Aster, widely seen as Hyperliquid’s biggest rival, is dominating headlines after securing the public backing of Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
The Aster price has surged 1900% in just five days, going live at $0.10 on September 17 and reaching a new all-time high of $21.97 on Sunday. It reached a peak market capitalization of $3.26 billion and a fully-diluted valuation of $15.77 billion.
Aster is a next-generation decentralized exchange (DEX) that delivers spot and perpetual trading with up to 1001x leverage, combining the non-custodial security of DeFi with the speed and user experience of a CEX.
Backed by Binance co-founder CZ and incubated through his YZi Labs, Aster is being touted as a multi-chain rival to Hyperliquid.
Owing to its explosive post-launch rally, sidelined investors are wondering whether Aster is still a good investment or if they should wait for a better entry point after a pullback.
While the Aster price prediction from prominent analysts leans bullish, the coin’s technical indicators point to the likelihood of a near-term pullback.
What Is Aster: CZ’s Counter To Hyperliquid?
Aster is the latest hybrid CEX-DEX trading platform, widely seen as Binance and co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s answer to Hyperliquid.
Hyperliquid’s CEX-style DEX trading model was viewed as a serious threat to centrally controlled platforms like Binance. Headlines started calling Hyperliquid the end of Binance as investors poured in for its near-instant execution, deep liquidity, ultra-low fees, and permissionless high-leverage trading.
Now, Aster is being viewed by investors as CZ’s response to Hyperliquid. Backed and incubated by CZ’s YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), Aster emerged from a merger of APX Finance (formerly ApolloX) and Astherus in late 2024.
APX brought advanced perpetual contract trading, while Astherus contributed yield and liquidity-focused products.
After rebranding, Aster introduced both spot trading and perpetuals, offering two trading modes: a Simple Mode with on-chain one-click trades and up to 1001x leverage, and a Pro Mode with order book tools, hidden orders and low fees.
Investors can even trade US stocks with up to 100x leverage.
Aster does have key advantages over Hyperliquid, including a maximum leverage of 1001x compared to Hyperliquid’s 40x, support for hidden orders that protect large trades, and the addition of spot markets alongside perpetuals.
Unsurprisingly, it already has over $525 billion in trading volume, with over 2 million users.
CZ is now publicly backing the exchange as well, which is also giving a major boost to its token price.
Aster’s Centralized Tokenomics Raise Concerns About Long-Term ROI
Despite Aster’s explosive launch and rapid adoption of its DEX, the project’s fundamentals are raising concerns.
For instance, 88.25% of the token supply is being held by just 4 wallets, all controlled by SafeProxy multisig wallets. Theoretically, the developer team can choose to dump their holdings at any point, which poses a massive risk to investors.
Analyst StarPlatinum highlights that 5 wallets control 93.5% of the token supply, and just one wallet controls 44.7% of all tokens.
Moreover, Aster’s max supply of 8 billion tokens contrasts sharply with Hyperliquid’s 1 billion, making Hyperliquid the potentially stronger long-term investment from a scarcity perspective.
Aster Price Prediction: Should Investors Buy or Wait for a Pullback?
The risk-reward ratio no longer favours sidelined investors looking to buy at the current price.
The Aster price has retested the upper trendline of a parallel wedge, as well as a typically bearish ascending narrowing wedge. As a result, it could soon retest the $1.70 support level, and a breakdown below could push the price down to $1.50 and below.
Furthermore, ASTER has also formed a bearish divergence in its hourly chart, further confirming a strong selling pressure.
Notably, Aster is drawing comparisons with Hyperliquid. However, the HYPER price recorded a 17.5x growth over 20 days, before a 70% pullback. Meanwhile, ASTER has already rallied by nearly 20x in just 5 days, suggesting that a sharp sell-off could be next.
Aster price predictions from prominent analysts remain bullish, with $4 in the mid-term and $10 in the long-term emerging as key price targets. However, sidelined investors can afford to wait for a better entry.
Is The Best Wallet Token The Next 10x Crypto?
Aster is unlikely to deliver outsized returns at this stage. With its market cap near $3 billion, a 10× move would require $30 billion, while Hyperliquid, launched in November 2024, has only peaked at around $20 billion.
On the contrary, smart money investors are calling the Best Wallet Token (BEST) an easy 10x investment, seeing as this new crypto is still in its presale and has raised over $16 million in short order.
The success of Hyperliquid and Aster has brought the spotlight to performance-native tokens and next-gen trading coins, paving the way for low-cap alternatives like BEST.
For the uninitiated, Best Wallet is a new cutting-edge multi-chain, non-custodial and anonymous crypto trading wallet.
Beyond its role as a secure and anonymous wallet, Best Wallet is positioning itself as a full-scale trading hub. Its roadmap includes derivatives trading, bringing perpetual and futures contracts directly into the app, a move that would place it alongside Aster and Hyperliquid in the category of next-gen DEXs.
The platform also features staking, an “Upcoming Tokens” portal for early presale access, and in-app rewards powered by the $BEST token.
Unsurprisingly, the Best Wallet is already recording impressive growth statistics, including over 200,000 monthly active users and 630% MoM increase in app installation rates.
With a new bull market starting in Q4, BEST has positioned itself as one of the best new cryptos to buy now.
Visit Best Wallet Token Presale
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