The new directives could heighten geopolitical tensions, impacting global oil markets and complicating diplomatic efforts for peace.

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The incident heightens geopolitical risks, potentially affecting global oil markets and prompting international diplomatic responses.

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The conflicting statements highlight ongoing tensions, reducing confidence in imminent diplomatic resolutions and impacting market stability.

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The IRGC's actions heighten regional tensions, deterring UK naval presence and impacting geopolitical stability in the Strait of Hormuz.

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Pakistan's mediation efforts could reshape US-Iran relations, influencing geopolitical dynamics and market expectations significantly.

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Bitcoin Magazine

When Quantum Computers Come for Your Bitcoin: What Classical Property Law Says Happens Next

Bitcoin’s quantum debate keeps slipping sideways because people keep arguing about two different things at once.

One question is technical: if quantum computing gets good enough to break Bitcoin’s signature scheme, the protocol can respond. New address types, migration rules, soft forks, deprecations, key rotation. That is a real engineering problem, but it is still an engineering problem.

The other question is legal: suppose someone uses a quantum computer to derive the private key for an old wallet and sweep the coins. What, exactly, just happened? Did he recover abandoned property, or did he steal someone else’s bitcoin?

In April 2026, BIP-361 proposed freezing more than 6.5 million BTC sitting in quantum-vulnerable UTXOs, including an estimated million-plus coins associated with Satoshi. No longer just an abstract discussion, it’s now a live fight over ownership, confiscation, and the meaning of property inside a system that ultimately recognizes only control.

I am not taking a position here on when a quantum computer capable of attacking Bitcoin will arrive. The narrower question is the one that matters first: if it does arrive, and someone starts moving long-dormant coins with quantum-derived keys, does the law treat that as legitimate recovery or theft?

Classical property law gives a fairly blunt answer. It is theft.

That answer will frustrate some Bitcoiners, because Bitcoin itself does not enforce title in the way courts do. It enforces control. If you can produce the valid spend, the network accepts the spend. But that only sharpens the point. The harder the network leans on control, the more important it becomes to state clearly what the law would say about the underlying act.

And on that front, the law is not especially mysterious.

Old coins are not ownerless just because they are old.

The actual quantum risk

It helps to begin with the narrower, more realistic version of the threat. Not all bitcoin is equally exposed. In the ordinary case, an address does not reveal the public key until the owner spends. That matters because a quantum attacker cannot simply look at any untouched address on the chain and pluck out the private key.

The real risk sits in a more limited category of outputs. Early pay-to-public-key outputs reveal the full public key on-chain. Some older script constructions do the same. Taproot outputs do as well: a P2TR output commits directly to a 32-byte output key, not a hash of one. Address reuse can also expose the public key once a user spends and leaves funds behind under the same key material. Those are the coins people really mean when they talk about exposed bitcoin.

The timeline for this scenario has compressed. On March 31, 2026, Google Quantum AI published research showing Bitcoin’s secp256k1 curve could be broken with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits, a twenty-fold reduction from prior estimates of roughly nine million. The same paper models the mempool attack vector directly: during a transaction, the public key is exposed for approximately ten minutes before block confirmation, giving a quantum adversary a window to derive the key before the spend confirms.

Current hardware remains far from these thresholds: Google’s Willow chip sits at 105 qubits and IBM’s Nighthawk at 120. But algorithmic optimization is outrunning hardware scaling. NIST’s own post-quantum migration roadmap calls for quantum-vulnerable algorithms to be deprecated across federal systems by 2030 and disallowed entirely by 2035. That federal timeline does not bind Bitcoin, but it supplies the benchmark against which institutional holders and regulators will measure Bitcoin’s preparedness.

A great many of those coins are old. Some are certainly lost. Some belong to dead owners. Some are tied up in paper wallets, forgotten backups, ancient storage habits, or estates that no one has sorted out. Some probably belong to people who are very much alive and simply have no interest in touching them.

That last point matters more than the “lost coin” crowd usually admits. From the outside, dormancy tells you very little. A wallet can sit untouched for twelve years because the owner is dead, because the owner lost the keys, because the owner is disciplined, because the owner is paranoid, because the coins are locked in a multi-party setup, or because the owner is Satoshi and would rather remain a rumor than a litigant. The blockchain does not tell you which explanation is true.

That uncertainty is precisely why property law has never treated silence as a magic solvent for ownership.

Dormancy is not abandonment

The casual “finders keepers” intuition that floats around these discussions has almost nothing to do with how property law actually works.

Ownership does not evaporate because property sits unused. Title continues until it is transferred, relinquished, extinguished by law, or displaced by some doctrine that actually applies. Time alone does not do that work. Inaction alone does not do that work. Value certainly does not do that work.

So if someone wants to argue that dormant bitcoin is fair game, the path usually runs through abandonment. The claim is simple enough: these coins have been sitting there forever, nobody has touched them, they are probably lost, therefore they must be abandoned.

The law is much stricter than that. Abandonment generally requires both intent to relinquish ownership and some act manifesting that intent. The owner must, in substance, mean to give it up and do something that shows he meant to give it up. Simply failing to move an asset for a long period is not enough, particularly where the asset is obviously valuable.

That is not some fussy technicality… it’s one of the core tenets of property law. If nonuse alone were enough to destroy title, the law would become a standing invitation to loot anything whose owner had been quiet for too long. That is not our rule for land, for houses, for stock certificates, for buried cash, or for heirlooms. It is not the rule for bitcoin either.

Take the easy edge case. If someone deliberately sends coins to a burn address with no usable private key, that begins to look like abandonment because there is both a clear act and a clear signal. But that example proves the opposite of what quantum raiders want it to prove. It shows what relinquishment looks like when a person actually intends it. Most dormant wallets do not look anything like that.

The better reading is the ordinary one: old coins are old coins. Some are lost. Some are inaccessible. Some are forgotten. Some are sleeping. None of that converts them into ownerless property.

And recent legislation has begun to formalize the same instinct. The UK’s Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on December 2, 2025, creates a third category of personal property explicitly covering crypto-tokens. In the United States, UCC Article 12 has now been adopted by more than thirty states and the District of Columbia, recognizing “controllable electronic records” as a distinct legal category. Neither regime treats dormancy as relinquishment. By formally classifying digital assets as property, both raise the bar for anyone arguing that old coins are ownerless by default.

Death does not erase ownership

The next move is usually to shift from abandonment to mortality. Fine, perhaps the coins were not abandoned, but surely many of these early holders are dead. Doesn’t that change the analysis? 

Not in the way the raider would like.

Some early wallets invite a kind of Schrödinger’s-heir problem: the owner is confidently declared dead when the raider wants ownerless property, then treated as notionally available whenever the burdens of succession come into view. Property law does not indulge the superposition.

When a person dies, title does not disappear. It passes. Property goes to heirs, devisees, or, in the absence of both, to the state through escheat. The law does not shrug and announce an open season. It preserves continuity of ownership even when possession becomes messy, inconvenient, or impossible to exercise.

The analogy to physical property is almost insultingly straightforward. If a man dies owning a ranch, the first trespasser who cuts the lock does not become the new owner by initiative and optimism. The estate handles succession. If there are no heirs, the sovereign has a claim. Valuable property does not become unowned merely because the original owner is gone.

Bitcoin is no different on that point. Lost keys do not transfer title. Inaccessibility is not a conveyance. A stranger who derives the private key later with better tooling has not uncovered ownerless treasure. He has acquired the practical ability to move property that still belongs to someone else, or to someone else’s estate.

That conclusion matters most for the largest block of old, vulnerable coins: Satoshi’s. Whether Satoshi is alive, dead, or permanently off-grid does not change the legal classification. Those coins belong either to Satoshi or to Satoshi’s estate. They do not become a bounty for the first actor who arrives with a quantum crowbar.

Unclaimed property law does not rescue the theory

Some people assume dormant bitcoin can be swept up under unclaimed property law. That confusion is understandable, but it misses how those statutes actually operate.

Unclaimed property law generally runs through a holder. A bank, broker, exchange, or other custodian owes property to the owner. If the owner disappears long enough, the state steps in and requires the holder to report and remit the asset, subject to the owner’s right to reclaim it later. The doctrine is built around intermediaries.

That framework works well enough for exchange balances. It works for custodial wallets. It works for assets sitting with a business that can be ordered to turn them over.

It does not work the same way for self-custodied bitcoin. A self-custodied UTXO has no bank in the middle, no exchange holding the bag, and no transfer agent waiting for instructions. There is no custodian for the state to command. There is only the network, the key, and the person who can or cannot produce the valid spend.

That means governments can often reach custodial crypto, but self-custodied bitcoin presents a harder limit. The law can say who owns it. The law can sometimes say who should surrender it. What it cannot do is conjure the private key.

The same problem defeats a more dressed-up version of the argument under UCC Article 12. A quantum attacker who derives the private key may gain “control” of the asset in a practical sense. But control is not title. It never has been. A burglar who finds your safe combination gains control too. He still stole what was inside.

Adverse possession does not fit, and salvage is worse

Two analogies get dragged out whenever someone wants to dignify quantum theft with a veneer of doctrine: adverse possession and salvage.

Neither one survives contact with the facts.

Adverse possession developed for land, and it carries conditions that make sense in land disputes. Possession must be open and notorious enough to give the true owner a fair chance to notice the adverse claim and contest it. A quantum attacker who sweeps coins into a fresh address does nothing of the sort. Yes, the movement is visible on-chain. No, that is not meaningful notice in the legal sense. A pseudonymous transfer on a public ledger does not tell the owner who is asserting title, on what basis, or in what forum the claim can be challenged.

The policy rationale also collapses. Adverse possession helps resolve stale land disputes, quiet title, and reward visible use of neglected real property. Bitcoin has none of those structural problems. The blockchain already records the chain of possession. 

Salvage is worse. Salvage rewards a party who rescues property from peril. The quantum raider does not rescue property from peril. He exploits the peril. In many cases, he is the reason the peril matters at all. Calling that “salvage” is like calling a pirate a lifeguard because he arrived with a boat: a euphemism masquerading as a legal theory.

What BIP-361 is really fighting about

This is why BIP-361 matters. It is the first serious proposal to force the issue at the consensus layer rather than wait for courts and commentators to argue over the wreckage afterward.

In broad strokes, the proposal would roll out in phases. First, users would be barred from sending new bitcoin into quantum-vulnerable address types, while still being allowed to move existing funds out to safer destinations. Later, legacy signatures in vulnerable UTXOs would stop being valid for purposes of spending those coins. In practical terms, any remaining unmigrated funds would freeze. A further recovery mechanism has been proposed using zero-knowledge proofs tied to BIP-39 seed possession, though that portion remains aspirational and incomplete.

Critically, the recovery path works only for wallets generated from BIP-39 mnemonics. Earlier wallet formats, including the pay-to-public-key outputs associated with Satoshi, have no realistic route back under the current proposal. That limitation is not incidental. It means Phase C, as currently designed, would preserve the property rights of more recent adopters while permanently extinguishing those of the earliest ones. That is a de facto statute of limitations imposed not by a legislature but by a protocol change.

The attraction of the proposal is obvious. If the network knows a category of coins is likely to become loot for whoever reaches them first, it can refuse to bless the looting. That is, in substance, a defense of ownership against a purely technological shortcut. It treats the quantum actor as a thief and denies him the prize.

But that is only half the story. The other half does not vanish merely because protocol designers would rather not observe it.

The proposal also creates a second legal problem, and it is harder to wave away. Phase B does not only stop thieves. It also disables actual owners who fail, or are unable, to migrate in time. That matters because property law does not ask only whether a rule has a good motive. It also asks what the rule does to the owner.

Calling that “theft” is too imprecise. BIP-361 does not reassign the coins to developers, miners, or some new claimant. It does not enrich the freezer in the ordinary way a thief enriches himself. But “not theft” does not end the inquiry. The closer analogy is conversion, or at least something uncomfortably adjacent to it. If the rule is that an owner had a valid spend yesterday and will have none tomorrow, not because he transferred title, not because he abandoned the coins, and not because a court extinguished his claim, but because the network decided those coins were too dangerous to remain spendable, the network has done something more than merely “protect property rights.” It has intentionally disabled the practical exercise of some of those rights.

That is what makes the freeze legally awkward. Freeze supporters can defend it as the lesser evil, and they may be right. But lesser evil is not the same thing as legal cleanliness. A rule that permanently prevents an owner from accessing his own coins begins to look less like ordinary theft and more like forced dispossession by consensus.

The strongest objections appear in the hardest cases. Timelocked UTXOs are the cleanest example. If a user deliberately created a timelock that matures after the freeze date, that owner did not neglect the coins. He did not abandon them. He affirmatively structured them to be unspendable until a future date. Yet the protocol could still freeze them permanently before that date ever arrives. Other older wallet constructions create a similar problem. If the eventual recovery path depends on BIP-39 seed possession, some earlier wallet formats may have no realistic route back at all. Estates create the same tension in another form. The owner may be dead, but title has not vanished. It passed somewhere. Freezing the coins does not eliminate the underlying property claim. It only eliminates the network’s willingness to honor it.

That is why the better description of Phase B is not “anti-theft rule” in the abstract. It is a confiscatory defense mechanism. Maybe a justified one. Maybe even a necessary one. But still confiscatory in effect for at least some owners. The proposal does not just choose owner over thief. In some cases it chooses one class of owners over another, then treats the losses of the disfavored class as the price of securing the system.

That does not make BIP-361 unlawful in any straightforward, courtroom-ready sense. Bitcoin consensus changes are not state action, so the takings analogy is imperfect unless government enters the picture directly. But as a matter of private-law reasoning, the conversion analogy lands harder. Title may remain rhetorically intact while practical control is intentionally destroyed.

That is the real symmetry at the center of the quantum debate. Letting a quantum attacker sweep dormant coins looks like theft. Freezing vulnerable coins by soft fork may be the lesser evil, but it is not costless, either materially or morally. For some owners, it begins to look a great deal like confiscation.

The legal answer is clear, even if Bitcoin’s is not

Classical property law is not going to bless quantum key derivation as some clever form of lawful recovery.

Dormancy is not abandonment. Death transfers title; it does not dissolve it. Unclaimed property law reaches custodians, not self-custody itself. Adverse possession does not map onto pseudonymous UTXOs. Salvage is a bad joke.

So if someone uses a quantum computer to derive the private key for a dormant wallet and move the coins, the legal system will almost certainly call that theft.

But BIP-361 shows that Bitcoin may not face a choice between theft and pristine protection of ownership. It may face a choice between theft by attacker and dispossession by protocol. Freezing vulnerable coins may be a defensible response to an extraordinary threat. It may even be the only response the network finds tolerable. Still, it should be described honestly. For some owners, especially those with timelocked outputs, old wallet formats, or no realistic migration path, the freeze begins to look less like protection than confiscation.

That is what makes the issue more than a simple morality play. Bitcoin collapses the distinction property law usually relies on between title and possession. Courts can say a quantum raider stole the coins. Courts can say a protocol-level freeze substantially interfered with an owner’s rights. But the chain will still recognize only the rules its economic majority adopts.

So the fight is not simply over whether Bitcoin should defend property rights during the quantum transition. The fight is over which property rights Bitcoin is willing to impair in order to defend the rest.

Welcome to classical politics.

This is a guest post by Colin Crossman. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

This post When Quantum Computers Come for Your Bitcoin: What Classical Property Law Says Happens Next first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Colin Crossman.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Whole Entire Universe: 21 Million, One Painting

There are 21 million bitcoin. That number is fixed, coded into the protocol, finite. It is one of the most consequential design decisions in the history of money, and yet for most people it remains an abstraction. Green digits cascading down a black screen like something out of The Matrix, or a talking point tossed around on a podcast.

The Japanese artist On Kawara spent nearly fifty years hand-painting a date onto a canvas every day — if he didn’t finish by midnight, he destroyed it. Anik Malcolm spent 900 hours painting 21 million beads. The impulse is the same: make the abstraction physical, make the counting matter, let the labor carry the meaning.

“The Whole Entire Universe” is a concept first conceived in early 2025 and now in its third and most ambitious incarnation: a meticulous, large-format oil painting in which every single bitcoin is represented as an individual bead, painted by hand over the course of more than 900 hours. The work will debut at Bitcoin 2026 at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas.

The premise was somewhat simple— show 21 million of something. But in working out how to do it, Malcolm stumbled into something closer to a tesseract — a shape that revealed more dimensions the longer he looked at it. Twenty-one million does not divide cleanly into a cube — its cube root is an irrational number. But if you round up to the nearest whole number, 276, and cube it, you get 21,024,576 — exactly 24,576 more than 21 million. That surplus divides evenly by six (one for each face of the cube), yielding 4,096 beads to remove per side. The square root of 4,096 is 64 — a perfect square and a power of two. Which means those removed areas can be halved repeatedly: from 64×64, to 32×32, to 16×16, all the way down to 2×2 — mirroring, with startling precision, bitcoin’s halving mechanism.

He opened the box and the pattern was already inside. To him, the work is not an illustration of Bitcoin — it is a still life of it. The most literal depiction that could be made, rendered in a form so structurally resonant that it has drawn the attention of Adam Back.

From early drawings exhibited in Lugano to digital renderings to the oil painting debuting at B26 — and a planned monumental public sculpture in Roatán — “The Whole Entire Universe” keeps demanding a bigger canvas. 

I spoke with Anik Malcolm about how a simple question produced an extraordinary answer.

BMAG: The Whole Entire Universe began with a deceptively simple premise — make an artwork that shows 21 million of something. How did you land on that idea, and what was it like when your wife — herself an artist and jeweler — suggested a cube of beads? How does that kind of creative exchange between partners work for you? 

Anik Malcolm: The original impetus was literally that simple — it struck me that although the 21M number is so critically important to us as bitcoiners, it’s also a number that is difficult to fathom without seeing. How simultaneously large it is in volume, but also overseeably small and “human” in scale — so I wanted to find a way of bringing the number to life, of making it graspable. My wife Una and I have collaborated on many projects over the years, both in the visual and sonic arts, so we have honed the skill well of making it a constructive flow. I suggested this idea to her in conversation, and her instantaneous response was “a cube of beads.” I loved this both for the fact that a cube is such a deeply ubiquitous symbol in bitcoin, visually and metaphorically, and that the bead was one of the very first methods of exchange — the combination just made perfect sense, and was additionally manageable in scale. I immediately set to working out the practicalities, calculator in hand, and could barely believe what I found..!

BMAG: When you started working out whether 21 million could fit into a cube, you stumbled into a series of mathematical coincidences — 276 cubed, the 4,096 remainder dividing evenly by six, the square root landing on 64 (I can’t help hearing the Beatles lyric “When I’m 64” in my head), a power of two. Walk us through that moment. Did you realize right away what you were looking at, or did it unfold gradually?

Anik Malcolm:  Haha — wow, I hadn’t even made the Beatles connection yet! Fantastic. Yes, it happened very quickly. Obviously the cube root of 21M wasn’t going to be a rational number, so I knew I would have to do some tinkering to make it fit. I naturally started with the idea of rounding the cube root up to 276 and subtracting from there — as you said earlier, to reach 21,024,576, and it was already a rush when the surplus 24,576 divided cleanly into 6, meaning I could give the desired structure symmetry. That rush, however, was greatly amplified by the fact that I felt I recognized the number 4,096, and I was literally shaking when I inputted “square root of 4096” into my calculator, and when I saw the result I was absolutely dumbstruck — Una witnessing the whole process in amusement! The fact that I could not only spread the subtracted number equally over all six sides, but ALSO do so in perfect squares to obtain exactly 21,000,000 felt like a moment of divine providence, as if this symmetry had been encoded from the start and had been waiting to be found, and that there was possibly some deeper significance that someone, some day, might fathom. I knew right away that I had been entrusted with a very meaningful project.

BMAG: The pattern you found — squares halving from 64×64 down to 2×2 — mirrors bitcoin’s halving mechanism. You’ve described the piece as a “still life of Bitcoin.” How much of that connection did you set out to find, and how much of it felt like it was already embedded in the number waiting to be discovered?

Anik Malcolm: Yes — I was actually so moved by the initial finding that it wasn’t until some time later that I realized, to my EVEN greater astonishment, the obvious fact that I could divide 64 into 32, 16, 8, 4, and 2 — not only making the cube much more visually interesting, but in the process also representing both the halving function so deeply integral to bitcoin’s mechanism, but simultaneously also the exponential growth that, conversely, is a direct result of that halving. It felt that this single cube embodied everything that bitcoin is and does, and in such incredible symmetrical elegance — I was, and am still, more than a year later, absolutely in awe of the beauty of it all, which is why I have made it pretty much into my life’s work, for the time being at least. So to answer the question — I didn’t set out to find it at all, which is why I really feel I’m just a messenger, a role which permits me to stand so strongly behind it as it is not my own creation but merely a discovery.

BMAG: The oil painting debuting at Bitcoin 2026 took over 900 hours — each bead representing an individual bitcoin, painted by hand. What does that kind of sustained, meticulous labor do to your relationship with the subject? Does spending that long with 21 million change how you think about the number?

Anik Malcolm: This is a very interesting question, and one I actually pondered much during the process. As it is a two-dimensional representation of a still-theoretical 3D object, I “only” had to paint the 227,701 visible beads — each one, however, three times: body, highlight, shadow, not to mention the underlying grid.

The whole process, as you can imagine, was deeply meditative, and I found that “intrusive” thoughts would affect my efficiency, so that in itself became an exercise in recognizing, accepting, and letting go — a growth process of sorts which many report encountering on their bitcoin journey.

Next, I realized that music that was more demanding of my attention would have the same effect, so over time the playlist evolved into a soundtrack which resonated with the cube’s essence rather than rubbed against it — Arvo Pärt, David Lang, Kjartan Sveinsson, and the like, which I will also provide for listening at B26, as it forms an added dimension to the artwork’s presence.

Thirdly, I started noticing many other patterns within the numbers, many of which linked with Tesla’s “3,6,9” ideas, and I even spontaneously started reciting personal mantras as I painted, dot by dot, in a 3,6,9 pattern!

So I would say that rather than actively applying meaning to the number and its cubic manifestation, I became deeply under its influence as time progressed — physically, mentally, and spiritually. There is a certain “holiness” to bitcoin upon which I feel we all agree to a greater or lesser extent, and my experience of representing it so very literally was a true reflection of that.

BMAG: This concept has moved from drawings in Lugano to digital versions and tutorial videos to a full-scale oil painting, and you’re planning a monumental public sculpture in Roatán. What is it about this particular idea that keeps demanding a bigger format?

Anik Malcolm: Actually, both the Lugano drawings and the B26 painting (each 128×128 cm — about 4’2″) are on the smallest scale at which I could accurately represent the number! Each bead is 2mm (5/64″) — even smaller on the top face — so any smaller would have been unfeasible. I would also like to make a sculpture version of the same or similar size, hopefully within the next 12 months, as 55.2cm (under 2′) is still manageable in size. However, I met someone in Lugano who had spent years looking for a suitable idea for a monumental Bitcoin sculpture in Roatán, and felt that this worked perfectly. Even at a bead size of only 1cm (roughly ⅜”) with a 1cm gap in between for visual and kinetic effect, the cube alone quickly expands to 5.52m (approx. 18′), not counting the supporting structure and elevation from the ground. I feel that being able to be in the presence of all 21 million at such a grand and imposing scale would be an experience that would do bitcoin and all it stands for the appropriate justice.

BMAG: Adam Back has taken notice of the work. But if someone walks up to this painting at B26 with no math background and no particular interest in Bitcoin’s technical architecture — what do you want them to see or infer?

Anik Malcolm: I think my teenage daughter is a good representative of that demographic! She told me the other day that she would frequently come into the room where the painting has been drying “just to look at it for a while.” As I experienced while painting — I feel there is a deeply calming effect that the cube’s sheer symmetry and pattern exudes, floating and glowing in its abyssal setting, and combined with the provided soundtrack it becomes a deeply meditative and engrossing experience. And even on a basic math entry level — there are 21 subtracted squares visible on the painting! (Another beautiful coincidence — 1 square of 64², 4 squares of 32², and 16 squares of 16².) I feel, and hope, that both visitors of B26 and eventually the painting’s future owner will derive deep and sustained pleasure from this calm that was quietly encoded into that magical number, in the way both I and my whole family have during the journey of its creation — the calm methodical truth that is reflective of the bitcoin experience as a whole.

Fix the money. Fix the world.

“The Whole Entire Universe” by Anik Malcolm debuts in the BMAG art gallery at Bitcoin 2026, April 27–29, at The Venetian Resort, Las Vegas. Preview the work and explore more from the BMAG B26 exhibition HERE.  A limited edition shirt based on the painting is available HERE.

The Bitcoin Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG) is the curatorial and cultural programming division of BTC Inc and the Bitcoin Conference. Since 2019, the BMAG conference art gallery has facilitated more than 120 BTC in art and collectible sales. Learn more about BMAG at museum.b.tc. Follow BMAG on twitter @BMAG_HQ.

Bundle your Bitcoin 2026 pass with a stay at The Venetianand get your fourth night free. Use code AFTERS for a free After Hours Pass, or get your pass alone here. 

This post The Whole Entire Universe: 21 Million, One Painting first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Dennis Koch.

Bitcoin Magazine

Congresswoman Sheri Biggs Discloses Up to $250,000 BTC Investment via iShares Bitcoin ETF

Representative Sheri Biggs of South Carolina has disclosed a purchase of up to $250,000 in Bitcoin exposure via the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), marking one of the largest single Bitcoin-related buys by a sitting member of Congress. 

The Periodic Transaction Report filed with the House shows a transaction in the $100,001–$250,000 range executed on March 4, 2026 and reported in mid‑April, in line with disclosure deadlines under the STOCK Act.

The trade places Biggs among Congress’s most aggressive adopters of Bitcoin investment products, a cohort that already includes Senator David McCormick and Representative Brandon Gill, who have collectively reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin ETF purchases over the past year. 

Biggs has previously been identified by crypto advocacy groups as strongly supportive of digital assets, and her latest filing underscores how lawmakers are increasingly gaining direct financial exposure to the sector they help regulate.

The move comes as BTC trades below recent highs but remains a central focus of Washington’s ongoing debate over digital asset regulation and potential federal Bitcoin reserve policy. 

Bitcoin price action 

Bitcoin price rose sharply above $77,000 today after Iran announced the Strait of Hormuz had been fully reopened under a ceasefire framework, easing fears of a potential supply shock and triggering a broad risk-on move across global markets.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the key shipping route is open to all commercial vessels for the duration of a 10-day truce tied to de-escalation efforts involving Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The announcement signaled a temporary stabilization in a region that had been on edge for weeks over escalating tensions and threats to energy flows through one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints.

President Donald Trump amplified the development on social media, declaring that the “Strait of IRAN is fully open and ready for full passage,” reinforcing expectations that diplomatic momentum could continue. The White House has suggested that broader talks with Tehran remain possible within days, with additional regional meetings under discussion.

Markets reacted quickly. Oil prices fell as the geopolitical risk premium unwound, and equities and crypto moved higher in tandem. BTC pushed back into the $76,000–$78,000 range, a zone that has repeatedly acted as resistance since February’s pullback from earlier highs.

With liquidity thin and positioning crowded, BTC now sits at a key inflection point where continued geopolitical de-escalation could fuel a breakout above resistance, while renewed tensions risk sending price back toward the low-$70,000 range.

This post Congresswoman Sheri Biggs Discloses Up to $250,000 BTC Investment via iShares Bitcoin ETF first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

U.S Senator Probes Status of Binance Inquiry Over Iran Compliance Concerns

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has asked the Justice Department and FinCEN for updates on the status of monitors overseeing Binance, citing concerns about the exchange’s compliance program and allegations of weak anti-money laundering controls, according to Fortune reporting. 

In letters sent Friday, Blumenthal referenced reports of Iranian-linked crypto flows and questioned whether Binance’s oversight structure is functioning as intended. 

As part of a 2023 settlement tied to sanctions and money laundering violations, the exchange agreed to pay a $4.3 billion fine and accept two independent monitors — one reporting to the DOJ and another to FinCEN — to oversee its compliance reforms starting in 2024.

The senator’s inquiry follows media reports alleging internal investigators at Binance were dismissed after flagging more than $1 billion in transactions linked to Iranian wallets, a claim the company disputes.

It also comes amid broader scrutiny of federal monitorships, which have faced criticism over effectiveness and cost, and reports that the DOJ has reconsidered or paused some corporate oversight programs.

Senate Democrats urge for a DOJ, Treasury Binance probe as well

Earlier this year, in a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a group of U.S. senators called for a “prompt, comprehensive review” of Binance’s sanctions compliance and anti-money laundering controls, citing renewed concerns over the exchange’s handling of illicit finance risks.

The letter, led by Sen. Mark Warner and joined by Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren along with Sens. Chris Van Hollen, Jack Reed, Catherine Cortez Masto, Tina Smith, Raphael Warnock, Andy Kim, Ruben Gallego, Lisa Blunt Rochester, and Angela Alsobrooks, points to internal compliance findings reportedly identifying roughly $1.7 billion in crypto transactions connected to Iranian actors, similarly to Blumenthal’s inquiry. 

According to the senators, one case involved a Binance vendor allegedly facilitating $1.2 billion in transfers tied to Iran-linked entities. The letter further claims Iranian users accessed more than 1,500 Binance accounts and that the platform may also have been used by Russian actors to circumvent sanctions.

The lawmakers also raised concerns that employees who flagged suspicious activity were dismissed and that Binance has become less responsive to law enforcement requests, potentially undermining obligations under its 2023 plea agreement.

Binance previously pleaded guilty to federal violations involving sanctions breaches and anti–money laundering failures, agreeing to more than $4 billion in penalties and committing to extensive compliance reforms under U.S. oversight, including enhanced KYC and sanctions screening systems.

The senators argue that the latest allegations raise serious questions about whether those reforms have been effectively implemented and sustained, warning that allowing such flows would conflict with Binance’s commitments to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

This post U.S Senator Probes Status of Binance Inquiry Over Iran Compliance Concerns first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Kraken Owner Payward to Acquire Bitnomial for $550M, Securing Full CFTC-Licensed U.S. Crypto Derivatives Stack

Kraken-owner Payward has agreed to acquire Bitnomial in a deal valued at up to $550 million in cash and stock, giving the firm control of a fully licensed U.S. crypto derivatives stack as it expands deeper into regulated markets.

The transaction values Payward at $20 billion and is expected to close in the first half of 2026, subject to customary conditions and regulatory filings with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Bitnomial stands out as the first crypto-native platform in the U.S. to secure all three licenses required to operate a full-stack derivatives business: a designated contract market, a derivatives clearing organization, and a futures commission merchant. Those approvals allow it to run an exchange, clear trades, and offer brokerage services within a single regulated framework.

By acquiring Bitnomial, Payward gains infrastructure that would take years to build. The exchange spent more than a decade developing a system designed for digital assets, including crypto settlement, crypto collateral, and continuous trading. The deal brings that foundation under Payward’s ecosystem, which includes Kraken and its recently acquired futures platform NinjaTrader.

Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said clearing infrastructure shapes how markets function, pointing to settlement systems and margin models as the core of derivatives innovation. He said the U.S. lacks clearing infrastructure built for digital assets, which made Bitnomial’s platform a strategic target.

Bitnomial founder Luke Hoersten said the company built its exchange and clearinghouse from the ground up for crypto markets. He pointed to features such as perpetual futures, crypto-settled products, and a unified trading book across spot, futures, and options as capabilities that legacy systems cannot support without redesign.

Kraken’s busy week

The acquisition expands Payward’s push into derivatives, a segment that has become central to crypto trading volumes. While Kraken remains a major exchange, it trails some global competitors in spot trading and has focused on building out derivatives and multi-asset capabilities through acquisitions.

The company’s largest move came in 2025 with its $1.5 billion purchase of NinjaTrader, which gave it a foothold in U.S. futures markets and access to a large base of retail traders. The Bitnomial deal builds on that strategy by adding a fully regulated derivatives infrastructure layer.

The deal also strengthens Payward Services, the company’s business-to-business infrastructure arm. Through a single API integration, banks, fintech firms, and brokerages will be able to offer regulated U.S. derivatives alongside services such as crypto trading, staking, and tokenized equities.

Payward framed the transaction as an infrastructure play rather than a traditional acquisition, positioning Bitnomial’s regulatory stack as the foundation for building the next phase of U.S. crypto derivatives markets.

Earlier this week, Deutsche Börse acquired a $200 million stake in Kraken to expand institutional crypto services, even as the exchange disclosed limited insider-related security incidents affecting a small number of accounts. Also this week, Kraken confirmed a confidential IPO filing as its valuation dropped to $13.3 billion. 

This post Kraken Owner Payward to Acquire Bitnomial for $550M, Securing Full CFTC-Licensed U.S. Crypto Derivatives Stack first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Washington isn't trying to solve every crypto policy fight at once, but it appears to be carving out a workable path for one specific category of digital asset: the regulated, dollar-pegged stablecoin.

The GENIUS Act established the first federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, and a bipartisan House tax discussion draft now proposes friendlier tax treatment for those same tokens when people actually use them.

Together, the two efforts point toward a deliberate, stablecoins-first lane in American crypto policy that could reshape how users, merchants, and issuers interact with digital dollars in the years ahead.

What the stablecoin tax draft actually proposes

The draft legislation is the Digital Asset PARITY Act, a bipartisan discussion draft first released in December 2025 by Representatives Max Miller (R-Ohio) and Steven Horsford (D-Nevada), both members of the House Ways and Means Committee. An updated version was re-released on March 26, 2026, with significant revisions to its core stablecoin provision.

In the revised March draft, gains from selling a “regulated payment stablecoin” generally wouldn't be included in gross income, and losses wouldn't be recognized, unless the taxpayer's basis in the token falls below 99% of its redemption value.

For exchanges, the recipient would take a deemed basis of $1. To qualify, the stablecoin must be issued by a permitted payment stablecoin issuer under the GENIUS Act, pegged only to the US dollar, and have demonstrated tight price stability over the prior 12 months. Brokers and dealers are excluded.

For ordinary people, this means spending a qualifying dollar stablecoin could stop triggering a small, irritating tax event every time the token's value drifts a fraction of a cent.

The draft is trying to give stable, regulated dollar tokens the kind of practical flexibility that cash already enjoys, rather than subjecting every micro-fluctuation to the capital gains framework applied to volatile crypto assets.

This is a narrow carve-out for tokens that behave, by design and by regulation, as digital representations of the dollar.

Why the GENIUS Act is the foundation

The tax draft can't be understood in isolation because its scope is explicitly tied to the regulated stablecoin category that the GENIUS Act already created.

That law, which passed the Senate 68-30 and the House 308-122 with substantial bipartisan support, established who can issue payment stablecoins in the United States, what reserves they must hold, and what compliance obligations they must meet. It requires 100% reserve backing with liquid assets, subjects issuers to Bank Secrecy Act obligations, and mandates all kinds of anti-money-laundering and sanctions compliance programs.

The regulatory machinery behind this new draft is already moving.

The OCC proposed its implementing rules in early March 2026, covering standards for reserves, capital, liquidity, and risk management. Treasury and FinCEN/OFAC followed in April with a joint proposed rule establishing anti-money-laundering and sanctions compliance requirements for permitted payment stablecoin issuers. The FDIC has also begun laying out application procedures for FDIC-supervised institutions seeking to issue payment stablecoins through subsidiaries.

The tax draft's own explanatory notes acknowledge that its narrow focus on regulated payment stablecoins follows existing statute, specifically citing the GENIUS Act.

Congress appears to be building in sequence: first define the legal stablecoin, then make it practical to use.

No stablecoin issuer has received formal “permitted payment stablecoin issuer” status yet, because the regulatory machinery is still being assembled, and final implementing rules aren't required until July 2026.

But the leading candidates are already visible.

Circle's USDC is the clearest frontrunner: the company already publishes monthly reserve attestations verified by a Big Four accounting firm, holds reserves in US Treasuries and cash at regulated banks, and operates under existing state money transmitter licenses. USDC is widely expected to meet GENIUS Act compliance requirements without any major structural changes.

Rather than restructuring USDT for US compliance, Tether took a different route by launching USA₮ in January 2026 through Anchorage Digital Bank, creating a separate US-compliant token rather than restructuring its offshore flagship.

The GENIUS Act also opened a door that didn't previously exist for traditional banks.

Any FDIC-insured institution can now apply to issue payment stablecoins through a subsidiary, and some major players are already exploring that path. JPMorgan's blockchain arm Kinexys has been developing a deposit token aimed at institutional on-chain settlements, and Bank of America has publicly described stablecoin regulation as the beginning of a multi-year shift toward on-chain banking.

If those efforts produce tokens that qualify under the GENIUS Act's framework, they would also be eligible for the PARITY Act's proposed tax treatment. While it's unlikely that these bank-issued stablecoins would see the kind of volumes USDC and USDT have, it's still a significant change for the stablecoin market that has been dominated by crypto-native issuers since its inception.

What this means for users, merchants, and issuers

The benefit this will have for users is straightforward friction reduction.

Under the current framework, every sale or exchange of a digital asset can generate a reportable gain or loss, no matter how trivial.

The PARITY Act draft is aimed at eliminating that burden for qualifying regulated dollar stablecoins, because tiny value fluctuations around $1 would generally stop being a tax problem.

If the token stays close enough to its peg and the user acquired it near $1, the special rule would apply. If the token breaks away from the peg and the transaction occurs outside that narrow band, it wouldn't.

The benefit for merchants is simpler acceptance. A payment method works better when customers don't feel that every transaction creates an accounting problem, and stablecoins have struggled with that perception in the US for years.

If the tax treatment becomes simpler for customers, merchants have one less obstacle when considering stablecoin adoption.

But issuers would be the ones who would most likely benefit the most, as this combination of acceptance and regulation could be quite transformative.

The GENIUS Act provides the rulebook: permitted issuers know what reserves they need, what compliance programs they must run, and what regulators expect.

But a stablecoin issuer's business model only works if people actually hold and spend the token. If the tax draft passes, compliant issuers would have a considerably stronger case that their tokens are practical to use in everyday American commerce, and that distinction between regulatory permission and real-world usability is exactly where the commercial value sits.

However, it's important to note that a discussion draft isn't law. It's much closer to a public working version of a bill, released by lawmakers to signal policy direction, invite feedback, and test political support before formal legislative movement.

The PARITY Act still contains explanatory notes and unfinished technical provisions, showing that the policy ideas behind it are real, but the legislative language is still being refined. Representatives Miller and Horsford said they intend to introduce the draft as a formal bill, and there's been discussion about crypto tax provisions potentially fitting into a broader reconciliation package, but passage isn't guaranteed.

The draft shows where influential lawmakers want policy to go, and discussion drafts can carry political weight without becoming law quickly, or at all.

What happens to stablecoins either way

If the PARITY Act's stablecoin provision becomes law, certain regulated dollar stablecoins would become genuinely easier to use in routine transactions across the US economy. The bill text indicates the provision would apply to taxable years beginning after Dec. 31, 2025.

If it fails, it most likely won't cause any negative effects for stablecoins.

The GENIUS Act is already law, and implementation is moving through Treasury, the OCC, the FDIC, and FinCEN. Issuers would still have a federal regulatory framework to operate under, and the infrastructure buildout would continue.

What would be missing is the tax simplification layer for users and businesses. The US could still become a regulated stablecoin market without becoming an easy-to-use stablecoin payment market.

The system would have legal rails for issuers, but retail users and merchants would continue facing the kind of tax ambiguity that discourages routine adoption.

Without the tax piece, the country may regulate stablecoins faster than it normalizes using them.

That tension captures the central question in American stablecoin policy right now. The country has already defined what a legal stablecoin is and who can issue one. What remains undecided is whether those regulated dollar stablecoins will sit as licensed financial products on a regulatory shelf or function as everyday digital dollars that people and businesses can use without hesitation.

The GENIUS Act built the framework. The tax draft, if it ever becomes law, would bridge the gap between regulation and routine use, and that gap is exactly where the future of American stablecoin payments will be decided.

The post Congress on verge of making regulated dollar stablecoins act almost like digital cash appeared first on CryptoSlate.

For most of its life, crypto lived outside the financial system. If you wanted to move dollars in or out of an exchange, that money still had to pass through a regular bank somewhere along the way. Most people assumed it would stay that way until Washington finally decided how to regulate it.

But that assumption is now breaking down. In March 2026, a regional Federal Reserve bank approved a limited account for Kraken, the first time a crypto exchange has ever been allowed to plug directly into the US central bank's payment system. More approvals could follow, and the GENIUS Act, passed last year, has cleared a path for ordinary banks to start issuing their own digital dollars.

None of this needed a sweeping “crypto law”: it was a series of smaller, technical decisions that have added up and changed the picture entirely.

Crypto may not be waiting for permission anymore. It may already be finding a way in.

What a “backdoor into the system” actually means

The US financial system runs on a set of payment networks operated by the Federal Reserve. Banks use them to move money between each other, settle transactions at the end of the day, and tap dollar liquidity when they need it. The most important, called Fedwire, moves trillions of dollars between banks every single day.

To use those networks, an institution needs an account at the Fed, which was historically reserved for licensed banks. Everyone else had to rent access by going through a partner bank that already had one.

That's what just changed. Kraken's banking unit now has its own direct line into the Fed's payment system, without routing dollars through another bank first. The account is limited, which means it won't have interest on reserves or access to the Fed's emergency lending, but it lets Kraken settle its own dollar transactions on the same infrastructure banks use.

Think of the difference this way: instead of using a third-party app to talk to your bank, you have your own connection to the bank's back end. Faster, cheaper, and no longer dependent on a middleman that can say no.

For years, US crypto policy has moved slowly, pulled between agencies that didn't agree on the basics. At the same time, demand for crypto services from big institutional investors hasn't gone away. They want cleaner, regulated ways to touch the asset class.

So the system is adapting practically, not politically.

The GENIUS Act gave digital dollars their first real federal rulebook and effectively invited regulated banks into the market. Regulators began handing out special charters that let nonbank firms like Circle operate with bank-like privileges.

The Fed opened a public comment period on a lighter-weight account designed for payment-focused firms. Wyoming's crypto-friendly bank charter, once treated as an experimental oddity, became the legal vehicle that carried Kraken through the door.

All of this means that your bank's exposure to digital assets is going up, either through partners, products, or its own tokens. Citi has said it's targeting a 2026 launch of crypto custody. A group of major global banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs, has explored a jointly-backed digital dollar. Even if you never buy crypto, it will now sit on the edges of the account you already have.

This comes with quite a few risks for markets, though. When the pipes between crypto and traditional finance get wider and shorter, money moves faster in both directions, and so do shocks.

For crypto, direct access to payment systems is a stamp of legitimacy that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. But it also means it loses the “outside the system” identity that defined it, and takes on some of the same responsibilities.

The more connected crypto becomes, the less isolated its risks are.

The real tension: stability or contagion for crypto?

One view (call it the normalization case) is that pulling crypto inside the regulated perimeter makes everyone safer. Companies with direct Fed access have to meet stricter standards, and reserves get easier to monitor. This is a net positive for users, as they end up with fewer opaque middlemen between their dollars and the exchange. When seen through this lens, integration reduces risk rather than creating it.

The other view is hard to ignore, as the scares from the 2008 financial crisis are still fresh for many.

The US banking lobby reacted to the Kraken decision by warning that lightly regulated companies like this with direct access to the payment system introduce all kinds of money-laundering and operational risks. However, they would also open a Pandora's box of new risks: in a panic, money could actually flood into these new accounts, draining deposits from the community banks and credit unions that fund the real economy.

The Bank Policy Institute, representing the country's largest banks, said the approval happened before the Fed Board had even finished writing its own rulebook for these accounts.

The question underneath this fight is pretty simple: if crypto becomes part of the system, does it make the system stronger or more fragile?

Financial crises are rarely about the risk everyone is watching. They're a result of the connections no one modeled, and many believe that the new direct connection between crypto markets and the Fed's payment rails is exactly that kind of linkage.

The subtle part

Part of what makes a huge shift like this hard to see is that nobody is announcing it as one.
There's no press conference where “crypto joins the banking system,” because there doesn't need to be. A regional Fed approval here, a stablecoin rulebook there, and a charter granted to a firm most people have never heard of.

Each of these items is boring on its own terms, which is why they clear without the kind of political fight that most comprehensive crypto laws have been stuck in for years.

More crypto firms will almost certainly follow Kraken once the Fed finalizes its lighter-weight account framework, and the approvals will be granted one at a time, in different Federal Reserve districts, with conditions that take pages of legal language to unpack.

Big banks will keep rolling out custody services and their own digital dollars as ordinary product launches, not ideological statements, while the Kraken cybersecurity incident this spring (an extortion attempt built around insider access) hands the banking lobby exactly the kind of material it needs to argue that lightly regulated firms shouldn't be sitting on the same rails as JPMorgan.

A comprehensive crypto market-structure law may still pass, and probably will eventually, but by the time it does, the thing it's meant to govern will already have been built around it, and the interesting question will no longer be what the rules say but how much of the system has stopped needing them.

The post Crypto to enter the US banking system through a backdoor, not through regulation appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Kevin Warsh is set to become the first Federal Reserve chair with disclosed crypto holdings, and the first whose policy instincts could still squeeze the sector harder than his predecessors.

Most Americans don't follow Fed personnel drama closely, but they feel its aftershocks every month through mortgage rates, savings yields, and the temperature of equity markets.

Bitcoin feels those same currents even more acutely than most traded assets, which is why the question of who leads the central bank matters to crypto long before that person says a word about digital assets. When Warsh's odds of becoming Fed chair were rising, Bitcoin sold off, as traders read him as a central banker who favors a smaller Fed balance sheet and a tighter monetary regime.

That reaction shows just how high the stakes are. The next Fed chair will shape Bitcoin's fate through the price of money, the amount of liquidity in markets, and the willingness of the financial system to let crypto move closer to its core.

Warsh's financial disclosure added more weight to this. The document revealed holdings tied to several crypto-related ventures, including Polymarket, and Warsh has pledged to divest those positions under Fed ethics rules if confirmed by the Senate.

That makes him the first nominee to reach the chair's seat with visible sector exposure at a moment when crypto is pushing closer to the mainstream American financial system. The unusual part is that the same figure who appears optically closer to crypto could still end up presiding over the kind of monetary environment that tends to weigh on it most heavily.

Warsh could matter more to Bitcoin than past Fed chairs

The clearest consequence of a Warsh chairmanship will most likely arrive through macro policy rather than doctrine. Reuters has reported that he favors a smaller Fed balance sheet and a tighter monetary regime, and that framing alone hit Bitcoin prices when his nomination odds climbed.

Bitcoin tends to perform better when liquidity is abundant and investor risk appetite is high, and it tends to struggle when the Fed pulls liquidity back. So a chair whose instincts lean toward a smaller balance sheet matters to crypto in the cold arithmetic of markets, because tighter money usually leaves less room for speculative assets to run.

That's also legible well beyond crypto. The same institution that influences borrowing costs, market sentiment, and the value of financial assets more broadly also shapes the backdrop in which Bitcoin trades. Even those who care little about digital assets still understand the underlying mechanism, because they see the Fed's influence in mortgage payments, savings returns, and stock-market swings.

Bitcoin sits on that same map of risk, only a little bit closer to the edge.

A second consequence reaches deeper into the financial system itself. The Federal Reserve influences whether crypto firms can connect more directly to the core of American finance, and the tone set by the chair filters down to banks, custodians, and regulators deciding how much exposure to permit.

Earlier this month, Kraken became the first crypto firm to secure a Fed master account, giving it direct access to Fed payment rails with restrictions. Regional Fed banks manage those accounts, while the Fed board sets the guidelines and has signaled openness to more restricted models for crypto and fintech firms. A Warsh-led Fed will inherit that opening question, and its answers will help determine whether crypto becomes a more established fixture of the financial system or remains closer to its edges.

That same tone also shapes the broader climate around bank custody of digital assets, stablecoin scrutiny, and supervisory attitudes toward firms operating at the border of banking and crypto.

Warsh's direct authority over crypto legislation will be limited, yet his stance will still influence how willing banks feel to work with digital-asset businesses and how quickly the compliance burden eases or tightens. This is one reason the choice of Fed chair carries more significance for crypto than a narrow reading of the job title might suggest.

Why this represents a break from the Fed's recent pattern

Recent Fed chairs largely kept crypto at institutional arm's length even as it moved from novelty to something large enough to attract sustained official attention.

In the early years of Bitcoin, the response inside the Federal Reserve was one of cautious interest, with digital-payment innovation treated as a technology worth watching while remaining outside the center of policy.

Janet Yellen spoke more firmly about the limits and concerns surrounding cryptocurrencies, and Jerome Powell later developed a framework that acknowledged potential efficiency gains in areas such as payments while continuing to emphasize financial-stability risks and the absence of traditional protections. By late 2024, Powell was also clear that the Fed was legally unable to own Bitcoin and had no plans to seek legislative changes that would allow it.

Warsh arrives with a different kind of profile. His disclosed holdings reflect personal proximity to a part of the sector, and his divestment pledge shows an awareness of how sensitive those optics will be. What sets him apart is the combination of visible crypto ties and a macro worldview that markets already read as hawkish. That mix makes him feel different from previous chairs without making him easier for the industry to live with.

The forward signals will land soon. Warsh is scheduled to appear before the Senate Banking Committee on April 21, and Powell's term ends on May 15. Several signals in the hearing will carry weight for crypto markets, including whether Warsh frames financial innovation as something to accommodate or contain, whether he emphasizes balance-sheet shrinkage as a central objective, whether he addresses bank access and stablecoin oversight with specificity, and how directly he speaks about his disclosed crypto holdings and divestment commitments.

Pull back, and you see the big picture. The next Fed era will shape crypto through three forces ordinary Americans already understand, which are the price of money, the amount of liquidity moving through markets, and the degree of access crypto firms have to the institutions most Americans trust.

Previous chairs treated crypto as peripheral, experimental, or risky. Warsh arrives at a moment when that distance is harder to maintain, even as the policy instincts associated with him could make the environment more difficult for Bitcoin and the firms around it.

His confirmation carries the weight of a larger argument about crypto's next American chapter and about whether that chapter will be defined more by deeper access to the financial system or by tighter money flowing through it.

The post Why Kevin Warsh should become Bitcoin’s most impactful Fed chair yet appeared first on CryptoSlate.

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded their largest single-day capital inflow since January on April 17, as the reopening of a critical Middle Eastern shipping route sparked a broader market rotation into risk assets.

According to SoSoValue data, the 12 products drew approximately $664 million in fresh capital on April 17.

The surge was catalyzed by an announcement from Iran’s foreign minister that the Strait of Hormuz had reopened to commercial shipping for the duration of the ceasefire.

The development, subsequently confirmed by US President Donald Trump, alleviated immediate fears of global energy supply disruptions.

This macroeconomic relief triggered a massive daily allocation into spot Bitcoin ETFs.

BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led the pack, absorbing $284 million on Friday alone. Fidelity's Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) followed with $163.4 million, while the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) took in $117.9 million.

Morgan Stanley’s newly launched MSBT fund also captured $16.6 million during the session, demonstrating early traction for the wealth management giant's bespoke offering.

Caution remains

Despite the robust headline figures, market analysts remain cautious about the structural integrity of Bitcoin's current rally.

Ecoinometrics, a digital asset analytics platform, noted that while recent flows indicate active market participation, they lack the compounding momentum indicative of a sustained breakout.

According to the firm, the market's current environment can be described as “participation without urgency” because the industry is still seeing chunks of outflows.

It explained:

“The daily data is inconsistent. Inflows are interspersed with outflows, and more importantly, we haven’t seen any of the large single-day inflows that typically mark a strong wave of demand. When a rally is backed by conviction, flows will cluster and build momentum. That has not happened yet.”

Considering this, Ecoinometrics concluded that Bitcoin is currently priced exactly in line with its baseline flow levels, with no sign of demand pushing the market beyond that metric.

Unless capital injections accelerate meaningfully and build consistent momentum, analysts warned that any attempt by Bitcoin to sustain a move higher will remain fragile.

Bitcoin ETFs register strongest weekly inflow since January

Meanwhile, the concentrated surge on April 17 marked the asset class's strongest weekly performance since January.

Supported by the late-week rally, the suite of US ETFs drew in $996 million in total net inflows over the five-day period. Notably, this is the highest weekly intake since the roughly $1.4 billion recorded in early January.

The massive haul effectively salvaged what had begun as a volatile trading week.

The period opened with a $291 million outflow on Monday before momentum shifted, resulting in gains of $411.5 million on Tuesday and $186 million on Wednesday, followed by a modest $26 million on Thursday.

Meanwhile, this marked the third consecutive week of inflow for the products. During this period, the funds have drawn around $1.7 billion in fresh capital.

As of press time, the total net assets across spot Bitcoin ETFs stood at over $101 billion, pushing cumulative net inflows to $57 billion since inception.

The post US Bitcoin ETFs pull in $664M in largest daily inflow since January, because Iran reopened Hormuz for a few hours appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Iran's Friday announcement that the Strait of Hormuz would be opened during the current ceasefire triggered one of the sharpest oil reversals of the year.

Brent crude fell 12.95% to $86.52, and WTI dropped 14.26% to $81.19, both their lowest levels since Mar. 11 and the largest single-day declines since Apr. 8. US stocks surged, bond yields dropped, the dollar weakened, and Bitcoin registered an intraday high of $78,336.

Traders stripped the war premium they had spent weeks layering into crude prices, and risk assets repriced accordingly.

Yesterday, the Strait was opened on Iranian terms. Commercial vessels required authorization from Iran's Ports and Maritime Organization and the IRGC and had to transit through Iran-designated safe lanes, but the US blockade on Iranian shipping remains fully in place until a broader diplomatic settlement.

That window has already narrowed. As of Apr. 18, Iran said it had closed the Strait again after the US left its blockade in place, pushing the market back into a countdown toward the Apr. 22 ceasefire deadline.

Only eight oil and gas tankers moved during the reopening, underscoring how far the route remains from anything resembling normal traffic.

Related Reading

Bitcoin faces critical weekend test as Iran closes Strait after immediately disputing the US narrative on Hormuz deal

Bitcoin’s post-Hormuz rally faces a weekend test as Iran disputes Trump’s deal claims and shipping, oil, and bond risks remain unresolved.

Apr 17, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

During the brief window, the IMO was not able to confirm that the arrangement met freedom-of-navigation standards.

Shipping companies were waiting for legal and safety clarity before resuming normal passage, and the US Navy stated that the mine threat in parts of Hormuz is not fully understood.

One Pakistani-flagged tanker carrying roughly 440,000 barrels of UAE crude exited the Gulf on Apr. 17, providing concrete data that passage was possible.

That brief test never became normalization. AP reported that only eight oil and gas tankers transited during the short reopening before Iran reimposed restrictions, leaving Bitcoin with just four days to see whether the ceasefire can produce real shipping recovery before Apr. 22.

Bitcoin is now caught between a market that priced reopening fast and a Strait that, as of Apr. 18, is closed again ahead of the Apr. 22 ceasefire deadline.

The arithmetic of fear

EIA data puts average daily oil flow through the Strait at 20 million barrels in 2024, roughly 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption, with 84% of crude and condensate and 83% of LNG flowing onward to Asian markets.

That is the concrete threshold behind the market’s countdown: unless traffic recovers before Apr. 22, the route that carries about one-fifth of global petroleum liquids remains functionally impaired.

Since the conflict began, the war has knocked more than 500 million barrels of crude and condensate out of the global market, about $50 billion in lost output. In comparison, global onshore crude inventories fell roughly 45 million barrels in April alone.

As recently as Apr. 7, the EIA projected Brent averaging $115 in the second quarter. On Apr. 13, Morgan Stanley held Brent at $110 in the second quarter and $100 in the third quarter, modeling only a gradual export recovery through October.

At $86.52, Brent sits materially below every major published baseline from less than two weeks ago. The market has front-run a normalization path that neither the EIA nor Wall Street had priced.

That asymmetry shapes the financial premium, which can dissipate much faster. The IEA's chief said overall Middle East energy output may take roughly two years to recover to pre-war levels.

Why the reopening is still fragile

Iran's operational message on Apr. 17 closely mirrors what its deputy foreign minister said on Apr. 9, when ships could pass with Iranian coordination but actual traffic ran below 10% of normal. This is roughly seven vessels per day versus the usual 140.

The diplomatic probability distribution changed while the passage rules stayed broadly the same. A 10-day ceasefire and revived US-Iran diplomacy caused markets to reread the same basic operational framework as de-escalation.

The Lebanon truce, which forms part of the diplomatic backdrop, still leaves Israeli military presence in southern Lebanon and Hezbollah's disarmament unresolved.

The blockade stays in force until a broader deal, and even if vessels begin moving, it takes roughly 21 days for ships to travel from the Gulf to Rotterdam, meaning physical supply relief follows diplomatic headlines with a lag of weeks.

Insurance premiums have not yet normalized, no official authority has downgraded the mine warnings, and no major liner has publicly declared the route cleared.

The Bitcoin transmission channel

Bitcoin's move today runs through a specific macro chain. Oil fell, reducing the near-term inflation outlook and reorienting expectations around the Federal Reserve's rate path.

Traders moved from pricing the Fed as sidelined until well into 2027 to pricing cuts by December 2026, a meaningful compression in the expected tightening window.

The March FOMC minutes had already flagged that higher crude prices were expected to lift inflation in 2026 and that a prolonged Middle East conflict risked making pass-through to core inflation more persistent.

When oil fell, that hawkish risk partially unwound. Bonds rallied, the dollar weakened, equities surged, and Bitcoin moved in step with the broader risk-on repricing.

Bitcoin has spent the past several months behaving as a liquidity-sensitive risk asset whose trajectory tracks Fed expectations, tech sentiment, and the size of the monetary backdrop.

A durable de-escalation that keeps oil prices falling long enough to soften inflation and revive the Fed-cut story is a genuine macro tailwind for Bitcoin.

The paths ahead

While rhetoric has deteriorated quickly after the initial announcement, talks have not yet officially failed, and the ceasefire still holds.

If that extends into a broader US-Iran settlement, traffic resumes along lanes approaching internationally accepted standards, mine warnings fade, and insurers soften their stance, the oil relief could extend beyond today's price.

The EIA already viewed the market as oversupplied before the conflict began. A durable reopening could bleed out more premium than most traders currently expect, with Brent potentially drifting into the mid-$70s to mid-$80s.

In that setup, Fed-cut expectations would move further forward, the dollar would stay under pressure, and Bitcoin would have the cleanest macro tailwind available in the current cycle.

Citi's 12-month bull case of $165,000 represents the outer envelope of what a sustained macro thaw of that magnitude could support.

The more underpriced negative outcome is a ceasefire that holds in name but never produces shipping normalization.

Mine warnings persist, politically controlled lanes keep insurers cautious, tanker counts stay well below the 140-per-day threshold, and the operational reality never matches the diplomatic headline.

In that scenario, oil rebounds toward the $100-$115 range that informed EIA and sell-side forecasts as recently as last week.

The inflation relief stalls before reaching the Fed's decision calculus, rate-cut expectations drift back out, and Bitcoin surrenders its de-escalation premium.

Citi's recessionary downside case of $58,000 marks the outer bound for Bitcoin re-entering a tighter-for-longer macro regime.

These two paths will first become visible in ship counts, insurer behavior, and whether the US blockade language shifts over the next 72 hours.

The ceasefire's 10-day window gives this trade a built-in expiry.

Points to watch include whether vessel counts move materially above Apr. 9 levels, whether the IMO formally endorses the transit arrangement, whether the US-Iran talks produce any revision to the blockade language, and whether Bitcoin continues to price oil relief as a Fed-relief narrative.

The post Bitcoin now has just 4 days before ceasefire deadline risks price reversal with Hormuz closed again appeared first on CryptoSlate.

After surging by 4,000%, RAVE entered a parabolic phase where price action became unsustainable. This kind of vertical movement rarely holds. What followed was a classic blow-off top, where early buyers began taking profits while late entrants were still chasing upside.

Once momentum stalled, the structure quickly shifted. Selling pressure accelerated, liquidity dried up on the bid side, and the token collapsed within hours. The move wasn’t gradual—it was aggressive, emotional, and driven by forced exits.

This is the nature of hype-driven altcoins. They rise fast, but they fall even faster.

RAVE Token Crash Analysis: Where the Breakdown Happened

The chart tells a clean story of transition from euphoria to panic.

RAVE peaked in the $26–$28 zone, where price started to stall after its vertical climb. This was the first signal of exhaustion. From there, the market attempted to hold structure, but the real turning point came at $17, a key horizontal support level that had previously acted as a strong base.

Once that level broke, the entire structure collapsed.

A massive red candle followed, slicing through support and triggering a cascade of liquidations. The move extended toward the $11 zone, with a sharp wick even pushing close to $8, highlighting how aggressive the sell-off became.

Momentum indicators confirm this shift. RSI dropped rapidly from elevated levels into oversold territory, reflecting the speed of the reversal. At the same time, price lost both short-term moving averages, signaling a complete trend flip.

This breakdown wasn’t subtle—it was decisive. And for traders watching structure, it was the confirmation needed to act.

Why the RAVE Token Crash Was Predictable

The warning signs were visible before the crash even began.

RAVE’s rally lacked proper consolidation phases. Instead of building stable support levels, price moved almost vertically, fueled by speculation and rapid inflows of liquidity. These types of moves are typically driven by short-term interest rather than sustainable demand.

As the rally extended, the risk-reward profile worsened. Late buyers were entering at elevated levels, while early participants were already sitting on massive gains. That imbalance often leads to distribution, where smart money exits into retail demand.

In crypto markets, parabolic growth tends to follow a familiar cycle. The sharper the rise, the more fragile the structure becomes. When support finally breaks, the unwind is fast and unforgiving.

How to Trade the RAVE Token Crash (Long or Short)

This kind of volatility creates opportunity for traders who know how to navigate both directions of the market.

👉 You can trade RAVE (buy or short) using leverage on Bitget.

Step-by-Step: How to Start Trading RAVE

• Create an account
  Sign up on Bitget using your email or phone number.
• Complete KYC verification
  Upload your ID and complete facial verification. Approval is typically fast.
• Deposit funds
  You can deposit crypto or purchase directly using a card.
• Access Futures Trading
  Search for the RAVE/USDT pair and choose your preferred leverage. Beginners should stick to lower leverage like 3x–5x.
• Execute your trade
  Go long if you expect a bounce, or short if you expect further downside.
• Manage your risk
  Always use a stop-loss and avoid overexposure during high volatility.

What Comes Next After the RAVE Token Crash?

Following such a sharp decline, the market typically enters a period of uncertainty.

A short-term bounce is possible, especially toward the $14–$17 zone, which previously acted as support and may now serve as resistance. However, unless that level is reclaimed, the broader trend remains bearish.

If selling pressure continues, a break below $11 could open the door for a retest of the $8 region or even lower levels as liquidity fades.

Another possibility is consolidation. The market may stabilize within a range while participants reassess value and volume returns gradually.

For now, $17 remains the key level. It defines whether RAVE attempts recovery or continues its downtrend.

Final Take on the RAVE Token Crash

The RAVE token crash reinforces a fundamental market principle: preparation beats reaction.

Traders who recognized the unsustainable rally, waited for confirmation, and acted on the breakdown were able to capture one of the cleanest moves in recent altcoin trading.

This wasn’t just a collapse—it was a predictable shift in structure. And in markets like crypto, those who understand structure don’t just avoid losses—they position themselves to profit from them.

The first quarter of 2026 has proven to be a challenging period for the digital asset market. While the previous year ended with high hopes for institutional adoption, a combination of macroeconomic shifts—including hawkish Federal Reserve pivots and geopolitical trade tensions—has sent many high-profile altcoins into a tailspin.

According to recent data, the market is currently navigating a period of "leverage flushing," where over-extended positions are being liquidated, leading to double-digit Year-to-Date (YTD) losses for even the most promising Layer 1 and privacy projects. In this article, we break down the five tokens that have suffered the most significant declines since the start of the year.

Summary of the Biggest YTD Losers

The following table summarizes the performance of the five hardest-hit tokens based on current market data:

1. Midnight (NIGHT): The Privacy Paradox

Topping the list of losers is Midnight ($NIGHT), the privacy-focused partner chain of the Cardano ecosystem. Despite the high anticipation surrounding its Glacier Drop airdrop and subsequent Binance listing in March 2026, the token has seen a massive 58.64% decline YTD.

The primary cause for this "heavy red" status is the typical post-launch fatigue and a series of massive token unlocks. As of April 2026, the market is absorbing a circulating supply of roughly 16.6 billion tokens. While the technology behind its selective disclosure remains sound, the sheer volume of sell pressure from early airdrop recipients has outpaced buyer demand.

2. Sei (SEI): High Speed, Low Momentum

Sei ($SEI), often touted as one of the fastest Layer 1 blockchains for trading, has hit a major roadblock in 2026. With a YTD loss of 48.96%, the SEI price reflects a broader exit from "alternative L1" trades.

Investors appear to be rotating capital out of high-throughput experimental chains and back into "Blue Chip" assets like Bitcoin or stablecoins. Despite a minor 1.84% recovery in the last seven days, the technical outlook remains bearish as it struggles to reclaim previous support levels.

3. Bitget Token (BGB): Exchange Utility Under Pressure

The Bitget Token ($BGB) has dropped 46.10% YTD, currently trading at $1.87. This is a significant correction from its 2024 all-time high of over $8.00. The decline is largely attributed to a decrease in exchange-wide trading volumes and a shift in investor sentiment regarding exchange-native tokens.

While BGB still offers utility within its ecosystem, the lack of new "Launchpad" excitement in a bearish Q1 has left the token without a strong bullish catalyst.

4. Aptos (APT): The Scalability Struggle

Aptos ($APT) is currently down 42.68% for the year, with its price hovering under the $1.00 mark at $0.9523. Much like Sei, Aptos is suffering from the "VC Coin" narrative, where large venture capital backers and scheduled unlocks create persistent overhead resistance.

While the Move programming language continues to attract developers, the price action suggests that the market is repricing the entire Layer 1 sector. Analysts suggest that until the network sees a significant "killer app" deployment, the APT price may continue to lag behind the broader market recovery.

5. Worldcoin (WLD): Regulatory and Identity Hurdles

Rounding out the top five is Worldcoin ($WLD), which has shed 42.52% of its value since January 1st. Trading at $0.2762, WLD has been hampered by ongoing regulatory scrutiny regarding its biometric data collection.

In a 2026 landscape where privacy regulations are tightening globally, Worldcoin's "Orb" model faces logistical and legal friction. This uncertainty has led to a sharp decrease in speculative interest, despite the project's ties to the booming AI sector.

Conclusion: Is the Bottom In?

The heavy losses across these five tokens highlight the inherent volatility of the altcoin market in 2026. While YTD drops of 40% to 60% are painful for holders, they often create "oversold" conditions that attract contrarian investors.

Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have reached a boiling point today, April 18, 2026, as the Iranian military officially announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This move comes less than 24 hours after the waterway was briefly declared "open" during a fragile ceasefire. The Iranian military command stated that the strategic passage has now "returned to its previous state" due to the United States' refusal to lift a naval blockade on Iranian ports.

Impact on Global Energy and Crypto Markets

The sudden escalation triggered an immediate reaction across global financial markets. WTI Crude Oil prices, which had softened during the brief reopening, quickly pumped back to the $83/barrel mark. Simultaneously, the risk-off sentiment hit the digital asset space hard; Bitcoin (BTC), which had been testing major resistance levels, saw a sharp correction down to $76,000.

Why the Strait of Hormuz is Closed Again

According to a statement published via the state-backed Fars media outlet, the Iranian military accused the U.S. of "banditry and piracy" by maintaining its blockade despite the temporary truce. The military command emphasized that until the U.S. ensures full freedom of movement for vessels traveling to and from Iran, the strait will remain under "strict management and control" of Iranian armed forces.

This reversal has effectively caught markets off guard. Just yesterday, President Trump had claimed on Truth Social that Iran had agreed to never use the strait as a weapon again. The current "previous state" implies a full military blockade of one of the world's most vital energy arteries.

Bitcoin and Crypto Under Pressure

The crypto market's reaction has been swift and decisive. Before this news broke, Bitcoin was struggling to maintain momentum at its psychological resistance level.

• Bitcoin (BTC): Slipped to $76,000, erasing recent gains.
• Altcoins: Most major tokens followed suit, with liquidations spiking as traders fled to "safe-haven" assets like gold.
• Outlook: Analysts warn that if the conflict escalates further, BTC could test support levels near $71,000.

Bitcoin Stands at a Technical Crossroads

Bitcoin ($BTC) is currently testing a pivotal resistance level that could define the market's trajectory for the remainder of the second quarter of 2026. After a period of consolidation and geopolitical-driven volatility, the Bitcoin price has surged back toward the $77,000 - $78,000 range.

For traders and long-term investors, the focus is now entirely on the weekly candle close. Technical indicators suggest that flipping the $78,000 level from resistance to support would clear the path for a rapid ascent toward the psychological $90,000 barrier.

Is the BTC Breakout Real?

Yes, current market data confirms that Bitcoin is attempting a high-conviction breakout. As of April 18, 2026, $BTC is trading near $76,378, having touched intraday highs above $78,000 earlier this week. This move is supported by a significant shift in macro-economic sentiment, specifically the cooling of tensions in the Middle East and the temporary reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which has lowered global inflation fears and bolstered "risk-on" assets.

Understanding the $78,000 Resistance Zone

In technical analysis, a "breakout" occurs when an asset's price moves above a defined resistance level with significant volume. For Bitcoin, $78,000 represents more than just a number; it is a structural ceiling established during the volatile swings of early 2026.

The Significance of the Weekly Close

Daily price spikes are often dismissed as "noise" or "fakeouts." However, a weekly close (Sunday at midnight UTC) provides a more reliable signal of institutional intent.

• Above $78,000: Confirms a trend reversal and sets a new floor for the next leg up.
• Below $78,000: Suggests the market is not yet ready to sustain higher valuations, likely leading to further consolidation near $70,000.

From Macro Drivers to Price Targets

The current momentum is fueled by a "perfect storm" of fundamental and technical factors:

1. Macro Stability: The collapse of crude oil prices following ceasefire talks has redirected capital from commodities back into digital assets.
2. ETF Inflows: Institutional demand via spot ETFs remains robust, with major players like Morgan Stanley’s MSBT absorbing sell-side pressure.
3. Liquidation Cascades: According to data from Coinglass, a move above $78,500 would trigger the liquidation of billions in short positions, providing the "fuel" needed for a squeeze toward $85,000.

Price Targets: The Road to $90,000

If the weekly close remains bullish, analysts are eyeing two primary stages:

• Target 1 ($85,000): The first major Fibonacci extension level and a historical zone of interest.
• Target 2 ($90,000): A psychological milestone that would likely attract a fresh wave of retail FOMO.

Technical Analysis: RSI and Support Levels

Examining the BTC/USD chart, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is currently hovering around 64.13. While this indicates strong bullish momentum, it is not yet in the "overbought" territory (typically above 70), suggesting there is still ample room for upward movement before a cooling-off period is required.

Paris is currently the epicenter of the digital asset world as Paris Blockchain Week 2026 kicks off at the Carrousel du Louvre. While institutional panels discuss regulatory frameworks like MiCA, the Austrian fintech giant Bitpanda has decided to take a more "on-the-ground" approach. In a bold marketing stunt to promote its Bitpanda Fusion platform, the company deployed a flashmob of 100 "Traders" to iconic Parisian landmarks, signaling a major push for liquidity dominance in the European market.

Bitpanda Fusion Stunt: A Sea of Traders at the Louvre

On the morning of April 15, visitors at the Louvre and other key spots across the French capital were met with an unusual sight: 100 identically dressed "Traders." This coordinated flashmob wasn't just for show; it was a high-impact "stunt" designed to bring Bitpanda Fusion to the forefront of the conversation during the year's most important blockchain event in Europe.

The message is clear: Bitpanda is no longer just a retail broker; it is evolving into a professional-grade liquidity powerhouse. By choosing the Louvre—a symbol of history and value—Bitpanda is positioning Fusion as the bridge between traditional asset appreciation and modern digital efficiency.

What is Bitpanda Fusion?

At its core, Bitpanda Fusion is a liquidity aggregation platform designed to solve the fragmentation problem currently facing European traders. While most platforms provide access to a single order book, Fusion connects to 12 global trading venues simultaneously.

Key Features of the Platform:

• Order Book Aggregation: Access to combined liquidity from multiple top-tier exchanges.
• Better Execution: By sourcing from multiple pools, traders can often find tighter spreads and better price fills on over 2,000 trading pairs.
• Advanced Order Types: Support for Limit, Stop-Limit, and Take-Profit orders, integrated with native TradingView charting.
• Regulated Environment: Fusion operates within Bitpanda’s highly regulated framework, ensuring user safety while providing "offshore-level" liquidity.

For those tracking the current Bitcoin price, using a platform that aggregates liquidity is essential for minimizing slippage, especially during the high-volatility periods often seen during major conferences.

Fusion Night: Networking at Le Tout Paris

The impact of the day-time stunt leads directly into an exclusive evening event. Bitpanda is hosting the Fusion Night at the iconic Le Tout Paris. Located with a panoramic view of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, the event serves as a networking hub for partners, influencers, and industry leaders to discuss the future of the crypto exchange landscape.

For attendees, this was a chance to move beyond the flashmob and see the technology behind the brand. The event focuses on the technical superiority of liquidity aggregation and how it will redefine the trading experience for both retail and institutional clients in 2026.

Zac Prince, head of Galaxy’s retail platform, said he struggles to see prediction markets in diversified portfolios for long-term investors.

Experts warn quantum computers could someday forge Bitcoin’s digital signatures, allowing unauthorized transactions.

GPT-Rosalind is OpenAI's first domain-specific model, built for drug discovery and life sciences—and it's not for everyone.

The price of Bitcoin breaks a seven-month downtrend as geopolitical shifts and prediction markets point to $84K next.

More than $1.2 million worth of wrapped XRP tokens (wXRP) have been minted on Solana as the Ripple-linked asset gains greater DeFi utility.

Ripple CTO emeritus David Schwartz has fulfilled an XRP offer to an X critic.

Institutional adoption of XRP has entered a new phase, as a wave of spot XRP ETFs and sustained inflows signal growing demand from major financial players following regulatory clarity.

Zcash has revealed that the vulnerabilities were not exploited to affect the consensus chain and all user funds remain safe.

A mysterious whale is loading up on Ethereum, withdrawing 32,007 ETH from a major crypto exchange.

The crypto market entered a deeper downturn in Q1 2026, with total capitalization falling over 20% to $2.4 trillion as macro pressure and policy shifts weighed on risk assets.

The Pepe Coin price prediction fires back to life after PEPE rallied 10% on April 17 as $39.78M in fresh derivatives capital and ETF speculation pulled the token off the lows, per CoinMarketCap.

The move tracked Canary Capital’s S-1 filing for the first U.S. listed spot PEPE ETF earlier this month. Dogecoin (DOGE) rode the same tape higher as large holders bought 330 million DOGE and pushed price toward $0.10.

Every Pepe Coin price prediction is now getting repriced around the ETF news, and projects with real tools and confirmed listings are the ones big money keeps chasing. Pepeto crossed $9.16M because the wallets inside know $1,000 at this price becomes $100,000 after the Binance listing.

Santiment data shows $39.78M in fresh capital entered PEPE derivatives on April 17, pushing the token up 10% with a positive funding rate of 0.0043% and controlled bullish leverage, per CoinMarketCap. Canary Capital filed an S-1 for the first spot PEPE ETF on April 8. Dogecoin whales bought 330 million DOGE the same week, driving DOGE back above $0.10 with $3.99M in short liquidations.

The daily chart now flashes a confirmed breakout within a rising channel, targeting $0.0000055 on a clean close. The ETF news favors projects with real demand over tokens running on sentiment alone.

Pepe Coin Price Prediction Compared: PEPE, Dogecoin, and the Presale Opportunity Pepeto

Pepeto Builds the Tools Pepe Never Did So the ETF Rotation Flows Here

Pepe proved meme energy alone can mint $11 billion in value and turn $500 entries into millions. It also proved that without tools, every dollar eventually comes back down. Pepeto is building what Pepe never had, which is why $9.16M is already in and the Binance listing moves closer every day.

The contract scanner scores every position for risk before capital moves, catching traps and abnormal large holder activity so traders sidestep the damage that hits everyone else. The zero fee swap engine lets holders move tokens across networks at no cost, breaking the wall that shuts smaller traders out. Both tools carry a completed SolidProof audit and run live today.

The same creator who proved one token and one community can produce $11 billion cofounded Pepeto, with a Binance exchange veteran leading development. The last stage closed early, this stage fills while the market watches, the same pattern that preceded every presale to listing move that made early buyers rich.

Pepe (PEPE) Price at $0.0000039 After 10% Rally on ETF Speculation

Pepe (PEPE) trades at $0.0000039 on April 17 per CoinMarketCap, sitting 87% below the $0.000028 all time high with a $1.5 billion cap.

The 10% rally arrived on $39.78M in derivatives inflows and Canary Capital’s S-1 for the first spot PEPE ETF. Support holds at $0.0000036 with resistance at $0.00000408 and $0.0000055 above.

DigitalCoinPrice projects PEPE between $0.0000057 and $0.0000072 for 2026, roughly 55% to 95% from here. That math still takes months, while presale to listing entries need one event to deliver multiples no meme coin recovery can match.

Dogecoin (DOGE) Price at $0.98 as Large Holders Buy 330M DOGE in a Week

Dogecoin (DOGE) trades at $0.98 on April 17 per CoinMarketCap, sitting 86% below its $0.7376 record. Large holders bought 330 million DOGE this week, pushing price above the key $0.10 resistance. Spot and derivatives volumes surged 62% and 56%.

Without a supply cap, every rally faces inflation pressure, and DOGE needs a supercycle to deliver the multiples presale entries with confirmed listings ahead produce from a single event.

Conclusion

Pepe already proved meme coins mint millionaires, and the ETF rally ripping 10% out of the chart today just confirmed smart money still bets on this lane, but the biggest returns in crypto history never came from chasing a recovery already in motion. They came from catching presale pricing the candle before a confirmed listing printed, every single time.

PEPE has the ETF news and DOGE has the brand, but neither holds what Pepeto holds right now, and fresh capital keeps landing on the Pepeto site every hour as this round fills toward the listing window.

Buying Pepeto now at $0.0000001865 is how the wallets reading this setup correctly step into the 100x position every trader who waits one more day ends up paying listing price for.

Click To Visit Pepeto Website To Enter The Presale

FAQs

What is the Pepe Coin price prediction for 2026 after the ETF speculation rally?

Pepe (PEPE) trades at $0.0000039 with analysts projecting $0.0000057 to $0.0000072 for 2026, roughly 55% to 95% upside. PEPE rallied 10% on April 17 as $39.78M in derivatives inflows and Canary Capital’s spot PEPE ETF S-1 filing fueled the move.

How does Pepeto compare to holding Dogecoin (DOGE) for a recovery?

Pepeto at $0.0000001865 targets 100x from a confirmed Binance listing, SolidProof audit, and live exchange. The presale raised $9.16M with 182% APY, while DOGE at $0.98 needs a full supercycle to retake its $0.7376 record.

The post Pepe Coin Price Prediction 2026: PEPE Rips 10% on ETF News, DOGE Whales Pile In, but Is Pepeto the Next 100x Meme Before the Binance Listing? appeared first on Blockonomi.

Trump confirmed the US is “very close” to a nuclear deal with Iran on April 16 as a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon took effect and Pakistan mediated direct talks in Islamabad. Oil prices dropped on the de-escalation and risk assets surged across equities and crypto simultaneously. The XRP price prediction expanded immediately as analysts recalculated what a resolved Middle East conflict means for institutional flows. European Business Magazine projects $5 to $10 for XRP if the CLARITY Act passes into law, while 24/7 Wall Street notes $10 would place XRP’s market cap at $610 billion, roughly where Ethereum peaked in 2025. The geopolitical breakthrough reshapes the macro backdrop for every digital asset. But AlphaPepe does not need a peace deal to deliver. AlphaSwap is already live and outpacing legacy return profiles from Stage 13 at $0.01494 with over $890,000 raised across 7,700 wallets.

The $10 XRP Price Prediction and What the Iran Breakthrough Unlocks

The conflict has been the single largest macro headwind suppressing crypto since February 2026. Oil above $100 kept the Fed locked at 3.5%. XRP fell from $2.40 to $1.35 during the war months. A resolution changes the calculus at every level. Lower oil frees the Fed to signal cuts. Rate signals drive institutional capital back into risk assets. ETF inflows resume at scale.

Standard Chartered’s Kendrick projects $8 if the CLARITY Act passes and ETF inflows reach $10 billion. Zipmex places the 2030 range at $5 to $15 with $10 achievable if Ripple captures meaningful SWIFT settlement volume. A Coinbase and EY-Parthenon survey found 18% of institutional investors already hold XRP and 25% plan to add exposure in 2026. From $1.35 to $10 is a 640% return that requires peace, legislation, and institutional adoption scaling over 12 to 18 months. Legacy asset returns across BTC, ETH, and XRP all measure in single-digit multiples from current prices. That is meaningful wealth preservation. It is not the compressed asymmetry presale positioning offers.

AlphaSwap Tech Outpaces Legacy Returns Before Any of Those Catalysts Arrive

AlphaSwap does not need an Iran deal, a CLARITY Act vote, or ETF inflows to function. It is already live. A cross-chain AI DEX screening every contract for exploit patterns before execution, tracking whale flows across chains in real time, and generating trading fee revenue today. The technology operates in a category where AI now catches 92% of exploited vulnerabilities before human auditors flag them. AlphaPepe puts that capability directly at the retail level through an interface that works now, not after a diplomatic milestone.

The developer behind AlphaSwap delivered 500 million transactions across Shibarium mainnet. A 10/10 BlockSAFU audit verified the contract with zero flags. Supply capped at 1 billion tokens. Instant delivery. Zero vesting. Stakers earning 85% APR while Q2 approaches. Tier 1 CEX debut follows.

Over $890,000 raised from 7,700 wallets. Stage 13 at $0.01494 with 100 new addresses arriving daily. A $2,500 entry secures 167,336 tokens. Analysts targeting $1.50 value that at $250,904. At $3.50 it crosses $585,676. Buyers at $2,000 or above can apply code ALPHA50 for a 50% bonus. XRP needs peace, legislation, and institutional scaling for 640%. AlphaPepe needs Q2 for a return that outpaces every legacy asset on the board.

Geopolitics Reshape Timelines. AlphaSwap Already Shipped.

The Trump-Iran breakthrough may accelerate the $10 XRP thesis or it may stall at the negotiation table. The presale at $0.01494 with $890,000 raised and a live AI DEX does not fluctuate with diplomatic headlines. Stage 13 is filling and the $1 million milestone approaches.

Click To Visit AlphaPepe Official Website To Enter The Presale

FAQs

Can XRP reach $10 after a Trump-Iran deal?
Analysts project $5 to $10 if CLARITY passes and macro conditions improve. A peace deal would lower oil, free the Fed, and accelerate institutional ETF inflows toward the $10 billion threshold XRP needs.

How does AlphaSwap outpace legacy asset returns?
A live AI DEX at Stage 13 pricing of $0.01494 with analyst targets of $1.50 to $3.50 offers 100x to 234x versus single-digit multiples from BTC, ETH, and XRP at current levels.

How close is AlphaPepe to raising $1M?
Over $890,000 across 7,700 wallets at $0.01494. The $1 million mark is approaching with 100 new addresses entering daily.

The post Analysts Forecast $10 XRP Price Prediction Amid Trump-Iran Geopolitical Breakthrough as AlphaPepe AlphaSwap Tech Outpaces Legacy Asset Returns appeared first on Blockonomi.

ChatGPT now targets $2.50 to $3.50 for XRP by late 2026, up to 155% upside from current levels, as Bitcoin moved past $78,000 on April 17 after the Strait of Hormuz reopened. XRP trades at $1.47 with fresh weekly inflows of $119.6 million reported by CoinShares.

The XRP price prediction from AI models keeps running ahead of price, and that gap is the exact signal that defines every cycle. While the market debates which way XRP breaks next, one presale has been pulling capital straight through the macro fog, and the numbers behind it are starting to earn their own coverage. Pepeto crossed $9.16 million at $0.0000001865 with a Binance listing closing in fast.

ChatGPT sees XRP’s first leg moving toward $1.60 to $1.85, then a push into $2.50 to $3.50 by late 2026 as ETF inflows pick up, per Yahoo Finance.

The XRP price prediction has every structural piece in place: Rakuten integrating XRP for 44 million Japanese users on April 15, the SEC CLARITY Act roundtable on April 16, and XRPL on-chain lending amendments now in validator voting per 24/7 Wall St.

But no wallet ever built generational wealth buying XRP after the forecast confirmed. The returns go to the buyers who picked the right project while $1.47 and extreme fear kept everyone else frozen.

XRP, Pepeto, and the ChatGPT Prediction Most Holders Are Missing

Pepeto Built What No Other Presale This Cycle Can Match

Crypto headlines rotate every hour, but the wallets that printed real gains keep those records on record forever. Shiba Inu turned sub-cent buys into account sizes most salaries cannot match, returning 49 million percent inside a matter of weeks. Traders who showed up two days late caught an entirely different number, while the first holders walked away with seven-digit results.

Pepeto is building the same pace regardless of where the XRP price prediction settles. Chatter on X, Telegram, and Reddit grows louder by the day, mirroring the buildup ahead of every major meme listing the market has seen.

The difference between the two projects is clear. Shiba Inu had no utility and lost 93% once the hype passed. Pepeto is built to do the opposite. Its scanner flags unsafe code before any wallet sends funds, PepetoSwap handles trades across three chains with no fees, and the bridge carries tokens between Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana with no gas cost.

SolidProof audited every contract before the presale accepted a single buyer. A former Binance team member manages the exchange while the builder who took Pepe to $11 billion from nothing leads development. Staking at 182% APY keeps positions growing while the Binance listing draws closer.

“Nothing in crypto pulls more attention than the meme coin space, but tokens without real products will not survive 2026. Pepe was the beginning, not the ending. Pepeto is the full vision I always carried, and with an experienced Binance engineer on the team, the exchange runs at an institutional quality,” said the cofounder behind the first Pepe coin.

XRP Price Prediction: XRP Holds $1.47 as ChatGPT Maps $3.50 Target on ETF Flows

XRP trades at $1.47 on April 17 after Bitcoin pushed past $78,000 per CoinMarketCap, with seven U.S. spot XRP ETFs now holding a combined $1 billion in AUM. Standard Chartered carries a $2.80 target while Grok sees $10 if adoption keeps accelerating.

This XRP cycle runs on a four-year rhythm. The buyers who picked the right project during fear become the names on every success list. Pepeto fills that role for 2026.

Conclusion

The XRP price prediction has ChatGPT and CoinShares inflows pointing past $2.50. News confirms big money is coming back. But returns from an $88 billion base cannot match what a presale priced in millionths of a cent can produce.

When XRP finally prints $3.50, every outlet will run the headline. Presale math produces far bigger multiples. Putting $1,000 into Pepeto today buys 5.36 billion tokens, which at a listing of $0.00005 works out to $268,000. Analysts base this target on Pepe’s all-time high, and they point out that Pepeto adds real utility Pepe never had, making a weaker result difficult to argue.

The wallets sitting on Pepeto at presale pricing carry the most one-sided return setup this cycle will produce, and the Pepeto presale is where that entry still sits open before the Binance listing sets a higher price.

Click To Visit Pepeto Website To Enter The Presale

FAQs

What does ChatGPT predict for XRP in 2026 after the Hormuz reopening?

ChatGPT targets $2.50 to $3.50 for XRP by late 2026 per Yahoo Finance, up to 155% upside. Seven spot XRP ETFs now hold $1 billion in combined AUM.

Is XRP or Pepeto the better buy right now before the next rally?

Pepeto pairs a SolidProof audit, zero-fee exchange, cross-chain bridge, and contract scanner built by the Pepe cofounder and a senior Binance developer. The presale holds $9.16M at $0.0000001865 with 182% APY and a confirmed Binance listing.

The post XRP Price Prediction: ChatGPT Target Could Shock Markets While Pepeto Might Be the Better Play appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• ARB maintains a bullish structure despite cooling momentum, holding above the critical $0.125 support zone.
• RSI and MACD indicators signal short-term weakness, pointing to consolidation rather than a full trend reversal.
• Altcoin market cap retreats from $195B highs, testing key support levels near the $182B–$184B range.
• Market conditions suggest a range-bound phase as traders wait for confirmation of the next breakout direction.

Altcoins recorded steady momentum over the past week as broader market conditions remained supportive. Bitcoin held strength, while volatility stayed low.

Market data shows a cooling phase emerging, with key indicators pointing toward consolidation rather than a clear reversal.

ARB Price Action Signals Cooling Momentum After Rally

On the ARB/USDT 4-hour chart, price action confirms a shift from consolidation into an uptrend. The asset climbed from around $0.095 to near $0.135 before facing resistance. At the time of observation, ARB traded near $0.128, showing minor gains during the session.

Crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe addressed this trend in a recent tweet. He linked altcoin momentum to low volatility and strong Bitcoin performance. He also noted that a pullback, if it occurs, could present a buy-the-dip setup for ARB.

The structure still reflects higher highs and higher lows, which supports a bullish trend. However, recent rejection near the $0.135 zone slowed upward movement. Price has since entered a narrow range, indicating reduced momentum.

Key levels remain in focus. Immediate resistance sits between $0.130 and $0.135, while stronger resistance appears near $0.140. On the downside, support holds around $0.125, with deeper levels near $0.120 and $0.110.

Momentum indicators show a shift in pace. The Relative Strength Index moved down from overbought levels and now sits near neutral territory. This suggests easing buying pressure without clear bearish divergence.

Meanwhile, the MACD indicator shows a bearish crossover with a slightly negative histogram. This points to short-term selling pressure, though not strong enough to confirm a reversal. The setup aligns more with a pause following rapid gains.

Van de Poppe stated that a deeper correction remains unlikely. He added that any pullback could form a buy-the-dip pattern. His projection places a potential continuation toward the $0.16 level if support holds.

Altcoin Market Cap Pulls Back After Sharp Expansion

The broader altcoin market, excluding the top ten assets, followed a similar pattern. Market capitalization reached approximately $195 billion before retreating to near $185 billion. This move reflects a short-term correction after rapid expansion.

Earlier phases showed a clear transition. The market declined through mid-March, followed by a consolidation range into early April. That phase formed a base between $169 billion and $178 billion.

A breakout occurred in mid-April, with strong upward candles pushing valuation higher. The move showed limited pullbacks, signaling aggressive capital inflows during that period. However, the rally lost pace near recent highs.

Current price action shows rejection near the $195 billion level. The pullback has brought the market toward a support zone between $182 billion and $184 billion. This level now acts as a key area for stability.

If the market holds above $180 billion, structure remains intact. A rebound could lead to another test of the $190 billion region. On the other hand, a breakdown below support may shift focus toward $178 billion.

Short-term behavior suggests consolidation may follow. A range between $180 billion and $190 billion appears likely while indicators reset. This aligns with the cooling trend seen in individual altcoins.

The recent rally points to increased activity outside major cryptocurrencies. However, the sharp rejection indicates that rapid gains triggered profit-taking. The market now seeks balance after the strong move.

Overall, both ARB and the broader altcoin market show similar patterns. Strong upward trends remain in place, yet momentum has slowed. Current conditions favor consolidation as traders assess the next direction.

The post Altcoins Cool After Rally as ARB Holds Support and Signals Potential Continuation appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• TAO cryptocurrency hit its first halving in December 2025, cutting daily emissions from 7,200 to 3,600 tokens.

• Grayscale allocated 43% of its AI Fund to TAO, making it the single largest position in the fund.

• Bittensor’s 128 competing subnets auto-prune weak projects, mirroring the S&P 500’s survivorship mechanism.

• Venice.ai, with over one million paying users, trained its flagship model on Bittensor’s Subnet 4.

TAO cryptocurrency is drawing serious attention from analysts who argue it combines the strongest features of Bitcoin, the S&P 500, and Nvidia into one asset.

Currently trading at $250 with a $2.7 billion market cap, TAO operates on the Bittensor network. The network runs 128 competing AI subnets, with a fixed supply cap of 21 million tokens. Institutional interest is growing, with multiple ETF applications now pending before the SEC.

TAO Cryptocurrency’s Scarcity Model and Automated Subnet Competition

TAO crypto mirrors Bitcoin’s supply structure through a hard cap of 21 million tokens. The network’s first halving occurred in December 2025, cutting daily emissions from 7,200 to 3,600 TAO. Around 67% of circulating supply remains locked, leaving a liquid float of just 3 million TAO.

Analyst Andy ττ argued on X that Bitcoin’s decade following its first halving produced a 1,311x return on a pure scarcity thesis alone.

He noted that TAO carries the same scarcity DNA but adds subnet-level revenue and usage on top. That combination did not exist in Bitcoin’s early structure.

The Bittensor network’s 128 subnets compete directly for emissions. Weaker subnets lose their allocation, while stronger ones attract more stake and grow.

This mirrors the S&P 500’s mechanism, where underperforming companies exit the index automatically over time.

Andy ττ described the structure as “a self-optimizing index of decentralized AI companies.” Stake-based voting determines which subnets survive, making the process market-driven rather than committee-driven. No comparable financial structure has existed before in traditional or digital markets.

Institutional Adoption and Real-World Usage Already Building Around TAO

Grayscale’s AI Fund recently allocated 43% of its holdings to TAO cryptocurrency, making it the fund’s single largest position.

Both Grayscale and Bitwise have ETF applications pending with the SEC. Corporate treasury firm xTAO is actively accumulating, and Yuma has staked $691 million into the network.

Venice.ai, co-founded by Erik Voorhees, now counts over one million paying users. The platform trained its flagship model on Bittensor’s Subnet 4 via Targon Compute.

Macrocosmos, operating on Subnet 9, is targeting a 70-billion-parameter distributed training run, which would be a world first.

The TAO Institute launched in April 2026, introducing a Subnet Risk Index for institutional allocators. Jensen Huang of Nvidia has publicly endorsed decentralized training, a concept central to Bittensor’s model. These developments point to infrastructure maturing around TAO rather than speculative positioning alone.

Andy ττ also noted that increased network usage reduces sell pressure on TAO cryptocurrency over time. Greater competition recycles more TAO, while higher usage lowers net issuance. Combined with the halving schedule, this creates a feedback loop between growth and reduced supply pressure.

The post Why TAO Cryptocurrency May Be the Most Structurally Unique Asset of the Next Decade appeared first on Blockonomi.

Grinex, a sanctioned crypto exchange serving Russian businesses and individual users, said it was hit by a large-scale cyberattack that resulted in the theft of funds worth more than 1 billion rubles from its users’ wallets.

The exchange described the incident as a targeted operation and claimed there were indications of involvement by foreign intelligence agencies. It said the technical footprint and scale of the attack suggested the use of advanced resources typically available to state-backed actors.

Following the breach, Grinex suspended its operations.

Laundering Route Exposed

In its official update, the exchange revealed that all relevant information has been handed over to law enforcement authorities. A criminal complaint has also been filed at the location of its infrastructure. Grinex stated the attack led to total damages estimated at around 13.74 million USDT.

Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs reported around 70 addresses connected to the hack, which is about 16 more than what Grinex publicly disclosed. According to the findings, all stolen assets were swapped into TRX through SunSwap and later pooled into a single TRON address.

The report also says TokenSpot, which TRM found to be a potential front linked to Garantex, was affected around the same time. Two of its wallets sent funds to the same consolidation address used by Grinex-linked wallets. Both platforms reportedly went offline on 15 April, which indicates that they may have been targeted by the same attacker.

Grinex was set up in Kyrgyzstan in December 2024, just weeks before a coordinated law enforcement operation in March 2025 that took down Garantex, a crypto exchange previously flagged for high-risk activity. Soon after Garantex was shut down, Telegram channels connected to it began directing users toward Grinex and presented it as a replacement platform with similar features. These channels also encouraged former customers to migrate in order to regain access to frozen funds.

This led the US Treasury’s OFAC to impose sanctions on Grinex, along with individuals linked to Garantex and the issuer of the A7A5 token, Old Vector, that same year. Before its closure, Garantex had processed over $100 billion in transactions while under sanctions since 2022.

The report also shed light on the use of A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin issued by Old Vector. According to the findings, Garantex wallets began moving funds into A7A5 in early 2025, before enforcement action began. After the shutdown, former users were issued A7A5 credits on Grinex equal to their frozen balances, allowing them to continue transactions through the new system.

Russia-Linked Illicit Activity

An earlier report by the platform found that illicit crypto inflows jumped in 2025, with about $158 billion flowing into suspicious wallets. The rise was mainly linked to Russia-related activity and improved tracking methods. Despite the increase, illicit transactions still made up only around 1.2% of total on-chain volume.

A7A5 was the largest contributor, which brought in about $72 billion in incoming value. Another $39 billion was linked to the A7 wallet cluster. Most of this activity was tied to Garantex, Grinex, and A7.

The post Garantex Successor Grinex Collapses Days After Coordinated Wallet Exploit appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum recorded a major on-chain milestone in the first quarter of 2026 across its base layer activity. Data from Artemis shows the network processed over 200 million transactions, its highest quarterly total on record.

On a quarterly basis, this represents a 43% increase from 145 million transactions in the previous quarter ending late 2025. Quarterly activity previously bottomed near 90 million in 2023 before stabilizing through most of 2024.

What’s Driving Ethereum’s Activity Growth?

Growth was driven mainly by Layer 2 networks that process transactions off-chain and settle on Ethereum. Rollups such as Base and Arbitrum bundle activity, increasing recorded base-layer transaction counts significantly over time.

Alongside this scaling effect, stablecoin issuance also expanded, pushing total supply on Ethereum to about $180 billion in the quarter. These dollar-pegged tokens now support decentralized finance activity, payments, and remittance flows across the ecosystem.

Network-level efficiency also played a role. The Dencun upgrade reduced data costs for Layer 2 networks, limiting direct fee pressure on the Ethereum mainnet. As a result, higher usage did not translate into proportional gas fees or increased ETH token burns.

What This Means for Ethereum’s Next Phase

Despite stronger network activity, Ether price remains near $2,400, still more than 50% below its 2025 peak levels. Analysts note a growing divergence between on-chain usage and market valuation trends.

Some market observers view this gap as a sign of delayed pricing response to network fundamentals. Historical cycles suggest sustained on-chain expansion often precedes broader price recovery phases in crypto markets.

However, analysts caution that transaction growth may include automated stablecoin movements rather than new user adoption. This raises questions about how much of the activity reflects genuine economic demand on the network.

Future momentum depends on whether the network maintains over 200 million transactions into the second quarter of 2026, alongside continued stablecoin and Layer 2 activity. These factors will determine whether the current level of network usage is sustained or fades.

The broader question is whether strong on-chain activity will eventually translate into renewed long-term market strength. This uncertainty is amplified as Ethereum’s usage, scaling, and price trends continue to move in different directions.

The post Ethereum Hits All-Time High in Quarterly Network Activity appeared first on CryptoPotato.

After weeks of dwindling performance, no-inflow days, and investor uncertainty, the spot ETFs tracking the popular cross-border token saw impressive inflows over the past five trading days.

This coincided with the de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East, but the return of uncertainty from conflicting statements over the weekend could turn the tables next week.

Best Week in 3 Months

CryptoPotato has repeatedly reported the spot XRP ETFs’ rather intriguing performance, which began with impressive numbers. The first $1 billion was attracted in about a month, while the initial nine weeks had no single day of more net outflows than inflows.

However, the trend rapidly changed in January and February and worsened in March as the war in the Middle East broke out and quickly intensified. In fact, March was the first month in the red for the funds, with over $31 million leaving the financial vehicles in total. April began on the wrong foot as well, with multiple days of no-reportable activity and some minor outflows, mirroring the March performance to a large extent.

Investors showed the first signs of reactivation on April 10, pouring over $9 million into the funds. This trend continued in the following business week, which ended with $55.39 million in net inflows – the single-best weekly performance since the one that ended on January 16. April 15 stands out as the highest-inflow day ($17.11 million), setting a 10-week record.

As such, the cumulative total net inflows have neared the all-time high ($1.28 billion) at $1.27 billion as of Friday’s close, according to data from SoSoValue.

XRP Pumped

The underlying asset joined the broader market’s rally over the past week, surging by 7% since the previous Sunday to over $1.43 now. It even tapped a three-week high at just over $1.50 yesterday after Iran’s foreign minister announced that the country had reopened the Strait of Hormuz.

However, it was stopped there and driven to its current level after Iran and the US made some contrasting statements on the war front, with Trump claiming that they had engaged in “very good conversations,” while the other side denied it.

Although the ceasefire between the two enemies continues for a few more days, the situation remains highly flammable and could go either way. More volatility is expected tomorrow when the legacy financial markets start to open and price in the impact of the weekend developments.

The post Ripple (XRP) ETFs Post Best Week in 3 Months as Investors Return appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The team behind the popular yet controversial project continues to try to improve the overall ecosystem with different initiatives announced frequently, but to no actual avail in terms of community approval and token price recovery.

In the latest example, they announced the first smart contract capability going live on Testnet, but the underlying asset continues to slide, while the comments below the post continue to refer to old issues they experience.

First Smart Contract Capabilities

Pi Network’s protocol updates began in late February when the network migrated to version 19.6. The following month and a half saw the introduction of version 19.9 and, perhaps most importantly, 20.2. The latter laid out the foundations for allowing smart contract features. V21 followed in early April, while V22 is scheduled to be completed by April 27.

In its latest announcement on X, the Core Team outlined the introduction of the aforementioned first smart contract capabilities directly on the project’s Testnet. According to them, this would foster “real, recurring, utility-driven use cases.”

They also promised that the blockchain will now be able to power e-commerce, streaming, online tools, and other similarly attractive niches.

Pi’s first smart contract capability is now live on Testnet: subscriptions!

This fosters real, recurring, utility-driven use cases.

Think e-commerce, streaming, online tools, and more, powered on-chain.

Read more in the Pi mining app. pic.twitter.com/tafdpuGAu1

— Pi Network (@PiCoreTeam) April 17, 2026

Despite this seemingly positive news, the majority of the comments below the post on X were still focused on another crucial topic: KYC. Many continue to experience issues when trying to migrate their tokens, even though they claim they have successfully completed all necessary steps. The team began second migrations last month and insists that hundreds of thousands of Pioneers have completed the transfer of their balances, but the community remains unconvinced.

PI Slides Again

After last month’s brief price pump following the Kraken listing, the underlying asset has been in a free-fall state for four weeks, falling from almost $0.30 to well below $0.20. It tried to stage a comeback earlier this week, but was halted at $0.185 today.

The subsequent rejection was quite painful, pushing the asset down to $0.173 as of press time. Its market cap is down to $1.760 billion on CoinGecko, which endangers its place in the top 50 alts by that metric despite the minor 7-day increase.

The post The Pi Network Paradox: Major Feature Launched, But PI Token Slides Again appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP is trading around $1.43 as Bitcoin’s breakout above its descending channel lifts broader market sentiment. The altcoin has staged a slight recovery from the recent low, but continues to lag meaningfully behind BTC’s move. This has been a persistent theme throughout this correction that shows no signs of reversing yet.

Ripple Price Analysis: The USDT Pair

XRP remains firmly inside its descending channel on the USDT pair, with the 100-day MA now declining toward approximately $1.50 and the 200-day MA sitting near $1.90. Both moving averages are compressing downward and forming an increasingly tight resistance ceiling just above the current price. The convergence of the channel’s upper boundary with the 100-day MA around $1.50–$1.60 makes that zone the first real test for buyers.

The RSI has recovered above 50 from deeply oversold levels in February, which is an improvement but still short of anything that signals genuine trend momentum. The $1.80 supply band remains the more significant resistance above, and it needs to be reclaimed on a closing basis before any bullish case can be made with conviction.

Below, the $1.20 level is the critical support zone that has held on a closing basis since the February wick, and a breakdown there could be disastrous as it opens the door toward the $1.00 and the $0.60 structural zone further below.

The BTC Pair

The XRP/BTC pair continues to disappoint, trading at approximately 1,880 sats and remaining in a sustained downtrend that has been in place since the August 2025 peak near 3,000 sats. While Bitcoin has broken above its descending channel and the 100-day MA, XRP has been completely unable to keep pace, and the ratio reflects that divergence clearly.

Both the 100-day MA (~2,000 sats) and 200-day MA (~2,100 sats) remain well above and declining, with the descending channel structure firmly intact. The RSI has bounced from deeply oversold territory in the low-20s back toward the mid-40s, which could support a short-term relief bounce on this pair, but a bounce is very different from a reversal.

A reclaim of 2,000 sats is the bare minimum needed before the bearish outlook begins to soften, and even then, the 100-day MA represents a much more meaningful hurdle. As long as Bitcoin continues to strengthen and XRP fails to outperform, this ratio is likely to remain under pressure.

The post Ripple Price Prediction: What Are XRP’s Next Big Targets After Recent Breakout? appeared first on CryptoPotato.