Bitcoin, XRP, and other cryptocurrencies were falling again early Friday as digital assets got caught up in the tech selloff, compounding a bad week.
Bitcoin, the world's largest crypto, fell as low as $61,300 before climbing back to $62,500--down 1% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data. The digital asset has slumped 14% this week and is now more than 50% down from its record high of $126,272 reached in October last year. Ethereum slumped 5.5% to $1,666, while popular altcoin XRP fell 2.7% to $1.12.
Investors may be rotating out of cryptos and into equities ahead of several big IPOs, Thahbib Rahman, analyst at crypto analytics firm Block Scholes, said.
SpaceX is set to make its long-awaited trading debut next week, while OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs are expected later this year.
"There is some evidence of a potential capital rotation, or at the very least, speculative froth, in perpetual futures contracts tracking real-world assets, as well as pre-IPO perps, at the same time we see weakening in Bitcoin and Ethereum sentiment," Rahman said.
The week got off to a bad start when Strategy, the largest corporate holder of the crypto, sold some Bitcoin for the first time in four years. The company's founder and chairman Michael Saylor said last year "sell a kidney if you must, but keep the Bitcoin."
It was only a small sale--32 Bitcoins at a value of $2.5 million compared with its total holdings valued at more than $52 billion. But the very act of Strategy selling seems to have spooked crypto investors.
Crypto-related stocks Strategy, Coinbase, and Robinhood were all down less than 1% ahead of the open.
