Bitcoin’s Bounce Stalls Below $40,000

After tumbling to a one-month low just above $34,000 early Thursday, bitcoin BTC$77,003.56 charged as high as $39,600 Friday before slipping back to its current $38,700.

• “Risk markets have surprisingly taken the [Russian invasion of Ukraine] news in stride,” said Lux Thiagarajah, head of trading at BCB Group. “Whilst BTC and [altcoins] have rallied, they haven’t been able to break back above levels before the invasion.”
• Thiagarajah says that Western powers declining to send troops into Ukraine is comforting for bitcoin, but cautions there are “still too many unknowns to say if we haven’t seen the bottom yet.”
• Looking ahead, the next focus point for bitcoin, said Oanda’s Edward Moya, is Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s semi-annual testimony before House and Senate committees next week. So far, there's been no signal from Fed speakers this week that the Ukraine invasion has pushed the U.S. central bank off of its anticipated plan to hike interest rates by at least 25 basis points in March.
• Traditional markets also continue to rally since the invasion, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up another 2%, the S&P 500 up 1.7% and the Nasdaq up 1%.