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The lingering fears triggered by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs have analysts increasingly convinced that Bitcoin is now more likely than ever to challenge the US dollar in the years ahead.

“Higher chance Bitcoin survives over the dollar in our lifetime after today,” Bitwise Invest head of alpha strategies Jeff Parks said in an April 9 X post.

Investors will be left with no other option but Bitcoin, says crypto exec

“First time the thought hit me and didn’t feel like theory but an actual truth to grapple with,” Parks added. 

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley shared a similar view, noting that with trust in the US dollar waning and other foreign currencies seen as “even weaker,” investors are left with fewer choices. 

He argued that gold, typically seen as a safe harbor amid uncertainty, also has drawbacks around shipping and storage and implied that Bitcoin may be the only option left. “You wind up buying Bitcoin,” Horsley said.

An Ether whale who had held 10,000 Ether for the last 900 days has sold their entire stash and missed out on a peak profit of $27.6 million when the cryptocurrency was worth over $4,000. 

The whale initially bought a total of 10,000 Ether (ETH) across two transactions in October and November 2022 for $13 million at the time for an average price of $1,295 per token, blockchain analytics service Lookonchain said in an April 8 X post.

“He didn’t sell when Ether broke through $4,000. But today, he exited with a $2.75 million profit. The profit at the peak was $27.6 million,” Lookonchain said.

Source: Lookonchain 

The whale sold when Ether was around $1,578, according to Lookonchain. Within the period that the whale wallet was holding its stack, Ether hit a high of $4,015 on Dec. 9, CoinGecko data shows. 

Ethereum has only outperformed Bitcoin for 15% of all trading days since its launch almost a decade ago, according to analysts.

Since Ether (ETH) began trading in mid-2015, it has underperformed against Bitcoin (BTC) 85% of the time, analyst James Check said in an April 8 X post.

Data shared by Check shows that Ether significantly outperformed Bitcoin in its early years from mid-2015 to around mid-2017, and it had two short periods in late 2019 and early 2020 when the ETH to BTC ratio was in Ether’s favor.

However, Bitcoin has outperformed Ether for the past five years.

ETH/BTC profitable days. Source: James Check

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has warned that crypto will increasingly threaten traditional financial markets’ stability as the industry grows and becomes more entwined with traditional finance players.

“We cannot rule out that future sharp drops in crypto prices could have knock-on effects on our financial system,” ESMA’s executive director Natasha Cazenave said in an April 8 statement to the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

Cazenave noted, however, that crypto currently only accounts for 1% of global financial assets and is not yet significant enough to cause major “spillover effects” into traditional financial markets.

She warned that interconnections between crypto and traditional markets are rapidly growing — particularly in the more crypto-friendly US — and called for closer monitoring.

“Crypto-assets markets evolve quickly, in an often unpredictable manner, and we need to keep a close eye on these developments,” Cazenave said, adding:

The artificial intelligence agent creation and monetization platform Virtuals Protocol has seen its daily revenue plummet to just $500 as demand for crypto AI agents continues to wane.

“Probably one of the wildest crypto charts of the cycle,” Blockworks researcher Sharples said in an April 8 X post.

Steep decline in AI agent creation

Sharples said that it has “been about a week” since a new AI agent launched on Virtuals compared to late November when the platform was helping make over 1,000 new AI agents a day, according to Dune Analytics data.

On Jan. 2, when the Virtual Protocol (VIRTUALS) token hit an all-time high of $4.61, Blockworks data shows Virtuals’ daily revenue soared above $500,000. 

However, that seemed to mark the start of a downtrend, signaling a potential top for the AI agent sector. The decline continued even after a Jan. 25 announcement that the project had expanded to Solana.

Former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal has been granted final court approval to settle a class-action lawsuit for $11 million with Astrals non-fungible token (NFT) buyers.

Florida federal court judge Federico Moreno granted approval of the settlement between O’Neal and the class group led by Daniel Harper in an April 1 order made available on April 8.

The deal created a fund of up to $11 million for eligible class members and awarded $2.9 million in attorney fees and costs. All those who purchased Astrals NFTs from May 2022 to Jan. 15 and those who purchased the project’s native GLXY tokens up until mid-January are eligible. 

“The fee sought by lead class counsel has been reviewed and approved as fair and reasonable by plaintiffs,” Moreno’s order read.

O’Neal was hit with the lawsuit in May 2023 over his founding and promotion of the Solana-based Astrals NFT project, which the suit claimed was an “offer and sale of unregistered securities.”

The team behind US first lady Melania Trump’s memecoin, Melania Meme (MELANIA), has moved $30 million worth of the token out of the project’s community funds and has begun selling them, says blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps.

Bubblemaps said in an April 7 X post that 50 million MELANIA tokens worth around $30 million “was moved from community funds — and is now being quietly sold, with no explanation from the team.”

It added the tokens were moved to a single wallet before being “split across multiple addresses.” From there, Bubblemaps said $3 million worth were transferred to exchanges, two new $6 million positions were opened, and $500,000 worth of MELANIA was sold.

Source: Bubblemaps

“No one from the MELANIA team has addressed this. Not the movements. Not the selling,” it added.

Malicious actors are attempting to steal crypto with malware embedded in fake Microsoft Office extensions uploaded to the software hosting site SourceForge, according to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

One of the malicious listings, called “officepackage,” has real Microsoft Office add-ins but hides a malware called ClipBanker that replaces a copied crypto wallet address on a computer's clipboard with the attacker's address, Kaspersky’s Anti-Malware Research Team said in an April 8 report.

“Users of crypto wallets typically copy addresses instead of typing them. If the device is infected with ClipBanker, the victim’s money will end up somewhere entirely unexpected,” the team said.

The fake project’s page on SourceForge mimics a legitimate developer tool page, showing the office add-ins and download buttons and can also appear in search results.

Kaspersky said it found a crypto-stealing malware on the software hosting website SourceForge. Source: Kaspersky

The Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs could collapse US demand for Bitcoin mining rigs, which would benefit mining operations outside the country as manufacturers will look outside the US to sell their surplus inventory for cheaper, says Hashlabs Mining CEO Jaran Mellerud.

“As machine prices rise in the U.S., they could paradoxically decrease in the rest of the world,” Mellerud said in an April 8 report. “The demand for shipping machines to the U.S. is set to plummet, likely nearing zero.”

“Manufacturers will be left with excess stock originally intended for the US market. To offload this surplus, they’ll likely need to lower prices to attract buyers in other regions,” he added.

Falling mining rig prices could see non-US mining operations scale up and take a larger slice of Bitcoin’s total hashrate, Mellerud said.

Source: Jaran Mellerud

RedStone, a blockchain oracle provider, has introduced a push-based oracle on MegaETH to tackle latency issues that challenge the efficiency of onchain trading.

According to a spokesperson for RedStone, the new oracle can push new prices onchain every 2.4 milliseconds. Initially debuting on MegaETH, an Ethereum layer-2 network, the product may be rolled out to additional chains in the future.

RedStone said its oracle sources prices from centralized exchanges and delivers them directly to applications or smart contracts via nodes that operate natively on the MegaETH chain.

This “co-location” strategy minimizes latency by eliminating delays typically caused by the physical distance between servers. In the future, RedStone also plans to include price feeds from decentralized exchanges.

Oracles compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) are becoming more popular. According to Alchemy, there are currently 12 decentralized oracle networks operating on Ethereum.

Crypto and equities traders were hopeful for a last-minute solution that would prevent the US from enacting 104% tariffs on Chinese goods entering the United States, but in a press conference, the White House confirmed that the tariffs would start on April 9. Markets deteriorated when Peter Navarro, trade adviser to US President Donald Trump, stated that tariffs were “not a negotiation.”

As a result, the S&P 500 index closed on April 8 with a 1.6% loss, reversing earlier gains of 4%. This downturn has left traders wondering whether Bitcoin (BTC) can regain its bullish momentum amid worsening macroeconomic conditions.

Spiraling US debt issues remain, paving the way for Bitcoin gains

Between April 2 and April 7, the S&P 500 index dropped by 14.7%, causing panic among Bitcoin holders and forcing a retest of the $75,000 level—the lowest in more than five months.

S&P 500 futures (left) vs. Bitcoin/USD (right). Source: TradingView / Cointelegraph

During an appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 7, President Trump reportedly said his goal was to "reset the table" on trade. He added that “there can be permanent tariffs, and there could also be negotiations because there are things that we need beyond tariffs.” Amid this uncertainty, IPOs and mergers have been delayed, while leveraged loan deals and bond sales were sidelined, according to Yahoo Finance.

Cboe BZX Exchange has asked United States regulators for clearance to list an exchange-traded fund (ETF) backed by Sui (SUI), the native token of the Sui Network, public filings show. 

The request submitted on April 8 must be reviewed and approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before the exchange can list any shares of the fund.

If approved, the ETF — issued by asset manager Canary Capital — would be the first in the country to hold SUI. The token has a market capitalization of roughly $6.5 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Sui is a blockchain network designed to provide users with a more streamlined onboarding experience — similar to traditional Web3 applications. It is built using Move, a smart contract framework based on the Rust programming language. Sui has approximately $1.1 billion in total value locked (TVL), according to DefiLlama.

Sui Network has roughly $1.1 billion in TVL. Source: DeFiLlama

Bitcoin (BTC) has a new $70,000 reversal target as a leading indicator sets new bull market lows.

In X analysis on April 7, popular trader and analyst Rekt Capital predicted that BTC/USD could find its floor near old all-time highs from 2021.

History suggests $70,000 should end BTC price dip

Bitcoin can dip as low as $70,000 before recovering and still keep within historical norms, Rekt Capital says.

Considering where the current bull market correction might end up, the analyst used the relative strength index (RSI) indicator to calculate the potential BTC price downside.

“Whenever Bitcoin's Daily RSI crashed into the sub-28 RSI levels - that wouldn't necessarily mark out the price bottom. In fact, historically, the actual price bottom would be -0.32% to -8.44% lower than the price when the RSI first bottomed,” he explained.

With US President Donald Trump imposing 104% tariffs on Chinese imports, Beijing is responding by letting the yuan weaken against the dollar — a move that analysts say could spark the next leg of the Bitcoin bull market.

On April 8, the yuan-to-US dollar exchange rate fell to its lowest level since 2023, signaling the Chinese central bank’s readiness to let its currency fluctuate more freely. 

The US dollar-to-yuan exchange rate on April 8. Source: Bloomberg

With the trade war ratcheting up, “expectation for China to eventually devalue the currency has jumped and the pressure won't go away easily,” Ju Wang, head of Greater China FX at BNP Paribas, told Reuters.

The yuan’s devaluation could drive the narrative of Chinese capital flight into hard assets, which includes Bitcoin (BTC), according to BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes. 

Aavegotchi, a non-fungible token (NFT) protocol focused on Web3 gaming, has opted to abandon blockchain network Polygon and “go all-in” on Base, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling chain, according to the results of an onchain vote. 

On April 8, Aavegotchi’s community members voted 93.5% in favor of a proposal to “Make Aavegotchi Based Again” by deprecating the protocol’s smart contracts on Polygon and re-deploying on Base, according to Aavegochti’s governance page. 

“Given our close relationship with the Base team, as well as recent developments in the Base ecosystem […] we believe the most +EV move for Aavegotchi (for this cycle, at least) is to sunset [its Polygon deployment] and go all-in on Base,” Aavegotchi founder Dan said in a February X post proposing the shift.

The migration reflects Aavegotchi’s efforts to adapt to 2025’s cryptocurrency market downturn, which was worsened last week by President Donald Trump’s plan to impose sweeping tariffs on most US imports. 

Aavegotchi’s developer, Pixelcraft Studios, has “recently made significant team cuts to reduce our burn and extend runway,” Dan said. Memecoins and NFTs have been among Web3’s hardest-hit segments so far this year.

Ether (ETH), the native token of Ethereum, is showing signs of bullish exhaustion after a steep 65% decline over the past three months. The pace of the downtrend and the oversold conditions shown by various ETH price metrics have investors wondering if a market bottom is approaching.

ETH fractals point to a drop to $1,000

Ether’s current price action mirrors a familiar fractal pattern seen in 2018 and 2022. In both instances, ETH price saw euphoric rallies that ended with sharp breakdowns and prolonged bear markets.

Each of these cycles shared the following key traits:

Higher price highs were accompanied by lower highs in the relative strength index, which is a classic sign of bearish divergence and weakening momentum.

ETH/USD weekly price chart. Source: TradingView

Asset manager BlackRock is partnering with Anchorage Digital for crypto custody services, a move aimed at addressing the rising demand for digital assets from retail and institutional investors.

According to an April 8 announcement, BlackRock is the world’s largest investment firm, with $11.6 trillion in assets under management. The company ranks among the largest providers of crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs), with holdings totaling $45.3 billion in Bitcoin (BTC) and $1.7 billion in Ether (ETH), according to data from Arkham.

BlackRock’s crypto holdings. Source: Arkham Intelligence

Anchorage is the only federally chartered crypto bank in the United States. Along with custody services, it will provide BlackRock access to digital assets staking and settlement. Anchorage currently supports BlackRock’s BUIDL fund — a $2 billion tokenized fund backed by US Treasurys and focused on real-world assets.

BlackRock relies on Coinbase for custody of the Bitcoin held in its iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price has dropped 5.6% over the past seven days, closing three daily candles below the $80,000 support for the first time since Nov. 9, 2024.

Data from Glassnode highlighted Bitcoin witnessing a 64% rise in futures volume during the same period. The analytics platform said that “this marks a reversal from the past month,” when futures volume progressively decreased.

A rise in futures volumes suggested heightened market activity, but further analysis of the broader futures market revealed a more complex outlook. Bitcoin’s open interest (OI), representing the total value of outstanding futures contracts, declined 19% over the past two weeks.

Bitcoin futures volume chart by Glassnode. Source: X.com

This reduction suggests that while trading volume is increasing, some traders are closing their positions rather than keeping them open, possibly to lock in profits or mitigate risk with respect to Bitcoin’s bearish market structure.

Bitcoin’s surprise rebound to $81,180 — which was influenced by fake news regarding a pause on US tariffs — has all but evaporated following White House confirmation that 104% tariffs on China will start on April 9.

S&P 500 drops intra-day gains follow White House tariff confirmation. Source: X / Kobeissi Letter

After dropping below the $75,000 level for the first time since Nov. 6, 2024, BTC retested a key demand zone that traders hope will provide a safe haven for the bulls.

The safe haven is a fair value gap located between $77,000 and $73,400, and this zone was created during the November 2024 Trump pump.

BTC/USD daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Binance is planning to delist 14 tokens from its platform on April 16 in a move designed to purge low-quality projects that do not adhere to the crypto exchange’s tighter listing requirements. 

The tokens are being delisted following a “comprehensive evaluation of multiple factors,” including the exchange’s first “vote to delist” results, where community members nominated projects with less than stellar metrics, Binance announced on April 8.

Other factors included the team’s commitment to the project, development activity, trading volume and liquidity, network stability, responsiveness to Binance’s due diligence requests and new regulatory requirements. 

The tokens selected for delisting are Badger (BADGER), Balancer (BAL), Beta Finance (BETA), Cream Finance (CREAM), Cortex (CTXF), Aaelf (ELF), Firo (FIRO), Kava Lend (HARD), NULS (NULS), Prosper (PROS), Status (SNT), TROY (TROY), UniLend (UFT) and VIDT DAO (VIDT).

Source: Binance

Bitcoin (BTC) danced around $80,000 at the April 8 Wall Street open as US stock markets staged a fresh recovery, but unresolved tensions between China and the US continue to put a damper on BTC’s upside.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Hayes: Bitcoin can repeat historic China inflows

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC price volatility cooling while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index gained up to 4.3% in the first few hours of trading.

Stocks built on a strong rebound that had accompanied the start of the week’s TradFi trading, alleviating fears of a 1987 “Black Monday” style crash. 

US trade tariffs nonetheless stayed top of the agenda for traders, who in particular eyed the ongoing war of words with China.

Ripple’s $1.25 billion acquisition of prime broker Hidden Road is a “defining moment” for the blockchain payments company, potentially unlocking more use cases for the XRP Ledger among institutions, said David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer. 

“Ripple’s acquisition of Hidden Road is a defining moment for the XRP Ledger and XRP,” Schwartz said on social media on April 8. 

Hidden Road is a prime brokerage and credit network with more than 300 institutional customers. On a typical day, it clears more than $10 billion and processes more than 50 million transactions across traditional rails. 

“Now imagine even a portion of that activity on the XRP Ledger — and that’s exactly what Hidden Road plans on doing — not to mention future use of collateral and real-world assets tokenized on the XRPL,” said Schwartz. 

Source: Ripple

Opinion by: Jay Jog, co-founder of Sei Labs 

When CryptoKitties crashed the Ethereum network in 2017, the industry learned a hard lesson about blockchain scalability. Today, with over $100 billion locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) and millions of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) being traded, that lesson is more relevant than ever. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) — the engine that powers this activity — is reaching its limits.

So far, the crypto community’s answer has been layer 2 solutions — separate chains that process transactions and report back to Ethereum. But what if the community’s been looking for answers in the wrong place?

Layer 2s are not the solution

Layer 2 blockchains have long been touted as the solution to the EVM’s performance challenges, given their ability to offload the computational work from Ethereum to a secondary chain. Layer-2 solutions have proven to be nothing more than a “quick fix” instead of a permanent solution, as many hoped for. As Gemini reported, a new layer 2 appeared every 19 days in 2024, indicating that the competitive landscape is creating more problems instead of solving them.

Layer 2 solutions come with their own challenges, primarily tied to centralization and interoperability. Many of today’s layer 2 blockchains run with centralized sequencers that could expose the network to transaction censorship, transaction reordering and more. Additionally, Vitalik Buterin stated in a recent blog post that layer 2s are struggling to maintain interoperability. This called attention to the disorganized state of layer 2s, further contributing to liquidity fragmentation and a complex user experience. 

Despite the ongoing market meltdown on US trade tariffs, executives at major cryptocurrency firms Messari and Sygnum are bullish on institutional Bitcoin adoption later in 2025.

Speaking on a panel at Paris Blockchain Week on April 8, Messari CEO Eric Turner and Sygnum Bank co-founder Thomas Eichenberger said they expect a significant shift in the banking sector’s involvement with crypto in the second half of the year.

According to the executives, the global banking push into Bitcoin (BTC) services has great potential to happen in the second half of 2025 as regulators embrace crypto, including stablecoins and crypto services by banks.

“I think we’re probably looking at a muted Q2, but I’m really excited for Q3 and Q4,” Messari’s Turner said during the panel discussion moderated by Cointelegraph CEO Yana Prikhodchenko, forecasting “really interesting” things coming to the crypto market in 2025.

Crypto adoption is not just about Trump

While some investors focus on the pro-crypto stance of US President Donald Trump, Turner emphasized that broader regulatory momentum is what matters most.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) has announced the launch of a new Bitcoin futures derivative product.

According to an April 7 announcement, Cboe plans to launch the FTSE Bitcoin Index futures on April 28, which is based on the VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF (XBTF), if approved by regulators.

The new product will be cash-settled, and like XBTF, it will represent one-tenth of the value of the FTSE Bitcoin Index. The futures will settle on the last business day of each month.

This is the first product that was launched as a result of Cboe’s collaboration with the London Stock Exchange Group’s index subsidiary, FTSE Russell. The new Bitcoin derivative product is reportedly meant to complement its recently launched Bitcoin options offerings Bitcoin US ETF Index Options (CBTX) and Bitcoin US ETF Index Options (MBTX). Catherine Clay, global head of derivatives at Cboe, said:

“This launch comes at a pivotal time as demand for crypto exposure continues to grow and market participants are increasingly seeking more capital-efficient and versatile ways to gain and manage that exposure.”

Related: Largest ever CME gap has just printed in Bitcoin futures

Dubai’s real estate and crypto regulatory authorities have signed a new agreement aimed at expanding digital asset adoption in the real estate sector.

On April 6, the Dubai Land Department (DLD) announced an agreement with the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). According to the announcement, the agreement will link Dubai’s real estate registry with property tokenization through a governance system. 

The agreement aims to improve digital infrastructure and attract global investment by enhancing market liquidity and property management efficiency.

It also aims to support Dubai’s broader economic strategy, which includes a goal of doubling the city’s gross domestic product over the next decade.

Related: Mantra and Damac sign $1B deal to tokenize Middle Eastern assets

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are often praised for offering around-the-clock trading access, but that constant availability may have contributed to a steep sell-off over the weekend following the latest US trade tariff announcement.

Unlike stocks and traditional financial instruments, Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies enable payments and trading opportunities 24/7 thanks to the accessibility of blockchain technology.

After a record-breaking $5 trillion was wiped from the S&P 500 over two days — the worst such drop on record — Bitcoin remained above the $82,000 support level. But by Sunday, the asset had plummeted to under $75,000.

Sunday’s correction may have occurred to due Bitcoin being the only large tradable asset over the weekend, according to Lucas Outumuro, head of research at crypto intelligence platform IntoTheBlock. 

“There was a bit of optimism last week that Bitcoin might be uncorrelating and fairing better than traditional stocks, but the [correction] did accelerate over the weekend,” Outumuro said during Cointelegraph’s Chainreaction live show on X, adding:

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly disbanding the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET).

NCET’s disbandment was noted in a four-page memo by United States Deputy General Todd Blanche, according to a Fortune journalist who claims to have seen the document in an April 8 report. The official is quoted saying in the note:

“The Department of Justice is not a digital assets regulator. However, the prior Administration used the Justice Department to pursue a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution.”

Blanche is the second-highest-ranking official in the DOJ and served as US President Donald Trump’s defense attorney in high-profile cases, including the New York hush money case and federal cases related to classified documents and the 2020 election.

Related: Trump tariff negotiations are ‘all about’ China deal — Raoul Pal

What is the NCET?

The NCET’s launch was established in October 2021 under President Joe Biden. At the time, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said that the unit was aimed at going after platforms “that help criminals launder or hide their criminal proceeds.” She said:

Blockchain-based payments network Ripple announced it has acquired crypto-friendly prime broker Hidden Road in one of the largest mergers in the cryptocurrency industry to date.

Ripple is acquiring Hidden Road in a $1.25 billion deal, the company officially announced on April 8.

The deal will make Ripple the first crypto firm to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker. According to the company’s April 8 announcement, the acquisition is expected to position Ripple as the world’s largest non-bank prime broker, with Hidden Road currently clearing more than $3 trillion across more than 300 institutions.

The acquisition also aims to reinforce the position of Ripple USD (RLUSD), an institution-focused stablecoin launched by Ripple in December 2024.

Ripple has been a Hidden Road customer for years

Ripple has been a customer of Hidden Road for years and “knows their breadth of expertise firsthand,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in an X post on April 8.