Bears got absolutely rekt on Thursday last week with $870M in BTC and ETH shorts liquidated. Everyone wants to know if BTC will break new ATHs and how high Ethereum will go? Animal spirits are alive once more, and after weeks of sideways churn and fading bullish sentiment, BTC roared past $100K and ETH exploded by over 20%.
This is a break-out and a narrative reset. Investors don’t want to miss what comes next. BTC is trading above six figures, Ethereum is soaring post-Pectra upgrade, and now analysts are asking where does capital go next? Time to dive into which is the best crypto to buy now in May.
- Shorts got blown out and this was a cleansing moment. The US-China deal has added fuel to the fire, driving risk assets higher, and the mass liquidation of traders betting against BTC & ETH shows how many market participants were offside. And when traders are offside, they have to buy back higher.
- Ethereum finally pumped, signaling the start of altcoin season. The recent Pectra upgrade has massively scaled Ethereum, and ETH finally decided to pump. Further boosted by the announcement that Abraxas Capital has purchased $400M of ETH, it seems that institutions are finally bidding on ETH.
- Retail is getting excited and will flood back into markets soon. Most of the current trading volume comes from large capital funds, and retail has yet to make its move. That means that meme coins haven’t even started ripping yet. And for anyone who wants to get ahead of the market, that’s where Bitcoin Pepe, Sui, and Virtuals come in.
$873M in BTC and ETH Shorts liquidated: why it signals the start of retail’s return
This massive trader wipeout is a narrative reset. When markets punish over-leveraged bears this violently, it usually marks a turning point: a shift from doubt to belief. And investors want to bet big at the start of a trend shift, not at the tail end. Smart money recognizes this for what it is: the return of the golden bull run.
Last week’s liquidation was caused by Bitcoin breaking back above $100,000 and Ethereum ripping 20% post-Pectra. But these moves didn’t come from retail FOMO—they came from institutional flows. And the time is right for retail to flood back into markets and trigger an altcoin season.
Liquidations are a cleansing mechanism. They flush out leverage and open the door for new capital. What happens next is almost too predictable. Retail arrives, sees BTC and ETH have already pumped, and starts bidding altcoins. This liquidation wasn’t the end of a move. It was the start of a new one, and now the race is on to find tomorrow’s winners early.
Bitcoin Pepe: Winning in a post-$100K BTC market
Bitcoin Pepe is a meme-native Layer 2 on Bitcoin, set to launch on May 31st, and rapidly absorbing capital flows as a higher BTC price encourages investors to invest in the ecosystem. Everyone knows that when markets flip risk-on, the winning tokens are ecosystem projects that balloon in value thanks to price appreciation of the native asset—and with BTC crushing it, BPEP is next in line to hit the gas pedal.
BPEP introduces the PEP-20 token standard. For the first time, anyone will be able to mint memes directly on BTC, and asset creation has spurred all the largest crypto booms. Bitcoin Pepe’s L2 will be the first meme coin focused economic zone within the Bitcoin network, and traders will be enjoying Solana speed underpinned by unmatched security.
It is the perfect fusion of scalability, $2 trillion in dormant capital, and crypto culture. And as markets flip risk on again, BPEP could easily become one of the best rotation trades of 2025. Even better, still in its presale, investors are early.
While Bitcoin ETFs draw institutional interest, BPEP is positioned to absorb the retail frenzy that inevitably follows. Investors should think of BPEP like an alley-oop trade: BTC threw the dunk—BPEP is about to slam it with its launch on May 31st.
The DEX will go live on launch, the bridge will unlock all that sleeping BTC capital, and with $8m raised in its presale, there is no stopping this train. Rumors are swirling about a tier 1 listing, and with BTC’s breakout acting as rocket fuel, BPEP looks like it could be the best crypto to buy now.
Sui: Infrastructure for the coming App layer era
Sui is one of those rare assets that has survived the era investors hating VC coins and come out of the other side looking like it wants to rerun the Layer 1 trade. Built by ex-Meta engineers and running on the Move programming language, Sui brings ultra-fast, parallel transaction processing to Layer 1 infrastructure—and it’s starting to pay off.
A slew of impressive gaming partnerships are starting to make Sui look undervalued, and this next-gen L1 is one of the few chains in crypto with enough throughput to support on-chain gaming. Animoca Brands launched ‘One Fight Arena’ on Sui recently, and even institutional interest is growing, with 21Shares filing for a Spot SUI ETF this year.
The market still needs scalable and user-friendly blockchains. Ethereum’s performance post-Pectra signals that demand exists for better and more scalable chains, and while 2024 was ‘Solana Summer’ in 2025 retail traders may end up flocking to Sui.
Virtuals: Betting on the AI narrative
Virutals is a protocol built on Ethereum Layer 2, Base and allows anyone to create, own, and monetize AI agents. Each agent is a tokenized digital entity with its personality, wallet, and economic logic. These agents talk, trade, transact, and even bet in the case of Billy Bets, one of Virtuals’ most popular agents.
Over 2,200 AI agents have launched since, and Virutals is becoming a functioning on-chain AI-driven economy. At the center of this ecosystem is VIRTUAL, the protocol’s native token. All agent tokens—like the flagship LUNA or Twitter-analyzing frog bot AIXBT—are paired with VIRTUAL. And anyone who wants to buy or deploy an agent needs to purchase VIRTUAL.
Anyone can create their own AI agent without any coding, and for those looking for a better option regarding AI tokens, Virtuals is an easy choice. Holding Virtuals is how users bet on the infrastructure of an AI economy.
Post liquidation: How to front-run retail
The squeeze was violent, but it wasn’t random. It was inevitable as traders had gotten too cocky shorting crypto. And especially in the case of ETH, it seemed that the entire world was shorting it.
Smart money is rapidly adjusting to the new environment, and instead of looking for shorts, they are asking how high will Ethereum go this cycle. When ETH starts to outperform, it means altcoin season is here and retail will arrive soon. What is the best crypto to buy now to attract retail investors?
BPEP, SUI, and VIRTUAL are all excellent picks. But BPEP comes out ahead with its May 31st launch, perfectly timed to catch the rotation trade into meme coin infrastructure. It is a bet on continued BTC strength and growing meme coin trading volumes—it perfectly captures the current psyche of markets.
Disclaimer: This is a Press Release provided by a third party who is responsible for the content. Please conduct your own research before taking any action based on the content.
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