Decentral Block Post

Key Takeaways:

US GDP shrank -0.3% in Q1, far below +0.3% forecasts, sparking recession fears.

Bitcoin faces selling pressure with its spot volume delta dropping $300 million in 3 days.

Whales are accumulating BTC, but smaller holders are selling, hinting at profit-taking.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price dropped under $93,000 on April 30, after the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data revealed a -0.3% contraction in Q1. While the GDP missed expectations of +0.3%, the GDP Price Index soared to 3.7%—the highest since August 2023. Polymarket odds of a recession in 2025 hit 67%, with consumer confidence at its lowest since May 2020.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the former CEO of crypto exchange Binance, said most European countries were moving “nowhere” in terms of the adoption of digital currencies.

Speaking at the Token2049 conference in Dubai on April 30, Zhao said that areas of the United Arab Emirates were “extremely pro-business,” leading to crypto adoption in Dubai, while others like Bhutan were building national Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) stockpiles. According to Zhao, the US was pressing other countries’ hands by exploring its own policies for a crypto reserve, but those in Europe didn’t seem to be reacting.

“I don’t see Europe in this discussion,” said Zhao, highlighting one exception. “Montenegro is actually quite pro-crypto. We had an active dialogue with [the] prime minister there, and he’s a very forward-thinking person, leader. But other than Montenegro, I don’t have any other, it’s kind of missing on the map.”

Related: ‘Wealthiest US prisoner’: How did Binance founder CZ get there?

Zhao, who has a home in Dubai, resigned as Binance CEO in November 2023 as part of a plea deal with US authorities pursuing charges against the exchange. Since leaving Binance and serving four months in prison in the US, he has become more involved with his educational platform, Giggle Academy. 

Asset manager Grayscale launched the Grayscale Bitcoin Adopters exchange-traded fund (ETF), an investment vehicle that tracks companies employing a Bitcoin (BTC) treasury, or holding strategy.

According to the April 30 announcement, the ETF will provide exposure to companies across seven business sectors, including Bitcoin mining firms, automotive companies, and energy.

Some of the most notable firms in the ETF include Michael Saylor's Strategy, mining company MARA, automotive manufacturer Tesla, BTC treasury company Metaplanet, and aerospace energy firm KULR Technology Group.

Grayscale's Bitcoin Adopters ETF highlights the growing trend of Bitcoin acquisition companies using the scarce digital asset to drive up shareholder prices and to protect their corporate financial reserves against the inflation inherent in fiat currencies.

Related: Cantor plans $3B crypto venture with SoftBank, Bitfinex and Tether: Report

Key points: 

US GDP shrank in Q1, raising recession alarms while also prompting calls for Fed rate cuts.

Bitcoin dropped to $92,910 as GDP figures were released, but sustained buy-side demand could provide support. 

Today’s crypto derisking is likely transitory; market fundamentals remain strong.

Bitcoin (BTC) price took an abrupt tumble as data showed the US gross domestic product (GDP) retracting by 0.3% in Q1, raising alarms among analysts anticipating a recession. Following the news, BTC price dropped to an intra-day low of $92,910, while the DOW and S&P 500 fell by 1% and 1.3% respectively. 

Opinion by: Fraser Edwards, co-founder and CEO, Cheqd

Brutal honesty has its place, especially when confronting discomfort, so here’s one that can’t be sweetened with honey: 96% of imported honey in the UK is fake! Tests found that 24 of 25 jars were suspicious or didn’t meet regulatory standards. 

Self-sovereign identity (SSI) can fix this. 

The UK Food Standards Agency and the European Commission both urge reform to tackle this concern by creating a robust traceability database within supply chain networks to ensure consumer transparency and trust. Data, however, is not the problem. The issue is people tampering with it. 

This is not the first time products have been revealed to be inauthentic, with the Honey Authenticity Network highlighting that one-third of all honey products were fake in 2020, a fraudulent industry amounting to 3.4 billion euros ($3.65 million) of counterfeit goods entering the EU in 2023, as reported by the European Commission.

April 2025 witnessed crypto markets rocked by more tariffs at the direction of US President Donald Trump — controversial policies that could have influenced the outcome of Canada’s elections on April 28.

On April 2, Trump levied “discounted reciprocal tariffs” on 185 countries and territories. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2,200 points on April 4, while the S&P 500 dropped nearly 6%, its largest decline since March 2020. Bitcoin (BTC) went along for the ride but broke from stocks as it recovered toward the end of the month. 

Blockchain adoption metrics for Ethereum are looking good, as the network now boasts 60% real-world asset (RWA) tokenization value. Major firms like BlackRock are sure the blockchain will be the standard for RWAs, but other observers believe that scaling issues could create problems.

On matters of policy, pro-crypto legislators in a number of US states are pushing their respective bills; two states have introduced new legislation in April. In Canada, pro-crypto Conservatives lost to the Liberals, but the victors must form a minority government.

Here’s April in numbers.

“Liberation Day” sees markets plunge, Bitcoin up 16% on the month

On April 2, the US president levied retaliatory tariffs on all US trade partners, sending Wall Street into a spiral. Between the announcement after market close and the end of trading on April 8, global markets wiped off more than $8.5 trillion in asset value. By the same date, the S&P 500 had fallen by just north of 12%.

Market value has since inched back upward as some countries court the Trump administration seeking tariff relief, but major partners such as China still haven’t budged. While markets have recovered slightly, losses still amount to a “mere” $1 trillion, according to investment managers AJ Bell. 

Chinese artificial intelligence development company DeepSeek has released a new open-weight large language model (LLM).

DeepSeek uploaded its newest model, Prover V2, to the hosting service Hugging Face on April 30. The latest model, released under the permissive open-source MIT license, aims to tackle math proof verification.

Prover V2 has 671 billion parameters, making it significantly larger than its predecessors, Prover V1 and Prover V1.5, which were released in August 2024. The paper accompanying the first version explained that the model was trained to translate math competition problems into formal logic using the Lean 4 programming language — a tool widely used for proving theorems.

The developers say Prover V2 compresses mathematical knowledge into a format that allows it to generate and verify proofs, potentially aiding research and education.

Related: Here’s why DeepSeek crashed your Bitcoin and crypto

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin released another update on what he believes the future of the network should entail.

In an April 30 post on blockchain-based social media platform Farcaster, Buterin outlined his personal areas of focus for Ethereum development this year. These include investigating changes to the network infrastructure to achieve single-slot finality, updates to smart contract execution and enhancements to privacy.

The post comes as the Ethereum network hits a new milestone. GrowThePie data shows that the weekly number of unique addresses interacting with the Ethereum ecosystem reached a new high of over 15.4 million, with nearly 13.45 million on layer-2 protocols.

Buterin recently argued that privacy should be a top priority for developers and proposed solutions to boost privacy on Ethereum. Earlier in April, he also published a short-term privacy roadmap for Ethereum, detailing technical solutions to the network’s transparency.

Buterin’s focus on forward-looking research follows changes at the Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit organization developing the Ethereum ecosystem. Earlier this month, the Ethereum Foundation co-executive director, Tomasz Stańczak, said that Buterin now has more time for research and exploration.

An elderly US individual is reportedly the victim of a devastating $330 million Bitcoin heist, now ranked as the fifth-largest crypto hack in history.

The attacker used advanced social engineering tactics to gain access to the victim’s wallet, onchain investigator ZachXBT said in an April 30 update on X.

The hack took place on April 28, 2025, when ZachXBT flagged a suspicious transfer involving 3,520 Bitcoin (BTC), valued at $330.7 million.

Following the transfer, the stolen stash was quickly laundered through over six instant exchanges and swapped into privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR).

Onchain data shows that the victim had held over 3,000 BTC since 2017, with no prior history of large-scale transactions.

Crypto was born from an open-source ethos, where code was shared publicly, accessible for review and shaped by community contributions. Transparency and verifiability are foundational principles that enable trust in Bitcoin.

But as the space matured, some disadvantages of open source surfaced. Innovative smart contract platforms and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications were forked to create direct competitors — from the wave of Uniswap clones to Ethereum forks — which prioritized speed and lower fees over decentralization.

As a result, some projects opted for closed-source development to protect proprietary designs and reduce the risk of exploits, hoping to delay or deter malicious actors by making the code harder to analyze. This approach is often criticized as “security through obscurity,” where hiding vulnerabilities instead of fixing them becomes a line of defense.

Closed-source systems run counter to crypto’s original vision of decentralization and transparency. What started as a grassroots movement among cypherpunks and hackers is now increasingly mainstream and integrating with the very institutional system it once sought to disrupt.

Solana Loopscale exploit shows why open source can still be more secure

An exploit on Solana’s Loopscale protocol shows that closed source is not a one-size-fits-all solution for keeping malicious actors out. On April 26, just weeks after launching, the closed-source DeFi lending platform suffered a $5.8-million exploit.

Cryptocurrency hackers stole more than $90 million in April, dealing another blow to the industry’s mainstream reputation despite ongoing efforts to improve cybersecurity.

Hackers made off with $92 million of digital assets across 15 incidents in April, according to an April 30 research report by blockchain cybersecurity firm Immunefi.

The total marks a 124% month-over-month increase from March, when hackers stole $41 million.

The month’s largest hack on open-source platform UPCX accounted for most of the damage in April, with over $70 million in losses, while KiloEx lost $7.5 million as April’s second-largest hack.

The KiloEx exploiter returned the stolen funds just days after the attack occurred.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Mantra has called for industry-wide cooperation to reduce investor risks in the aftermath of its OM token crash.

On April 30, Mantra published its latest update since the sudden collapse of its OM token, claiming that the incident was “bigger than Mantra.”

“Liquidation cascades could happen to any project in the crypto industry,” Mantra CEO John Mullin warned in the post, pointing to the role of “aggressive leverage positions” on exchanges as a broader threat to investor safety.

“We’re cooperating with major exchanges to improve market stability, and we’re calling on the rest of our industry to provide input on how exchange policies can minimize — or continue to permit — policies that create risk to investors,” the update states.

Progress includes governance improvements

Aside from calling global centralized exchanges to review their leverage policies, Mantra listed a few key solutions following the OM crash.

Key takeaways:

Macro Chain Index issues first buy signal since 2022, hinting at a new Bitcoin bull run.

RSI crossover on the MCI aligns with past cycle bottoms that preceded 500%+ BTC rallies.

Bitcoin price recovers from $74K to $95K amid rising open interest and positive funding rates.

A key Bitcoin (BTC) indicator that accurately signaled the 2022 market bottom has just flashed another buy signal, suggesting the cryptocurrency may be entering a new bull phase.

The Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) plans to launch a new blockchain network to support its non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles, the organization announced on April 30.

FIFA will launch its “FIFA Blockchain,” with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility and aims to provide “better performance, future features, and improved scalability.”

As part of the move, FIFA Collect — its official NFT collection — will migrate from the Algorand blockchain to the new FIFA Blockchain. The migration is scheduled to begin no earlier than May 20, FIFA said.

“At this stage, no immediate action is required. When the migration process begins, we will provide clear, step-by-step instructions on what (if anything) you need to do,” the announcement stated.

The collection’s migration will take place “not earlier than” May 20, FIFA said, adding that it will confirm the exact date and provide clear instructions for NFT holders.

Vanar Chain, a layer-1 blockchain network, has launched a new artificial intelligence-powered compression and data authentication layer designed to address the industry’s longstanding issue with onchain storage.

Vanar Chain is launching Neutron, an AI-native blockchain layer with data compression ratios of up to 500:1, which can reduce a standard 25 megabyte file to just 50 kilobytes, transforming it into a “Neutron Seed” that can be stored on the blockchain ledger.

The new blockchain compression layer aims to solve the industry’s data storage issue, with traditional blockchains lacking the capacity to store data, only to reference it.

This design introduces potential single points of failure. Vanar's Neutron aims to solve this by enabling fully onchain, verifiable data storage.

Neutron is a “world first” which “handles both physical file compression and semantic compression, meaning it compresses not just the file itself but the meaning inside it,” Jawad Ashraf, CEO of Vanar Chain, told Cointelegraph:

Key points:

Bitcoin consolidates after upside momentum stalls, but traders are confident that upside breakout will result.

Major risk-asset volatility is expected as US macro data precedes the monthly candle close.

April BTC price performance is on track to be the best since 2020.

Bitcoin (BTC) spent another day around $95,000 on April 30 as volatility waited in the wings.

Bitcoin is showing signs of maturity as a global financial asset, with price volatility dropping to its lowest level in more than 500 days, according to new research.

Volatility refers to the degree of variation of a trading price over time, which indicates the uncertainty about the size of changes in an asset’s value.

Bitcoin (BTC) weekly volatility hit a 563-day low on April 30, said Vetle Lunde, the head of research at K33 Research.

Bitcoin’s decreasing volatility suggests BTC is maturing as a global financial asset, leading to a more stable price trajectory.

Bitcoin has become the seventh-largest asset globally by market capitalization, reaching $1.87 trillion. It now ranks above Silver, Meta and Saudi Aramco, according to Companiesmarketcap.

Stablecoin issuer Circle has partnered with Onafriq, Africa’s largest payments gateway, to reduce the high cost of cross-border payments across the continent using USDC.

According to a press release shared with Cointelegraph, Circle aims to pilot USDC (USDC) settlements within Onafriq’s vast network, which connects over 500 wallets and 200 million bank accounts in more than 40 countries.

“By integrating USDC, we aim to simplify financial transactions for institutions and individuals, reduce costs and strengthen trust,” Onafriq founder and CEO Dare Okoudjou said.

He added that the integration of USDC will simplify transactions and boost trust in digital financial services.

Currently, over 80% of intra-African transactions are routed through correspondent banks outside the continent and settled in foreign currencies like the US dollar or euro. This results in approximately $5 billion in fees annually.

Key takeaways

Set up your Pi Wallet and secure it with a 24-word seed phrase before transferring your coins.

KYC is often required on both CEXs and P2P platforms to transfer and sell Pi Coins.

You can sell Pi through CEXs or P2P platforms, each offering different security, speed and control.

Always do your own research (DYOR) before selling or holding, as expert opinions on Pi’s future vary.

If you’re here, you probably already know what Pi Coin is and just want to figure out how to sell it. However, a recap awaits, in case you need one. 

Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization and son of US President Donald Trump, has delivered a warning to global banks regarding cryptocurrency adoption.

“The modern financial system is broken, it’s slow, it’s expensive,” Trump said in a CNBC interview on April 30, adding that the existing banking system “favors the ultra-wealthy.”

“It forced me into the crypto world,” he continued, adding: “And I’m telling you, if the banks don’t watch what’s coming, they’re going to be extinct in 10 years.”

SWIFT is an “absolute disaster”

While emphasizing the need for banks to closely monitor developments in the crypto industry, Trump highlighted the benefits of cryptocurrency’s underlying blockchain technology for the financial system.

He slammed the existing cross-border transaction solutions like the global international messaging network SWIFT, which has often been criticized for its slow transactions.

The Open Network (TON) ecosystem participant Broxus has unveiled TON Factory, a new platform designed to accelerate the development and scalability of high-throughput applications like decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and blockchain-based games.

In an April 30 post on Telegram, the project said TON Factory aims to help developers rapidly build and scale projects with modular components, integration tools, and hands-on expert support.

“For OGs already building on TON, TON Factory helps you scale further,” the announcement stated.

The initiative is backed by a team of over 150 engineers with experience delivering production-ready infrastructure in the TON ecosystem, per the announcement.

Related: Venture capital firms invest $400M in TON blockchain

Key takeaways

Approving staking for spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US may have a minimal impact on inflows unless Ether sees a sustained rally, says Eric Balchunas

ETH dropped significantly in price after the launch of the ETFs last year, unlike spot Bitcoin ETFs, which saw new all-time highs just two months after launching.

For inflows to increase again, Balchunas said ETH would need a multimonth run along with a strong narrative.

Spot Ethereum ETFs being able to stake a portion of the tokens under their control may not help garner inflows without a more sustained rally in the token’s price, says Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.

PayPal says the US Securities and Exchange Commission has abandoned its investigation into the payment giant’s US-dollar stablecoin.

PayPal said in an April 29 regulatory filing that the SEC concluded its investigation into PayPal USD (PYUSD) and wouldn’t be taking any action.

The company said it received a subpoena from the SEC’s Division of Enforcement over its stablecoin in November 2023. 

“The subpoena requests the production of documents. We are cooperating with the SEC in connection with this request,” PayPal stated at the time.

In its latest filing, the firm said the SEC notified it in February that the agency “was closing this inquiry without enforcement action.”

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has filed lawsuits against the non-fungible token marketplace NFT Stars and the blockchain gaming firm Kurosemi, which operates as Delysium, accusing them of withholding tokens they owed.

The lawsuits, both filed in the Delaware bankruptcy court, alleged that NFT Stars and Delysium failed to deliver all the tokens paid for by FTX despite repeated attempts to resolve the matter.

FTX claimed in an April 28 statement that it made “numerous unanswered attempts” to engage with both firms, and it would be “contacting numerous other token and coin issuers regarding FTX assets and will be filing additional suits against non-responsive parties.”

As part of the complaint against Delysium, FTX claimed its defunct trading arm, Alameda Research, paid $1 million in January 2022 for 75 million of the gaming firm’s AGI tokens.

It claimed the original token launch was in April 2023, and Alameda Research’s share of the tokens was subject to a vesting schedule that started with 20% unlocking after 12 months.

Asset manager BlackRock has filed to create digital ledger technology shares from one of the firm’s money market funds, which will leverage blockchain technology to maintain a mirror record of share ownership for investors.

The DLT shares will track BlackRock’s BLF Treasury Trust Fund (TTTXX), which may only be purchased from BlackRock Advisors and The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), the firm said in its April 29 Form N-1A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The money market fund holds over $150 million worth of assets, invested almost entirely in US Treasury bills and cash.

BlackRock said that the shares “are expected to be purchased and held through BNY, which intends to use blockchain technology to maintain a mirror record of share ownership for its customers.”

Unlike the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), DLT shares won’t be tokenized but will instead be used as a transparency tool to verify ownership.

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control can’t restore or reimpose sanctions against the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash, a US federal court has ruled.

Austin federal court judge Robert Pitman said in an April 28 judgment that OFAC’s sanctions on Tornado Cash were unlawful and that the agency was “permanently enjoined from enforcing” sanctions.

Tornado Cash users led by Joseph Van Loon had sued the Treasury, arguing that OFAC’s addition of the platform’s smart contract addresses to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list was “not in accordance with law.” 

OFAC had sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, accusing the protocol of helping launder crypto stolen by the North Korean hacking collective, the Lazarus Group.

The agency dropped the platform from the sanctions list on March 21 and argued that the matter was “moot” after a court ruled in favor of Tornado Cash in January.

Key takeaways:

Richard Byworth says Michael Saylor’s Strategy could ramp up its Bitcoin buys by acquiring cash-rich companies and converting their cash into Bitcoin.

He says that Strategy should consider accelerating purchases as the Bitcoin supply on exchanges continues to decline.

Byworth argues that aggressively increasing Bitcoin holdings would boost Strategy’s mNAV, benefiting shareholders.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy should take a more aggressive approach to buying Bitcoin by acquiring companies to use their cash holdings to fund purchases and do away with over-the-counter buys, a crypto executive says.

Australia’s financial intelligence agency has told inactive registered crypto exchanges to withdraw their registrations or risk having them canceled over fears that the dormant firms could be used for scams.

There are currently 427 crypto exchanges registered with the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), but the agency said on April 29 that it suspects a significant number are inactive and possibly vulnerable to being bought and co-opted by criminals.

The agency is contacting any so-called digital currency exchanges (DCEs) that appear to no longer be trading, and AUSTRAC CEO Brendan Thomas said they’ll be told to “use it or lose it.”

“Businesses registered with AUSTRAC are required to keep their details up to date; this includes details about services that are no longer provided,” he added.

Businesses wanting to offer Australians conversions between cash and crypto, including crypto ATM providers, must first register with AUSTRAC, which monitors for crimes including money laundering, terror financing and tax evasion.

Scammers are mailing physical letters to the owners of Ledger crypto hardware wallets asking them to validate their private seed phrases in a bid to access the wallets to clean them out.

In an April 29 X post, tech commentator Jacob Canfield shared a scam letter sent to his home via post that appeared to be from Ledger claiming he needed to immediately perform a “critical security update” on his device. 

The letter, which uses Ledger’s logo, business address, and a reference number to feign legitimacy, asks to scan a QR code and enter the wallet’s private recovery phrase under the guise of validating the device.

The letter threatens that “failure to complete this mandatory validation process may result in restricted access to your wallet and funds.”

A seed phrase, or recovery phrase, is a string of up to 24 words that unlocks access to a crypto wallet. A scammer with the phrase can access and control the associated wallet to transfer its holdings elsewhere.