Dogecoin Jumps More Than 15% Back Above $0.10

Dogecoin rose more than 15% in twenty-four hours and moved back just above $0.10, the biggest gain among major cryptocurrencies. PEPE added about 25% on the same wave. Behind the move sits more than $1B of liquidations, with short sellers taking $844M of the hit.

Key Takeaways

• DOGE gained more than 15% to just above $0.10, close to 20% on the week.
• Over $1B was liquidated in 24 hours, 82% of it short positions.
• The Altcoin Season Index sits near 49, short of a full rotation.

Dogecoin Leads the Majors Back Above $0.10

By Tuesday morning in Asia, Dogecoin was trading just above $0.10 after a gain of more than 15% over twenty-four hours. No other major token did better over that window, and the weekly advance is close to 20%.

The rest of the meme sector joined in. PEPE climbed about 25% and Bittensor gained nearly 18%. It is a different kind of memecoin headline from the one that dominated early September, when Hunter Biden launched the LAPTOP memecoin and its founders kept 30%.

Large caps moved at a slower pace. XRP added 7% to near $1.52, Solana rose 5% to just under $117 and ether gained 3% to close to $2,740. That is still a long way from early July, when Solana jumped 16% on the week and pulled altcoins along. Cardano gained between 6% and 7%, and Monero added 13% on Monday to around $588.

BNB and Tron each moved up between 1% and 2%, with BNB holding near $785. Zcash was the only large token in the red, down 4% to just above $1,450. The dip comes after a weekly gain of more than 25% for ZEC.

The backdrop helped. On Monday, bitcoin climbed more than 7% during the session and touched $87,000 on Coinbase and Binance, its highest level since late January. Falling oil prices and an upcoming summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping lifted risk assets across the board, and the Nasdaq closed 2.8% higher. Among large tokens, Dogecoin rode that wave harder than any other over the following twenty-four hours.

More Than $1B of Liquidations Fueled the Dogecoin Move

The rally owes a lot to derivatives. Across the crypto market, more than $1B of positions were liquidated in twenty-four hours. Short sellers accounted for $844M of that, or 82%, and roughly 135,000 traders were closed out.

Bitcoin alone took about $608M of the liquidations and ether $181M. The largest single position forced shut was a bitcoin trade of nearly $21M on Hyperliquid, the same venue where HYPE soared to $61 in May as shorts were squeezed out.

At the peak of the move, more than $300M was liquidated in a single hour. In the most recent hour, the figure had dropped under $11M. Most of the forced buying happened in the first hours of the rally.

The mechanism is well known. When short sellers are forced to buy back, their purchases add to spot demand. That effect amplified the rebound in Dogecoin and in the tokens most exposed to derivatives. Bitcoin, for its part, held just above $85,600, up about 5% over twenty-four hours.

Also on Cryptonomic:

• Bitcoin Price Hits $87,000, Highest Since January
• Hyperliquid’s HYPE Hits a Record Above $90
• Bitcoin Reclaims $81,000 Despite the Clarity Act Failure

An Altcoin Season Index at 49 Keeps the Meme Rally in Check

Total crypto market capitalization is closing in on $3T, up about 4%. The Altcoin Season Index, however, sits near 49. The reading shows secondary assets doing better, without reaching the threshold that usually marks a genuine altcoin season.

The session looks more like a broad rebound amplified by a short squeeze than a settled rotation into altcoins. Speculative activity on small tokens remains high all the same, as shown earlier this month when 263,000 Solana tokens were minted in a single day.

Buying memecoins with a credit card is also about to change. Visa is restricting the use of merchant code 5815, normally reserved for digital media such as streaming, for memecoin purchases. Once a grace period expected to end this week runs out, those purchases will have to be processed as standard crypto transactions, subject to Visa’s crypto restrictions. Points and cash back earned on them will go away.

The loophole ran through Crossmint, the firm powering card purchases of memecoins in the Fomo and Robinhood Wallet apps, and through its payment processor Checkout.com, which was told to end the practice. Chase had flagged the category as inappropriate and referred the matter to Visa. For retail buyers who used their card to pick up tokens like Dogecoin and PEPE, the perk is ending just as the sector bounces.

In the short run, DOGE needs to defend $0.10. A rally built on forced buybacks tends to lose steam once there are no more shorts left to liquidate, and the drop in hourly liquidations suggests that fuel is already running low.

Over the coming months, the path depends on bitcoin. If BTC holds above $85,000, memecoins keep a supportive backdrop. Without fresh spot buying to take over, Dogecoin could give back part of its gains.

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