Papertrade has officially gone live, with 11,465 addresses depositing a total of $138 million.

Bitmine, an Ethereum treasury firm’s Chairman Tom Lee recently stated that Ethereum is poised to rally to between $25,000 and $50,000 in the current cycle. He noted that ETH has traded in a similar range over the past five years, and its ongoing consolidation may lay the foundation for a larger breakout down the line. Tom Lee also projected ETH’s price will surpass $5,000 by year-end, adding that if Bitcoin climbs above $100,000, ETH could hit roughly $7,500.

According to official website data, Papertrade recorded over $80 billion in cumulative notional trading volume within its first hour of launch. BlockBeats analyzed that the platform’s early trading frenzy may be tied to its unique mechanism. Per its official documentation, the issuance model of Papertrade’s native token PAPER works as follows: for every $1 a platform user loses, the protocol mints a certain amount of PAPER on a curve. When the protocol’s LP balance is below $2 million, the minting rate is fixed at 100 PAPER per $1 in losses; now that the LP pool size exceeds $2 million, PAPER token emissions have entered a decay phase. Likely driven by the above-mentioned "trading losses for tokens" mechanism, data shows that users on the platform have accumulated $4.73 million in total trading losses. Papertrade is a fully on-chain synthetic perpetual trading platform deployed on HyperEVM, which pulls prices from the BBO mid-price of Hyperliquid’s order book. Users trade directly against the protocol’s LP as counterparty, rather than via traditional order book matching. The protocol’s key selling points include high leverage, zero slippage, and no funding fees.

According to Goldman Sachs data, investor bullish sentiment toward large-cap tech stocks has reached an all-time high. Hedge funds’ total net exposure to the U.S. Magnificent 7 tech stocks has risen to 22%, a record high. This figure has surged by 7 percentage points since July, marking the largest three-month increase since 2023, and breaking the previous peak of 21% set in June 2024 (compared to just 8% during the 2022 bear market low). Meanwhile, hedge funds’ total net exposure to U.S. semiconductor stocks has climbed to 12%, only slightly below the 14% peak reached in June 2026, while this metric stood at just 2% at the start of 2025. Current market demand for tech stocks is extremely strong. (The Kobeissi Letter)

According to official data, Papertrade recorded a cumulative trading volume of $39.9 billion in its first 30 minutes post-launch. The platform’s contract open interest also dropped sharply, with Bitcoin and Ethereum contract positions standing at $1.27 billion and $890 million respectively. The initial trading boom may be linked to its project mechanism: per official documentation, PaperTrade’s native token PAPER is minted via a model where the protocol mints a set amount of PAPER on a curve for every $1 a platform user loses. When the LP balance is below $2 million, the minting ratio is fixed at 100 PAPER per $1 of losses; once the LP scale exceeded $2 million, PAPER token emissions entered a decay phase. Papertrade is a fully on-chain synthetic perpetual trading platform built on HyperEVM, which pulls prices from the Best Bid Offer (BBO) mid-price of the Hyperliquid order book. Users trade directly against the protocol’s liquidity provider (LP) as counterparty, rather than through traditional order book matching. The protocol’s key features include high leverage, zero slippage, and no funding fees.

According to official information, Papertrade generated a notional trading volume of $14.4 billion in less than 10 minutes after its launch. As of press time, open interest for Bitcoin and Ethereum contracts stood at $3 billion and $2.66 billion respectively. The project’s early trading boom may be tied to its unique mechanism. Per the official documentation, the issuance model of PaperTrade’s native token PAPER works as follows: for every $1 a platform user loses, the protocol mints a certain number of PAPER tokens on a curve. When the liquidity provider (LP) balance is below $2 million, the minting ratio is fixed at 100 PAPER per $1 lost; once the LP balance exceeds $2 million, the minting rate begins to decay, with the number of PAPER minted decreasing as the LP balance grows.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa), two addresses belonging to the same whale have built positions worth $14.89 million in ETH. Over the past 20 minutes, the two addresses have withdrawn a total of 5,965 ETH from Binance at an average price of $2,496.95 per ETH. Notably, the address that sourced the funds also transferred similar amounts of USDC to several other new addresses, suggesting it may continue to buy ETH in batches.