Decentral Block Post

Key points:

Bitcoin continues to face resistance at $95,000, but the possibility of an upside breakout remains high.

Solid spot Bitcoin ETF inflows do not always signal a short-term top.

Select altcoins are showing early signs of a short-term trend change.

Bitcoin (BTC) pierced the $95,000 resistance on April 28, but the bulls are struggling to sustain the higher levels. This suggests that the bears have not given up and are trying to defend the level. A minor positive in favor of the bulls is that they have not ceded much ground to the bears. That improves the prospects of a move toward $100,000.

Key takeaways:

US Treasury funds saw $19 billion inflows, the highest since March 2023, as the 30-year yield fell 30 basis points.

Foreign central banks cut US Treasury holdings to 23%, a 22-year low, as gold reserves hit 18%.

Bitcoin soared in 2020 from $9,000 to $60,000 amid similar trends, hinting at a similar outcome in 2025.

The global financial tides are shifting significantly, and Bitcoin (BTC) price could greatly benefit from it. Recent data indicates that US Treasury funds saw $19 billion in net inflows last week, exceeding the 2020 pandemic peak of $14 billion, with the 4-week moving average rising to $7 billion—the highest since March 2023.

The hacker behind the $5.8 million recent Loopscale exploit is in talks to return the stolen funds in exchange for a bounty, the Solana-based protocol said. 

The exploiter pilfered approximately 5.7 million USDC (USDC) and 1,200 Solana (SOL) tokens from two of Loopscale’s yield vaults on April 26, prompting the decentralized finance protocol to temporarily pause its lending markets. 

The following day, the hacker sent a message on the Etherscan blockchain scanner “indicat[ing] a willingness to return the exploited funds in exchange for a bounty,” Loopscale said in an April 27 X post. 

“We are agreeable to collaborating with you to reach a white hat agreement. However, we would like to negotiate the bounty percentage; our expectation is 20%,” the hacker said. “To demonstrate our commitment to a cooperative approach, we will immediately return the 5,000 wSOL funds following the transmission of this message,” they added.

Negotiations are ongoing for the remaining funds, according to the public messaging exchange on Etherscan. 

Key Takeaways:

Bitcoin price dropped alongside falling Treasury yields, signaling investors’ flight to safer assets.

Strategy’s $4.28B Bitcoin purchases and stock market strength have supported BTC above $90,000.

A true breakout toward $100,000 will require Bitcoin to decouple from equities and stronger liquidity signals.

Bitcoin (BTC) experienced a sharp $2,000 correction to $93,500 on April 28. This price movement closely tracked the decline in US Treasury yields, suggesting that traders were seeking the relative safety of more secure assets.

Crypto users betting on the outcome of the snap election to determine Canada’s next prime minister appear to be favoring a Liberal Party victory as residents head to cast their votes.

As of April 28, cryptocurrency betting platform Polymarket gave current Canadian Prime Minister and Liberal Party candidate Mark Carney a 79% chance of defeating Conservative Party candidate Pierre Poilievre in the race to become the country’s next PM. Data from the platform showed users had poured more than $75 million into bets surrounding the race, predicting a Poilievre or Carney victory.

The odds suggested by the platform, as well as those from many polls, show a sharp change in the two candidates’ prospects since former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned in January. Trudeau and Liberal Party, faced criticism over the handling of Canada’s housing crisis and questions about how he would face US President Donald Trump’s then-proposed tariffs.

Following Trudeau’s resignation, Trump stepped up rhetoric disparaging Canada, repeatedly referring to the country as the US’s “51st state” and Trudeau as its “governor.” Trump also imposed a 25% tariff on goods imported from Canada in March.

The election is not really focused on crypto

In contrast to the 2024 US election, in which Trump often made statements suggesting he would enact policies favorable to the crypto industry, neither Carney nor Poilievre seemed to have made digital assets central to their campaigns.

What to know:

Altcoins have lagged Bitcoin year-to-date, but BNB price shows relative resilience, trading only 10% lower than the previous cycle’s all-time high.

BNB Chain shows a robust activity, consistently ranking third in daily transactions, active addresses, and TVL, while leading in the number of DApps.

The blockchain’s weakest point is its revenue, which still lags compared to competitors.

Altcoin price action has been underwhelming for much of the 2023-2026 cycle, pushing many crypto traders to focus primarily on Bitcoin. However, with moderate optimism returning to the markets, a closer look reveals that not all altcoins are struggling. In fact, the total altcoin market cap remains solidly above $1 trillion — $1.17 trillion, to be exact — and its 9% surge over the past week offers a glimmer of hope.

Opinion by: Steven Smith, head of protocol and applied research, Tools for Humanity

Blockchains were designed as systems of trust that are transparent, decentralized and accessible. The age of AI has, however, introduced significant new challenges. Nearly half of all internet traffic is generated by bots, with up to 80% of blockchain transactions now automated and AI agents accounting for most onchain activity. 

While some bots serve legitimate and helpful purposes, others — like those used for airdrop farming and fake account creation — clog networks, drive up fees, and monopolize space and resources.

It’s up to humans to protect the blockchains we know and love, ensuring that people aren’t unfairly disadvantaged by automated systems, insulated from the effect of maximal extractable value attacks and exploits, and free from the need to pay significant gas fees to be included in a block.

The bot takeover is already here

AI bots are becoming more integral to networks and capable of more sophisticated exploits, dominating trading volumes, driving up gas fees, and manipulating decentralized finance (DeFi) markets.

Ethereum’s Fusaka hard fork is expected to take place in the third or fourth quarter of this year, according to an Ethereum Foundation official.

In an April 28 X post, Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Tomasz Kajetan Stańczak said that the organization is aiming to deploy the Fusaka Ethereum network upgrade in Q3 or Q4 2025. Still, the exact rollout schedule has not been decided yet.

The comments come amid controversies over the upcoming implementation of the EVM object format (EOF) upgrade for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). As Stańczak pointed out, EOF is expected to be a part of the Fusaka network upgrade.

The EVM is the software that runs Ethereum smart contracts. EOF would implement a series of protocol changes, known as Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs), with profound implications for how it operates. EOF introduces an extensible and versioned container format for the smart contract bytecode that is verified once at deployment, separating code and data for efficiency gains.

Related: Researcher proposes scaling Ethereum gas limit by 100x over 4 years

Peter Chung, head of research at quantitative trading firm Presto, has repeated his prediction that Bitcoin (BTC) will reach $210,000 by the end of 2025.

In an April 28 interview with CNBC, Chung cited institutional adoption and global liquidity expansion as the primary drivers behind his long-term bullish outlook.

The analyst acknowledged that market conditions this year haven’t been as expected, specifically the challenging macroeconomic environment and market reaction.

However, he described the recent corrections as a “healthy” adjustment, suggesting they have laid a stronger foundation for Bitcoin’s progression toward becoming a mainstream financial asset.

“In hindsight, I think it was actually a healthy correction which has paved the way for the further re-rating of Bitcoin as a mainstream asset,” he said.

When Donald Trump was running for president, he pledged to build 10 new US cities, dubbed “freedom cities,” from scratch, designed to improve the quality of life for Americans. 

These new high-tech communities were to be created on public land, and they were going to be free of the “nightmare of red tape,” including lengthy environmental reviews, that had hampered the development of affordable housing in many parts of the US.

Freedom cities aren’t really a new idea. They are a rebranding of charter cities, which have been around since the late 1800s. Still, Trump’s proposal won the gung-ho support of many of Silicon Valley’s tech bros, whose backing helped tilt the last US presidential election in his direction, and many of whom — e.g., the PayPal mafia consisting of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and Balaji Srinivasan — were also enthusiastic early supporters of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. 

In mid-March, the new administration made some tentative moves to make freedom cities a reality. Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner announced a Joint Task Force on using underutilized federal land suitable for housing.

“America needs more affordable housing, and the federal government can make it happen by making federal land available to build affordable housing stock,” they wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy added to its massive Bitcoin stash last week as the cryptocurrency surged above $90,000.

In an April 28 announcement, Strategy reported acquiring 15,355 Bitcoin (BTC) between April 21 and 27.

The latest purchases cost Strategy $1.42 billion at an average price of $92,737 per BTC, increasing the company’s aggregate BTC holdings by roughly 3% to a total of 535,555 BTC worth more than $50 billion.

Strategy’s latest buy is its largest since late March, when the firm bagged 22,048 Bitcoin for $1.92 billion at an average price of $86,969 per BTC.

Strategy’s Bitcoin yield is at 13.7%

Announcing the purchase on X, Strategy co-founder Saylor said the firm has achieved the BTC yield of 13.7% year-to-date.

Coinbase, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, is launching the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund on May 1, aiming to offer Bitcoin (BTC) exposure for institutional investors outside the US.

The fund targets an annual net return of 4% to 8% on Bitcoin holdings, according to an April 28 blog post by Coinbase.

“To address the growing institutional demand for bitcoin yield, Coinbase Asset Management is excited to introduce the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund (CBYF),” the company wrote.

The fund is backed by multiple investors, including Aspen Digital, a digital asset manager based in Abu Dhabi and regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority.

Related: Michael Saylor hints at Bitcoin purchase as whales stack aggressively

Wallet interoperability still remains the vision for Web3 gaming, according to Arthur Madrid, the co-founder and CEO of the decentralized metaverse and gaming platform The Sandbox. 

In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph at the Crypto Polo event in Dubai, Madrid and The Sandbox co-founder and chief operating officer Sebastien Borget told Cointelegraph that Web3 gaming interoperability remains the goal for The Sandbox. Madrid said: 

The Sandbox CEO said that one of the main narratives they’ve seen in the last couple of months is that players can move from one game to another using a single wallet. The executive told Cointelegraph that players accessing games with one wallet and using their items on different platforms remains an exciting topic for Web3 gaming enthusiasts. 

Web3 gaming still “booming” as tools become accessible

Madrid added that despite a market slowdown, the Web3 gaming space is still booming. The executive told Cointelegraph that the tools and infrastructure needed to create new games have become more accessible. 

“I can feel that the tools you need to create games are becoming more accessible. If you look the number of games that have been created on gaming platforms over the last two years, it's still booming,” Madrid told Cointelegraph. 

The Stacks Asia DLT Foundation has become the first Bitcoin-based organization to establish an official presence in the Middle East, aiming to promote institutional Bitcoin adoption through expanded educational initiatives.

Stacks Asia has partnered with the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) — one of the world’s fastest-growing financial centers — in a move that could boost the adoption of its Bitcoin (BTC) layer-2 (L2) solution in the Middle East and Asia.

The new partnership will play a “pivotal role” in shaping the future of Bitcoin’s “programmability and adoption” in these regions through educational programs and support for Bitcoin builders, according to an April 28 announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

Through the collaboration, Stacks and the ADGM aim to make it easier for institutions and investors to participate in the growing Bitcoin economy and help set “new standards for regulatory clarity and technical growth” for the rising global Bitcoin capital, according to Kyle Ellicott, executive director at Stacks Asia DLT Foundation.

Related: Crypto options desk QCP Capital wins Abu Dhabi license: Report

Cryptocurrency exchange-traded products (ETPs) bounced back with their third-largest inflows on record last week, according to CoinShares.

Global crypto ETPs collectively posted $3.4 billion of inflows in the trading week of April 21–25, marking the highest level since December 2024, CoinShares reported on April 28.

The inflows were just 13% below the all-time high of $3.85 billion seen in the trading week of Dec. 2–6, 2024, CoinShares previously reported.

Renewed investment interest in crypto ETPs came as Bitcoin (BTC) broke back above $90,000 last week for the first time since briefly retesting the price mark in early March, according to CoinGecko.

Bitcoin ETFs lead as price consolidates above $90,000

Bitcoin was the primary winner among crypto ETPs last week, with investors pouring as much as $3.18 billion into BTC ETPs.

Switzerland has long been seen as a beacon of privacy where companies, organizations and wealthy people put down roots in an effort to avoid the prying eyes of the rest of the world. Joining this cohort are many Web3 projects, which also appreciate the Swiss government’s generally positive stance toward blockchain and digital assets.

The country’s reputation as a privacy haven has resulted in Switzerland becoming a hub for privacy projects establishing their foundations or development entities there, including Nym, Session and Hopr — joining traditional privacy software companies such as Proton and Threema.

Now, a proposed change to a Swiss surveillance ordinance is worrying these same projects, as it would spell a marked increase in the government’s user monitoring requirements. But the decentralized nature of crypto may offer a solution for those wishing to preserve their privacy in a climate of increasing surveillance.

Switzerland is a privacy haven — or maybe not

Switzerland has long been considered by many to have some of the world’s strongest privacy protections. As Proton, the company behind the encrypted Proton Mail email service, argued in a 2014 blog post titled “Why Switzerland?”, the Central European country offers several advantages: Companies are outside of the jurisdiction of the US and EU, the country is politically neutral, there are strong constitutional privacy protections, and there is established infrastructure.

Kee Jeffries, technical co-founder of decentralized private messaging app Session, recently told Cointelegraph’s The Agenda podcast that it was important to establish the foundation “in a country which has a long history of preserving people’s personal privacy and freedom of speech.”

Onchain sleuth ZachXBT has flagged a suspicious transfer involving 3,520 Bitcoin (BTC), valued at $330.7 million, that may indicate a major theft. The transaction, reported on April 28, saw funds moved from a potential victim’s wallet to the address bc1qcry...vz55g.

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

The large-scale conversion led to a 50% spike in XMR’s price with the token reaching an intraday high of $339, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

At the time of writing, XMR has settled slightly but remains up 25% in the past 24 hours, trading at $289.

When asked whether North Korea’s Lazarus Group was behind the attack, ZachXBT dismissed the theory, stating it was “highly probable it’s not,” suggesting independent hackers were responsible.

Key takeawaysCrypto-backed mortgages let you use assets like Bitcoin or Ether as collateral to secure a loan without selling your holdings.The process involves choosing a lender, securing your crypto in custody, appraising the property and finalizing loan terms.These mortgages offer tax advantages, streamlined approvals and the ability to retain crypto investment value while accessing liquidity.Platforms like Nexo provide tailored solutions, but thorough research is essential to ensure security and regulatory compliance.

Crypto-backed mortgages are a watershed moment in real estate financing because they let you use digital assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH) as collateral for a home loan.

Instead of selling your cryptocurrency, you pledge it to secure funds for buying property. This approach has been gaining traction as more people explore alternatives to traditional financing.

Furthermore, as the adoption of cryptocurrencies grows, crypto-backed mortgages are positioning themselves as a bridge between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional property markets, offering a unique solution for crypto holders looking to diversify their investments without forfeiting their digital wealth.

What are crypto-backed mortgages?

Crypto-backed mortgages are home loans where digital assets are used as collateral instead of cash or traditional assets. 

Surprisingly, the process is straightforward: You transfer your cryptocurrency to a lender, who locks it up as collateral. In return, they provide a loan, often in fiat currency, to finance your property purchase. As long as you make timely payments, your crypto stays intact. 

Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Custodia Bank, has criticized the US Federal Reserve for quietly maintaining a key anti-crypto policy that favors big-bank-issued stablecoins, despite relaxing crypto partnership rules for banks.

In an April 27 thread on X, Long explained that while the Fed recently rescinded four prior crypto guidelines, it left intact a Jan. 27, 2023, statement issued in coordination with the Biden administration.

The guidance, according to Long, blocks banks from engaging directly with crypto assets and prohibits them from issuing stablecoins on permissionless blockchains.

“THE FED HAS MAINTAINED A REGULATORY PREFERENCE FOR PERMISSIONED STABLECOINS (ie, big-bank versions),” Long stated.

She warned that this move gives traditional financial institutions a “head start” in launching private stablecoins while the broader market waits for stablecoin legislation to pass through Congress.