Happy Cat, Hyperliquid, Virtuals lead as Bitcoin steadies above $100k

Cryptocurrency prices held steady on Saturday, Dec. 14 as the recent consolidation continued.

Bitcoin (BTC), the biggest cryptocurrency, remained above $101,382 at last check Saturday as it struggled to retest the all-time high of $104,000. VanEck predicts that the coin will rise to $180,000 in 2025. 

Happy Cat (HAPPY), HyperLiquid (HYPE), and Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) were some of the best-performing coins on Saturday. 

Happy Cat price rises after Uphold listing

HAPPY, which is a fast-growing Solana meme coin, rose by 35%, while HYPE and Virtuals jumped by 15% and 10%, respectively. The other top gainers were tokens like Raydium, Ripple, Fantom, and Flare.

Happy Cat’s token rally was mostly because it was because it was listed by Uphold, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the industry. Altcoins often rally after being listed by big exchanges.

The risk, however, is that the number of tokens on exchanges has rallied by 14% in the last seven days to over 464.95 million. An increase of tokens in exchanges is often a sign that investors are starting to sell.

Hyperliquid network’s volume is soaring

Hyperliquid jumped because of its strong fundamentals. The volume of perpetual contracts traded in its platfom rose by 33% in the last seven days to $37.62 billion. 

This increase brought its cumulative total to over $507 billion, a trend that will continue. Its volume was also higher than that of Base, Solana, Ethereum, and Arbitrum, combined.

Hyperliquid token also rose after it was listed in Sandwich, a fast-growing privacy-focused exchange. 

Virtuals Protocol boasts $2.5 billion market cap

Virtuals Protocol has also done well, rising from $0.0074 to $2.61 today, bringing its market cap to over $2.5 billion.

It has also become one of the biggest players in the Base blockchain, helped by the ongoing hype surrounding artificial intelligence agents. 

Virtuals Protocol was created as a platform to deploy AI-powered virtual characters on a Layer 2 Ethereum solution.

These AI agents can operate independently and interact within various ecosystems.

Looking ahead, the performance of most altcoins will depend on how Bitcoin performs in the near term. Most of them will continue rising if Bitcoin retests and crosses its all-time high.

As we have written before, technicals point to a potential rally to $122,000 in this bullish cycle.