Dogecoin Outpaces Market With 15% Pump as Bitcoin Trades Above $85K

Dogecoin emerged as the strongest performer in the crypto market’s rebound, while the wave of forced short closures that helped drive the rally began to subside.

DOGE climbed more than 15% to slightly above 10 cents during Tuesday’s Asian morning trading, recording the biggest gain among major tokens, according to CoinDesk data.

Bitcoin remained above $85,600 and was little changed over the latest hour. The largest cryptocurrency was still up about 5% over the past 24 hours, with much of that advance coming from traders being forced to close short positions as prices moved higher.

More than $1 billion in crypto positions were liquidated during the past day, CoinGlass reported. Short positions accounted for $844 million, equivalent to roughly 82% of all liquidations. About 135,000 traders were forced out of their positions.

Short sellers profit when an asset declines, but leveraged positions require collateral. When a price rally pushes losses beyond the collateral supporting a short, exchanges can automatically buy the underlying asset to close the trade. That forced demand can lift prices further and trigger additional short liquidations.

Bitcoin accounted for approximately $608 million of the liquidated positions, while Ether represented $181 million. The largest single liquidation was a Bitcoin position worth almost $21 million on Hyperliquid.

XRP gained 7% to nearly $1.52, while Solana rose 5% to just below $117. Ether advanced 3% to nearly $2,740. BNB and TRX each added between 1% and 2%. Zcash was the lone major decliner, dropping 4% to just above $1,450.

The intensity of forced closures has fallen sharply. Liquidations totaled less than $11 million in the latest hour, compared with more than $300 million per hour at the peak of Monday’s rally. That shift means further gains would need to come from fresh buyers rather than continued short-covering.

AI Rally Extends Across Asia

Asian equities continued to benefit from the strong tone set by U.S. markets.

MSCI’s Asia Pacific index rose nearly 1% for a fifth consecutive session. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix led chip stocks higher after following Monday’s rally in U.S. semiconductor shares. South Korea’s Kospi advanced 2%, while Taiwan’s benchmark index reached a record intraday level.

The latest gains were closely linked to renewed enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. U.S. stocks rallied following early signs of adoption for Meta Platforms’ new AI agent, while AMD moved toward a $1 trillion market valuation.

Meta launched Muse, an AI agent that operates across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, nearly two weeks ago. It has since overtaken ChatGPT as the top free application on Apple’s U.S. App Store. Data from app-tracking firm Apptopia showed almost 3 million global installations, with U.S. and Canadian iOS downloads nearly 40% above ChatGPT’s total during its first 12 days on mobile.

Investors are increasingly connecting the adoption of AI agents with stronger demand for computing infrastructure. Every response generated by an agent requires server capacity, creating expectations that widespread usage could increase demand for advanced chips.

AMD, which receives around 5% of its revenue from Meta, surged as much as 10% Monday and briefly exceeded a $1 trillion market capitalization. Intel gained as much as 12%, while Arm climbed 14%. The gains pushed the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index more than 4% higher for a fifth consecutive session.

China’s technology sector also joined the AI-driven move. Alibaba announced Tuesday that it was rolling out what it described as the country’s “most powerful AI chip,” an accelerator intended to compete with Nvidia. Alibaba’s Hong Kong shares rose, while Tencent gained after releasing a new image-generation model.