Silver is now in the headlines at Hyperliquid, highlighting a subtle shift in how crypto derivatives platforms are used as Bitcoin struggles to find its direction.
The SILVER-USDC contract has become one of the most active hyperliquid markets, trading around $110 during Asian business hours and posting around $994 million in 24-hour volume.
Open interest sits at nearly $154.5 million, while funding remains slightly negative, indicating significant turnover and two-way positioning rather than a leveraged one-way bet. For a crypto-native market built around perpetual values, this combination looks more like a market focused on volatility and hedging than a speculative market.
What stands out is not just the price of silver, but its importance: Silver is just behind the BTC and ETH pairs in volume, according to CoinGecko data, and ahead of SOL and XRP.
When a commodities contract competes in volume with major crypto assets on a decentralized exchange, it suggests that traders are using crypto infrastructure to express opinions that bitcoin and ether no longer effectively capture. In other words, crypto plumbing is repurposed for macro trades.
This backdrop helps explain why bitcoin itself remains stuck. Data from Glassnode shows that BTC is stuck in what it describes as a defensive equilibrium. The cumulative spot volume delta has become sharply negative, indicating that sellers are reaching their bids during rallies.
ETF flows have cooled, removing a key source of additional demand. In the derivatives industry, open interest rates have softened, funding is uneven, and options bias has increased, signaling a growing demand for downside protection rather than conviction in gains.
The result is a market where Bitcoin absorbs pressure without collapsing, but also fails to trend. Price stability near $88,000 masks a lack of aggressive buyers and a reluctance to deploy leverage. ETH’s relative underperformance reinforces the message. Risk appetite is not moving down the curve.
Bitcoin is not abandoned. It’s just pushed aside. And the rise of money trading on Hyperliquid is one of the clearest signs yet of the current scale of uncertainty.
Market movement
BTC: Bitcoin is hovering around $88,000, trading sideways as persistent selling pressure and cautious positioning ceiling recovers despite no panic selling.
ETFs: Ether is trading around $2,300, down for the week and lagging Bitcoin as leverage and risk appetite remain subdued.
Gold: Gold is extending its breakout, up about 15% in the past 30 days and more than 50% over six months, reinforcing the same macroeconomic stress appearing on silver as capital gravitates toward hard assets rather than crypto beta.
Nikkei 225: Japan’s Nikkei 225 index was mostly flat in Asia, although South Korean auto stocks swung sharply on new U.S. tariff threats, with regional markets mixed and chip-led gains in Seoul and Australia offsetting weakness in China.
