Ugly technical development
All the people who were telling their relatives to buy Bitcoin at Christmas are going to have some explaining to do at Easter.
It was a brutal finish to a brutal quarter for Bitcoin. It fell 9.8% on Friday in a quarter where its value fell 50.2%.
Bitcoin briefly traded below the 200-dma in February but it snapped back the same day in the start of a 98% bounce. It's been so long since Bitcoin closed below the 200-day moving average that it's almost impossible to see on the daily chart.
The 200-dma is a technical holy grail. It's one of the indicators that people who don't use technical analysis still follow.
That said, it's far from infallible.
There are many markets currently testing the 200-dma because of wide-ranging reversals so far this year. The S&P 500 tested the mark several times this year including earlier this week. It bounced 1.4% on Friday to give itself some breathing room.
In the bigger picture, the enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies has ebbed with regulators cracking down, stories of fraud and exchanges having problems.
Google search interest in Bitcoin has fallen substantially since the start of the year.
For more on Bitcoin, see our special section on cryptocurrencies.