The price of everyone’s favourite dog-themed meme coin, Dogecoin, has surged over the past week on the back of a tweet from the new Twitter owner, Elon Musk. Musk’s tweet got the Doge army’s tails wagging as it outlined his plans for the social media platform, which included a vague reference to payments.
Data from CoinGecko shows Dogecoin’s price jumped from US$0.088 before Musk’s tweet on November 27 to US$0.108 at the time of writing, an increase of 22.2 percent. Over the week, Dogecoin is up a whopping 37.9 percent: a significant increase given the current bear market.
What Did Musk Tweet?
Ever since Musk purchased Twitter last month, Dogecoin enthusiasts have been hopeful that the famously Doge-interested billionaire would somehow integrate the coin into Twitter.
In his Tweet on November 27, Musk outlined the progress he’d made since taking over the platform and also listed some future plans for what he referred to as Twitter 2.0 — The Everything App.
Some of the new features Musk listed included encrypted direct messages, long form tweets, relaunched ‘Blue Verified’, and a vague and mysterious reference to payments.
Despite no direct reference to Dogecoin, the mention of payments coming to Twitter was enough to spark FOMO, triggering something of a buying frenzy and causing the meme coin’s price to spike.
Musk’s mysterious slide deck image with a blank space for payments. Source: @elonmusk on Twitter
Earlier Rumours Contribute to FOMO
Previously, just after Musk’s purchase of Twitter in late October, rumours had begun circulating, fuelled by speculation from tech blogger Jane Manchun Wong, that the company had commenced work on a crypto wallet that would allow users to deposit and withdraw crypto. This earlier speculation saw Dogecoin’s price jump 40 percent at the time and may have played a part in the excitement about Musk’s tweet.
Some in the crypto community have poured cold water on the idea of Dogecoin for payments — pointing out that unlike many other distributed ledgers, Dogecoin doesn’t natively support smart contracts and may not be suitable as a payments platform due to shortcomings in security, privacy and capacity for scaling.
With Elon Musk finally taking the reins at Twitter last week, the value of Dogecoin rallied by more than 90% — jumping from US$0.05 to $0.14 briefly on October 30 before dropping to 11 cents at the time of writing.
Seven-day price data for DOGE. Source: CoinMarketCap
Despite the latest surge, in defiance of the prevailing crypto winter, DOGE remains down 84% on its all-time-high of US$0.73 in May 2021 according to CoinMarketCap. Dogecoin now ranks eighth in the market, overtaking Cardano (ADA) with a market cap of US$15.6 million.
Musk has long been a supporter of the meme coin, and has been attributed as the cause of several major DOGE price pumps, including when he first announced his intent to buy Twitter.
The Twitter acquisition process was fraught, with Musk seeking to renege his offer and then backflipping in early October —ostensibly to avoid legal action brought about by Twitter. At the time, Musk’s confirmation that he’d close the deal led to a small bump in Dogecoin’s value of around 9%.
Officially becoming Twitter’s boss has come with some surprising learning opportunities for Musk:
Just received this email from Twitter. This is an actual, real email that was autogenerated 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/7DQp4sNINX
CEO of electric car company Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX, Musk has touted his admiration for Dogecoin in various tweets and interview mentions since 2019. He also began accepting Dogecoin as a payment in exchange for merchandise of his companies.
Musk had also hinted that he was considering making DOGE a payment option for Twitter users to authenticate their accounts. Since the acquisition was finalised, Cardano’s founder and CEO Charles Hoskinson went as far as predicting DOGE could be integrated with the social media platform:
Now that Twitter is in the hands of @elonmusk I can see a real possibility that doge will somehow merge with the platform.
Musk’s support for DOGE has not been without controversy. In June this year a US$258 billion class-action lawsuit was filed against Musk and his companies, alleging Musk had been essentially running a Ponzi scheme — intentionally manipulating the price of the coin for profit.
Tesla CEO and part-time crypto memelord, Elon Musk, has sent a letter to Twitter through his lawyers indicating he is now willing to purchase the company for the originally agreed price of $US44 billion, or US$54.20 per share. The letter was also filed with the SEC.
This surprising move comes after Musk had previously reneged on his offer to buy Twitter, citing the social media giant’s lack of honesty and transparency around the extent of spam bots on the platform.
Immediately following the letter’s release, the price of DogeCoin, the meme coin Musk is so fond of, surged eight percent — changing hands at the time of writing at US$0.0656, up 9.2% on the day.
Dogecoin chart over the last seven days. Source: CoinMarketCap
Deal to Close Twitter’s Case Against Musk
Musk’s new offer to buy Twitter specifies that the social media platform must immediately drop its legal action against him — relating to the retraction of his previous offer to buy the company — which was due to go to trial in just two weeks.
With Musk’s new offer, it appears the legal action has been dropped, and the deal, as originally agreed, will be closed:
Twitter issued this statement about today's news: We received the letter from the Musk parties which they have filed with the SEC. The intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share.
The timing of this new offer begs speculation that Musk was trying to avoid going to trial, perhaps because he received legal advice that he was unlikely to win or in hopes of preventing information from being released at trial (already a large trove of Musk’s private text messages have been released as part of the case).
Musk has given the impression that he simply decided Twitter is, once again, a company he wants to purchase for strategic reasons. Following the release of the letter, Musk tweeted that the purchase of Twitter is an important part of his plan to develop ‘X’, something which he describes as ‘the everything app’.
Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app
Musk originally offered to buy Twitter in April of this year, promising his purchase would bring a renewed commitment to freedom of speech on the platform — but the deal quickly ran into problems.
Just three months after announcing his intention to purchase, Musk was backing out of the deal claiming that Twitter had provided him with misleading data about the prevalence of fake accounts and spam bots.
Twitter, for their part, insisted they had provided accurate data and took their case to the Delaware Court of Chancery to attempt to enforce the contract.
The Dogecoin copycat, TeddyDoge (TEDDY), has lost over 99.95 percent of its value over the past few days after suffering what crypto security firm PeckShield described as a “soft rug pull” last weekend:
PeckShield said wallets connected to the coin’s developers acquired and then swapped over 30 billion TEDDY tokens – valued at approximately US$4.5 million – for wrapped Binance Coin (wBNB).
The wrapped BNB was then converted to BNB and Binance USD (BUSD) and gradually transferred to Binance, sending investor confidence and the price of TEDDY plummeting.
Rogue Developers Plunder Liquidity Pools
The TeddyDoge developers were able to easily steal such a large amount of assets because they controlled the TeddyDoge liquidity pools, meaning they had total access to the token pairs held in their smart contracts.
Regulators are slowly starting to wake up to the risk rogue crypto developers pose to investors. In April, new legislation was filed in New York state to specifically outlaw crypto rug pulls.
Rug pulls in crypto refer to projects that often initially appear legitimate but eventually, when the price has pumped sufficiently, the developers abandon the project and make off with investors’ assets, figuratively pulling the rug out from under them. In the case of TeddyDoge, investigators have labelled it a “soft rug pull” as they’re not yet certain the developers have totally abandoned the project.
Project’s Telegram Admins Not Sure What Happened
The administrators of the TeddyDoge Telegram channel also remain uncertain as to exactly what caused the loss of funds and price crash, saying it could have been either “a bug in our cross-chain bridge or a leaked developer wallet”.
The admins warned users not to buy any more TEDDY tokens for now, saying they had closed the cross-chain bridge and were “in the process of fixing it”. They also said that TEDDY holders would soon receive a new token called DRAC, as the project was rebranding from TeddyDoge to the DRAC Network.
TeddyDoge is the latest in a long line of crypto projects to have defrauded investors. In November 2021, the founders of the curiously named Monkey Jizz DeFi project made off with approximately US$300,000 of investors’ funds after having gone to great lengths to appear legitimate and assure investors.
Let’s take a closer look at today’s altcoins showing breakout signals. We’ll explain what the coin is, then dive into the trading charts and provide some analysis to help you decide.
1. Uniswap (UNI)
Uniswap UNI is a popular decentralised trading protocol known for its role in facilitating the automated trading of decentralised finance (DeFi) tokens. Uniswap aims to keep token trading automated and completely open to anyone who holds tokens while improving the efficiency of trading versus that on traditional exchanges. Uniswap creates more efficiency by solving liquidity issues with automated solutions, avoiding the problems that plagued the first decentralised exchanges.
UNI Price Analysis
At the time of writing, UNI is ranked the 19th cryptocurrency globally and the current price is US$6.41. Let’s take a look at the chart below for price analysis:
UNI‘s 70% retracement from its Q2 highs set a low near $3.80 during its consolidation that began in early June.
Relatively equal highs near $6.80 could be the current target if the price breaks through resistance beginning near $6.97. Bullish continuation might reach through the next significant swing high near $7.20 into the daily gap near $7.50.
If bullish strength continues, the zones just below the monthly open near $7.88 and $8.23 could halt any retracement.
A bearish shift in the market might seek the relatively equal lows near $5.90 into possible support near $5.62. If this down move occurs, the swing low near $5.32 and possible support near $4.93 may be the primary objective.
2. Dogecoin (DOGE)
Dogecoin DOGE is based on the popular “Doge” internet meme and features a Shiba Inu as its logo. The open-source digital currency was created by Billy Markus from Portland, Oregon, and Jackson Palmer from Sydney, Australia, and was forked from Litecoin in December 2013. Dogecoin’s creators envisaged it as a fun, light-hearted cryptocurrency that would have greater appeal beyond the core Bitcoin audience since it was based on a dog meme.
DOGE Price Analysis
At the time of writing, DOGE is ranked the 10th cryptocurrency globally and the current price is US$0.06089. Let’s take a look at the chart below for price analysis:
DOGE marines continue holding the price, printing nearly 29% gains during June.
The consolidation near $0.06015 is likely to provide support as the price continues exploring new highs. However, a set of relatively equal lows near $0.05829 provides a tempting target for a stop run into probable support near $0.05460.
A decidedly bearish shift in the market could reach probable support near $0.05098, near the monthly open.
Almost no resistance lies overhead, although low-timeframe traders can use the resistance below recent highs near $0.06384 as a first target. Beyond this level, extensions near $0.06723, $0.07354 and $0.08169 give reasonable higher-timeframe targets.
3. Enjin Coin (ENJ)
Enjin Coin ENJ is a project of Enjin, a company that provides an ecosystem of interconnected, blockchain-based gaming products. Enjin’s flagship offering is the Enjin Network, a social gaming platform through which users can create websites and clans, chat, and host virtual item stores. Enjin Coin is a digital store of value used to back the value of blockchain assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
ENJ Price Analysis
At the time of writing, ENJ is ranked the 70th cryptocurrency globally and the current price is US$0.5357. Let’s take a look at the chart below for price analysis:
ENJ spent Q2 ranging between 30% over and 20% below. The price is currently consolidating between adjacent resistance and support at $0.5145 with no clear higher-timeframe trend. A strong move over the monthly open could signal a run to resistance beginning near $0.6395.
This move would likely target the swing high at $0.6512 and relatively equal highs near $0.7049. A sustained bullish trend could reach up to the monthly high near $0.7432.
Bulls may see a sweep of the relatively equal lows near $0.4832 as a chance to buy at a discount. If this level fails to hold, the next significant area for the price to find buyers is likely near the consolidation around $0.4435 and $0.4050.
These coins have high liquidity on Binance Exchange, so that could help with trading on AUD/USDT/BTC pairs. And if you’re looking at buying and HODLing cryptos, then Swyftx Exchange is an easy-to-use popular choice in Australia.
Elon Musk, along with his companies Tesla and SpaceX, is facing a US$258 billion class-action lawsuit that claims they “are engaged in a crypto pyramid scheme (aka Ponzi scheme) by way of Dogecoin cryptocurrency”.
The lawsuit alleges that Musk “falsely and deceptively claims that Dogecoin (DOGE) is a legitimate investment when it has no value at all”, although crypto Twitter is already talking down the suit’s chances of success:
As a couple other folks have pointed out, Musk is being sued for exactly this: manipulating the Dogecoin market. Yeah the lawsuit has little chance of succeeding, but this is very much a thing that's happening (across crypto, in various forms).https://t.co/RUPkCmPx0W
Order Sought to Classify DOGE Trading as ‘Gambling’
Plaintiff Keith Johnson, a Dogecoin investor, has filed a complaint in federal court accusing the world’s richest man of racketeering for touting DOGE and driving up its price, only to later allow it to tumble. According to the complaint, “[the] Defendants were aware since 2019 that Dogecoin had no value yet promoted Dogecoin to profit from its trading”, adding that “Musk used his pedestal as World’s Richest Man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme for profit, exposure, and amusement”.
Johnson argues that DOGE is “simply fraud whereby ‘greater fools’ are deceived into buying the coin at a higher price”. The plaintiff is seeking to represent a class of fellow investors who have lost money by trading DOGE since April 2019 and claims US$86 billion in damages and treble compensatory damages of US$172 billion.
Additionally, Johnson is seeking an order to block Musk and his companies from promoting DOGE, and declaring that DOGE trading constitutes gambling under US and New York law.
Musk Tweets Ongoing Support for Dogecoin
Musk has famously joked that Dogecoin could become the world’s currency. In May, he announced that SpaceX would soon accept DOGE for merchandise and also discussed allowing payment in DOGE for some Twitter services, should he become the owner of the social media platform – which he has since acquired for a cool US$44 billion.
Australian-born Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer has renewed his trenchant criticism of the cryptocurrency industry in an interview to promote his new podcast.
“Increasingly people are doing nothing but making money off doing nothing, it’s kind of f..ked us all up,” Palmer told Cameron Wilsson of Australian online publication Crikey this week. “I wish it was the end of crypto, but it’s not.”
NEW: @ummjackson is the Aussie co-creator of Dogecoin, a meme coin which became one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies, who denounced cryptocurrency as a "hyper-capitalistic technology"
Spruiking his new podcast, Griftonomics – its very title an oblique reference to Palmer’s stance on digital assets – the former crypto evangelist said he thought the industry would have imploded by now and that “people would learn their lesson”.
But increasingly, in the past six months, I’ve seen a continued perseverance. You see these big people with big money getting involved and that means it’s not slowing down.
Jackson Palmer, Dogecoin co-creator, former crypto YouTuber, now podcaster
Send in the Clowns
Palmer wrote off ICOs, DAOs and NFTs as “scams” and denigrated Initial Game Offerings (IGOs) as the industry’s “latest swindle”. Yet he also played down the idea of an imminent crypto winter, saying: “I still see heaps of money being funnelled in by crypto promoters. They’re waiting for a fresh batch of fools to come in. This happens in cycles.”
Publicist Deserves a Raise
Whoever is acting as Palmer’s publicist is clearly not being paid enough, as the newly minted podcaster also popped up on ABC-TV’s Four Corners current affairs show this week, joining a chorus of critics on an episode focusing on cryptocurrency.
“The future crypto offers is more dystopian than utopian,” Palmer was quoted as saying, as past tweets of his were offered as supporting evidence, including this old chestnut: “Despite claims of decentralisation, the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures.”
Palmer’s bitter Twitter tirade against his former crypto project began soon after he walked away from Dogecoin in 2015, reaching a vitriolic peak in his personal crypto winter last year:
After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity.
Luxury high-end international fashion brand Gucci is set to accept various cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether, and even Dogecoin in some of its stores in North America.
Gucci will start accepting cryptos in five of its stores across the US later this month. The locations are New York City (Wooster Street), Los Angeles (Rodeo Drive), Miami (Design District), Atlanta (Phipps Plaza), and Las Vegas (The Shops at Crystals).
The stores will accept include Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Wrapped Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and five stablecoins that are pegged to the US dollar.
Crypto Provides an ‘Enhanced Customer Experience’
According to Marco Bizzarri, president and CEO of Gucci, the brand is “always looking to embrace new technologies when they can provide an enhanced experience for our customers”. He added:
Now that we are able to integrate cryptocurrencies within our payment system, it is a natural evolution for those customers who would like to have this option available to them.
Marco Bizzarri, president and CEO, Gucci
Gucci has been active in the Web3 and NFT space and recently established a Web3-focused team and released a couple of NFTs. The brand is also extending its crypto efforts to the metaverse where it is developing digital real estate in the decentralised blockchain game The Sandbox. Further, Gucci is building a virtual “Gucci Vault” for Gucci-themed NFTs.
More and More Companies Accept Crypto Payments
Gucci joins a raft of companies that accept crypto as payment. Last year, Crypto News Australia reported that a real estate company in Los Angeles would allow its tenants to rent properties with Bitcoin, starting with the Grove shopping centre and other LA properties.
Many companies in Australia are also accepting cryptocurrencies as payments. You can now order a custom-built PC, buy dog food, design a custom home, get solar power and pay for almost everything in Bitcoin.
Vlad Tenev, chief executive of US-based brokerage Robinhood, has been mercilessly mocked for his assertion that Dogecoin could become the native currency of the internet:
Can #Doge truly be the future currency of the Internet and the people? As we added the ability to send/receive DOGE on Robinhood, I’ve been thinking about what that would take.
Tenev took to Twitter to share his thoughts on what it would take for Doge to become the base layer of value on the internet.
His initial claim relates to transaction fees, saying that they have to be “vanishingly small”. He continues to say that, fortunately, Doge is “already there” compared to the 1-3 percent network fees that major card networks charge.
He then turns to block time, saying that at one minute, Doge’s current throughput is sub-optimal for competing with Visa’s 65,000 transactions per second. However, says Tenev, “Fortunately, this is easy to solve simply by increasing the block size limit.”
While critics may be concerned that an increased block size would come at the expense of decentralisation, Tenev believes that the increased throughput is “actually a fair tradeoff”.
Under-fire Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev. Source: CNN
Finally, he dismisses criticisms of Doge’s inflationary monetary policy and indeterminate hard cap supply limit by saying that it is less than the US dollar, and further, that “the inflation rate actually declines over time, and in a couple of decades it will be below 2 percent”.
Where to Begin?
You’d imagine that Robinhood would have earned some goodwill from the Bitcoin community following its recent Lightning Network announcement. However, the Twitter thread seemingly touched a nerve given all Tenev’s assertions have been thoroughly addressed as far back as 2017 during the infamous “Blocksize Wars”.
Some described the thread as “embarrassing”:
It appears you've spent about 2 hours on this topic.
I recommend spending 2 minutes researching the lightning network and then deleting this embarrassing take.
For anyone paying attention between 2017 and now, it’s self-evident that Tenev’s assertions are misguided at best, and at worst, smack of self-interest. In the end, the saga was neatly summed up by Bitcoin proponent Mike Alfred, who offered Tenev some unsolicited advice:
Your stock is down 75% since the IPO. Your culture is broken. Maybe focus on fixing your own house before playing around with shitcoins.
However, a confluence of factors have turned things around, resulting in the market lifting above US$2 trillion for the first time in over six weeks:
Global crypto market capitalisation. Source: Coinmarketcap.com
After investors’ frustration at what felt like endless sideways price action, the sentiment across crypto Twitter was distinctly upbeat by the positive moves:
The total #crypto market cap is above $2 trillion again!
Digital assets across the board saw material gains, with the crypto economy’s total value holding above US$2 trillion for five consecutive days.
According to Coinglass data, around US$142 million in short liquidations contributed to bitcoin breaching US$47,000 for the first time since January. No doubt, Terra’s decision to buy US$10 billion in BTC is also at least partially responsible for the surge.
At the time of publication, bitcoin is trading at US$47,664, effectively erasing its losses and pushing past break-even for the year.
BTC price action over past seven days. Source: CoinMarketCap.com
Outside of BTC, altcoins similarly enjoyed a strong comeback, with a veritable feast of green candles on display. Analysts have suggested that the positive returns over the past week may be indicative of an impending bull market:
BTC – 12.7 percent
ETH – 14.5 percent
ADA – 30.4 percent
SOL – 22.7 percent
BNB – 7.8 percent
XRP – 4.8 percent
LUNA – 11.8 percent
AVAX – 6.7 percent
POL -15.2 percent
DOGE – 19.6 percent
Market Gets Greedy
It’s been said that fear and greed drive financial markets, and nowhere is that more apparent than in crypto.
Despite his equating Bitcoin to rat poison, Warren Buffett’s cautionary words are perhaps worth noting, especially when the market is seemingly on the up:
Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.
