Bitcoin Looks Indecisive After Sell-off in Bonds, Tech Stocks

Bitcoin (BTC) mostly traded sideways on Friday after a steep drop overnight to as low as $44,181, timed with a steep sell-off in bonds and technology stocks.

At press time, the largest cryptocurrency  was changing hands at $47,921, down 6.2% in the past 24 hours, based on CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index. Since 12:00 a.m. UTC (7 p.m. ET), the price is up 1.6%.

On the hourly chart, bitcoin was trading between its 10-hour and 50-hour moving averages, a sideways signal for market technicians.

After the No. 1 cryptocurrency failed to reclaim the key psychological threshold of $50,000, prices dropped sharply along with equities markets across the globe as investors fretted over surging yields on U.S. Treasury bonds.

“The recent rise in long-dated U.S. Treasury yields, particularly at the long end of the curve such as the US 10-year Treasury yields, is indicative of higher growth and inflation expectations, which is starting to put pressure on tech valuations,” Kevin Kelly, co-founder of crypto research firm Delphi Digital, said. “Market volatility has also started to pick up again, which historically has coincided with short-term weakness in bitcoin.”

“If we continue to see equities slide, this may be problematic for crypto and result in another pullback,” said Andrew Tu, an executive at quantitative trading firm Efficient Frontier.

As CoinDesk reported, deeper price declines in bitcoin, if any, could be temporary, with blockchain data showing large traders accumulating the cryptocurrency on the dips. The institution-focused Coinbase Pro exchange has logged outflows of 25,000 BTC in the past 24 hours, seen by analysts as a sign of persistent demand from U.S.-based institutional investors, according to South Korea-based blockchain data firm CryptoQuant.