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Crypto Daybook Americas: PEPE Signals Altcoin Frenzy as Rampant Ether Outpaces Bitcoin

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8 часов ago

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By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

As the crypto rally gathers pace ether has widened its lead over bitcoin in terms of volatility expectations, signaling relatively greater action not just in the second-largest cryptocurrency, but in the broader digital asset market as a whole.

Deribit’s ether implied volatility index (ETH DVOL), which represents the 30-day expected price turbulence, has shot up 11% to an annualized 7% this week while the bitcoin equivalent, BTC DVOL, held steady near multimonth lows around 45%, according to data source TradingView.

The divergence has widened the spread between the two to 27%, the most in at least two years. Clearly, traders are anticipating greater volatility in ETH and the broader altcoin market.

According to some observers, ETH has turned deflationary because the Pectra upgrade implemented this week has boosted on-chain activity and led to over 38,000 ETH burned or destroyed in the past 24 hours. Some market participants are buying higher strike ETH calls on Deribit in anticipation of continued price gains.

We could be on the verge of an altcoin season, as the BTC dominance rate looks to end its five-month-long uptrend. (Check out Technical Analysis).

In key news, American fast-food chain Steak ‘n Shake said Thursday it will begin accepting BTC as a payment mode at all U.S. locations starting May 16, allowing its 100 million customers to shop with the world’s biggest digital-asset token.

T-Rex, the Web3 consumer entertainment platform, which is backed by Portal Ventures, North Island Ventures, Framework Ventures and Arbitrum Gaming Ventures, raised $17 million in pre-seed financing.

Finally, just in case you missed it, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase agreed to buy the world’s largest crypto options exchange, Deribit, for $2.9 billion in cash and shares in the crypto industry’s largest ever M&A deal. Deribit controls over 80% of the activity, meaning Coinbase will be able to offer a full suite of spot and derivative products, boosting liquidity on the platform. Stay alert!

What to Watch

  • Crypto:
  • Macro
    • May 9, 8 a.m.: The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases April consumer price inflation data.
      • Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.56%
      • Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 5.48%
    • May 9, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases April employment data.
      • Unemployment Rate Est. 6.8% vs. Prev. 6.7%
      • Employment Change Est. 2.5K vs. Prev. -32.6K
    • May 9-12: Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng will hold trade talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during his visit to Switzerland.
  • Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
    • May 9: TeraWulf (WULF), pre-market
    • May 12: Exodus Movement (EXOD), post-market
    • May 13: Semler Scientific (SMLR), post-market
    • May 14: Bitfarms (BITF), pre-market
    • May 14: IREN (IREN), post-market
    • May 15: Bit Digital (BTBT), post-market
    • May 15: Bitdeer Technologies Group (BTDR), pre-market
    • May 15: KULR Technology Group (KULR), post-market

Token Events

  • Governance votes & calls
    • A Sei Network developer proposed ending support for Cosmos to simplify the blockchain and align more closely with Ethereum to reduce complexity and infrastructure overhead and boost Sei’s adoption.
    • May 15, 10 a.m.: Moca Network to host a Discord townhall session discussing network updates.
  • Unlocks
    • May 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $8.08 million.
    • May 11: Solayer (LAYER) to unlock 12.87% of its circulating supply worth $35.66 million.
    • May 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.82% of its circulating supply worth $57.45 million.
    • May 13: WhiteBIT Coin (WBT) to unlock 27.41% of its circulating supply worth $1.14 billion.
    • May 15: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 4.09% of its circulating supply worth $17.7 million.
  • Token Launches
    • May 9: OKX lists Jito with JITOSOL/USDT pair.
    • May 9: BitMart lists Minutes Network Token with MNTX/USDT pair.
    • May 16: Galxe (GAL), Litentry (LIT), Mines of Dalarnia (DAR), Orion Protocol (ORN), and PARSIQ (PRQ) to be delisted from Coinbase.

Conferences

CoinDesk’s Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

  • PEPE is up more than 40% in the past 24 hours, outperforming most major tokens as traders continue to treat it as a high-beta ETH play — a speculative vehicle to gain outsized exposure to ether (ETH).
  • The memecoin has become a proxy for ETH upside since early 2024 because the PEPE price tends to react strongly to ETH narratives such as the recent Pectra upgrade, which preceded a 20% jump in the second-largest cryptocurrency.
  • Trading volumes for PEPE surged past $3.5 billion in the past 24 hours, several times more than Wednesday’s $500 million.
  • This marks one of the token’s strongest weeks in the past year and signals a return of risk appetite in the memecoin space.
  • Derivatives data shows rising open interest and funding rates for PEPE futures, suggesting a wave of leverage-fueled bets are targeting the frog-themed token in the hope of higher volatility ahead.
  • Meanwhile, Solana-based hippo token MOODENG rallied over 150%. The project, known for its absurdist branding based on a viral Thai hippo, is popular among Asian trader circles.
  • Cat-themed MOG also posted double-digit gains, but PEPE remains the most liquid and visible memecoin in the current ETH-beta trade.

Derivatives Positioning

  • BTC and ETH annualized futures basis on the CME has surprisingly held steady near 7% despite the price rallies. That could be a sign of market maturity as cash and carry arbitrage narrows price discrepancies.
  • On off-shore exchanges, perpetual funding rates for BTC, ETH and most major tokens are hovering between annualized 10% and 14%, reflecting a bullish bias.
  • In the options market, BTC and ETH risk reversals show call bias. Block flows featured a short position in the $95K put expiring on May 15 and calendar spreads in May and June expiries.

Market Movements

  • BTC is up 1.19% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $102,725.44 (24hrs: +2.92%)
  • ETH is up 9.9% at $2,328.10 (24hrs: +20.03%)
  • CoinDesk 20 is up 4.59% at 3,116.42 (24hrs: +8.86%)
  • Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 15 bps at 3.04%
  • BTC funding rate is at 0.01% (10.95% annualized) on Binance

CD20 May 9 2025 (CoinDesk)

  • DXY is down 0.26% at 100.38
  • Gold is up 0.67% at $3,325.99/oz
  • Silver is up 0.45% at $32.60/oz
  • Nikkei 225 closed +1.56% at 37,503.33
  • Hang Seng closed +0.4% at 22,867.74
  • FTSE is up 0.48% at 8,572.92
  • Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.38% at 5,308.85
  • DJIA closed on Thursday +0.62% at 41,368.45
  • S&P 500 closed +0.58% at 5,663.94
  • Nasdaq closed +1.07% at 17,928.14
  • S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.37% at 25,254.06
  • S&P 40 Latin America closed +1.8% at 2,557.27
  • U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is unchanged at 4.38%
  • E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.11% at 5,690.75
  • E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.23% at 20,193.50
  • E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 41,445.00

Bitcoin Stats

  • BTC Dominance: 63.94 (-0.80%)
  • Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.2282 (6.79%)
  • Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 925 EH/s
  • Hashprice (spot): $55.50
  • Total Fees: 6.54 BTC / $655,033
  • CME Futures Open Interest: 149,545 BTC
  • BTC priced in gold: 31.3 oz
  • BTC vs gold market cap: 8.86%

Technical Analysis

BTC's dominance rate. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

  • BTC’s dominance rate, or the largest cryptocurrency’s share of the crypto market, might soon drop below a trendline, characterizing BTC outperformance relative to the broader market since December.
  • The breakdown will likely mean the onset of the altcoin season.

Crypto Equities

  • Strategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $414.38 (+5.58%), up 1.75% at $421.65 in pre-market
  • Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $206.5 (+5.06%), down 1.33% at $203.76
  • Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at $27.67 (+4.45%)
  • MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $14.29 (+7.2%), down 1.33% at $14.10
  • Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $8.44 (+7.65%), up 1.42% at $8.56
  • Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $9.45 (+6.18%), up 2.54% at $9.69
  • CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.68 (+8.09%), down 1.73% at $8.53
  • CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $15.53 (+6.44%)
  • Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $35.24 (+6.63%) , up 1.87% at $35.90
  • Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $42.49 (+6.2%), unchanged in pre-market

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

  • Daily net flows: $117.4 million
  • Cumulative net flows: $40.81 billion
  • Total BTC holdings ~ 1.17 million

Spot ETH ETFs

  • Daily net flows: -$16.1 million
  • Cumulative net flows: $2.47 billion
  • Total ETH holdings ~ 3.45 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Overnight flows, May 9 2025 (CoinDesk)

Chart of the Day

The MOVE Index. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

  • The MOVE index, which measures the expected volatility in the U.S. Treasury market that underpins global finance, has nearly reversed the late March to early April spike.
  • The decline supports increased risk-taking in financial markets, including cryptocurrencies.

While You Were Sleeping

In the Ether

ITE May 9 2025 (Scott Bessent/X)ITE May 9 2025 (Ryan Rasmussen/X)ITE May 9 2025 (Bitcoin For Corporations/X)ITE May 9 2025 (Bo Hines/X)ITE May 9 2025 (Santiment/X)

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Bitcoin Miner MARA Stock Surges Despite Earnings Miss as Analysts Applaud Cost Cutting

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2 часа ago

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9 мая, 2025

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Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings (MARA) stock outperformed peers on Friday, even after its first quarter results missed Wall Street’s estimates, as the company’s focus on lowering costs is seen as positive by analysts.

Jefferies analysts said that with the bitcoin BTC price improving in the second quarter of this year and MARA focusing on more sustainable energy sources such as solar and flared gas-driven data centers, power costs should come down in the coming quarters and help margins.

«MARA is expanding infrastructure at its 114 MW wind farm and has fully energized its 25 MW micro flared gas data center, both of which should drive down power costs,» said analyst Jonathan Petersen in a note.

If the mining firm continues to buy up more of such power sources, it would help the company’s profitability, Petersen wrote. «Continued acquisition of power assets is expected to further reduce energy costs, expand margins, and better prepare the firm for the next halving.» Peterson reiterated his hold rating on the stock, while raising the price target to $16 from $13.

Bitcoin mining, once a very profitable business, has seen its profit margins crash drastically during the last bear market and even more so after the recent halving that cut the rewards by half. To make matters worse, rising power costs for mining have continued to plague the margins.

This squeeze has forced most miners to diversify their business into other sources of revenue, including hosting artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers. MARA was among the few miners that didn’t jump into the AI sector right away, but rather focused on other avenues of diversification, such as transaction revenue services, mining pool, buying bitcoin in the open market and lowering power costs via green energy sources.

The last point about lower power cost seemed to have struck a chord with the market.

H.C. Wainwright analyst Kevin Dede said that this is what separates MARA from its mining peers: «Commentary last night made it clear the company remains focused on technology development in its core vertical of power conversion … with a peeled eye on driving energy costs to zero.»

«We rehash this here in distancing MARA’s strategy against mining competitors gently or forcefully migrating their mining businesses to address the rapidly evolving HPC opportunity,» he said.

Dede, who has a buy rating and price target of $28, also seemed to echo the sentiment that MARA will be able to lower costs by focusing on these types of power sources.

«Our opinion on that aside for now, we agree with MARA’s overarching objective to create opportunities by exploiting unused power or improving the efficiency of used power,» he said.

MARA’s shares rose as much as 9% on Friday, while the CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) has fallen about 0.3%.

Read more: MARA Holdings Cut to Sell at Compass Point Ahead of Earnings, Citing Cash Burn

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Trump Family Profited $320M on Memecoin Despite 87% Decline Since Day One

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2 часа ago

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9 мая, 2025

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U.S. President Donald Trump has come a long way since he said the value of crypto was “based on thin air” in 2019. So much so that he is now one of the sector’s largest proponents, foraying into memecoins, DeFi, NFTs, and even stablecoins.

A new report by the State Democracy Defenders Fund estimates that Trump’s family has increased their net worth by $2.9 billion thanks to crypto, and that now 40% of that net worth is being held in crypto assets.

His deepening ties to the industry have reverberated across the political landscape, to the point that a broadly bipartisan stablecoin bill failed in a key vote Thursday after Democrats expressed concern about the extent to which he is profiting off the sector.

Trump’s support helped spark a continued bull market after his election victory in November, a market that’s been dominated by two trends: memecoins and institutional adoption of bitcoin via ETFs. While the latter is the province of, generally, institutional investors and providers, it’s the memecoin business that puts retail investors at risk and is potentially ripe for exploitation.

On Thursday, Solidus Labs claimed that 98% of memecoins issued on the token creation platform pump.fun were rug pulls or pump-and-dump schemes. The platform has since refuted the report’s claims.

Another analysis by Chainalysis, cited by CNBC, suggested that the vast majority of TRUMP token holders lost money.

A memecoin is a type of crypto token with no inherent value, often based, as the name suggests, on a meme or cartoon character. Popular examples of this are dogecoin (DOGE), shiba inu (SHIB) and pepe (PEPE). The craze reached a climax in January when Trump touted his own TRUMP token on social media, followed by MELANIA— named after his wife.

TRUMP, which hit a day-one peak of $77.26, is now trading at $10.80, down a whopping 86%. MELANIA slumped even further, losing more than 97% of its value in four months to trade recently at 33 cents.

The hype around Trump’s social media post led to a flurry of trading activity. Data from Chainalysis reveals that 760,000 wallets, mainly belonging to retail investors, lost money on the TRUMP token.

A small group of people, however, was immune to those losses. The Chainanalysis data show 58 wallets made profits in excess of $10 million. The token’s creators netted a whopping $320 million in trading fees, although it’s worth noting that around 5% of the fees went to the decentralized exchange Meteora, which hosted the launch.

MELANIA was allegedly scooped up by a group of insiders before it was advertised on social media in a technique known as “sniping.” This group of insiders made $100 million on MELANIA tokens by swapping tokens for USDC after its price doubled, according to an investigation by the Financial Times.

One insider with access to the tokens before they went live was Kelsier Ventures’ Hayden Davis, who revealed his involvement during an interview in February. Davis was also the brains behind the botched LIBRA stablecoin that brought political chaos to Argentina.

In an interview with Coffeezilla in February, Davis said: “This is going to put me in a lot of danger. Which is fine, I’ll answer. I was a part of it [MELANIA]. I think the team did want to snipe it because of how big the snipe was on TRUMP. We definitely weren’t the big sniper, that was what we were trying to avoid. We didn’t take any liquidity out, zero.”

Trump’s crypto network

Trump’s foray into crypto isn’t limited to memecoins.

The U.S. president’s family is also behind World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that raised around $590 million across two pre-sale rounds earlier this year. It raised funds at a time when the market was resting around all-time highs, so that figure of raised crypto is now much less. Arkham Intelligence data suggests that World Liberty Financial holds around $103 million worth of crypto.

Trump also attempted to ride the coattails of non-fungible token (NFT) hype in 2022, releasing a series of cartoons depicting the president as a superhero or a cartoon character. Trump made around $8 million from rolling out these NFTs, according to financial disclosures.

Most recently, there was the crypto dinner event, which saw Trump host a group of 25 TRUMP holders to a private dinner and tour of his Virginia golf club. A Bloomberg report reveals that 19 of those 25 holders were either foreign entities or used an offshore exchange banned in the U.S.

He’s set to host another dinner for the top 220 holders of his token later in May. U.S. Senators Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass. called for Trump’s impeachment, asking the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate whether Trump violated federal ethics rules by inviting top investors.

The Trump family did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

Read more: Donald Trump Denies Claims of Profiting From TRUMP Token

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CoinDesk Weekly Recap: Even ETH Is Up

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2 часа ago

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9 мая, 2025

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It was a pretty positive week for crypto as prices rose, big deals were signed, and stablecoins continued to penetrate deep into the financial system. Even ETH, a perennial downer of late, rose sharply, reaching nearly $2300 at press time.

The CoinDesk 20, a barometer for the whole market, has risen 15%-plus since Monday.

Bitcoin was near ATH levels this week on the back of more positive “trade” news. Bearish positions were liquidated and ETF flows were up, Omkar Godbole reported.

ETH’s resurgence may have had something to do with its Pectra upgrade, which went off without a hitch (as Ethereum upgrades tend to). Pectra will make staking easier (and bigger) and boost efficiency. Margaux Nijkerk, our Ethereum reporter, had the news.

Coinbase signed the biggest acquisition in crypto history, a $2.9 billion deal for Deribit, a crypto options pioneer. Wall Street analysts said Coinbase is now a genuine player in derivatives, rivaling Binance.

Still, the deal couldn’t boost Coinbase’s stock price, which took a hit on tariff-affected Q1 earnings. Helene Braun wrote about that.

About those stablecoins… Meta (formerly Facebook) looks set to join the integration party; as does Stripe. But Senate Democrats are stalling the stablecoin bill, citing concerns about numerous questionable Trump crypto ventures. That delay could in turn affect the timetable for a more comprehensive “market structure” bill.

New Hampshire (“Live Free or Die”) signed the U.S.’s first state crypto reserve law. Many more are set to follow, Jesse Hamilton reported.

Meanwhile, Strike, which started as a bitcoin wallet, announced plans to get into bitcoin-based lending. Many expect the bitcoin credit market to expand from here.

This happened the same week, another bitcoin lender — disgraced Celsius Founder Alex Mashinsky — was sentenced to 12 years in prison for securities fraud related to the last cycle. Hopefully, bitcoin lending will work out better this time around.

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