Bitcoin traded marginally higher on Friday, but was set to book its second consecutive losing week after the recent rout.
In Friday trading, a single bitcoin
BTCUSD, +1.19%
fetched $5,567.21, up 1.1% since Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on the Kraken crypto exchange. For the week, the market value of all cryptocurrencies is down $28 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
After Wednesday’s rout, cryptocurrency investors have begun adjusting their portfolios accordingly, says Fan Xu, technical analyst at Daily FX.
“Retail trader data shows 79.9% of traders are net-long with the ratio of traders long to short at 3.98 to 1. The number of traders net-long is 7.6% lower than yesterday and 9.7% lower from last week, while the number of traders net-short is 24.7% higher than yesterday and 30.8% higher from last week.” he wrote.
Read: Why bitcoin prices are staging a fresh collapse
Nvidia has ‘crypto hangover’
Nvidia Corp., which reported third quarter earnings on Thursday seems to be suffering from the downturn in the cryptocurrency market. The chip maker said its third quarter included a $57 million charge for “prior architecture components and chips following the sharp falloff of crypto mining demand.” In a follow-up call, Chief Executive Jensen Huang told MarketWatch “the crypto hangover lasted longer than we expected.”
The crypto boom has provided a lucrative secondary market for Nvidia who sell rigs to miners of digital currencies. However, with the price of major cryptocurrencies in decline, demand for the equipment has waned.
Read: Opinion: ‘Crypto hangover’ has Nvidia staggering into holidays with a big headache
Bitcoin Cash struggles
After the upgrade to the network and the hard fork, Bitcoin Cash (the original Bitcoin Cash) continues to struggle as investors remain wary about the future of the fourth-largest digital currency. On Friday, Bitcoin Cash
BCHUSD, -9.01%
was down 5% at $353.50.
Read: What you need to know about the Bitcoin Cash ‘hard fork’
Elsewhere, it is a mixed start for altcoins, or coins other than bitcoin. Ether,
ETHUSD, +0.31%
was unchanged at $175.00, Litecoin
LTCUSD, -0.86%
was down 1% at $42.47 and XRP,
XRPUSD, +1.37%
was up 1.4% at 47 cents.
Bitcoin futures are trading higher Friday. The Cboe Global Markets December contract
XBTZ8, +1.58%
was up 1.7% at $5,455 and the CME Group November contract
BTCX8, +0.83%
was up 0.9% at $5,475.
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Source : MTV
