Traditional finance sees a surge in leveraged investment products, while crypto investors show cooling interest in speculative assets like memecoins. Equities investors are embracing traditional leveraged ETFs, with assets under management hitting $239 billion in Q3 2025. This shift signals a move away from high-risk digital assets towards regulated, less volatile products.

Crypto investor sentiment remains low post-October market crash, with fear still prevalent despite a slight recovery from extreme fear levels. Smart money traders are betting against memecoins like Fartcoin and Pump.fun, but are bullish on Ether (ETH) and Hyperliquid’s (HYPE) token, favoring tokens with real revenue-generating blockchain protocols.

Investor fatigue with memecoin launches is evident, with troubling data emerging about some coins. Bubblemaps data revealed that 30% of the Pepe (PEPE) token’s genesis supply was concentrated in an entity that sold $2 million a day after the coin’s debut, raising doubts about its fair-launch premise.

Read more at Cointelegraph: Crypto Speculation at 2024 Lows as TradFi Risk Booms