Bitcoin’s Great Descent: Pippin’s Triumph Over Reason!

What to know:

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise, as if time zones matter in this carnival of chaos)

While bitcoin, that digital ghost of Wall Street’s excesses, haunts the $63,000 threshold, a Solana-based memecoin, birthed from the fever dream of an AI and a unicorn meme, dances like a caffeinated jester.

Pippin (PIPPIN), the creation of Yohei Nakajima-a man who clearly mistook venture capital for a Dadaist experiment-has surged 135% in four weeks. It’s the financial equivalent of watching a squirrel juggle chainsaws. Ten percent in 24 hours? A mere warm-up act for the circus.

LunarCrush, a market oracle that somehow gets paid to say “it’s speculative,” claims the rally is “fueled by speculation.” No, really? Next you’ll tell us water is wet and politicians lie.

“Pippin’s price action,” they gasp, “is driven by artificial pumps, not organic demand!” How novel! A memecoin behaving like a memecoin! The world trembles.

Social media sleuths allege money laundering. Reputational risks? Naturally. This is crypto, where every triumph smells faintly of swamp gas and desperation.

Bitcoin’s 50% drop since October? Merely a warm-up for the main event: a speculative froth so thick it could drown a navy. Bloomberg’s Mike McGlone, ever the poet, declares, “A Bitcoin bottom requires cleansing of millions of cryptos tracking nothing.” In other words, hold your nose and pray.

Bitcoin dips below $63k-Asia’s gift to the West! It stabilizes near $63,200, down 4% like a drunkard clinging to a lamppost. Ether, Solana, and XRP follow suit, as loyal as lemmings in a conga line.

Tariffs! AI! Job loss! Risk assets flee, clutching pearls. CryptoQuant mutters about “steady institutional demand” and a “negative Coinbase Premium Index.” Translation: whales are napping, and retail investors are panicking.

$60,000: the Maginot Line of Bitcoin. Vinny Lingham, serial entrepreneur and harbinger of doom, warns: “Lose $60k, and cascading liquidations kiss recovery goodbye!” He also predicts a “2022-type blowup,” which, for the uninitiated, means grown men crying into their Lambos.

The yen weakens 1% against the dollar-a tragic love story between Japan’s PM and the BOJ’s rate hikes. Bitcoin and yen share an “uncanny positive relationship.” Stay alert! Or don’t. It’s not like anyone’s in control.

What to Watch

For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead” (or consult your local soothsayer).

Token Events

Same as above, but with more buzzwords.

Conferences

Strategy World 2026 (Las Vegas): Where fortunes are lost to slot machines and “vision boards.”
NEARCON (San Francisco): A gathering of NEARly sane individuals.
GFTN Forum Japan (Tokyo): Because Tokyo needed more neon.

Market Movements

BTC: Down 2.05% at $63,257.26. Down 4.54% in 24hrs. A rollercoaster with no track.
ETH: Down 1.95% at $1,826.78. Down 4.92% in 24hrs. Tragic.
CoinDesk 20: Down 1.95% at 1,826.19. Down 4.53%. A symphony of despair.
Ether CESR Staking Rate: Up 5 bps at 2.81%. Exciting!
BTC funding rate: -0.0032% on Binance. Negative rates? How avant-garde.

DXY: Up 0.1% at 97.81. The dollar flexes.
Gold: Down 0.69% at $5,189.50. Still shiny, but tired.
Silver: Up 1.32% at $87.71. Silver’s moment? Doubtful.
Nikkei 225: Up 0.87% at 57,321.09. Japan’s eternal optimism.
Hang Seng: Down 1.82% at 26,590.32. Hong Kong sighs.
FTSE: Down 0.25% at 10,657.66. Britain’s tea-soaked gloom.
Euro Stoxx 50: Down 0.13% at 6,106.15. Europe yawns.
DJIA: Down 1.66% at 48,804.06. America’s hangover.
S&P 500: Down 1.04% at 6,837.75. The grind continues.
Nasdaq: Down 1.13% at 22,627.27. Tech’s midlife crisis.
S&P/TSX: Down 0.12% at 33,776.50. Canada’s polite decline.
S&P 40 Latin America: Down 1.48% at 3,743.45. Latin passion, Latin pain.
U.S. 10-Year: Up 0.8 bps at 4.035%. Bonds: the last refuge.
E-mini S&P: Up 0.22% at 6,866.75. Hope, but faint.
E-mini Nasdaq: Up 0.33% at 24,843.50. Robots cheer.
E-mini Dow: Up 0.15% at 48,922.00. A flicker.

Bitcoin Stats

BTC Dominance: 58.35% (-0.51%). Still the belle of the ball, but fading.
Ether-bitcoin ratio: 0.02881 (0.32%). ETH: BTC’s quirky sidekick.
Hashrate: 1,014 EH/s. Machines toil.
Hashprice: $27.70. Mining’s diminishing returns.
Total fees: 2.6 BTC / $170,446. Greed, quantified.
CME Futures: 113,640 BTC. Paper BTC, but louder.
BTC in gold: 12.2 oz. Still not a yacht.
BTC vs gold: 4.23%. Gold wins, always.

Technical Analysis

ETH chart: candlesticks weep. Selling pressure! Retest $1,781. Then $1,385. Descent into madness.

Crypto Equities

Coinbase: Down 6.48% at $160.24. Pre-market: down 1.49%. Panic sells.
Circle: Down 2.94% at $61.17. Down 1.05%. Circle’s shrinking.
Galaxy Digital: Down 4.06% at $20.34. Down 1.52%. Galaxy implodes.
Bullish: Down 3.59% at $30.63. Down 1.40%. Bullish? Not here.
MARA: Down 1.13% at $7.88. Down 1.90%. Miners mourn.
RIOT: Down 0.19% at $15.65. Down 1.47%. Quiet despair.
Core Scientific: Down 2.37% at $16.89. Down 0.47%. Core rot.
CleanSpark: Up 1.76% at $9.82. Down 1.93%. Clean? No.
WGMI: Up 2.36% at $39.76. Down 0.58%. Hope is a meme.
Exodus: Down 3.14% at $9.55. Exodus indeed.

Crypto Treasury Companies

Strategy (MSTR): Down 5.60% at $123.71. Down 1.06%. Mastery? Not anymore.
Strive (ASST): Down 9.69% at $7.36. Up 0.27%. Striving for rock bottom.
SharpLink: Down 3.42% at $6.49. Down 1.23%. Sharp decline.
Upexi: Down 8.58% at $0.56. Upexi’s peak? A pimple.
Lite Strategy: Down 3.60% at $1.07. Lite despair.

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs

Daily net flows: -$203.8 million. The exodus.
Cumulative: $53.79 billion. A Titanic’s worth.
Total BTC holdings: ~1.26 million. Still not enough.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flows: -$49.5 million. ETH’s turn.
Cumulative: $11.51 billion. Modest, but tragic.
Total ETH holdings: ~5.66 million. Ethereum’s hollow crown.

2026-02-24 15:20