Dogecoin Rises After Twitter Rebranding, Bitcoin Slides to $29K

Dogecoin (DOGE) jumped as much as 5% on the back of Twitter's rebranding on Monday. The memecoin bucked the broader market slide as bitcoin (BTC) slipped to under $29,100, during European morning hours.

Elon Musk-owned Twitter is in the process of rebranding to X, a part of his artificial intelligence-focused group of companies called X.AI. Musk added dogecoin’s ticker logo to his bio early on Monday, spurring speculation of dogecoin playing a bigger role in the rebranded company.

Meanwhile, some $30 million worth of longs – over 96% of all levered futures positions – were liquidated in a single hour on bitcoin-tracked futures, which may have contributed to the sudden decline.

Liquidation refers to when an exchange forcefully closes a trader’s leveraged position due to a partial or total loss of the trader’s initial margin. This happens when a trader is unable to meet the margin requirements for a leveraged position or fails to have sufficient funds to keep the trade open.

Large liquidations can signal the local top or bottom of a price move, which may allow traders to position themselves accordingly.

Bitcoin's drop led to a fall in several major tokens, with Tron’s TRX and Polygon’s MATIC losing 3.4%, while Solana's SOL fell nearly 5%.

Meanwhile, analysts said the lack of bullish news and a generally quiet summer may further weigh into bitcoin prices, with some targeting the $27,000 level.

“If bearish pressure intensifies, the next significant support level would be $27,000, the lower boundary of the rising channel from the November lows and the 200-week moving average,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, FxPro senior market analyst, in an email to CoinDesk.

The sentiment was mirrored by Simons Peters, markets analyst at eToro. “Bitcoin is beating a slow retreat at the moment as the price continues to trend down from recent highs. Although market dynamic in summer months can tend toward volatility with lower trading flows, the recent period has been remarkably calm for top cryptoassets in the market,” Peters told CoinDesk in an emailed statement.

“The softening of the price we’re watching currently suggests investors are looking for positivity to cling to, but with little forthcoming for now it is very much wait and see,” Peters added.