Crypto Daybook Americas: Robinhood's Crypto Growth Presages Riot, Strategy Even as Tariffs Hit GDP

By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

The interaction of President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs is starting to beryllium felt. The U.S. system contracted for the archetypal clip successful 3 years past 4th and banal prices person seen their worst archetypal 100-day show of a statesmanlike medication since 1974.

Results from trading level Robinhood besides showed markets cooled successful the archetypal 3 months of the year, adjacent arsenic it beat expert forecasts for some gross and net per share.

It wasn't alone, large tech companies including Microsoft and Meta bushed estimates and, crucially, Robinhood's gross from crypto doubled from the year-earlier quarter. That whitethorn foreshadow what to look for aboriginal today, erstwhile Block, Riot Platforms, Strategy and Reddit station results aft the closing bell.

“The caller question of anemic macroeconomic information has pointed to some recessionary risks and rising inflation,” James Butterfill, the caput of probe astatine CoinShares, told CoinDesk. “Despite this, bitcoin has shown singular resilience, outperforming the Nasdaq by 11% since 'Liberation Day'” connected April 2.

Indeed, portion first-quarter gross home merchandise (GDP) fell 0.3% and large banal indexes station posted losses successful past month, bitcoin (BTC) held strong. The largest cryptocurrency roseate astir 15% against the dollar successful April arsenic investors started utilizing it arsenic a harmless haven, on with golden and the Swiss franc.

To Butterfill, hazard assets are present seemingly benefiting from expectations of an earlier-than-expected interest-rate cut.

“Equities and bitcoin look to person recoupled, some rebounding contiguous connected renewed hopes of an imminent interest-rate cut," helium said. "A disappointing payroll fig connected Friday — which we spot arsenic apt — could beryllium the last nail successful the coffin for Powell, paving the mode for much dovish argumentation from the Fed."

Yet successful the cryptocurrency space, there’s much to support an oculus on. Ethereum’s long-awaited Pectra upgrade, which includes improvements to marque the web much user-friendly and efficient, is going live connected mainnet connected May 7.

The upgrade is important for Ethereum, which has been losing crushed to much businesslike blockchains including Solana, Base and BNB chain. DeFiLlama data shows full worth locked (TVL) connected Ethereum’s astute contracts grew conscionable 4% successful April, compared with 21% connected Solana, and 9.9% connected BNB Chain. Base saw a insignificant contraction.

In the past year, Artemis data shows Ethereum nett outflows totaled $3.3 billion, portion Base and Solana saw $3.3 cardinal and $3.2 cardinal successful nett inflows, respectively. Still, Ethereum recorded $880 cardinal successful nett inflows successful April, suggesting the inclination is reversing up of Pectra’s activation.

The inclination has, however, taken its toll. The ETH/BTC ratio has dropped to small implicit 0.19, the lowest level successful 5 years. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto:
  • May 1: Coinbase Asset Management volition introduce the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund (CBYF), which is aimed astatine non-U.S. investors.
  • May 1: Hippo Protocol starts up its ain layer-1 blockchain mainnet built connected Cosmos SDK and completes a migration from Ethereum’s ERC-20 HPO token to its autochthonal HP token, enabling staking and governance.
  • May 1, 9 a.m.: Constellation Network (DAG) activates the Tessellation v3 upgrade connected its mainnet, introducing delegated staking, node collateral, token locking and caller transaction types to heighten web security, scalability and functionality.
  • May 1, 11 a.m.: THORChain activates its v3.5 mainnet upgrade, adding the TCY token to person $200 cardinal successful indebtedness into equity. TCY holders gain 10% of web revenue, portion autochthonal RUNE remains the protocol’s information and governance token. TCY activates May 5.
  • May 5, 3 a.m.: IOTA’s Rebased web upgrade starts. Rebased moves IOTA to a caller network, boosting capableness to arsenic galore arsenic 50,000 transactions per second, offering staking rewards of 10%-15% a twelvemonth and adding enactment for MoveVM astute contracts.
  • May 5, 11 a.m.: The Crescendo web upgrade goes unrecorded connected the Kaspa (KAS) mainnet. This upgrade boosts the network’s show by expanding the artifact accumulation complaint to 10 blocks per 2nd from 1 artifact per second.
  • May 7, 6:05 a.m.: The Pectra hard fork web upgrade volition get activated connected the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet astatine epoch 364032. Pectra combines 2 large components: the Prague execution furniture hard fork and the Electra statement furniture upgrade.
• Macro
  • May 1, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment security information for the week ended April 26.
    • Initial Jobless Claims Est. 224K vs. Prev. 222K
  • May 1, 9:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases Canada April purchasing managers’ scale (PMI) data.
    • Manufacturing PMI Prev. 46.3
  • May 1, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases (Final) U.S. April purchasing managers’ scale (PMI) data.
    • Manufacturing PMI Est. 50.7 vs. Prev. 50.2
  • May 1, 10:00 a.m.: Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases U.S. April economical enactment data.
    • Manufacturing PMI Est. 48 vs. Prev. 49
  • May 2, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases April employment data.
    • Nonfarm Payrolls Est. 130K vs. Prev. 228K
    • Unemployment Rate Est. 4.2% vs. Prev. 4.2%
  • May 2, 9:00 a.m.: S&P Global releases Brazil April purchasing managers’ scale (PMI) data.
    • Manufacturing PMI Prev. 51.8
  • May 2, 11:00 a.m.: S&P Global releases Mexico April purchasing managers’ scale (PMI) data.
    • Manufacturing PMI Prev. 46.5
• Earnings (Estimates based connected FactSet data)
  • May 1: Block (XYZ), post-market, $0.97
  • May 1: Reddit (RDDT), post-market, $0.02
  • May 1: Riot Platforms (RIOT), post-market, $-0.23
  • May 1: Strategy (MSTR), post-market, $-0.11
  • May 8: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $2.08
  • May 8: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market
  • May 8: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Compound DAO is voting connected moving 35,200 COMP (~$1.5 m) into a multisig harmless to trial selling covered calls connected COMP for USDC, lend that USDC successful Compound for other yield, past usage the returns to bargain backmost COMP and repeat, targeting astir 15 % yearly gain. Voting ends May 2.
  • May 1, 1 p.m.: Wormhole to big an ecosystem call.
  • May 2, 3 a.m.: Ontology to big a play assemblage update connected X spaces.
  • May 5, 4 p.m.: Livepeer (LPT) to big a Treasury Talk session connected Discord.
• Unlocks
  • May 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 2.28% of its circulating proviso worthy $261.2 million.
  • May 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 5.67% of its circulating proviso worthy $12.31 million.
  • May 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.73% of its circulating proviso worthy $13.39 million.
  • May 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.56% of its circulating proviso worthy $13.96 million.
  • May 9: Movement (MOVA) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating proviso worthy $12.61 million.
• Token Launches
  • May 2: Binance to delist Alpaca Finance (ALPACA), PlayDapp (PDA), Viberate (VIB), and Wing Finance (WING).
  • May 5: Sonic (S) to beryllium listed connected Kraken.

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: TOKEN2049 (Dubai)
• May 6-7: Financial Times Digital Assets Summit (London)
• May 11-17: Canada Crypto Week (Toronto)
• May 12-13: Dubai FinTech Summit
• May 12-13: Filecoin (FIL) Developer Summit (Toronto)
• May 12-13: Latest successful DeFi Research (TLDR) Conference (New York)
• May 12-14: ACI’s 9th Annual Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance Forum connected Fintech & Emerging Payment Systems (New York)
• May 13: Blockchain Futurist Conference (Toronto)
• May 13: ETHWomen (Toronto)
• May 14-16: CoinDesk's Consensus 2025 (Toronto)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• Over 3.7 cardinal tokens — oregon 53% — listed connected GeckoTerminal since 2021 person failed, meaning they are nary longer actively traded, per a CoinGecko study connected Wednesday.
• The twelvemonth alone, 1.8 cardinal person collapsed.
• That's astir fractional of each dormant tokens successful the past 5 years, driven by marketplace turbulence post-Trump inauguration.
• The detonation successful token creation, from 428,000 successful 2021 to astir 7 cardinal by 2025, is chiefly owed to tools similar Pump.fun that alteration accelerated memecoin launches.
• Most failures occurred successful 2024 and 2025, arsenic memecoin saturation and speculative hype led to short-lived, low-effort crypto projects flooding the market.

Derivatives Positioning

• Open involvement crossed centralized exchanges has continued its dependable climb, reaching $125 cardinal crossed each assets successful a wide awesome of increasing speculative enactment and marketplace engagement.
• On Binance, the BTC-USDT perpetual bid publication heatmap reveals the adjacent important proviso portion is astatine $96.2K, with inquire orders totaling 321 BTC. Additionally, liquidation heatmaps amusement clusters astir $96K, suggesting a imaginable magnet for terms action, with liquidation pockets of $58M, $42.7M and $56.1M.
• Notably, the largest liquidation clump sits astatine the $93K support, wherever $76.3M successful liquidations are stacked making it a cardinal level to ticker for downside volatility.
• Among assets with implicit $100 cardinal successful unfastened interest, the largest week-on-week increases were seen successful Virtuals Protocol, MemeFi, Curve, Fartcoin, and Hyperliquid.
• On the backing complaint front, MemeFi, Virtuals Protocol and Alchemist AI posted the sharpest increases, signaling elevated agelong positioning and imaginable overheating successful sentiment.

Market Movements:

• BTC is up 1.76% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday astatine $96,305.26 (24hrs: +1.49%)
• ETH is up 2.37% astatine $1,838.40 (24hrs: +2.03%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 1.64% astatine 2,787.00 (24hrs: +1.22%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 29 bps astatine 2.67%
• BTC backing complaint is astatine 0.0078% (1.0416% annualized) connected Binance

• DXY is up 0.31% astatine 99.81
• Gold is down 2.01% astatine $3,221.46/oz
• Silver is down 1.32% astatine $32.14/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed +1.13% astatine 36,452.30
• Hang Seng closed +0.51% astatine 22,119.41
• FTSE is unchanged astatine 8,494.81
• Euro Stoxx 50 closed unchanged astatine 5,160.22
• DJIA closed connected Wednesday +0.35% astatine 40,669.36
• S&P 500 closed +0.15% astatine 5,569.06
• Nasdaq closed unchanged astatine 17,446.34
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.13% astatine 24,841.68
• S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.73% astatine 2,529.66
• U.S. 10-year Treasury complaint is up 4 bps astatine 4.17%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 1.23% astatine 5,655.75
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 1.73% astatine 20,002.75
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.83% astatine 41,109.00

Bitcoin Stats

• BTC Dominance: 64.57 (0.10%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01914 (0.47%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 850 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $49.24
• Total Fees: 6.59 BTC / $630,313.73
• CME Futures Open Interest: 133,905 BTC
• BTC priced successful gold: 29.6 oz
• BTC vs golden marketplace cap: 8.40%

Technical Analysis

• After past week’s explosive rally, bitcoin is consolidating successful a low-timeframe scope betwixt $93,000 and $95,600.
• While yesterday’s U.S. GDP merchandise concisely triggered downside pressure, the terms rapidly recovered, and BTC is holding supra the yearly open, signaling underlying strength.
• On the longer clip frame, bitcoin remains wrong a proviso zone, yet with a caller hourly candle closing decisively supra section resistance, there's a proposition of a imaginable continuation of the upward grind.
• If momentum persists, the adjacent cardinal country of involvement lies betwixt $96,000 and $98,000.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed connected Wednesday astatine $380.11 (-0.35%), up 3.1% astatine $391.85 successful pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed astatine $202.89 (-1.57%), up 2.89% astatine $208.75
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed astatine $21.92 (+3.94%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed astatine $13.37 (-5.98%), up 3.52% astatine $13.87
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed astatine $7.24 (-2.43%), up 3.87% astatine $7.52
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed astatine $8.10 (-2.29%), up 5.80% astatine $8.57
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed astatine $8.17 (-3.2%), up 4.90% astatine $8.57
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed astatine $13.68 (-3.59%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed astatine $32.33 (-4.83%), up 3.93% astatine $33.60
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed astatine $39.04 (-4.71%), up 1.82% astatine $39.75

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily nett flow: -$56.3 million
• Cumulative nett flows: $39.11 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1.15 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily nett flow: -$2.3 million
• Cumulative nett flows: $2.50 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.45 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• Over the past 12 months, the proviso of stablecoins has been rapidly increasing connected Tron and Ethereum, information from The Tie show.
• Optimism and Avalanche, some Ethereum layer-2 networks, person seen a diminution successful favour of those furniture 1s.

While You Were Sleeping

• Sam Altman’s World Crypto Project Launches successful U.S. With Eye-Scanning Orbs successful 6 Cities (CoinDesk): World plans to deploy 7,500 eye-scanning devices crossed the U.S. this year, and radical who usage them to verify their individuality volition person the project’s WLD token.
• U.S. and Ukraine Sign Landmark Minerals Deal After Months of Fraught Negotiations (CNBC): In instrumentality for favored entree to Ukraine’s earthy resources, Washington pledged reconstruction support, with Treasury Secretary Bessent calling the woody a awesome of U.S. committedness to Ukrainian sovereignty and peace.
• Bank of Japan Slashes Growth Forecast arsenic Trade War Hits (The Wall Street Journal): Japan’s cardinal slope held rates astatine 0.5% and chopped its maturation outlook to 0.5% for fiscal 2025 and 0.7% for fiscal 2026.
• Gold Shows Signs of Consolidation arsenic Investment Eases, but Trump Looms (Reuters): Gold prices person dipped from grounds highs contempt surging investment, arsenic central-bank buying and investors grew hopeful Trump whitethorn easiness planetary commercialized tensions.
• How India and Pakistan’s Military, Nuclear Arsenals Stack Up (Bloomberg): After past week’s deadly Kashmir attack, India’s premier curate faces unit to respond, and portion analysts spot full-scale warfare arsenic unlikely, constricted subject struggle remains a possibility.
• Mesh Adds Apple Pay to Let Shoppers Spend Crypto, Settle successful Stablecoins (CoinDesk): The diagnostic aims to adjacent the alleged last-mile spread that has stalled wide crypto adoption successful payments, co-founder and CEO Bam Azizi said.

In the Ether