Cold DOGE, While Bitcoin Simmers Above $28.6K
A Bitcoin Rally Past $28.5K
DOGE was down and so were jobs.
The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization recently traded at $28,622, up 2.6% as investors contemplated a welcome dip in the heated job market but also remained cautious about the future after weeks of banking uncertainty.
Trading and volatility was easy. On Monday, BTC had fallen below the $28,000 threshold it has largely surpassed in the past two weeks after a rumor surfaced that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was facing an international law enforcement request to arrest him. (Binance denied the rumor in an email to The Block.)
“Bitcoin is hovering around the high end of its recent range as crypto traders wait to see how they will benefit from the current banking crisis,” Edward Moya, although he also noted that the “Bitcoin bear case” was growing.
Ether spent the day outperforming BTC, changing hands above $1,900 for the first time since last August. The second largest crypto by market capitalization was up 5.5% from Monday, same time. Other major cryptos were mostly in green, albeit lighter shades. MATIC, the token of the layer 2 platform Polygon, and SOL, the token of the Solana blockchain, recently jumped by 5.2% and 3.8%, respectively. Popular meme coin DOGE fell 0.7%. The drop came a day after it rose dramatically when Elon Musk’s Twitter replaced the social media platform’s famous blue bird at the top of its homepage with the cryptocurrency’s iconic Shiba Inu dog logo. DOGE is up 21% since the beginning of the week.
The CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of the crypto markets’ overall performance, was recently up more than 3%.
US stock markets fell slightly with the tech-focused Nasdaq and S&P 500 both closing down around half a percentage point. But gold, the traditional safe haven, rose above $2,000, hitting its highest level since last March, after a report from the US Department of Labor’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed job openings falling below 10 million for the first time in nearly two years, and a day later, another report showed that orders for durable goods declined. The signs of economic slowdown combined with ongoing inflation concerns have created a favorable backdrop for more conservative assets that historically hold their value.
“A weakening economy continues to drive safe-haven flows toward gold,” wrote Oandas Moya. “The JOLTS report supported the view that the economy is steadily weakening towards a recession.”
He added that investors should monitor bitcoin’s price near the end of a Good Friday-shortened work week and the Labor Department releasing nonfarm payrolls. “Bitcoin has had a key price barrier at the $30,000 level, and if Friday’s NFP report shocks to the downside, we could see high-frequency trading systems and algos try to take advantage of any momentum opportunities,” Moya wrote.
Jason Pagoulatos talks about Binance and Bitcoin
Even the giant of crypto exchanges, Binance, can’t outrun bad news, the chief market officer of crypto analytics firm Delphi Digital told CoinDesk TV in an interview on Tuesday.
Jason Pagoulatos linked Binance’s dramatic loss of market share over the past two weeks to the recent regulatory entanglements in the US and beyond.
“I would definitely say that you’re a pretty big contributor to the decline in market share you’ve had these rumors that Binance is in trouble with global regulators,” Pagoulatos said.
Binance remains the top exchange by trading volume, but its market share has fallen from around 70% to 54% since the last weeks of March. To be sure, the plunge has come as the exchange halted its free trading campaign for 13 bitcoin spot trading pairs. Binance witnessed the lowest trading volume for bitcoin (BTC) since July 2022 on March 27.
But the exchange has also lost ground after the US Commodity Futures Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit against Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao sued the exchange and founder Changpeng Zhao, alleging that they offered unregistered crypto derivative products in the US in violation of federal law.
On Monday, Binance suffered its latest indignity when a rumor surfaced that Zhao was facing an international law enforcement request to arrest him – a red notice from Interpol – to arrest him. On Twitter, Chief Strategy Officer of Binance, Patrick Hillmann wrote, “One of two things is true: 1. It’s bullsh-t; 2. A police agent illegally leaks elements of a case file.” He added: “My bet is #1.”
Pagoulatos saw BTC’s fall on Monday following the rumor as a flight to safety. “When people trade bitcoins, they’re going to trade on places like Binance, Coinbase, Bybit,” he said. “And when there are rumors that, for example, the CEO of the largest exchange is a wanted fugitive, obviously people will want to get their money out, sell their bitcoin, get it off as quickly as possible.”
Bitcoin has recently recovered above the $28,000 level, where it has been for much of the past two weeks. Pagoulatos secured his future path. “We had this significant increase of 20k all the way up to 28k,” he said. “And like 28 to 30k is a big area of significance. That’s kind of where bitcoin was trading before the Three Arrows Capital collapse last year — the huge liquidation event for hedge funds — so like that area is going to be a difficult place for bitcoin to get through .”
He added: “What’s going to be interesting is which way bitcoin follows from here. Is it going to trade more in line with risk assets? Or is it going to trade more in line with what gold is doing?”
Canadian crypto exchanges WonderFi, Coinsquare and CoinSmart have revealed plans to merge, creating what will be one of the world’s largest crypto trading platforms. O’Leary Ventures Chairman Kevin O’Leary, along with WonderFi President and Interim CEO Dean Skurka, joined “First Mover” to discuss. Additionally, The Tie Co founder and CEO Joshua Frank weighed in on dogecoin hopping after Twitter replaced its blue bird logo with the token’s dog. And FTX creditor Sunil Kavuri shared his thoughts on the future of the failed crypto exchange.
