Bitcoin (BTC) ended Monday 1.3% lower at a flat US$27,800, marking the third day of straight losses, although this Tuesday has seen a bit of a rebound, with the BTC/USDT pair adding 0.7% to US$28,000.
Ethereum (ETH) had a better Monday session compared to bitcoin, adding 0.9% to close at US$1,810, while adding another 0.2% to US$1,815 this morning.
Bitcoin (BTC) is up 70% year to date – Source: currency.com
As such, ETH/BTC is in a strong position after closing Monday 2.25% higher. In fact, ETH/BTC has seen a levelling out in the past two weeks after significant declines in early-to-mid March.
This suggests some renewed interest in the altcoin space after a large-scale surge of bitcoin-only sentiment amid a safe-haven rally in response to turmoil in the traditional finance sector.
Both BTC and ETH remain in the green week on week, with 3.5% and 5% added respectively, but the real price action has been seen on the largest of the so-called memecoin set, Dogecoin (DOGE).
After Twitter, SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk replaced Twitter’s traditional blue bird icon with the cartoon Shiba Inu dog face synonymous with Dogecoin on Monday, seemingly at the behest of a throwaway promise made a year earlier, DOGE went into overdrive.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2023
The memecoin soared 21% to US$0.1 on Monday, bringing DOGE up to the seventh-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalisation of US$13.6bn.
DOGE closed the session slightly lower at US$0.096, though has since rebounded back to US$0.098.
DOGE has a tendency to pump whenever Musk namedrops it, so the rally comes as no surprise; nor should an imminent reversal if and when the hype dies down.
Shiba Inu (SHIB) enjoyed a bit of a rally on the back of its dog-themed memecoin brethren, adding 4% yesterday and another 1.2% this morning to bring the coin’s market cap close to US$6.7bn.
The rest on the top-20 set has remained largely unchanged, with Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP) and BNB adding low single digits in overnight trades.
Global cryptocurrency market cap added 0.7% to US$1.17tn overnight, while total value locked in the decentralised finance (DeFi) space is just below US$50bn after adding 0.5%.
