$INIT This price action is getting more ridiculous the longer I watch it.
I kept an eye on it for a while this morning. It’s up 44% in 24 hours, currently at 0.316, after peaking at 0.395, with trading volume close to $40 million. The problem is, there’s no good news at all: a little after 6 a.m. yesterday, Initia’s mainnet was halted after an approximately $615,000 unauthorized transfer caused by a leaked private key for its rollup infrastructure. This is the second such incident in three weeks; the one on October 23 resulted in a loss of $2.7 million.
The chain is halted, but the token is rising. KuCoin says the move is being driven by speculative trading and a short squeeze: shorts are being forced to cover, pushing the price up. The broader market isn’t helping either. After last night’s CPI report, BTC fell to around $72,700 and is now hovering around $73,500. The Fear and Greed Index is at 29, and the overall market is weak. This INIT rally is basically moving against the broader market.
This volume doesn’t really look like something retail traders could have driven, but the fundamentals don’t support the move either—the chain is halted and funds were stolen, while the rally is driven by a squeeze, not demand. I generally don’t chase this kind of price action; I just watch to see if it can hold.
My outlook for the next 24 hours: I’m leaning toward choppy trading with a bearish bias. If it holds above 0.35, that would suggest the squeeze isn’t over, and it could test the previous high of 0.395 again. If it drops below 0.28 and then breaks below 0.25, the squeeze will have mostly fizzled out, and traders sitting on unrealized gains from chasing the rally will be the first to exit. The invalidation signals are straightforward: the mainnet resumes block production, the team provides a clear compensation or recovery timeline, or volume continues to expand while the price holds above 0.35—in any of those cases, my view would be wrong. For now, I’m watching three things: when the chain comes back online, whether short covering can continue, and whether the broader market keeps dragging lower.
Not investment advice; just a market note.
#INIT
I kept an eye on it for a while this morning. It’s up 44% in 24 hours, currently at 0.316, after peaking at 0.395, with trading volume close to $40 million. The problem is, there’s no good news at all: a little after 6 a.m. yesterday, Initia’s mainnet was halted after an approximately $615,000 unauthorized transfer caused by a leaked private key for its rollup infrastructure. This is the second such incident in three weeks; the one on October 23 resulted in a loss of $2.7 million.
The chain is halted, but the token is rising. KuCoin says the move is being driven by speculative trading and a short squeeze: shorts are being forced to cover, pushing the price up. The broader market isn’t helping either. After last night’s CPI report, BTC fell to around $72,700 and is now hovering around $73,500. The Fear and Greed Index is at 29, and the overall market is weak. This INIT rally is basically moving against the broader market.
This volume doesn’t really look like something retail traders could have driven, but the fundamentals don’t support the move either—the chain is halted and funds were stolen, while the rally is driven by a squeeze, not demand. I generally don’t chase this kind of price action; I just watch to see if it can hold.
My outlook for the next 24 hours: I’m leaning toward choppy trading with a bearish bias. If it holds above 0.35, that would suggest the squeeze isn’t over, and it could test the previous high of 0.395 again. If it drops below 0.28 and then breaks below 0.25, the squeeze will have mostly fizzled out, and traders sitting on unrealized gains from chasing the rally will be the first to exit. The invalidation signals are straightforward: the mainnet resumes block production, the team provides a clear compensation or recovery timeline, or volume continues to expand while the price holds above 0.35—in any of those cases, my view would be wrong. For now, I’m watching three things: when the chain comes back online, whether short covering can continue, and whether the broader market keeps dragging lower.
Not investment advice; just a market note.
#INIT
