Bitcoin Dips, Penguins Party & Hackers Keep It Spicy – Crypto Drama Unfolds! 🐧💰

by

Markets

What to know:

  • Bitcoin took a little stumble from its overnight ego-boost above $116,000 to a humbler sub-$115,000 playground as the Dollar Index just stands there, unmoved and unimpressed.
  • Optimists (bless them) are still convinced Bitcoin’s got new all-time highs in its crystal ball, with tokens like HYPE, SOL & ENA playing the hype squad cheerleaders.
  • Meanwhile, tiny underdog tokens MYX, HASH, PENGU, PUMP, and MNT decided to throw a double-digit price party this week. 🎉 Double digits? Yes please.

Bitcoin decided it’s not quite ready for the big leagues just yet, pulling back from the stratosphere of $116,000-ish to a “meh” sub-$115,000 as the Dollar Index (DXY) just sips its tea, unaffected by whispers of a Fed rate cut. Drama much?

The financial soothsayers remain delightfully optimistic, predicting BTC will throw a tantrum and fly to new heights, dragging HYPE, SOL, and ENA along for the wild ride.

Of course, the spotlight’s already darted onto the scrappy underdogs-MYX, HASH, PENGU, PUMP, and MNT-who’ve all decided to strut some serious double-digit gains. Go small or go home, right?

“The CPI + jobs combo created a classic “good news/bad data” trade: inflation prints higher, but weaker labor data preserves the easing narrative, a net positive for crypto in the near term,” said Timothy Misir, head of research at BRN, probably while sharpening his crystal ball.

Derivatives Positioning

  • Open interest in futures on the top 10 cryptos got a cheeky 3%-5% bump in 24 hours, as Fed rate cut gossip has traders throwing caution (and maybe their money) to the wind.
  • Despite the partying, the market hasn’t gone full bubble yet-perpetual funding rates hover nicely around 10%. Chill vibes. High rates? That’s froth-and no one likes froth unless it’s on their latte.
  • PENGU, the week’s unofficial mascot of “Look at me!”, hit a record-breaking open interest of 7.78 billion coins. Its funding rate’s a modest 15%, showing it’s slightly extra but not crazy. 🐧
  • Tokens like SKY and PYTH are playing the pessimists, sporting negative funding rates because, well, somebody’s gotta be the Debbie Downer.
  • CME’s bitcoin futures finally got off their couch and rose after sulking for weeks, while ether’s futures took a nap, dropping to a one-month low of 1.78 million ETH. Could this be BTC begging for the spotlight again? Drama, always.
  • On Deribit, BTC and ETH options are basically betting on a December tantrum, even though traders are pricing in about five U.S. interest-rate cuts by next July. Optimism? Pessimism? Yes.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight (because someone had to)

  • One founder of Thorchain, the blockchain’s version of a Swiss Army knife for asset mixing, got hoodwinked by a deepfake Zoom call and hacked. Classic 2025 drama.
  • “Ok so this attack finally manifested itself. Had an old metamask cleaned out,” JPThor lamented on X, a.k.a. Twitter but more existentially tragic.
  • Peckshield confirmed a cool $1.2 million was snatched from a Thorchain user, and ZachXBT whispers the culprit is probably a North Korean hacker. Is anyone surprised? Nope.
  • Thorchain’s apparently North Korea’s preferred laundering tool of choice (charming), with researchers estimating it helped siphon off 80% of $1.4 billion stolen from Bybit earlier this year. Yikes.
  • RUNE, Thorchain’s token, now trades around $1.28 – that’s a 14% nosedive just this month and more than 90% off from its March 2024 glory days at $12.95. Sad trombone.
  • The hack was the evil lovechild of social engineering and phishing-those pesky reasons hackers are still winning, having scooped a casual $2.5 billion in 2025’s first half alone.

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2025-09-12 15:56