Decentral Block Post

Elon Musk’s tunnel construction firm The Boring Company (TBC) has begun allowing customers to pay for rides on its Las Vegas transit system using Dogecoin.

A July 6 report from CNBC said the new payment option via Bitpaysurfaced on Friday, a day after the opening of its new Loop station at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

While the Boring Company has not officially confirmed the new payment method, founder Elon Musk seemingly did when he responded to a tweet about the news, saying: “Supporting Doge wherever possible.”

On the same day, DogeDesigner, a graphic designer for Dogecoin Foundation, shared a video with his 13,600 Twitter followers with him navigating through the Vegas Loop booking page and making a purchase of a day-pass using 37.52 DOGE via BitPay.

The new Loop station is located underneath an integrated resort called Resorts World Las Vegas, and is the fourth stop on the 1.7-mile Las Vegas Convention Center Loop. 

Trading across the cryptocurrency market was relatively subdued on July 5 as the ecosystem continues to digest the fallout from the Three Arrows Capital scandal and Voyager Digital announcing that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. 

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of Bitcoin (BTC) has spent the day oscillating around the $20,000 support level, ranging from a low of $19,775 to an intraday high of $20,480 on $25.48 billion in trading volume.

Here’s a look at what several analysts are saying about what could come next for Bitcoin and what support and resistance levels to keep an eye on in the event of a sharp move in price.

Watch the repeating pennant pattern

A noticeable pattern on the Bitcoin chart prior to the pullbacks that have occurred since November 2021 was pointed out by crypto analyst and pseudonymous Twitter user Moustache, who posted the following chart displaying the similarities between each drawdown.

Moustache said,

Bitcoin (BTC) is attempting to rise above the psychological level of $20,000 on July 6, a sign that bulls are trying to stall the brutal bear market. The retail traders are making the most of the current fall and are on a buying spree. Proof of this comes from Glassnode data showing that wallets holding less than one Bitcoin scooped up 60,460 Bitcoin in June, at “the most aggressive rate in history.”

In a recent report, Glassnode analysts said that the activity on the Bitcoin network shows that “all speculative entities, and market tourists have been completely purged from the asset.” This means that mostly long-term investors are left holding Bitcoin.

However, not everyone is bullish about Bitcoin’s prospects in the short term. According to Arcane Research, the ProShares Short Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITI), the first exchange-traded fund (ETF) to be "short" Bitcoin, has increased its short exposure “by more than 300% last week.”

Could the rush into the first inverse Bitcoin ETF act as a contrarian signal that indicates a possible bottom formation? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin is trading inside a symmetrical triangle pattern. The buyers tried to push the price above the resistance line of the triangle on July 5 but the bears held their ground.

The cryptocurrency market has experienced a turbulent period as of late, with several firms filing for bankruptcy or shutting down. Voyager Digital announced its bankruptcy on Wednesday, becoming the second crypto lender to default following Three Arrows Capital.

In the light of present market circumstances, Circle has sought to reaffirm its commitment to openness and user security in a blog post published on Tuesday. Jeremy Fox, CFO of Circle, said that his firm's priority is to preserve the financial integrity of the system - robust, trustworthy, and safe. He added that other financial institutions offer fraudulent promises of preserving user money, only to abandon them when the going gets tough.

The CFO said that Circle's business model is to minimize risk, not “taking and managing risk.” He also explained how the firm protects its USD Coin (USDC) reserves, emphasizing that Circle does not own these assets and that they are 100 percent owned by USDC holders in segregated accounts labeled "for the benefit of USDC holders." Fox wrote:

"Circle is not allowed to use the USDC reserves for any other purpose. Unlike a bank or an exchange or an unregulated institution, we cannot lend them out, we cannot borrow against them, and we cannot use them to pay our bills."

As a result, in extreme situations like bankruptcy, the USD Coin (USDC) is purportedly still redeemable at face value. Also, the USDC reserves are completely disconnected from Circle's other activities, minimizing the risk of them being used to covering other losses.