ISTANBUL

Bitcoin on Friday pulled back from its a record-high level and the recent rally in the cryptocurrency market has come to a pause.

Price of Bitcoin was trading around $68,100 at 9.06 a.m. EDT for a daily loss of 6.5%, giving back almost all of its gains recorded in the past week, according to data from CoinMarketCap, a digital asset price-tracking website.

The world's biggest cryptocurrency saw its price climbing to an all-time high of $73,666 on Thursday, the highest level in its 15-year history, before retreating to $71,390 for a daily loss of 2.3%.

Bitcoin has been on a rally since Jan. 11, when the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved spot Bitcoin ETFs, or exchange-traded funds. The move allowed investors, especially financial institutions, to trade Bitcoin without owning it.

Ethereum, the world's biggest altcoin by market cap, was down 5.6% to $3,718 at 9.08 a.m. EDT.

Some altcoins saw their prices plummet as much as 14%, according to CoinMarketCap.

The value of the cryptocurrency market was down 6.6% to $2.57 trillion at the time, while Bitcoin's share of the crypto market, known as dominance, was at 51.9% and Ethereum's dominance at 17.3%.