Markets Today: Bitcoin, Ether Hold Gains as Ethena Hits $11.9B TVL, Pudgy Penguins Race to F1

Futures positioning points to profit-taking in BTC and ETH as open interest falls, while DeFi protocol Ethena joins the $10B club and meme token PENGU secures high-speed exposure at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Aug 12, 2025, 10:23 a.m.

What to know:

added 2.3% to $118,527, ether rose 0.7% to $4,293. Solana and XRP each advanced 4.4% while Dogecoin gained 4.7%.

The rallies came alongside heavy short liquidations, with risk sentiment improving after a relatively calm macro session.

Derivatives Positioning

• Futures open interest (OI) in major tokens decreased over the past 24 hours, indicating a capital outflow. It's also suggestive of price losses being driven by the unwinding of long positions rather than outright short sales.
• XMR's perpetual futures appear overheated, with annualized funding rates exceeding 200%. The extremely high figure may prompt arbitrageurs to take a simultaneous long position in the spot market and a short position in futures, allowing them to pocket the funding safely.
• Funding rates for other major tokens remain pinned at around 10%, reflecting a moderately bullish bias.
• On the CME, open interest in ETH futures rose to 1.70 million from 1.51 million ETH.
• BTC open interest remained steady near 138K BTC, the lowest since April.
• On Deribit, BTC options out to August expiry show a slight bias toward put, or protective, options. ETH options showed a bullish bias across all tenors.
• ETH's implied volatility (IV) term structure steepened while BTC's remain unchanged. Flows at OTC desk Paradigm featured a long position in the BTC $115K put expiring on Aug. 13 and demand for $150K calls expiring in September.
• Volumes were substantial, with $3.3 billion traded at Paradigm.

Token Talk

• Ethena surpassed $11.89B in TVL, becoming the sixth DeFi protocol to cross $10B and the second non-staking model after Aave to do so. The sUSDe APY sits at 4.72%, attracting yield-focused investors.
• The protocol’s scale underscores growing appetite for non-staking DeFi models and could influence future designs. Market reaction has been broadly positive, with industry figures noting the milestone’s significance.
• USDe maintains a $1 peg with a $10.48B market cap and $371.97M in 24-hour volume.
• Polymarket will transition UMA’s oracle from OOV2 to MOOV2 after governance approval, restricting market resolution proposals to a whitelist of vetted participants.
• The change aims to reduce disputes and market manipulation by ensuring proposals are submitted by experienced users, while keeping dispute rights open to all.
• The initial whitelist includes 37 addresses, with the shift framed as moving from open debates to a more controlled council-style resolution process.
• Pudgy Penguins secured Formula 1 branding at the Singapore Grand Prix after winning Kraken’s memecoin trading contest. PENGU branding will appear on Williams Racing’s FW47 car.
• The token gained 55.1% over the past 30 days while dipping 11.8% in 24 hours, partially rebounding with a 1.4% intraday gain.
• The exposure is expected to boost visibility among mainstream audiences and strengthen Kraken’s push into sports-linked crypto promotions.

Shaurya Malwa

Omkar Godbole

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