Hot News
Bitcoin prices rose 6.8% last week, mainly due to President Trump's announcement of a 90-day suspension of reciprocal tariffs on all countries except China, temporarily easing the potential global trade war situation and further selling pressure in the U.S. Treasury market. Bitcoin's volatility has converged compared to the S&P 500, showing the change in the market's risk appetite for the crypto market and the stock market.
Macro Outlook
The United States announced a new tariff of 104% on Chinese goods, which was later increased to 145%. At the same time, China also retaliated further, announcing that it would increase tariffs on all US goods from 84% to 125% starting April 12.
President Trump later clarified that major consumer electronics products would be exempt from reciprocal tariffs and would only be subject to the 20% tariff currently in place. However, the next day, he said on Truth Social that he had not announced any tariff exemptions and emphasized that semiconductors and the entire electronics supply chain would be included in the upcoming "National Security Tariff Investigation," which is expected to announce details next week.
Canada announced on April 9 that it would impose a 25% tariff on U.S. imported vehicles that do not meet the requirements of the Canada-Mexico-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSMA), and impose the same tariff on vehicle parts that meet CUSMA requirements but do not contain Canadian or Mexican origin content.
On April 7, the European Commission proposed to impose retaliatory tariffs of 25% on a range of US goods in response to President Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum products. The tariffs will take effect on some products from May 16, and the rest are expected to be implemented on December 1.
The minutes of the Fed's March FOMC meeting showed that the members expressed concerns about continued inflationary pressure and slowing economic growth, and tended to maintain a healthy balance sheet reduction plan. Boston Fed President Susan Collins also said that if there is a serious market turmoil, the Fed is ready to take action to maintain stable market operations.
The US inflation rate fell to 2.4% in March, lower than the market expectation of 2.6%. Core inflation increased by 0.1%, better than the market forecast of 0.3%. In the same month, PPI fell by 0.4%, far better than the market forecast of 0.2%. Economists estimate that the core PCE in March may be 0.1%, lower than 0.4% in February.
However, the University of Michigan's consumer confidence index in April plummeted to 50.8, the lowest since June 2022, reflecting the market's increased concerns about an escalating trade war.
Upcoming economic calendars include:
April 16 (Wednesday) 8:30 p.m.: U.S. March retail sales data released
Thursday, April 17, 1:30 a.m.: Fed Chairman Powell delivers an economic outlook speech at the Chicago Economic Club
April 17 (Thursday) 8:15 p.m.: ECB interest rate decision announced
Cryptocurrency Market Overview
Teucrium launched the first XRP ETF on the New York Stock Exchange, a daily 2x long XRP ETF . The fund achieves 200% XRP exposure through futures and swap contracts.
Galaxy Digital announced that the U.S. SEC has officially implemented its S-4 registration statement regarding the company's reorganization and relocation to Delaware, and plans to list on the Nasdaq with the stock code " GLXY ". The company will hold a special shareholders meeting on May 9 to vote on the reorganization.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it will no longer initiate criminal investigations into cryptocurrency exchanges, mixing platforms, or offline wallets due to user behavior or unintentional violations, nor will it hold developers legally responsible if their code is used by others for criminal acts.
President Trump signed a resolution to abolish the original crypto tax regulations that required managed brokers to report user transaction data to the IRS and issue 1099 forms.
Arizona has officially passed the Bitcoin Mining Rights Act, HB 2342 , which protects people who run nodes or engage in digital asset mining from regional use restrictions. The bill passed the Senate with 17 votes in favor and 12 votes against, and has now been sent to the Governor's Office for signature.
The U.S. Senate has voted to confirm Paul Atkins as the new SEC Chairman.
The SEC has approved Ethereum ETF options trading applications submitted by issuers such as Bitwise, Grayscale and Blackrock.
The SEC issued new guidelines on securities issuance and registration in the crypto asset market, encouraging token issuers to disclose relevant information such as project content, token functions, revenue models, smart contract operations, and potential risks.
The SEC held a cryptocurrency roundtable last week, proposing a temporary conditional exemption for registered and unregistered entities, and discussed the possibility of securities and non-securities assets being traded under the same regulatory framework, as well as the scope of the SEC's regulatory authority.
Helium confirmed that the SEC has withdrawn its charges against Nova Labs for issuing securities without registration, confirming that the HNT, IOT and MOBILE tokens issued by Helium Network, as well as compatible hotspot devices, do not constitute securities.
Layer 1 and Layer 2 Public Chains
Ripple acquired Hidden Road for $1.25 billion to promote cryptocurrency into the institutional market and migrate the post-trading process to XRPL, while using RLUSD as collateral.
Solana launches Confidential Balances token extension, supporting private balances and transfers, private minting and destruction, and private transaction fees to meet compliance requirements.
NEAR launched Omni Bridge as an alternative to Rainbow Bridge, which realizes abstract processing of cross-chain transactions such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, and is expected to support more blockchains in the future.
Avalanche has completed the Octane upgrade on the mainnet, reducing the gas fee on C-Chain through a dynamic rate mechanism.
Cosmos launchesIBC Eureka , a new native cross-bridge mechanism that connects the Cosmos Hub with Ethereum, Babylon, and other Cosmos chains. Cross-chain fees paid in various tokens will be automatically converted to ATOM as a handling fee for the Cosmos Hub. The base fees on the Cosmos Hub will be permanently destroyed.
As a high-performance Ethereum Layer-2 network, RISE is committed to achieving 100,000 TPS and 10 Gigagas/s, and the testnet has been launched.
Plume Network has received a strategic investment from private equity giant Apollo Global for an undisclosed amount. Apollo Global manages $696 billion in assets.
Babylon officially launched its mainnet and native token, with 12% of its token supply staked and an annual inflation rate of 8%. The BABY token is valued at approximately $1.3 billion.
As the RWA protocol with the largest market value, Mantra's token price plummeted by 90% in two hours, and its market value evaporated by nearly 10 billion US dollars. The project said that the collapse was caused by "reckless liquidation behavior", but did not further explain the details.
Dapps
World Liberty Finance proposed a test airdrop of $1 per person to WLFI holders.
Ethena has signed a non-binding letter of intent with TLGY Acquisition Corp., a SPAC listed on the Nasdaq OTC market. TLGY intends to acquire Converge, a validator business on the RWA-focused permissioned public blockchain jointly developed by Ethena and Securitize, and obtain the right to purchase up to $100 million in ENA tokens at a reasonable discount.
RedStone releases RedStone Bolt , a push-based oracle service deployed on MegaETH with an update frequency of every 2.4 milliseconds.
Pump.fun has relaunched its live streaming feature after a 4-month hiatus.
Fetch.ai introduces the “ Two-Way Agent Communication ” upgrade in the ASI-1 mini, enabling more dynamic and two-way interactions between AI agents.
Wayfinder, a DeFAI protocol powered by Parallel Studio, has officially launched its native token PROMPT . The token can be used to mint Wayfinder Shells (proxies), use Wayfinder Paths (cross-chain paths, etc.), pay network fees, and serve as payment and governance. PROMPT's FDV is approximately $400 million.
Governance/Project Updates
Pendle has passed a governance proposal to include PT tokens in the Aave V3 market.
Ocra passed a proposal to start using protocol fees to repurchase ORCA tokens for redistribution to stakers, and plans to repurchase $10 million to distribute to contributors and new recruits, while destroying 25% of the token supply.
Aave Labs proposed to split the reserve treasury and GHO income of the Horizon platform in half with Aave DAO.
Arbitrum proposed to improve operational efficiency through " Arbitrum Aligned Entities ". This proposal received some support, but also raised concerns about centralization risks.
PancakeSwap proposed a major reform of the token economic model , planning to terminate veCAKE and the governance voting mechanism, reduce emissions by 43.75%, convert revenue distribution to a destruction mechanism, and hand over emission management to the team.
KernelDAO, the leading liquidity re-staking protocol on BNB and managing over $1.5B in re-staking assets on Ethereum through KelpDAO, is expected to launch its native token KERNEL on April 14.
Filecoin is expected to upgrade its mainnet to v25 on April 15, which will significantly shorten the transaction finalization time from 7.5 hours to tens of seconds, add a "temporary storage" function to transaction execution, simplify the termination fee mechanism, remove the original batch balancer, and switch to a new fee model calculated based on storage sectors every day.
Render will host RenderCon in California on April 15, which will explore Hollywood, the future of 3D and AI rendering, and the latest developments in the Render Network.
WalletConnect's native token WCT is expected to be launched on April 15. WCT will be used for governance participation, node staking, and sharing of future protocol fees.
CowSwap expects to pass the proposal to integrate Flash Loans on April 16.
BNB has completed the hard fork upgrade of the Lorentz testnet , enabling opBNB to achieve 0.5 second block time and BSC mainnet to 1.5 seconds. The mainnet upgrade is expected to take place on April 29.
Jupiter plans to announce the launch of new products and the release plan of Jupiter Mobile v2 before the end of April.
Fluid expects to implement a dynamic fee mechanism on Fluid DEX to expand its market share of trading volume on Ethereum.
Sonic will host the Sonic Summit in Vienna from May 6th to 8th.
Token Unlock
STRK tokens will be unlocked on April 16th, accounting for 4.65% of the total token supply.
ARB tokens will be unlocked on April 17th, accounting for 2.01% of the total token supply.
VANA tokens will be unlocked on April 17th, accounting for 1.47% of the total token supply.
IMX tokens will be unlocked on April 18th, accounting for 1.36% of the total token supply.
TRUMP tokens will be unlocked on April 18, accounting for 19.9% of the total token supply.
PLUME tokens will be unlocked on April 21st, accounting for 5.48% of the total token supply.
RON tokens will be unlocked on April 27th, accounting for 5.28% of the total token supply.
GRASS tokens will be unlocked on April 30th, accounting for 1.35% of the total token supply.
OP tokens will be unlocked on April 30th, accounting for 1.99% of the total token supply.
SUI tokens will be unlocked on May 1st, accounting for 2.71% of the total token supply.
ENA tokens will be unlocked on May 2, accounting for 1.69% of the total token supply.
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