Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy meetings on April 26-27, 2016 supported the idea that officials could begin raising interest rates as a result; US dollar recorded its third weekly gain on Friday.

For the past five days, the BTC/USD exchange rate has declined 3.5%. On Friday, it rebounded 1.7% to reach $442.41 from $435.08. Analysts said that, break below $435 could expose lows near $420. The $470 region continues to offer the toughest resistance on the upside.

The US dollar index has rebounded nearly 3% since the beginning of May. The index tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of six fiat currencies. The dollar reflected increased volatility in the currency markets, down by 3%.

With multinational banks and governments experimenting with the blockchain technology this year, the technology has attracted attention from players ranging from Goldman Sachs all the way to the UK Cabinet Office and has received massive media attention as well.

Apart from bitcoin, several other cryptocurrencies like ether have gained momentum. Ether was last seen trading near $14, a nearly 15-fold increase in just six months. Bitcoin and Ether alone are valued at $8 billion when combined. Due to this, Coinbase Exchange recently announced that it will rebrand as Global Digital Exchange as reported by Forbes.

On May 27, Friday, Commerce Department is expected to release revised first quarter GDP data. This is expected to show a stronger performance for the US economy at the start of the year. Also there is a speech scheduled on Friday by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen which will address similar issues.

According to analysts, for the first five months of the year, bitcoin has shown greater stability. This suggests that cryptocurrency is slowly gaining mainstream appeal after several years of negative backlash.