BITCOIN continued to rally in tandem with a rebound in Asian equities on Friday (Aug 9) after a bruising selloff.
The original cryptocurrency rose as much as 5.3 per cent to briefly top US$62,000, extending gains from Thursday.
The moves marked a turnaround from earlier this week when the market posted its steepest decline since the days of FTX’s collapse in 2022. Second-ranked Ether climbed as much as 6 per cent.
Still, both tokens remained below their levels a week ago. Bitcoin on Thursday posted its largest one-day gain in more than 16 months.
Traders view the recent volatility in digital assets as the product of macro-economic factors as well as forced selling by crypto speculators.
In the medium term, macro factors “will continue to weigh on risk assets,” said Justin d’Anethan, head of business development in Asia-Pacific at Keyrock, the crypto market-maker.
The unwinding of the yen carry trade “isn’t something that gets resolved in a couple of days,” he added.
But a silver lining of Monday’s selloff in crypto is the “flushing out of massive leveraged positions,” d’Anethan said. BLOOMBERG
