Dogecoin (DOGE) price action has been rallying this week, with the excitement largely driven by Dogecoin ETF launch expectations.
However, the launch has been marked by delays .A Bloomberg ETF analyst just revealed that the launch has been pushed back once again.
The Dogecoin ETF was slated to launch on 12 September after an initial delay. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas posted the update that launch date was pushed back by another week.
The delay also triggered some speculation that they were waiting until the FOMC’s next announcement which will determine if there will be a rate cut.
The delayed Dogecoin ETF launch will likely be held on Thursday next week.
Dogecoin ETF Expectations Fuel DOGE Price Rally
DOGE price has also been front running the Dogecoin ETF launch. The memecoin pulled off an impressive rally since Sunday, which saw it push as high as $0.27 on Friday. A 27% rally within the last 7 days.
Dogecoin’s latest rally marked the third major bullish attempt this year. Previous attempts failed to push price well above $0.30. The meme coin was almost overbought at its $0.27 press time price tag.
Aside from the possibility of short term profit-taking, there was another major reason why a DOGE price retracement might be on the cards.
The Dogecoin ETF launch might turn out to be a “sell the news” event, just as was the case with Ethereum.
The rally this week indicate that buyers were excited for the launch, and thus they anticipated the ETF launch to have a positive impact on price.
However, it takes some time before ETF inflows start having an impact on price. It may take some time for the Dogecoin ETF demand to be large enough to trigger a significant impact.
A strong outcome may allow DOGE to break above the $0.30 resistance and potentially push higher.
Dogecoin Open Interest Approaches $5 Billion But Whales Taking Profits
The latest DOGE price rally was fueled by demand from both the spot and derivatives segment. The memecoin’s spot flows switched back to positive this week for the first time since before mid-August.
DOGE had $36 million worth of positive net flows in the last 24 hours. This was the highest daily net inflows recorded since 17 January.
Things were much more interesting in the derivatives segment. Open interest jumped from as low as $3.31 billion at the start of the week to $4.6 billion in the last 24 hours.
Dogecoin short liquidations were also on the rise as price pushed higher. For reference, roughly $12 million worth of short positions were liquidated in the last 24 hours, compared to only $1.51 million in longs.
This signalled that a faction of investors anticipated a pullback. As far as bearish possibilities were concerned, whales contributed just over $6 million across Coinbase, Binance and OKX.
However, perpetuals remained on the positive side by about $249 million on Binance and $192 million on OKX.
Coinglass Large order book data revealed that some whales were taking profits but in relatively low amounts not likely to cause a major pullback.
On the other hand, derivatives activity revealed that whales still had some skin in the game, seeking exposure to Dogecoin’s latest upside.