On Friday, Bitcoin saw a slight uptick in price amidst overall subdued sentiment in crypto markets, driven by increasing expectations of higher U.S. interest rates. The focus shifted towards upcoming U.S. inflation data, impacting investor outlook.

Over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin rose by 1.17% to reach $64,169.2 by 09:04 ET (13:04 GMT). Despite this, the world’s largest cryptocurrency was set for a relatively muted weekly performance, trading within a range of $60,000 to $70,000 established over the past six weeks.

Concerns regarding ongoing regulatory pressures on crypto surfaced after reports suggested that U.S. prosecutors sought a three-year prison sentence for Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws.

Bitcoin and the broader crypto market showed little response to a decline in the dollar overnight, following weaker-than-expected U.S. gross domestic product data. However, a stronger GDP price index reading led traders to diminish expectations for Fed interest rate cuts.

Traders, as indicated by the CME Fedwatch tool, now anticipate rate cuts by September or the fourth quarter of 2024, contributing to an environment of higher-for-longer U.S. interest rates. This sentiment largely deterred traders from Bitcoin and crypto assets, given their volatility and speculative nature, which tend to thrive in low-rate, high-liquidity environments.

Despite positive performance from U.S. technology stocks following strong earnings from giants like Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Bitcoin’s correlation with these stocks, albeit returning in recent weeks, remained predominantly negative.

Meanwhile, in the broader crypto market, Ethereum, the second-largest token, declined by 0.9%, while Solana saw a slight drop of 0.3%. XRP, however, managed to rise by 1%.

Investors await key U.S. inflation data, particularly the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index for March, which is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge and is expected to influence interest rate outlooks.

In other news, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest completed the sale of its remaining shares in the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), divesting 237,983 shares valued at $6.7 million. These shares were held in ARK’s Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW). Despite initially acquiring over 4 million shares of BITO late last year, ARK disposed of the final BITO shares over the past week, with its ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) becoming the firm’s largest holding.