Markets: Bitcoin, Ether prices flat; Dogecoin, SHIB lead gains in crypto top 10

Bitcoin and Ether were little changed in Wednesday morning trading in Asia along with most of the cryptocurrency top 10 by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins. The world’s two leading memecoins, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu token were the exceptions, still buoyed by longtime proponent Elon Musk’s purchase of social media platform Twitter Inc.

Fast facts

• Bitcoin dipped 0.1% to US$20,485 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ether rose 0.4% to US$1,579, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Polygon and Polkadot were the biggest losers in the top 10. Polygon dropped 3.2% to US$0.87 and Polkadot fell 2.4% to US$6.47.
• Dogecoin continued its price run after Musk acquired Twitter, gaining 12.2% to US$0.14. It reached US$0.15 overnight, its highest price since April. The token has surged 127% in the past seven days. Copycat memecoin Shiba Inu token was also trading up 3.2% to US$0.00001286, a jump of 25.7% over the past seven days.
• The gains come amid sweeping changes Musk has made since buying the social media platform, including firing the entire board of directors. The world’s richest man also tweeted an image of a Shiba Inu — the breed of dog the Doge meme is based on — over the past few days. Musk has previously hinted at a possible integration of Dogecoin into Twitter as a payment method.
• Bitcoin’s hashrate, the amount of computing power being used to maintain the network, reached an all-time high of 288,400 petahashes per second on Nov. 1, according to CoinMetrics. While this requires a huge amount of electricity, Jeff Yew, chief executive officer of Australia’s Monochrome Digital Asset Management, told Forkast that the process also provides an opportunity to help the transition to renewable energy.
• “Because Bitcoin’s mining process is geographically agnostic, it proves to be a great way to economically tap into stranded energy sources that would otherwise go to waste,” Yew said via email. “Bitcoin miners are energy buyers of last resort, the industry thrives by commercializing otherwise unusable energy sources to profit off securing the Bitcoin network and help to preserve our environment.”
• U.S. equities dipped on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.3%, the S&P 500 Index fell 0.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index closed 0.9% lower.
• Investors await the latest move by the U.S. Federal Reserve on interest rates, which is due to be released at 2 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S.) on Wednesday. The consensus is for another 75-basis point rise.
• The Fed lifted interest rates from near zero in March to the current 3.25% as inflation reached a near 40-year high of 8.2% in September. The Fed had indicated it will continue this policy until inflation comes back to a target range of 2%.