Decentral Block Post

On April 11, European cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares published its latest “Digital Asset Fund Flows Report,” revealing that digital asset investment products experienced positive sentiment with inflows totaling $57 million last week, bringing inflows back to a net positive position year-to-date. However, despite this, "volumes were low at $970 million for the week," and the global Bitcoin (BTC) exchange market also saw low volumes, which "were just 25% of the year-to-date average at $18 billion for the week."

According to the report, inflows were primarily driven by investors in the U.S., with $27 million of inflows. Germany, Switzerland, and Canada also saw positive sentiment, with inflows totaling $17 million, $13 million, and $2.2 million, respectively, indicating a broad-based increase in confidence towards digital assets.

Investors primarily focused on Bitcoin, with BTC receiving $56 million of inflows, which accounted for 98% of all inflows. Meanwhile, short-bitcoin suffered minor outflows totaling $0.6 million. In contrast, altcoins, including Uniswap (UNI), Polkadot (DOT), and Polygon (MATIC), saw minor inflows of less than $1 million each.

The report also noted that despite the Ethereum network's Shapella upgrade scheduled for April 12, Ether (ETH) inflows were relatively minor at $600,000, suggesting that perhaps investors are cautious about investing in Ethereum until they are more confident about the impact of the upgrade. Additionally, blockchain equities saw minor inflows totaling $2.1 million, indicating a relatively quiet week for this market segment.

Related: Ethereum price retests key support level that preceded 60% gains in June 2022

Bitcoin (BTC) price has finally broken the $30,000 level after the key price zone lasted as a ten months resistance level. BTC price rallied 6.5% on April 10 and the much-awaited price gain ended an agonizing 12-day period of extremely low volatility, which saw the price hovering close to $28,200. Bulls are now confident that the bear market has officially ended, especially considering the fact that BTC price has gained 82% year-to-date.

Another interesting note is, Bitcoin's decoupling from traditional markets has been confirmed, after the S&P 500 index presented a mere 0.1% gain on April 10, and WTI oil traded down 1.2%. Bitcoin traders are likely anticipating the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy to reverse sooner than later.

Stagflation risk could be behind the decoupling

Higher interest rates make fixed-income investments more attractive, while businesses and families face additional costs to refinance their debts. The reversal of the U.S. central bank's recent tightening movement is deemed bullish for risk assets. However, the fear of stagflation — a period of increased inflation and negative economic growth — would be the worst-case scenario for the stock market.

Fixed-income traders are betting that the Federal Reserve probably has one more interest-rate hike because the latest economic data displayed moderate resilience. For instance, the 3.5% U.S. unemployment rate announced on April 7 is the lowest measure in half a century.

The U.S. treasuries market suggests a 76% chance that the Federal Reserve will bolster the benchmark by 0.25% on April 29, according to Bloomberg. There's also the added uncertainty of the banking crisis's impact on the sector, with JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup scheduled to report first-quarter results on Friday.

Ronin Network’s native token RON recorded 5x gains since the start of the year thanks to its plans to shift to a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism and expand its gaming portfolio beyond Axie Infinity.

The gaming-focused layer-2 Ethereum blockchain will change its current Proof-of-Authority to the DPoS consensus mechanism on April 12.

The previous mechanism had around six to nine participants securing and validating transactions on the network, which put the network at a centralization risk. It was the leading cause of the $650 million hack from the Ronin network on March 29, 2022.

The new DPoS consensus mechanism allows RON stakers to earn from the network’s fees and vote on the set of validators operating the network.

Additionally, Sky Mavis, the team behind Axie Infinity and the Ronin Network, is also working on expanding the gaming portfolio of the Ronin Network. On March 30, they announced that four new gaming studios are building on the Ronin Network, including Tribes Studio, Bali Games, Directive Games and Bowled.io.

Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) token continued its losing streak versus Bitcoin (BTC) for the fifth day in a row as BTC’s price jumped above $30,000 for the first time since June 2022.

ETH/BTC bullish reversal fails midway

On April 11, the ETH/BTC pair dropped nearly 1.6% to 0.0634 BTC to retest multi-month lows.

The ETH/BTC level is down 6.75% from its local peak of 0.0679 BTC set six days ago. It is also just 2% above the pair’s local low of 0.0622 BTC from March 20, showing that Ether’s bullish reversal attempt versus Bitcoin is near failure.

Interestingly, institutional interest also appears to gravitate more toward Bitcoin than Ethereum, according to CoinShares’ weekly report. It shows that the Bitcoin-focused investment funds witnessed inflows worth $56 million in the week ending April 7.

In comparison, the Ethereum-based funds received only $600,000 despite the hype around its long-awaited Shanghai hard fork on April 12.

Bitcoin (BTC) got busy testing $30,000 as new support at the April 11 Wall Street open after hitting new 10-month highs.

$30,000 surge decimates liquidity

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD coming down from an overnight peak near $30,500.

The pair had spent most of the day bouncing from the $30,000 mark after finally passing it in a short squeeze weeks in the making.

Major misgivings from some market participants accompanied the move, with fears centering on a potential correction to $25,000 or even lower.

Takes became more optimistic on longer timeframes, however. The $30,000 push, for instance, cemented popular trader and analyst Rekt Capital’s conviction that Bitcoin had abandoned a bearish double top formation from Q1.