TL;DR

• Sui reportedly handled around $65 billion in stablecoin transfers in a five-day stretch after its gasless stablecoin update.
• The update reduces friction by allowing supported stablecoin transfers without requiring users to hold SUI for gas.
• The headline number is large, but zero-fee systems can attract bots, arbitrage loops, and repeated high-velocity transfers.
• The market takeaway is less about instant retail adoption and more about whether Sui can turn throughput into sticky liquidity.

Sui has become the latest layer-1 network to post a headline-grabbing stablecoin activity figure after a protocol-level fee change removed a common source of friction for users. According to the June 16 evening source packet, the network processed roughly $65 billion in stablecoin transfers in the five-day period following June 10, after Mysten Labs enabled gasless transfer operations for supported stablecoins in May.

The supported assets listed in the handoff include USDC, USDsui, suiUSDe, USDY, FDUSD, AUSD, and USDB. The simple idea behind the update is that stablecoin transfers should not require a user to first hold the network’s native token just to pay gas. For wallets, payments, and low-margin settlement use cases, that matters. A user or application can move a stablecoin directly without first solving the separate “where do I get gas?” problem.

Gasless Transfers Give Sui A Cleaner Stablecoin Pitch

The pitch is easy to understand. Stablecoins are most useful when they behave like money, and money becomes less useful when every transfer requires a separate fee asset. By removing that fee requirement for selected stablecoin transfers, Sui is trying to make the network feel closer to a payments rail than a trading-only chain.

That is why the $65 billion figure is worth watching even if it should not be treated as a pure adoption number. High transfer volume can show capacity and demand for cheap movement, but it can also be inflated by automated strategies. Zero-fee transfers are especially attractive to arbitrage bots, market makers, and high-frequency programs that can move assets many times without the normal cost filter.

The Important Caveat For Traders

The risk is that the market reads the volume as evidence of a sudden retail wave. That would be too generous. The better interpretation is that Sui has created conditions where stablecoin movement can scale quickly, and now the question is whether that activity converts into deeper liquidity, more applications, and durable user demand.

For SUI traders, the setup is still useful. Stablecoin velocity can become a narrative driver when markets are looking for layer-1 ecosystems with real transaction activity. But the useful test from here is not just the next five-day volume number. It is whether balances, application usage, and settlement demand remain elevated once the first burst of gasless activity is behind the network.

What To Watch Next

The next useful signal will be whether the activity shows up in more than raw transfer count. Traders should watch stablecoin balances, application-level demand, bridge flows, and whether Sui-based DeFi protocols see deeper liquidity. If the network keeps the transfer numbers high while balances and app usage also rise, the gasless update becomes a stronger adoption story. If the volume fades or remains concentrated in repeated transfers between the same actors, the market may treat it as a technical throughput headline rather than a durable growth signal.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

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Bitcoin’s drop toward $60,000 last week exposed how quickly a shift in investor appetite can turn into forced selling when leverage has been rebuilt beneath the surface of the crypto market.

The largest cryptocurrency by market value fell nearly 14% last week, triggering almost $10 billion in liquidations of long futures as traders who had bet on higher prices were pushed out of the market.

Bitcoin later recovered to about $63,000, but the rebound did little to settle the debate over what caused one of the year’s sharpest sell-offs.

Market commentary from Charles Schwab and NYDIG points to a broader explanation. Capital has been rotating toward artificial intelligence, private technology deals, and other high-growth trades at the same time that futures positioning in Bitcoin has become more crowded.

AI becomes the rival trade to Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s latest weakness has unfolded as investors reassess where the strongest speculative returns are coming from.

In a note shared with CryptoSlate, Jim Ferraioli, head of crypto research and strategy at Charles Schwab, said crypto investors have repeatedly shifted toward the market’s dominant momentum trade.

That pattern has played out across precious metals, oil futures during the Iran conflict, memory stocks, and private investment vehicles linked to future IPOs.

In recent months, artificial intelligence has taken that role.

The scale of spending tied to AI has drawn capital across listed equities, data-center infrastructure, and private markets. For investors who once used Bitcoin as a primary way to express a high-growth technology view, AI has become a direct competitor for attention and liquidity.

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor pointed to that pressure last week after Bitcoin’s decline. He said about $400 billion had flowed into AI infrastructure over the past six months, while US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs had seen roughly $4 billion in outflows since mid-May.

The contrast underlined the challenge facing Bitcoin. The top crypto is no longer competing only with gold, other digital assets, or macro trades. It is being measured against an AI cycle that has become the main growth story across financial markets.

Greg Cipolaro, global head of research at NYDIG, also identified AI as one of several forces weighing on Bitcoin and the broader crypto market.

His argument centered on the overlap between the two investor bases. According to him, both sectors appeal to investors seeking exposure to emerging technologies, large markets, and high return potential.

As AI-linked stocks have continued to outperform, capital has moved toward the stronger trade.

That shift is also visible in private markets. Investors are already positioning for a potential wave of major technology listings, with companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic viewed as eventual public-market candidates.

These large offerings can prompt institutions to raise cash or reduce existing positions before committing to new allocations.

For Bitcoin, the result is weaker marginal demand at a difficult point in the cycle. The network’s adoption story has not clearly broken down, but price action has softened as investors compare crypto with a technology trade that currently offers stronger momentum.

Leverage turns rotation into liquidation

Meanwhile, the retreat from Bitcoin became more severe because traders had rebuilt risk in derivatives markets before the selloff began.

Ferraioli said the move reflected a market where leverage had returned, even if positioning was still below the excesses seen in earlier periods. He noted that futures open interest had dropped to about $31 billion in February after reaching a high of roughly $70 billion. By May, it had recovered to about $51 billion.

That recovery showed traders had moved back into leveraged exposure as Bitcoin regained ground. Once the market turned lower, those positions became a source of pressure.

According to him, almost $10 billion in long futures positions were liquidated last week as prices fell, forcing traders who had bet on further gains to close out. The decline in open interest during the selloff suggested that exposure was being removed from the market rather than replaced with fresh positions.

Funding rates also moved back toward negative territory, showing that the long bias that had built up during the recovery had started to unwind. Ferraioli said liquidations relative to overall open interest pointed to a moderate forced reduction in positioning.

That helped explain why Bitcoin’s decline accelerated. The rotation toward AI-linked assets, ETF outflows, and hedge fund selling weakened demand. Then, BTC traders’ derivatives positioning magnified the pressure once prices began moving lower.

In a leveraged market, selling can become automatic. Traders facing margin pressure are forced out of positions regardless of whether they still believe in the longer-term Bitcoin thesis. That process can push prices lower until enough exposure has been cleared.

The shift also showed how quickly Bitcoin’s support structure changed. ETF inflows and improving sentiment had helped the market earlier in the year. By late May, those flows had weakened while futures exposure had expanded.

Ferraioli noted that hedge funds were the main source of selling after Bitcoin peaked in early May. That pullback also aligned with the drop in futures open interest.

By May 31, hedge funds had cut their share of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, to about 19% from around 29%. Investment advisers moved the other way and added exposure during the decline, while retail brokerage accounts also reduced holdings.

The split pointed to a market where longer-term allocators were willing to buy weakness, while more tactical investors moved to reduce risk as momentum broke down.

A flush, Not Yet a Bottom

In view of the above, Ferraioli said the latest price action points to a market clearing out leverage rather than adding a new wave of speculative exposure.

According to him, the market signals are moving in the same direction. Open interest has declined, liquidations have surged, and funding rates have slipped toward negative territory.

Together, those measures suggest traders have been cutting long exposure after positioning became stretched during Bitcoin’s rebound from February levels.

That still leaves the market short of a confirmed bottom as forced liquidations can happen near the end of a selloff, but they can also appear in the middle of a broader decline. However, they do not prove that selling pressure has been exhausted on their own.

Ferraioli said liquidations need to be read alongside open interest and funding rates. A more constructive setup would require open interest to stop falling, funding to stabilize, and forced selling to fade.

If leverage builds again before spot demand recovers, the market could remain exposed to another round of pressure.

Meanwhile, some technical and cost-based levels suggest the BTC decline may be nearing an exhaustion zone.

Ferraioli noted that Bitcoin has returned to areas around its February lows, efficient miner production costs, and the 200-week moving average. Traders often watch those levels for signs that distress selling is slowing and longer-term buyers are beginning to reappear.

The question is whether those support levels can compete with the broader rotation into AI and private technology. Bitcoin’s recovery to about $63,000 showed demand had returned after the liquidation wave, but weaker ETF flows and hedge fund selling continue to weigh on the market.

The next stage will depend on whether fresh capital moves back into crypto. If AI-linked equities, infrastructure deals, and expected technology listings continue to attract the marginal dollar, Bitcoin may struggle to regain momentum even after a major leverage reset.

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Crypto traders have turned Elon Musk’s expected SpaceX listing into a round-the-clock proxy market, pushing more than $1 billion through SpaceX-linked perpetual futures in the last three days as investors try to front-run one of the largest public offerings in Wall Street history.

The shift comes as retail investors face limited allocations in a heavily oversubscribed offering and look for other ways to gain exposure.

It also arrives with a warning from market history as some of the most celebrated technology listings of the past decade opened to enormous demand, only to punish early buyers with steep first-year losses before settling into longer-term trading patterns.

Crypto becomes the early trading floor

Before SpaceX shares begin trading on a traditional exchange, crypto venues have become the closest thing to a live market for the company’s expected public debut.

The SPCX perpetual future, a synthetic contract linked to SpaceX’s pre-IPO valuation, has drawn more than $1 billion in trading volume over the past 72 hours, CoinGlass data show. Since May 30, cumulative volume across participating platforms has exceeded $2.6 billion, with open interest around $363 million.

Unlike ordinary equity options, perpetual futures have no expiration date. Traders can hold positions indefinitely, but they must manage funding payments and the risk of liquidation if prices move sharply against them.

That structure makes the market especially attractive to crypto traders accustomed to high leverage and continuous price movement.

Hyperliquid helped pioneer the SPCX contract, but activity has since spread beyond decentralized finance. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, now accounts for a large share of the market, showing how quickly a synthetic product can become a major venue for price discovery before the underlying stock exists in public markets.

Meanwhile, the market is attracting bullish bets. Arkham Intelligence said one trader using the handle “wenyu8888888” had placed a $5.7 million, 2x short on SPCX, describing it as the largest SpaceX short it had tracked.

The position highlights how the synthetic market has also become a venue for traders willing to bet that the IPO premium will fade once public trading begins. It also shows how quickly a single leveraged account can become part of the broader spectacle around the listing.

For traders shut out of the official bookbuild, the contract offers a way to express a view on SpaceX before the opening bell.

For market watchers, it offers something Wall Street’s formal IPO process does not: a continuously moving price backed by real capital, leverage, and liquidation risk.

That makes the SPCX market a rough but useful gauge of speculative appetite, as it shows where traders willing to take immediate financial risk believe the stock could trade once public markets get their first chance to price it.

However, it does not grant ownership in SpaceX, voting rights, or any claim on shares.

The premium is still there, but smaller

The futures market continues to suggest that traders expect SpaceX to open above its reported IPO price.

The company’s offering has been priced at $135 a share, giving SpaceX an expected valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion to $1.8 trillion. At about $162, the SPCX contract implies a premium of roughly 17% to the listing price.

While that represents a meaningful gap, it is also a sharp reset from the early days of the contract, when speculative buying drove prices above $220 and, at one point, near $230.

At those levels, traders were pricing in a far larger first-day jump and treating SpaceX as a scarcity asset before its stock became widely available.

The compression in that premium is important because it shows the market has become more selective even as headline demand remains enormous.

Underwriters have drawn hundreds of billions of dollars in investor interest for a planned $75 billion raise, making the deal several times oversubscribed.

In many IPOs, that kind of demand would allow bankers to lift the final price range before shares begin trading. SpaceX’s fixed-price structure leaves less room for that adjustment, forcing investors to accept the $135 price or walk away.

Retail demand has added another layer of pressure. SpaceX reserved a larger-than-usual portion of the offering for individual investors, but the scale of demand means many buyers are likely to receive only part of what they requested.

Some of that frustrated demand appears to be spilling into synthetic markets, where traders can build exposure immediately but take on risks that differ markedly from those of owning common stock.

IPO history gives buyers reason to pause

The rush for SpaceX exposure is running into a warning from the recent history of major technology listings: even strong companies can deliver painful early returns when investors buy at aggressive valuations.

Charlie Bilello, chief market strategist at Creative Planning, has argued that one common mistake investors make during high-profile listings is treating a great business as a great investment at any price.

His analysis of major IPOs shows that the median offering loses 31% in its first year and suffers a peak-to-trough drawdown of 53% along the way.

That point has become more relevant as some investors compare SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic with the early public-market days of Amazon, Google, and Meta. They argue that buying the next generation of dominant technology companies at IPO could resemble buying the last generation of internet giants before they became some of the most valuable businesses in the world.

However, Jim Chanos, the veteran short seller, rejected that comparison and argued that the valuation gap is too large to ignore.

According to him, Amazon went public in 1997 at a valuation of about $450 million, or roughly three times revenue. Google was listed in 2004 at about $23 billion and roughly seven times revenue. Meta debuted in 2012 at a valuation of about $104 billion and around 20 times revenue, then sold off sharply after listing.

Chanos argues that SpaceX is starting from a valuation that already dwarfs those early public-market entry points, leaving less room for investors to benefit from multiple expansion if growth falls short of the market’s most aggressive expectations.

He also pointed to Uber as a cautionary example of how large addressable-market forecasts can fail to translate directly into public-market value. Uber pitched a total addressable market of more than $12 trillion when it went public in 2019. Its market capitalization is now about $150 billion, a little over 1% of that projected opportunity.

Using a similar approach, Chanos argued, would imply a much lower value for SpaceX than the roughly $2 trillion level now being discussed by the market.

Thierry Borgeat, co-founder of the financial research firm Arvy, reached a similar conclusion after tracking the post-listing performance of prominent technology and growth companies over the past decade.

According to him, the record shows that first-year volatility has been the rule, even for companies that later became major market winners.

For context, Facebook fell 54% from its first-year high before recovering. Snap, Uber, Pinterest, Lyft, Rivian, and Robinhood suffered even deeper drawdowns, with declines ranging from 56% to 90% during their first year as public companies.

According to Borgeat, the pattern was not confined to broken listings. Zoom Video Communications finished its first year up 142%, but only after enduring a 40% drawdown. Palantir Technologies closed its first public year up 153%, while still forcing early holders through a 53% decline before the rebound took hold.

Additionally, CrowdStrike, Datadog, and MongoDB also ended their first year in positive territory, but each experienced sharp interim declines.

The lesson from those listings is that early demand can lift a stock on debut without preventing a severe reset once the market begins testing valuation, growth assumptions, and investor patience.

That history complicates the current SpaceX trade. Crypto derivatives still suggest traders expect the company to open above its IPO price.

However, they offer a weaker guide to what happens after the first burst of demand is filled and public-market investors begin deciding whether a valuation near $1.8 trillion leaves enough room for error.

Regulatory scrutiny follows SpaceX’s IPO

Meanwhile, the scale of the listing has drawn scrutiny in Washington, where Sen. Elizabeth Warren has urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to delay the offering until regulators address risks to retail investors and market structure.

Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, warned SEC Chair Paul Atkins that a SpaceX listing of this size could create unusual risks for public markets. Her concerns focus on valuation, shareholder rights, and the company’s governance structure.

The letter argued that public investors could be exposed to a company in which control remains heavily concentrated among Musk and insiders.

According to the lawmaker, supervoting shares, mandatory arbitration provisions, and Texas corporate law could limit outside shareholders’ ability to challenge management decisions or seek legal remedies in disputes.

Warren also raised concerns about passive investors. At a valuation near $1.8 trillion, SpaceX would likely become a major component of market indexes after listing. That could force millions of investors in index funds and retirement accounts to gain exposure to the company even if they never chose to buy SpaceX directly.

In view of this, Warren stated:

“These are not normal circumstances: a number of additional factors exacerbate concerns and require action by the SEC to meet its investor protection and market integrity mandates by delaying the [SpaceX] IPO.”

The warning adds a political layer to an offering already defined by unusual scale and retail attention. It does not mean the IPO will be delayed. Registration materials have moved through the SEC process, and underwriters are preparing for a debut that could become one of the most closely watched market events in years.

However, Warren’s intervention gives skeptics a clear framework for questioning the deal. The concerns are no longer limited to whether SpaceX opens higher than $135.

They now extend to whether ordinary investors understand the legal, governance, and valuation risks embedded in the offering.

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