Hedera remains under heavy pressure, marking yet another day of decline as traders continue to bet against the altcoin. It trades at $0.18 at press time, noting a 2% price drop over the past 24 hours.
With its long/short ratio signaling a surge in short interest, market sentiment has turned increasingly pessimistic.
Short Sellers Tighten Grip on HBAR
HBAR’s long/short ratio has dropped to 0.86, its lowest level in a month. This reflects a sharp increase in short positions among derivatives traders.
The long/short ratio measures the proportion of long positions (bets on price increases) to short positions (bets on price declines) in the market. A ratio below one means there are more short positions than long ones. This indicates that traders are predominantly bearish on HBAR and hints at a higher likelihood of continued downside movement.
Further, HBAR’s negative Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) on the daily chart supports this bearish outlook. This indicator, which measures how money flows into and out of the asset, is below zero at -0.10 when writing.
HBAR’s negative CMF reading suggests high selling activity, with its sellers dominating the market and looking to push prices lower.
HBAR Traders Brace for Volatility as Price Flirts with Key Support Levels
The growing demand for short positions highlights investors’ expectations of further downside, raising concerns about HBAR’s ability to hold above the critical support level formed at $0.17.
If it fails to hold, the token’s price could plummet to a multi-month low of $0.11, which it last traded at in November.
However, a resurgence in demand for the altcoin could invalidate this bearish projection. If buyers regain market dominance and increase demand, HBAR could rebound toward $0.22.
Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation, is looking beyond meme coins to establish Solana as the infrastructure for what she calls “internet capital markets.”
In an exclusive interview with BeInCrypto and a presentation at the 2025 Web3 Festival in Hong Kong, Liu outlined her vision for blockchain technology’s role in democratizing financial access.
From Meme Coins to the “Everything Chain”
“Solana has evolved from being the DeFi chain to the NFT chain, the gaming chain, the payment chain, and recently the meme coin chain,” Liu explained. “When you sum all that up, Solana is the everything chain.”
While meme coins drove Solana’s price to an impressive $290 high in January before falling 60% to around $120 today, Liu views them as just one transient asset class in a much broader ecosystem. “Meme coins are just one type of asset. There will be something else—there’s always going to be the tulip market and the beanie baby market. That’s been going on for a really long time. That’s just what humans do with or without blockchain,” Liu noted.
Despite price volatility, Solana’s Total Value Locked (TVL) reached an all-time high in April 2025, demonstrating continued investor confidence in the ecosystem beyond speculative assets.
The Crisis of Capital Access for Young Generations
Liu, who previously co-founded Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase in 2018) and served as CFO of Chinaco Healthcare Corporation, brings significant experience from building businesses in both the US and China to her current role at Solana. Her background in traditional finance gives weight to her critique of current capital markets.
“Fifty years ago, it took 25 hours of labor to buy one share of the S&P 500. Today, it takes 195 hours,” Liu noted in her presentation, highlighting how capital gains have become less accessible to average workers while losses are increasingly socialized through national debt.
This inaccessibility to capital markets has created anxiety among young people globally. Liu pointed to challenges in Korea and China, where housing prices have skyrocketed beyond what young professionals can afford without parental support.
“In Korea and China, the parents’ generation has retained the upside of a major asset class like housing. Young people’s ability to convert hours of labor into capital and freedom later in life has become extremely limited,” she observed. “In China, it creates huge anxiety for families where young men are culturally expected to own an apartment before marriage, yet average professional salaries make this impossible without parental help.”
Blockchain as Global Financial Infrastructure
Liu sees blockchain’s core purpose as creating a unified global financial infrastructure, similar to how the internet unified attention. “What crypto is doing is providing this unified infrastructure to unify the wealth, the transactions, the financial coffers of five and a half billion people,” she explained.
This infrastructure enables what Liu calls “internet capital markets,” making the full range of financial assets available to anyone with an internet connection. She contrasts the simplicity of downloading a crypto wallet against the complex paperwork of traditional banking and investment systems.
Lily Liu, President of Solana Foundation. Source: 2025 Web3 Festival Hong Kong.
For Liu, this infrastructure is particularly valuable in expanding access to equities and other assets that have both fundamental value and price discovery—currently reserved primarily for accredited investors even in developed markets.
Community-Based Capitalism and the Ownership Economy
Liu argues that blockchain offers an alternative to traditional economic systems. “In the last 100 years, we’ve come to accept that the dominant ownership models are either capitalist or communist—corporate ownership or state ownership,” she explained. “What Bitcoin proposed is that those aren’t the only choices.”
This has evolved into what Liu calls “community-based capitalism,” a term she uses to describe economic models where value accrues to network participants rather than just shareholders or the state. “Instead of universal basic income, which is essentially a welfare economy, crypto proposes universal basic opportunity,” she said. This model allows early participants in network building to share in the upside.
Liu contrasts this with traditional platforms like Uber, where early drivers who helped bootstrap the network received hourly pay but no equity upside. Her “ownership economy” concept refers to this more inclusive approach to capital formation where contribution and ownership are more closely aligned.
Solana’s governance reflects this philosophy, which was recently demonstrated in a controversial proposal to reduce inflation. Liu actively participated in this discussion, explaining that inflation reduction might seem efficient from a network security perspective but would potentially harm Solana as a yield-generating asset.
“Dynamic yield on an asset makes it a worse asset,” Liu emphasized. “If you have an asset yielding a fixed percentage annually, you price that very differently than an asset yielding at variable rates.”
Looking five years ahead, Liu envisions Solana enabling an ownership economy where blockchain creates new pathways for individuals to convert labor into capital, bringing “more inclusivity for five and a half billion people on the internet into capital markets.”
“The end state is moving into assets that have value, can also command price, and bring more inclusivity around the world,” Liu concluded. “This is where crypto is going.”
Ripple has received full approval from the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA)to offer regulated crypto payments in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).
It makes Ripple the first blockchain-enabled payments provider licensed by the DFSA, significantly expanding its operations in the Middle East.
Ripple Receives Full Approval from the DFSA
This development follows Ripple’s in-principle financial services approval from the DFSA in October. With its regional headquarters in Dubai since 2020, Ripple continues strengthening its presence in a region known for its regulatory clarity and fintech-friendly environment.
The DFSA license enables Ripple to offer its global payment solutions to businesses in the UAE. This would reinforce its role as a trusted partner for financial institutions looking to leverage blockchain technology for faster and more cost-effective transactions.
“We are entering an unprecedented period of growth for the crypto industry, driven by greater regulatory clarity around the world and increasing institutional adoption. Thanks to its early leadership in creating a supportive environment for tech and crypto innovation, the UAE is exceptionally well-placed to benefit,” a press release shared with BeInCrypto read, citing Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
Indeed, Dubai has established itself as a global hub for blockchain and fintech innovation. It boasts a $400 billion international trade market. The UAE has seen growing demand from both crypto-native firms and traditional financial (TradFi) institutions looking for solutions to inefficiencies in cross-border payments. These include high fees, slow settlement times, and lack of transparency.
“Securing this DFSA license…will enable us to better serve the growing demand for faster, cheaper, and more transparent cross-border transactions in one of the world’s largest cross-border payments hubs,” Ripple’s Managing Director for the Middle East and Africa, Reece Merrick, emphasized.
In the same tone, DIFC Authority CEO, His Excellency Arif Amiri, said this milestone presents Ripple with new growth opportunities across the region and beyond. Ripple’s regulatory approval in Dubai adds to its growing list of over 60 regulatory licenses worldwide.
Despite its success in Dubai, Ripple remains embroiled in a legal battle with the US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). However, recent reports indicate that the case may soon be resolved. Reportedly, Ripple’s legal team is negotiating more favorable terms regarding an August 2023 district court ruling.
The ruling imposed a $125 million fine and restricted Ripple from selling XRP to institutional investors. Ripple’s team argues that the firm should not be penalized for past regulatory uncertainty. This contention is based on theSEC’s reconsideration of its enforcement stance against other crypto firms.
“…Accepting the Torres ruling as it stands would mean that Ripple is essentially agreeing to admit to wrongdoing — but now the SEC itself is seemingly unsure whether any wrongdoing occurred. There’s no real playbook for this kind of thing, which could explain why this case is taking longer to resolve than the rest,” crypto journalist Eleanor Terret reported, citing two well-placed sources.
PI has been in a persistent downtrend since reaching an all-time high of $3 on February 26. In fact, it has traded below a descending trendline since April 12, highlighting the negative bias against the altcoin.
However, the tide may finally be turning. Technical indicators now point to a potential bullish resurgence, hinting at a PI rebound in the short term.
PI’s Quiet Accumulation Phase Could Trigger a Rally
BeInCrypto’s assessment of the PI/USD one-day chart suggests that the altcoin may be preparing for a bullish breakout. For example, its on-balance volume (OBV) has spiked over the past two days, showing early signs of accumulation.
The OBV indicator uses trading volume to predict price movements, adding volume on up days and subtracting it on down days. When its value rises like this, it suggests a surge in buying pressure.
OBV is considered a leading indicator, meaning it often moves ahead of price action and can signal shifts in market sentiment before they are reflected in the asset’s price. Therefore, PI’s rising OBV indicates that buyers are quietly accumulating the token, even as its price remains subdued.
This divergence signals that bullish momentum is building, increasing the likelihood of a PI breakout once broader market sentiment aligns.
Furthermore, the red bars forming PI’s BBTrend indicator have gradually shrunk. This reduction suggests that selling pressure is weakening, serving as an early signal that the current downtrend may be losing steam.
In technical analysis, a contraction in the BBTrend histogram is a precursor to a potential trend reversal, especially when accompanied by rising volume and other bullish indicators.
As the bars shorten, it indicates that volatility is stabilizing in the PI market and that a bullish shift in price is increasingly likely.
PI for Reversal as Bullish Signals Point to $1 Breakout
PI currently trades at $0.591, resting below its descending trend line, which forms resistance above it at $0.605. If bullish pressure strengthens and PI demand rockets, it could flip this price point into a support floor and climb toward $1.01.
