Amid a stressful week, bitcoin ended Friday down about 6% at $26,038.41, according to Coin Metrics, after a stunning fall that began late Thursday.
The entire cryptocurrency market was affected, as on Friday both Ether and Binance dropped about 4%, Cardano lost more than 3%, Hot Ripple fell 13% and Solana lost 7%.
Over the course of the week, bitcoin closed down 11.28%, its seventh weekly loss in the past eight weeks, but it was the worst week since November.
Cryptocurrencies were pressured all day Thursday, but fell sharply around 6pm ET, following a report in the Wall Street Journal that Elon Musk's SpaceX devalued its bitcoin holdings by $373 million in 2021 and 2022.
Darius Tabatabai, co-founder of decentralized exchange Vertex Protocol, said: “Thursday's sharp sell-off appears to have been triggered by fear following reports that SpaceX sold bitcoin assets...the markets were in a panic.”
Tabatabaei added, “Currently, we are witnessing negative indicators for perpetual futures contracts, which could herald bearish momentum at the present time due to the speed and violence of the movement.
Bitcoin has been stagnant for most of the third quarter, which is a historically weak period for the cryptocurrency. It is now down by 14.25% on a quarterly basis, and about 10.69% in August. But despite recent market weakness even before this week's dramatic slide, Bitcoin is still up about 57% in 2023.
