According to the data, Dogecoin plunged to $0.06464 from $0.07295, before recovering to $0.06515 at 13.00 hours IST.

Edul Patel, Co-Founder and CEO, Mudrex said Dogecoin saw a massive increase in its price after Tesla founder Elon Musk supported the crypto at the Qatar Economic Forum.

“The meme token started to fall on Tuesday with an increase in the bearish sentiment in the market. Further, an announcement by Crypto.com that it is removing DOGE also put pressure on the coin,” he added.

Adding to it, Taaran Chanana, MD and Co-Founder, MemeChat said Crypto.com recently announced that they are removing 15 cryptocurrencies from its crypto Earn Rewards program and Dogecoin is one of them.

Musk, the richest man on the planet, has been a Dogecoin supporter and his tweets have often pushed the prices of the token higher. Fondly called ‘Doge Father’ by the community, Musk recently extended his support for the meme token.

“When it comes to meme coins, their utility was always questionable. Due to social influence, they had gained unfair valuations. They are all getting corrected now.” said Sathvik Vishwanath, Co-Founder & CEO, Unocoin.

However, not only Dogecoin, other crypto tokens have been bleeding lately. Tokens like Chiliz, Enjin Coin, Helium, Aave and Mina have plunged between 11-14 per cent. Top tokens including Bitcoin, Ethereum and BNB were also down.

Global financial markets are down and cryptocurrencies are no exception, said Prashant Kumar, Founder & CEO weTrade. “Once global equity markets stabilise, we will experience a rise in cryptos as well.”

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

Bitcoin’ jump to $44,000 unwound an increasing number of short positions, data from Coinglass showed. The token has driven the crypto market higher amid growing adoption through the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Is a Bitcoin short Squeeze incoming?

Data from Coinglass showed about $68 million short positions in the world’s largest cryptocurrency had been liquidated in the past 24 hours. Sentiment towards crypto improved in the past week as Western sanctions and wartime disruptions boosted adoption in Ukraine and Russia.

Long positions made up 54% of total positioning on bitcoin in the last 24 hours, while positioning in the broader market was closer to 50/50. Still, long positions on Bitcoin have been steadily building this week.

Bitcoin and other tokens raced past broader financial markets in the past week. While the token is up about 12%, the S&P 500 stock index has only added about 1.9% from last Wednesday.

Total crypto market capitalization crossed the $2 trillion mark for the first time in over two weeks, while the fear and greed index improved to neutral from extreme fear.

 A total $176 million crypto shorts liquidated

Among altcoins, Ethereum’s jump to near $3000 saw nearly $43 million shorts liquidated in the past 24 hours. Luna and SOL also had some of the largest short positions wiped.

On the broader front, a total $176 million of short positions were liquidated by crypto’s rally in the last 24 hours. The largest single liquidation order happened on Okex, and was a btc-tether swap valued at $8 million.

Okex also had the highest concentration of short positions among major crypto exchanges, at about 53%.

Is Bitcoin the safest haven?

The latest rally has also fueled renewed speculation over Bitcoin’s potential role as a safe-haven asset. While the currency had faltered in the initial stages of the Russian invasion, it found its ground and has now even raced past gold in the past week.

Shorts RIP. This time there most definitively is a major safe haven bid behind bitcoin. This is not just a simple short squeeze.

— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) February 28, 2022

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With more than five years of experience covering global financial markets, Ambar intends to leverage this knowledge towards the rapidly expanding world of crypto and DeFi. His interest lies chiefly in finding how geopolitical developments can impact crypto markets, and what that could mean for your bitcoin holdings. When he isn’t trawling through the web for the latest breaking news, you can find him playing videogames or watching Seinfeld reruns.
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• Crypto market cap sinks 8.1% this week
• Stablecoins see largest volumes
• Bitcoin price could fall to $36,000 this month- Analyst

Concerns over a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine weighed on crypto markets this week, wiping out roughly $160 billion in market value as investors fled into relatively safer asset classes.

Cryptocurrencies, along with broader markets, fell amid warnings from Western leaders that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent. Safe-haven assets including gold, U.S. Treasuries  and stablecoins benefited.

Trading volumes rose through the week to $72.3 billion from $64.5 billion.

With crypto markets trading more in line with conventional asset classes, many have begun questioning whether the space, particularly bitcoin, is a viable bet against volatility. The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly broke below $40,000 on Friday for the first time in two weeks.

“Bitcoin has clearly lost its function as a defensive asset lately, showing almost no correlation with gold, which was in high demand on Wednesday and Thursday,” Alex Kuptsikevich, senior financial analyst at FxPro said in a mailed statement.

“It is quite possible that from the end of January to mid-February, we saw a pullback after the momentum of the decline, and now a new step down is being formed. The nearest goal with this push down is located near this month lows around $36,000.”

Earlier this year, concerns over rising inflation and U.S. interest rate hikes had also unsettled crypto markets, with most major tokens falling in line with a rout in equities and foreign exchange.

Stablecoins shine

A large amount of crypto trade appeared to be directed towards stablecoins this week, as investors sought less volatile options, while still maintaining exposure to crypto.

Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin with a market capital of nearly $80 billion, had the highest volumes among its peers in the last seven days, with about $349 billion moved– nearly twice as much as that of bitcoin.

Binance USD and USD Coin also saw combined volumes of $48 billion. USD Coin in particular, saw increased interest after its operator Cirlce doubled the value of a deal to publicly list its shares.

Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market has had a fairly decent week up until Thursday when investors decided to change their minds on a potential rally and begin to pull out capital, greatly affecting the market mood. After a couple of days of gains, Bitcoin witnessed a 1.92 percent dip in value through Thursday and is currently at $46,221 (roughly Rs. 34.24 lakh), down by 1.83 percent over the past 24 hours on Indian exchanges like CoinSwitch Kuber. Meanwhile, on global exchanges, the price of the most popular cryptocurrency stands at $42,769 (roughly Rs. 31.68 lakh) down by 1.96 percent over the past 24 hours.

Ether suffered a worse plight after the Ethereum-based cryptocurrency witnessed a fall of 2.73 percent through the day and is currently valued at $3,544 (roughly Rs. 2.63 lakh) on CoinSwitch Kuber while values on global exchanges see the crypto pegged at $3,277 (roughly Rs. 2.43 lakh), where the coin saw a drop of 2.05 percent over the past 24 hours. Despite its horrible start to 2022, Ether’s good showing through the week has seen the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation cut losses to just over 4 percent over the past week.

Bitcoin and Ether’s drop off on Thursday didn’t mean well for the rest of the market either. Gadgets 360’s cryptocurrency price tracker reveals a showing in red across the board, barring a few outliers. Ripple, Cardano, Polygon, Uniswap, Chainlink, and Litecoin all saw dips in valuation. Meanwhile, Polkadot and Monero were the only coins to manage gains apart from the likes of stablecoins like Tether and USDC.

Meme coins have a different story to tell though. While Shiba Inu dropped off by a steep 5.78 percent through Thursday to be valued at $0.000034 (roughly Rs. 0.002511), Dogecoin has managed a massive rise of 8.22 percent over the past 24 hours, buoyed by news of Tesla testing DOGE as a payment option. That said, SHIB’s value has moved up by 1.2 percent in the past week, while Dogecoin’s has skyrocket by 19 percent.

“We saw traded volumes going up almost 20 percent over the past 24 hours. However, the market remained in a consolidated phase with the weekend approaching. The coming week could likely remain volatile with a good participation by the bulls. If Bitcoin remains below 40 percent and the market holds its support levels, we could likely a bullish move across the altcoins,” claims Edul Patel, CEO and co-Founder of crypto investment firm Mudrex.

In related news, Block CEO and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has proposed the creation of a legal defence fund that would help Bitcoin developers deal with mounting litigation. Called the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, it’s services would be free for developers to take advantage of if they choose to do so. Initially, volunteers and part-time lawyers would assist with cases, and the fund’s board would be responsible for determining which cases and defendants to help. Dorsey outlined the basics of the proposal in an email to the Bitcoin-dev mailing list.

After El Salvador made Bitcoin a legal tender in September last year, the crypto culture witnessed expansion in several parts of the world. However, the crypto sector could likely encounter obstacles in Pakistan. The central bank of Pakistan is reportedly considering a ban on all cryptocurrencies from operating in the country. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has now submitted a document to the Sindh High Court, calling cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin “illegal” and unusable for trade purposes. As per Chainalysis’ Global Crypto Adoption Index, Pakistan ranks third amongst the top 10 countries with the highest number of crypto users.

Cryptocurrency is an unregulated digital currency, not a legal tender and subject to market risks. The information provided in the article is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, trading advice or any other advice or recommendation of any sort offered or endorsed by NDTV. NDTV shall not be responsible for any loss arising from any investment based on any perceived recommendation, forecast or any other information contained in the article.