Bitcoin is struggling to muster the strength for another push above US$28k today*, but at least Dogecoin is still running hot, thanks once again to Elon Musk.

And that pretty much tells the story today in crypto so far – a mixed bag of fear (a loose rumour mill at work regarding Binance’s CZ) and greed (Dogecoin FOMO). Speaking of which… the Crypto Fear & Greed Index has hit something of a greed-leaning plateau just lately.

So earlier today, we discussed the very obvious reason for the Dogecoin (DOGE) pump – Elon Musk’s “Doge meme Twitter-logo re-branding. And the dog is still on heat, with $DOGE now currently up more than 23% over the past 24 hours.

As for the highly unsubstantiated (and probably completely untrue) rumour of Interpol supposedly looking to hunt down and arrest Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhou (also mentioned in this morning’s Mooners and Shakers), that stench seems to be dissipating somewhat now as the afternoon dust settles.

And that’s because the source of the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) – a highly popular Crypto Twitterer who goes by the name of Cobie – has explained that his message of “Interpol Red Notice for CZ” was meant to stay encrypted and hidden from public view, until he was ready to reveal it – if he ever did.

As Cobie’s Twitter account is actually private, here’s another widely followed account, “FatMan”, with the explanation…

“But as it turns out, people did notice, and it was a big deal, leading to today’s series of events,” continued FatMan, adding: “Lesson: Don’t trust everything you read online.”

Why post an encrypted rumour at all? Seems like an odd thing to do. We can only assume that it was a way of proving he was right about something after the fact, if it came to pass as true. Doubt he’ll be doing that again in a hurry.

In any case, it seems the damage to the price of Bitcoin (and BNB for that matter) has been fairly limited as a result. A distraction, probably, from the main event of macro/inflation/recession considerations and Wall Street stock market correlation.

 

Is a US crypto industry exodus on the cards?

Raoul Pal, a former Goldman Sachs exec turned CEO of macro financial news media site Real Vision, believes that the US crypto industry will leave in droves for more welcoming global locations in the face of regulatory roadblocks from the American government and the likes of the SEC.

Pal was speaking in an interview on the Rug Radio podcast, and predicted that the UK, Europe and Asia (including Hong Kong) is where many top US crypto firms, including Coinbase and Circle, may choose to end up basing themselves.

“The UK has been making very strong statements about crypto, as have the EU. Even France, even Macron is talking about it. As is Switzerland, as is Singapore, as is the UAE, as is Hong Kong,” noted the macro guru.

“That is the group of countries that enabled the euro-dollar markets and the FX markets. They’re all there – and the derivatives markets. And the UK plays very well with that group of people. And the Cayman Islands is the other one because of how the offshore funding markets work.

“So they’re all there. So my guess is the US screws it up, and the UK will eat its lunch. My guess is they see that opportunity and they know the rule book, because there is demand.”

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.22 trillion, up about 1.3% over the past 24 hours, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Bitcoin has made something of a recovery this afternoon, and might well be pushing north of US$28k by the time this is read.

Meanwhile, it’s a green scene across the majors, led by the world’s most popular dog-themed meme coin.

Even XRP is recovering, which has had something of a buy-the-rumour, er, sell-the-rumour rise and fall of late, all based around the eternal hope that the bloody SEC legal stoush with Ripple Labs will settle some time soon.

 

Uppers and downers

• SXP (SXP), (market cap: US$445 million) +15%

• Injective (INJ), (mc: US$435 million) +11%

• Floki (FLOKI), (mc: US$362 million) +10%

• Baby Doge (BABYDOGE), (mc: US$430 million) +8%

• Shiba Inu (SHIB), (mc: US$6.7 billion) +6%

 

• Energy Web (EWT), (market cap: US$141 million) -6%

• Kaspa (KAS), (mc: US$630 million) -6%

• Hedera (HBAR), (mc: US$2 billion) -4%

• Blur (BLUR), (mc: US$246 million) -4%

• EOS (EOS), (mc: US$1.29 billion) -2%

 

* Annnnd… news just in about five minutes after we hit publish: Bitcoin is back above US$28k. The dangers of writing price-related crypto headlines.

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