Big Friday Crypto Selloff Pulls Bitcoin Below $70K

Challenging an all-time high earlier Friday, bitcoin has pulled back, giving up most of its weekly gains
The selloff in the rest of the cryptocurrency market was far larger as speculative fever cooled
The spot bitcoin ETFs are on their largest accumulation streak since launch, but it wasn’t enough for a sustained rally in price.

What was thought to be a challenge of all-time highs for bitcoin (BTC) has turned into a fast retreat in U.S. trading on Friday, with the world’s largest crypto barely hanging onto a week-over-week gain.

At press time, bitcoin was changing hands at $69,000, down 2.5% over the past 24 hours. That was far outperforming the broader CoinDesk 20 Index, which is lower by 5% over the same time frame.

Among CoinDesk 20 constituents, ether (ETH) was off 4%, Tezos {{XTX}} and EOS {{EXOS}} 10% and Solana (SOL) 7%.

According to data tracked by Coinglass, the selloff has led to $450 million in liquidations, the largest amount since a mid-April washout.

Challenging $72,000 earlier on Friday, bitcoin began headed lower in the U.S. morning hours after the government’s employment report for May came in far stronger than expected with 272,000 jobs added. That seemingly dashed hopes for an imminent interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve, sending interest rates and the dollar sharply higher.

The selloff in bitcoin and crypto really picked up steam several hours later as Roaring Kitty held a hotly anticipated YouTube livesteam for the first time in several years. The trading legend perhaps disappointed those waiting for some sort of big announcement and instead said little of interest except for his hope that GameStop management will be able to transform the company into something of great value in coming years.

Already lower on the day, GME shares fell further during the broadcast, now off 40% for the session. The GME meme coin is down 50% from highs reached earlier Friday. A check of other meme coins finds dogecoin (DOGE) lower by 8% over the past 24 hours, shiba inu (SHIB) down 10%, and pepecoin (PEPE) off 15%.

In the meantime, bitcoin bulls might be left scratching their heads at what might be needed for a true upside breakout. The spot ETFs on Thursday completed an 18th-consecutive day of inflows, a steak not even accomplished during the frenzied price increases of February and March. Over that 18-day streak, the ETFs accumulated more than 56K bitcoins, according to HODL Capital, or nearly 7x the amount of bitcoin mined during that period.

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