Bitcoin edged cautiously higher from six-month lows as global markets took stock at the end of a wild week and investors hunted for bargains in some digital tokens after the heavy selling of the past month.
The largest digital currency by market value gained 2.2% to US$36,979, outperforming its smaller peer Ethereum - just 0.4% higher to US$2,420.
The two cryptos are trading about 45% below all-time highs seen in November as rising inflation and fears Russia and Kazakhstan will follow China’s lead and ban crypto mining drove investors to shift into safer assets.
"The general sentiment is still bearish when it comes to cryptos," Naeem Aslam, an analyst at AvaTrade said. "Having said that, here is some silver lining, we do see more HODLERS (holding on for dear life) in the market. The wallet activity for bitcoin shows more people are hodling now which is positive for the bitcoin price."
Alt-coin BNB climbed 4.8% to US$385.45, while the ninth most popular digital currency Solana rose 1.2% to US$89.93.
Further down the pecking order, Polkadot, Avalanche, and Polygon advanced 2.1%, 2.7%, and 5.6%.
But not all alt-coins found support, with Cardano and Terra dropping 1.0% and 9.6% to US$1.04 and US$52.54 respectively.
Meanwhile, Cosmos, Near Protocol and Phantom were down 5.4%, 6.0%, and 3.6%.
Overall, 62 of the top 100 cryptos were trading in green territory on Friday morning.