Bitcoin fell to $68,507 on Friday morning, down 3.2% over the past 24 hours and 2.7% on the week, after a familiar pattern played out for the fifth week in a row: a de-escalation headline immediately followed by an escalation headline.
US President Donald Trump extended his deadline for Iran to strike a ceasefire deal by 10 days, saying talks were going “very well”. Brent crude fell 1.3% to $106. Then the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon is looking at sending up to 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East, and all the relief that had been built evaporated.
The broader crypto market fell nearly 1% to a combined cap of $2.4 trillion. Ether fell 4.6% to $2,050, back below the level it has struggled to hold all month. Solana fell 5.3% to $85.93. XRP lost 2.8% to $1.36, now down 6.5% on the week. BNB fell 2.3% to $626. Dogecoin fell 2.8% to $0.091. Tron was the only major in the green with 1.2% daily and 2.4% weekly.
Asian shares fell 0.6% on Friday after Wall Street hit its lowest level since September on Thursday. South Korean tech stocks led losses, with Samsung and SK Hynix dragging the KOSPI down 2.3%. Taiwan fell 1.2 per cent. The war’s fifth week produces the same pattern as the first four, with headline-driven whipsaws leaving everyone stopped and the underlying trend unresolved.
FxPro chief market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich noted that the crypto market value is approaching its 50-day moving average, but still remains above what he called “a bullish sign.”
The market “must make an early decision,” he said, “either break through the uptrend line from early February or confirm the 50-day MA as support and break the downtrend.”
The institutional data during the price action tells a different story than the daily sell-off.
Bitcoin ETFs have attracted $2.5 billion over the past month, according to Bloomberg, offsetting almost all of the outflows that had been underway since January. BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF has ranked in the top 2% of all ETFs by year-to-date inflows. The net outflow of bitcoin from exchanges last month signaled a shift toward accumulation, with investors buying coins and withdrawing them into self-deposit.
BlackRock itself offered a notable takeaway this week, saying big investors are concentrating on bitcoin and ether while shunning the broader altcoin market.
The 10-day extension of the Iran deadline pushes the next binary event to early April.
