There’s always a niche token pump in crypto circles if you search hard enough, regardless of whether Bitcoin (BTC) is moving or not, according to recent reports. One example is the CYBER token of the Web3 social network CyberConnect, which has seen its market cap more than double in the past week to $113 million, according to CoinGecko. Trading volumes have also skyrocketed, with $225 million worth of the tokens exchanged in the past 24 hours, up from $30 million on Monday.
Desperate traders are paying more than 2000% to buy the tokens on margin, as evidenced by the positive funding rates for CYBER on Bybit and Bitget, which have soared to as much as an annualized 2,190%, and on Binance, which have reached 1,500%. Most of the trades are taking place on Binance, accounting for 74% of all CYBER volume, followed by the Korean exchange UpBit, which traded $70 million worth of the tokens.
The success of CYBER stands in stark contrast to the fate of similar projects, such as Friend.tech, which saw its revenue drop 95% in just over three weeks. Friend.tech launched on Aug. 10 and racked up some 4,400 ETH (about $8.1 million) in trading volume on the first day, but transactional activity on the platform peaked at $16 million on Aug. 21 before slumping to just over $700,000 as of Thursday.