Memecoins Crash While Bitcoin Holds Steady: Why Crypto Markets Are Bleeding Today

Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and PEPE get wrecked in brutal altcoin selloff—but Bitcoin barely flinches. Here's what's shaking the crypto markets on July 29, 2025.

The Memecoin Massacre

DOGE tanks 15% as Elon Musk's latest tweet conspicuously avoids mentioning cryptocurrency. SHIB follows suit with a 12% nosedive—turns out burning tokens doesn't burn shorts. PEPE gets rekt hardest at 18% down, proving once again that frog money hops both ways.

Bitcoin's Chill Pill

While speculators panic-sell meme tokens, BTC trades sideways like a boomer stock. The 1% daily volatility feels downright boring compared to the altcoin circus. Institutional inflows keep the king coin stable while retail plays musical chairs with shitcoins.

Market Mechanics at Work

Liquidity craters as overleveraged degens get margin called. Crypto Twitter oscillates between 'buy the dip' and existential dread. Meanwhile, traditional finance pundits somehow blame the Fed for Dogecoin's decline—because everything's the Fed's fault, right?

As the dust settles, one truth emerges: The crypto market giveth dopamine hits, and the crypto market taketh away. Just ask anyone who FOMO'd into PEPE at the top while their financial advisor quietly weeps into their 401(k) statements.

Key takeaways

The crypto market saw a sharp $120 billion drop in market cap, led by heavy losses in top memecoins like DOGE, SHIB, and PEPE. Bitcoin remained stable near $119K. 

Crypto markets are in the red today, with top memecoins leading a broader sell-off that has wiped over $120 billion from the global market cap.

From regulatory roadblocks in the U.S. to brewing uncertainty in India’s exchange ecosystem, cautiousness has made the market take a dive.

Market-wide dip wipes out $120B

As of press time, the total crypto market cap fell from a high of $3.92 trillion to a low of $3.80 trillion within a 24-hour window, fueling a sharp $120 billion decline.

Source: TradingView

While the market showed signs of recovery around the $3.85 trillion level, overall momentum remained fragile.

Hourly volume climbed to $316.96 billion, up 0.58%, indicating reactive trading behavior rather than fresh inflows.

Memecoins bleed while Bitcoin sleeps

Top memecoins have shed blood.

Dogecoin [DOGE] fell 7.99%, shiba inu [SHIB] dropped 6.30%, and Pepe [PEPE] slid 9.06% over the last 24 hours.

Source: Coinmarketcap

Meanwhile, Bonk [BONK] and Floki [FLOKI] posted similar losses of over 9%, while dogwifhat [WIF] plunged 10.91%.

Highlighting the volatility in lower-cap tokens, the sharpest decline came from Fartcoin [FARTCOIN], which crashed 17.52%.

Even Trump-themed and meme-narrative assets like OFFICIAL TRUMP [TRUMP] and SPX6900 [SPX] weren’t spared.

Source: TradingView

Bitcoin [BTC], however, remained relatively stable. At press time, it hovered NEAR $119,000, with its daily RSI at 60.9; suggesting neutral momentum. The OBV showed no significant uptick, reinforcing a sideways trend.

BTC’s consolidation proved that it was not the primary driver of the latest volatility, as traders instead dumped riskier meme assets.

Headlines weigh heavy

The broader market dip may have been influenced by a number of factors.

The U.S. SEC postponed its decisions on both the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF (now due by September 18) and Grayscale’s Solana Trust conversion (October 10), causing continued uncertainty.

Meanwhile, in India, reports of Coinbase exploring a potential acquisition of CoinDCX surfaced after the latter’s valuation plunged from $2.2 billion to under $1 billion, following a $44 million hack.

While CoinDCX has stabilized, the news may have amplified marketwide caution and sell-side pressure.