Dogecoin Drives Market Surge with 15% Increase, Bitcoin Holds Steady Above $85,000

Markets Dogecoin Drives Market Surge with 15% Increase, Bitcoin Holds Steady Above $85,000

A wave of forced buying has concluded, costing short sellers $844 million, leaving Bitcoin stable and ZEC as the only notable loser among major tokens.

By Shaurya Malwa 26 minutes ago 3 min read Make preferred on Share this article

Dogecoin experienced a remarkable rise of over 15%, climbing to just above 10 cents, thereby leading gains among significant cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, meanwhile, maintained a position just above $85,600 after a 5% increase over the past 24 hours.

In the last day, more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency positions were liquidated, with $844 million of that total attributed to short sellers. This trend indicates that continued price increases may rely more on fresh buying rather than ongoing short squeezes.

As of Tuesday morning in Asia, DOGE was noted for its significant gain, while Bitcoin's recent stability followed a forced exit of traders who had bet against it. Just over $1 billion in crypto positions were liquidated, with short positions accounting for about 82% of that total, involving approximately 135,000 traders.

When traders short sell, they profit when prices decline. They must provide collateral, and if prices rise significantly enough that the collateral no longer covers potential losses, the exchange will buy back the asset for them, resulting in additional upward price pressure.

Bitcoin alone comprised about $608 million of the total liquidations, with Ethereum contributing $181 million. The largest single liquidation event involved a nearly $21 million Bitcoin position on Hyperliquid.

XRP saw a 7% increase, nearing $1.52, while SOL rose by 5% to just below $117. Ethereum climbed 3% to almost $2,740, and both BNB and TRX gained between 1% and 2%. ZEC was the only major cryptocurrency to decline, dropping 4% to just over $1,450.

In the last hour, liquidations were under $11 million, a significant drop from the peak of over $300 million seen on Monday, suggesting that the next price movement will depend more on buyers rather than forced selling.

AI Trade Surges

Meanwhile, equities in Asia exhibited a positive trend.

The MSCI Asia Pacific index rose nearly 1%, marking the fifth consecutive day of gains, primarily driven by chipmakers like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which followed the rally in U.S. semiconductor stocks from Monday. The South Korean Kospi index climbed 2%, and Taiwan's benchmark reached an intraday record high.

The enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence has been a significant factor in these gains. The rally on Wall Street was spurred by early successes of Meta Platforms' new AI agent, while AMD briefly surpassed a $1 trillion market capitalization.

Meta Platforms launched its Muse AI agent, which integrates across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, nearly two weeks ago. It has since overtaken ChatGPT to become the top free app on Apple's U.S. App Store, achieving almost 3 million downloads globally. This represents a 40% increase in iOS downloads in the U.S. and Canada compared to ChatGPT's initial 12 days on mobile, according to data from app-tracking service Apptopia.

Every query handled by an AI agent utilizes server resources, prompting chipmakers to rally on the assumption that the emergence of a mainstream AI agent will significantly increase demand for their products.

AMD, which derives about 5% of its revenue from Meta, surged as much as 10% on Monday, briefly crossing the $1 trillion mark in market value for the first time. Intel and Arm also saw gains of up to 12% and 14%, respectively, pushing the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up more than 4% for the fifth consecutive day.

Additionally, Alibaba announced on Tuesday that it is rolling out what it claims to be China’s most powerful AI chip, an accelerator designed to rival Nvidia, which led to a rise in its Hong Kong stock alongside Tencent, which has also launched a new image-generation model.