2 months ago
By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
As the commercialized warfare betwixt the U.S. and China escalates, with the second raising tariffs connected the erstwhile from 84% to 125% this morning, bitcoin (BTC) and the wider cryptocurrency marketplace look comparatively unfazed.
Bitcoin is down a specified 0.15% implicit the past 24 hours, and China’s caller escalation hasn’t stopped its ongoing recovery. The cryptocurrency is present trading supra $82,000. The wider crypto market, measured by the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, is unchangeable with akin performance.
The aforesaid can’t beryllium said astir different assets. Gold roseate to a caller $3,227.5 grounds making Tether’s XAUT — a gold-backed cryptocurrency — the top-performing integer asset. Meanwhile, the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) dropped beneath 100 aft enduring its biggest driblet since 2022. At the aforesaid time, the output connected 10-year Treasuries kept rising to present basal adjacent 4.4%.
“The question of a imaginable dollar assurance situation has present been definitively answered — we are experiencing 1 successful afloat force,” ING strategists, including Francesco Pesole wrote successful a enactment reported connected by The Telegraph.
Inflation successful the U.S. really declined astatine the header level past month, which could punctual the Federal Reserve to resume cutting rates astatine its adjacent meeting. Still, the marketplace whitethorn person interpreted the little figures arsenic perchance waning demand, deepening the crisis.
That “confidence crisis” is seemingly seeing each plus summation against the dollar, but crypto. Bitcoin investors realized losses of up to $250 cardinal implicit 6-hour windows during the caller drop, according to Glassnode, which points retired that “realized losses are shrinking - suggesting aboriginal signs of seller exhaustion.” Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
April 11, 1 p.m.: U.S. SEC Crypto Task Force Roundtable connected "Tailoring Regulation for Crypto Trading" successful Washington.
April 17: EigenLayer (EIGEN) activates slashing connected Ethereum mainnet, enforcing penalties for relation misconduct.
Macro
April 11, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases March shaper terms ostentation data.
Core PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. -0.1%
Core PPI YoY Est. 3.6% vs. Prev. 3.4%
PPI MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 0%
PPI YoY Est. 3.3% vs. Prev. 3.2%
April 11, 12:01 p.m.: China's tariff connected imported goods originating from the U.S. volition increase from 84% to 125%.
April 14: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele volition articulation U.S. President Donald Trump astatine the White House for an official moving visit.
Earnings (Estimates based connected FactSet data)
April 22: Tesla (TSLA), post-market
April 30: Robinhood Markets (HOOD), post-market
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
Spartan Council is voting connected increasing the liquidation ratio for SNX solo stakers, with an archetypal summation to 250% connected April 11, to 500% connected April 18, and “high capable to deprecate solo SNX staking” connected April 21. Voting ends connected April 19.
Lido DAO is discussing onboarding recognition delegation protocol Twyne into the Lido Alliance. Twyne aims to grow stETH’s usage cases, portion it’s requesting strategical endorsement, promotional enactment and method guidance from Lido.
GMX DAO is discussing the deployment of GMX V2 Botanix’s Spiderchain, which it describes arsenic being “positioned arsenic the archetypal bitcoin Layer 2 designed to unlock bitcoin DeFi.”
April 11, 9 a.m.: Lombard is holding an X Spaces session connected Institutional Bitcoin Staking Partnership.
April 11, 12 p.m.: Avalanche to clasp a telephone connected Revolutionizing Blockchain Privacy with Encrypted Tokens.
April 11, 3 p.m.: Zcash to big a municipality hallway connected lockbox organisation & governance.
April 14, 10 a.m.: Stacks to host a livestream with caller announcements from the project.
Unlocks
April 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.87% of its circulating proviso worthy $53.83 million.
April 12: Axie Infinity (AXS) to unlock 5.68% of its circulating proviso worthy $21.82 million.
April 15: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 4.37% of its circulating proviso worthy $16.69 million.
April 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.01% of its circulating proviso worthy $27.12 million.
April 18: Official Trump (TRUMP) to unlock 20.25% of its circulating proviso worthy $326.78 million.
April 18: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.65% of its circulating proviso worthy $80.6 million.
Token Launches
April 11: Tether Gold (XAUT) to beryllium listed connected Bybit.
April 14: KernelDAO (KERNEL) to beryllium listed connected Binance, Gate.io, LBank, KuCoin, MEXC, and others.
April 16: Badger (BADGER), Balacner (BAL), Beta Finance (BETA), Cortex (CTXC), Cream Finance (CREAM), Firo (FIRO), Kava Lend (KAVA), NULS (NULS), Prosper (PROS), Status (SNT), TROY (TROY), UniLend Finance (UFT), VIDT DAO (VIDT), and aelf (ELF) to beryllium delisted from Binance.
April 22: Hyperlane to airdrop its HYPER tokens.
Conferences:
CoinDesk's Consensus is taking spot in Toronto connected May 14-16. Use codification DAYBOOK and prevention 15% connected passes.
Day 2 of 2: BITE-CON 2025 Conference (Miami)
Day 2 of 2: 2025 Fintech and Financial Institutions Research Conference (Philadelphia)
Day 1 of 2: Strategy's OPNEXT Conference (Tysons, Va.)
April 12: Ethereum Argentina (Córdoba)
April 12-13: DeSci London 2025
April 14: ETH Seoul 2025 Conference
April 14: FinTech and InsurTech Digital Congress 2025 (Warsaw)
April 14-16: Morocco WEB3FEST GITEX Edition (Marrakech)
April 14-26: Solana Economic Zone (SEZ) Dubai 2025
April 15: Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Summit (online)
April 15-16: BUIDL Asia 2025 (Seoul)
April 15-16: World Financial Innovation Series 2025 (Hanoi, Vietnam)
April 15-17: NexTech Week Tokyo
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa and Oliver Knight
A stablecoin (sUSD) tied to decentralized derivatives speech Synthetix suffered a depeg connected Friday, tumbling down to $0.86. The depeg stemmed from a governance connection named SIP-420, which progressive shifting Synthetix from idiosyncratic staking to pooled staking.
The connection meant that 2.5 times much sUSD would beryllium minted per staked synthetix (SNX) token, but it besides meant that stakers had nary inducement to bargain sUSD arsenic each indebtedness sat connected the staking excavation arsenic opposed to idiosyncratic wallets.
The Synthetix squad said connected Discord that it volition "continue to summation incentives for Curve pools," and that "the sUSD peg is critical. "An MEV (Miner Extractable Value) bot named "Yoink" exploited weaknesses successful Wayfinder's PROMPT token airdrop, utilizing a front-running strategy (reordering transactions to leap up of morganatic claims) to bargain astir 119 ETH (or $200,000 astatine existent prices) from Kaito users. Onchain information shows the bot swapped claimed tokens for ETH, draining funds until the airdrop was paused.
Wayfinder, an AI blockchain project, launched the PROMPT token airdrop for users who staked PRIME (Echelon Prime’s governance token) oregon earned “Yaps” connected Kaito, a level that analyzes societal media for crypto insights. The bot targeted Kaito “Yappers” who completed societal missions, with TokenTable halting claims to hole the contented and promising idiosyncratic compensation.
MEV attacks, wherever malicious actors manipulate Ethereum transaction ordering for profit, are progressively blase with AI-driven bots similar Yoink. TokenTable confirmed the astute contract’s security, is addressing failed transactions, and volition supply a elaborate study erstwhile the assertion process resumes.
Derivatives Positioning
On astir exchanges, notional unfastened involvement successful BTC futures has accrued much than the cryptocurrency's terms successful the past 24 hours, suggesting an influx of caller wealth arsenic the marketplace looks to carve retired a bottom.
A akin signifier is seen successful SOL and DOGE futures, portion traders stay cautious successful the ETH and XRP futures markets.
Funding rates for the apical 25 coins stay betwixt 0% to 10%, suggesting cautiously bullish sentiment.
BTC's options-based implied volatility word operation has normalized, portion ETH's remains successful backwardation, indicating fears of outsized terms volatility successful the abbreviated term.
Flows person been mixed connected Deribit, with telephone spreads booked successful BTC and SOL enactment rolling via OTC level Paradigm.
Market Movements:
BTC is unchanged from 4 p.m. ET Thursday astatine $82,013.36 (24hrs: +0.81%)
ETH is up 1.9% astatine $1,559.54 (24hrs: +5.22%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 3.43% astatine 2,379.04 (24hrs: +0.64%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 17 bps astatine 3.4%
BTC backing complaint is astatine -0.0018% (-2.0049% annualized) connected Binance
DXY is down 1.1% astatine 99.75
Gold is up 2.51% astatine $3,234.50/oz
Silver is up 1.79% astatine $31.22/oz
Nikkei 225 closed -2.96% astatine 33,585.58
Hang Seng closed +1.13% astatine 20,914.69
FTSE is down 0.51% astatine 7,872.98
Euro Stoxx 50 is down 1.72% astatine 4,736.11
DJIA closed connected Thursday -2.5% astatine 39,593.66
S&P 500 closed -3.46% astatine 5,268.05
Nasdaq closed -4.31% astatine 16,387.31
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -3% astatine 23,014.90
S&P 40 Latin America closed -3.2% astatine 2,255.64
U.S. 10-year Treasury complaint is down 4 bps astatine 4.4%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.38% astatine 5,281.75
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.44% astatine 18,403.00
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.4% astatine 39,637.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 63.55 (0.50%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01898 (-0.78%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 901 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $42.4
Total Fees: 5.2 BTC / $424,070
CME Futures Open Interest: 129,830
BTC priced successful gold: 25.5/oz
BTC vs golden marketplace cap: 7.24
Technical Analysis
BTC's 30-day momentum indicator, measuring the complaint of alteration successful prices implicit 4 weeks, has precocious turned up, diverging from the weakness successful prices.
The indicator's divergence, coupled with Wednesday's bullish extracurricular time candle, suggests the way of slightest absorption is to the higher side.
A imaginable determination past the descending trendline would unfastened doors to absorption astatine $88,000 (the precocious March high), followed by $92,000, which acted arsenic beardown enactment aboriginal this year.
Crypto Equities
Strategy (MSTR): closed connected Thursday astatine $272.34 (-8.26%), up 4.48% astatine $284.54 successful pre-market
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed astatine $169.62 (-4.22%), up 2.46% astatine $173.80
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed astatine C$14.35 (-5.53%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed astatine $11.74 (-4.63%), up 4.17% astatine $12.23
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed astatine $6.79 (-7.99%), up 2.65% astatine $6.97
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed astatine $6.82 (-9.19%), up 2.79% astatine $7.01
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed astatine $7.13 (-6.55%), up 3.51% astatine $7.38
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed astatine $12.01 (-8.04%), up 4.08% astatine $12.50
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed astatine $32.63 (-7.2%), up 4.17% astatine $33.99
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed astatine $41.07 (-4.80%), down 0.41% astatine $40.90
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily nett flow: -$149.5 million
Cumulative nett flows: $35.46 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.10 million
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily nett flow: -$38.8 million
Cumulative nett flows: $2.32 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.37 million
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
As the U.S.-China commercialized warfare escalates, analysts expect that Beijing volition devalue the yuan to antagonistic Trump's tariffs, perchance starring to a superior formation into bitcoin.
Options market, however, shows nary signs of hedging downside risks successful yuan successful anticipation of a large devaluation.
The 25-delta hazard reversal for the USD/CNH was somewhat supra 1, representing a mean bias for calls that would support from yuan devaluation. Higher values were observed up of the erstwhile yuan devaluation episodes of 2015 and 2016, according to The Brookings Institution's Senior Fellow Robin Brooks.
While You Were Sleeping
S&P 500 More Volatile Than Bitcoin arsenic U.S. Assets Lose Investor Favor (CoinDesk): Since Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement, S&P 500 volatility has surged from 50% to 169% annualized, the highest since the 2020 COVID crash, according to TradingView.
Gold Rally Makes Tether’s XAUT Top-Performing Digital Asset arsenic Crypto Markets Remain Flat (CoinDesk): XAUT gained implicit 3% successful 24 hours arsenic crypto traders rotated into gold-backed tokens amid concerns implicit the U.S. fund shortage and unpredictable argumentation from the White House.
Ripple and SEC File Joint Motion to Pause Appeals (CoinDesk): The 2 parties reached an statement successful rule to resoluteness each remaining issues, including appeals and claims involving Ripple founders Garlinghouse and Larsen, according to lawyer James Filan.
Bitcoin’s Recent Drawdown Proves Its More Than Just a Leveraged Tech Play (CoinDesk): Bitcoin’s three-month diminution is milder than successful 2021–22, signaling greater stability, and ranks mid-pack among tech peers, outperforming Tesla and NVIDIA and matching Apple, Meta and Amazon.
Gold Bolts Past Key $3,200 Mark connected Dollar Slide, Safe-Haven Flows (Reuters): Investor rotation retired of U.S. stocks and Treasuries connected tariff fears is pressuring the dollar and driving planetary request for gold, according to Tastylive’s caput of planetary macro.
BOJ’s Retreat From Bond Buying Spurs Bid to Lure Foreigners (Bloomberg): Officials are pitching Japanese bonds overseas much aggressively arsenic home request wanes, stressing stronger yields, streamlined trading access, and a dependable economical outlook to pull caller buyers.
China Unlikely To Aggressively Devalue Yuan to Offset Impact of U.S. Tariffs, Economists Say (CNBC): Analysts expect China to trust connected stimulus and gradual yuan weakening to dependable markets, informing that crisp moves hazard triggering superior formation similar successful 2015 and broader fiscal instability.
In the Ether
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