Investing.com – Bitcoin prices rose on Friday as the popular digital currency seeks to avoid a weekly loss for the first time in two weeks.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin rose to $4,340.4, down $25.0, or 0.58%. Bitcoin is nearly 20% below its recent peak of $4,969 with a market cap of about $72 billion.
Since hitting a five-week high on Monday, Bitcoin prices have struggled to hold onto gains as the fallout from the China ban on domestic bitcoin exchanges continued to weigh on sentiment amid an uptick from regulators in the cryptocurrency industry.
In other cryptocurrency news, Bitcoin Cash rose 4.04%, to $369.23, while Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, tacked on 2.20% to $301.80.
Ethereum prices have been restricted to a narrow trading range over the past week amid a drop in volatility as investors awaited the upcoming Byzantium hard fork – expected on October 17 – to establish how the network will be affected.
The market cap of both Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum is well below that of Bitcoin at $6.15 billion and $28.64 billion, respectively.