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Mooners & Shakers: Bitcoin dips ahead of Fed meeting; Doge pumps on back of Twitter rebrand

Elon Musk seems to have again given his pet cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, a reason to wag its tail. Meanwhile Bitcoin is clinging to $US29k.

Rob Badman
4 min read
12:22PMJuly 25, 2023
Stockhead
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Every Doge has its day. Sometimes more than one. Picture: Getty Images
Every Doge has its day. Sometimes more than one. Picture: Getty Images

Bitcoin is not exactly off to the best start this week, having lost its tenuous grip on the US$30,000 branch. But at least Doge is leg humping its way up again.

BTC has fallen further down the tree, not quite in Rambo from First Blood style, and has broken its descent at just above $US29k.

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Hmm, thought things had been looking up – an XRP/Ripple win over the SEC, Bitcoin ETF applications piling up in Gary Gensler’s in-tray.

So why then? How come this dip? Why did it rain at Old Trafford the other day? Why? It’s. Just. Not. Fair. Daddy.

Well, one reason for the cooling off is very likely (in fact, almost certainly) to do with a pump in the US dollar index (DXY) ahead of this week’s latest MOST IMPORTANT EVER Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

That’s set to happen in the wee hours on Thursday this week (AEST) and the general market predictions around it appear to suggest a resumption hike from Jerome Powell and mates at the Fed.

A likely 25bps increase, which the CME FedWatch tool gives about oh, a 99.6 per cent possibility of happening. (Insert “so you’re telling me there’s a chance” GIF here.)

So then, are we in for some gloom as rate-hiking season begins once more and recession takes up the narrative in H2?

Certainly some analysis seems to be trending that way, with figures sub $US20,000 being bandied about for BTC again.

Here’s the often-very-positive Michaël van de Poppe, who is of the belief it could pull back to at least $US27,000, but within an overall uptrend still.

And that’s an uptrend that still currently has Bitcoin at +75 per cent, or thereabouts, for the year to date.

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Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at $US1.21 trillion at noon Tuesday (AEST), down 2.7 per cent since the same time Monday, here’s the state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Source: CoinGecko
Source: CoinGecko

Bitcoin, for a time did actually dip below $US29k overnight, but has at least recovered that area for now.

There’s not much positivity to tell you elsewhere in the majors, either just at present. Although hang on, Doge is wagging its tail.

We can only assume it’s a response to Elon Musk’s Twitter rebrand to X.

Why does that mean a Dogecoin pump? It’s Elon Musk… doing things, and it just does. We don’t make the rules.

But yes, there’s a chance, and actually some level of probability, that Musk will, at some point, give Dogecoin a role to play on his X everything app platform.

He’s already hinted at that several times in the past, and looky here, he’s just updated his X profile location to include a D, for Doge apparently.

There are all sorts of unconfirmed rumours flying about at present (see below), but we’ll keep things updated here once we know more.

eToro’s Market Analyst Josh Gilbert gave us an emailed take on Musk’s ‘X’ Twitter rebrand, and what it might mean for crypto/Bitcoin/Dogecoin…

“This does have implications for crypto in the short-term as it moves markets, and in the long-term as Musk looks to build out payment networks using his own platform that could soon compete with the likes of Ethereum, Bitcoin or others,” wrote Gilbert.

He went on to add: “Watchers won’t have missed the news either that Bitcoin payments have seemingly been quietly dropped from Tesla, despite Dogecoin remaining. While the market reads the tea leaves of Musk’s choices, it’s better for investors not to become distracted by short-term events and focus on the longer and wider trends.”

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Uppers and downers

Some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at noon Tuesday (AEST). Stats based on CoinGecko.com data.

PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

  • XDC Network (XDC), (market cap: $US799 million) +14.2 per cent
  • Trust Wallet (TWT), (market cap: $US387 million) +6.9 per cent
  • GMX (GMX), (market cap: $US471 million) +2.1 per cent

SLUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

  • Flex Coin (FLEX), (market cap: $US396 million) -29 per cent
  • Pepe (PEPE), (market cap: $US563 million) -10.4 per cent
  • Compound (COMP), (market cap: $US430 million) -9.9 per cent
  • Kaspa (KAS), (market cap: $US711 million) -9.5 per cent
  • Tezos (XTZ), (market cap: $US754 million) -9.5 per cent

Around the blocks: Worldcoin hits market

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

Have you caught any of the buzz about this Worldcoin thing? It’s a retina-capturing, Universal Basic Income (UBI) crypto project developed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and its token, WLD, has just hit the market – available on Binance, KuCoin, Huobi, the DEX Uniswap and a few other exchange locations.

It pumped pretty hard upon market entry, but has pulled back a tad now, still registering a 28 per cent 24-hour gain at noon Tuesday (AEST).

As Stockhead’s Eddy Sunarto explained in this morning’s Market Highlights: “Worldcoin uses a small device called an ‘orb’ to scan people’s eyeballs in order to generate a unique digital identity, which then grants its holder ‘proof of personhood’ ”.

More unique personal data capture – all for a few dollars worth of a s**tcoin. Things that make you go hmm… scratch chin, and mumble something about a dystopian nightmare. (Then go back to reading about Bitcoin, Ethereum, or lithium, or the women’s FIFA World Cup, or Ashes fifth Test selection possibilities).

This content first appeared on stockhead.com.au

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/stockhead/mooners-shakers-bitcoin-dips-ahead-of-fed-meeting-doge-pumps-on-back-of-twitter-rebrand/news-story/a204337aa0975fd340d44244a7673fe5