end of October.
Bitcoin remains over 100% higher year to date – Source: tradingview.com
Ethereum (ETH) had an unfavourable trading session on Thursday, falling 2.5% against the US dollar.
Further losses were chalked up this morning, but the second-largest cryptocurrency managed to bounce off the 200-day moving average (MA) trendline.
The 200-day MA has been a solid support line for ETH/USDT since late October.
At the time of writing, ether was trading at $1,800.
Looking at the wider altcoin space, Cardano (ADA) has pulled ahead of the market, adding more than 5% yesterday.
Solana (SOL), which was the strongest performer in the blue-chip altcoin space of late, has fallen more than 16% from its year-to-date high achieved on Wednesday.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation currently stands at $1.28 trillion, with bitcoin dominance at approximately 53.7%.
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