cryptopolitan.com
RIVER is a newly emerging token that turned into one of the day’s biggest winners. Despite the all-time highs, the token came with warnings of significant insider holdings.
RIVER is one of the recent new runners, rising to an all-time high of $87.73. The token broke out in the past few weeks, showing an unusual risk appetite for a relatively new asset. RIVER has entered a period of rapid token unlocks and may also face selling pressure in the coming weeks.
RIVER remains volatile, later falling below $80, reversing the trend just hours after climbing to its record. The rapid expansion and volatility led to more interest in the project and its potential risks.
The token was launched toward the end of 2025 by River, Inc., a new DeFi protocol with a native stablecoin. Until the recent rally, River was a relatively small protocol with $161M in liquidity. As Cryptopolitan reported, River attracted $8M in funding from TRON DAO.
River’s native stablecoin, SatUSD, had a supply of around $158M with multi-chain presence.
RIVER flagged for significant insider holdings
RIVER is a multi-chain token with representation on BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Base. All chain holdings have a different composition, based on Bubblemaps data. On Base, over 88% of the supply is not distributed and is held on a single address.
On Ethereum and BNB Chain, RIVER is held in connected wallet clusters, suggesting potential insider accumulation. RIVER pumped due to a relatively small outstanding supply of 19.6M tokens, with a total supply of $100M.
The token’s trading is highly concentrated on Bitget, where market makers can boost liquidity and encourage more active trading. Additionally, RIVER had a derivative market on Binance, where the price liquidated short positions close to $90.
Recently, open interest on RIVER reached a peak above $214M, signaling increased interest in speculative bets. More than 64% of all positions were short, leading to the rapid short squeeze in the past days. However, most of the available positions were closed or liquidated, leading to a price slide.
Traders fear RIVER crash
RIVER is setting expectations of crashing to near-zero, similar to other newly launched tokens. On BNB Chain, the top holder carries over 69.3% of the supply, based on decentralized on-chain data.
The token has been mentioned by top influencers, including Arthur Hayes, but it is still considered at risk for insider selling. The token is represented on decentralized markets, including PancakeSwap and Uniswap.
The asset is also extremely volatile, as only one liquidity provider ensures over 59% of the liquidity in the PancakeSwap pair.
The top two whale traders have already extracted close to $2M from the decentralized market, selling into strength while RIVER rallied. The presence of whales and influential traders is opening RIVER to even greater risks.
The token has been around for a few months, accumulating over 25K reported holders. However, some of the smaller wallets may be connected to a smaller number of real holders.
RIVER continues to be promoted as potentially breaking out above $90 or even to $100, but analysts remain skeptical, especially under the worsening crypto market sentiment.