The significant liquidations highlight market volatility and caution, suggesting potential for short-term price swings and strategic trading opportunities.

The post Bitcoin futures see $600M in long liquidations, highest since February appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The haredi draft crisis could destabilize Israel's political landscape, impacting coalition dynamics and Netanyahu's leadership tenure.

The post Israel’s haredi draft crisis threatens Netanyahu’s coalition stability appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin's potential surge past $80K could trigger significant market volatility, impacting trader sentiment and future price predictions.

The post Bitcoin nears $80K, $2.2B in short positions at risk of liquidation appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Iran's stance may heighten regional tensions and complicate diplomatic efforts, impacting global oil markets and nuclear non-proliferation talks.

The post Iran rejects demands on Strait of Hormuz, uranium enrichment halt appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The stranding of ships in the Strait of Hormuz exacerbates regional trade instability, impacting market confidence and economic forecasts.

The post 600 ships stranded in Strait of Hormuz, disrupting regional trade appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

VanEck Flags Dual Bullish Signals for Bitcoin as Funding Turns Negative, Hash Rate Slips

Bitcoin’s latest onchain and derivatives data point to a constructive setup, with VanEck highlighting negative funding rates and a clustered hash rate drawdown alongside softer volatility and cautious positioning. 

The firm notes in their latest report that realized volatility fell from about 56% to 41% as US‑Iran tensions eased, while the 7‑day average funding rate dropped to roughly -1.8%, its lowest level since 2023 and in the 10th percentile of readings since late 2020.

Since 2020, bitcoin’s average 30‑day return during periods of negative funding has been 11.5%, compared with 4.5% across all periods, with a 77% hit rate for positive performance. When annualized funding sank below -5%, subsequent 30‑day returns averaged 19.4%, and 180‑day returns reached 70%, making negative funding a recurrent contrarian buy signal. VanEck also reports that 19 of the top 50 180‑day return windows since 2020 began on days with negative funding, despite such periods representing only about 13.6% of the sample.

The Bitcoin hash rate is falling

On the mining side, the 30‑day moving average hash rate has fallen to the 16th percentile over 30 days and 9th percentile over 90 days, while difficulty has slid to the 5th and 6th percentiles on those horizons. 

Three sustained hash rate decline episodes have appeared since December 2025, the densest cluster since China’s 2021 mining ban, with the latest drawdown of about 6.7% ending on April 15, 2026. Across seven completed historical drawdowns, bitcoin was higher 90 days later in six cases, with a median gain of 37.7% and a 63.1% median gain over 180 days.

Derivatives and onchain activity reflect guarded sentiment rather than capitulation. Put premiums relative to spot volume are more than six times their April 2024 level, while active supply over the last 180 days slipped to 28.4%, signaling greater holder dormancy. 

Long‑tenured cohorts, particularly 7‑10 year and 10+ year holders, increased spent volume to the 85th and 90th percentiles of the past four years, but VanEck stresses that such movements do not always represent outright selling. 

Taken together, the firm concludes that negative funding and hash rate stress form a reinforced bullish backdrop for bitcoin.

“Both mining rate drawdowns and negative funding rates have been associated with strong forward BTC returns. As such, we have become increasingly bullish on bitcoin,” the analysts wrote. 

Editorial Disclaimer: We leverage AI as part of our editorial workflow, including to support research, image generation, and quality assurance processes. All content is directed, reviewed, and approved by our editorial team, who are accountable for accuracy and integrity. AI-generated images use only tools trained on properly license material. In Bitcoin, as in media: Don’t trust. Verify.

This post VanEck Flags Dual Bullish Signals for Bitcoin as Funding Turns Negative, Hash Rate Slips first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

DOJ Drops Criminal Probe of Fed Chair Powell, Clearing Path for Warsh

The Department of Justice ended its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday, removing the last major obstacle to Senate confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the central bank’s next leader — a development with consequences for monetary policy and Bitcoin.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced the closure of the probe, which had been launched over alleged cost overruns on a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s Washington headquarters. 

Pirro said she was transferring the matter to the Fed’s own inspector general, calling for “a comprehensive report in short order.” She left open the possibility of reopening criminal proceedings if warranted.

The investigation had no legal foundation. A federal judge, James Boasberg, quashed DOJ subpoenas in March after a prosecutor conceded the government had found “essentially zero evidence” of a crime, branding the justification as “thin and unsubstantiated.” Powell himself called the probe a political weapon, stating in January that it was “a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”

A ‘bogus’ probe into Powell

Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, had vowed to block Warsh’s confirmation until the probe ended, describing it as “bogus.” His opposition, combined with unified Democratic resistance, had stalled the nomination. With the investigation now closed, leadership expects a swift committee vote and floor confirmation before Powell’s term expires on May 15.

Warsh, 56, a former Fed governor and Stanford professor, testified before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday and pledged “strict independence” from the White House on rate decisions. “The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Warsh said. 

Senator Elizabeth Warren called him a “sock puppet” for Trump, while Republicans praised his qualifications.

For Bitcoin, the stakes are significant. The cryptocurrency has traded in the $70,000–$92,000 range this year as the Fed held rates steady at 3.5%–3.75%, with traders watching every signal from the central bank. 

Lower interest rates historically reduce yields on conventional assets, pushing capital toward risk assets like Bitcoin. When the DOJ first launched its probe in January, Bitcoin climbed toward $92,000 as institutional investors read the attack on the Fed as a threat to dollar credibility and a potential catalyst for rate cuts.

Warsh is considered more hawkish than Powell on inflation, having called the Fed’s post-pandemic rate response “the biggest policy error in 40 or 50 years.” 

Should he take the helm on May 15 and maintain a restrictive stance, Bitcoin bulls betting on rate-cut-driven liquidity expansion may find themselves waiting longer than expected.

This post DOJ Drops Criminal Probe of Fed Chair Powell, Clearing Path for Warsh first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

7 Reasons JPX Should Reconsider Its Proposed Digital Asset Exclusion From TOPIX

A closer look at why the consultation’s proposed deferral sits awkwardly inside a rules-based benchmark and what a better path forward might look like.

JPX Market Innovation & Research (JPXI) is considering a new rule that would defer companies whose principal asset is cryptoassets from new inclusion in TOPIX and other periodically reviewed indices. The proposal is measured in tone, and the underlying concern, how to treat a newly emerging category of issuer, is a reasonable one for any index provider to think about.

But the specific rule under consultation raises real questions. It would affect companies like Metaplanet, Remixpoint, and ANAP Holdings, along with a growing set of Japanese issuers whose business models are fully legitimate, fully regulated, and fully aligned with long-standing corporate treasury practices.

Here are seven reasons JPXI should reconsider the proposal before February 2026.

1. The Rule Doesn’t Measure What TOPIX Normally Measures

TOPIX is designed to function as a broad, neutral, investable benchmark of the Japanese equity market. Its methodology already contains objective tools for that purpose: liquidity screens, free-float-adjusted market capitalization criteria, continuation buffers, and established treatment for delistings and other listing-quality events.

A crypto-asset screen is a different kind of test. It doesn’t measure liquidity, free float, turnover cost, market capitalization, or listing quality. It looks instead at the composition of a company’s balance sheet.

That’s a meaningful departure from how TOPIX eligibility has historically worked, and it deserves a clearer justification than the consultation currently provides. If a company satisfies TOPIX’s ordinary eligibility requirements, deferring it because of one category of asset introduces a new kind of judgment into a methodology that has been valued precisely for its objectivity.

2. “Principal Asset Is Cryptoassets” Needs a Clearer Definition

The consultation refers to companies whose “principal asset is cryptoassets,” but leaves several administrative questions open:

• Is the test based on parent-only holdings or consolidated holdings?
• Would exposure through wholly owned subsidiaries, affiliated companies, or strategic equity stakes be captured?
• Would indirect exposure through securities, derivatives, or economically similar instruments count?
• Is the inquiry formal (direct legal title) or substantive (economic exposure)?

These aren’t edge cases. They determine which companies the rule actually applies to. Index methodology gains its credibility from rules that are objective, measurable, and consistently administrable, and a clearer definition would help everyone: issuers, investors, and JPXI itself.

3. The Rule May Be Easier to Work Around Than to Apply

A practical concern follows from the definitional question. If direct Bitcoin holdings by the parent company are disfavored, but equivalent exposure through other structures is not, the rule becomes sensitive to legal form rather than economic substance.

Consider the asymmetry:

• A direct Bitcoin position would trigger the rule
• A position in the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) likely would not
• A position in a listed Bitcoin miner likely would not
• A stake in a crypto-linked subsidiary likely would not

The economic exposure in these cases can be very similar. The index treatment would be quite different. That creates an incentive for issuers to restructure toward less transparent forms of exposure rather than disclose direct holdings on the balance sheet. A benchmark rule generally works better when it encourages clear disclosure rather than the opposite.

4. The Carve-Out for Existing Constituents Creates an Internal Tension

The consultation contemplates deferring new inclusion while not applying the rule to existing constituents. This is understandable from a stability standpoint, no one wants unnecessary index churn.

But it also creates an internal tension in the rule’s logic. If Bitcoin treasury exposure were genuinely incompatible with TOPIX, it would be difficult to justify exempting current members. And if it isn’t incompatible, it’s worth asking why new entrants meeting the same investability criteria should be treated differently.

Reconciling that asymmetry would strengthen the proposal considerably.

5. “For the Time Being” Leaves the Timeline Open-Ended

The consultation says the deferral would apply “for the time being,” without specifying a review period, exit standard, or sunset mechanism. In practice, that leaves the timeline open-ended.

The timing matters here. October 2026 will be the first periodic review under the next-generation TOPIX framework in which Standard and Growth market companies can become eligible through the new process. A deferral that coincides with that review, without a defined path back to eligibility, could function as a longer-term exclusion even if it isn’t framed that way.

A clearer review cadence, or an explicit sunset, would make the proposal easier to evaluate on its merits.

6. Global Peers Have Taken More Time on the Same Question

JPXI is not the only index provider thinking about this. MSCI recently considered a threshold-based approach to digital-asset treasury companies and ultimately did not adopt a blanket exclusion, acknowledging the need for further work to distinguish operating companies from non-operating or investment-like entities. FTSE Russell has not announced a comparable rule.

The common thread is that the classification question is genuinely unsettled. Operating companies that hold Bitcoin alongside other business lines: media, energy, retail, mining, infrastructure, don’t fit neatly into existing categories, and the global index community is still working out how to think about them.

Given that, there’s a reasonable case for JPXI to engage further with issuers and market participants before codifying a rule, rather than moving ahead of where the broader conversation has landed.

7. An Asset-Neutral Framework Would Be More Durable

If the underlying concern is that some listed companies have become more concentrated or investment-like, that concern is worth addressing, but it isn’t unique to cryptoassets. Concentrated holdings can take many forms: listed equities, private-company stakes, fund interests, real estate, or other non-operating assets.

A framework that applies consistently across these categories would likely be more durable than a single-asset rule. It would also sidestep the definitional and arbitrage concerns above, since the test would focus on the economic characteristic JPXI actually cares about rather than on one particular asset class.

Several paths could accomplish this:

• Enhanced disclosure standards for concentrated treasury positions of any kind, giving investors clarity without changing index composition
• An asset-neutral concentration framework that applies the same test to any non-operating asset held above a defined threshold
• An optional index variant for investors who want exposure to the Japanese market with cryptoasset-heavy companies excluded, offered alongside, not in place of, the flagship benchmark

Where This Leaves the Proposal

None of this is to say JPXI’s instinct to think carefully about a new category of issuer is wrong. It isn’t. Bitcoin treasury companies are relatively new, and their prominence in Japan has grown quickly enough that questions about how to treat them are worth taking seriously.

But the specific rule on consultation is narrower, vaguer, and more open-ended than the questions it’s trying to answer. A clearer definition, a defined review period, and an asset-neutral framing would go a long way toward addressing the underlying concerns while preserving what has made TOPIX a trusted benchmark: objective, rules-based eligibility that reflects the Japanese equity market as it is.

That combination, substance over form, clarity over ambiguity, neutrality across asset classes, seems like the stronger path forward.

Add Your Signature

Bitcoin For Corporations has organized a coalition letter urging JPXI to withdraw the proposed exclusion and preserve TOPIX as a neutral, rules-based benchmark. The public comment period closes May 7, 2026 and every signature strengthens the case that this issue matters to issuers, investors, and market participants worldwide.

If the arguments above resonate, add your name. Individuals and organizations from any jurisdiction can sign.

→ Sign the coalition letter at topix.bitcoinforcorporations.com

You can also review the full position letter, see who has already signed, and share the campaign with your network from the same page. The deadline is firm, and the window to shape JPXI’s final decision is short.

Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.

This post 7 Reasons JPX Should Reconsider Its Proposed Digital Asset Exclusion From TOPIX first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Nick Ward.

Bitcoin Magazine

Nakamoto (NAKA) Launches Bitcoin Derivatives Program to Capture Volatility Income and Hedge Downside Risk

Nakamoto Inc. has launched an actively managed Bitcoin derivatives program aimed at generating income from market volatility while reducing downside exposure, according to a company statement released Friday.

The program, in operation since the first quarter of 2026, is structured as a complement to Nakamoto’s core strategy of holding Bitcoin as a treasury asset. It uses a portion of the company’s Bitcoin holdings as collateral in a derivatives strategy managed by Bitwise Asset Management through a separately managed account. Custody services are provided by Kraken Institutional.

The initiative centers on two primary components: an income sleeve and a hedging sleeve. The income sleeve involves writing covered calls and call spreads against a defined share of Nakamoto’s Bitcoin holdings. This approach seeks to capture premiums from options markets, where implied volatility in Bitcoin pricing often exceeds realized volatility.

The hedging sleeve focuses on purchasing protective puts and put spreads. These positions are designed to offset potential losses during periods of price decline, providing a buffer against adverse market moves. According to the company, premiums generated from the income sleeve may help fund the cost of these protective positions.

Bitcoin’s volatility as opportunity 

Tyler Evans, chief investment officer of Nakamoto and UTXO Management, said the firm views Bitcoin’s implied volatility as a consistent source of opportunity. He described the program as a structured effort to convert that volatility into shareholder value while maintaining exposure to the underlying asset.

Bitcoin used as collateral within the program remains under Nakamoto’s ownership and continues to be counted toward its reported holdings. The company emphasized that derivatives positions supplement its spot Bitcoin exposure rather than replace it.

Premiums collected through the program may be received in either Bitcoin or U.S. dollars, depending on the structure of each trade. Nakamoto said these proceeds can be allocated toward hedging costs, additional Bitcoin purchases, or general corporate needs in line with its capital allocation strategy.

The program operates under a unified investment mandate that defines limits on notional exposure, eligible instruments, counterparties, and custody requirements. It also accounts for the tradeoff between income generation and potential limits on upside participation due to call option positions.

Nakamoto framed the strategy as part of a broader effort to generate yield from its Bitcoin treasury while maintaining long-term accumulation goals. The company said the hedging component is intended to support balance sheet stability and reduce the risk of forced asset sales during periods of market stress.

Performance details from the program’s first quarter of operation are expected to be disclosed in Nakamoto’s upcoming Form 10-Q filing.

Bitcoin Magazine is published by BTC Inc, a subsidiary of Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA)

This post Nakamoto (NAKA) Launches Bitcoin Derivatives Program to Capture Volatility Income and Hedge Downside Risk first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Metaplanet Issues $50M in Zero-Interest Bonds to Buy More Bitcoin 

Metaplanet said it will issue ¥8 billion ($50 million) in zero-interest bonds to expand its Bitcoin holdings, according to a Friday statement, extending a financing strategy that has defined its balance sheet shift toward digital assets.

The issuance marks the firm’s 20th series of ordinary bonds and will mature in April 2027. The bonds are unsecured and carry no interest, giving the company access to capital without added debt servicing costs. Proceeds are earmarked for additional Bitcoin purchases, with repayment due at par upon maturity.

The bonds were allocated to EVO FUND, a Cayman-based investor tied to Evolution Financial Group that has backed several of the company’s prior raises. Under the terms, the fund can request early redemption with five business days’ notice, while Metaplanet retains the option to redeem part or all of the issuance if it completes further financing with the same counterparty.

At current Bitcoin prices near $78,000, the raise could allow Metaplanet to acquire between 640 and 700 BTC. The company holds 40,177 BTC, valued at about $3.1 billion, making it the largest corporate Bitcoin holder in Japan and the third largest among public firms.

Metaplanet has set a target of 100,000 BTC by the end of 2026 and 210,000 BTC by the end of 2027. The latest raise follows a first quarter in which the firm added 5,075 BTC and reported a BTC Yield of 2.8%.

Metaplanet reported a ¥95 billion net loss for fiscal year 2025, driven by unrealized valuation declines tied to Bitcoin price movements. Its average acquisition cost stands at $104,106 per coin, above current market levels.

Strategy’s massive buy

The strategy mirrors a model seen in the United States, where public firms use capital markets to accumulate Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset. The most famous of this type of company is Strategy.

Earlier this week, Strategy disclosed it bought 34,164 bitcoin for about $2.54 billion, one of its largest purchases ever. The acquisition raised its total holdings to 815,061 BTC, surpassing BlackRock and bringing its cumulative spend to roughly $61.56 billion at an average cost near current market prices. 

The purchase was funded through equity sales and its STRC preferred stock offering, which has become a key financing tool. 

Despite its expanding position — now over 3.8% of bitcoin’s supply — shares slipped in pre-market trading as investors weighed the firm’s aggressive capital strategy.

Editorial Disclaimer: We leverage AI as part of our editorial workflow, including to support research, image generation, and quality assurance processes. All content is directed, reviewed, and approved by our editorial team, who are accountable for accuracy and integrity. AI-generated images use only tools trained on properly license material. In Bitcoin, as in media: Don’t trust. Verify.

This post Metaplanet Issues $50M in Zero-Interest Bonds to Buy More Bitcoin  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Demand for US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs has rebounded into its longest positive stretch of 2026, putting fund flows back at the center of Bitcoin’s latest test of the $80,000 area.

SoSoValue data show the products drew net inflows for nine consecutive trading days through April 24, adding about $2.12 billion since April 14.

The run is the strongest since last October’s inflow burst and comes as Bitcoin trades near $78,000 after gaining around 11% over the past month.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust remained the main driver of the move, attracting roughly $1.6 billion during the latest stretch. Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin Trust followed with about $115 million, while Grayscale’s BTC product added more than $73 million.

The renewed demand has lifted total net assets across US spot Bitcoin ETFs to about $101 billion, equal to roughly 6.57% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization. That puts the ETF complex back at the center of the market’s next major test, as Bitcoin trades near the top of its recent range.

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Bitcoin has demonstrated surprising resilience by holding near $78,000, following a massive derivatives short squeeze.

Apr 24, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

ETF demand rebuilds after a weaker stretch

The latest inflow streak signals a shift after several months in which Bitcoin ETF demand had cooled from the pace seen during earlier stages of the spot-fund boom.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said rolling flow periods for Bitcoin ETFs have turned positive again after months of weakness, with IBIT’s recent intake ranking among the strongest across the broader ETF market.

Meanwhile, the recovery in ETF demand gives Bitcoin a clearer support base than it had during the prior correction.

Ecoinometrics, a macro research platform, said the current streak showed that capital was returning to the market as the funds' 30-day rolling net inflows have turned higher after nearing outflow territory.

Still, the platform noted that the ETF flow recovery has not yet reached a level that would more firmly validate a sustained breakout. Ecoinometrics said its model points to roughly 50,000 BTC in net inflows over 30 days as the threshold at which the odds shift more decisively toward sustained positive returns.

This means Bitcoin is currently in a stronger position than during the earlier correction. The current rally has fresh demand behind it, though the scale of that demand remains below the level usually associated with a more durable upside move.

Cost-basis data also show why the $80,000 region is important. Bitwise data showed the aggregate cost basis for US spot Bitcoin ETF buyers at about $81,000 as of April 24. IBIT’s cost basis was around $80,200, while Fidelity’s FBTC and Bitwise’s BITB were lower at about $59,300 and $55,400, respectively.

That places many recent ETF buyers close to breakeven as Bitcoin approaches $80,000. A move through that area could strengthen confidence among newer holders, while another rejection may encourage profit-taking and hedging.

The post US Bitcoin ETFs are on their longest inflow streak this year as funds hit near 7% of BTC supply appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Just as investors were trying to steady the 2026 rate outlook, the oil market handed the Federal Reserve a fresh inflation problem.

The Fed meets on April 28 and 29. On April 30, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is scheduled to publish the advance estimate for first quarter GDP alongside March personal income and outlays, the release that includes the Fed's preferred PCE inflation gauge.

Any one of those events can jolt markets on its own. But packed into three days, they become a stress test for the easing narrative that carried risk assets into spring.

Bitcoin is smack dab in the middle of that chain. BTC spent much of this cycle trading alongside the broader path of rates, liquidity, and risk appetite. Once war threatens supply, oil rises. Once oil rises, energy starts pressing on freight, manufacturing, and consumer prices. From there, the pressure lands where markets least wanted to see it again: on the Fed's inflation problem.

Bitcoin heads into the weekend with a bigger question than crypto alone can answer. If oil keeps policy tighter for longer, the market may have to reprice the entire path of relief it had been counting on.

Related Reading

Bitcoin price surges to $78k even as oil rises again creating new setup – what you need to know

Bitcoin is entering a fresh macro test as higher oil prices feed inflation fears, lift yields, and push Fed cuts further out.

Apr 22, 2026 · Gino Matos

Oil has turned the April Fed meeting into an inflation test

Federal Reserve officials are already describing the inflation risk in direct terms.

St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said he sees high oil prices keeping core inflation near 3% this year, above the central bank's 2% target, with rates potentially staying unchanged for some time.

A day later, New York Fed President John Williams said developments in the Middle East are already lifting inflation pressures and increasing uncertainty.

Those remarks pull the debate out of the realm of market chatter. Fed officials are treating war-driven energy prices as an active inflation channel.

Investors spent the last few months trying to map the moment when the Fed could begin easing again. That view rested on inflation continuing to cool in a fairly orderly way.

But now oil scrambles that assumption. A sharp rise in energy prices can slow disinflation, revive concerns about second-round effects, and push policymakers toward a more guarded tone even before the data catch up in full.

That's why the April meeting may be more affected by the Fed's tone than by the decision itself.

Markets will be listening for confidence, hesitation, and any sign that the path back to lower rates has narrowed since early April. One oil spike is enough to darken the mood if it forces the Fed through a major meeting with inflation pressure suddenly moving the wrong way.

Oil sits at the center of the problem because the physical disruption still looks severe. On April 20, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz had fallen to a standstill after warning shots and the seizure of an Iranian cargo ship. Ship-tracking data showed only a few crossings over 12 hours, far below the usual pace of roughly 130 vessels a day.

Markets tend to sprint toward the diplomatic ending while central banks have to live in the uncomfortable stretch before it arrives.

Oil takes time to normalize after a ceasefire headline appears because all kinds of complex, real-life actions need to take place.

Cargoes need to move, insurers still have to price the new risk, shipowners still have to decide whether they want to send vessels through a dangerous corridor, and refiners and buyers still have to absorb delays, rerouting, and higher costs.

The Fed has to focus on realized inflation pressure, the kind that reaches households and businesses through fuel, freight, and input costs. If those pressures linger, the inflation debate stays uncomfortably warm even as traders search for the next peace headline.

Bitcoin's bullish macro case has leaned heavily on the idea that we'll get easier policy later in the year. A war-driven energy shock weakens that case by making cuts feel later, less certain, and more conditional on a friendlier inflation backdrop than the market now has.

Crypto markets have seen versions of that pressure before during prior FOMC windows and hotter-than-expected inflation prints.

Bitcoin may be about to absorb a repricing of the whole rate path

The next FOMC meeting runs from Monday, April 28, through Tuesday, April 29. The advance estimate of first-quarter GDP and March personal income and outlays both arrive on Wednesday, April 30, at 8:30 a.m. ET.

That's a very narrow window in which markets have to absorb a fresh inflation concern, hear the Fed's language around it, and then run straight into top-tier economic data. First comes the statement and press conference, then the GDP and PCE almost immediately after. There's hardly any time for a comfortable narrative to settle in between.

If GDP shows resilience and PCE shows lingering price pressure, the higher-for-longer case can harden quickly. If the data is cool enough to offset some of the oil anxiety, markets can move back toward the view that cuts later in the year remain plausible.

Markets still want to believe the energy shock will fade with time. That instinct is understandable, as traders are conditioned to fade panic in commodities and to treat geopolitical price spikes as temporary. The Fed has to judge a harder question: whether the shock fades fast enough to keep it from reshaping inflation expectations and the rate path in the meantime.

Bitcoin in 2026 still trades with one eye on liquidity and one eye on policy. If war-driven oil keeps pushing the expected path of rates higher, or simply delays the market's timetable for relief, bitcoin can be repriced alongside equities and the rest of the risk complex. We've already seen the reverse version of that move when cooler inflation data supported Bitcoin.

The market is now facing two possible scenarios.

In one, tensions ease, oil cools materially, shipping conditions improve, and the Fed preserves room for cuts later in the year. Bitcoin would likely benefit as investors move back toward a softer-rate narrative.

In the other, Hormuz disruption lingers, inflation stays sticky, and the Fed turns more guarded heading into GDP and PCE. In that environment, Bitcoin would be facing a repricing of a less forgiving macro regime.

By the time this weekend gives way to next week, markets will be staring at an unresolved oil shock, a Fed meeting days away, and major macro releases arriving on April 30. Bitcoin is heading into a test of whether the market's easing narrative can hold together after war pushed oil and inflation back into the center of policy.

The post The global oil shock has the Fed cornered just days before its next meeting — what that means for Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The world's central banks stopped arguing about whether stablecoins are risky long ago. Their main concern now is about who will control them and how.

On April 20, BIS General Manager Pablo Hernandez de Cos called for global cooperation on stablecoins, describing it as “critically important.”

The Bank for International Settlements, often called the central bankers' central bank, has raised concerns about stablecoins before, but the language they've used is much sharper now. De Cos warned about runs that could trigger market stress, about dollar-pegged tokens accelerating the dollarization of developing economies, and about fragmented regulatory frameworks that private firms can arbitrage across borders.

That's the language of systemic risk, distinct from the investor-protection framing that dominated earlier debates.

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value relative to a fiat currency. Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC are the two largest, together accounting for roughly 85% of the $315 billion in stablecoins currently in circulation.

Unlike a savings account or legal tender, a stablecoin functions as a private IOU worth $1, backed by reserves that include US Treasury bills and built for speed across borders and crypto markets. At that scale, the convenience is exactly what central banks now find alarming.

Central banks are worried about deposits, not pegs

The concern over peg stability is real: if an issuer can't maintain the $1 value during heavy redemptions, the result is a run that forces rapid liquidation of reserve assets, injecting volatility into Treasury markets.

The deeper concern, however, is what stablecoins do to the banking system as they grow. When people hold tokens instead of bank deposits, banks lose the funding base they use to make loans. When payments settle on private token networks rather than bank rails, banks lose fee income, transaction data, and customer relationships.

The ECB has been explicit about this chain: stablecoins could cost European banks all three simultaneously while giving dollar-denominated tokens a foothold in markets where the euro is supposed to be dominant.

CryptoSlate reported on the ECB's modeling in November 2025, when policymakers war-gamed what $2 trillion in stablecoins would mean for European financial stability. Their conclusion was that at that scale, stablecoins become a direct transmission channel for American financial stress into European banks.

Citi's April 2026 research projects stablecoin issuance at $1.9 trillion by 2030 in the base case, with $4 trillion possible under higher-adoption scenarios. These figures are now actively shaping how central banks set their planning horizons.

The deposit question has become urgent for banks. If stablecoins can offer competitive yields, consumers have a clear incentive to shift balances away from insured bank accounts toward digital-dollar wallets, and the US banking lobby has estimated that stablecoins could extract roughly $500 billion in deposits by 2028.

The Federal Reserve, in a March 2026 note on payment stablecoins and cross-border payments, added a further complication: a large enough stablecoin sector outside the banking system can blunt how monetary policy reaches the real economy, because the Fed's tools work through banks, and a parallel network that bypasses them weakens their reach.

The deposit drain plays out primarily in developed economies because the dollarization problem is global. De Cos warned that stablecoins can accelerate the structural dependence of developing economies on the dollar while making it easier to evade capital controls, leading to larger inflows during stable periods and faster capital flight during stress.

We've seen this take place in countries like Nigeria, Argentina, and Turkey, where households are already using dollar-pegged stablecoins to protect savings from devaluing local currencies, bypassing official exchange rates and domestic banking systems entirely.

Standard Chartered has estimated that banks in emerging markets could lose as much as $1 trillion in deposits to stablecoins. The IMF has described stablecoins as the digital edge of the dollar system, a phrase that perfectly captures both the utility and the structural threat.

It implies that stablecoins extend dollar dominance faster and more directly than the eurodollar system ever did, through private companies rather than state institutions, leaving central banks in smaller economies with no practical mechanism to slow the outflow.

The real fight is over who controls stablecoin movements

The debate has reached European political leadership, and the positions aren't aligned.

On April 17, French Finance Minister Roland Lescure called the current volume of euro-pegged stablecoins “not satisfactory” and endorsed Qivalis, a consortium of European banks including ING, UniCredit, and BNP Paribas, building a euro-denominated stablecoin. Lescure also urged European banks to explore tokenized deposits, framing the initiative as a defense of European payment sovereignty against US dominance.

It's hard to miss the tension in that position. European policymakers fear stablecoins and simultaneously fear being excluded from the infrastructure race. If dollar tokens become the default settlement layer for digital payments globally, a Europe that blocked stablecoin development domestically ends up on American rails regardless.

At the same time, the Banque de France's First Deputy Governor, Denis Beau, has been calling for stronger MiCA restrictions on non-euro stablecoins used in everyday payments, even as Lescure endorses the technology.

Europe is running two policy tracks at once without resolving the contradiction: policymakers want the efficiency of tokenized money movement, and they're deeply uncomfortable with private issuers controlling it.

Whether regulators ultimately treat stablecoins as payment utilities, deposit substitutes, or shadow money-market products will determine how much of the monetary system private issuers are permitted to absorb.

That reclassification is happening in real time, and the outcome will shape how money moves for the next decade.

The post The world’s central banks are now treating stablecoins like a real multi-trillion dollar monetary threat appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Crypto market liquidity is increasingly hyper-concentrating within a handful of massive trading venues, creating a market structure that global central bank researchers warn is evolving into a heavily leveraged “shadow crypto financial system.”

Data from CryptoQuant shows that Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, cleared over $1 trillion in trading volume during the first 112 days of 2026.

This is significantly higher than the total of rival platforms like MEXC, which stood at about $284.9 billion; Bybit at $242.3 billion; Crypto.com at $219.9 billion; Coinbase at $209.3 billion; and OKX at $195.2 billion.

The gap gives a market anchor to a new Financial Stability Institute paper published by the Bank for International Settlements, which said large crypto platforms have expanded beyond trading and custody into yield products, lending, derivatives, staking, and token-related services.

The paper described many of these trading platforms as “multifunction cryptoasset intermediaries” (MCIs) because they now combine roles that are usually split among banks, brokers, exchanges, and custodians in traditional finance.

Due to this, BIS flagged concerns that the crypto trading venues attracting the deepest liquidity are also becoming the places where users store assets, post collateral, take leverage, and seek yield.

That has turned the current exchange concentration into a wider question for regulators: whether platforms built for crypto trading have become financial intermediaries before the rules around customer assets, leverage, and liquidity risk have caught up.

Liquidity is concentrated where risk is rising

Crypto’s trading base has not spread evenly across hundreds of platforms despite years of exchange failures, enforcement actions, and market drawdowns.

The BIS paper said there were about 200 to 250 active centralized spot exchanges as of 2025, but trading remained dominated by a small group of large platforms.

BIS pointed out that Binance accounted for about 39% of global centralized exchange spot volume, while the top 10 exchanges handled about 90% of global trading activity.

The BIS paper said the largest MCIs often operate through subsidiaries or licensed entities across more than 100 jurisdictions. It also cited estimates that the top five MCIs collectively serve about 200 million to 230 million unique users, with 20 million to 34 million using staking or earn products.

That means the biggest crypto exchanges are no longer just places where buyers meet sellers. They are becoming balance-sheet hubs for a market that still lacks many of the legal protections built into traditional finance.

That structure gives the largest venues power beyond ordinary market share as their order books influence pricing and their derivatives products shape leverage.

At the same time, their custody systems hold the assets customers use to move across spot, margin, staking, and yield products.

Binance’s $1.09 trillion in early-year volume shows the force of that network effect. Traders continue to cluster where liquidity is deepest and execution is most reliable.

In normal conditions, that concentration can reduce friction. During stress, it can make a handful of venues central to the way losses move through the system.

Exchanges are becoming financial supermarkets

The business model that has made large exchanges commercially powerful is the same model now drawing scrutiny.

A major crypto platform can offer spot trading, perpetual futures, custody, staking, lending, secured borrowing, wallet services, and yield products under one roof. Some also operate affiliated token ecosystems or infrastructure tied to their broader platforms.

In traditional finance, those services are usually split among institutions with different capital, liquidity, disclosure, and conduct rules. Banks, brokerages, exchanges, clearinghouses, and custodians each sit inside specific regulatory lanes.

Crypto has moved toward a more integrated model. A user can deposit assets, trade spot tokens, borrow against collateral, open leveraged derivatives positions, and allocate idle balances to yield products without leaving the platform.

That model keeps capital inside the venue. However, it also makes it harder for users and regulators to separate trading risk from credit, custody, and liquidity risks.

The BIS paper said MCIs that accept customer assets through investment programs and use them for lending, market-making, or other activities take on risks similar to those faced by financial intermediaries. Those include credit risk, maturity risk, and liquidity risk.

The difference is that many crypto platforms do not face the same prudential requirements as banks or regulated broker-dealers. They may not be subject to comparable capital buffers, liquidity rules, deposit protection, stress tests, or resolution frameworks.

Yield turns balances into credit exposure

The clearest example is the growth of earn-and-yield products.

These products are often marketed as a way for users to earn passive returns on idle crypto assets.

However, the economic reality can be much less straightforward. Depending on the terms, customers may give the platform control over their assets, allowing those funds to be used for staking, lending, market-making, margin financing, or other activities.

The BIS paper said some arrangements can leave customers with an unsecured claim on the intermediary rather than a protected right to specific assets. In practice, the user may think of the product as a savings account, while the legal exposure resembles a loan to the platform.

That distinction becomes critical in a crisis.

A bank depositor is usually protected by a framework built around capital requirements, liquidity management, deposit insurance, and access to central bank liquidity in extreme cases.

A crypto exchange customer using a yield product may have none of those protections. If the platform cannot meet withdrawals or suffers trading losses, the customer may become an unsecured creditor.

The BIS cited Celsius Network and FTX's bankruptcy as examples of how those weaknesses can surface.

Celsius offered yield products that depended on lending, leverage, and liquidity transformation. When market conditions turned, and customers sought withdrawals, the platform failed.

On the other hand, FTX exposed a different version of the same structural problem, with customer assets, affiliated trading activity, and group-level risk becoming entangled.

Those examples remain important because the largest exchanges today are bigger, more global, and more embedded in crypto market infrastructure than many failed firms were in 2022.

Leverage can transmit stress fast

The BIS warning also extends beyond customer protection into market structure.

Crypto derivatives markets run continuously, use automated liquidation engines, and often rely on collateral whose value can fall sharply within minutes. When leverage is concentrated on the same venues that dominate spot liquidity, price shocks can become liquidation events before human traders have time to respond.

The BIS pointed to the October 2025 flash crash as an example of how fast the system can move. The episode triggered about $19 billion in forced liquidations across crypto derivatives markets and affected more than 1.6 million traders.

The crash showed how tightly connected leverage, collateral, automated risk engines, and venue concentration have become. Notably, some market observers blamed the October 10 incident on Binance's operating practices. 

This is because a sharp macro move hit spot prices, resulting in a price decline that weakened collateral. Then, this weaker collateral triggered margin calls, which forced liquidations and deepened the downward price move.

That loop is not unique to crypto, but the emerging market structure can accelerate it.

Large exchanges sit at the center of that process because they host the liquidity, collateral accounts, and derivatives positions through which deleveraging occurs. A brief outage, pricing gap, or liquidity shortfall at a dominant venue can affect more than that venue’s own users. It can influence market prices across the sector.

Regulators face a business model that outgrew the exchange label

Against this backdrop, the policy challenge is that the largest crypto platforms do not fit neatly into existing categories.

A single firm may operate as an exchange, custodian, broker, lender, staking provider, derivatives venue, and wallet infrastructure provider simultaneously. Each activity may fall under a different regulator, or outside clear oversight altogether, depending on the jurisdiction.

As a result, the BIS paper called for prudential requirements for MCIs engaged in financial intermediation. Those could include capital and liquidity buffers, stronger governance standards, stress testing, risk-management rules, and clearer segregation of customer assets.

It also suggested that regulators may need both entity-based and activity-based rules. Entity-based rules would look at the health and structure of the platform as a whole. Activity-based rules would apply to specific services such as lending, custody, staking, derivatives, or yield products.

That approach would mark a shift from treating large crypto firms mainly as trading platforms to more closely aligning them with their surrounding financial conglomerates.

This would now raise questions about how they manage balance-sheet risk, protect customer assets, handle liquidity stress, and how a failure would be contained.

Meanwhile, this issue is becoming more urgent as traditional finance links to crypto deepen through exchange-traded products, institutional custody, stablecoin reserves, and brokerage integrations.

The BIS paper warned that as MCIs become more connected to traditional finance, disruptions at major platforms could have consequences beyond the crypto ecosystem.

The post Trillions of dollars in crypto liquidity is concentrating inside the venues US regulators fear most appeared first on CryptoSlate.

UK authorities have carried out their first coordinated operation against suspected illegal peer-to-peer crypto trading, sending a clear and simple message to the market: once a person turns crypto dealing into a business, the state expects names, checks, records, and accountability.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it worked with police and tax officials to visit eight London addresses linked to suspected illegal p2p crypto trading, issuing cease-and-desist letters at each site. Evidence gathered during the inspections is now supporting criminal investigations, according to the regulator, while Reuters reported that there are currently no FCA-registered peer-to-peer crypto traders in Britain.

The legal side is fairly easy to understand. In the UK, an occasional person-to-person crypto trade isn’t the same as running a dealing desk, brokerage service, or informal exchange. The line is crossed when someone regularly exchanges crypto for money, arranges those exchanges, swaps one cryptoasset for another, or operates a machine that does the same thing “by way of business.”

The FCA’s anti-money-laundering regime explicitly names “cryptoasset exchange providers,” including p2p providers, as firms that can fall inside the rules. A person who repeatedly buys and sells crypto for others, advertises a service, handles customer money, or acts as a recurring intermediary can’t describe the activity as informal.

Under the UK’s Money Laundering Regulations, in-scope crypto businesses must register with the FCA before they begin operating, and the regulator says registration is a legal requirement.

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The reason is anti-money laundering. A registered crypto firm has to verify customers, monitor transactions, keep records, and report suspicious activity. These requirements are part of the financial system that makes it harder for stolen funds, sanctions evasion, fraud proceeds, and terrorist financing to move through apparently ordinary payments.

For the FCA, an unregistered peer-to-peer desk creates the same basic risk as any other unregistered money-services business: it can turn dirty money into spendable value while leaving fewer names behind.

There is also the issue of promotions. Since the UK extended its financial promotions regime to crypto, companies marketing crypto activity to UK consumers must use one of four permitted routes.

These include communication by an authorized firm, approval by an authorized firm, communication by an FCA-registered crypto business under the relevant exemption, or another valid exemption. Promotions outside those routes breach section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act and are treated as a criminal offense.

Having tax officials involved in the investigation just makes it more complicated. It doesn’t prove that each target had undeclared income or unpaid tax, but it shows how authorities see informal crypto services.

A business that takes fees, earns spread, or generates gains through repeated dealing can create taxable income. If that business also avoids registration, customer checks, and clean accounting, enforcement turns into financial crime supervision, tax compliance, and consumer protection wrapped into one operation.

The UK has already moved crypto inside the perimeter

The UK has spent years pulling crypto from a semi-detached market into a rule-bound financial box. CryptoSlate has covered that process in several stages, from the FCA’s expanded reach over stablecoin issuers and custodians to the UK Treasury’s October 2027 deadline for a full cryptoasset regime under FSMA-style rules.

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The country has also clarified that digital assets can be treated as a third category of personal property, giving courts a firmer basis for ownership, recovery, custody, and insolvency disputes. That legal recognition helps crypto owners when assets are stolen, or platforms fail, and makes crypto easier for regulators, lawyers, and courts to fit into existing enforcement systems.

Recognition and restraint usually arrive together. The more the state accepts crypto as property, market infrastructure, payment technology, or collateral, the more it wants to know who's providing the service, who's responsible when something breaks, and who's checking whether criminal money is moving through the system.

Bitcoin began as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, and CryptoSlate’s Bitcoin page still describes it as a decentralized peer-to-peer network secured by cryptographic proof rather than trust in a central authority.

Yet the market surrounding Bitcoin has changed so much that it's almost unrecognizable. A user can still hold private keys, send coins directly, and transact without a bank account, but most large-scale access now runs through exchanges, custodians, ETF issuers, payment firms, and regulated rails.

That creates a legal distinction that regulators can work with. Holding Bitcoin is one thing, but running a recurring business helping strangers buy and sell it is another. Running an informal service that substitutes for an exchange while avoiding the controls that exchanges must follow is exactly the kind of activity the FCA is designed to stop.

Seen that way, the raid is legally clean. The FCA isn’t inventing a new rule on the fly or regulating through enforcement. Its guidance states that companies and sole practitioners providing in-scope crypto services in a business capacity must register, and its registration page specifically includes peer-to-peer providers in the category of cryptoasset exchange providers.

The question we have to ask now is what gets lost when the law is enforced this way.

The raid narrows the space where crypto still feels like crypto

Peer-to-peer crypto has always carried two meanings at once. To regulators, it always looks like a gap in surveillance: direct trades, fewer records, weaker identity checks, and easier movement between cash, bank transfers, stablecoins, and wallets.

But to crypto-native users, it's one of the last visible pieces of the original design: two people exchanging value without asking a bank, broker, app store, payment processor, or exchange for permission.

A person using p2p markets to run an unlicensed exchange isn’t defending financial freedom. They're using the language of decentralization to avoid obligations every other money-handling business has to follow, especially in the UK.

Still, enforcement of this kind changes the shape of the market for people who never planned to commit a crime. When the state squeezes informal exchange, more activity moves onto regulated platforms.

That gives users clearer recourse, better disclosures, and cleaner records. It also means more identity checks, more transaction monitoring, more account freezes, and more dependence on firms that can be pressured, licensed, delisted, acquired, or cut off from banking access.

The first loss is privacy. A regulated exchange creates a record that links a real person to a wallet, a bank account, a device, and a trading history. That record can protect customers in disputes and help police follow stolen money, but it can also turn their crypto use into another monitored financial file.

The second loss is access. People who struggle with banks, lack standard documents, live between jurisdictions, work in cash-heavy industries, or simply distrust large platforms often rely on informal routes into crypto. Some of those routes are messy, some are risky, and some are also the only realistic bridge into a digital asset system that keeps claiming to be open.

The third loss is autonomy. Crypto’s promise was never only price appreciation, although that is what pulled most people in. It was the idea that an individual could hold and transfer value through software, without every transaction being routed through institutional permission.

Each enforcement action that pushes users back toward approved intermediaries makes crypto safer in the way a gated financial system is safer: more controlled, more legible, and more dependent on the gate.

The UK is hardly alone here. CryptoSlate’s end-of-the-year review of 2025 regulation described a world in which major jurisdictions began converting crypto from a legal argument to operational infrastructure, with rules on issuers, exchanges, custody, payments, and investor protection becoming more specific. T

he FCA’s London operation fits that global direction. Informal access points are being pulled toward the same perimeter as centralized platforms.

That may help large exchanges and registered firms. It may also make life easier for banks, payment companies, and institutions that want crypto exposure without informal counterparties sitting beside them. The market becomes easier to supervise and easier to plug into traditional finance.

It also becomes less peer-to-peer in the most basic meaning of the phrase.

The uncomfortable middle ground is the honest one. Unregistered crypto dealing can create real risks, and regulation can protect real people.

At the same time, a system that treats every repeat act of informal exchange as a business to be registered, monitored, and supervised leaves less room for the kind of direct financial activity that made crypto culturally powerful in the first place.

The UK may be right on the law. It may even be right on enforcement. The open issue is what kind of crypto market is left once safety, surveillance, access, and autonomy are all forced into the same box.

At some point, making crypto safer also makes it more like the financial system it was built to route around.

The post New police raids on people trading crypto for cash raises a hard question about financial freedom appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Cardano (ADA) continues to test the patience of its community as the price remains tightly bound to the $0.25 level. Despite a flurry of technical milestones in early 2026, including the much-anticipated Van Rossum hard fork and the integration of the Midnight privacy sidechain, the market value of ADA hasn't reflected this progress.

As of April 25, 2026, the Cardano price is hovering around $0.249, showing a minor daily decline of 0.20%. This stagnation comes at a time when other Layer-1 competitors are seeing volatile swings, leaving ADA investors questioning when the "compressed spring" will finally snap.

Cardano Price Analysis: Breaking Down the Technicals

The daily chart for $ADA reveals a period of intense consolidation. Following a sharp decline in early February that saw prices drop from $0.36, Cardano has established a well-defined horizontal range.

Key Support and Resistance Levels

Looking at the technical data, three critical yellow horizontal lines define the current playing field.

• $0.30 Resistance: This is the psychological and technical ceiling. A daily close above this level is required to shift the mid-term bias from neutral to bullish.
• $0.27 Intermediate Barrier: This level has repeatedly capped relief rallies throughout March and April.
• $0.24 Major Support: This is the "line in the sand" for bulls. As long as ADA stays above this floor, the accumulation phase remains intact.

RSI and Momentum Indicators

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is currently sitting at 49.16, almost exactly at the 50-midpoint. This confirms the lack of a clear trend. The RSI has been oscillating between 40 and 55 for several weeks, suggesting that neither buyers nor sellers have gained the upper hand. Historically, such low volatility in ADA often precedes a massive "god candle," but the direction remains dependent on broader crypto news and Bitcoin's performance.

The "Van Rossum" Hard Fork: Why No Pump?

In April 2026, Cardano successfully implemented Protocol Version 11, known as the Van Rossum hard fork. This upgrade significantly improved Plutus smart contract performance and introduced advanced on-chain governance features.

Despite these fundamental wins, the price has been weighed down by the closure of major ecosystem players like JPG Store, which signaled a cooling-off in the Cardano NFT sector. Furthermore, while the network is technically superior to its 2021 version, the market cap of Cardano currently struggles to attract the same retail speculative mania seen in previous cycles.

Whale Activity: The Hidden Bull Case

While the price action looks "boring," on-chain data tells a different story. Reports indicate that wallets holding 10M+ ADA have reached a 4-month high. This "whale accumulation" often happens during flat price periods where retail investors "capitulate" or lose interest.

Cardano Future: What Will Break the Deadlock?

For ADA to break out of the $0.24 - $0.27 range, two things likely need to happen:

• Bitcoin Stability: A move toward $80,000 for $Bitcoin would provide the necessary "rising tide" to lift ADA.
• DeFi TVL Growth: With the new Plutus upgrades, the Total Value Locked (TVL) in Cardano DeFi needs to surpass the $1.5 billion mark to prove the network's utility.

While $Bitcoin remains in a consolidation phase, a handful of mid-cap and low-cap assets have decoupled from the primary trend. This "rotation of capital" is a classic sign of localized bullishness, where traders seek higher returns in high-beta altcoins.

In the last 24 hours, three specific cryptocurrencies have surged, driven by a mix of leadership changes, exchange listings, and heavy on-chain volume.

Current State of the Altcoin Market

As of late April 2026, the global crypto market cap sits near $2.58 trillion. Despite a slight cooling in major assets, the appetite for risk remains high in specific niches like GameFi and decentralized oracles.

1. ApeCoin (APE): Ecosystem Revitalization

ApeCoin has emerged as a primary leader in the current rally, posting gains of over 68% in a single day.

• The Driver: The momentum is largely attributed to the appointment of Michael Figge as the new CEO of Yuga Labs. This leadership shift has reignited interest in the BAYC ecosystem and the potential for new utility within the "Otherside" metaverse.
• On-Chain Data: Market intelligence from OnchainLens revealed that a major whale opened a $1.03 million leveraged long position shortly before the breakout, suggesting institutional-grade conviction.
• Price Targets: After breaking its long-term downtrend, APE is currently testing resistance. Maintaining a floor above $0.11 is critical for the sustainability of this rally.

2. Katana (KAT): The Exchange Listing Effect

Katana, a DeFi-optimized Layer 2 incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR, has seen its price skyrocket by 165% over the past week.

• The Driver: The primary catalyst is the recent listing of KAT on South Korea's largest exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb, alongside its inclusion in Coinbase’s perpetual futures. This has provided a massive bridge for both retail and professional liquidity.
• Market Dynamics: Spot trading volume for the token increased by over 1,400%, signaling a "buy-side" imbalance that typically follows high-tier exchange integrations.
• What to Watch: As the project recently launched its private mainnet, traders should watch for the transition to public mainnet in June as a secondary catalyst.

3. API3: Momentum Without a Catalyst

In a classic display of crypto market unpredictability, API3 has surged over 40% without any direct news or protocol upgrades.

• The Analysis: This appears to be a momentum-driven pump fueled by massive volume spikes—up over 2,500% in 24 hours. When a token rallies significantly while the broader market is flat, it often indicates a short squeeze or a coordinated rotation by high-net-worth traders.
• The Risk: Without a fundamental anchor (like a partnership or tech upgrade), these "ghost rallies" are prone to sharp retracements.
• Technical Levels: Monitoring the $0.45 level is key; failure to hold this could see the price revert to its 200-day moving average.

Analysis: Is This a Sustainable Trend?

The surge in these three assets highlights a shift toward "narrative trading." Whether it is the revitalized interest in NFT-adjacent tokens or the liquidity boost from Asian markets, the current bullishness is concentrated rather than market-wide.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov recently took to his platform to issue a stark warning regarding a surge in violent crimes targeting the crypto community. According to Durov, France has seen 41 kidnappings of crypto holders in the first 3.5 months of 2026 alone.

This alarming statistic comes amidst a backdrop of systemic failures in data protection and a controversial push by the French state for even greater access to private citizen data. As the crypto hub ambitions of France face their toughest test, the intersection of tax transparency and physical safety has become a focal point of industry outrage.

The Rise of "Wrench Attacks" and Kidnappings in 2026

The term "wrench attack"—physical violence used to force a victim to surrender their private keys—has moved from a theoretical threat to a daily reality for many investors. The reported 41 kidnappings represent a significant escalation compared to previous years.

A Pattern of Violence

• Targeted Extortion: Criminals are no longer just hacking hot wallets; they are knocking on doors.
• Brutal Tactics: High-profile cases, such as the 2025 attack on Ledger co-founder David Balland, where victims suffered permanent physical harm to extract ransoms, have set a terrifying precedent.
• Collateral Damage: Recent reports indicate that family members, including children and partners, are increasingly being taken hostage to leverage the release of Bitcoin and other liquid assets.

The "Ghalia C." Scandal: How Tax Data Reached Criminals

Durov’s most explosive claim centers on how criminals are selecting their targets. He pointed directly to a massive breach of trust within the French tax administration (DGFiP).

Investigations have uncovered the activities of Ghalia C., a 32-year-old tax official accused of selling sensitive data from the government's "Mira" software to criminal networks. This software, intended for fiscal oversight, contains the addresses, net worth, and crypto holdings of French citizens.

The breach allegedly allowed organized crime syndicates to build "hit lists" of wealthy investors with surgical precision. This highlights a fundamental flaw in centralized databases: when the state mandates the collection of every crypto transaction, it creates a honey pot that is irresistible to both corrupt insiders and external hackers.

Surveillance vs. Safety: The New Legislative Battle

While the state struggles to secure its existing databases, it is simultaneously pushing for more. Durov noted that the French government is moving toward requiring government IDs and access to private messages for social media users.

The Threat of Decentralized Privacy

France has already taken a hardline stance against privacy-focused platforms. The 2024 arrest of Durov himself at Le Bourget airport was a watershed moment for the industry. Critics argue that by stripping away digital anonymity, the state is inadvertently providing criminals with the roadmap they need for physical attacks.

Under the guise of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and local age-verification mandates, the "de-anonymization" of the internet is accelerating. For a crypto holder, the link between their digital identity and their physical home address is a liability that can lead to life-threatening consequences.

How to Protect Your Assets in a High-Risk Environment

With the crypto market remaining volatile and physical threats rising, investors must rethink their security hygiene. Relying on state protection appears insufficient given the current data leak climate.

• Use Cold Storage: Never keep large amounts on an exchange. See our hardware wallet comparison for the best offline options.
• Multi-Signature (Multi-sig) Wallets: Use setups that require multiple keys stored in different geographic locations. This makes a "wrench attack" on a single person fruitless.
• OPSEC (Operations Security): Avoid discussing your holdings in public or on social media.
• Institutional Security: For high-net-worth individuals, using regulated custodians can add a layer of separation between personal identity and asset access.

As reported by The Guardian, even magistrates have not been immune to these ransom plots, suggesting that the criminal networks involved are becoming increasingly bold.

As tensions in the Middle East reached a boiling point, risk assets—including $Bitcoin and major altcoins—faced a sharp "risk-off" liquidation. However, as diplomatic channels begin to signal a potential de-escalation, savvy investors are looking at the "blood in the streets" as a generational entry point.

Historically, markets overreact to geopolitical shocks. If a resolution is reached in early April, the pent-up liquidity currently sitting in stablecoins is expected to flood back into high-conviction projects that were unfairly hammered during the panic.

Is April a Good Time to Buy Crypto?

Potentially, as April 2026 is shaping up to be a prime recovery month. With many tokens trading at 20-30% discounts from their Q1 highs, the current "oversold" conditions on the RSI (Relative Strength Index) suggest a relief rally is imminent.

1. Ethereum (ETH): The Race Back to $3,000

$Ethereum remains the backbone of the decentralized economy. During the recent March turbulence, ETH slipped below its psychological support, but the fundamentals remain unshaken.

• Recovery Catalyst: The successful implementation of the "Prague" upgrade earlier this year has further reduced Layer-2 costs.
• Price Target: Analysts expect a swift recovery to the $3,000 mark as institutional ETH ETFs see renewed inflows once the global macro outlook stabilizes.

Investors should monitor the ETH price closely, as its recovery usually leads the broader altcoin market.

2. PEPE: The Volatility King

For those with a higher risk appetite, $PEPE remains the go-to memecoin for catching rapid bounces. Memecoins often act as high-beta plays on market sentiment; when the market turns green, PEPE tends to move twice as fast as the majors.

• Current State: PEPE lost significant ground in March but has maintained a strong community floor.
• Why Buy: Its extreme volatility makes it an ideal candidate for a "relief rally" play. As retail investors return to the market in April, the low-unit bias of PEPE often attracts massive speculative volume.

3. XRP: Regulatory Clarity Meets Institutional Adoption

$XRP has faced a double-whammy of geopolitical pressure and a temporary "capital flight" toward safer havens. However, its role in cross-border payments, especially in the Middle East, makes it a unique asset to watch as regional stability returns.

• Market Position: Having secured full regulatory clarity in late 2025, XRP is no longer a "gamble" but a utility-driven asset.
• Outlook: It has lost nearly 15% in the last month, making the XRP price highly attractive for those betting on the continued expansion of RippleNet.

4. Cardano (ADA): The "Deep Value" Opportunity

$Cardano is currently one of the most oversold "blue-chip" altcoins. While critics point to its slower price action, the network's resilience and growing DeFi TVL (Total Value Locked) suggest it is undervalued.

• The Dip: ADA has hit multi-month lows, hovering near critical demand zones.
• The Play: Historically, ADA performs well in the second stage of a market recovery.

5. Solana (SOL): The Ecosystem Powerhouse

No "Top 5" list for 2026 is complete without $Solana. Despite the market-wide dip, Solana continues to lead in retail transaction volume and NFT activity.

• Technical Outlook: SOL has shown incredible strength in bouncing off the $80-$100 support range.
• Why April: With the Firedancer upgrade nearing full optimization, Solana's throughput is unmatched. Any return of "risk-on" sentiment will likely see SOL outperform Bitcoin in percentage gains. You can compare Solana's performance against other majors on our exchange comparison page.

Top 5 Cryptos to Buy in April 2026

Ripple’s native token continues to trade within a frustratingly narrow range. As of April 24, 2026, the digital asset is hovering around the $1.43 mark, showing a lack of momentum that has characterized its performance for months.

Despite a massive legal victory in late 2025 and a joint SEC-CFTC classification as a "digital commodity" in March 2026, the expected "moon mission" has yet to materialize. Instead, XRP is currently in a "coiled spring" phase, waiting for a catalyst to break its structural handcuffs.

Ripple Price Today: (April 24, 2026)

• 24-Hour Change: -0.37%
• 7-Day Change: -1.35%
• 30-Day Change: +1.30%
• Year-to-Date (YTD): -44.78%

The Sideways Grind: Why Isn't XRP Moving?

The primary reason for the stagnant price action is a fundamental tension between institutional adoption and retail exhaustion. While Ripple has successfully launched its RLUSD stablecoin and expanded its cross-chain utility to Cardano and Ethereum via Wanchain, the market is currently "pricing in" these developments slowly.

Furthermore, a significant portion of the YTD decline (-44.78%) reflects a cooling off from the speculative highs of 2025. Investors are now looking for the CLARITY Act markup vote in late April to provide the next major legislative leg up. Without a fresh influx of retail FOMO, the price is largely being sustained by steady, yet quiet, institutional ETF inflows.

XRP Price Analysis: The Breakout Levels

Looking at the 1D chart, $XRP is currently squeezed between very clearly defined horizontal boundaries. The price action is oscillating with low volatility, as evidenced by the Relative Strength Index (RSI) sitting at a neutral 54.67.

The Resistance: Higher Breakout Levels

To confirm a bullish reversal, XRP needs to clear two specific hurdles:

• Immediate Resistance ($1.4355 - $1.45): This is the current local ceiling. A daily close above this level is required to shift the short-term bias.
• Major Target ($1.5046): This level (highlighted in yellow on the chart) represents a psychological and structural barrier. A breakout here would likely trigger a fast move toward the $1.60 red resistance line, which has rejected price multiple times in Q1.

The Support: Lower Breakdown Levels

On the flip side, if the market remains bearish or the CLARITY Act faces delays:

• Primary Support ($1.3097): This is the most critical floor. As seen on the chart, XRP has consistently found buyers at this level since March.
• Emergency Support ($1.2075): If $1.30 fails, the next stop is the $1.20 zone. A drop below this level would invalidate the current consolidation and likely lead to a retest of the yearly lows.

How to Trade XRP Today?

For those looking to trade these levels, the current environment favors a "range-bound" strategy rather than a "trend-following" one. Buying near the $1.31 support and taking profits near $1.50 has been the most consistent play for the last 60 days.

Researchers found that xAI's Grok was the riskiest AI model tested, often validating delusions and offering dangerous advice.

Bitcoin hash rate recovery and negative funding rates signal potential gains ahead, according to the ETF provider's latest network analysis.

Brazil’s Finance Ministry cited investor protection concerns and rising gambling addiction as it blocked platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.

Tennessee has become the second U.S. state to outlaw Bitcoin and crypto ATMs, making it a criminal offense to own or operate the machines.

The Justice Department moved to intervene in xAI’s lawsuit challenging Colorado’s algorithmic discrimination law.

Prominent gold advocate and vocal cryptocurrency critic Peter Schiff is sounding the alarm on Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy ($MSTR)..

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has been crowned the 2026 Business Leader of the Year by the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California.

Shiba Inu is seeing impressive growth in onchain activity as its network continues to show strength, sparking optimism among investors.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse discusses crypto's next phase at key event.

XRP has achieved another net weekly inflow for the third time as institutional investors begin to show renewed interests as market sentiment flip positive.

TLDR:

• Arbitrum now leads all blockchains with 1,938 tokenized RWA assets and a $874.19M distributed asset value.

• BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and Robinhood have all deployed tokenized products on Arbitrum.

• The Arbitrum DAO approved STEP 2, allocating 35 million ARB tokens directly into RWA treasury instruments.

• Arbitrum’s TVL has climbed to roughly $2.5 billion, driven largely by rising real-world asset activity on-chain.

Arbitrum is experiencing a notable resurgence driven by real-world asset tokenization. The Layer 2 network now leads all blockchains with 1,938 tokenized RWA assets.

Its total distributed asset value stands at $874.19 million. With stablecoin supply exceeding $7.24 billion and 30-day transfer volume near $345 million, the network draws renewed attention.

Major traditional finance institutions are actively building on the platform, bringing institutional capital the broader crypto market has long needed.

Major TradFi Players Choose Arbitrum for Tokenized Asset Deployment

BlackRock has integrated its $BUIDL tokenized Treasury yield product on Arbitrum through Securitize. Franklin Templeton also launched its Onchain US Government Money Fund via the Benji platform on Arbitrum.

These moves mark a clear shift toward regulated, yield-bearing instruments on decentralized infrastructure.

WisdomTree is tokenizing 13 investment funds on the network. Spiko leads EU and US T-bill tokenization on Arbitrum, with assets surpassing $467 million.

Robinhood is also tokenizing roughly 2,000 US stocks and ETFs on the platform for European investors. These instruments are accessible 24 hours a day, which traditional markets currently cannot offer.

Projects like Ondo Finance and private credit platforms such as Libre and Centrifuge have also chosen Arbitrum. They point to low transaction fees, high processing speed, and EVM compatibility as primary reasons.

The network’s composability with DeFi protocols for lending and yield farming further strengthens its appeal to builders.

According to crypto analyst @Karamata2_2, Arbitrum’s RWA activity is delivering actual value and sustainable liquidity to the ecosystem.

RWA holders on the network have now reached 6,596, reflecting steady growth across multiple asset classes. The 30-day transfer volume of approximately $345 million adds further evidence of growing on-chain economic activity.

These numbers also show that institutional adoption on Arbitrum is moving beyond early-stage experimentation.

Arbitrum DAO Directs 35 Million ARB Tokens Into RWA Treasury Strategy

The Arbitrum DAO approved the STEP 2 proposal, directing 35 million ARB tokens into RWA treasuries. This governance decision reflects growing confidence in tokenized real-world assets as a long-term growth driver. It also aligns the DAO’s treasury strategy with broader institutional trends in the tokenized asset market.

RWA-driven activity has pushed Arbitrum’s total value locked to approximately $2.5 billion. Higher liquidity on the network directly translates to increased gas fee revenue for the DAO.

That revenue, in turn, funds ongoing ecosystem development and provides structural support for the ARB token.

The network’s fee structure and EVM compatibility continue to attract a wide range of participants. Platforms built around real-world assets benefit from Arbitrum’s integration with existing lending and yield-farming products. This layered composability creates functional utility that other networks have found difficult to replicate.

The emerging cycle on Arbitrum links liquidity growth directly to DAO revenue and token stability. More on-chain activity generates higher fees, which fund further development and attract additional participants.

This structure positions Arbitrum as a growing destination for institutional-grade tokenized assets in the near term.

The post Arbitrum RWA Surge: How Institutional Capital Is Fueling the Network’s Comeback appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Justin Bons says Canton’s invitation-only validator process makes it a fully permissioned, centralized system.
• Canton’s tiered fee structure charges smaller users more, drawing direct comparisons to traditional banking models. 
• The network’s claimed $326 billion TVL is disputed, with DeFiLlama reportedly listing its actual TVL at zero. 
• Bons argues Canton’s 21.8% inflation rate and free validator rewards resemble a money-printing scheme, not crypto. 

A crypto researcher is arguing that Canton, a blockchain network backed by major financial institutions, operates more like a traditional bank than a decentralized network.

Justin Bons, founder of Cyber Capital, made the claim in a detailed public post targeting the project’s governance and economic model.

He accused the network of misleading investors with fabricated metrics and false claims of decentralization. His statements have drawn significant attention across the crypto community.

Canton’s Structure Mirrors Old Financial Systems, Researcher Claims

Bons pointed to the network’s invitation-only validator process as direct evidence of centralization. A pre-existing validator set decides who may participate in consensus, much like a board approving new members.

He wrote that “there is a literal invitation-only application process, where the pre-existing validator set decides who is allowed to join.” That structure, he argued, is the opposite of what blockchain technology stands for.

The network also applies a tiered fee system that charges smaller users more than larger ones. Bons drew a direct comparison to traditional banking, which has long applied preferential treatment to wealthy clients.

A central authority additionally determines which applications receive featured status and increased rewards. Critics say that the model concentrates power in ways that mirror those of institutional finance.

The project also burns tokens taken directly from holders’ wallets through a built-in mechanism. Bons described this as a tax system imposed by a centralized authority.

He argued that such a mechanism has no place in a genuinely decentralized network. Traditional banks, he noted, operate through similar top-down financial controls.

Canton carries a reported net inflation rate of 21.8%, with validators receiving token rewards without staking anything.

Bons compared this arrangement to a money-printing scheme. He argued that partnerships may be motivated by free token distributions rather than real utility. That dynamic, he said, serves validators and selected applications far more than everyday users.

Fake TVL Claims and the Case Against Institutional Crypto

Bons also challenged Canton’s reported real-world asset TVL of over $326 billion. He called the figure an accounting trick made possible through corporate partnerships.

Companies such as Broadridge reportedly mirror their existing balance sheets inside private networks on the platform. That data is then recorded as on-chain TVL without any actual on-chain activity.

More reputable tracking platforms, including DeFiLlama, reportedly list Canton’s actual TVL at zero. Bons argued that the network would not affect those balance sheets if it shut down tomorrow.

That, he said, confirms the metric is entirely manufactured. The gap between the claimed figure and the reported figure is substantial.

Bons also referenced the early internet to frame the broader debate. Large institutions once resisted the open public internet and pushed for private alternatives instead.

The public internet ultimately prevailed over those closed systems. He suggested that truly decentralized blockchains will follow that same historical outcome.

The researcher concluded that Canton represents a regression rather than progress in the crypto space. He argued that the network invokes crypto’s values while contradicting them entirely.

The banking system, Canton resembles, he said, is precisely what crypto was built to challenge. That tension, for many in the industry, remains the central issue.

The post Is Canton Really Blockchain? Researcher Says It Fails Every Decentralization Test appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Points

• Multiple gunshots erupted at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner held at Washington’s Hilton Hotel on Saturday evening
• Both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance were safely evacuated from the premises without injury
• One Secret Service agent sustained gunshot wounds but was protected by body armor
• Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old resident of Torrance, California, has been apprehended and admitted to authorities his intent was to target administration officials
• The annual gala has been postponed and Trump announced plans to reschedule within one month

A violent incident unfolded Saturday night when gunfire broke out at the prestigious White House Correspondents’ Dinner in the nation’s capital. Secret Service personnel immediately evacuated President Donald Trump from the Washington Hilton venue.

The attack occurred approximately 8:35pm Eastern Time at the historic Washington Hilton. Gunshots rang out near a security screening area in the hotel’s lobby, outside the main ballroom hosting the formal dinner.

The President had been sitting at the head table alongside First Lady Melania Trump when agents swarmed the venue. Within 120 seconds, the entire presidential table had been cleared.

Vice President JD Vance attended the gathering and was also successfully evacuated. Other high-ranking officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were rushed out through alternative emergency routes.

A Secret Service agent suffered gunshot injuries at point-blank range. Thanks to protective ballistic vest equipment, medical personnel expect a complete recovery.

Authorities Identify Shooter

Law enforcement has named the assailant as Cole Tomas Allen, age 31, originally from Torrance, California. Secret Service agents overpowered and detained him at the location. According to CBS News reporting, Allen confessed to investigators that his targets were Trump administration personnel.

Allen carried several firearms, Trump later disclosed. Federal Bureau of Investigation teams alongside local police are currently executing a search warrant at a residence in Torrance, California. Formal criminal charges are anticipated to be filed during Monday’s court proceedings.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer had stepped away from the ballroom and was positioned near the lobby area when the shooting began. A law enforcement officer forced him to the floor for protection before escorting him to safety. Blitzer later reported witnessing multiple officers subduing the armed individual.

Approximately 2,600 attendees had gathered for the annual event. Many guests took cover beneath dining tables as gunshots echoed through the area. National Guard troops and additional law enforcement personnel surrounded the hotel perimeter while helicopters provided aerial surveillance.

President’s Statement Following Incident

Trump conducted an unscheduled media briefing from the White House’s James Brady Press Room just after 10:30pm. Still dressed in formal evening attire, he appeared alongside FBI Director Kash Patel and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

The President described initially mistaking the gunfire for dropped dinnerware before recognizing the true nature of the sounds. He commended Secret Service personnel for their rapid protective response.

Via Truth Social, Trump revealed he had suggested continuing the dinner program but deferred to law enforcement recommendations. Officials ultimately decided to cancel the remainder of the evening.

Trump announced the postponed dinner would reconvene within the next 30 days. White House Correspondents’ Association president Weijia Jiang verified all attendees remained unharmed and confirmed rescheduling plans.

The Washington Hilton holds historical significance as the location where President Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt in 1981.

The post President Trump Evacuated After Shooting Incident at White House Correspondents’ Dinner appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• RLUSD now moves across XRPL, Ethereum, and Cardano using Wanchain bridge infrastructure
• European banks plan a euro stablecoin using Ripple tech, expanding institutional blockchain use
• Ripple upgraded custody services with compliance tools and staking for institutional clients
• RLUSD adoption grows through pilots in payments, settlements, and multi-chain DeFi access

Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin continues to expand its reach as new infrastructure and institutional developments reshape its role in digital finance.

Recent updates show progress in cross-chain access, banking collaborations, and custody services, positioning RLUSD within evolving global payment networks.

Cross-chain expansion strengthens RLUSD accessibility

RLUSD’s latest development centers on its integration with Wanchain’s bridge infrastructure. This upgrade allows

transfers between the XRP Ledger, Ethereum, Cardano, and Wanchain. As a result, users can move RLUSD without relying on centralized exchanges.

A recent tweet from CoinDesk reported that Wanchain added support for Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin. The post noted that the bridge enables transfers across major blockchain networks. This update confirms RLUSD’s growing presence in multi-chain environments.

The bridge supports two-way transfers, which improves liquidity movement between networks. Users can send RLUSD from the XRP Ledger to Cardano or from Ethereum to Cardano. They can also reverse these transactions with minimal friction.

This setup reduces dependency on wrapped assets and intermediaries. Instead, RLUSD operates across ecosystems in a more direct manner. As liquidity moves freely, trading and decentralized finance activity may become more efficient.

Wanchain acts as a central hub connecting these blockchains. Through this role, it simplifies how assets move between networks. Therefore, RLUSD becomes easier to access for users operating on different chains.

The stablecoin currently holds a market capitalization of about $1.5 billion. Around 382 million tokens circulate on the XRP Ledger. Meanwhile, a larger share remains active on Ethereum, supporting its broader use.

Institutional adoption and infrastructure upgrades progress

Beyond technical integration, RLUSD is gaining traction among financial institutions. European banks are preparing to launch a euro-backed stablecoin using Ripple’s technology. ING, UniCredit, and BNP Paribas plan to release it in late 2026.

This initiative focuses on regulated digital payments within the eurozone. It also introduces competition to dollar-based stablecoins. Ripple’s infrastructure will support settlement and transaction processing for the project.

At the same time, Ripple has upgraded its custody platform. The update includes real-time compliance monitoring and cloud-based security systems. These features aim to meet institutional requirements for digital asset management.

The platform also introduces staking capabilities. This addition provides institutions with more flexibility when managing digital assets. As a result, RLUSD becomes easier to integrate into treasury operations.

Institutional use cases are already being tested in real-world scenarios. RLUSD is part of pilot programs for real-time settlements with partners like Kyobo Life Insurance. It is also being explored for credit card settlement processes with Mastercard.

These developments align with Ripple’s broader multichain strategy. RLUSD is also undergoing testing on Ethereum Layer-2 networks such as Base, Optimism, and Ink. These efforts expand its potential use across scaling solutions.

As RLUSD moves across networks and gains institutional support, its role in payments and finance continues to evolve. Its presence across multiple chains and systems reflects ongoing efforts to increase utility and access.

The post RLUSD Integrates with Wanchain Bridge as European Banks Plan Stablecoin Launch appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• BTC declined beneath $78,000 following Trump’s decision to cancel a diplomatic envoy mission to Pakistan aimed at Iranian peace negotiations
• The leading cryptocurrency hovered around $77,200, experiencing a roughly 40% decline in 24-hour trading volume to approximately $18 billion
• Spot Bitcoin ETF products attracted $2.12 billion in capital during a consecutive nine-day period ending April 24
• BlackRock’s IBIT options open interest climbed to $27.61 billion, overtaking Deribit’s $26.90 billion position
• Market analyst Ted Pillows identified $76,000–$77,000 as critical support territory, with $80,000 representing the subsequent resistance threshold

Bitcoin tumbled beneath the $78,000 threshold on April 25 following President Donald Trump’s announcement that he canceled a scheduled diplomatic journey by U.S. representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan. The mission was designed to advance peace discussions with Iranian government officials. Trump stated the 18-hour journey wasn’t justified and instructed Iran to contact the United States if negotiations were desired.

Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, had already departed Pakistan prior to the announcement of the cancellation. This development introduced additional uncertainty regarding the timeline for resuming diplomatic discussions. Trump verified the cancellation via Truth Social, pointing to disorganization among Iran’s governing authorities.

BTC retreated from approximately $78,000 to the $77,200 range after the announcement. Twenty-four-hour trading activity contracted by roughly 40% to around $18 billion. Notwithstanding the daily decline, Bitcoin has maintained approximately 10% gains across the previous month.

Cryptocurrency market analyst Ted Pillows shared on X that BTC continues to maintain position above critical support territory. He indicated that sustained holding above the $76,000–$77,000 range could enable Bitcoin to attempt another push toward $80,000. He cautioned that breaching this support zone might trigger a more substantial price correction.

Trump clarified to Axios that the abandoned diplomatic mission doesn’t indicate U.S. intentions to restart military conflict with Iran. The ceasefire agreement, initially scheduled to conclude on April 22, has received an indefinite extension. Trump stated it would remain active until Iran delivers a coherent negotiating position.

The United States additionally froze $344 million in USDT associated with Iranian entities and continues enforcing a blockade at the Strait of Hormuz. According to Trump, Iran sustains approximately $500 million in daily losses because of this enforcement action.

Bitcoin ETF Products Record Sustained Inflow Pattern

Spot Bitcoin ETF vehicles registered nine consecutive sessions of positive net capital flows spanning April 14 through April 24, accumulating $2.12 billion in total. The most robust individual session occurred on April 17, attracting $663.91 million. BlackRock’s IBIT dominated during the quietest day on Friday, capturing $22.88 million in inflows.

Aggregate net capital inflows for spot Bitcoin ETF products have now accumulated to $58.23 billion. ETF specialist Nate Geraci observed on X that market participants continue accumulating positions despite BTC trading approximately 35% beneath its record peak, characterizing them as “longer-term allocators.”

IBIT Options Eclipse Deribit in Market Position

BlackRock’s IBIT options open interest on the Nasdaq platform reached $27.61 billion on Friday, marginally exceeding Deribit’s $26.90 billion in Bitcoin options contracts. IBIT debuted merely two years ago, whereas Deribit has maintained operations since 2016.

Call option positioning within IBIT suggests market expectations for BTC to approach approximately $109,709 in the near term. Deribit’s positioning reflects slightly more measured expectations, targeting the $106,000 vicinity.

BTC was exchanging hands at roughly $77,516 when this analysis was conducted, based on CoinMarketCap data.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Slides Below $78K as Trump Scraps Iran Peace Mission appeared first on Blockonomi.

After a month of building hype around what was described by the POTUS himself as the “most exclusive” crypto and business conference in the world, in which many big names delivered speeches, the meme coin related to the First Family plunged hard yet again, wiping out over $160 million from its market cap in hours.

Aside from the event hype, there’s another reason why the asset keeps digging new lows.

The Mar-A-Lago Crypto Event

The POTUS and his team launched the TRUMP (and later MELANIA) meme coin days before his inauguration in January 2025. The asset quickly skyrocketed to be one of the largest crypto assets, charting an all-time high of over $73 on CoinGecko within hours.

However, it has been predominantly downhill since then, and Trump’s attempts to revive it have seen short-term gains. Earlier this weekend, he hosted the second large event for the biggest meme coin token holders at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. The 297 top buyers who had registered for the contest attended the gathering, while the largest 29 holders went for a “special VIP reception and champagne toast” with the president.

Trump was the keynote speaker, indicating that he felt an “obligation” to support the crypto industry:

“As a president, I have to be able to make sure that all of our industries do well. Crypto is a big industry; it’s actually become somewhat mainstream,” he added.

Many of his family’s crypto ventures, including the meme coins, have faced intense scrutiny from Democrats and certain regulators. A Reuters report claimed that the First Family has profited more than $1 billion from crypto asset sales, including $336 million from meme coin sell-offs made only in the first half of 2025.

It’s worth noting that this event took place hours before the President returned to Washington and was evacuated from another dinner after multiple gunshots were fired.

TRUMP Plummets

As mentioned above, the TRUMP token has been nosediving for over a year, while the two events managed to boost its price briefly as holders rushed to buy to attend the gatherings or just to take advantage of the expected hype. However, once the event concluded, a familiar scenario occurred: the asset tanked almost instantly.

TRUMP peaked at just over $3.1 yesterday before it plunged by 20% to $2.5. Although it has rebounded slightly to $2.65 as of press time, it remains more than 96% away from its all-time high marked just over a year ago. Moreover, there are several reports that the Trump team has continued to dump tokens as the asset recovered some ground in the past few weeks, which is another reason behind today’s crash.

$TRUMP token has crashed -21.5% and wiped out nearly $161 million from its market cap in the past 24 hours.

This came after investors sold before Trump’s Crypto Conference, a classic “sell the rumour” event.

But that’s not the only reason.

Over the last 3 weeks, the Trump team… pic.twitter.com/22UfiGjreL

— Ash Crypto (@AshCrypto) April 25, 2026

The post TRUMP Token Crashes 20% After Mar-a-Lago Event and Trump Team Sell-Offs appeared first on CryptoPotato.

“Quite an evening” event took place in the White House hours ago as a shooter fired at least five shots, according to reports, which prompted the US Secret Service to act promptly and evacuate US President Donald Trump, his wife, VP JD Vance, and all other cabinet members.

The POTUS addressed the nation later on, confirming that the shooter was apprehended, while all attendees were unharmed.

Another Attempt on Trump’s Life?

Reports from a few hours after the incident informed that the POTUS and FLOTUS were evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner after loud gunshots. The suspect “charged” through the security checkpoint and past law enforcement officers stationed at the venue entrance. Security footage shows a man sprinting through the metal detectors and officers running toward him with their guns drawn.

The shooter, identified as Cole Tomas Allen from California, acted alone according to the Secret Service and was armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives. Interim police chief Jeffery Carroll explained that law enforcement tackled the suspect to the ground and handcuffed him instead of killing him, as some initial reports claimed.

President Trump quickly posted on his social media platform that he, the First Lady, the Vice President, and all Cabinet members are “in perfect condition.” He also promised that the dinner event will be rescheduled to take place within 30 days.

Binance’s former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, who is among the biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s current presidency, given the pardon he received, noted on X that it was “sickening” to see another attempt at the President’s life after the shooting during the election campaign in 2024.

Sickening to see another attempt on President Trump’s life just now at the White House Correspondends Dinner. I’m relieved that he, the First Lady, the Vice President Vance, and everyone in attendance are safe.

— CZ BNB (@cz_binance) April 26, 2026

BTC Price Reacts

Recall that BTC’s price skyrocketed in the initial hours after the first assassination attempt in mid 2024. This time, the asset also climbed slightly, but in a more modest manner. Bitcoin had dipped to $77,200 after yesterday’s peace talk failures announced by Trump, but surged by a grand to tap $78,200 after the evacuation reports.

It trades around $78,000 as of now, with a market cap of over $1.560 trillion and market dominance of more than 58% on CoinGecko. However, more volatility is expected later today when the legacy spot and futures markets open.

The post Bitcoin Price Reacts After Trump Evacuated Following White House Gunshots appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP is one of the most popular and high-volume altcoins in the market, drawing tremendous attention across the board. It’s also oftentimes the subject of interesting price predictions from both macro and technical analysts, some of which raise more than a few eyebrows.

XRP Price Predictions: Technical Analysts

Most recently, Ali Martinez, a frequent commentator and technical analyst, wrote:

A multi-year triangle on XRP points to $0.90 as a potential bottom for the bear market and $13 as a target for the next bull run.

But that would mean an increase just short of a 10x and, even in the next bull run, whenever that may be, it sounds more like wishful thinking. After all, even at current floats, that would put the project’s market cap at around $870 billion.

A more structured approach to XRP’s technical outlook was given by Crypto WZRD, who said that:

A move above the $1.55 resistance will see a rally towards the $2 resistance and beyond.

The analyst also explained that the altcoin needs to print a bullish candle against BTC, which should happen if Bitcoin’s dominance declines.

But What About the Realities?

And while technical analysis paints one side of the story, the realities oftentimes disconnect and present a whole different picture. It’s important to understand that a large part of how Ripple sustains its operations (if not all of it) comes from systematically selling millions of XRP to the public every single month.

The CEO himself has said that the firm relies on these sales for profitability.

Now, it goes without saying that Ripple is taking proactive measures to ensure these sales are spread out as needed to minimize market impact, but the fact remains that they are ongoing and there is no end in sight.

So, while technical analysts continue pointing out points of potential contention or positivity, the fact remains that the underlying fundamentals also have a massive impact – one that is hard to quantify.

The post From a Massive $13 XRP Price Prediction to the Realities of Ripple Markets appeared first on CryptoPotato.

O’Leary, known as Mr. Wonderful, by friends and fans, has come a long way on cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH.

The Shark Tank star has gone from bashing Bitcoin, to investing in it, to saying it will save the world. But now he’s saying it’s the best option for new or inexperienced crypto investors.

Risky Altcoin Investments

In an April interview on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.,” O’Leary said he has exited the frothing altcoin markets. Instead, he’s put all his crypto holdings in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

That is a pivot from this time last year, when the Shark Tank panelist recommended SUI.

Now, O’Leary calls altcoins “pooh-pooh coins.” In addition to the crass name, he warned that thousands of cryptos have failed:“What’s happened to the pooh-poohs is they collapsed last October [ … ] Thousands of them never came back [ … ]  At the end, why don’t you just own those two?”

SUI is down 71% on the 1-year window. That’s a punishing fall from last year’s highs, even compared to Bitcoin’s 17.5% 12-month loss.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s price is up 71% over the same 12 months.

BTC and ETH began a swift recovery in April, but it’s not the same story for SUI. Many other altcoins have also showed bearish inertia.

Bitcoin, Ethereum Dominance

O’Leary said it’s easier and safer to go with the biggest coins with the most rounded out exposure to the rest of crypto’s volatility.

“Supporting 27 different positions [ … ]  All you need to own is Bitcoin and Ethereum, and you own 97% of the volatility of all the other pooh-pooh coins.”

Moreover, he’s not alone. Michael Saylor’s Strategy, Inc. invests exclusively in Bitcoin out of all cryptocurrencies. Saylor frequently posts “laser eyes” memes to emphasize focus.

Institutional Blockchain Adoption

Kevin O’Leary also pointed to the growing adoption of stablecoin payment rails and the movement of institutional and regulatory power players to support his blue chip thesis.

The Shark Tank mastermind said the movement toward institutional adoption of crypto supports his conviction in Bitcoin and Ethereum, despite the risks.

While most cryptos have failed to justify their place in O’Leary’s portfolio by his standards, he still thinks Bitcoin and Ethereum are smart high-tech plays for investors.

The post Shark Tank Kevin O’Leary Now Says Forget Alts, Hold Bitcoin, Ethereum appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Hyperliquid’s HYPE token rose 80% over the past 90 days, significantly outperforming Bitcoin’s 10% gain over the same period. This price action comes in the backdrop of a market witnessing geopolitical turmoil.

However, data demonstrates that fundamentals have waned relative to HYPE’s valuation.

Cooling Derivatives Momentum

In his latest report, crypto analyst Michael Nadeau said investors are increasingly “paying up” for each dollar of revenue, as the token’s fully diluted price-to-sales ratio reached 47.3, up 67% quarter-over-quarter and nearing record levels. This is an uncommon trend during periods when valuations typically contract.

Over the last 90 days, Hyperliquid’s perpetual DEX generated $153.8 million in fees, down 13% from the previous quarter but up 12.3% year-over-year, with 99% of those fees used for HYPE buybacks. Average daily trading volume stood at $7.07 billion, after rising 6% quarter-over-quarter, while open interest declined to $7.6 billion, down 51% from its peak and around 15% over the same period.

The protocol continues to lead among decentralized perpetual exchanges with a 72% market share, though it accounts for about 5% of total volume when centralized platforms are included. In terms of capital flows, $3.36 billion is currently bridged into Hyperliquid, which is down 44% from its peak. To top that, $730 million has left the network over the last 90 days, including $500 million since early April.

Mixed Signals

Activity metrics depicted mixed trends. Active addresses, for one, averaged 46,000 per day, up 6.6% quarter-over-quarter, besides strong growth in HIP-3, a framework that allows third parties to launch their own perpetual DEXs.

HIP-3 volumes averaged $2.58 billion per day, up 973% quarter-over-quarter, and accounted for 36% of total volume. Meanwhile, the HyperEVM ecosystem recorded $1.84 million in revenue over the period as it plunged 33% quarter-over-quarter, with active addresses also falling.

Stablecoin supply on HyperEVM rose to $1.83 billion, driven largely by USDC.

On token dynamics, buybacks were greater than issuance over the past 90 days, which resulted in net deflation, while core contributor token unlocks are ongoing through 2027. The report also found that buyback yield has declined to 2.55% on a fully diluted basis.

Certain areas reveal strong expansion, while others reflect cooling activity. As a result, the token’s price has gone up faster than the actual growth of the project’s usage and revenue, while different parts of the system are growing at different speeds.

The post Hyperliquid’s (HYPE) Growth Story Meets Slowing Activity: Report appeared first on CryptoPotato.