Bitcoin rebounded back above $15,000 during Saturday trading, according to price tracker CoinDesk.com, a some 40% bounce from its worst levels hit during a bloody Friday for cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin traded as high as $15,704.35 and as low as $13,583.38 Saturday. It was recently fetching $15,009.76, up about 8% compared to late Friday levels, according to CoinDesk.
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The rebound followed the heavy selling that clobbered the digital currency universe a day earlier, touching all 40 of the largest cryptos. The retreat was driven by bitcoin BTCUSD, -12.52% , the world’s largest crypto, which was down nearly 30% to $10,834.94 at one point in Friday’s volatile session, according to CoinDesk. One of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase, warned Friday access might be “temporarily offline” due to high traffic.
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With Friday’s deepest slide, bitcoin had shed more than a third since last Sunday’s all-time high left it nearly clearing $20,000. Bitcoin Cash fell 37% at one point though was up late in the day Friday and remained sharply higher on the week.
Even with Friday’s retreat, both bitcoin and rival Ether remained sharply higher on the year. Bitcoin, which started 2017 below $1,000, is up some 1,400% for 2017, a move fueled in recent weeks by the launch of crypto-linked futures at two major exchanges. Ether, which runs on the Ethereum network, shed about 33% Friday, taking it from an intraday high above $827 to around $561 at one point in the session. Ether was around $8 when the year started.
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The size of the entire cryptocurrency space shrank to about $426.14 billion at one point Friday, according to pricing website CoinMarketCap, down from $610.43 billion at the start of the day.
Bitcoin’s tumble touched certain stock sectors. On Friday, investors unloaded stocks that had even a whiff of cryptocurrency about them, although pared those losses by the close as bitcoin and other cryptos rebounded off their lows.
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