Bitcoin Traders Eye $55K Amid U.S. Stocks Sell-off, XRP Leads Losses in Major Cryptos

Bitcoin (BTC) reversed losses in Asian morning hours Friday as a general sell-off across global assets continued into its third day this week, exacerbated by Middle East geopolitical tensions.

BTC slumped to as low as $62,500 in late U.S. trading hours on Thursday, reversing losses and trading just under $64,000 at 6:30 UTC to trade near its 50-day moving average, which remains a tactical support line for some traders.

“If the decline develops, dynamics around the $63K and $61K levels, near where the 50 and 200-day moving averages are, will be important,” Alex Kuptsikevich, FxPro senior market analyst, told CoinDesk in an email. “A failure of this support will open the way to $55K, which is quite frightening.”

“August is considered one of the two worst months for BTC. Over the past 13 years, bitcoin has ended the month up only five times and down eight times. The average decline was 15.4% and the average rise was 26%,” he added.

Crypto majors fell in the past 24 hours amid weakness in global equities. Ether (ETH) lost 1.6% in the past 24 hours, while major tokens XRP and Solana’s SOL dropped as much as 8%. The broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a liquid index tracking the largest tokens by market capitalization, minus stablecoins, was down 2.44%.

This broad sell-off in BTC was felt in some of the bitcoin exchange-traded funds, according to market data.

While the U.S.-listed BTC ETFs had a total daily net inflow of $50.6 million, GBTC, FBTC, ARKB, BITB and HODL posted outflows.

Meanwhile, Ether ETF's collectively posted net inflow of $26.75 million although many registered zero flow.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 ended Thursday with a 2.6% loss, and the S&P 500 Index sank 1.4%, losing nearly all of Wednesday’s 1.6% gains on concerns around the U.S. economy and future earnings of technology firms.

Elsewhere, Japan’s Topix index dropped 6% on Friday to mark its biggest fall since 2016.

In a note shared with CoinDesk, Presto Research highlighted Microstrategy's (MSTR) standout performance in 2Q24 due to its 3.7% BTC per share increase via "intelligent leverage," a planned $2 billion equity offering for BTC purchases, and the adoption of fair-value accounting for BTC by 1Q25, which will benefit the broader BTC market.

Year-to-date, MSTR is up 118%, while BTC is up 45%, according to CoinDesk Indices data.