By Deepak Tijori 
The digital asset market’s struggles continue as Bitcoin falls back below $17,000 and altcoins suffer steep declines
The largest token dropped as much as 3.7 per cent to $16,762 on Friday. Earlier in the week, Bitcoin reached its highest price since Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire filed for bankruptcy last month. On Friday, Ether declined as much as 6.3 per cent, while other altcoins like Avalanche and Solana dropped as well.
Cryptocurrencies dipped alongside US stocks as the economy weathers the Federal Reserve’s aggressive tightening. The drop reverses a brief relief rally that pared back some of the token’s November losses. Since the start of the year, Bitcoin has declined roughly 65 per cent.
Fairlead Strategies Senior Analyst Will Tamplin said that the token is at risk of re-approaching its November lows. Then, it sank to its lowest price since November 2020.
Noelle Acheson, author of the of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter, wrote that investors remain skittish about the fates of other crypto-related companies, including Binance Holdings Ltd. and Digital Currency Group, parent company of troubled crypto broker Genesis. Binance’s BNB token was down 6.3 per cent on Friday, and has slumped about 50% in the past year.
“There may be some ugly contagion news yet to drop,” Acheson wrote. “But most investors who were going to sell have done so.”
Shares of companies tied to the digital-asset world continued to be under pressure. Coinbase Global Inc., fell as much as 9 per cent to $34.71, another all-time low. The shares of the biggest US crypto exchange have tumbled 85 per cent. Bitcoin miners Marathon Digital fell almost 85, while Riot Blockchain dropped 6 per cent. They’re down 88 per cent and 83 per cent, respectively, since last December.