Bitcoin slides under $26K, majors SOL, XRP, DOGE erase all weekly gains

Bitcoin and major tokens gave back all weekly gains as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission delayed key ETF decisions that were expected on Friday, dampening traders’ hopes of a long-term recovery.

Bitcoin (BTC) slid under $26,000 to retrace all gains made earlier this week. In the past 24 hours, majors Dogecoin (DOGE) and solana (SOL) fell as much as 5.5%, and ether (ETH) lost 3.7%. Elsewhere, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) slid 7.7%.

Only tron (TRX) and toncoin (TON) were in the green on Friday, up over 1% each on no immediate catalysts.

The rush for the exits ahead of the weekend came as the SEC said late Thursday it had delayed until October making a decision on all of the spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications filed by applicants including BlackRock, WisdomTree, Invesco Galaxy, Wise Origin, VanEck, Bitwise and Valkyrie Digital Assets earlier this year.

This followed from Tuesday's reports of a U.S. federal court ordering the SEC to "vacate" its rejection of the trust issuer's bid to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-traded fund.

GBTC is a publicly traded bitcoin fund offered by Grayscale (Grayscale and CoinDesk share the same parent company, Digital Currency Group), which could potentially open the door for a spot bitcoin ETF in the U.S - even as the SEC has disapproved every such ETF application it's reviewed to date.