After a week of mixed and choppy trading action, the cryptocurrency markets are now seeing a widespread, albeit relatively minor, drop, stemming from Bitcoin’s decline into the $6,300 region after it failed to stabilize above $6,500 a couple of days ago.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at just under $6,400 and isn’t showing any signs of wanting to drop to the bottom of its long-established trading range between $6,200 and $6,700.

Earlier this week, Bitcoin rose to weekly highs of approximately $6,550 on the aggregated markets, but it failed to maintain momentum above $6,500 and has been gradually declining in the days since. If its price does happen to dip into the $6,200 region, it is likely that bulls will step up the buying volume and push BTC’s price back into the middle of its trading range.

If bulls fail to defend $6,200, a drop back to Bitcoin’s year-to-date lows around $5,800 is likely. This, however, appears to be unlikely due to the lack of trading volume (for both bulls and bears), and would most likely occur as a result of negative news.

One of today’s best performing altcoins is XRP, which is currently trading flat after dropping 6% yesterday to its current price of $0.50.

Although XRP has held steady above $0.50, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which was also one of yesterday’s worst performing altcoins, failed to stabilize and extended its losses into Friday.

BCH is currently trading down nearly 4% over the past 24-hours at its current price of $567. It is currently down 10% from its weekly highs of $630 but is still up 24% from its 7-day lows.

BCH’s recent price rise is the result from its upcoming hard fork event, which is scheduled to occur on November 15th. This event could prove to be profitable for BCH investors, as they will be rewarded with free units of the forked cryptocurrency.

It is important to note that Bitcoin Cash itself was the result of a Bitcoin hard fork, and it has proven to be highly profitable for Bitcoin investors that were rewarded with free units of BCH.

Basic Attention Token (BAT) has been one of today’s worst performing altcoins, currently trading down 17.5%. BAT’s drop is the result of the US SEC’s recent actions against the owner of the decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, EtherDelta, who was charged with violating securities laws for operating an unlicensed securities exchange.

The SEC’s report noted that many of the ERC20 altcoins on EtherDelta, which includes BAT, are securities, which could ultimately prove to be negative for the cryptocurrency, as it could jeopardize its listing status on multiple US-based exchanges.

Analysts: Markets Still Moving in Positive Direction

Despite this week being mixed and choppy, analysts still believe that the crypto markets are taking positive steps towards an end-of-year rally.

While speaking to MarketWatch, Charles Hayter, the co-founder of CryptoCompare said that support for BTC at $6,000 is strong, and the markets are heading in the right direction.

“The $6k mark remains fairly solid, volumes are on the lighter side but we are still seeing some positive steps, albeit slowly,” he said.

Robert Sluymer, a technical strategist at Fundstrat Global Advisors also shared a similar sentiment, recently explaining that:

After pullbacks to the lower end of narrow trading ranges last week, a growing number of ALTs [altcoins] bounced back to reverse downtrends that have been in place since the April-May highs and in some cases since the beginning of 2018.”

All the cryptocurrencies mentioned in this article are available to trade on covesting.io