Bitcoin price tanks alongside ether as traditional markets are mostly flat

Bitcoin and ether tumbled on Friday, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes were mostly flat for the day. 

Bitcoin fell 3.5% over the past 24 hours to trade at $27,271, according to data from TradingView. Ether was down nearly 5%. 

It’s never exactly clear what drives price gyrations in the volatile market for digital currencies, but Matt Klein, a portfolio strategist at Nascent, chalked up the downward pressure to waning exuberance. 

In a message to The Block, the Web3 investor said “speculators have begun to risk off as signs of euphoria manifested in a DOGE rally leading into 4/20 as well as a memecoin PEPE dominating activity on chain.”

Daniel Matuszewski of investment firm CMS described it as “pre-selling before May and go away.”

Bitcoin price declines 

via TradingView

Elsewhere, the Financial Times reported earlier in the day that the gigantic Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan would steer clear from future investments in crypto after it wrote off a $95 million investment into the failed FTX exchange.

“We’re still working through what exactly happened there and you’re going to be careful,” the Financial Times reported OTPP chief executive Jo Taylor as saying. 

The Financial Stability Oversight Council chaired by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, meanwhile, said it wants to tighten rules on risk assessment and for nonbank companies.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both ended the day up about 0.1%. 

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