This is an excerpt from CoinDesk’s newsletter “Daybook.” If you haven’t registered yet, please register here.
Bitcoin Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL) and other top 10 currencies have had a difficult time recently, with all falling by at least 2% in the past 7 days. Still, there will always be a bull market somewhere, and several cryptocurrency subsectors have posted impressive gains.
Tokens related to derivatives protocols, particularly those focused on perpetual futures such as HYPE and LIT, have surged by 40% or more.
Hype has been building since Hyperliquid blockchain-based trading interface Trade.xyz listed Space pre-IPO perpetual contracts on Monday, valuing the company at $1.78 trillion. The trading volume of the contract exceeded US$30 million on the first day. According to data source DefiLlama, the protocol continues to earn millions of dollars in fee revenue every week, accounting for more than 40% of the total market fee revenue.
It’s not just super liquids; investors are trading in other venues as well. According to data from CoinGecko, the average monthly trading volume of perpetual futures contracts on the top 12 decentralized exchanges has increased from $532 billion in 2025 to $612 billion in 2026.
Privacy and quantum-resistant coins such as Zcash (ZEC), Quantum Resistant Ledger’s QRL, Qubitcoin’s QTC and Starknet’s STRK are also climbing, with gains between 6% and 25%.
Data shows that investors are willing to ignore macro and geopolitical issues and deploy capital, but only to tokens with strong use cases and narratives.
Privacy is the focus of the season, with fund managers like Arthur Hayes saying it’s a basic necessity as advanced artificial intelligence, big tech companies and government surveillance rapidly erode privacy. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin on Wednesday outlined the steps being taken to bring privacy features to Ethereum, the world’s largest smart contract blockchain.
As for quantum risks, Google researchers have warned that, in theory, a sufficiently powerful quantum machine could attack large-scale blockchains like Bitcoin with far fewer resources than previously estimated.
Bitcoin itself is struggling to recoup its losses over the past seven days and is currently trading around $77,300.
Analysts at Marex said the “final stages” of talks between the United States and Iran were more subdued, “relieving some inflationary pressures and giving risk assets room to rebound”.
However, they said this was less like a complete resumption of the bull trend and more like a reprieve for a market still constrained by interest rates.
In traditional markets, NVDA closed flat on Wednesday despite a blowout quarterly earnings report, while oil prices fell to $98 a barrel. Stay alert!
Read more: For analysis of today’s altcoin and derivatives activity, see Today’s Cryptocurrency Market. For a complete list of this week’s events, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
what is trend
today’s signal
The price of Ethereum has fallen below the trendline connecting the March and April lows. This trend line represents a recovery bounce.
Therefore, this breakout signals that the price rally is over and could trigger more selling pressure from momentum traders, which could lead to further price declines.
Prices moved higher from the lows of $1,937 in late March, which is now a key support level. In the event of a violation, the price will be less than $1,800.
