A little-known crypto token — River ($riverIt has made waves over the past month, surging more than 1,900% to become a top 100 token by market capitalization, according to data from CoinGecko.
The native token of the multi-chain stablecoin abstraction platform of the same name was trading around $5 near the end of December, but has since soared, recently hitting around $82. At Monday’s price, $river Its market capitalization is around $1.6 billion, enough to make it the 67th largest token among cryptocurrencies.
The platform, which aims to eliminate the need to bridge stablecoins across blockchains, has attracted the attention of some of the biggest names in crypto, including Tron founder Justin Sun and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes, both of whom have championed the token in the last month.
A shining example of Number Go Up! $river
Don’t you think we need more CEX and DEX lists? pic.twitter.com/SUSGWnBhvC
— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) January 6, 2026
Hayes quickly rose to prominence and on January 6th called for additional listing on a centralized exchange. Since then, the value of the token has more than quadrupled, even as prices in most of the crypto markets have declined.
Sun entered the fray last week, but Invest $8 million in the protocol support the integration of tronHe founded the Layer 1 network and introduced it to the River ecosystem.
Promotions by Sun and Hayes have helped draw attention to the token, which is up 168% in the last week, but the token’s rapid rise may not be all that it seems.
Blockchain analytics company CoinGlass recently used $river As an example of how the funding rate, which is a fee set by an exchange to maintain a balance between price and contract price, can manipulate the price of a token.
“Step one is simple: keep prices down while making financing significantly negative,” Coinglas said. Posted in X last week. “This concentrates short positions and builds the belief that “negative financing = a rebound is inevitable.”
According to CoinGlass, in this setup, traders would go long, betting on a rise in price, and expect to put money into a rebound and payout. In reality, the company says, this “expectation is a trap” and can be reset many times, leading to “consensus positioning.”
In this case, the consensus positioning is upward. $riverwhich rose another 12% in the past 24 hours. It hit a new high of over $87 early Monday.
According to recent research, River’s protocol manages approximately $161 million in total value locked (TVL). Data from DeFiLlamadown from October’s peak TVL of $605 million. The market capitalization of the company’s overcollateralized stablecoin (satUSD) is approximately $159 million, 40th largest stablecoin by market capitalization.
