This Week in Coins: Twitter Speculation Sends Dogecoin Higher, Bitcoin and Ethereum See Green

If last week was a mixed bag of flatness for the largest coins, this week offered the first real signs of gains following the catastrophe of FTX’s spiral into bankruptcy. 

Bitcoin (BTC) rose 2.7% over the past seven days and currently trades at around $17,000. Its closest rival Ethereum (ETH) grew 6.7% and trades for $1,285 at the time of writing, according to data from CoinGecko. 

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Both leading cryptocurrencies appear to have begun a modest recovery, after starting the week on a downward slide when news of civil unrest in China rocked risk assets like tech stocks and crypto. Protestors were demonstrating against the country’s ongoing draconian COVID measures, prompting fears that the world’s second largest economy may be getting disrupted. 

The market also dipped on Monday on news that crypto lender BlockFi was filing for bankruptcy. BlockFi is the latest in a long line of crypto companies to get hit with contagion following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. 

Risk assets recovered on Wednesday when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in a speech that December would bring smaller interest rate hikes. This signals the end of a cycle of hikes—three so far this year, each of 75 basis points—that were the steepest since 1994. 

Although the leading currencies almost all posted growth, gains were mostly small. However, several names enjoyed turbocharged rallies, including Chainlink (LINK)—up 11% to $7.59, Uniswap (UNI) blew up 12% to $6.12, and Polygon (MATIC) rose 8.4% to $0.922278.

Dogecoin (DOGE) enjoyed a staggering rally of 21.5% and trades at nearly 10 cents at the time of writing. 

DOGE’s weeklong rally was spurred by a tweet from Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk, which includes slides from a Twitter company talk he recently gave. One slide mentions “payments” but doesn’t elaborate. However, it was enough to send the Doge Army into speculation that their favorite coin could…