This Week in Coins: Caitlyn Jenner Dives Into the World of Memes As Bitcoin and Ethereum Lay Flat - Decrypt
06/01/2024 16:31While the top tokens held steady, meme coin movements tracked some crazy headlines.
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Go to Alpha ReportsIt's been another boring week for Bitcoin but non-stop craziness for the rest of the industry.
The price of Bitcoin broke above $70,000 on Monday but is now trading for $67,635, down about 2% over seven days.
Its dip is in part due to news that defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox moved more than $9 billion worth of BTC to an unknown wallet yesterday, which caused the market to think that creditors were about to be repaid.
Since then, the collapsed exchange's former CEO Mark Karpelès has reassured people that "there is no imminent sale of Bitcoins happening."
In the Ethereum world, the second-biggest coin by market cap has not budged at all over the week—even following the historic approval of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) last week.
Ethereum's price currently stands at $3,798, according to CoinGecko. Analysts did say that the coin was due a bull run soon, though.
But in the world of memes and alts, the action was non-stop.
Firstly, Sahil Arora, a promoter who works with celebrities to launch crypto projects, launched a meme token with Caitlyn Jenner. The Solana-based project sent crypto Twitter into meltdown on its launch.
Olympic gold medalist and member of the Kardashians then told Decrypt that she'd fallen out with Sahil, and that he owed her "lots of money."
The token, JENNER, has since plunged and is trading at a big loss since its launch.
But the circus surrounding the celebrity and her move into the crypto space helped push up other more established tokens in the meme space: Dogwifhat and FLOKI are both big winners this week, having surged by 15% and 14%, respectively.
Dogwifhat is currently trading for $3.41; Ethereum-based FLOKI is priced at $0.0002588.
In other news, former FTX executive Ryan Salame received 90 months in prison. And crypto exchange Gemini said Wednesday that it will pay out over $2 billion worth of digital assets to customers of its Earn lending program.
In terms of big gains, Telegram-based "social clicker" game Notcoin's NOT token is the biggest winner of the week, having surged by 148% to $0.01354 in seven days.
Hype around the project and its token took off since it launched "earnings missions" that enable players to passively earn crypto rewards by using the messaging app.
It's now priced at $0.01285.
Finally, the guilty verdict for former president Donald Trump dominated the end of the week. While the impact of the news on the broader market is being hotly debated, it was good news for meme coins dedicated to Trump—albeit after a notable plunge.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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