Ethereum outpaces Bitcoin as DOGE and SHIB have a brief rally

Global crypto market capitalisation remained at the US$1.12tn point in Tuesday’s early trade, with Bitcoin staying relatively flat at US$23,800.

Ethereum continues to outpace the market, enjoying a 2.3% gain this Tuesday morning, briefly bringing the coin’s price above the US$1,800 point for the first time in two months.

Large-cap meme coins enjoyed a decent daily rally, with US$9.7bn Dogecoin jumping 4% and Shiba Inu up just under 3%.

Stepn gained 10.2% this morning, bringing the move-to-earn (M2E) NFT project’s market capitalisation up to US$629mln.  

Total value locked in the Decentralised finance (DeFi) space fell 1.6% to US$69.2bn, underscored by single-digit losses for Uniswap, PancakeSwap and Aave.

In the news

Despite filing for bankruptcy last month, Celsius’ CEL token rallied 30% in the past 24 hours, buoyed by the #CelShortSqueeze Twitter campaign that is attempting to artificially inflate the token’s price.

The committee of unsecured creditors in Celsius’ bankruptcy proceedings has issued a five-point restructuring plan, with a view to “pursuing a resolution that will maximise Celsius’ value for the benefit of its account holders and unsecured creditors.”

Privacy coin ZCash was also up 11%, following news coming in of sanctions being placed on competitor Tornado Cash.

The US Department of Treasury fears the “crypto mixer” is being used for mass money laundering, including by North Korean hackers.

Tornado Cash, which uses Ethereum-based smart contracts to obfuscate digital currency transfers, has long been seen as a go-to protocol for criminals operating in the crypto space.