Decentral Block Post

Escalating trade wars are rattling cryptocurrency markets — but they are also creating new use cases for blockchain networks, Truebit executives told Cointelegraph. 

On April 2, President Donald Trump announced plans to charge sweeping tariffs on US imports, prompting other nations to threaten retaliatory measures. Trump later paused the tariff rollout for certain countries — but the possibility of a global trade war still looms, especially after Trump reiterated his commitment to taxing Chinese goods.

If high tariffs materialize, blockchain technology can play an important role in ensuring governments apply them fairly, according to the executives. Blockchain can “really help you prove provenance [...] proving the chain of custody,” Federico Kattan, Truebit’s chief technology officer, told Cointelegraph. 

Trump’s proposed tariffs would transform global trade. Source: Statista

For example, a company might “assemble or do some packaging in a low-tariff country and then import into the US at 10% instead of 58%... [but] blockchain can help establish where the product actually came from,” Kattan said.

South Korea is expanding a ban on digital asset firms’ applications servicing its citizens. On April 11, the country’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) announced that 14 crypto exchanges were blocked on the Apple store. Among the affected exchanges are KuCoin and MEXC.

The report, which was made public on April 14, says the banned exchanges were allegedly operating as unregistered overseas virtual asset operators. The report also states that the Financial Information Analysis Institution (FIU) will continue to promote the blocking of the apps and internet sites of such operators to prevent money laundering and user damage.

The request to block applications on the Apple Store comes after Google Play blocked access to several unregistered exchanges on March 26. KuCoin and MEXC were also targeted during the blocking of the Google Play apps. The FSC published a list of 22 unregistered platforms operating in the country, with 17 of them already blocked on Google's marketplace.

The 17 crypto exchanges blocked on Google Play. Source: FSC

According to the FSC report, users will not be able to download the apps on the Apple Store, while existing users will not be able to update the apps. The FSC notes that “unreported business activities are criminal punishment matters” with penalties of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 50 million won ($35,200).

Bitcoin (BTC) reclaimed the $84,500 level on April 14, and the recovery appears partially fueled by the announcement of partial import tariff relief by US President Donald Trump. However, traders’ optimism faded on April 13 when it became apparent that the relaxation was temporary and that tariffs on the electronics supply chain could be revisited.

Uncertainty surrounding the ongoing trade tensions between the US and China impacted Bitcoin markets, causing traders to lose some of their regained confidence. This explains why Bitcoin’s price failed to break above $86,000 and why BTC derivatives showed limited short-term potential, potentially setting the tone for the next few days.

Bitcoin 2-month futures annualized premium. Source: Laevitas.ch

The premium on Bitcoin monthly futures contracts peaked at 6.5% on April 11 but has since dropped to 5%, which is near a neutral to bearish threshold. Sellers typically require a 5% to 10% annualized premium for longer settlement periods, so anything below this range indicates reduced interest from leveraged buyers.

Bitcoin sentiment dims as stock market ties dent bullish momentum

Traders’ brief excitement can be linked to President Trump’s April 13 announcement that tariffs on imported semiconductors would be reviewed during the week. This suggests that exemptions for smartphones and computers are not final, according to Yahoo Finance. Trump reportedly said: “We want to make our chips and semiconductors and other things in our country.”

Update (April 14 at 9:12 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a comment from the Ontario Securities Commission.

Spot Solana exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are set to launch in Canada on April 16, according to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas. 

In an X post on April 14, the analyst shared a private client note from TD Bank, a Canadian financial institution, claiming the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) greenlighted asset managers Purpose, Evolve, CI and 3iQ to issue ETFs holding Solana (SOL).

Canada does not have a federal securities agency, with its territories and provinces applying their own securities laws. Toronto’s securities exchange is regulated by Ontario’s OSC.

The ETFs are permitted to stake a portion of the SOL holdings for added yield, Balchunas said, adding that the upcoming listings are “our first look at the alt coin race.” 

Update (April 14 at 10:37 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include Anchorage's response.

The US Department of Homeland Security's El Dorado Task Force has reportedly launched an investigation into Anchorage Digital Bank, a Wall Street-backed cryptocurrency firm. 

According to an April 14 Barron's report, members of the task force have contacted former employees of the company over the past weeks to examine its practices and policies. The report cites unidentified sources. 

The reported Homeland task force probe hints at cross-national financial activities. Established in 1992, the El Dorado Task Force focuses on “transnational money laundering” activities and financial crimes carried out by organizations. 

Anchorage is co-founded by Portuguese-American entrepreneur Diogo Mónica and Nathan McCauley, according to its website. Along with its US businesses, Anchorage has operations in Singapore and Portugal. Its investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs and Visa, among others. 

The US Treasury has injected $500 billion into financial markets since February by drawing liquidity from its Treasury General Account (TGA), funding government operations after a $36 trillion debt ceiling was hit on Jan. 2, 2025.

Macroeconomic financial analyst Tomas said that this liquidity surge boosted the net Federal Reserve liquidity to $6.3 trillion, and it may support Bitcoin’s (BTC) price in the future, even though risk assets have reflected minimal growth so far.

US Treasury General Account’s expected liquidity flow. Source: X.com

The TGA represents the government’s checking account at the Federal Reserve, holding capital for daily operations like paying bills or collecting taxes. A decrease in TGA capital means the balance has been deployed into the broader economy, boosting available cash in the markets.

Tomas explained that The TGA drawdown commenced on Feb. 12, following the exhaustion of "extraordinary measures" after the debt ceiling was reached. The TGA balance has dropped from $842 to roughly $342 billion, releasing liquidity into the system, and the targeted liquidity is expected to rise up to $600 billion by the end of April.

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls are trying to start the week on a positive note by pushing the price above $85,000. Michael Saylor’s Strategy has used the recent dip to buy 3,459 Bitcoin for $285.5 million at an average price of $82,618. That boosts the total holding of the firm to 531,644 Bitcoin purchased at an average price of $67,556.

However, not everyone is bullish in the near term. Several institutional investors seem to have trimmed their holdings. CoinShares reported on April 14 that digital asset exchange-traded products (ETPs) witnessed $795 million in outflows last week. The $7.2 billion in outflows since February have reversed nearly all year-to-date inflows, now at just $165 million.

Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360

Although Bitcoin seems to have bottomed out in the short term, a roaring bull market rally is unlikely to start in a hurry. The tariff headlines and the outcome of the tariff talks between the United States and other countries could dictate the price action.

Could Bitcoin build upon the recovery, pulling altcoins higher? Let’s analyze the charts to find out.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has delayed a decision on whether to approve Ether staking in two Grayscale funds.

The decision on Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETF and Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust ETF has been postponed until June 1, according to an April 14 announcement from the SEC. The deadline for a decision is the end of October.

On Feb. 14, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) filed a proposed rule change on behalf of Grayscale that would permit investors in the company’s Ether (ETH) ETFs to stake their holdings.

Staking is the process of locking up cryptocurrency in a wallet to support the operations and security of a blockchain network, offering stakers rewards in return. The feature is considered a potentially integral part of Ether ETFs, as it could generate yield to investors, increasing the attractiveness of the funds.

SEC’s announcement of the delay. Source: SEC

The 2-year and 10-year US Treasury yields dipped on Monday, April 14, after Bitcoin (BTC) closed its best weekly performance since the second week of January. Bitcoin gained 6.79% over the past week, but are enough factors aligned to support continued price upside?

The 10-year treasury yield declined by 8.2 basis points to 4.40% during the New York trading session, while the 2-year treasury saw an 8 basis point slip to 3.88%. The drop in yields occurred on the back of possible tariff exemptions on smartphones, computers, and semiconductors, which were introduced to give US companies time to move production domestically. However, US President Donald Trump emphasized these exemptions were temporary in nature.

US 10-year treasury bond yields chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The tariff exemptions announced on April 12 came at the end of a bullish week for Bitcoin. After forming new yearly lows at $74,500, BTC price jumped 15% to $86,100 between April 9-13.

Easing US treasury yields could be a double-edged sword for Bitcoin. Lower yields reduce the appeal for fixed-income assets, improving capital injection into risk-on assets like BTC. Still, the uncertainty of “temporary exemptions” and the ongoing trade war with China keeps Bitcoin susceptible to further price volatility.

Mantra CEO John Mullin addressed key concerns from the community following the sharp decline in the OM token during an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session hosted by Cointelegraph on April 14.

Mullin reassured users that Mantra and its partners are actively working to support the recovery of the Mantra (OM) token, though he noted that details around token buybacks and potential burns are still being developed.

“We’re still in the early stages of putting together this plan for potential buyback of tokens,” the CEO said, adding that the OM token recovery is Mantra’s “preeminent and primary concern right now.”

At the time of writing, OM traded at $0.73, slightly higher than its post-collapse low of $0.52 recorded on April 13 at around 7:30 pm UTC, according to data from CoinGecko.

“Baseless allegations”

In addition to denying reports claiming that key Mantra investors dumped the OM token pre-crash, the Mantra CEO also denied allegations that the Mantra team controls 90% of the token’s supply.

Opinion by: Leroy Hofer, co-founder and CEO at Teneo Protocol

As the old wisdom goes, nobody knows you’re a dog on the internet. Often enough, nobody knows if you’re a bot either, to the point where the dead internet theory sometimes feels disturbingly tangible. 

Bot traffic share hit its highest level in 2024, up 2% on the year before, according to the 2024 Imperva Bad Bot Report. The bot pandemic is ravaging the Web. People are taking notice — people like Chanpeng Zhao, for example, who recently urged Elon Musk to ban bots on X. He’s not the only one in the Web3 community to call for such measures, and rightly so. 

From artificially inflating engagement metrics to orchestrating scams, bots are quickly drowning out real human interactions — and it’s at a time when our lives drift more and more into the online world. 

While platform owners continue to roll out AI-driven moderation and paywalls to curb bot activity, these solutions fail to address the root problem. Moderation tools also regularly operate with minimal transparency — incorrectly flagging legitimate content without users knowing why.

Crypto exchange Bybit has denied claims that it charges $1.4 million to list a token on its platform, following allegations made by a social media user with over 100,000 followers.

On April 14, X user “silverfang88” accused the exchange of demanding millions from projects in listing fees. The user also alleged that Bybit used key opinion leaders (KOLs) to silence students who were given trial contracts through the platform’s Campus Ambassador program.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou denied the allegations, asking the social media user to provide evidence backing the claims. Zhou added that the crypto space has been chaotic because of rumors posted without evidence. 

Source: Ben Zhou

Bybit denies $1.4-million listing fee accusation

In a statement sent to Cointelegraph, a Bybit representative clarified the requirements for listing on the crypto exchange. 

Solana’s SOL has rallied more than 20% against Ether (ETH) over the last seven days, and a trader is eyeing a potential breakout to $300, which would mark new all-time highs.

SOL/ETH ratio hits highest weekly close

The SOL/ETH ratio, which reflects the value of Solana in Ether, rose to 0.080 on April 13, marking the highest weekly close ever, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and Binance.

The SOL/ETH trading pair has been forming higher highs on the daily chart since April 4, suggesting an uptrend is underway.

SOL/ETH daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The SOL/ETH pair gains follow a bullish week for Solana, which has increased by 35% over the last seven days, against a 13% increase in ETH price over the same timeframe.

The market cap of Circle’s Euro Coin (EURC), a euro-pegged stablecoin, is growing quickly as the ongoing trade war pushes the US dollar price lower.

“In recent weeks, interest in the euro has grown tremendously” and “this interest has not escaped the Circle EURC stablecoin,” Obchakevich Research founder Alex Obchakevich wrote in a recent X post.

The euro has risen by 2.2%, reaching its highest price since February 2022 at its current price of $1.13.

Obchakevich said that amid this happening, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Aave saw €2.3 million of Euro Coin inflows in April alone. He further highlighted that EURC’s capitalization is growing at a rapid pace.

Source: Obchakevich’s

Kraken is expanding beyond cryptocurrencies by offering US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in a move aimed at appealing to more traditional investors.

Kraken, the world’s 13th largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange by volume, announced the launch of 11,000 US-listed stocks and ETFs with commission-free trading in an effort to bring “equities and digital assets together” under one trading platform.

As of April 14, US-based users in New Jersey, Connecticut, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Idaho, Iowa, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Alabama and the District of Columbia can access these stocks and ETFs within their Kraken account, the company announced.

Kraken expands to stocks and ETFs. Source: Kraken

The exchange plans to continue expanding access to clients in other US states, marking the first part of a “phased national rollout.”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said privacy should be a top priority for developers, warning that assumptions about transparency and good intentions in global politics are overly optimistic.

In an April 14 blog post, Buterin argued that privacy is essential to maintain individual freedom and protect against the growing power of governments and corporations. He criticized the idea that increased transparency is inherently beneficial, saying it relies on assumptions about human nature that are no longer valid.

“These assumptions include believing that global political leadership is generally well-intentioned and sane, and that social culture continues to progress in a positive direction,” Buterin wrote. “Both are proving to be increasingly untrue.”

Buterin claimed there was “no single major country for which the first assumption is broadly agreed to be true.” Furthermore, he wrote that cultural tolerance is “rapidly regressing,” which is reportedly demonstrable by an X post search for “bullying is good.”

Buterin’s personal privacy issues

Buterin said that he found his lack of privacy unsettling at times. He added:

The crypto lending market’s size remains significantly down from its $64 billion high, but decentralized finance (DeFi) borrowing has made a more than 900% recovery from bear market lows.

Crypto lending enables borrowers to use their crypto holdings as collateral to obtain a crypto or fiat loan, while lenders can loan their holdings to generate interest.

The crypto lending market is down over 43%, from its all-time high of $64.4 billion in 2021 to $36.5 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, according to a Galaxy Digital research report published on April 14.

“The decline can be attributed to the decimation of lenders on the supply side and funds, individuals, and corporate entities on the demand side,” according to Zack Pokorny, research associate at Galaxy Digital.

Crypto lending key events. Source: Galaxy Research

Michael Saylor’s digital asset firm, Strategy, purchased 3,459 Bitcoin for $285.5 million, signaling continued confidence in Bitcoin even as global markets face trade-related headwinds.

Strategy acquired the 3,459 Bitcoin (BTC) for $285.5 million at an average price of $82,618 per BTC. The purchase brings Strategy’s total Bitcoin holdings to 531,644 BTC, acquired for a cumulative $35.92 billion at an average price of $67,556 per coin, achieving an over 11.4% yield since the beginning of 2025, Saylor wrote in an April 14 X post.

Source: Michael Saylor

The $285 million purchase marks Strategy’s first Bitcoin investment since March 31, when the company acquired $1.9 billion worth of Bitcoin, Cointelegraph reported.

According to data from Saylortracker, the firm is currently sitting on more than $9.1 billion in unrealized profit, representing a 25% gain on its total Bitcoin position as of 12:20 pm UTC.

Crypto exchange Bybit has partnered with lending protocol Avalon to offer Bitcoin yield to its users.

According to an April 14 Avalon Labs X announcement, the centralized decentralized finance (CeDeFi) protocol will now be a part of the exchange’s yield product, Bybit Earn. Avalon said it will allow the platform’s users to earn yield from Bitcoin (BTC) by arbitrating on its fixed-rate institutional borrowing layer.

Source: Avalon Labs

Avalon Labs announced in March that it raised a minimum of $2 billion worth of credit with possible scaling as the need arises. The product allows institutional borrowers to access USDt (USDT) liquidity without liquidating their Bitcoin holdings at a fixed 8% borrowing cost.

In February, Avalon Labs also announced it was considering issuing a Bitcoin-backed debt-focused public fund. Venus Li, co-founder of Avalon Labs, said at the time that the fund could be issued by leveraging a Regulation A US securities exception:

Digital asset exchange-traded products (ETPs) saw almost $800 million in outflows last week, marking their third consecutive week, according to a report from crypto asset manager CoinShares. 

On April 14, CoinShares reported that crypto ETPs saw $795 million in outflows last week, with Bitcoin (BTC)-based products accounting for $751 million, while Ether (ETH) products followed with $37.6 million. 

While the major tokens saw increased outflows, some altcoins went against the flow, seeing small gains. These included XRP, Ondo Finance, Algorand and Avalanche. 

According to CoinShares, the total outflows of crypto ETPs since February have reached $7.2 billion, nearly wiping out the year-to-date (YTD) inflows from the investment products. 

Tariff activity weighs in on crypto ETPs

CoinShares head of research James Butterfill attributed the outflows to the recent tariff-related activities initiated by United States President Donald Trump. 

Key takeaways

Stablecoin attestation reports provide third-party verification that each token is backed by real-world assets like cash and US Treasurys.

Attestation ≠ audit: Attestations are point-in-time checks, not deep financial audits, so users should still perform broader due diligence.

Not all tokens are redeemable. Time-locked, test or frozen tokens are excluded from reserve calculations to reflect only actively circulating coins.

USDC sets an industry benchmark with regular third-party attestations, transparent reserve reporting and compliance with MiCA regulations.

Stablecoins play a crucial role in the digital asset ecosystem, bridging traditional fiat currencies and the decentralized world of cryptocurrencies. 

Update (April 14, 1:15 pm UTC): This article has been updated to add comments by Mantra CEO John Mullin from an AMA event hosted by Cointelegraph.

Mantra CEO John Mullin denied reports suggesting large-scale token transfers by major Mantra investors in the days leading up to the sharp collapse of the OM token, while speaking in an AMA hosted by Cointelegraph on April 14.

“The Mantra association, our key investors, our advisers — no one has sold, and we are going to categorically deny and also provide verifiable proof onchain proof that this is the case,” Mullin stated in the AMA.

Previous reports suggested that Laser Digital, a strategic Mantra investor, cashed out large portions of Mantra (OM) tokens before the cryptocurrency collapsed on April 13.

At least two wallets linked to Laser Digital were among 17 wallets that moved a combined 43.6 million OM tokens — worth about $227 million at the time — to exchanges before the crash, the blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain reported on April 13, citing Arkham Intelligence data.

Google will begin enforcing stricter advertising policies for cryptocurrency services in Europe under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework, the company said in a recent policy update.

The move could be a “double-edged sword” for regulation that may prevent initial coin offering (ICO) frauds, but risks further enforcement gaps, according to legal advisers.

Starting April 23, cryptocurrency exchanges and crypto wallet advertising in Europe must be licensed under Europe’s MiCA framework or under the Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) regulation.

Crypto advertisers on Google will also have to comply with “local legal requirements,” including “national-level restrictions or requirements beyond MiCA” and be “certified by Google,” according to a March 24 Google policy announcement.

The new advertising policy will apply to most European countries, including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

Policy violations “won’t lead to immediate account suspensions,” as a warning will be issued at least seven days before any account suspensions, added Google’s policy update.

Mantra’s OM (OM) token staged a sharp rebound after plunging 90% over the weekend, following an active response from the project’s team addressing allegations of a rug pull scam.

OM bounces 200% as co-founder addresses concerns

As of April 14, OM was trading for as high as $1.10, almost 200% higher than its post-crash low of $0.37 a day prior.

OM/USDT daily price chart. Source: TradingView

The rebound came after Mantra addressed rug-pull allegations.

Co-founder JP Mullin reassured the community that the project remains active, pointing to the official Telegram group being “still online.”

Bitcoin (BTC) is holding down the fort as the US trade war rages on into the third week of April.

BTC price action attempts to overcome a long-term resistance trend line without success as trade war concerns dictate traders’ expectations.

Tariffs are the key macroeconomic topic of the week as risk assets brace for potential surprise headlines.

Bitcoin ETFs lost almost $800 million in a week, while Strategy indicates it has purchased the dip.

Despite tariff pressures, the weakness of the US dollar could be a blessing in disguise for Bitcoin and risky assets.

Andrew Kang, founder of the crypto venture firm Mechanism Capital, has seemingly doubled down on his bet that Bitcoin will gain in price with a $200 million long position, onchain data shows. 

“Andrew Kang just doubled his Bitcoin position,” crypto analytics firm Arkham said in an April 12 X post. It explained a crypto address tied to Kang made another $100 million long bet on Bitcoin (BTC) with an expected profit, or loss, of $6.8 million.

On April 9, Arkham noted that the Kang-tied wallet had put on a $100 million leverage-long bet on Bitcoin after US President Donald Trump posted to his Truth Social platform earlier the same day that “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.”

Source: Arkham

Just hours later, the Trump administration announced a 90-day pause on its global hiked tariff regime, which sent crypto and stocks rallying. The tariffs, first unveiled on April 2, had gone live just hours earlier and had tanked most financial markets.

The team behind real-world tokenized asset blockchain Mantra says its native token’s sudden 90% plunge was caused by exchanges forcibly closing positions without notice, with one currently unnamed exchange potentially to blame. 

On April 13, Mantra (OM) price dropped from $6.30 to below $0.50, rapidly shedding over 90% of its $6 billion market cap.

“We have determined that the OM market movements were triggered by reckless forced closures initiated by centralized exchanges on OM account holders,” Mantra co-founder John Mullin wrote in an April 13 statement on X.

“The timing and depth of the crash suggest that a very sudden closure of account positions was initiated without sufficient warning or notice,” he added. 

Source: John Mullin

Crypto markets have been fairly stable amid wider market panic caused by US President Donald Trump’s “on-again, off-again” sweeping global tariffs, according to a New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) analyst.

“Despite the carnage in traditional financial markets, the crypto markets have been relatively orderly,” NYDIG global head of research Greg Cipolaro said in an April 11 note. “Historically, in broad risk-off moves, we tend to see stresses show up in crypto markets. We have yet to see that.”

Cipolaro said crypto perpetual futures rates have “been persistently positive,” with liquidations spiking on April 6 and 7 in the days after Trump first announced the tariffs on April 2 but only to a total of $480 million, which he added “was well below other notable liquidation events.”

He noted that the price of Tether (USDT), a US dollar-tracking stablecoin widely used token in crypto trading, was below $1 but had “not experienced a sharp decline.” 

Trump unveiled a sweeping tariff regime on April 2 that lumped various levies on every country before pausing them for 90 days just hours after they came into effect on April 9 and instead charging a base tariff of 10%, besides China, which currently has tariffs of up to 145%.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argues it’s Ethereum’s application layer, not its infrastructure layer, where Ethereum needs “good social philosophy” the most.

The app layer is where developers build decentralized applications on top of Ethereum’s base infrastructure and where they make decisions about how these programs operate. 

In an April 12 post on the social media platform Warpcast, Buterin responded to a user’s argument that Ethereum needs a new generation of developers rooted in Ethereum’s core values to renew itself. He argued that it’s the app layer that needs this more.

“Apps are 80% special purpose. What apps you build depends heavily on what ideas you have of what Ethereum apps, and Ethereum as a whole, are there to do for the world. And so having good ideas on this topic out there becomes crucially important,” Buterin said. 

Source: Vitalik Buterin