Tom Lee: Ethereum May Surpass $5,000 by Year-End, Expected to Hit $50,000 in This Cycle

Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani announced on X that his largest personal angel investment to date has been allocated to Backpack. On September 2, Backpack revealed that Samani—also an early Solana investor—has joined the Backpack US board of directors. Samani has long focused on DeFi, blockchain infrastructure, and the evolution of global capital markets. Backpack noted that the appointment reflects the shared view of both parties that the future of global finance will integrate institutional-grade risk control with the efficiency and transparency of on-chain markets.

Security researcher @cyberscrilla has discovered a fake Ledger website and app appearing at the top of Google search results, designed to trick users into revealing their 24-word recovery phrases. Reportedly, Google data shows the site has received over 1 million visits in the past 30 days. Earlier, cybersecurity firm Zscaler uncovered in a September investigation that malicious Google ads impersonating Ledger were redirecting users to fake wallet verification pages. Currently, Ledger is probing an alleged wallet theft case involving customers of Southeast Asian dealer CryptoBilis, with an estimated loss of $86 million.

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.