Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies were trading mostly higher on Friday, though Bitcoin was having trouble recapturing the $10,000 mark.
The largest digital currency by market cap briefly recovered the psychological level in trading on Thursday, before paring gains.
It took another run at $10,000 on Friday achieving a brief breach of the handle, but indecision seemed to make investors think twice, paring gains to back below $10,000 despite gaining around 3% on Friday.
Easing regulatory fears provided a stable backdrop for a sharp move higher throughout the week in the popular digital currency with other rivals swept along in a generally bullish move.
Rising inflows into the market continued amid fading regulatory fears after South Korea appeared to pivot toward more ‘friendly’ approaches to regulate the crypto industry.
“We are positively considering the adoption of an exchange approval system as the additional regulation on cryptocurrencies,” a South Korean government official said this week, according to a report from BusinessKorea. “We are most likely benchmark the model of the State of New York that gives a selective permission.”
That paved the way for cryptoinvestors to return to the market as initial fears that South Korea – which accounts for a large part of cryptocurrency trading activity – would issue an outright ban on cryptocurrencies was one of the chief reasons for the recent crash.
Still reeling from the selloff that saw bitcoin tumble to a low of $6,000 on the Bitfinex exchange, investors appear to have adopted a somewhat measured approach in their return to the market.
At 8:37AM ET (13:37GMT), Bitcoin gained 2.95% to $9,912.80, recovering more than 20% in the last seven days, but still short of its intraday high at $10,271.00.
By descending market cap, Ethereum gained 0.8% to $928.00, registering gains of around 13.5% since a week ago, Ripple edged forward 0.7% to $1.09700, adding to weekly gains of nearly 40%, while Bitcoin offshoot Bitcoin Cash seemed to be a preferred choice for cryptoinvestors, leading its largest rivals with gains of around 11% on Friday at $1,478.50.