Cold DOGE, While Bitcoin Simmers Above $28.6K
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Good morning. Here’s what happens:
Prices: Dogecoin fell into the red late Tuesday, while bitcoin and ether rose solidly as crypto markets absorbed the latest jobs report.
Insight: Jason Pagoulatos attributed Binance’s loss of market share largely to growing entanglements with regulators. He also opined about bitcoin’s way forward.
Prices
CoinDesk Market Index (CMI)
1,241
+37.1 3.1%
Bitcoin (BTC)
$28,594
+751.3 2.7%
Ethereum (ETH)
$1,910
+98.6 5.4%
S&P 500
4,100.60
-23.9 0.6%
Gold
$2022
−0.2 0.0%
Nikkei 225
28,287.42
+99.3 0.4%
BTC/ETH prices per CoinDesk indices, as of 07:00 ET (11:00 UTC)
A Bitcoin Rally Past $28.5K
DOGE was down and so were jobs. But bitcoin was not.
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 mark it has largely breached for the past two weeks after a rumor spread 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,” said 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 cap was up 5.5% from Monday, at the 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 decline came a day after it rose dramatically when Elon Musk’s Twitter replaced the social media platform’s familiar blue bird logo on its homepage with the cryptocurrency’s iconic Shiba Inu dog. 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 asset – rose above $2,000, hitting its highest level since last March after a report from the US Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed job openings falling below 10 million for for the first time in nearly two years, and a day later another report showed orders for durable goods declining. The signs of economic slowdown combined with ongoing inflation concerns have created a favorable backdrop for more conservative assets that historically hold their value through good times and bad.
“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.
Biggest winners
Biggest losers
Insight
Jason Pagoulatos talks about Binance and Bitcoin
Even the giant among crypto exchanges, Binance, cannot run from bad news, the chief market officer of crypto analysis 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 when the exchange stopped 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 sued the exchange and founder Changpeng Zhao, alleging they offered unregistered crypto derivative products in the US in violation of federal law.
On Monday, Binance suffered another blow when a rumor surfaced that Zhao was facing an international law enforcement request to arrest him, referred to as an Interpol Red Notice. 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, say, 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 Three Arrows Capital’s collapse last year — the huge liquidation event for hedge funds — so that area is going to be a difficult place for bitcoin to get hold of. 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?”
Important events.
16:15 HKT/SGT(8:15 UTC) US ADP Employment Change (March)
18:00 HKT/SGT (10:00 UTC) US ISM Services PMI (March)
05:30 HKT/SGT (21:30 UTC) Australia’s trade balance (MoM/Feb)
CoinDesk TV
In case you missed it, here’s the latest episode of “First Mover” on CoinDesk TV:
Binance Market Share Hits Lowest Since November After CFTC Lawsuit; Kevin O’Leary on Crypto Markets Outlook
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.
Headings
OpenSea launches OpenSea Pro, courting professional NFT traders: As part of the launch, marketplace fees will revert to the main OpenSea platform at 2.5%, while Pro users will have zero fees.
Arbitrum Governance Fracas Reopens the Question, Why DAOs?: A messy governance dispute over a major Ethereum scaling system has some complaining about “decentralization theater.”
Polkadot registers trademark for Blockchain Communication Platform: The trademark archive mentions social networking software.
Crypto Protocol LayerZero Raises $120M to $3B Valuation: The valuation is three times as high as the company’s previous financing round in March 2022.
Binance’s market share hits lowest level since November after CFTC lawsuit, end of zero-fee trading: The exchange’s share of trading volume has fallen to 54% from 70% in the last two weeks.
