OVERVIEW

XLM Loads The Squeeze Cannon 💥

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:

And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Shorts Cry Uncle: XLM’s Open Interest Pops Like Popcorn 🍿 

Stellar $XLM.X ( ▲ 13.41% ) is up nearly +12.5% today. Which is kind of an anomalous move compared to its peers. So, what’s happening?

This piece of on-chain analysis slices into Stellar’s futures/perps market, yanking apart six months of open-interest spikes and funding-rate whiplash to see who’s really driving the bus.

If you want to skip the nerd stuffs, there’s a TL;DR at the end of this section. 👎️ 

Open Interest 😯 

Open interest (OI) is the total number of open XLM futures/perps positions. In other words, OI is every unresolved long or short still on the board. 🧠 

Rising OI means traders are piling in, adding leverage and liquidity; falling OI means the crowd is cashing out and risk is evaporating. Pair OI with price and you see whether money is backing the move or bailing on it.

• Mid-Jan FOMO: Jan 15-16 OI +80% to $118M. Jan 19 OI back to $79M after leveraged longs ate pavement.

• Feb Crunch: OI sinks to $31M by Feb 26 - one-quarter of the peak. Longs nuked, shorts cash out, knife left unattended.

• Spring Chop: Mar-early Jun OI steady at $30-45M. Early May pop to $0.325 bumps OI 40% then fades.

• Jul 9 Pop: OI +38% to $63.3M, biggest build since Jan. Someone backed a dump truck of leverage into that candle.

Big, steady OI increases that track a trend suggest genuine conviction; blow-off vertical spikes often mark exhaustion. Collapsing OI on a decline can flag capitulation - the moment bears quit pressing and shorts start covering.

July’s surge tells us fresh leverage just entered, so sentiment is anything but complacent. Time to peek at funding… 👀 

Funding Rates (By Exchange) 💱

What are Funding Rates? In perpetual swaps, longs pay shorts when funding is positive, shorts pay longs when it’s negative. It’s the toll for siding with the crowd. Positive funding says bulls are dominant; negative says bears own the wheel.

• Cap-Locked Longs: Mar 24-25 and Apr 23-25 funding pinned at +0.0001 during the pump. Price stalls a few days later, leverage suffocates, longs face-plant.

• Shorts Max Fear: Feb 5 funding dives to -0.00109, Jun 5 to -0.00058. Triple-digit bps to stay short, both troughs spark snap rallies that torch them.

• Ping-Pong Funding: Traders pay up to chase every wiggle; long the pump, short the dump. Contrarians dine on the extremes.

• Jul 9 Fade: Price gaps +11 %, funding flips to -0.000334 in 24 h. Fresh shorts fade the breakout; either pros laying a trap or lemmings begging for a squeeze.

Excessive positive funding = too many longs; one downtick and those positions cascade. Excessive negative = too many shorts; one uptick and the squeeze is on.

So far in 2025, XLM funding extremes flagged local tops and bottoms within days. 🗓️ 

Total Funding Rates (Aggregated by Asset) 🌐

Roll every exchange together and the picture’s the same: funding mostly below zero during drawdowns, modestly positive on rallies, and sharply negative (-0.000319) on Jul 9. No outlier skew - the entire market got bearish into strength. 💪 

Conclusion - Bullish or Bearish Take? 🤔

Price just printed a higher high while futures traders leaned net short. Rallies that climb walls of worry tend to persist - the skeptics are involuntary fuel.

Funding lows in Feb, Apr, and Jun marked tradeable bottoms. July pairs the biggest OI build since Jan with another funding low - textbook ingredients for a face-melting squeeze.

June carved a higher low ($0.23), and so far, July punched a higher high ($0.296). Trend shift brewing. Add renewed OI and bearish funding - you’ve got upside potential that shorts may have to buy.

But don’t let the hopium blind you. The shorts could be right - maybe smart desks faded the pop? If price stalls back below $0.27 and funding stays negative, downside opens and longs get rinsed. 🚿 

My Take/TL;DR ⏩️ 

Odds favor a squeeze toward the $0.34-0.38 value area. 🪗 

Watch funding: if it climbs toward zero while price rises, shorts are covering and momentum can snowball. If funding snaps back positive while price stalls, party’s over. For now, data tilts bullish.🔥

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
Altcoins Beating BTC, ETH, and Stablecoins 🤯 

Keep and eye on the ticker in the thick, red box: TOTAL3ES. 👁️ 

The screenshot above shows four tickers:

1. TOTAL - total market cap

2. TOTAL2 - total market cap excluding Bitcoin

3. TOTAL3 - total market cap excluding Bitcoin and Ethereum

4. TOTAL3ES - total market cap excluding Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Stablecoins

Even though Bitcoin has hit new all-time highs, the aggregate altcoin market is outperforming the big guys:

If you wanted something that hints at a strengthening altcoin market, well, you’re looking at it. 👍️ 

STOCKTWITS RETAIL RADAR
Retail Sentiment Reset Supports Bitcoin’s Breakout ($BTC.X) 🧐 

Bitcoin broke out to fresh all-time highs today, begging the question of whether this is the real deal or a fakeout. Stocktwits Sentiment and Message Volume suggest there’s room to run, and platform chatter shows retail sticking with the trade.

When prices become extended and one side of the trade becomes too crowded, it can be difficult for a trend to sustain itself in the short term. The last two times Bitcoin peaked above $100,000 (February and May), Stocktwits Sentiment and Message Volume were in “extreme territory,” leaving little room for the next marginal buyer. 😬 

When Bitcoin reached $110,000 in May, it had already experienced a 50% rally off its April lows in just six weeks, making it difficult for bulls to get on board. Now, with prices resetting at this higher range, it’s clear to buyers they won’t be getting a bargain at lower levels. This clean technical setup gives them the confidence that they’re buying a fresh breakout rather than chasing a long-in-the-tooth rally. Sentiment moving into ‘Bullish’ territory today quantifies their enthusiasm. 👍️ 

From both a sentiment and technical perspective, the recent reset is being viewed by traders as a healthy development. Today’s breakout to new highs and strength in the altcoin market suggest risk appetite remains strong and that the Stocktwits community is looking for the next leg of Bitcoin’s rally to begin. 📈 

Add $BTC.X to your watchlist to monitor this development. More importantly, to source these sentiment insights yourself, subscribe to Stocktwits Edge to unlock all the historical sentiment data for equities and crypto. 🔓️ 

*This real-time Stocktwits Sentiment use-case example was curated by Stocktwits’ Editor-in-Chief, Tom Bruni, and is solely for informational and educational purposes. Tom does not hold any positions in Bitcoin as of the time of publishing. For any questions or comments, please email tbruni[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

CRIME
OmegaPro’s 300% Pipe Dream Just Met A Federal Reality Check 🚨

Federal prosecutors just shredded OmegaPro’s “300 % returns” fantasy, unsealing an indictment that pegs the MLM-styled forex-crypto scheme at a $650 million haul. 🤏

Two alleged ringleaders, Michael Sims and Juan Carlos Reynoso, now stare down wire-fraud and money-laundering counts carrying up to 20 years each.

Key Numbers 🔢 

• $650M raised; 300% promised in 16 months; zero withdrawals.

• Tens of thousands of victims worldwide; founders skimmed millions for Lambos and luxury junkets.

• Two felony conspiracies filed in Puerto Rico; 20-year max per count.

Since 2019, Sims and Reynoso blasted the OmegaPro logo onto Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and toured hotel ballrooms from Latin America to Puerto Rico. They hawked crypto-funded “investment packages” allegedly run by elite forex traders promising triple-digit gains.

Cash instead funneled to insider wallets until a phantom 2023 “hack” iced withdrawals.

FBI, IRS-CI, and Homeland Security traced the coins through mixers and shell firms, with the five-nation J5 tax-fraud squad sweeping up evidence on four continents. DoJ dropped the indictment July 8; arrests are pending while asset-seizure paperwork stacks up.💡

NEWS
Leakapalooza: Pump.fun’s $600 Million Token Sale Date Isn’t A Secret Anymore 🚀 

Two “oops” posts (Gate.io first, Bybit Ukraine next) both spilled some numbers and data about an upcoming Pump.fun token sale.

The Fine Print 

• Date: July 12 kickoff, wraps July 15

• Tokens on offer: 150B (15% of 1T)

• Price: $0.004 each

• Raise target: $600M

• Implied FDV: $4B

• Max ticket: $500K

• Accepted coins: USDT, USDC, SOL, bbSOL

• Exchanges: Bybit + “others” (Gate.io still pretending it never clicked publish)

Pump.fun has already banked roughly $700 million in fees since January, yet still wants another $600 million from retail instead of an airdrop.

Market share has slid 80% while newer meme-machinists like LetsBonk wolfed down the volume. Even Bybit’s own spokesperson kept mum on who else is game enough to host.

Also: not a rumor anymore, the official pump.fun X account confirmed the ICO.

Pump.fun’s token firehose arrives Saturday. 🤷

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵️

🤖 DeXe + AgentBound Tokens = Reputation on a Ledger

Tomer J. Chaffer’s “ABTs” treat trust like collateral: AI agents stake non-transferable tokens that auto-update with performance data and get slashed for bad behavior. DeXe’s modular DAO stack (non-linear voting, validator layer, incentive loops) already supports that skin-in-the-game model - so go wire your bots to earn, not burn. DeXe.

🕵️ Internet Computer Activates vetKeys - Privacy Switch Flipped

Niobium milestone lets canisters derive user-encrypted keys via threshold cryptography: identity-based encryption, timelocks, BLS signatures, VRF randomness; all on-chain, no off-chain key servers. Translation: build private chat, sealed-bid auctions, or DKMS straight from Motoko. Internet Computer Protocol.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Real World Asset Tokenization (RWA) News 🪙

🚀 Avalanche Courts the Suits

If legacy middleware makes you sob, spin up an AvaCloud chain and ship. Execs crave tech that slashes costs and cycles; Avalanche pitches bespoke L1s, sub-second finality, and a DMV pilot that digitized 42 M titles. Add AutoPen’s remote notarization and Citi’s tokenized-assets sandbox and the subtext is clear: everyone wants in. Avalanche.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Metaverse, NFT, & Gaming News 🎮️

🌎 Ammo Content Cuts the Cord with Storj

10,000 hours, 110 countries, 50M+ watch-hours a month. After dumping legacy clouds for Storj’s distributed storage, download fails vanished and egress bills shrank: proof that decentralized buckets beat single-region silos when you’re slinging AVOD to the planet. Storj.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, & Lending Protocol News 🏦

💎 Mantle Rewards Station, Season 3

Lock $MNT, earn “MNT Power,” split a 1.2 M-token pot from July 8 → Oct 6. Longer locks = bigger multipliers, and the dashboard now separates ongoing, claimable, and past events so your spreadsheets can breathe. Mantle.

🟧 tBTC Lands on Sui - $500M in BTC Liquidity Goes Warp Speed

Threshold’s trust-minimized BTC wrapper mints natively on Sui (first non-EVM chain to do so). Instant routes to Bluefin, Bucket, AlphaLend, AlphaFi, all under 400ms finality. BTCfi on Sui now owns >10 % of chain TVLand the faucet just doubled. Sui.

🔍 Zcash’s Electric Coin Co. Transparency Report (Q4 2024)

ECC’s dev-fund tap closed Nov 2024: avg inflow $293 K/mo vs. $375 K burn; holding 67 K ZEC + $1 M cash (as of June 25 2025). Sold some Agoric BLD and Starknet STRK to pad runway; still owes $3.3 M note to Electric Notes LLC. Future funding: grants only, reporting “periodic.” Zcash.

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

🪵 Cathie Wood, who dumped surging stock, calls it crypto’s ‘ChatGPT moment’

🟢 Circle taps OKX to boost USDC liquidity with direct dollar ramps for over 60 million exchange users

😡 Suspected exploit hits GMX exchange: Over $42M drained from vaults - DeBank Reports

🪙 Emirates to accept Bitcoin and crypto payments rhrough crypto.com by 2025

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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in ADA, IMX, COPI, MIN, AGIX, ALGO, ZEC, XLM, and NEAR. 📋