3 weeks ago
By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” announcement earlier this period drove the economic commercialized argumentation uncertainty index to a grounds precocious and sent investors distant from hazard assets, which see bitcoin (BTC) and different cryptocurrencies.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell fanned the flames precocious Wednesday, saying the cardinal slope sees unemployment rising with the system apt to dilatory and ostentation apt to spell up arsenic "some portion of those tariffs travel to beryllium paid by the public.”
His comments weighed further connected hazard assets, bringing the Nasdaq down 1.17% and the S&P 500 dropping 2.24% earlier the closing bell. Still, bitcoin is up much than 1% successful the past 24 hours, portion the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, which captures the broader market, added 1.8%, adjacent though crypto is seen more arsenic gauge of risk than a harmless haven.
To Michael Brown, an expert astatine Pepperstone, request for “assets which supply structure from governmental incoherence and commercialized uncertainty” is apt to support growing, The Telegraph reported.
While bitcoin has outperformed the banal marketplace — up 1% successful the past period compared with the Nasdaq’s adjacent 8% driblet — organization investors are piling into gold, the battle-tested harmless haven.
The precious metallic is up 11% implicit the past period and 27% this twelvemonth to astir $3,340 a troy ounce. Bank of America’s Global Fund Manager Survey shows that 49% of money managers spot “long gold” arsenic Wall Street’s astir crowded trade, with 42% of money managers forecasting it to beryllium the best-performing plus of the year.
UBS analysts wrote successful a enactment that the “case for adding golden allocations has go much compelling than ever successful this situation of escalating tariff uncertainty, weaker growth, higher inflation, geopolitical risks & diversification distant from US assets & the US$,” Investopedia reported.
Gold money flows have deed $80 cardinal so acold this year, portion SoSoValue data shows spot bitcoin ETFs saw $5.25 cardinal nett inflows successful January and nett outflows since the uncertainty started. Month-to-date, implicit $900 cardinal near these funds, aft February and March saw $3.56 cardinal and $767 cardinal of nett outflows, respectively. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
April 17: EigenLayer (EIGEN) activates slashing connected Ethereum mainnet, enforcing penalties for relation misconduct.
April 18: Pepecoin (PEP), a layer-1, proof-of-work blockchain, undergoes its second halving, reducing artifact rewards to 15,625 PEP per block.
April 20, 11 p.m.: BNB Chain (BNB) — opBNB mainnet hardfork.
April 21: Coinbase Derivatives volition list XRP futures pending support by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
April 25, 1:00 p.m.: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Crypto Task Force Roundtable connected "Key Considerations for Crypto Custody".
Macro
April 17, 8:30 a.m.: U.S. Census Bureau releases March caller residential operation data.
Housing Starts Est. 1.42M vs. Prev. 1.501M
Housing Starts MoM Prev. 11.2%
April 17, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment security information for the week ended April 12.
Initial Jobless Claims Est. 225K vs. Prev. 223K
April 17, 7:30 p.m.: Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs & Communications releases March user terms scale (CPI) data.
Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.2% vs. Prev. 3%
Inflation Rate MoM Prev. -0.1%
Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 3.7%
Earnings (Estimates based connected FactSet data)
April 22: Tesla (TSLA), post-market
April 30: Robinhood Markets (HOOD), post-market
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
GMX DAO is discussing the constitution of a GMX Reserve connected Solana, which would impact bridging $500,000 successful GMX to the Solana web and transfering the funds to the GMX-Solana Treasury.
Treasure DAO is discussing handing authorization to the halfway contributor squad to wind down and shutter Treasure Chain infrastructure connected ZKsync and negociate the superior MAGIC-ETH protocol-owned liquidity excavation fixed the “crucial fiscal situation” of the protocol.
April 17, 11 a.m.: Starknet to big a governance call to sermon however to amended Cairo and the “overall dev experience.”
Unlocks
April 18: Official Trump (TRUMP) to unlock 20.25% of its circulating proviso worthy $314.23 million.
April 18: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.65% of its circulating proviso worthy $84.4 million.
April 18: Official Melania Meme (MELANIA) to unlock 6.73% of its circulating proviso worthy $10.72 million.
April 18: UXLINK (UXLINK) to unlock 11.09% of its circulating proviso worthy $16.52 million.
April 18: Immutable (IMX) to unlock 1.37% of its circulating proviso worthy $10.03 million.
April 22: Metars Genesis (MRS) to unlock 11.87% of its circulating proviso worthy $126.7 million.
Token Launches
April 17: VeThor (VTHO) to beryllium listed connected Bybit.
April 17: Babylon (BABY), AI Rig Complex (ARC), and Alchemist AI (ALCHI) to beryllium listed connected Kraken.
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 3 of 3: NexTech Week Tokyo
April 22-24: Money20/20 Asia (Bangkok)
April 23: Crypto Horizons 2025 (Dubai)
April 23-24: Blockchain Forum 2025 (Moscow)
April 24: Bitwise's Investor Day for Bitcoin Standard Corporations (New York)
April 26: Crypto Vision Conference 2025 (Manilla)
April 26-27: Harvard Blockchain successful Action Conference (Cambridge, Mass.)
April 27: N Crypto Conference 2025 (Kyiv)
April 27-30: Web Summit Rio 2025
April 28-29: Blockchain Disrupt 2025 (Dubai)
April 28-29: Staking Summit Dubai
April 29: El Salvador Digital Assets Summit 2025 (San Salvador, El Salvador)
April 29: IFGS 2025 (London)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
Raydium's level for introducing tokens, LaunchLab, went unrecorded precocious Wednesday.
It straight competes with Pump.fun, which precocious pivoted distant from Raydium and started its ain exchange, PumpSwap, prompting Raydium to present a perceived competing platform.
The Solana ecosystem saw a surge successful enactment with LaunchLab's debut, creating implicit 1,750 tokens soon aft it started up. The terms of Raydium's RAY token roseate arsenic overmuch arsenic 10% successful the hours afterwards.
LaunchLab's dynamic associated curve strategy offers linear, exponential and logarithmic curves — 3 types of pricing mechanisms that power however token values alteration based connected idiosyncratic trading — a displacement from the fixed-slope pricing models utilized successful memecoin motorboat platforms.
Integration with large Solana trading apps similar Axiom, BullX and JupiterExchange enhances LaunchLab's visibility, perchance driving broader adoption crossed the ecosystem.
Derivatives Positioning
Open involvement successful bitcoin futures connected the CME reached 138,235 BTC, the highest level the month, arsenic traders re-enter the ground trade. The annualized ground connected the CME has climbed to 8%.
With conscionable implicit a week remaining until the April options expiry connected Deribit, the $100,000 onslaught remains the astir dominant, holding implicit $315 cardinal successful notional unfastened interest.
The futures perpetual backing complaint turned antagonistic again connected Wednesday during Fed Chair Powell’s speech. Throughout the week, backing rates person oscillated betwixt affirmative and negative, highlighting continued short-term uncertainty astir bitcoin’s direction.
Market Movements:
BTC is unchanged from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday astatine $84,312 (24hrs: +0.4%)
ETH is up 1.26% astatine $1,593.44 (24hrs: +0.91%)
CoinDesk 20 is unchanged astatine 2,459.45 (24hrs: +1.36%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 1bp bps astatine 3%
BTC backing complaint is astatine 0.012% (4.3866% annualized) connected Binance
DXY is up 0.11% astatine 99.49
Gold is up 0.35% astatine $3,338.30/oz
Silver is down 1.49% astatine $32.44/oz
Nikkei 225 closed +1.35% astatine 34,377.60
Hang Seng closed +1.61% astatine 21,395.14
FTSE is down 0.82% astatine 8,207.47
Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.56% astatine 4,938.69
DJIA closed connected Wednesday -1.73% astatine 39,669.39
S&P 500 closed -2.24% astatine 5,275.70
Nasdaq closed -3.07% astatine 16,307.16
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.16% astatine 24,106.80
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.32% astatine 2,345.32
U.S. 10-year Treasury complaint is up 3 bps astatine 4.31%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.9% astatine 5,353.25
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 1.02% astatine 18,573.25
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.81% astatine 40,175.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 63.89 (-0.07%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01889 (0.64%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 905 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $43.9
Total Fees: 5.78 BTC / $482,907
CME Futures Open Interest: 138,235 BTC
BTC priced successful gold: 25.4 oz
BTC vs golden marketplace cap: 7.15%
Technical Analysis
Bitcoin has bounced cleanly disconnected the aureate pouch zone, with the 0.618 and 0.65 Fibonacci levels astatine $74,995 and $73,213 holding arsenic support.
This country marked the archetypal existent retracement from the $109,396 precocious and has shown beardown purchaser interest.
The bounce besides coincided with a breakout from the regular downtrend that has been successful spot since February — a cardinal displacement successful operation worthy noting.
BTC is present sitting conscionable beneath the regular 50 and 200 exponential moving averages, which person begun to converge.
These levels often enactment arsenic determination points, and with the terms pressing close up against them, the adjacent determination should connection clearer direction. A cleanable interruption and clasp supra would springiness bulls much control, portion a rejection could spot prices caput backmost toward the aureate pocket.
The play 50 EMA — presently $78,071 — is besides successful play and adds to the confluence conscionable below. As agelong arsenic BTC holds supra the breached trendline and continues to support this clump of support, short-term momentum remains constructive.
Crypto Equities
Strategy (MSTR): closed connected Wednesday astatine $311.66 (+0.3%), up 0.98% astatine $314.70 successful pre-market
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed astatine $172.21 (-1.91%), up 0.87% astatine $173.70
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed astatine C$15.58 (+0.84%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed astatine $12.32 (-2.07%), up 0.81% astatine $12.42
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed astatine $6.36 (-2.9%), up 0.31% astatine $6.38
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed astatine $6.59 (-3.8%), up 1.67% astatine $6.70
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed astatine $7.28 (+0.0%), up 0.27% astatine $7.30
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed astatine $11.91 (-0.58%)
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed astatine $31 (-9.88%)
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed astatine $37.19 (-2.16%), up 2.18% astatine $38
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily nett flow: -$171.1 million
Cumulative nett flows: $35.36 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.10 million
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily nett flow: -$12.1 million
Cumulative nett flows: $2.26 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.30 million
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
Yesterday, the SOL/ETH ratio surged to a grounds high, closing astatine 0.0833 and highlighting sol's continued spot comparative to ether.
Ether's weakness besides showed successful the the ETH/BTC ratio, which slipped to 0.0187, its lowest level since Jan. 6, 2020.
While You Were Sleeping
SOL Jumps 6%, Bitcoin Clings to $84K connected Dampened Rate Cut Hopes (CoinDesk): Bitcoin volition apt enactment betwixt $80,000 and $90,000 arsenic traders await clarity connected tariff talks and delayed Fed complaint cuts, said BTSE COO Jeff Mei.
Meloni, Europe’s Trump Whisperer, to Try Her Hand connected Tariffs (The Wall Street Journal): Italy’s premier curate is expected to property Trump contiguous connected the EU’s “zero-for-zero” proposal, which would destruct tariffs connected concern goods if some sides agree.
Nvidia Chief Jensen Huang Flies Into Beijing for Talks (Financial Times): The sojourn follows a U.S. determination requiring a licence to export Nvidia’s H20 spot to China, prompting the institution to pass of a $5.5 cardinal net hit.
China Stocks Face Risk of $800 Billion U.S. Outflows, Goldman Says (Bloomberg): In a afloat fiscal decoupling, U.S. investors could dump $800 cardinal of Chinese stocks portion Chinese investors mightiness offload $370 cardinal of U.S. equities and $1.3 trillion successful bonds.
Bitcoin, the Haven Crypto Bulls Hoped for, Is More a Barometer of Risk: Godbole (CoinDesk): Bitcoin, alternatively than behaving arsenic a integer gold, has solidified arsenic a proxy for risk, validating FX marketplace participants who way it arsenic a gauge of speculative sentiment.
Quantum Computing Group Offers 1 BTC to Whoever Breaks Bitcoin's Cryptographic Key (CoinDesk): A contention is offering 1 bitcoin to the archetypal idiosyncratic oregon squad to interruption elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) utilizing Shor’s algorithm connected a quantum computer.
In the Ether
English (US) 