Holding pattern
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. 29th May 2026.
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 Stalls Out Again Except, That Is, For 'Perps' Market King
Fresh off a record-setting Thursday, U.S. stocks were poised to possibly climb even higher heading into the weekend. Oil prices keep falling as the U.S. and Iran hammer out a supposedly nearly finalized agreement that would reopen the Hormuz Strait while setting the stage for further talks to end a war that has now dragged on for three months.
Bitcoin is flatter than hammered veal. Crypto in general seems stalled. A few big altcoins, including XRP, SOL and DOGE, are up 1%-2%.
Meanwhile, Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures platform continues to capture all kinds of attention. A recent 30-minute "flash crash" and subsequent snapback in a pre-IPO SpaceX perpetual contract was hardly harrowing enough to dampen enthusiasm surrounding HYPE which today climbed back toward its record high, hit three days ago, of $64.
At a recent investor conference, Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, confirmed his team held talks with Hyperliquid as part of an effort to evaluate possible entry into the perpetual futures, or “perps,” market. Candidly relayed Sprecher: “What we are saying to the regulators is, 'Can we do that?’”
What's down
Bitcoin Mired In Malaise
The emergence of a “draft agreement” to end the war helped push the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to record closing highs yesterday. Bitcoin's sitting out the risk-on party. The big bopper of coinland just seems stuck.
As of Friday at 8:50 a.m. (EST), BTC was roughly $73,000, or pretty much exactly where it stood yesterday at this time. Ethereum, the second-largest crypto, managed to reclaim the $2,000 level on a 24-hour gain of 0.3%. However, it too appears bogged down and also entirely disconnected from geopolitics. ETH is down 6% over the past week. BTC lost 5% in that span.
It seems the BTC market had already priced in a relief rally going back to the initial ceasefire news in early April, said Javier Martinez, CEO at sFOX, in an email to CoinDesk.
Institutional investors, he added, are now looking past Tehran headlines and focusing more toward ones coming from Washington, D.C. “They're waiting on regulatory confirmation, not just macro improvement," Martinez explained.
What's next
Long-Term Holders At Record Level But A Worrisome Pattern Emerges
In a trend that sometimes has previously foreshadowed bouts of Bitcoin price frailty, large holders are pausing their buys.
A new report from CryptoQuant shows annual balance growth for “whale” accounts — holding at least 1,000 BTC — has turned negative. It’s the fastest contraction so far this year. Note too that ever since February the monthly whale growth numbers have been flat, connoting a shift from steady accumulation to mild distribution, Crypto Quant added.
Whales and “dolphins” (the cohort holding between 100 and 1,000 BTC) collectively represent the primary source of support (structural demand) within the worldwide BTC marketplace. A slew of digital asset treasury (DAT) companies fall into the dolphin category.
The overall long-term holder supply recently reached a fresh record of 15.8M BTC, as Cointelegraph pointed out.
But it’s a bearish configuration devoid of new entrants. Navigating the current range-bound BTC market remains a vexing proposition, with “euphoria emerging whenever BTC approaches the upper end of the range,” said the analyst Darkfrost.
Of course, when BTC moves closer to the lower end of the range, “pessimism quickly returns,” Darkfrost added.
