The crisis underscores the vulnerability of global oil supply chains, potentially leading to prolonged market volatility and economic uncertainty.

The post Strait of Hormuz crisis drives 8% surge in crude oil prices appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The ongoing impasse over the Strait of Hormuz highlights geopolitical instability, affecting market confidence and delaying potential resolutions.

The post Iran denies plans to reopen Strait of Hormuz amid ongoing tensions appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The AAVE exploit highlights DeFi's vulnerability, potentially undermining confidence and prompting scrutiny of protocol security measures.

The post AAVE exploit triggers $7B TVL drop, AAVE falls 15% amid DeFi concerns appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The potential resumption of US-Iran talks could stabilize regional tensions, but market volatility suggests uncertainty remains high.

The post Iran reviews US plan amid diplomatic meeting speculation appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Iran's withdrawal from peace talks heightens regional instability, reducing prospects for ceasefire extensions and long-term peace deals.

The post Iran pulls out of Islamabad peace talks, ceasefire extension uncertain 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.

A $292 million exploit at KelpDAO set off a broad retreat across decentralized finance over the weekend, draining roughly $10 billion across the DeFi industry and forcing multiple protocols to freeze markets tied to rsETH.

The breach began late Saturday when an attacker drained about 116,500 rsETH from KelpDAO’s cross-chain bridge. The stolen tokens were worth about $292 million at the time, according to CryptoSlate data.

KelpDAO issues rsETH to users who deposit ETH into its liquid restaking system. The platform then deploys those ETH through the restaking platform EigenLayer to generate additional yield on top of standard staking returns.

KelpDAO’s loss now stands as the largest DeFi exploit of 2026 in the report, surpassing earlier attacks this year.

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How KelpDAO was exploited for $292 million

rsETH circulates across the broader market via LayerZero, a cross-chain messaging network that moves instructions and assets between blockchains.

Yearn Finance core developer Banteg explained that the exploit hit the route linking Unichain to the Ethereum mainnet.

According to the on-chain analyst, the attacker pushed through a fraudulent message that the system accepted as valid, prompting the Ethereum-side adapter to release pre-funded rsETH reserves.

This route was configured as a one-of-one decentralized verifier network path without secondary verifiers that could have flagged the transaction.

Banteng stated that the malicious transaction, identified as nonce 308, was verified and delivered at 17:35 UTC.

Following the attack, the KelpDAO’s emergency multisignature wallet froze the protocol’s core contracts. This blocked two further attempts that together could have removed another roughly $100 million in rsETH.

The initial stolen funds were moved through Tornado Cash, obscuring the trail before the protocol’s response could contain the damage.

Meanwhile, the drained reserve-backed wrapped rsETH circulated across secondary networks, including Base, Arbitrum, Linea, Blast, Mantle, and Scroll. Once those reserves were depleted, users holding rsETH off Ethereum faced rising uncertainty around redemption and backing.

And that pressure quickly fed into the rest of the market.

Aave takes the heaviest blow

The most severe aftershock hit Aave, the largest crypto lending platform, where the attacker allegedly deposited the stolen rsETH as collateral.

During the attack window, Aave’s pricing oracles continued to read rsETH near its normal peg, allowing the protocol to issue 106,467 ETH against the compromised collateral.

That left the platform facing a potential $236 million bad-debt exposure and triggered a rush for the exits.

Data from DeFiLlama showed Aave’s total value locked dropped from more than $26 billion to about $20 billion as users withdrew funds.

The drawdown amounted to one of the sharpest pullbacks on the platform in recent memory and turned a bridge exploit into a liquidity event for the largest lending venue in DeFi.

On-chain analysts revealed that large ETH holders on the DeFi platform accelerated the move.

For context, TRON founder Justin Sun reportedly withdrew more than 65,580 ETH, worth about $154 million, in a single transaction.

As these kinds of withdrawals mounted, Aave’s ETH utilization rate reached 100%, leaving all available Ether on the platform either borrowed or withdrawn.

Meanwhile, the pressure also spilled into Aave’s market price. The AAVE governance token fell more than 18% as traders priced in the possibility of deeper losses.

This was exacerbated by heavy sales from large AAVE wallets. Blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain reported that one entity identified as smaugvision sold more than 20,000 AAVE for $2.06 million, while another investor sold a similar amount for $2.05 million. A third whale sold nearly 19,700 AAVE in exchange for wrapped Bitcoin and ETH.

In response to these issues, Aave froze the rsETH markets on both V3 and V4. The platform's founder Stani Kulechov stated on X:

“rsETH has been frozen on Aave V3 and V4, the asset does not have any borrowing power as a measure due to KelpDAO bridge exploit that happened outside of Aave. Both Aave V3 and V4 does not have further exposure to rsETH.”

Contagion spreads across DeFi

Apart from Aave, other DeFi protocols also experienced significant withdrawals from their platform due to the attack.

0xngmi, the pseudonymous founder of DeFiLlama, reported that the incident triggered a $10 billion drop across the DeFi sector. This includes the $6 billion exodus from Aave.

Notably, data from DeFiLlama show that TVL for DeFi protocols has dropped 10% from around $99 billion on April 18 to $89 billion as of press time.

Meanwhile, the incident has also led several DeFi platforms to move quickly to reduce their exposure to the embattled rsETH token.

DeFi analyst Ignas flagged eight additional DeFi protocols, including Lido, SparkLend, Fluid, Compound, and Euler, which froze their rsETH lending markets.

He added:

“I suppose LayerZero is probably affected too, as rsETH were bridged from L2s, so I wonder if those rsETH on L2s aren't worthless right now.”

Meanwhile, Ethena, the developer of the synthetic USDe dollar, temporarily suspended its LayerZero bridges as a precaution, while stating that it had no exposure to rsETH.

Those moves reflected how widely rsETH had been embedded across DeFi as it was deeply used in lending markets, vault products, and collateral strategies that depended on smooth cross-chain transfers and confidence in reserve backing.

As that confidence weakened, protocols moved to ring-fence risk before further withdrawals or price dislocations could deepen the damage.

The strain also exposed the speed at which capital can move once collateral quality comes into question. A bridge exploit at one venue was enough to send shockwaves through multiple markets within hours, pushing platforms to suspend activity even when their own contracts had not been directly breached.

Crypto community calls for solution to DeFi bridge hacks

Jonathan Man, the Head of Multi-Strategy Solutions & DeFi Strategies at Bitwise, said:

“This is another setback but we can bounce back stronger. We as an industry need to collectively up our game to make sure we are building the future of finance on solid foundations.”

Meanwhile, the KelpDAO exploit also prompted broader discussion about how lending protocols and token issuers can limit the damage from hacks targeting bridged or thinly traded assets.

Keone Hon, co-founder of Monad, said pooled lending protocols should consider imposing rate limits on how quickly an asset can be deposited and used as collateral.

Under that model, an asset with a current circulating supply of $100 million and a formal cap of $300 million would not be allowed to jump straight to the full cap in a single burst. Instead, the supply allowed into the system would rise gradually over a set period, such as 10 minutes or a few hours.

Hon said that approach would narrow the available exit paths when an exotic asset is exploited, especially in cases involving infinite-mint bugs.

He argued that the size of the loss is often determined less by the mint itself than by how much of the compromised asset can be offloaded into lending venues or other liquid exits before markets react.

In that framework, large lending protocols become the main release valves because decentralized exchange liquidity is often too limited to absorb a major exploit.

He added that asset issuers should also have an interest in tighter caps, particularly when they issue receipt tokens with delayed redemption. In those cases, the issuer is not necessarily exposed to immediate redemption pressure from an attacker, but still benefits when downstream exit routes remain constrained.

Hon pointed to the Hyperbridge DOT exploit and the Resolv incident as examples where losses stayed below more catastrophic levels because the available paths for exiting the hacked asset were limited.

Guy Young, founder of Ethena, endorsed that view and said issuers should consider adding rate limits at the mint and redemption layer, as well as custom throttles on top of LayerZero’s OFT standard.

The post DeFi users pull $10 billion out of the market as $292 million exploit sparks bank-run optics appeared first on CryptoSlate.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

DeFi Crash: The rsETH Contagion

Confidence in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem has plummeted to an all-time low following a cascading series of security failures. What began as a targeted exploit on Kelp DAO’s rsETH (Liquid Restaked ETH) has rippled through the industry’s most trusted protocols, most notably Aave, the world’s largest lending market.

The incident has reignited a fierce debate over the risks of "DeFi composability"—the practice of layering different protocols on top of one another. Critics argue that a simple Ethereum deposit should not be vulnerable to the failure of a complex, cross-chain restaking bridge.

Aave and LayerZero: What Happened?

The crisis was triggered by a sophisticated exploit targeting the bridge infrastructure of rsETH. According to forensic reports, the attacker—widely identified as the North Korean state-sponsored Lazarus Group (DPRK)—executed a multi-stage attack on LayerZero’s Decentralized Verifier Network (DVN).

The Anatomy of the Exploit

Contrary to initial speculation that the DVN itself was compromised, the attackers targeted the RPC (Remote Procedure Call) nodes that the DVN relied on for data.

1. The Lure: Attackers identified two specific RPCs used by the DVN.
2. The Sabotage: A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack was launched against the DVN’s primary, healthy RPCs.
3. The Deception: This forced the system to fail over to the two compromised RPCs. These malicious nodes served accurate data to the public but fed fraudulent state information to the DVN, bypassing traditional security safeguards.

Impact on Aave: Frozen Markets and Bad Debt

The exploit allowed the attacker to mint fraudulent rsETH and deposit it into Aave to drain approximately $300 million in ETH. This sudden exodus of liquidity caused a "Whale Panic," with figures like Justin Sun reportedly withdrawing over $150 million in a single transaction.

Current Protocol Status

In an official statement, Aave confirmed that rsETH is now frozen across Aave V3 and V4. Additionally, WETH reserves remain frozen on several networks, including Ethereum mainnet, Arbitrum, Base, Mantle, and Linea, to prevent further contagion.

• Utilization Crisis: Lending rates for ETH spiked to 10-15% as utilization hit 100%.
• Liquidity Lock: Many lenders are currently unable to withdraw their assets because all available ETH in the pool is technically "borrowed."

Is the Debt Recoverable?

Aave’s official analysis suggests that rsETH on the Ethereum mainnet remains fully backed, and the exposure has been capped. However, the market remains skeptical. The "bad debt" looming over the protocol remains a primary concern for crypto news analysts. Until it is clear who will bear the brunt of the $300 million hole, trust in the "money lego" architecture of DeFi will remain suppressed.

For those looking to secure their remaining assets, diversifying into hardware wallets or reviewing top exchange comparisons for safer exit ramps has become a priority for many retail users.

Return to Pristine Collateral

The fallout from this incident suggests a shift in investor sentiment. There is an increasing demand for a "return to basics"—using pristine collateral like Bitcoin or native ETH rather than complex derivative products. While LayerZero has restored its DVN services, the industry now faces weeks of introspection regarding RPC security and the dangers of single-point-of-failure configurations.

What Is Happening in the Crypto Market Right Now?

The crypto market is entering a phase of tight compression, where price action looks stable on the surface—but pressure is building underneath.

Bitcoin is holding around the $74,000 level, showing resilience despite negative headlines. Ethereum, meanwhile, is hovering near key support zones, with no clear breakout direction yet.

At the same time, traditional markets are sending a very different signal. U.S. equities are pushing toward new all-time highs, absorbing liquidity and attention, while crypto lags behind.

👉 This divergence is critical.
It suggests that crypto is not weak—it is waiting.

The $90M Ethereum Whale Bet: Confidence or a Trap?

One of the most striking developments comes from a large Ethereum position:

• A whale opened a $90.8 million long on ETH
• Using 20x leverage
• Liquidation level near $1,392

This kind of positioning is not noise—it’s a statement.

What it could mean:

• Strong conviction that ETH is near a bottom
• Expectation of a sharp upside move
• Or a high-risk play in a low-volatility environment

But there’s another side to this.

👉 High leverage positions often appear before major volatility spikes, not during calm trends.

This raises a key question:
Is the whale early—or is this liquidity bait?

Geopolitical Tensions: The Silent Market Trigger

Beyond charts and trades, macro events are quietly escalating.

Recent developments around U.S. naval actions and tensions in the Middle East are adding a layer of uncertainty across global markets. Historically, such events act as volatility catalysts rather than directional signals.

Crypto reacts fast to these shocks because it sits at the intersection of:

• Risk assets
• Global liquidity flows
• Investor sentiment

👉 Any escalation could trigger:

• A sudden risk-off move (crypto drop)
• Or a flight to alternative assets (crypto spike)

Right now, the market is pricing uncertainty—but not panic.

Bitcoin Holding $74K: Strength or Exhaustion?

Bitcoin’s current position is deceptively important.

• Price remains near key support around $74K
• Selling pressure is present, but not dominant
• Momentum is slowing across lower timeframes

This creates a neutral zone, where both bulls and bears are waiting.

Two possible scenarios:

• Bullish: Support holds → breakout toward higher resistance levels
• Bearish: Support breaks → fast move downward due to liquidity gaps

👉 The longer Bitcoin stays in this range, the stronger the eventual move becomes.

Stocks vs Crypto: A Growing Disconnect

Another key signal is the widening gap between traditional markets and crypto.

• U.S. stocks are pushing higher
• Crypto is consolidating or slightly declining

This is not typical in strong bullish environments.

What it suggests:

• Liquidity is rotating into equities
• Institutional focus is temporarily elsewhere
• Crypto is being left behind—temporarily

But this type of divergence rarely lasts.

👉 When capital rotates back, crypto tends to move faster and more aggressively than traditional assets.

Why the Real Move Hasn’t Started Yet

All current signals point to one conclusion:

👉 The market is not trending—it is compressing.

You have:

• Large leveraged positions building
• Macro tension increasing
• Bitcoin holding but not rallying
• Capital rotating unevenly

This combination typically precedes a liquidity event.

Not a slow move.
A fast, decisive one.

What to Watch Next

Instead of reacting to noise, focus on the triggers:

• Bitcoin holding or losing the $74K level
• Ethereum reacting to whale positioning
• Any escalation in geopolitical tensions
• Rotation of liquidity back into crypto

These are the signals that will define the next move.

Conclusion: A Market Waiting to Explode

Crypto right now is like a coiled spring.

Nothing dramatic is happening—yet.
But everything is aligning for a major shift.

The presence of high leverage, macro uncertainty, and diverging markets creates one clear expectation:

👉 Volatility is coming.

The only question is direction.

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

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.

Binance's CZ does not seem too happy about his follower count on X, but it is pretty easily explainable.

Integration of XRP into the Solana blockchain has unlocked a novel trading experience, allowing users to swap assets directly within the WhatsApp messaging app.

Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz has issued a warning for the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector following a devastating $290 million exploit of the Kelp DAO ecosystem.

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.

Key Takeaways

• Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings release is scheduled for April 22 following the closing bell
• First-quarter vehicle deliveries totaled 358,023 units, falling short of the ~370,000 analyst estimate
• Analysts project $0.37 earnings per share on $22.71B revenue, though conservative estimates suggest potential disappointment of -20.6%
• Capital spending for 2026 is projected to surpass $20 billion, with Terafab infrastructure costs potentially reaching trillions separately
• The company’s price-to-earnings ratio hovers around 370x, a multiple justified only if autonomous vehicle and AI initiatives succeed

Tesla’s first-quarter 2026 financial results drop on April 22 after the closing bell. The earnings announcement comes as the electric vehicle maker faces a widening gap between its soaring stock price and underlying operational performance.

Tesla, Inc., TSLA

First-quarter vehicle deliveries reached 358,023 units, representing a 14% sequential decline and missing analyst expectations clustered around 370,000 vehicles. Compared to the same period last year, when Tesla delivered 386,810 vehicles, the figure marks a 7% year-over-year contraction.

The delivery shortfall carries deeper implications. Production for the quarter totaled 408,386 vehicles, creating an inventory buildup of approximately 50,000 units. This production-delivery mismatch signals potential demand weakness that investors can’t ignore.

Analyst consensus stands at $0.37 earnings per share on $22.71 billion in revenue. However, Refinitiv’s Smart Estimate projects more conservative figures: $0.30 EPS on $21.52 billion revenue, anticipating a -20.6% earnings surprise.

Profitability and Capital Spending Under Microscope

Gross profit margins are anticipated to fall within the 17%-18% range. A result below 17% would intensify concerns about Tesla’s ability to maintain profitability amid fierce pricing competition in China and persistent raw material cost headwinds.

Capital expenditure projections demand equal attention. Tesla’s 2026 capex forecast already exceeds $20 billion, a substantial jump from approximately $8.5 billion in 2025. These investments target new manufacturing facilities and artificial intelligence computing infrastructure.

Yet an even larger commitment looms on the horizon. Terafab — Tesla’s proposed one-terawatt AI computing complex — sits outside that $20 billion allocation. Industry reports from Reuters and Bloomberg indicate Musk’s organization has engaged multiple equipment suppliers, signaling the project’s advancement beyond conceptual planning. Full buildout estimates place Terafab’s cost in the mid-single-digit trillions.

Funding such ambitions from an automotive business experiencing margin compression presents a formidable challenge.

Autonomous Technology Timeline Takes Center Stage

The upcoming earnings conference call will pivot heavily on autonomous driving progress. Shareholders are seeking concrete updates on Robotaxi commercial deployment schedules, Full Self-Driving adoption metrics, and Optimus humanoid robot unit profitability.

Musk disclosed last week that Tesla completed tape-out of its next-generation AI5 autonomous driving chip. He further claimed the current AI4 chip possesses sufficient capability for Full Self-Driving software to exceed human driver safety standards. This announcement propelled Tesla shares upward by over 7%.

The Cybercab — Tesla’s dedicated autonomous vehicle platform — remains on track for a 2026 market debut. Management’s commentary regarding its production scaling trajectory will significantly influence investor sentiment.

Wall Street coverage across 30 analyst ratings breaks down to 13 buy recommendations, 11 hold ratings, and 6 sell calls. The consensus hold rating reflects unusually elevated skepticism for a mega-cap technology company.

From a valuation perspective, Tesla commands approximately 364x trailing twelve-month earnings — roughly 35 times Mercedes-Benz’s multiple and 52 times Volkswagen’s ratio. This valuation premium rests entirely on the company’s physical AI and robotics narrative rather than its automotive operations.

Technically, Tesla shares recently escaped a prolonged descending channel pattern, currently trading in the $395-$400 range. The 100-day moving average continues trending bearish at -13.21%, indicating the long-term uptrend hasn’t yet established itself.

The April 22 earnings call represents a critical juncture where management must bridge the gap between ambitious vision and concrete execution timelines backed by financial projections.

The post Should You Buy Tesla (TSLA) Stock Ahead of Q1 2026 Earnings Report? appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Polymarket is targeting a $400M funding round at a $15B valuation, a 67% jump from its October 2025 figure.

• Total new financing could reach $1B as Polymarket looks to add strategic investors alongside existing backer ICE.

• Prediction market monthly volumes surged from $1.2B in early 2025 to over $20B by January 2026, per TRM Labs.

• Regulatory pressure mounts as U.S. senators push the Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act to restrict certain contracts.
  

Polymarket is seeking to raise $400 million at a $15 billion valuation, The Information reported Sunday. The decentralized prediction markets platform is in active talks with investors to secure the capital. Reports from October 2025 had placed funding discussions at a $12 to $15 billion range. The new raise could push total new financing to roughly $1 billion, alongside existing commitments from Intercontinental Exchange.

Polymarket Eyes Strategic Investors Beyond ICE

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the NYSE parent company, agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket in October 2025. That deal gave Polymarket a $9 billion post-money valuation at the time. The new round would add to the $600 million ICE has already committed to the platform. This marks a 67% jump from its October 2025 valuation.

Beyond ICE, Polymarket is also looking to bring in additional strategic investors. Total funding could reach around $1 billion once all commitments are included. The company has expanded its offerings beyond political markets into commodities and individual equities. Oracle providers like Pyth and Chainlink now supply real-time pricing data for these contracts.

Prediction markets have evolved from niche crypto platforms into a multi-billion-dollar financial sector. Monthly trading volume grew from about $1.2 billion in early 2025 to over $20 billion by January 2026, per TRM Labs. Leading platforms now reach roughly 840,000 unique active wallets each month. Activity is increasingly driven by geopolitics, macroeconomics, and political events.

The Block’s data shows Polymarket recorded $10.57 billion in monthly trading volume in March 2026. That trails rival Kalshi, which posted about $13 billion in monthly volume the same month. Both platforms remain dominant in liquidity and user participation across the sector. Their combined presence has drawn considerable investor interest through early 2026.

Regulatory Pressure Builds as Competition Intensifies

Kalshi reportedly raised over $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation in March 2026. That roughly doubled its value since November 2025, reflecting strong sector momentum. Both Kalshi and Polymarket continue attracting rising investor attention heading into mid-2026. Their positions shape the competitive landscape of the prediction markets industry.

However, both platforms face increased scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers. In March, Senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis introduced the “Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act.” The bill seeks to bar prediction contracts tied to sports or casino-style games on registered platforms. This legislative push prompted action from both companies.

In response, Kalshi introduced new screening tools to address insider trading risks. Polymarket, for its part, expanded restrictions on market abuse across its platform. Both moves came as lawmakers called for tighter regulation across the sector. The evolving regulatory environment remains a key factor shaping the industry.

The Block reached out to Polymarket for comment on the reported funding round. No official confirmation has been issued by the company as of publication. As prediction markets continue expanding, investor and regulatory attention is expected to grow. Polymarket’s fundraising outcome will be closely watched across the digital asset space.

The post Polymarket Targets $400M Raise at $15B Valuation as Prediction Markets Surge appeared first on Blockonomi.

Quick Summary

• QS shares gained 11.6% for the week, reaching nearly 20% gains intraday
• Q1 2026 earnings scheduled for April 22 after market hours
• Options traders anticipate a 14.51% price movement following earnings
• Analyst consensus forecasts a $0.18 per share loss, improved from $0.21 last year
• Eagle Line production facility and customer billing updates will be crucial

Shares of QuantumScape finished the week with an 11.6% gain following a strong rally that briefly pushed gains close to 20%. The upward movement represents a significant rebound for investors, as QS had tumbled more than 40% year to date before this recovery began.

QuantumScape Corporation, QS

This surge arrives at a critical juncture: QuantumScape is scheduled to release its Q1 2026 financial results on April 22, following the closing bell.

Analyst estimates point to a net loss of $0.18 per share, representing progress compared to the $0.21 loss recorded in the same period last year. Since QuantumScape doesn’t yet generate revenue through commercial sales, the emphasis shifts from earnings per share to operational milestones and manufacturing developments.

Option activity reveals significant uncertainty. Market makers are pricing in a potential 14.51% move in either direction after earnings are announced. For context, the stock’s average post-earnings movement over the previous four quarters has been just 5.5%.

This substantial difference indicates that traders view the upcoming report as potentially market-moving.

All Eyes on Eagle Line Production

The spotlight this quarter falls squarely on the Eagle Line — QuantumScape’s newly launched automated pilot manufacturing facility that began operations in February. Market participants are eager to learn whether the facility is successfully producing QSE-5 battery cells using automated equipment instead of manual assembly, and if those cells have reached customers for validation testing.

Meaningful progress at Eagle Line would demonstrate that the company’s solid-state battery technology can transition from lab to production scale. Disappointing news on this front could quickly reverse the week’s positive momentum.

Another critical metric will be customer billing figures. For the full 2025 fiscal year, QuantumScape reported $19.5 million in billings — representing actual payments received from automotive partners for test cells and development milestones. Any sequential growth would indicate that major collaborators, including Volkswagen’s PowerCo. battery division, remain committed to the partnership.

The Cobra manufacturing approach also warrants attention. This process promises faster throughput compared to previous methods and represents a key component of the company’s cost reduction strategy. Shareholders will be looking for confirmation that Cobra remains on schedule to meet 2026 production goals.

Financial Position and Strategic Partnerships

QuantumScape maintains approximately $970 million in cash reserves, with management projecting this capital will fund operations through 2029. Investors will be monitoring whether capital expenditures align with expectations as Eagle Line production scales.

Regarding partnerships, the company’s business model centers on licensing its proprietary technology rather than operating as a large-scale battery manufacturer. Progress updates concerning collaborations with partners like Corning and Murata Manufacturing will be significant for investors backing this strategic direction.

Current Wall Street sentiment reflects a Hold rating, derived from six analyst assessments published over the last three months — all six rated as Hold with none more optimistic. The consensus price target stands at $9.76, suggesting approximately 37% potential upside from the current price near $7.11.

The stock has traded between $3.65 and $19.07 over the past 52 weeks, positioning it within a broad range that allows for substantial movement following the earnings announcement.

The post QuantumScape (QS) Stock Surges 12% Before Wednesday’s Earnings Report appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Points

• The Chinese technology firm Huawei has entered a strategic partnership with Vietnam’s SHB bank this past weekend
• The collaboration encompasses technology infrastructure design and comprehensive data platform construction
• Security and operational stability for banking systems form core components of the agreement
• This partnership joins existing Huawei collaborations with SCB, SeABank, and Home Credit across Vietnam
• Huawei secured major contracts in 2024 for Vietnam’s 5G infrastructure development

The Chinese technology conglomerate Huawei Technologies Group has formalized a strategic partnership with SHB, a prominent Vietnamese banking institution, signaling the company’s accelerating expansion throughout Vietnam’s financial landscape.

SHB publicly disclosed the partnership on Sunday. According to the arrangement, Huawei will provide expertise in crafting the bank’s technological framework and establishing robust data infrastructure. The agreement additionally ensures that SHB’s operational systems maintain consistent reliability and comprehensive security.

“The cooperation with SHB is an important milestone in the group’s market expansion in Vietnam,” said Spawn Fan, a senior Huawei executive, in the bank’s statement.

This isn’t Huawei’s inaugural venture into Vietnam’s banking industry. The technology powerhouse maintains established partnerships with multiple financial institutions including SCB, SeABank, and Home Credit, spanning initiatives in digital transformation, security protocols, data intelligence, cloud infrastructure, and banking platform optimization.

Strategic Expansion in Southeast Asia

The newly announced SHB collaboration strengthens Huawei’s increasingly substantial position within one of Southeast Asia’s most dynamic and rapidly expanding markets. Vietnamese financial institutions have aggressively prioritized digital infrastructure modernization, creating opportunities that Huawei has strategically pursued.

Huawei’s expanding influence in Vietnam represents a significant shift from previous policy positions. Until quite recently, Vietnamese authorities maintained strict restrictions preventing Chinese corporations from participating in the nation’s 5G telecommunications infrastructure.

This policy underwent a dramatic reversal in 2024 when Huawei successfully secured multiple contracts to develop significant portions of Vietnam’s 5G network. The current SHB partnership reflects a continuation of this evolving relationship — demonstrating strengthening connections between Vietnamese organizations and Huawei spanning both telecommunications and financial technology sectors.

Partnership Scope and Implementation

SHB ranks among Vietnam’s most significant privately-owned commercial banking institutions. The comprehensive partnership with Huawei encompasses multiple critical domains: architectural design for technology infrastructure, comprehensive data platform construction, and continuous operational assistance ensuring system stability and security.

These initiatives represent substantial commitments. Constructing data platforms and architectural frameworks for commercial banking operations requires extensive integration with fundamental banking technology systems.

According to statements from the Vietnam Banks Association, Huawei’s activities throughout Vietnam’s financial industry concentrate on digital transformation initiatives, cybersecurity enhancement, advanced data analytics, cloud computing solutions, and banking operational efficiency — capabilities that align directly with the SHB partnership framework.

The 5G infrastructure contracts Huawei won in 2024 marked a fundamental policy transformation from Vietnamese government authorities. This strategic pivot created pathways for expanded collaboration, with the SHB agreement representing one of the most substantial manifestations of this revised approach.

Spawn Fan, the Huawei representative referenced in SHB’s official announcement, characterized the partnership as a significant achievement — not solely for SHB’s technological advancement, but for Huawei’s comprehensive Vietnam market strategy.

The Vietnam Banks Association has verified that Huawei’s current financial sector engagements include SCB, SeABank, and Home Credit, with the SHB partnership now expanding that portfolio.

The post Huawei Expands Financial Footprint in Vietnam with Major Bank Partnership appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Samsung SDI clinched its inaugural long-term battery supply agreement with Mercedes-Benz for electric vehicles
• High-nickel NCM battery technology will power upcoming compact and midsize Mercedes EV SUVs and coupes
• Deal valuation estimated to surpass 10 trillion Korean won (approximately $6.8 billion) with supply volumes reaching tens of gigawatt-hours
• Samsung SDI shares jumped 4.87% following the announcement; Mercedes-Benz stock declined 2.49%
• Mercedes-Benz joins Samsung SDI’s expanding European portfolio that already includes BMW and Volkswagen

Samsung SDI secured a groundbreaking electric vehicle battery supply partnership with Mercedes-Benz on Monday, propelling its shares upward by 4.87%. The landmark agreement was formalized during a signing ceremony held in Seoul, with senior leadership from both corporations in attendance.

The battery cells will utilize advanced high-nickel nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) technology. According to Samsung SDI, this chemistry provides superior energy density, extended driving range, enhanced durability, and robust power performance.

Mercedes-Benz intends to integrate these batteries into its forthcoming lineup of compact and midsize electric SUVs and coupe variants. According to industry insiders, the battery supply is designated for a new electric vehicle model scheduled for launch in 2028.

While Samsung SDI refrained from publicly confirming the financial terms, industry analysts estimate supply quantities will reach tens of gigawatt-hours, with the overall contract value projected to exceed 10 trillion won — approximately $6.8 billion.

The Seoul ceremony featured Samsung SDI’s President and CEO Choi Joo-sun, alongside Mercedes-Benz Group Chairman Ola Kallenius and Chief Technology Officer Jorg Burzer.

Long-Term Negotiations Led to Partnership

This strategic alliance represents the culmination of extensive negotiations. Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong had been cultivating a stronger relationship with Mercedes-Benz over an extended period.

Last November, Kallenius made a trip to South Korea and conducted meetings with Lee at Samsung’s exclusive VIP guest facility in Seoul. Their discussions centered on potential collaboration opportunities spanning automotive electronics and battery technology.

The partnership gained significant traction after Lee journeyed to Germany alongside Samsung SDI President Choi for direct negotiations with Mercedes-Benz executives.

The existing business relationship between Samsung and Mercedes-Benz provided a solid foundation for this battery agreement. Samsung’s subsidiary Harman currently provides the German automaker with infotainment systems and premium audio solutions.

For Mercedes-Benz, this partnership represents a strategic expansion of its supplier network, which already encompasses Korean battery manufacturers LG Energy Solution and SK On. The automaker has been proactively diversifying its battery procurement strategy in preparation for its next-generation electric vehicle portfolio.

Strategic Implications for Samsung SDI

This contract positions Mercedes-Benz alongside Samsung SDI’s established European customer base, which features BMW and Volkswagen.

Samsung SDI emphasized that the batteries will incorporate its exclusive safety technologies, positioning these innovations as a crucial competitive advantage in securing the agreement.

Beyond the immediate supply commitment, both organizations expressed intentions to broaden their collaboration to encompass joint research and development of advanced battery technologies and future mobility innovations.

“This partnership brings together the innovative DNA of both companies,” a Samsung SDI official said.

Mercedes-Benz described the deal as ensuring “a stable supply of high-performance battery technology, a critical component of the brand’s electrification strategy.”

The substantial order is anticipated to significantly enhance Samsung SDI’s revenue streams and manufacturing capacity utilization. The multi-year contract is structured to support production requirements for Mercedes-Benz’s 2028 electric vehicle rollout.

The post Samsung SDI Secures Massive $6.8B Electric Vehicle Battery Contract with Mercedes-Benz appeared first on Blockonomi.

[PRESS RELEASE – Singapore, Singapore, April 20th, 2026]

LBank, a leading global cryptocurrency exchange, has expanded its LBank Pay ecosystem and rolled out a new user campaign aimed at accelerating real-world cryptocurrency adoption. The update introduces support for six additional fiat currencies: SGD, MNT, KHR, PHP, THB, and LAK, bringing the total number of supported fiat currencies to eight. Simultaneously, LBank continues to deepen its integration with established local payment networks, including VietQR in Vietnam and PIX in Brazil.

This expansion underscores a strategic shift in LBank’s development direction. Moving beyond its traditional positioning as a pure trading venue, the platform is evolving into a practical financial access layer that bridges digital assets with everyday spending scenarios. By enabling users to make direct payments with USDT through familiar local payment channels, LBank Pay effectively narrows the gap between holding cryptocurrency and utilizing it in real life.

To support this strategic transition, LBank has launched a limited-time campaign running from April 20 to June 30, 2026 (UTC). During the promotion period, new users who complete a single transaction of at least 3 USDT equivalent via LBank Pay are eligible to receive up to 10 USDT in instant discounts, which will be automatically applied at checkout. The offer is available on a first-come, first-served basis and is currently accessible through the VietQR and PIX payment networks.

The campaign is deliberately designed around low-friction, real-world transactions. Instead of imposing complex trading tasks or requiring significant capital commitments, users can unlock rewards through everyday activities such as purchasing coffee or making small retail purchases. This approach aligns incentive mechanisms with user behavior, encouraging first-time users to experience cryptocurrency as a practical payment method rather than merely a speculative asset.

Eric He, Community Angel Officer and Risk Control Advisor at LBank, commented: “The next phase of crypto adoption will not be driven by trading alone, but by usability. If users can seamlessly spend digital assets in their daily lives, adoption will become a natural outcome rather than a forced transition. LBank Pay is built to eliminate this friction and make cryptocurrency truly practical for everyday use.”

The addition of six new fiat currencies further strengthens LBank’s presence across Southeast Asia and other emerging markets, where mobile-first financial behaviors are widespread and demand for alternative financial tools continues to grow. By anchoring transactions in stablecoin settlement while integrating local payment channels, LBank effectively connects two parallel financial systems without requiring users to alter their existing payment habits.

As competition among crypto platforms increasingly shifts toward real-world utility, LBank is positioning itself at the forefront of this critical transition. Through the continued expansion of LBank Pay, the platform is not only enhancing its payment capabilities but also redefining its role within the industry, from a traditional trading venue to a broader infrastructure layer that connects digital assets with real-world financial scenarios.

This strategic direction reflects LBank’s deep understanding of evolving user needs, as well as a clear long-term view of where the industry is heading. The next phase of crypto growth will be driven less by trading activity and more by real-world usage. Against this backdrop, LBank is focused on building more accessible and practical payment experiences, enabling digital assets to integrate seamlessly into everyday life and accelerating their adoption at scale.

About LBank

Founded in 2015, LBank is a leading global cryptocurrency exchange serving over 20 million registered users in 160 countries and regions. With a daily trading volume exceeding $10.5 billion and 10 years of safety with zero security incidents, LBank is dedicated to providing a comprehensive and user-friendly trading experience. Through innovative trading solutions, the platform has enabled users to achieve average returns of over 130% on newly listed assets.

LBank has listed over 300 mainstream coins and more than 50 high-potential gems. Ranked No. 1 in 100x Gems, Highest Gains, and Meme Share, LBank leads the market with the fastest altcoin listings, unmatched liquidity, and industry-first trading guarantees, making it the go-to platform for crypto investors worldwide.

Users Can Follow LBank for Updates:

Website: https://www.lbank.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LBank_Exchange

Telegram: https://t.me/LBank_en

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lbank_exchange

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lbank

The post LBank Pay Expands with Six New Fiat Channels, Launches Exclusive Campaign to Accelerate Crypto Payments appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP has been grinding sideways for months, but that could be about to change.

According to two prominent market watchers, there is a multi-month symmetrical triangle on XRP’s daily chart that, once the price finally exits it, could trigger a 35% move.

XRP Compresses Into a Triangle as Traders Watch for Breakout

In a post published on X earlier today, analyst Ali Martinez, known on the platform as Ali Charts, said this about the Ripple token:

“$XRP consolidates in a symmetrical triangle, pointing to a potential 35% move.”

That view was echoed by fellow on-chain technician ChartNerd, who went into more detail, describing the compression as continuing “towards its apex” and flagging the 20- and 50-day exponential moving averages as levels that “need to be held or a drop to support opens up.”

At the time of writing, XRP was sitting near $1.40, up nearly 6% on the week but still down more than 3% on the month and off its July 2025 all-time high by about 61%.

Another analyst, Arthur, posted what looks like a supporting signal: while the price has been making lower lows, the RSI has been printing higher lows. He pointed out that that kind of divergence can mean selling pressure is running out of steam before a bigger move. In addition, he said that XRP had just broken above a horizontal resistance level around $1.40, calling the setup “increasingly interesting.”

On the volume side, data published by Arab Chain shows XRP’s Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) sitting close to -7.18 million, meaning sell orders have been outpacing buys even with prices stabilizing. Meanwhile, the 30-day correlation between the price and CVD has improved to roughly 0.61, suggesting the two are gradually coming back into alignment, but this is still a market that has not made up its mind about which direction to take.

A separate note from CryptoQuant contributor PelinayPA over the weekend made the same point from a different angle: large wallet transfers above 100,000 XRP have been sporadic, pointing to a lack of stable directional pressure from the bigger players.

Additional Context From ETF Flows and Blockchain Integration

Away from the charts, a few things have shifted in XRP’s favor recently. For instance, spot XRP ETFs had their best week in three months last week, when they pulled in $55.39 million across five trading days, per data from SoSoValue. On April 15 alone, the products had their best single-day return in 10 weeks, at $17.11 million. This pushed cumulative net inflows to around $1.27 billion, taking them within reach of the all-time high of $1.28 billion.

That is a meaningful turnaround from March, when the funds finished the month $31 million in the red, and it came just as tensions in the Middle East were easing, even though there were conflicting signals over the weekend that have left the sustainability of that trend an open question.

Elsewhere, the Solana ecosystem launched wXRP, a 1:1 backed wrapped version of XRP built through a partnership between Hex Trust and LayerZero, that is immediately usable across several Solana DeFi applications, including Jupiter Exchange and Phantom wallet.

The positive developments helped briefly push XRP to its highest level in almost a month, at $1.50, before it got rejected and drifted back to where it is trading now.

The post A 35% XRP Price Swing? The Massive Symmetrical Triangle Forming on Ripple’s Chart appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Abu Dhabi, UAE, April 20th, 2026]

Startale Group, the global blockchain infrastructure company, is expanding into Abu Dhabi after being selected for Hub71’s Digital Assets cohort, deepening its alignment with one of the world’s fastest-growing state-backed crypto ecosystems.

Through the program, backed by Mubadala and the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, Startale will establish operations within Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), a financial center that has developed a regulatory framework for digital assets and has attracted blockchain firms across the globe.

Startale was selected as one of 27 companies from more than 2,400 global applicants. Its entry into Hub71 places the company within a network of institutional partners, capital providers, and regulators shaping Abu Dhabi’s digital asset strategy.

“Hub71 and Abu Dhabi Global Market provide the regulatory clarity and global reach we need to scale Startale’s ecosystem responsibly”, said Sota Watanabe, CEO of Startale Group. “Abu Dhabi is becoming a key hub for digital assets, and joining this cohort positions us to expand across Eastern and Western markets, working closely with regulators and institutional partners”.

The expansion follows Startale’s $63 million Series A funding round, positioning the company to accelerate development of its blockchain and stablecoin infrastructure in regulated markets.

Startale is building Soneium through Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint venture with Sony Group Corporation, and is advancing Strium and stablecoin initiatives, including JPYSC, in collaboration with SBI Group, alongside its USDSC stablecoin and Startale App.

By anchoring in ADGM, Startale positions itself within a jurisdiction increasingly used by crypto firms seeking clearer regulatory frameworks and closer access to institutional capital.

Under the Hub71+ Digital Assets program, Startale will expand across three areas of its ecosystem, including blockchain infrastructure through Soneium and Strium, its Startale App, and stablecoin initiatives USDSC and JPYSC.

“We are pleased to welcome Startale Group into Hub71’s Cohort 18. Their focus on digital asset infrastructure reflects the strength of our specialist ecosystems and the calibre of founders choosing Abu Dhabi as a launchpad for global growth. We look forward to supporting their expansion.” — Divya Claudia Nair, Startup Journey Lead at Hub71.

Startale plans to deploy personnel in Abu Dhabi and work closely with regulators, investors, and partners through Hub71’s platform as it expands across the Middle East and global markets.

The move underscores how leading blockchain infrastructure companies are increasingly aligning with government-backed ecosystems to scale within regulated environments.

About Startale Group

Startale Group is a global crypto infrastructure company on a mission to build the next civilization by bringing the world on-chain. The company operates Astar Network, Japan’s largest public blockchain, and co-develops Soneium through Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint venture with Sony Group Corporation. Startale also builds consumer and developer products, including the Startale App, which serves as an all-in-one gateway to the Soneium ecosystem.

The post Startale Expands to Abu Dhabi, Aligning With UAE’s State-Backed Crypto Push appeared first on CryptoPotato.

It was another eventful weekend in which the two warring parties exchanged contrasting and confusing statements on what is happening with their ceasefire, whether any peace talks are scheduled, and what’s next.

Perhaps the most worrisome part came just hours ago when both nations resumed the strikes against each other.

Strikes Resumed

At first, US President Donald Trump announced on his social media platform that the US Navy Guided Missile Destroyer USS Spruance intercepted a 900-feet-long Iranian-flagged cargo ship called Touska, and “gave them a fair warning to stop.” However, Touska’s crew “refused to listen,” and the US destroyer “stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engine room.”

He added that US Marines have custody of the vessel, and it’s under US Treasury Sanctions because of “their prior history of illegal activity.”

Shortly after, Iran responded that it had attacked US military ships with drones to retaliate for the initial strikes and the seizure of the cargo vessel.

These attacks were the cherry on top of an eventful weekend. After Friday’s reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran decided to close it again hours later as the US didn’t move its naval blockade. Then, the US said both parties would resume the peace talks on Monday, but Iran denied any such plans.

Previously, Iran also refuted all of Trump’s statements made on Friday, including agreeing to give up its uranium enrichment program.

Over the last 48 hours:

1. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz

2. The US claimed peace talks would resume with Iran tomorrow

3. Iran has backed out of peace talks with the US

4. Iran has accused the US of plotting a “surprise attack”

5. The US has struck and seized an…

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) April 19, 2026

Markets React

Since crypto is the only financial market operating 24/7, it felt some volatility over the weekend, mostly heading south. Bitcoin had soared to $78,400 on Friday but was quickly halted there and dipped below $74,000 after the attacks resumed.

US stock market futures opened lower during the night, with losses of around 1%. In contrast, WTI Crude and Brent Oil exploded by over 8%. USOIL also soared by roughly $10, going from its local low of $79 to $89.

More volatility is expected in the coming days as the ceasefire officially expires. The attacks from last night only worsened the situation, and there are no evident talks in place.

The post Bitcoin, Oil, and US Stock Futures React as US-Iran Resume Strikes appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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.