Weighed down by recession fears, the dollar remained in the red on Friday. For its part, the South African rand strengthened against the dollar early in the day.

The pound was in positive territory, recovering after initially stalling on the back of disappointing UK economic data, while the dollar remained in the red. The pound was up 0.35 percent at $1.2304 around 0940 GMT.

The South African rand strengthened against the dollar early Friday as investors continued to assess the Federal Reserve's policy stance and whether aggressive rate hikes could trigger a recession. At 0709 GMT, the rand was trading at 15.9175 to the dollar, up 0.28 percent from its previous close.

The Russian ruble has stabilized near seven-year highs, supported by capital controls and high prices for Russian exports, such as oil and gas, while OFZ government bond prices have climbed. At 0715 GMT, the ruble was down 0.1 percent against the dollar at 53.50, close to its strongest level since mid-2015 of 52.80 that it hit earlier this week. Against the euro, the ruble was steady at 56.18, close to the 55.01 level it hit on the Moscow Stock Exchange for the first time since late May 2015.

On the cryptocurrency side, bitcoin was trading around the $21,000 mark at $20,917.23.