Hedera's HBAR token surged 27% on Sept. 28, driving open interest to a one-year high five days after IBM-related news involving The Hashgraph Group. According to Santiment Intelligence, the rally followed a sharp increase in leverage and social activity rather than an immediate market response to the announcement. The sequence — an enterprise announcement on Sept. 23, a muted same-day reaction, and a leveraged breakout days later — highlighted the gap between corporate news timing and market response. Analysts Crypto Patel and Doctor Profit subsequently offered differing views on the breakout's strength and its potential continuation.

Santiment Identifies Delayed Reaction to IBM News

The Hashgraph Group announced the listing of its IDTrust offering on the IBM Cloud Catalog on Sept. 23, a placement that positions the product among the third-party offerings enterprise clients can access through IBM's cloud platform. HBAR nonetheless closed down approximately 9% that day and, by Sept. 27, remained more than 3% below its Sept. 22 close.

The token's strongest move arrived on Sept. 28, when its price rose 27%. Santiment reported on X that coin-denominated open interest climbed 47% to nearly 1.2 billion HBAR, reaching a one-year high. The increase added approximately 385 million HBAR to open interest — nearly three times any other single-day increase recorded that year. Measured in dollar terms, the rise came to roughly 87%, although Santiment attributed the difference to HBAR's price appreciation over the same period. Because open interest tallies derivative contracts that remain open rather than settled, a jump of that scale indicates fresh leveraged positions entering the market — the metric commonly used to gauge how much capital is committed behind a move.

Social volume rose sharply as well, reaching approximately 4.8 times the average weekday level recorded between Sept. 1 and Sept. 25. On the day of the IBM announcement, by comparison, social volume had registered only around 1.4 times that average. Social volume, a count of asset mentions across social platforms, is widely read as a proxy for market attention. The figures indicate that attention and leveraged positioning built up only after the price move was already underway.

Analysts Set Different Expectations for HBAR

Crypto Patel reported that Hedera (HBAR) had gained 105% from an accumulation zone between $0.06 and $0.07, and identified $0.07–$0.09 as a pending reaccumulation zone. Patel outlined macro targets at $0.15, $0.33, $0.50 and $1, adding that a sustained break above the descending trendline could support further price expansion.

Doctor Profit, by contrast, closed an HBAR position with a small profit. The analyst described the breakout as a possible fake-out and pointed to risks associated with Bitcoin potentially approaching $79,000.

The disagreement plays out against the same dynamics Santiment documented: a breakout that arrived with a one-year high in open interest and a late surge in attention rather than a direct response to the underlying news.

HBAR Holds Above $0.10 After Pullback

HBAR traded near $0.106 after retreating from approximately $0.126–$0.127, holding above the $0.10 level. The token had climbed from $0.072–$0.075 earlier in September, breaking above $0.080, $0.088 and $0.096 in succession. Its 50-day moving average stood near $0.099, while the 200-day average sat around $0.083, leaving HBAR trading above both.

With that structure in place, HBAR faced resistance at $0.119–$0.127, with support around $0.100, followed by $0.096 and $0.088. Volume reached approximately 453.58 million HBAR in the latest chart reading, according to Santiment's market data. Those levels, together with the descending trendline Patel referenced, frame the reference points in the two analysts' divergent readings of the breakout.