Bitcoin fell to $68,507 on Friday morning, down 3.2% over the past 24 hours and down 2.7% for the week, after a familiar pattern developed for the fifth week in a row: a de-escalation headline immediately followed by an escalation headline.
US President Donald Trump extended the deadline for Iran to reach a ceasefire agreement by 10 days and said talks were going “very well.” Brent crude fell 1.3% to $106. Then the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon was considering sending up to 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East, and any relief that had been achieved evaporated.
The overall crypto market lost almost 1% to a total cap of $2.4 trillion. Ether fell 4.6% to $2,050, again below the level it has been struggling 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 one in the green with 1.2% daily and 2.4% weekly.
Asian stocks fell 0.6% on Friday after Wall Street hit its lowest level since September on Thursday. South Korean tech stocks led the losses, with Samsung and SK Hynix dragging the KOSPI down 2.3%. Taiwan fell 1.2%. The fifth week of the war is producing the same pattern as the first four, where the media headlines leave everyone paralyzed and the underlying trend is not resolved.
FxPro Chief Market Analyst Alex Kuptsikevich noted that the cryptocurrency market capitalization is approaching its 50-day moving average, but still remains above it, which he called “a bullish sign.”
The market “needs to make an early decision,” he said, “either break the uptrend line from early February or confirm the 50-day MA as support and break the downtrend.”
The institutional data behind the price action tells a different story than the daily settlement.
Bitcoin ETFs have attracted $2.5 billion over the past month, according to Bloomberg, offsetting almost all of the capital outflows that had occurred since January. BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF has ranked in the top 2% of all ETFs by inflows so far this year. Net outflows of bitcoin from exchanges last month signaled a shift toward accumulation, with investors purchasing coins and withdrawing them for self-custody.
BlackRock itself offered a notable framework this week, saying that large investors are focusing on bitcoin and ether while avoiding the broader altcoin market.
Iran’s 10-day deadline extension delays the next binary event until early April.
