Bitcoin holds strong; Ethereum dips slightly
Bitcoin is currently trading at $70,151, down slightly by 0.31% from the past day. The leading cryptocurrency asset’s trading volume fell by 25.12% to $24.49 billion. However, its market dominance continues, with a market capitalization of $1.38 trillion. Ethereum, on the other hand, was trading slightly higher by 1.60% to $3,568, despite a 27.33% decline in transaction volume.
The traditional U.S. stock market was closed on Friday, but the crypto market was still active. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gave a speech in San Francisco, emphasizing the strength of the U.S. economy and expectations for strong growth. He acknowledged that risks are two-way and reiterated that the Fed Commitment to closely monitor economic data, Powell did not explicitly mention any plans to cut interest rates this year, emphasizing that "cutting interest rates too early will cause great disruption."
Crypto markets quickly retreated after Powell’s speech, with Bitcoin falling below $70,000 and Ethereum falling below $3,500. SOL and ADA fell 1%, while Bitcoin Cash (BCH) rose 4%, extending Thursday’s gains.
Meme coins, led by Solana ecosystem Dogwifhat (WIF), surged for the second consecutive day, leading the gains in the meme sector. Market data shows that WIF surpassed pepecoin (PEPE) to become the third largest meme token by market value, trading at over $4, $4.16 at press time, a 7-day increase of nearly 90%.
CoinMarketCap data shows that the meme coin category surged 8% on average, outperforming mainstream sectors such as DEFI and platform tokens. Bets on DOGE tracking futures jumped to a record $2 billion, indicating that expectations for future price fluctuations are biased towards bulls.
$1.4 billion USDC transferred to Coinbase
The recent transfer of $1.4 billion USDC to Coinbase has attracted community attention. Some analysts pointed out that the large influx of funds into exchanges may indicate that bulls may be ready to inject funds, and tokens such as Bitcoin and Ethereum may benefit.
There is a traceable relationship between large USDC transfers from Coinbase and the rise in the price of the currency. Analysts pointed out that in January 2023, before the price surge, $1.3 billion of USDC flowed into Coinbase, and then BTC rose from around $16,300.
But it is worth noting that the fact that $1.4 billion of USDC flowed into Coinbase cannot be the main driving force. The Bitcoin or Ethereum markets already have deep liquidity, and market sentiment or large capital injections from institutions are the main drivers of prices.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs see net inflows for fourth consecutive day
Inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs remained net positive for the fourth consecutive day, closing out the month on a strong note.
According to SoSo Value, as of March 28, the total daily net inflow of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs was US$183 million, and the total cumulative net inflow was approximately US$12.13 billion.
BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETF saw the largest net inflows at $95.12 million, while the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund saw net inflows of $69.09 million.
On the other hand, net outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust continued, with close to $105 million flowing out of the product.
According to data from The Block, as of March 27, the cumulative spot trading volume of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs reached US$177.9 billion. Since reaching a peak earlier this month, the assets under management and on-chain holdings of spot Bitcoin ETFs have also stabilized.
CoinGlass data shows that open interest in Bitcoin futures on centralized exchanges hit a new high of $38 billion. Open interest is a measure of the total value of all open or "unsettled" Bitcoin futures contracts across exchanges, indicating an increase in market activity and trader sentiment around BTC.
Which will be the next popular Meme coin?
In the world of cryptocurrency, meme coins have become a unique phenomenon, not just memes on the Internet, but also the focus of investors. Let’s take a look at a few meme coins that are currently attracting attention in the market.
DOGE
The coin with the Shiba Inu as its logo has become a hot topic on the Internet. Today, the price of Dogecoin has reached $0.209756, and its trading volume has been very huge in the past 24 hours, and its price has increased by 5.01%. In the ranking of CoinMarketCap, Dogecoin ranks 8th with a market value of more than $30 billion.
BABY
The name may sound strange, but you must be familiar with the green frog. PEPE is a meme coin on Ethereum that pays tribute to classic Internet memes. Although the price of PEPE is not very high today, its 24-hour trading volume is quite considerable, and the price continues to rise.
WIF hits new high again
WIF can be said to be the "latter wave" of MEME. As a project without a community and a narrative, it has achieved a 10,000-fold increase in less than 4 months after its establishment, becoming the first Dogecoin to break through $1. With the listing of WIF on Binance, the price was pushed to a high point along with the sentiment before falling back slightly.
In the process of WIF achieving 10,000 times, in addition to KOLs such as BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes who have always been optimistic, there are also many believers. According to the monitoring of on-chain analyst Yu Jin, since December 13, 2023, the wifto100billy.sol address began to purchase WIF, and has spent a total of US$9.33 million to buy 37.62 million WIF (3.76% of the total WIF), becoming the largest individual/institutional holding address of WIF.
The average purchase price of wifto100billy.sol is $0.248. It has transferred all the purchased WIF to the wifto100billy.sol address for storage and has not yet started selling to stop profit. According to birdeye data, the price of WIF has been rising after trading sideways at $2 for several days, breaking through $3.98 today, setting a new record high. The largest holder of WIF currently has a profit of 1440%, with a floating profit of $134 million.
WIF's new high has once again attracted the market's attention to MEME. Solana is still the main battlefield for MEME speculation, and the "magic disk" BOME has brought a wave of MEME pre-sale frenzy. Although the price fell after listing on Binance, it still rose dozens of times from the bottom. Now in the new round of MEME fever, the price is still on the rise. As of writing, the price of BOME is $0.0135, with a 24-hour increase of 11.55%.
In addition to Solana MEME, other MEME ecosystems have also begun to exert their strength. Among them, according to Bitget data, Dogecoin DOGE rose 9.8% in 24 hours, ranking in the top three in terms of transaction volume; PEPE rose 3.8% in 24 hours; Base ecosystem MEME coin DEGEN rose 74.2% in 24 hours, ranking in the top three in real-time increase list.
DEGEN is a truly community-led MEME project that originated from the Farcaster community. Its popularity has also increased the exposure of the Base ecosystem. Its TVL has exceeded US$2.5 billion, a record high, and Base’s MEME has been talked about, with hundreds of smart money addresses ambushing the Base ecosystem MEME.
MEME season returns?
Today, the market still lacks a mainstream narrative that can compete with the Bitcoin ETF, and MEME coin has thus taken on the emotions of crypto players, with some even saying that "the value ratio is meaningless, and making money still depends on MEME."
As MEME has become more and more popular, the market has risen in various sectors in turn, such as AI driven by GPU, cross-chain interoperability driven by AXL, RWA narrative brought by ONDO, etc., but its popularity did not last long, and countless MEMEs can still be created for retail investors to speculate in each track. On March 29, according to alphascan data, from the current market sentiment, among the top ten cryptocurrencies, the MEME sector occupies 3 places.
Maartje Bus, vice president of research at Messari, said, “MEME coins will continue to be an important part of the cryptocurrency market and have the potential to become a new asset class. Cryptocurrencies are often criticized for not having use cases for ordinary people, which is a fair comment. But in fact, MEME coins have been successfully attracting people to the chain.”
