On March 13, a surprising development occurred when a post by Elon Musk, featuring a Pepe meme, captivated the attention of cryptocurrency enthusiasts worldwide.
This particular post on X sparked a notable rise in the value of the meme coin PEPE, contrasting with the recent downtrends observed in other meme cryptocurrencies such as SHIB, DOGE, and FLOKI.
Musk’s engagement with the Pepe meme not only highlighted his interest but also seemed to inject a new vigor into Pepe Coin, a cryptocurrency that blends the world of memes with blockchain technology.
This event came amid speculations about the potential end of the meme coin season, during which several prominent meme coins experienced significant value declines.
The reaction to Musk’s post was immediate, with Pepe Coin experiencing a bullish trend across the cryptocurrency market.
Noteworthy personalities on the platform also engaged with Musk’s post, further amplifying the interest in Pepe Coin.
As a result, the cryptocurrency saw a substantial price increase of 12.82% within 24 hours, trading at $0.000009314.
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This uptick was accompanied by a 28.53% rise in its 24-hour trading volume and a 13.40% increase in market capitalization, indicating strong bullish sentiment among investors.
Data from Coinglass corroborated this trend, showing a 15.33% rise in open interest for Pepe Coin, which amounted to $125.44 million, while its volume surged by 48.49% to reach $1.38 billion.
These figures suggest a growing interest in PEPE, as investors appear eager to inject new funds into the market, thereby enhancing market activity.
Technical analysis provided by Trading View further supported this optimistic outlook.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) hovered around 72, suggesting that Pepe Coin might be entering a consolidation phase due to its overbought status.
Nonetheless, the rally induced by Musk’s meme-centric post has ushered in a wave of optimism for the meme coin, suggesting its potential resilience in the face of market fluctuations.
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In 2021, Shiba Inu (SHIB), a meme cryptocurrency inspired by social media trends, experienced an unprecedented surge in its value, peaking at $0.000089 on October 28.
This rise was propelled by the enthusiasm on platforms like Reddit and the broader excitement around cryptocurrencies, especially following Dogecoin’s success.
There’s growing curiosity about SHIB’s ability to mimic its previous year’s performance.
Opinions on SHIB’s future prospects are divided among experts.
Alex Svanevik, CEO of Nansen, remains optimistic about meme coins, including SHIB and Dogecoin, predicting they could outperform other major cryptocurrencies like Cardano.
Conversely, analysts from The Motley Fool are skeptical, cautioning that the gains seen in 2021 may not be repeatable.
They highlight the mathematical challenges in expecting similar explosive growth, indicating “Those hoping for a repeat of 2021 might be disappointed because it would be mathematically impossible.”
Shiba Inu’s journey to replicate its 2021 success faces several obstacles.
With a circulating supply of 589 trillion coins, efforts to significantly impact its value through token burning have been sluggish.
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Moreover, the coin’s practical use cases remain limited, despite initiatives like Shibarium aiming to improve transaction efficiency and reduce costs.
The slow pace of merchant adoption further restricts its utility beyond speculative trading.
However, the Shiba Inu community is actively working to enhance the token’s ecosystem and utility.
Projects like Shibarium and Shiba Eternity, a collectible card game, underscore the community’s commitment to building a more sustainable and valuable network for SHIB.
The future performance of SHIB will also be influenced by the overall health of the cryptocurrency market.
Despite the hurdles related to its supply and utility, the unwavering support from its community and the evolving crypto landscape could play pivotal roles in SHIB’s ability to achieve long-term success.
The debate over SHIB’s potential continues, reflecting the dynamic and speculative nature of the cryptocurrency market.
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Grayscale‘s spot Bitcoin ETF, a pioneering financial product in the U.S. since its inception on January 11, has experienced a significant market share drop, marking the first time it has fallen below 50%.
According to Dune Analytics, as of March 12, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) managed $28.5 billion, constituting 48.9% of the combined $56.7 billion in assets under management (AUM) across ten U.S. Bitcoin ETFs.
Initially, Grayscale dominated the market, with its fund representing approximately 99.5% of the total AUM of the first ten U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs.
However, the landscape has shifted dramatically due to persistent daily withdrawals from GBTC, which averaged $329 million per day in the preceding week.
These outflows, particularly pronounced in the initial month post-launch, with $7 billion exiting the fund, have gradually decelerated.
Yet, a mid-February court decision enabling crypto lender Genesis to sell off approximately $1.3 billion in GBTC shares reignited the outflow trend. To date, GBTC has seen over $11 billion in outflows, as reported by Farside Bitcoin ETF flow data.
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Grayscale’s fund transitioned from a trust to an ETF following a successful legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and subsequent approvals of other spot Bitcoin ETF applications.
This transformation allowed institutional investors engaged in GBTC arbitrage to permanently withdraw or reallocate their capital to other Bitcoin ETFs offering lower fees.
The market initially reacted negatively to GBTC’s outflows. However, optimism has been renewed by significant net inflows into other ETFs, such as BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) and the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), which have collectively attracted $16.9 billion in inflows since their launch.
Market analysts attribute the substantial inflows into these new ETFs as a key factor behind the recent surge in Bitcoin’s price, which hit a record high of $72,900 on March 11.
BlackRock’s ETF now holds over 200,000 BTC, valued at roughly $14.3 billion, underscoring the shifting dynamics within the cryptocurrency investment landscape.
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Core Scientific (CORZ), a prominent player in the crypto mining industry, experienced a downturn in its annual revenue for 2023, reporting a total of $502.4 million, which marks a significant decrease of $137.9 million from the $640 million recorded in 2022, as revealed in their March 12 earnings release.
This decline in revenue was attributed to the company’s exit from the mining rig sales business and an increase in the global Bitcoin hash rate over the year.
Despite this drop in revenue, Core Scientific saw a notable improvement in its financial health, with yearly net losses reducing to $246.5 million in 2023, down from a substantial loss of $2.14 billion in 2022.
The Q4 2023 results further highlighted this positive trend, showing net losses narrowing to $195.7 million from the previous year’s $434.9 million in the same quarter.
The company also made headlines by being relisted on the NASDAQ on January 23, following a successful emergence from a bankruptcy crisis and a 13-month restructuring effort aimed at addressing $400 million in debt.
This financial turmoil was largely due to declining Bitcoin prices, escalating energy costs, and entanglements with the bankrupt crypto lender Celsius.
Core Scientific’s mining operations yielded a remarkable 13,762 BTC in the last year, positioning it as the top publicly traded mining firm in the U.S. based on Bitcoin mined.
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Despite these achievements, Core Scientific’s stock experienced a decline, closing at $3.54 a share on March 12, which further slipped to around $3.40 in after-hours trading.
This market reaction did not overly concern the company, as a spokesperson pointed out the general downturn in the market sentiment towards publicly traded Bitcoin miners, citing similar trends in peers like Marathon Digital and Riot Blockchain.
Analysts attribute the falling share prices of mining companies to investor caution ahead of the Bitcoin halving, an event that will reduce mining rewards by half, potentially affecting profitability.
However, with Bitcoin’s price reaching $72,000, predictions suggest these firms will remain profitable post-halving, assuming stable hash rates and Bitcoin prices.
Core Scientific remains optimistic about its future, especially with the upcoming Bitcoin halving. The company is updating its fleet with the latest Bitmain S21 models and aims to enhance its hash rate utilization.
This confidence is echoed by analysts and investment firms, with HC Wainright and Compass Point upgrading their ratings of Core Scientific to “buy,” reflecting a growing interest in the crypto mining sector amid a resurgence in BTC and cryptocurrency values.
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Binance, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, has declared its intention to remove several trading pairs involving TrueUSD (TUSD), a stablecoin with connections to Justin Sun, the founder of Tron.
On March 13, the exchange issued a statement announcing the forthcoming delisting of COMP/TUSD, EDU/TUSD, and PENDLE/TUSD pairs.
Additionally, BNB pairs with Arpa and EduCoin will also be discontinued. These changes are set to take effect on March 15, 2024, at 3:00 am UTC.
The decision to delist these pairs stems from Binance’s routine evaluation process, aimed at safeguarding users and ensuring the integrity of the trading environment.
The exchange pointed out that factors leading to the delisting of spot trading pairs could include inadequate liquidity and trading volume.
Nevertheless, Binance clarified the delisting’s implications, stating, “The delisting of a spot trading pair does not affect the availability of the tokens on Binance Spot.
“Users can still trade the spot trading pair’s base and quote assets on other trading pair(s) that are available on Binance.”
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“This ensures that TUSD remains accessible on the platform through its other trading pairs with major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Cardano, Avalanche, and Bitcoin Cash.
In addition to removing specific trading pairs, Binance also announced the discontinuation of spot trading bot services for these pairs, effective concurrently with the delisting.
The platform advised users to adjust or terminate their bots by the deadline to prevent potential financial losses.
TUSD has encountered several challenges since late 2023. A significant security breach was reported on October 17, when a third-party service provider was compromised, leading to a potential exposure of user KYC and transaction data.
Moreover, the stablecoin’s stability was tested earlier this year when it deviated from its $1 peg.
On January 15, TUSD’s value dipped to $0.984 as a result of traders liquidating over $339 million in TUSD for Tether, following speculation about the token’s absence from Binance’s Manta launch pool initiative.
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In late 2023, Coinbase Wallet, the self-custody crypto wallet service from Coinbase, significantly enhanced its security by incorporating the Blockaid security tool.
This strategic move, unveiled in a joint announcement to Cointelegraph on March 13, aims to fortify the digital assets of Coinbase users by introducing an additional layer of protection.
The collaboration between Coinbase Wallet and Blockaid has led to the safeguarding of over $75 million in user funds from potential theft.
This achievement was made possible by the integration of Blockaid’s technology, which effectively intercepted nearly 800,000 dubious wallet connections to harmful decentralized applications (DApps), after scrutinizing 114 million transactions and DApp interactions.
Ido Ben Natan, Blockaid’s CEO, shared with Cointelegraph the methodology behind quantifying the protected funds.
By analyzing the malevolent transactions at the wallet level and evaluating the transaction values at the time, Ben Natan affirmed, “We are able to confidently say that the minimum number of funds saved for users is over $75 million.”
Raz Niv, Blockaid’s CTO, referred to this figure as the “lower band” of detected scams for Coinbase Wallet users, emphasizing the calculation process based on transaction warning screens provided to users, which prevented these transactions.
An essential feature introduced through this integration is the enhanced transaction simulation capability, which predicts the outcomes of transactions before their execution on the blockchain.
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This technology is crucial for averting cryptocurrency scams and thefts, as it enables users to foresee the implications of their transactions.
This predictive feature is bolstered by the use of three Blockaid application programming interfaces (APIs), enhancing security during the navigation of DApps, executing Web3 protocol transactions, and on-chain messaging.
The partnership has notably improved transaction simulation capabilities across seven blockchain networks, including Ethereum and six Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible chains like Base, Optimism, and Polygon, as highlighted by Chintan Turakhia, Coinbase’s senior director of engineering.
Despite the advancements in transaction simulation technology, the report underscores the necessity of validation to ensure comprehensive protection against malicious activities, adding an extra layer of security by alerting users about potentially harmful transactions.
The adoption of Blockaid’s security measures is not exclusive to Coinbase Wallet.
MetaMask, another major EVM wallet, incorporated Blockaid’s security alerts in November 2023 and expanded its default security features to several blockchains by February 2024, marking a significant step forward in the collective effort to enhance the security of cryptocurrency transactions across the industry.
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Shiba Inu ($SHIB) and Dogecoin ($DOGE) are set to deliver strong gains to their loyal holders in 2024, despite already rallying by well over 100% in the last 30 days.
Dogami (DOGA), another dog-themed token, is also likely to deliver massive gains in 2024 – and with a market cap of just $6.5 million – it arguably has more potential than the other, more established memecoins.
$SHIB, $DOGA and $DOGE Price Prediction
Shiba Inu is up by 2.4% in the last 24 hours according to CoinMarketCap data, and despite facing some resistance recently, it remains over 200% up over the last month.
It’s currently trading at $0.00003231, and SHIB bulls are currently targeting the $0.00004 level after establishing $0.000032 as support.
By the end of 2024, Shiba Inu is likely to hit $0.0001, delivering a 3x return at the current entry price.
Meanwhile, Dogami is up over 15% in the last 24 hours according to CoinMarketCap data, currently trading at $0.01878.
If DOGA can break through the $0.02 barrier and maintain momentum, it could quickly surge past the $0.03 mark and then target $0.05.
Dogami coin is in a good position to breach $0.15 by the end of this year, delivering an almost 10x return at the current entry price.
Finally, Dogecoin is up by 7.4% in the last 24 hours, and has rallied by 106% in the last month.
Trading at $0.1793 and facing strong resistance, DOGE could hit $0.30 by the end of 2024 – and it could potentially surge considerably higher depending on how much support Elon Musk throws behind it.
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Retail cryptocurrency investors are currently the most bullish on Zap Protocol (ZAP), Render Network (RNDR) and DefiDo (DEFIDO), according to crypto analysis platform Market Prophit.
In a tweet posted on 14 March, Market Prophit revealed that crypto investors had the strongest bullish sentiment on the aforementioned three tokens, despite other, more popular tokens – like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Shiba Inu (SHIB) – dominating the headlines.
All three tokens – namely $ZAP, $RNDR and $DEFIDO – have enjoyed strong runs thus far in March, with further gains on the horizon.
The bullish sentiment regarding Render Network’s token was stoked by news that the project would be speaking on stage at the upcoming Nvidia AI conference.
Meanwhile, Zap Protocol’s token has been gaining momentum amid growing anticipation about the coin’s potential to return to its all-time high during the next bull run. This would deliver a return of over 100x, at the current entry price.
Zap token has already surged over 390% in the last month, while Render has rallied by over 130% in the last 30 days.
However, Zap has much more potential to rise, given the fact its market cap remains under $3 million, while Render’s is already above the $4.5 billion mark.
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MicroStrategy, along with its Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, remains committed to expanding their Bitcoin (BTC) portfolio, revealing plans for a new $500 million convertible note offering intended for further Bitcoin acquisitions.
Announced on March 13, this initiative marks another significant step in the company’s transition from a business intelligence entity to a “Bitcoin development” firm.
The offering, set to be privately issued as senior convertible notes, may also allocate a portion of its funds towards general corporate endeavors.
In the past two weeks alone, MicroStrategy has launched offerings totaling $1.3 billion, including a recently finalized $800 million senior convertible note offering.
This latest endeavor initially aimed to raise $600 million, but the target was subsequently increased to $700 million, plus an additional option for a $100 million aggregate principal amount under certain conditions.
These funds contributed to MicroStrategy’s acquisition of an additional 12,000 BTC, boosting its Bitcoin reserve to 205,000 BTC, valued at $15 billion.
This investment has yielded a 117% return, or a profit of $8.1 billion for the company.
MicroStrategy is nearing a milestone of owning at least 1% of Bitcoin’s theoretical maximum supply, needing just 5,000 more BTC to reach this goal.
With the current market prices, the proposed $500 million investment could secure approximately 6,850 Bitcoin.
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The terms of MicroStrategy’s senior convertible notes, which are debt instruments convertible into equity or cash, include semi-annual interest payments and a maturity date of March 15, 2031.
These can be converted into cash, shares of MicroStrategy’s class A common stock, or a combination of both, depending on specific conditions.
Following this announcement, MicroStrategy’s stock (MSTR) saw a significant rise, increasing 10.85% to $1,766 on March 13 as per Google Finance.
Since February 6, the stock has surged by 254%, making it one of the Nasdaq’s top performers this year.
This uptick in MSTR’s stock price aligns with Bitcoin’s recent price rally, which recorded a 46.1% increase over the last month, reaching $73,050 according to CoinGecko.
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Thetanuts Finance, a prominent decentralized on-chain options protocol, has recently unveiled its integration with Pendle Finance’s $PT-eETH, launching a Leveraged LRT Strategy Vault on the Ethereum Mainnet. This initiative marks Thetanuts’ initial venture into restaking and Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs), a burgeoning segment within the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) sector that boasts over $10 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL).
Restaking enables DeFi participants to leverage their staked $ETH for securing additional networks, thereby earning yields beyond those available on the Ethereum Mainnet. Originated by EigenLayer, this mechanism offers users the option to restake either directly through EigenLayer’s native dApp or via liquid restaking protocols like EtherFi. Through these protocols, users can create “Liquid Restaking Tokens” or LRTs, which can be further utilized to generate extra yield.
EtherFi emerges as a leading figure in the LRT domain, holding over $2.5 billion in TVL. It allows for the deposit of various Ethereum-based tokens to mint $eETH, an LRT that elevates rewards through EigenLayer points and additional protocol points, including EtherFi Loyalty Points. Pendle Finance enhances this ecosystem by dividing $eETH into two tokens: $PT-eETH, which offers a fixed ~20% APY without yield or points, and $YT-eETH, providing leveraged yield exposure.
Thetanuts Finance’s Leveraged LRT Strategy Vault aims to augment yields for $PT-eETH holders by leveraging option premiums and rewards. This innovative approach requires users to “Zap” their $PT-eETH into the Thetanuts Finance v3 Lending Market, borrow $ETH, and invest it in the $ETH Call Basic Vault for additional option premiums, albeit with short volatility risk.
Thetanuts Finance’s Leveraged LRT Vaults introduce a novel strategy allowing $PT-eETH holders to utilize their assets before maturity to earn yields in five different ways, including EigenLayer Points, EtherFi Loyalty Points, fixed yield from Pendle’s $PT-eETH, Thetanuts’ option premiums, and future $NUTS Rewards. This positions Thetanuts Finance as a pioneer in the options market, creating a unique yield-generating mechanism for LRT-related products. With 150,000 $PT-eETH in circulation, there’s anticipated strong demand for this innovative product.
Thetanuts plans to extend its Leveraged LRT Strategy Vaults to other LRT protocols, providing a similar strategy with different LRTs as collateral. However, like all DeFi investments, these ventures carry risks, including the potential for deposit loss if the market for eETH or PT-eETH faces downturns.