Heightened sensitivity

Bitcoin sat quietly nestled near $84.7K on a mostly calm Good Friday. When we checked the largest coin as of 8:10 a.m. (EST), it had shed 0.1% in 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. BTC over the past week has traded at close range ($82K-$86K). However, traders might want to prepare now for a spike in volatility likely right around the corner, said CryptoQuant, pointing out the skittish behavior of short-term holders (STHs), or those having stacked their satoshis within the past six months (Cointelegraph).

CryptoQuant labels STHs as one of the primary sources of BTC sell pressure and this cohort, as Cointelegraph noted, is "notoriously sensitive to snap moves and transitive narratives."

At the same time, per The Block, small-fry interest seems to be percolating as evidenced by a 26% month-over-month uptick in Google searches for the term "Bitcoin" during the month of March.

"While still far from prior cycle highs, [March's uptick] could reflect a rekindling of retail curiosity," The Block said.

Crypto rugpulls — let's call them harmful but not necessarily illegal or even entirely malicious exit schemes — are slowing down. DappRadar has tracked only seven so-called rugpulls so far this year, compared to 21 such incidents in Q1 of 2024.

A rug is deemed pulled, DappRadar explains, when developers of a protocol or token suddenly withdraw all liquidity and/or user funds, and disappear into the wind, leaving investors high/dry in terms of their bag (severely diminished if not worthless) and options for recourse (none). These episodes fall mainly into two categories, soft pulls and hard ones. In the latter category, pullers of rugs literally pull them, by shutting down smart contracts or disabling token transfers. In soft pulls, developers or insiders tend to dump large amounts of tokens on the market over a period of time, causing a crash without technically abandoning the project, DappRadar said.

"The scams are increasingly sophisticated, often orchestrated by teams with polished branding and well-planned narratives," the on-chain analytics firm added.

Among the most flagrant examples of a coin's floor vanishing right out from under it came this past Valentine's Day. That's when Solana-run Libra (LIBRA) was loved-up en masse after a social media shout-out by the president of Argentina. LIBRA's market cap pumped to $4.5 billion. But then it dumped by more than 90% after the post was deleted.

Dapp is counting the recent Mantra (OM) collapse as a rugpull in their Q1 '25 tally. OM plunged 90% in a few hours this past Sunday.

Mantra's founders, for their part, strenuously deny any insider selling.

"Rugpulls are becoming less frequent, but far more devastating when they do occur," DappRadar concludes.

Ahead of its still-being-finalized deal to be acquired by Ripple, Hidden Road announced yesterday it had secured regulatory approval to operate as a U.S. broker-dealer. It'll do so under a license, granted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), to a subsidiary, Hidden Road Partners CIV US LLC.

Hidden Road describes itself as a global credit network for institutions, built on a modern technology stack. The firm now boasts that, with the backing of Ripple's balance sheet, it is poised to become "one of the largest non-bank prime brokers globally."

Earlier this month, Hidden Road announced it had agreed to be acquired for $1.25 billion by Ripple, a ledger technology company closely associated with XRP. 

Although when describing Ripple in its press releases, Hidden Road prefers the phrase "blockchain infrastructure services firm closely associated with the XRP Ledger (XRPL) network."

XRPL indeed looms prominently in this transaction — subject to regulatory approval but expected to close in the coming months — as Hidden Road, so as to streamline settlement processes, plans to migrate its post-trade operations onto XRPL.