The naval blockade's impact on trade routes heightens geopolitical tensions, potentially leading to increased military coordination and economic strain.

The post US enforces naval blockade in Persian Gulf, ship traffic plummets appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Escalating tensions could destabilize global oil markets, impacting prices and economic stability amid fragile geopolitical conditions.

The post US warns Iran infrastructure strikes possible if no nuclear deal reached appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The blockade's impact on shipping highlights geopolitical tensions, potentially disrupting global trade and affecting regional economies.

The post Persian Gulf shipping drops to 5 ships daily amid IRGC blockade appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The closure could strain global economies, potentially influencing central bank policies if prolonged disruptions lead to energy price spikes.

The post Iran closes Strait of Hormuz, impacting global oil transit appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Iran's action heightens geopolitical tensions, disrupts global energy routes, and complicates diplomatic efforts for a swift resolution.

The post Iran closes Strait of Hormuz, complicating US blockade lift talks appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old coins are not ownerless just because they are old.

The actual quantum risk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dormancy is not abandonment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death does not erase ownership

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

Not in the way the raider would like.

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

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

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

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

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

Unclaimed property law does not rescue the theory

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adverse possession does not fit, and salvage is worse

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

Neither one survives contact with the facts.

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

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

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

What BIP-361 is really fighting about

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to classical politics.

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

The Whole Entire Universe: 21 Million, One Painting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fix the money. Fix the world.

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin price action 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kraken’s busy week

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

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

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

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

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

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

Users paid $9.7 billion in on-chain fees in the first half of 2025, up 41% year over year and the second-highest total on record.

1kx projects more than $32 billion in on-chain fees for 2026, driven by accelerating application growth. That growth has pushed the word “revenue” into every crypto investor pitch deck, every sector report, and every valuation conversation.

The report added that a Bitcoin drawdown may stress-test protocol fees.

1kx's April sector analysis finds that nearly every crypto fee category shows a positive correlation with BTC price. There is also wide dispersion across sectors, and the critical variable of downside beta is still unresolved.

The firm says a 0.6 correlation can mean very different things depending on whether sector fees fall at 0.8x Bitcoin's pace or at 1.5x, and it identifies the decomposed upside versus downside fee sensitivity.

Related Reading

Bitcoin miner fees are close to zero as cost to mine nears $80,000 with difficulty about to drop 5%

With fees contributing almost nothing, miners depend on price, efficiency, and cost control as the next reset approaches.

Apr 10, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

In crypto, a fee line can look like a business in an up market and still trade like amplified BTC beta when macro fear arrives.

The reflexive fee cluster

The sectors 1kx identifies as most correlated with Bitcoin price share a common economic architecture that improves when prices rise and deteriorates when they fall, often faster than the underlying asset itself.

Liquid staking and restaking sit at the top of that cluster, with their fee streams depending on yields that expand as borrowed capital and risk appetite grow and contract as they retreat.

Vault curators face the same pull, as assets flow in when price momentum is positive and out when sentiment reverses. Launchpads are the most acutely sentiment-driven category in the report, with launch activity accelerating in directional bull markets and stalling when confidence cracks.

Automation and DeFAI protocols, which earn fees tied to transaction activity and strategy deployment, also track the same directional pulse.

1kx says that layer-1 (L1) blockchains' fee correlation to BTC varies widely, with many inheriting market direction through native token price movements and activity mix, while others show more independence depending on their application base.

That variability makes the directional pull of token prices on on-chain activity mean most L1s still carry meaningful BTC sensitivity in their fee lines.

Reflexivity connects these categories, as their fees are largely an output of the same speculative, position-driven activity that drives Bitcoin itself.

When investors talk about fee growth in these sectors during an up market, they are partly describing business momentum and partly describing the same macro tailwind that lifted every risk asset in the portfolio.

The delivered-services layer

DePIN stands apart in 1kx's framework as the lowest-correlation category, earning the distinction as the standout for non-directional crypto revenue exposure.

The reason is that DePIN fees track the dollar value of compute, bandwidth, storage, and other delivered services. Demand for those services comes from users with real operational needs, and while token prices affect incentive structures, they do not directly set the fee rate, as asset prices do for yield or launch activity.

1kx projects DePIN fees above $450 million in 2026, sustaining triple-digit growth.

Stablecoin issuers and real-world asset protocols sit in a similar lower-correlation band, with 1kx estimating their BTC correlation at roughly 0.2. Their fee economics depend more on issuance volume, reserve management, and AUM than on speculative trading alone.

A lower correlation indicates a fee structure less tied to BTC price direction. 1kx's framework supports “more differentiated revenue exposure” and stops well short of claiming immunity to a selloff.

The more precise claim is that DePIN and issuance-linked businesses have a better structural case for defending their fee lines during a BTC-specific drawdown.

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs), lending protocols, and perpetuals platforms occupy a contested middle ground. 1kx puts DEX median correlation at roughly 0.33 and lending at around 0.3, while derivatives show wide variation, sometimes exceeding 0.4.

Volatility can support trading volume even in down markets, providing these sectors with a partial buffer. Still, fee-rate compression and position unwinds during stress episodes make their revenue lines unstable in ways that simple average correlation fails to capture.

Why valuation is the real payoff

1kx's broader revenue report shows that price-to-fee ratios across crypto sectors span several orders of magnitude. Blockchains had a median P/F ratio of 3,902x in the third quarter of 2025, with L1s at around 7,300x, compared with 17x for DeFi and finance.

DePIN's median P/F ratio had fallen to 211x from roughly 1,000x a year earlier. Blockchain valuations still account for more than 90% of the analyzed fee-generating market cap, even though DeFi and finance produce most of the fees.

1kx also says fee changes lead valuations in DeFi and finance, and to a lesser extent in blockchains.

If that directional relationship holds on the downside, with fees dropping first and multiples compressing in the weeks that follow the initial price move, then a BTC drawdown that exposes fee fragility in high-correlation sectors could trigger a second-order valuation adjustment.

Investors who had assigned business-quality valuations to beta-exposed fee streams would face a rapid repricing.

The test gets deferred

If macro conditions keep easing, such as oil lower, Fed-cut expectations holding, and geopolitical risk fading, Bitcoin could keep holding firm in the mid-to-high $70,000s and push toward Citi's 12-month base target of $112,000.

In that environment, fee lines across most sectors would continue to expand, and the downside beta would remain theoretical. 1kx projects application-led fee growth accelerating into 2026, with DeFi and finance expanding above 50% year over year.

The risk in that scenario is that the market continues to treat cyclically strong fee growth as evidence of durable business quality. Launchpad activity stays elevated in a buoyant market, restaking yields look robust when risk appetite is healthy, and vault curators report strong AUM figures.

The audit gets postponed, and capital keeps flowing into sectors whose fee quality has never been tested under real stress. The environment of falling oil, easing inflation fears, and revived Fed-cut bets is exactly the kind of environment where that postponement extends.

February repeats at scale

On Feb. 5, Bitcoin fell 14.1% to an intraday low of $62,254.50 in a single session as risk sentiment weakened, tech stocks sold off, and ETF outflows accelerated.

The crypto market shed roughly $2 trillion from its October peak during that episode. Launchpad activity cooled, borrowed-capital positions unwound, and restaking yields compressed.

Fee lines that had looked impressive through the end of 2025 showed their directional dependence within a matter of weeks.

A repeat of that pattern would move the downside-beta question from 1kx's stated next step to a live market event.

Sectors with reflexive fee structures would face the hardest examination, with the market looking for launchpads seeing launch volume decline, restaking yields compressing as borrowed capital exits, and vault curators watching AUM decline faster than token prices.

DePIN and issuance-linked businesses would still face headwinds, but their relative fee resilience would become legible in the data for the first time.

If fee changes drive valuations in DeFi and finance higher, the same mechanism works in reverse.

Protocols that report fee compression in the first quarter of the next down cycle give the market a reason to compress their multiples before the full macro picture has even resolved.

Investors who had assigned business-quality valuations to beta-exposed fee streams would face a rapid repricing.

Bitcoin is currently around $78,000, holding near the top of its recent range from the April geopolitical relief rally, exactly the window in which the fee-quality question sits unresolved.

The post Crypto traders spend $9.7B on fees as the next Bitcoin drawdown will expose which on-chain costs are real appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Morgan Stanley launched its spot Bitcoin ETF on Apr. 8 on NYSE Arca, calling MSBT the first cryptocurrency ETP from a US bank-affiliated asset manager and pricing its sponsor fee at 0.14%, the lowest Bitcoin ETP sponsor fee.

By Apr. 16, Farside Investors' data showed cumulative net inflows of $116 million across seven trading sessions.

Against Morgan Stanley Investment Management's $1.9 trillion in assets under management as of Dec. 31, 2025, that figure represents roughly 0.006% of the platform. At the 0.14% fee rate, it would generate only about $162,400 in annual gross revenue if assets were held at that level.

What makes the MSBT launch harder to ignore is the competitive arithmetic.

A number that travels

At roughly $16.6 million of net inflows per session, MSBT has already surpassed BTCW, which Farside shows at $86 million in cumulative inflows.

For a late entrant launching into a choppy Bitcoin market, clearing an existing competitor's total in less than two weeks establishes that brand, price, and distribution can still generate demand in a field already dominated by BlackRock's IBIT at $64.3 billion and Fidelity's FBTC at $10.8 billion.

Morgan Stanley has converted “crypto access” into “crypto manufacturing.”

The filing was the first such move by a major US bank, and Morningstar's Bryan Armor told Reuters that a bank's entry into the crypto ETF market adds legitimacy and that others could follow.

Goldman Sachs filed for its first Bitcoin ETF product on Apr. 14, six days after MSBT launched. The timing reinforces the sense that the reputational barrier to bank-branded Bitcoin products is contracting fast.

Morgan Stanley's own launch statement frames MSBT as part of a firmwide digital asset push spanning custody, trading, and product development. The fund is both a product decision and a positioning decision.

The 0.14% fee sets a price anchor that tells the market Morgan Stanley intends to compete on cost and trust, and reveals how it expects the category to evolve.

The battlefield is wide

Bank of America announced that advisers across its Private Bank, Merrill, and Merrill Edge platforms will be able to recommend crypto allocations starting Jan. 5, with no asset threshold.

Charles Schwab said on Apr. 16 that it would begin a phased rollout of direct spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading for retail clients in the coming weeks. Together, those moves show that the fight for Bitcoin's next wave of capital runs through advice, brokerage access, and custody-integrated client experience.

MSBT demonstrates that a bank can wrap Bitcoin in a familiar product and attract money, while Bank of America and Schwab demonstrate that a bank can also capture the same client relationship simply by controlling the recommendation or the trading interface.

Firms that do neither now face a specific competitive pressure, as rivals are accumulating either the wrapper or the client touchpoint, and in some cases both.

Citi expects US ETF assets to more than double from roughly $10.4 trillion to $25 trillion by 2030, with active ETFs gaining share. Bitcoin products are competing inside an ETF industry already organized around fee compression, distribution control, and model-portfolio inclusion.

Late entrants in that environment tend to win through price and platform relationships, which is exactly the bet Morgan Stanley's 0.14% fee implies.

The permission signal becomes a wave

If MSBT's opening pace held, Farside arithmetic would place it near $498 million after 30 trading sessions and over $1 billion after 63 trading sessions.

The straight-line projection extrapolates the current pace into a scenario, and the direction it points toward carries real strategic weight.

Goldman's filing could convert into a launched product by late June, while other firms watching two major banks move within days of each other face a weaker internal case for inaction.

The Morningstar framing that bank entry adds legitimacy, and others could follow, acquiring more force each time a new institution moves.

For Bitcoin, that path produces an outcome measured in more bank-branded wrappers, meaning more conventional allocation pathways via adviser model portfolios, standard brokerage workflows, and custody-integrated access for clients who have never opened a crypto exchange account.

That makes demand stickier, slower-moving, and less dependent on retail sentiment cycles.

Citi's 12-month base target of $112,000 and bull case of $165,000 represent the outer range of what broader institutional normalization could support if the current sequence of launches and distribution expansions continues to build.

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said a swift resolution to the Middle East conflict could keep hopes of a rate cut alive later in the year. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America all expect two cuts starting in September.

Easier financial conditions would support risk assets across the board, and Bitcoin would draw an additional tailwind from any meaningful shift in the rate path.

A crowded category

The less constructive reading of the same data holds that MSBT's early inflows confirm viability for a bank-branded launch while leaving the category leaders' distribution moat intact.

IBIT's $64.3 billion and FBTC's $10.8 billion represent advantages in scale, liquidity, and adviser familiarity that took years and a favorable regulatory moment to accumulate.

If flows flatten after the launch window, a pattern common across new ETF entrants, rivals may conclude that the distribution moat around IBIT and FBTC is wider than Morgan Stanley's launch suggested.

In that scenario, the industry response shifts from “launch our own ETF” toward “expand access through advice and direct trading,” which Bank of America and Schwab are already doing.

For Bitcoin, that outcome delivers symbolic validation. Glassnode's Accumulation Trend Score sits at 0, its language around the recovery has been cautious, and Bitcoin stays roughly 40% below its all-time high of $126,223.

In that environment, a market held together by selective flows and a narrow coalition of buyers stays vulnerable to macro reversals and sentiment shifts.

Citi's recessionary downside case of $58,000 represents the bearish 12-month outer envelope if tighter financial conditions persist and the institutional bid loses depth.

MSBT's weekly inflows staying above $50 million or compressing toward single-digit figures as the launch premium fades, Goldman's filing converting into an actual listed product, other firms responding through manufacturing or through advice and brokerage access instead, and deeper fee competition, will clarify which path is forming.

A second or third bank entrant undercutting 0.14% would point out that the category has entered a distribution war, which tends to expand access while compressing margins for all participants.

A major bank has now established, with a live product and a real asset base, that bank-branded Bitcoin exposure is commercially viable. Goldman filed days later.

Every firm watching that sequence is now calculating that the cost of moving looks lower than it did a month ago.

The post Morgan Stanley’s $116M Bitcoin ETF debut is tiny next to $1.9T, and that’s why Wall Street will notice appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Crypto traders traded more than $500 million in synthetic oil futures over the weekend on the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, betting that renewed military conflict in the Middle East could push crude prices back to $100 a barrel.

The surge in blockchain-based trading followed Iran's abrupt decision to shut the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, reversing a reopening announced just a day earlier.

Reports of attacks on vessels near the vital waterway sent investors scrambling for ways to hedge their energy exposure while traditional global financial markets were closed.

Related Reading

Bitcoin shrugs off oil surge and geopolitical tension, setting up potential push toward $80k

Spot BTC stabilizes as speculative froth subsides, ETF flows resume, and futures hint at momentum shift.

Mar 12, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Oil prices rise on Hyperliquid

On Hyperliquid, perpetual futures tied to the international benchmark Brent crude jumped above $90 a barrel, erasing a recent 10% drop triggered by news of the brief re-opening of the Strait on Friday.

West Texas Intermediate contracts climbed to $86, up sharply from a $79 close on traditional commodity exchanges Friday afternoon.

The weekend rush highlights a growing shift among market participants utilizing blockchain infrastructure to bypass standard trading hours.

Unlike Wall Street, crypto derivatives platforms operate continuously.

Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 system allows developers to create 24/7 leveraged futures markets for traditional assets like oil, gold, and equities, provided they lock up 500,000 of the platform’s native HYPE tokens as collateral.

Driven by the ongoing geopolitical panic, open interest across these synthetic markets has reached a record of more than $2 billion.

Related Reading

While gold markets were closed, crypto traders priced the Iran war in real time

With benchmarks dark, always on metals perps became the live risk barometer and one venue tracked Sunday’s reopen best.

Mar 3, 2026 · Gino Matos

US-Iran renew hostilities on Strait of Hormuz

The renewed hostilities stem from a breakdown in a temporary ceasefire set to expire on April 22.

President Donald Trump said that a US naval blockade of Iranian ports will persist until a peace agreement is reached.

In response, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to target any approaching commercial vessels, claiming it would maintain the closure until the US lifts its port restrictions.

Following the closure, Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said on X:

“We warned you, but you didn't pay attention! Now enjoy the return of the Strait of Hormuz situation to its previous state.”

Crypto betters on prediction markets quickly priced in the pessimism. On Polymarket, another blockchain-based platform, the betting odds that shipping traffic in the strait would normalize by the end of the month plummeted to 22% as of press time.

Meanwhile, the geopolitical anxiety has also halted momentum in the broader crypto market. Bitcoin hovered around $75,028 on Sunday as traders abandoned riskier digital assets in favor of defensive energy hedges.

With global inflation already a lingering concern, markets are bracing for higher manufacturing and transportation costs if Monday morning's traditional market open pushes crude past the $100 threshold.

The post Is crude heading back to $100? Crypto traders drive $500M weekend Hyperliquid oil bets over Strait of Hormuz closure appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin's network just recorded its lowest activity in eight years, and the price has barely flinched.

CryptoQuant flagged that active BTC addresses hit their lowest level since 2016 on Apr. 8. At the same time, Glassnode's latest 24-hour reading puts active addresses at 661,313, a number that, set against a price near $78,000, produces one of the more uncomfortable charts in recent crypto history.

The reading that quiet networks are quiet markets misses what has changed structurally. A growing share of Bitcoin exposure now trades without leaving any footprint on the base layer.

BlackRock's IBIT delivers Bitcoin exposure through exchange-traded shares, and CME's Bitcoin futures settle in cash. A fund manager rotating into Bitcoin through either vehicle never touches a wallet, never opens an address, never appears in Glassnode's address count.

Price discovery increasingly happens in ETF order books and futures markets. The chart mismatch is partly due to sentiment and partly to Bitcoin acquiring a second market structure on top of its original one.

Related Reading

The Bitcoin network is currently a ghost town as price is being controlled elsewhere

Fees, mempool pressure, and on-chain demand are telling a different story beneath the price recovery.

Apr 9, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

The participation picture

What the on-chain data does confirm is that broad retail engagement has faded.

Glassnode's Accumulation Trend Score sits at 0, which the firm defines as distribution or non-accumulation. Its own research from Apr. 1 described demand as remaining well below the levels typically seen at durable lows.

By Apr. 8, the language had tightened further to subdued, low-conviction, weak spot activity, and thinner derivatives participation. That is the vocabulary of a cautious, low-conviction market.

Glassnode puts illiquid BTC supply at 13.45 million coins as of Apr. 16, a large share of the circulating supply held by hands that show little inclination to sell. High illiquidity, combined with low active addresses, indicates a market where fewer coins are willing to trade in either direction.

Broad new demand would require a very different signal, as a coin that refuses to move signals supply firmness.

Glassnode's Apr. 13 market pulse reported ETF demand holding firm while on-chain activity cooled, with Bitcoin price momentum up 51.7% and futures open interest climbing 7.2%.

CoinShares reported $1.1 billion in digital asset product inflows for the same week, including $871 million into Bitcoin, the strongest weekly figure since early January.

Trading volumes at $21 billion remained well below the year-to-date average of $31 billion, which is exactly the texture of a narrow market where capital enters, and participation stays thin.

Related Reading

Bitcoin’s rally is still just a bear market bounce unless it reclaims this key level

Glassnode says bitcoin remains inside a bear-market value zone, with near-term support around $69,000-$71,500 but a more credible recovery only above $81,600.

Apr 10, 2026 · Gino Matos

The coalition holding price up

Glassnode's Apr. 15 report noted that Binance-led spot buying has been outpacing Coinbase's, complicating any clean “US institutions took over” framing.

Coinbase tends to serve as a proxy for domestic institutional and retail flows, while Binance skews toward offshore flows. A market where Binance leads, and Coinbase lags, reflects a coalition of selective institutions, offshore spot buyers, and tactical derivatives traders, rather than a uniform domestic institutional bid.

Goldman Sachs filed for its first Bitcoin ETF product on Apr. 14, joining Morgan Stanley, which filed for Bitcoin and Solana ETFs in January. Those are distribution channel decisions, consisting of banks building pipes through which client capital can reach Bitcoin without base-layer participation.

CME's Bitcoin futures open interest reached 23,827 contracts and $8.77 billion in notional value by Apr. 10, up from 21,180 contracts and $7.24 billion on Apr. 1.

The ETF flow snapshot for Apr. 16 complicates any straight-line bullish read. IBIT took in 1,088.13 BTC and MSBT added 177.76 BTC, but FBTC shed 478.92 BTC, GBTC lost 317.49 BTC, and smaller products posted further outflows.

Related Reading

Bitcoin is squeezing into the $78k ‘True Market Mean’ with Fed and retail data set to decide next move

With Bitcoin around $74,700, hotter March inflation, steady jobs data, retail sales due Apr. 21, and the next Fed meeting on Apr. 28-29, the market is heading into resistance with macro no longer offering easy help.

Apr 16, 2026 · Gino Matos

That is a mixed reading, with enough buying to offset selling but short of the persistent net inflow that signals broad conviction.

The off-chain bid becomes the bridge

If the current selective institutional positioning marks the early stage of a broader structural rotation, the path forward runs through a specific sequence, and ETF inflows would need to turn persistently positive.

CME open interest would continue to rebuild, and Coinbase's participation would improve to match Binance's offshore strength.

On-chain address activity would begin to recover from current lows as the institutional bid provides enough price stability to draw retail back in.

Glassnode puts the first meaningful technical checkpoint at the $78,100 True Market Mean and the $81,600 Short-Term Holder Cost Basis. A sustained move through both would indicate that the coalition of buyers has enough depth to absorb distribution and attract fresh capital.

In that setup, Citi's 12-month base target of $112,000 becomes a workable reference point, with the $165,000 bull case representing the outer envelope if end-investor demand broadens materially from current levels.

The macro backdrop could accelerate that path, as Fed Governor Christopher Waller said a swift resolution to the Middle East conflict could keep rate-cut hopes alive later in the year.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America still expect two cuts starting in September.

If energy prices stay lower and the Fed moves earlier than the market currently prices, the liquidity conditions that tend to support risk assets would improve.

In that case, Bitcoin's behavior as a liquidity-sensitive asset whose trajectory tracks Fed expectations and broader risk sentiment would benefit.

A narrow bid in a macro squeeze

The more uncomfortable reading of the same evidence is that a market held up by selective flows.

In this scenario, ETF inflows can reverse, offshore spot buyers can pull back, and derivatives traders can flip.

Glassnode's Apr. 15 note described the recovery as fragile and flow-driven, with limited conviction. If macro conditions stay tighter for longer, as Deutsche Bank still expects the Fed to be on hold through 2026, the off-chain bid lacks the fundamental tailwind that would reinforce it.

The first support pocket Glassnode identified runs from $69,000 to $71,500, a zone shaped by dealer gamma positioning. Below that, Glassnode places Bitcoin's Realized Price at $54,000, which is the average acquisition cost across the entire circulating supply and a natural stress level if the selective support base loses coherence.

Citi's recessionary downside case of $58,000 falls within that same range and represents the bearish 12-month outer envelope.

A market dominated by off-chain venues and a narrow coalition of buyers is more exposed to sentiment reversals and flow disruptions than a market with deep retail ownership distributed across millions of wallets.

High illiquid supply means fewer coins will move voluntarily, and low active addresses mean fewer participants are watching the chain and ready to step in organically.

The real exposure is that the support base may be narrower and more reversible than any headline price level implies.

The question the data leaves open

Active addresses are at an eight-year low, alongside a price holding near $78,000, describing a market that has reorganized around off-chain venues without announcing it.

Bitcoin's base layer persists while price formation has migrated toward off-chain venues.

The four signals worth watching are if on-chain activity recovers alongside price, if Coinbase joins Binance in showing sustained spot demand, if ETF inflows turn persistently positive, and if CME open interest keeps rebuilding.

When these signals move together, the off-chain support thesis gains structural depth. If they diverge, the holding pattern becomes harder to sustain on selective flows alone.

The post Bitcoin network activity just hit an 8-year low — has Wall Street replaced retail in the market? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The SEC has approved a rule change that eliminates one of Wall Street's most recognizable barriers for small traders: the old $25,000 minimum tied to pattern day-trading restrictions.

Regulators signed off on FINRA's proposal to scrap a framework that long made it harder for smaller investors to make rapid-fire stock trades, replacing it with a system aimed at measuring intraday risk.

The change might not be a rewrite of crypto regulation per se, but it carries certain implications for Bitcoin because the same retail crowd that speculates in stocks and options often moves through crypto too.

Related Reading

Why the SEC just gave self custody crypto apps 5 years to get traditional broker licenses

A new SEC staff statement gives certain wallet-linked crypto trading interfaces a narrow way to operate without broker registration, while leaving most DeFi protocols and tokenized markets stuck waiting on Congress.

Apr 16, 2026 · Gino Matos

What the old rule was and why it existed

Day trading means buying and selling a stock on the same day, trying to profit from short-term price swings rather than holding for weeks or months.

Under the old FINRA Rule 4210 framework, anyone who executed four or more of these same-day trades within a rolling five-business-day period could be classified as a “pattern day trader.” Once that label was applied, the trader was required to maintain at least $25,000 in their margin account at all times. Fall below that threshold, and the broker would lock you out until your balance recovered.

The rule dates back to 2001, when regulators were trying to contain the fallout from the dot-com crash.

Millions of retail traders had piled into overvalued tech stocks using margin accounts, and when the bubble burst, the losses were severe. The $25,000 requirement was designed as a capital buffer, a way to ensure that people making frequent, leveraged bets had enough to absorb the inevitable hits.

It made sense a lot of regulatory sense at the time. In practical terms, it meant that wealthier traders could move fast while smaller investors were told to sit still.

For anyone with a $5,000 or $10,000 account, the PDT rule was essentially a gate, and the workarounds were miserable: spreading trades across multiple brokers, switching to cash-only accounts with slower settlement, or avoiding day trading altogether.

Related Reading

SEC reverses course on crypto enforcement and disowns its own playbook

The same agency that pointed to crypto enforcement as proof of its toughness in late 2024 is now holding up those cases as evidence of institutional overreach.

Apr 12, 2026 · Andjela Radmilac

What the SEC actually changed

The SEC's Release No. 34-105226, granted on an accelerated basis, eliminates the pattern day trader designation entirely.

It also removes the $25,000 minimum equity requirement and all related day-trading buying power provisions. In their place, FINRA is introducing a new intraday margin standard under Rule 4210 that focuses on real-time calculations of actual position risk rather than counting trades.

The old system tried to control behavior by identifying and restricting smaller traders.

The new system measures the actual risk of each position as it develops during the trading day, with brokers calculating intraday margin requirements based on the size and volatility of what a trader holds at any given moment.

The minimum account equity to open a margin account now drops to $2,000, the existing baseline for standard margin accounts. Full implementation could take up to 18 months as brokers upgrade their systems, meaning adoption across the industry may stretch into late 2027.

Related Reading

New Goldman Sachs Bitcoin fund is built for advisers seeking yield, not traders chasing the next rally

Goldman plans to sell covered calls on Bitcoin-linked ETPs for yield, sometimes overwriting up to 100% exposure.

Apr 15, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

The 0DTE factor and why regulators are moving now

Markets today look almost nothing like the markets the PDT rule was built for.

Commission-free apps have eliminated cost friction. Mobile platforms have made it possible to place trades in seconds from anywhere. And one of the most dramatic shifts in market structure has come from the explosion of zero-days-to-expiration options, or 0DTE contracts, which expire on the same day they are traded.

0DTE options are bets on where a stock or index will move before the market closes. Because these contracts expire within hours, their prices can swing violently on even small moves in the underlying asset. A modest rally can produce an outsized gain, and a modest dip can wipe the position out entirely.

They represent the kind of fast, leveraged speculation that the original PDT rule was designed to curb, except they weren't part of the landscape when that rule was written.

The scale of growth these options have seen is nothing short of staggering.

According to Cboe Global Markets, 0DTE SPX options averaged 2.3 million contracts daily in 2025 and accounted for 59% of total S&P 500 index options volume, a fivefold increase over three years.

Retail traders now make up roughly 50 to 60% of SPX 0DTE activity, and total US-listed options volume topped 15.2 billion contracts in 2025, the sixth consecutive record year. Citadel Securities data shows that average daily retail options volume in early 2026 is running about 14% above 2025 and nearly 47% above the 2020-2025 average.

FINRA's own filing acknowledged the mismatch, stating that the current day-trading margin requirements are “no longer tailored to meet the regulatory objective” and “don't meet the needs of today's customers, members, and markets.”

After more than two decades of defending the old system, regulators are finally conceding that the market has outgrown it.

What this could mean for Bitcoin and crypto

This rule change doesn't alter digital asset regulation, exchange licensing, or the treatment of crypto-linked securities. But the indirect effects are worth considering through the lens of capital rotation.

Research from JPMorgan and Wintermute found a significant market shift since late 2024: retail speculative demand that once concentrated in crypto has been migrating toward equities.

US retail stock-trading volume surged to as high as 36% of total market activity in 2025, compared to a 10-year average of roughly 12%. Meanwhile, retail participation in crypto has declined, even as institutional volume in crypto derivatives has grown sharply.

The crucial detail here is that modern brokerage apps have made the boundary between these markets almost invisible. Robinhood, Webull, and Interactive Brokers all blend stock, options, and crypto trading into a single interface, so traders can move from a 0DTE SPX call to a Bitcoin position without switching apps.

If removing the $25,000 gate makes it easier for small traders to move faster in equities, the overall appetite for rapid speculation could rise across the entire retail ecosystem.

The behavioral patterns that drive 0DTE trading and meme-stock surges don't stop at asset-class boundaries. When speculation accelerates in one part of the market, some of that energy tends to spill into adjacent ones, and crypto has consistently been one of them.

Regulators removed a wall in the broader retail trading ecosystem, and Bitcoin may benefit from whatever additional speculative flow that produces.

The real tension in this decision is about what kind of market regulators believe they are governing.

The old PDT rule reflected a world where smaller traders needed to be protected from themselves, even if that protection came in the form of exclusion. The new framework reflects a world where those traders are already in the market, already taking leveraged bets, and already using instruments far more complex than simple stock day-trades.

Whether that acceptance is modernization or capitulation depends on where you stand. But if the overall culture of retail speculation expands as a result, the consequences won't stop at equities.

They could also show up in renewed flows into Bitcoin and crypto.

The post SEC removes huge pattern day trader barrier to allow retail investors to day trade Bitcoin with just $2k margin appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum Price Analysis: What the Chart Shows Right Now

Ethereum is trading around the $2,330–$2,350 zone, sitting directly on a strong support level that has been tested multiple times. This area is clearly acting as a short-term decision point for the market.

The key structure is tightening between nearby resistance and deeper support:

• Resistance sits around $2,417 – $2,450
• Immediate support holds at $2,300
• Lower supports extend toward $2,179 and $2,066

The recent failure to hold above $2,400 signals that bullish momentum is fading, with price starting to form lower highs in the short term.

Trend Breakdown: From Breakout to Cooling Phase

$Ethereum previously surged from the $2,200 region to nearly $2,450 in a strong breakout move. That rally, however, quickly met selling pressure at the top, leading to a gradual slowdown.

Since then, price has slipped below short-term moving averages, which are now flattening. This shift doesn’t confirm a full trend reversal yet, but it clearly shows that the market has entered a cooling and consolidation phase rather than continuation.

RSI Signals: A Bounce, But Not a Reversal Yet

The RSI is currently near 34, hovering just above oversold territory. It recently dipped lower and is now attempting a small recovery, which often hints at a potential short-term bounce.

Still, the signal remains weak:

• No clear bullish divergence has formed
• Momentum recovery is limited

This suggests that while a bounce is possible, it may not be strong enough to immediately reverse the trend.

Key Levels to Watch

Ethereum is sitting at a critical support zone around $2,300, and the reaction here will likely define the next move.

If buyers defend this level, the recovery path becomes clearer:

• First target: $2,360
• Then: $2,417
• Breakout zone: $2,450+

A move above $2,450 would shift momentum back in favor of bulls and open the path toward $2,500.

On the flip side, if this support breaks, the downside could accelerate quickly:

• First drop toward $2,179
• Then deeper into $2,066 – $2,030

Market Structure: A Transition Phase

The chart reflects a classic post-rally structure. After a strong upward move, $ETH entered a distribution phase, followed by a gradual decline toward support.

This type of structure often leads to a decisive move once compression ends. Right now, price is caught between holding support and breaking down, making this a make-or-break zone for the short term.

Ethereum Price Prediction (Short-Term Outlook)

The most likely scenario is continued consolidation between $2,300 and $2,400 as the market builds momentum.

• Bullish case: Hold support → reclaim $2,417 → target $2,450–$2,500
• Bearish case: Lose $2,300 → drop toward $2,180–$2,060

The breakout from this range will likely be sharp, as volatility is currently compressing.

Crypto News: What Just Moved the Market

The latest crypto news cycle has been dominated by one key reality: macro events are now driving crypto more than crypto itself.

Over the past days, markets reacted sharply to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Oil prices surged, risk assets dropped, and crypto followed.

Bitcoin briefly lost momentum as fear spread across global markets — but quickly rebounded once de-escalation signals appeared. At the same time, something more important happened behind the scenes:

Institutional money continues to flow into crypto.

Large inflows into Bitcoin, combined with growing involvement from traditional finance players, are supporting prices even during macro uncertainty.

This combination is critical:

• Short-term volatility driven by headlines
• Long-term strength driven by institutional demand

This is exactly why the next move could be explosive.

Why Bitcoin Is at a Critical Level Right Now

Bitcoin is currently trading near a key resistance zone.

This level has acted as a barrier multiple times, and the market is now testing it again under very different conditions:

• Stronger institutional backing
• Higher macro uncertainty
• Increased liquidity sensitivity

If Bitcoin breaks above this level, the move could accelerate quickly due to:

• Short liquidations
• Momentum traders entering
• Increased media attention

If rejected, however, a pullback or consolidation phase is likely.

👉 In both scenarios, volatility is expected to increase.

Crypto News Alert: 3 Events That Could Move Bitcoin Next

1. U.S. Regulation Developments

Crypto regulation remains one of the most powerful catalysts for price action.

Any progress in U.S. legislation could:

• Unlock new institutional capital
• Improve market confidence
• Drive long-term adoption

On the other hand, delays or negative signals could slow momentum.

👉 This is a high-impact, long-term trigger.

2. Federal Reserve & Liquidity Shifts

Bitcoin is now highly sensitive to macro liquidity conditions.

Key drivers to watch:

• Interest rate decisions
• Inflation data (CPI, PPI)
• Market expectations for rate cuts

If liquidity increases, crypto typically benefits.
If conditions tighten, pressure returns quickly.

👉 This is the most powerful short-term driver.

3. Geopolitical Tensions & Oil Prices

Recent crypto news made one thing clear:

Markets are reacting instantly to geopolitical headlines.

Rising tensions → risk-off → crypto drops
De-escalation → risk-on → crypto rebounds

Oil prices are a key indicator here, as they directly impact inflation and global sentiment.

👉 This is the most unpredictable but fastest-moving catalyst.

While the broader crypto market in 2026 has faced significant volatility, a select group of high-cap altcoins is defying the trend. Investors are increasingly shifting focus toward projects with tangible utility, institutional backing, and robust ecosystem growth. From decentralized perpetuals to DAO governance and gold-backed stability, five assets have demonstrated remarkable resilience and growth.

Which Altcoins are Up in 2026?

As of April 2026, the standout performers in the "billion-dollar club" include DeXe (DEXE), which leads with a staggering 363% YTD gain, followed by MemeCore (M) and Hyperliquid (HYPE). These tokens have successfully captured liquidity despite a general market retraction of approximately 22% in early 2026.

1. DeXe (DEXE) – The Governance Powerhouse

DeXe has emerged as the undisputed leader among major altcoins this year. With a Year-to-Date (YTD) increase of +363.67%, the token is currently trading at $15.03.

The primary driver behind this surge is the massive influx of capital into DAO governance structures. On-chain data shows that DeXe's open interest recovered from near zero in January to over $20 million by mid-April. This indicates fresh capital inflows rather than mere speculative liquidations. The project’s focus on professionalizing decentralized autonomous organizations has made it a favorite for institutional "smart money."

2. MemeCore (M) – Culture Meets Infrastructure

Ranked #21 by market cap, MemeCore has proven that "Meme 2.0" is more than just a trend. Trading at $3.44, MemeCore has secured a 118.53% YTD gain. Unlike traditional meme coins, MemeCore operates as its own Layer 1 blockchain, turning viral culture into a governance and economic engine.

The recent hard fork in late March 2026 acted as a major catalyst, sending the M token price up significantly as speculative flows shifted toward its growing ecosystem of dApps and social-finance (SoFi) tools.

3. Hyperliquid (HYPE) – The Perpetual King

Hyperliquid has become the go-to platform for decentralized perpetuals. Currently priced at $42.88, it has seen a +68.62% YTD increase.

The sentiment around HYPE is extremely bullish due to several factors:

• Spot ETF Filings: Heavyweights like Bitwise, Grayscale, and 21Shares have filed for HYPE ETFs in the U.S.
• Institutional Adoption: Major figures, including Arthur Hayes, have been actively accumulating the token.
• HIP-4 Mainnet: The upcoming 2026 mainnet rollout is expected to introduce event-based trading and prediction markets.

4. TRON (TRX) – The Stablecoin Safe Haven

While other Layer 1s have struggled, TRON continues its steady climb. Trading at $0.3329, it maintains a +17.14% YTD performance. In a year where the total crypto market cap retracted by 22%, TRX’s positive growth highlights its status as a "safe haven."

TRON’s dominance in the USDT (Tether) supply remains its strongest fundamental. Its utility in global payments and low-cost transactions ensures constant demand, while daily token burns provide deflationary pressure on the TRX price.

5. Tether Gold (XAUt) – Hedging with Digital Gold

For investors seeking stability without leaving the blockchain, Tether Gold has been a top choice in 2026. Priced at $4,775.53, XAUt is up 10.45% YTD.

As geopolitical tensions and inflation concerns persist, the demand for gold-backed tokens has spiked. XAUt provides a seamless way to hold a hardware wallet-compatible version of physical gold, offering a 1:1 peg to London Good Delivery gold bars. Its performance reflects the broader trend of "flight to quality" during periods of crypto market uncertainty.

Top Altcoins YTD as of April 2026

RAVE Token Crash: How $6.3 Billion Vanished Overnight

There's no gentle way to put this. $RAVE just had one of the ugliest collapses we've seen all year.

RaveDAO — the token that was all over crypto Twitter last week after its near-vertical climb — went from $28.27 to roughly $1.10 in about 24 hours. That's a 95%+ drop. Nearly $6.3 billion in market cap, gone. Not over a week, not over a few days. Practically overnight.

If you were holding $RAVE when this happened, you already know the worst part: there was no time to react. Liquidity dried up faster than the price fell, which meant sell orders were either filling at catastrophic slippage or not filling at all. By the time most holders realized what was happening, the damage was already done.

Was the RAVE Crash Insider Manipulation?

So what actually triggered this? The short answer: it's looking more and more like the insiders got out while everyone else got stuck.

On-chain investigator ZachXBT flagged it almost immediately. Wallet data shows that addresses linked to the RaveDAO deployer moved large amounts of $RAVE onto exchanges — Bitget and Binance specifically — right before the token peaked. The timing is hard to explain away as coincidence.

This has reignited a conversation that keeps coming up in crypto and never really gets resolved: why are major exchanges listing tokens where 90% of the supply sits in a handful of wallets, with no meaningful vesting schedule? Critics are calling the $RAVE listing "ridiculous," and it's hard to disagree. When the token's distribution looks like that, retail traders aren't participants — they're exit liquidity.

As one TradingView analyst put it: when most of the supply is insider-controlled and there's no lock-up in place, the listing itself becomes the dump.

RaveDAO Price Drop: Retail Trap or Pro Trading Opportunity?

For the average retail buyer who jumped in on the hype? $RAVE was a textbook trap. A pump driven by exchange listing momentum, thin liquidity, and concentrated supply. The kind of setup that always ends the same way.

But for experienced traders who read the signs early? This was one of the best short opportunities of the year. We'd already pointed out the red flags in our earlier analysis — the volume-to-market-cap ratio was at levels that screamed unsustainable, and the insider concentration made the downside thesis almost too obvious. Traders who positioned short before the unwind turned what was a disaster for most into a seriously profitable trade.

That's the uncomfortable truth about crypto: the same event that wrecks one person's portfolio can fund someone else's.

RAVE Price Prediction: Is a Dead Cat Bounce Coming?

Even after a 95% collapse, $RAVE isn't going quietly. The volatility alone is keeping it on every trader's watchlist, and history tells us that tokens that drop this hard, this fast, tend to produce a mechanical bounce.

Here's the logic: shorts start taking profit, bottom-fishers and degens pile in at what looks like a psychological floor, and for a brief window, the price snaps back up — hard. Not because the fundamentals have changed, but because that's just how markets behave after extreme moves.

Our expectation: a relief rally somewhere in the range of 80% to 100% from the lows, potentially within the next 24 to 48 hours.

But we want to be very clear — this is not a recovery play. It's a mechanical reaction in a market that's been heavily manipulated. If you're trading this bounce, you need a plan, a stop loss, and the discipline to take profit before the next leg down. This is not a token you hold and hope with.

Crypto Trading Volatility: How to Protect Yourself After the RAVE Collapse

If there's one takeaway from the $RAVE collapse, it's this: a CEX listing is not a stamp of quality. Binance listing something doesn't mean it's safe. Bitget listing something doesn't mean the tokenomics are sound. Exchanges are businesses — they list what drives volume, not necessarily what protects traders.

So if you're a retail investor, the lesson is straightforward. Check the supply distribution before you buy. Look at vesting schedules. Ask yourself who's already in and what their exit plan looks like. And if you're sitting on crypto you want to protect, take a look at our hardware wallet comparison — keeping your keys offline is still the simplest way to avoid losing funds to something you didn't see coming.

For professional traders, this is just another chapter. The chart is still moving, the volatility isn't going anywhere, and where there's volatility, there's opportunity. Follow the data, size your positions carefully, and whatever you do — don't fall in love with the trade.

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

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

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

RAVE Token Crash Analysis: Where the Breakdown Happened

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

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

Once that level broke, the entire structure collapsed.

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

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

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

Why the RAVE Token Crash Was Predictable

The warning signs were visible before the crash even began.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step-by-Step: How to Start Trading RAVE

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

What Comes Next After the RAVE Token Crash?

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

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

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

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

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

Final Take on the RAVE Token Crash

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

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

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

After attackers drained $291 million in crypto from Kelp DAO-linked infrastructure, DeFi users struggled on Aave to withdraw funds.

Companies like Strategy, Twenty One, and Metaplanet hold billions of dollars' worth of Bitcoin. These are the biggest publicly traded whales.

AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites surged in early 2026, and those visitors are generating more revenue than regular shoppers.

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

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

Market is not ready to cross the bearish threshold just yet, but the conviction of investors will be tested.

Crypto news digest: XRP goes live on Solana, SHIB crosses one trillion threshold in outflows, BTC ETFs see biggest inflows since January.

Shiba Inu's futures activity is down as the market witnesses a sudden shift in investor sentiment, causing its OI to drop to 9.85 trillion SHIB.

Cardano has completed a golden cross on short-term charts, but the timing of this signal raises questions.

SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci is forecasting a massive $21 trillion market capitalization for Bitcoin..

TLDR:

• Bitcoin Open Interest fell from $27B to $24B, reflecting broad long position closures across the derivatives market. 
• Funding rates stayed slightly positive, confirming shorts are not leading BTC’s current price correction phase. 
• One-hour heatmap data showed no major liquidity zones, pointing to capital outflows rather than liquidity hunting moves. 
• Analyst Carmelo Alemán noted BTC’s price decline is a consequence of prior structural weakness, not a fresh bearish trigger.

Bitcoin Open Interest has declined sharply, drawing attention to the market’s weak structural foundation. On-chain analyst Carmelo Alemán noted that BTC’s recent price pullback aligns with a notable drop in derivatives exposure.

Open Interest fell from roughly $27 billion to $24 billion. This pattern reflects long position closures and progressive deleveraging rather than aggressive selling. The data confirms that the earlier rally lacked real spot demand and was largely built on leveraged positions.

BTC Price Decline Tied to Derivatives Deleveraging

Bitcoin’s recent correction is directly connected to a derivatives-heavy market structure. Alemán had previously raised concerns that the bullish move lacked structural consistency.

The rally was fueled by futures activity rather than genuine demand in the spot market. Recent market behavior has since confirmed that earlier assessment clearly.

Open Interest dropping from $27 billion to $24 billion captures the full scope of the unwind. Long positions have been closing at a steady pace, pulling down overall derivatives exposure.

This process does not point to aggressive bearish pressure from short sellers. Instead, it reflects a gradual, market-wide effort to reduce leveraged exposure.

Heatmap analysis on the one-hour timeframe adds further context to the price movement. Based on TradingDifferent visual data, no major contiguous liquidity zones were identified in the area.

This rules out liquidity hunting or stop-loss sweeps as the primary driver behind the move. The price action therefore reflects capital outflows rather than directional pressure from either side.

Alemán, a verified contributor on CryptoQuant, noted that this outcome was foreseeable. A move built on derivatives tends to lose consistency once leverage begins coming off.

The price decline is not the root of the problem but a consequence of earlier fragility. The weak structural base was already present before the correction started materializing.

Positive Funding Rates Signal Risk Reduction, Not Bearish Control

Funding rates have remained slightly positive even as Bitcoin’s price continues to pull back. This is an important data point when assessing who is leading the current market move.

Positive funding rates show that long traders are still paying short traders a small periodic fee. Shorts are not the dominant force pushing prices lower at this stage.

Alemán noted that the market is not attacking the downside. Rather, participants are collectively choosing to reduce their derivatives exposure in an orderly way.

There is no evidence of coordinated short-side aggression driving the current phase. The correction aligns more with disciplined deleveraging than with a fresh bearish trend forming.

The one-hour heatmap data also supports this more neutral reading of market structure. Without major liquidity clusters nearby, price tends to drift lower in a measured, methodical manner.

The sharp, reactive moves typical of liquidity-driven markets are largely absent here. This reinforces the view that capital outflows, not targeted selling, are steering the current phase.

Bitcoin Open Interest contraction is clearing the excess leverage that accumulated during the earlier rally. Once this process runs its course, the market may find a more stable structural base.

Alemán’s analysis ties the current correction directly to the previously identified weakness in market structure. The price decline reflects the consequence of that fragility rather than a fresh bearish catalyst.

The post Bitcoin Open Interest Falls $3B as BTC Deleveraging Exposes Fragile Market Structure appeared first on Blockonomi.

BlackRock pulled $505 million into its iShares Bitcoin Trust across two April sessions, the biggest haul since early March. That scale of buying in a slow macro window says real money is already positioning before retail even opens a chart. Against that backdrop, Pepeto is drawing attention on the meme coin exchange layer of the market.

The presale has crossed $9.2 million raised and the token keeps landing on watchlists alongside the latest Bitcoin price news for 2026.

Morgan Stanley launched MSBT this April and delivered the strongest first day for any of its ETFs on record, according to Bitcoin Magazine. Across the same window, BlackRock’s IBIT pulled $505 million in two sessions, per Crypto Briefing.

The combination puts bank distribution firmly behind Bitcoin, and fresh capital is rotating into early entries as the overflow spreads. Money flowing this steady during a quiet macro window reads like slow motion buying by the biggest wallets on the board.

Two Names Worth Watching This April: Pepeto and Bitcoin

Pepeto Could Mirror Bitcoin’s Early Run Ahead of the Binance Listing

Right now, serious money in crypto is moving toward projects that already ship working products. BlackRock’s IBIT flow this week backs the same pattern, that capital rewards platforms actually building rather than publishing pitch decks. While big exchanges focus on expanding market infrastructure, Pepeto targets the meme coin trading layer with a zero fee exchange and a cross chain bridge live today.

The Pepeto presale has pulled more than $9.2 million and the token sits at $0.000000186 ahead of the Binance listing. A built in risk scorer checks every contract wallets interact with against known attack patterns, helping new buyers avoid the scams that emptied bags during the last meme cycle.

Auditors at SolidProof cleared every piece of the contract stack, a Binance alum drives the engineering side, and the founder who put the original Pepe into the market is at the head of this operation. That team previously drove a token with no working utility up to an $11 billion valuation, and this round a functional exchange is attached before the listing even prints.

Experienced buyers know the biggest returns come from entering before the broader wave shows up. Early buyers in Bitcoin captured that dynamic long before mainstream headlines caught on, and many investors are paying the same attention to Pepeto now. A 150x move matches what Pepe proved once, only this time a live exchange, clean audit, and Binance listing sit in the queue. The people who move during fear own the supply the late crowd pays up for.

BTC Price Prediction: Bitcoin Tests $75.143 With $80K in Range

Bitcoin broke through $75.143 this week according to CoinMarketCap as the Iran tension eased and oil rolled over, and technicals now point at $80,000 as the next zone, per Intellectia analysis. BlackRock IBIT ended Q1 with $54 billion in assets and captured roughly $8.4 billion in net inflows for the quarter.

Wallets holding 10,000 to 100,000 BTC have been quietly adding, and ETF holdings now sit near $96 billion across the category. A break above $78,000 opens a path to $80,000 and eventually the $97,000 prior cycle peak.

Failure at $75,143 keeps the range tight between $70,000 and $78,000 while the Fed decision weights. Either way, Bitcoin’s next 2x takes months, which is the same window a 150x presale can close in days.

Conclusion

Retail watches the latest Bitcoin price news hoping for a quick 10% off ETFs, and BlackRock’s $505 million IBIT buy gave them reason to stare. But the setup that produced every early buyer story in crypto looks nothing like a large cap grinding from $75K to $80K.

It looks like an entry today on a token with a working exchange, a clean audit, and the same founder who took Pepe from nothing to $11 billion with zero products.

The same setup minted early SHIB and Pepe millionaires in the last run, and wallets buying Pepeto through the Pepeto official website today walk out of the Binance listing holding the same returns.

Click To Visit Pepeto Website To Enter The Presale

FAQs

Why is institutional activity important for the latest Bitcoin price news?

BlackRock IBIT pulled $505 million this week while Morgan Stanley’s MSBT posted its best ETF debut, keeping structural demand under the Bitcoin price news cycle.

How does the Binance listing affect the Pepeto path from here?

The listing opens Pepeto trading to the biggest exchange audience in the world, and the current entry price at the Pepeto official website closes the moment it prints.

What signals are traders watching for the next Bitcoin move?

Traders track ETF flows, whale wallets, and the $80,000 resistance, which together shape whether BTC breaks out or ranges through the Fed window.

The post Bitcoin Price News: Could Pepeto Mirror BTC’s Early Run as Presale Crosses $9.2M Before Binance Listing appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• An rsETH collateral exploit on Aave allowed an attacker to extract approximately $250 million from the protocol
• Aave’s total value locked dropped by roughly $7 billion in a single day following the exploit and mass withdrawals
• Exchange inflows for AAVE surged to over 355,000 tokens, totaling around $32 million across all platforms
• The AAVE token dropped nearly 15% as panic selling intensified amid contributor exits and collateral risk concerns 

Aave is facing mounting pressure following a series of internal and external setbacks. The decentralized lending protocol recently suffered an exploit tied to rsETH, a collateral asset accepted within its ecosystem.

The attack allowed a malicious actor to extract approximately $250 million. This event compounded existing challenges, including the departure of key contributors BGD Labs and Chaos Labs.

As a result, the protocol experienced a sharp drop in total value locked and investor confidence.

rsETH Exploit Exposes Collateral Risks on Aave

The exploit did not originate from a flaw within Aave’s core protocol. Instead, the issue was rooted in rsETH, an asset accepted as collateral on the platform.

When a collateral asset deteriorates, it can trigger cascading effects across the lending system. These effects often result in bad debt accumulating within the protocol.

Crypto analyst Darkfost noted on X that cascading risk is inherent to collateral-based lending systems. The decision to accept rsETH ultimately opened the door to this vulnerability.

Once the exploit occurred, panic spread quickly through the community. Users began pulling their funds from the protocol at a rapid pace.

The wave of withdrawals caused the platform’s total value locked to fall by approximately $7 billion. This contraction took place over the course of a single day.

Many participants chose to exit their positions rather than absorb the uncertainty. The reaction was swift and spread broadly across the ecosystem.

The timing also worsened the situation considerably. BGD Labs and Chaos Labs had already left their contributor roles before this event.

Their exits weakened the protocol’s risk management and development capacity. The exploit therefore arrived at a particularly vulnerable moment for the protocol.

AAVE Token Selloff and Exchange Inflows Surge Amid Crisis

The AAVE token fell by approximately 15% on the day the exploit became public. This correction reflected the combined weight of the attack and the loss of community trust.

Investors moved quickly, reducing their exposure to the token as uncertainty grew. The drop was among the sharpest the token had recorded in recent months.

Exchange inflows for the token surged sharply during this period. The monthly average for token inflows into exchanges sits at around 31,000.

During the crisis, more than 236,000 AAVE flowed into exchanges in a short window. That volume represented roughly $21 million at current prices.

According to Darkfost, cumulative inflows across all exchanges exceeded 355,000 AAVE in total. This translates to approximately $32 million worth of the token.

Binance absorbed the largest share of these inflows due to its deep liquidity. The concentration on Binance reflected organized and rapid selling activity.

Together, these numbers point to a broad loss of confidence in the protocol. The platform has lost key contributors and now faces questions about its collateral risk framework.

Exchange inflows and token price declines both show sustained selling pressure. Market participants are watching closely as the situation continues to develop.

The post Aave Faces Crisis: rsETH Exploit Drains $250M as TVL Plunges $7B and AAVE Token Falls 15% appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• ETH moved between $2,200 and $2,500 as liquidation zones triggered sharp price reversals
• Heavy leverage clusters near $2,200 and $2,480 continue shaping short-term ETH volatility patterns
• The failed breakout near $2,450 led to renewed downside pressure toward lower liquidity support zones
• Despite price weakness, Ethereum recorded over 200M transactions, showing strong network activity

Ethereum traded within a volatile range as liquidity clusters shaped short-term price action. Recent data showed weakening momentum after a failed breakout, while on-chain activity reached record levels despite a challenging first-quarter performance.

Liquidation Clusters Drive Short-Term Price Movement

Ethereum’s recent structure reflects a liquidity-driven market rather than a sustained directional trend. Price initially climbed from the $2,200 zone toward $2,380 before entering a tight consolidation phase.

A brief breakout near $2,450 followed, but momentum faded quickly, leading to a controlled decline toward the $2,300 range.

A market update shared by Ted Pillows pointed to heavy liquidation clusters influencing price behavior. The tweet noted that Ethereum appeared weak, with long liquidation zones concentrated near $2,200.

It also identified short-side liquidity between $2,450 and $2,480 as a potential final upward move before rejection.

The heatmap data showed bright zones where leveraged positions were concentrated. These levels often attract price movements as the market seeks to trigger liquidations.

Strong resistance formed between $2,480 and $2,520, where the price faced immediate rejection. Meanwhile, support zones between $2,280 and $2,320 acted as a near-term magnet.

As the price moved lower, long positions began to unwind. This shift aligned with the broader pattern of liquidity sweeps between key levels.

The range between $2,300 and $2,450 remained active, with repeated moves targeting both sides of the market.

Strong Network Activity Contrasts Price Weakness

While price action remained under pressure, Ethereum’s network activity expanded sharply. The network recorded over 200 million transactions during the first quarter of 2026.

This marked one of the highest usage periods despite the asset’s 32 percent decline during the same timeframe.

At the same time, ecosystem developments continued to build. Ethereum Name Service integrated with PayPal, enabling users to send funds using simplified name-based addresses. This update aimed to improve accessibility for mainstream users interacting with blockchain systems.

Security and decentralized finance infrastructure have also advanced. Safe introduced a beta version of its wallet designed to act as a pre-execution security layer. In parallel, Silo Finance launched its V3 upgrade, focusing on improved lending safety within decentralized markets.

Looking ahead, price scenarios remain tied to key liquidity levels. A hold above $2,280 could allow a move back toward $2,400 and higher resistance zones. However, a breakdown below this level may lead to a sweep toward $2,200, where deeper liquidity sits.

Market conditions continue to show a balance between technical pressure and underlying network growth. As a result, price action remains sensitive to leveraged positioning, while broader adoption trends develop in the background.

The post Ethereum Faces Liquidity Pressure as Price Swings Between $2,200 and $2,500 Zones appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Changpeng Zhao confirmed he does not know Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity during a recent interview discussion.
• CZ stated he would not reveal Satoshi’s identity even if known, maintaining a consistent long-term stance.
• He explained that anonymity helps Bitcoin avoid central authority and maintain its decentralized structure.
• CZ noted that Satoshi’s absence allows Bitcoin to operate without influence from a single individual.

Changpeng Zhao addressed long-standing curiosity about Bitcoin’s creator during an April 9, 2026, interview. Speaking on the TBPN Channel, he stated he does not know the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto and would not reveal it if known.

CZ Maintains Distance From Satoshi Identity Debate

Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, addressed one of crypto’s oldest questions during the interview. He confirmed he does not know Satoshi Nakamoto’s real identity. He also made clear he would not disclose such details even if he had access.

A widely shared post captured his remarks during the interview session. In the clip, CZ reiterated his position calmly and without hesitation.

The statement quickly circulated across crypto communities, drawing attention to his consistent stance on the topic.

He explained that curiosity about Bitcoin’s creator exists across the industry. However, he stressed that uncovering the identity could create unnecessary risks. According to CZ, anonymity has played a key role in Bitcoin’s growth and resilience.

He further noted that Bitcoin operates without reliance on a central figure. This structure, he said, has helped maintain trust in the network. As a result, he sees no reason to pursue the identity question actively.

Anonymity Seen as Core to Bitcoin’s Structure

CZ emphasized that Bitcoin’s decentralized nature remains closely tied to its anonymous origins. He explained that a known founder could attract unwanted attention or influence. That scenario could shift how the network is perceived and governed.

He pointed out that Satoshi Nakamoto’s absence removes any central authority figure. This absence, in turn, allows Bitcoin to function without leadership pressure. It also prevents decisions from being tied to one individual’s influence.

During the discussion, CZ made it clear that he does not intend to investigate further. He described the search for Satoshi’s identity as unnecessary for Bitcoin’s continued operation. Instead, he focused on the system’s design and independence.

He added that Bitcoin’s strength lies in its open and distributed framework. Without a visible founder, the network avoids personality-driven narratives. This structure supports its position as a decentralized financial system.

CZ’s comments align with a broader view held by many in the crypto space. The unknown identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains one of Bitcoin’s defining characteristics. For CZ, preserving that mystery remains aligned with maintaining the network’s original structure.

The post Changpeng Zhao Declines Satoshi Identity Disclosure, Citing Bitcoin Structure appeared first on Blockonomi.

Crypto commentator Scott Melker has said that a friend of his lost nearly $450,000 worth of Bitcoin after using a fake Ledger app from the Apple App Store.

According to him, musician Garrett Dutton, also known as G. Love, lost 5.92 BTC that he had been acquiring since 2017 as part of a long-term safety net.

G. Love Loses Nearly 6 BTC in a Scam App

Melker posted about the incident on social media, saying that the theft happened after Dutton unknowingly downloaded a fake wallet app, given that it was hard to tell it apart from the real thing because it had the same branding and the same familiar interface. Even Melker himself couldn’t tell the difference between the two after looking at them.

“For lack of a better word, this is f***ed up,” he wrote. “If you can’t confidently identify the official app inside a place that’s supposed to be curated and trusted, something is fundamentally broken.”

Dutton was prompted to enter his 24-word seed phrase once he’d installed the app, which then, according to Melker, captured it and allowed the criminals behind the scheme to recreate the wallet and steal the musician’s BTC.

However, on-chain investigator ZachXBT traced the stolen cryptocurrency, saying it had been laundered through KuCoin and deposited across nine different addresses.

The exchange then flagged the transactions, tasking its AML team to track the funds and temporarily freezing the accounts ZachXBT had identified for seven days.

Lessons Learnt From the Loss

Melker described the incident as being devastating but an important example that other people could learn from.

He explained that the first issue was downloading the app without verifying it through official sources, noting that people should make a habit of confirming crypto-related apps on company websites or verified channels.

Another important thing he emphasizes is seed phrases. In his opinion, a recovery phrase should only ever be entered directly into a hardware device or stored offline. This is because putting it on a phone, computer, app, or website creates the risk of someone else gaining access in case the environment is compromised.

Additionally, users should assume full responsibility at all times when using a self-custody wallet. This is because access is not protected by recovery systems under these circumstances.

Melker finished by saying that hardware wallets are mostly thought to be safe, but the environment in which they get used could make them less safe.

“If there’s anything to take from this, it’s to slow down and verify everything,” he said. “Treat every interaction with your keys like it’s irreversible – because it is.”

This isn’t the first time criminals have tried stealing crypto from Ledger users. Earlier in the year, a data breach at one of the wallet maker’s e-commerce partners, Global-e, exposed the information of customers, which attackers used to send phishing emails claiming a merger between Ledger and Trezor.

The post How Musician Lost 5.92 BTC on Fake Ledger App appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Solana remained the top chain for decentralized exchange spot trading in Q1 2026, with a 30.6% market share, according to CoinGecko’s latest findings.

Its trading volume fell by 26.5% during the same period.

DEX Wars Intensify

This momentum shifted in March, when Ethereum briefly overtook Solana with a 27% share compared to the latter’s 26%. CoinGecko revealed BNB Chain ranked second for the quarter overall after holding a 24.5% share, slightly ahead of Ethereum’s 23.7%. Despite this, BNB Chain recorded a steeper drop in trading activity. This indicates a possible decline to third place in the coming quarter.

Meanwhile, Monad has steadily gained traction since its mainnet launch in November 2025 and is now the tenth-largest chain by spot trading volume, surpassing networks like Unichain and Optimism.

Interestingly, Solana also handled far more activity than any other blockchain in Q1 2026, as it processed about 25.3 billion transactions, as per CoinRank’s data. Meanwhile, BNB Chain came in a distant second with 1.7 billion transactions, followed by Tron at 978 million. Polygon and Aptos were much closer to each other, each recording around 700 million transactions, while all other major chains stayed below 500 million.

Solana saw a major jump in terms of stablecoin activity in February 2026, having recorded around $650 billion in transactions in a single month, according to The Kobeissi Letter. This was a record high and was nearly three times higher than January’s level.

The growth was driven by new offerings like Western Union’s USDPT and Jupiter’s JUPUSD, which helped attract more users. JUPUSD also drew attention for offering yield features within its ecosystem.

SOL Ends Week Strong

Solana’s price has been volatile in the past week. The crypto asset, which currently sits at the 7th spot by market cap, started near $84 and saw early fluctuations before a sharp decline around April 12-13, when it dropped toward the $82 level. Selling pressure eased midweek, and a recovery began on April 14 as prices moved back above $84.

Momentum strengthened later into the week, which ended up pushing SOL toward $89.86.

The post Solana Dominates Q1, But Cracks Appear as Ethereum Gains Ground appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin’s price was halted at its multi-month peak at over $78,000 on Friday, and the subsequent conflicting actions and statements from Iran and the US have led to another retracement to under $75,000 as of press time.

The latest set of blame-throwing came minutes ago, as reports emerged that Iran believes they are “facing deception” from US President Donald Trump due to “inconsistency with what is actually happening.”

Moreover, Iranian officials said they believe the two sides are “on the verge of a new round of escalation,” as reported by The Kobeissi Letter.

It’s worth noting that there’s merit to this claim. There have been numerous statements from the POTUS in the past 72 hours alone, starting from the more positive gratefulness for Iran’s decision to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on Friday.

However, the US blockade remained in place, and Iran decided to close the Strait just a day later. Trump started to threaten once again, while also saying that both nations’ delegations will meet again in Pakistan for another round of peace talks. In contrast, Iran’s Tasnim news agency said there were no such plans.

Trump then alleged that there’s a “divide” in the Iranian government and threatened to “blow up” the entire country if the two nations fail to reach an agreement.

This rather escalating uncertainty, with just a few days left until the ceasefire deal ends, led to a weekend correction for BTC, as the asset just slipped below $75,000. It’s now down by almost $4,000 since the Friday peak.

However, more volatility is to be expected later this evening when the futures legacy markets open and tomorrow morning, as it has happened in previous instances following major weekend developments.

The post ‘Facing Deception’: Bitcoin Dumps Below $75K as US-Iran Tensions Threaten to Escalate appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum is trading around $2.3k, holding near its highest levels since the February crash. Yet, there are signs of short-term fatigue after failing to sustain a breakout above the $2.4k resistance zone. The broader recovery remains intact, but the repeated failure at this ceiling is becoming a pattern that buyers will need to decisively break to shift the narrative.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

The price is pressing against a genuinely significant confluence on the daily chart, comprised of the 100-day moving average and the $2.4k supply zone. ETH has now closed above the long-term descending channel after months, but it is failing to follow through convincingly. That inability to sustain the breakout is the dominant story right now.

What keeps the setup from being outright bearish is the RSI, which has been grinding higher since February and is now holding above 50 on the daily timeframe. It is a reflection of steady bullish momentum building beneath the surface. The 200-day MA (~$2.9k) and the $2.8k supply zone sit well above, representing the next meaningful targets if the breakout does eventually confirm. Below, $1.8k remains the line in the sand, with $1.6k and $1.4k as deeper support levels.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart is flashing a warning sign that deserves attention. After briefly breaking above $2.4k earlier this week, the price quickly reversed, and the RSI has printed a clear bearish divergence on this timeframe. The signal is marked visibly on the chart: the price made a higher high just below $2.5k while the RSI made a lower high. This is a classic signal of fading momentum at resistance.

Since that rejection, the price has pulled back to around $2.32k and is now sitting just above the bullish trendline from the early-April lows near $2k, with the RSI dropping toward the 40s. The trendline is being tested right now, alongside the recent short-term low.

Holding above these levels would keep the short-term structure of higher lows intact and leave the door open for another attempt at $2.4k. Conversely, a breakdown shifts the immediate focus lower toward the $2k psychological level, with the $1.8k support band as the deeper backstop.

Sentiment Analysis

Ethereum’s funding rates present an interesting picture heading into the week. The chart shows negative readings that have dominated April. While the price has been gradually rising over the past couple of weeks, the funding rates have yet to show convincing, consistent positive readings.

Futures market participants are seemingly expecting the price to fail at $2.4k. However, a breakout could lead to a short liquidation cascade that could push the price rapidly toward the next significant resistance located at $2.8k. But for this scenario to materialize, sufficient demand from the spot market should be available to push the price over the line, or another wave of correction would be imminent.

The post Ethereum Price Prediction: Has ETH’s Rally Run Out of Steam After Another Rejection? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026, in what appears to be the largest quarterly liquidation on record, according to data analyzed by Miner Weekly.

The volume of sales already exceeds the total net BTC sold across all four quarters of 2025, even though first-quarter reporting from several firms is still incomplete.

Mining Sell-Off Wave

Major operators involved in the selling include MARA, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, Cango, Core Scientific, and Bitdeer. All of these companies have collectively reduced their BTC holdings as mining conditions tightened further at the start of the year. The scale of the liquidation is similar only to earlier periods of stress in the industry, surpassing the roughly 20,000 BTC sold by public miners in the second quarter of 2022, when the sector was impacted by market disruptions following the Terra-Luna collapse.

The latest figures stand in contrast to the accumulation trend seen in last year, when miners added about 17,593 BTC to their reserves by the end of 2024, taking combined holdings above the 100,000 BTC level. The change toward selling has coincided with continued pressure on mining profitability, as hashprice – a metric that estimates mining revenue per unit of computing power – has fallen to levels near historical lows in the low $30 per petahash per second range.

At these levels, profit margins are heavily compressed, particularly for miners operating older hardware or facing higher electricity costs, which makes continued holding of mined Bitcoin increasingly difficult. The decline in profitability has been shaped by structural changes in the network over recent years, including a significant increase in total hash rate following China’s mining ban in 2021, which led to rapid global expansion in mining capacity.

At the same time, Bitcoin’s block reward was reduced in 2024, while network difficulty has risen to roughly ten times the level seen in 2021. Such a trend has amplified competition among miners. Although Bitcoin prices remain high compared with previous market cycles, even after pulling back from recent highs above $120,000, the increase in network difficulty has offset much of the revenue benefit.

As a result, overall mining economics have tightened significantly, which ended up contributing to the decision by several operators to liquidate reserves. The selling activity is not uniform across the industry. Some miners are under greater financial pressure than others, depending on fleet efficiency, energy contracts, and access to capital.

Energy Rebrand Wave

Beyond the balance sheet pressures, some industry observers argue that the identity of BTC mining is starting to change. Paul Sztorc, CEO of LayerTwo Labs, said Bitcoin mining is “dying” while highlighting several industry changes as signs of stress. He noted that “MinerMag” has been rebranded as “Energy Mag,” while the “Mining Stage” at Bitcoin 2026 has been renamed the “Energy Stage,” demonstrating a major shift in how the sector is being framed.

Sztorc also said MARA, the world’s largest bitcoin miner, removed direct Bitcoin references from its website around two years ago. According to the exec, Cormint, another major miner, dropped the “Exahash” metric from its site, which is commonly used to measure mining scale.

The post Bitcoin Mining Giants Sold More BTC in Q1 Than Entire 2025 Combined appeared first on CryptoPotato.