Tension thickens
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 13th March 2025.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
Crypto Holds Steady Amidst Trade Tumult
An unsettling global trade rumpus has risk-asset investors on edge, but collected, as more key inflation data came in benign-on-arrival.
The crypto market has been holding firm. In the past day, total worldwide digital assets' market capitalization decreased by 2% to $2.79 trillion.
But Bitcoin, as of 9:42 a.m. (EST), sat just shy of $82,500, down only 1%. In the past one hour, which brought more troubling tariff headlines, BTC was flat.
After the consumer price index (CPI) yesterday morning showed inflation slightly cooling, the largest crypto rose to as high as $84K, briefly topping its 200-day simple moving average (SMA) in a display of steely resilience now going on 48 hours.
Most Big Ten coins are flat or slightly down. Among these biggies, XRP stands out for its gain of 4%.
A pair of Top 100 altcoins caught our eye this morning. One of them is Sonic (S) which is the native asset of Sonic, the rebranded Fantom chain. No. 64 Sonic has seen S surge 14% to nearly 50 cents in the past 24 hours.
Another noticeable performer is Pepe (PEPE), a well-established memecoin and the leader of the burgeoning frog-coin movement. PEPE is up 9%. It's the 41st-largest coin with a market cap of roughly $3B.
What's down
Big Bet Goes Bad
A heavy-handed trader ran roughshod over the Hyperliquid platform yesterday, resulting in some raised eyebrows, added scrutiny and downward pressure on the price of HYPE.
According to reports, a "whale" placed a $200M long ETH bet using $4.3M worth of a stablecoin, USDC, thus obtaining 50x leverage, an aggressive position but not outside the platform's parameters. The trader then withdrew a portion of the collateral, in violation of the maintenance rules, causing a $4M loss for Hyperliquid’s Hyperliquid Provider (HLP) Vault while stirring suspicions that something unsavory was afoot. However, "there was no protocol exploit or hack," Hyperliquid insisted, dousing rumors to that effect, per CoinDesk.
On Hyperliquid, blockchain-based Vaults allow users to deposit USDC to potentially earn a share of profits generated by the trading strategies of fellow users. Apparently, this aggressive, outsized trader made some quick profit/loss considerations and simply tweaked their exposure, lowering the margin, and then just got liquidated.
To avert future situations like this, Hyperliquid has said it will update the maximum leverage level for ETH trades to 25x.
In the past 24 hours, HYPE, 32nd-largest token, has slid 10% to $12.44, according to CoinGecko.
What's next
We Were Monitoring Macro Moves When Suddenly A Frog-Jumping Contest Broke Out
Wednesday's cucumber-cool CPI report goosed sentiment surrounding more rate cuts this year. Earlier this morning, a second inflation gauge, the PPI, likewise showed inflation in check. The PPI stands for "producer price index" and is considered a measure of inflation building up in the supply chain. Stripping out volatile food and energy, "core PPI" was flat (or rather, it fell 0.1%) in February, versus a consensus estimate pointing to a 0.3% increase.
Stock index futures went flat to slightly in the red as of just a few minutes before the opening bell.
Trump has threatened to put a 200% tariff on champagne. Wall Street is anxious. But Frog-themed coins are impervious to the ratcheting tension.
And it's not just PEPE hopping into the green. BRETT (a blueish toad-like entity) is +4.4% in the past day, reaching three cents, and wrangling a spot in the Top 200, per CoinGecko.
