Decentral Block Post

A Russian finance ministry official has reportedly said the country should be developing its own stablecoin after a recent freeze on wallets linked to the sanctioned Russian exchange Garantex by US authorities and stablecoin issuer Tether. 

Deputy director of Russia’s Finance Ministry’s financial policy department, Osman Kabaloev, said the Kremlin should be exploring the possibility of developing a stablecoin like Tether’s (USDT) to avoid similar actions in the future, according to April 16 reports by Reuters and the state-owned news agency TASS.

“We do not impose restrictions on the use of stablecoins within the experimental legal regime. Recent developments have shown that this instrument can pose risks for us,” Kabaloev told TASS.

“This leads us to consider the need to develop internal instruments akin to USDT, potentially pegged to other currencies.”

On March 6, the US Department of Justice collaborated with authorities in Germany and Finland to freeze domains associated with Garantex, which authorities claimed processed over $96 billion worth of criminal proceeds since launching in 2019.

Stablecoin operator Tether also froze $27 million worth of its stablecoin on March 6, forcing Garantex to halt all operations, including withdrawals.

The tone of Bitcoin-related social media posts has flipped to bullish according to crypto analytics platform Santiment, despite Bitcoin continuing to swing around $85,000.

“Traders are showing optimism that BTC can regain $90K, which will likely be dependent on tariff and global economy news as the week progresses,” Santiment said in an April 16 X post. The last time Bitcoin (BTC) traded above $90,000 was March 6.

Traders regaining confidence in Bitcoin

Santiment’s social media tracker, which measures how social media users feel about crypto based on the tone of their posts, moved into “bullish territory” on April 16 with a score of 1.973. 

Before that, it was neutral, with a score below 1.606, as social media users were unsure about where Bitcoin’s price was headed as it “has been repeatedly crossing above and below $85K,” Santiment added.

Bitcoin tapped as high as $86,000 on April 15 before retracing down to $83,000 the following day. Bitcoin is trading at $84,390 at the time of publication, according to CoinMarketCap.

A US federal judge has agreed to pause a lawsuit filed by 18 state attorneys general and the crypto lobby group DeFi Education Fund against the Securities and Exchange Commission after all parties said new SEC leadership could make the action moot.

Kentucky District Court Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove ordered a 60-day stay on the case on April 16, noting a mid-March filing from the SEC that “this case could potentially be resolved” due to a leadership transition at the regulator.

He added that the parties must file a joint status report within 30 days.

Paul Atkins, a Wall Street adviser who has held board positions with crypto advocacy groups, was sworn in as the new SEC chair earlier this month, replacing acting chair Mark Uyeda and taking over from Gary Gensler.

The 18 attorneys general, all hailing from Republican states, filed the lawsuit with the DeFi Education Fund against the securities regulator in November, alleging that the SEC exceeded its authority when targeting crypto exchanges with lawsuits, accusing the regulator and then-chair Gensler of “gross government overreach.” 

Transaction costs on the Ethereum network have dropped to the lowest level in five years as the amount of activity on the blockchain is in a lull, according to the onchain analytics platform Santiment.

Ethereum network fees are now around $0.168 per transaction and the reduction in fees coincides with fewer people sending Ether (ETH) and interacting with smart contracts, Santiment marketing director Brian Quinlivan said in an April 17 blog post.

“When many people are using Ethereum, users bid higher fees to get their transactions confirmed faster This drives the average costs up,” Quinlivan said.

“When fewer people are transacting, like we see now, users don’t need to bid much. As a result, the average fee drops,” he explained. “It’s essentially a supply and demand system.”

Source: Santiment

Quinlivan said that, from a trading perspective, low fees can preclude a price rebound, still, he added that traders appear to be patiently waiting for the global economic uncertainty to pass before scaling up their usual frequency of Ether and altcoin transactions.

The firm behind the Solana-based automated market maker (AMM) Raydium has launched its memecoin-making protocol, LaunchLab, which looks to compete with Pump.fun.

The arrival of LaunchLab on April 16 comes a month after Pump.fun, previously a key contributor to Raydium’s revenue, severed ties with the firm by moving its token migration from Raydium’s liquidity pools to its own new decentralized exchange, PumpSwap.

LaunchLab will leverage Raydium’s liquidity pools and aim to dethrone Pump.fun as the leading Solana memecoin launchpad.

Raydium said LaunchLab provides memecoin enthusiasts with customizable bonding curves and no migration fees, while tokens that raise 85 Solana (SOL) — currently worth $11,150 — will transition to Raydium’s AMM instantly.

Around 10 LaunchLab tokens have already surpassed this threshold, according to the LaunchLab platform.

Artificial intelligence startups received the lion’s share of venture capital investments across the globe in the first quarter of 2025, according to new data from Pitchbook.

“Investors still have an AI FOMO [fear of missing out] problem,” the research firm said in an April 17 report, which revealed that 57.9% of global venture capital dollars in Q1 went to AI and machine learning startups.

Comparatively, the first quarter of 2024 saw just 28% of VC dollars channeled into AI startups.

Pitchbook said the capital flowing into AI was even more concentrated in North America, with 70% of venture funding in the region going into AI startups in the first quarter.

The global AI sector raised $73 billion in the first quarter, which was more than half of the total value of AI-related deals made last year. However, more than half of that was for OpenAI, which closed a $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank on March 31.

Despite recent major developments in the crypto industry, the market has just posted its weakest Q1 performance in years — but a crypto analyst is pointing to several catalysts that could make Q2 more promising.

“Frustrating. That’s the best word to describe the past quarter,” Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan said in a recent market report, calling Q1 the “best worst quarter in crypto’s history.”

Bitcoin and Ether took an unusual hit in Q1

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, saw price declines of 11.82% and 45.41%, respectively, over Q1 2025 — a quarter that has historically seen strong results for both assets. Since 2013, Q1 has been Bitcoin’s second-strongest quarter on average (51.2%) and historically the best for Ether (77.4%), according to CoinGlass data.

Historically, Q1 2025 is the second-best performing quarter for Bitcoin on average, but it’s the best for Ether. Source: CoinGlass

Hougan pointed to a few key catalysts that could help crypto deliver more upside to Q2. 

He noted the rise in global money supply, which “after years of tightening, central banks across the globe are signaling a shift toward monetary easing and M2 expansion.”

Over the past 30 days, crypto market participants have bridged more than $120 million in liquidity to Solana (SOL) from other blockchains, signaling renewed confidence in the network. Traders transferred the highest amount from Ethereum (ETH) at $41.5 million, followed by a $37.3 million influx from Arbitrum, according to data from Debridge.

Meanwhile, users on Base, BNB Chain and Sonic moved $16 million, $14 million and $6.6 million, respectively.

Total transferred amount from other chains to Solana. Source: debridge

The return of liquidity to Solana paints a stark contrast to the network's recent challenges. Following Argentina’s LIBRA memecoin scandal, which ensnared President Javier Milei, Solana saw investors move $485 million to other blockchains like Ethereum and BNB Chain.

The current liquidity influx to Solana coincides with the return of double-digit price rallies from memecoins as POPCAT, FARTCOIN, BONK and WIF rose 79%, 51%, 25% and 21%, respectively, over the past seven days.

Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Ventures Fund I LP is expected to raise around $175 million to $180 million by the end of June to build a portfolio of 30 crypto and blockchain startups.

According to an April 17 Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter, the fund —  which has had a focus on payments and stablecoins — has surpassed its goal of raising $150 million.

The fund closing above target comes at a time when crypto venture capital is thin on the ground despite an industry-friendly administration in the United States. 

Earlier this year, Novogratz’s firm reported that 2024 was also a tough year for crypto VC despite potential market drivers such as Bitcoin ETFs, the memecoin craze, and AI agents, which it said were “not particularly suited to venture capital.” 

Venture capitalists invested $11.5 billion into crypto and blockchain-focused startups across 2,153 deals in 2024, it reported. This was slightly higher than the $10 billion invested in 2023 but way down from over $30 billion invested in 2022. 

The founder and lead developer of Ethereum Name Service has warned his X followers of an “extremely sophisticated” phishing attack that can impersonate Google and trick users into giving out login credentials. 

The phishing attack exploits Google’s infrastructure to send a fake alert to users informing them that their Google data is being shared with law enforcement due to a subpoena, ENS’ Nick Johnson said in an April 16 post to X. 

“It passes the DKIM signature check, and GMail displays it without any warnings - it even puts it in the same conversation as other, legitimate security alerts,” he said. 

The fake subpoena appears to be from a Google no-reply domain. Source: Nick Johnson

As part of the attack, users are offered the chance to view the case materials or protest by clicking a support page link, which uses Google Sites, a tool that can be used to build a website on a Google subdomain, according to Johnson. 

“From there, presumably, they harvest your login credentials and use them to compromise your account; I haven’t gone further to check,” he said.

Crypto exchange Coinbase has distanced its blockchain network Base from a memecoin it shared that saw massive backlash after the token rapidly gained, then dropped in value by millions of dollars.

Base posted to X on April 16 with an image promoting the network with its marketing tagline, “Base is for everyone,” it also shared a link to a token of the same name on Zora, a social network where users can make posts into tokens for others to speculate on.

In just over an hour after it was created, the Base is for everyone token hit a peak market capitalization of $17.1 million — then dropped by nearly 90% over the next 20 minutes to a market value of $1.9 million, DEX Screener data shows.

The Base is for everyone token’s market cap saw a slight recovery after a rapid, nearly 90% fall in value soon after its launch. Source: DEX Screener

The token has since made a slight recovery and was trading around $7.7 million at the time of publication.

A Coinbase spokeswoman distanced Base from the token, telling Cointelegraph that “Base did not launch a token.”

Quantum computing research firm Project Eleven has launched a competition to see just how much of a threat quantum computing currently poses to Bitcoin.

Launching the competition on April 16, Project Eleven said it is offering 1 Bitcoin (BTC) to whoever cracks the biggest chunk of a Bitcoin key using a quantum computer within the next year. 

Project Eleven said the purpose of the “Q-Day Prize” is to test “how urgent the threat” of quantum is to Bitcoin and to find quantum-proof solutions to secure Bitcoin over the long term.

“10 million+ addresses have exposed public keys. Quantum computing is steadily progressing. Nobody has rigorously benchmarked this threat yet,” Project Eleven wrote on X on April 16.

More than 6 million Bitcoin — worth around $500 billion — could be at risk if quantum computers become powerful enough to crack elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) keys, Project Eleven said.

Stablecoins rose to popularity as a result of limitations in the US financial system — particularly restricted banking hours and the lack of a non-USD trading pair, according to Jerald David, president of Arca Labs.

“So we start thinking about the reason why, we start talking about the nine-to-five banking hours,” David said during a panel at TokenizeThis 2025 event on April 16.

The panel discussion centered on yieldcoins or, essentially, the rising of cryptocurrencies that can generate yield through holding, staking or lending, like stablecoins.

“Well, nine-to-five banking hours don’t work, right? There are implementations right now of payment systems that are going to come to market very soon, that are a good combination of both yield-bearing instruments as well as stabletokens,” David said.

According to David, the need for stablecoins stems from the fact that the traditional US banking infrastructure doesn’t support round-the-clock transactions. “And this industry, as we all know, is a 24-hour industry.”

Panama’s capital city will accept cryptocurrency payments for taxes and municipal fees, including bus tickets and permits, Panama City mayor Mayer Mizrachi announced on April 15, joining a growing list of jurisdictions globally that have voted to accept such payments.

Panama City will begin accepting Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Circle's USDC (USDC), and Tether's USDt (USDT) stablecoin for payment once the crypto-to-fiat payment rails are established, Mizrachi posted on the X platform.

Mizrachi said previous administrations attempted to push through similar legislation but failed to overcome stipulations requiring the local government to accept funds denominated in US dollars.

In a translated statement, the Panama City mayor said that the local government partnered with a bank that will immediately convert any digital assets received into US dollars, allowing the municipality to accept crypto without introducing new legislation.

Panama City joins a growing list of global jurisdictions on the municipal and state level accepting cryptocurrency payments for taxes, exploring Bitcoin strategic reserves to protect public treasuries from inflation and passing pro-crypto policies to attract investment.

Solana’s native token SOL (SOL) failed to maintain its bullish momentum after reaching the $134 level on April 14, but an assortment of data points suggest that the altcoin’s rally is not over. SOL price is currently 57% down from its all-time high, partially due to a sharp decline in its DApps activity, but some analysts cite the growth in deposits on the Solana network as a catalyst for sustained price upside in the short term.Blockchains ranked by total value locked, USD. Source: DefiLlama

Solana has established itself as the second-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), with $6.9 billion. After gaining 12% over the seven days ending April 16, Solana has pulled ahead of competitors such as Tron, Base, and Berachain. Positive signs include a 30% increase in deposits on Sanctum, a liquid staking application, and 20% growth on Jito and Jupiter.

Solana's DEX volume surpasses Ethereum layer-2s

One could argue that Solana’s TVL roughly matches the Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem in deposits. However, this comparison overlooks Solana’s strong position in decentralized exchange (DEX) volumes. For example, in the seven days ending April 16, trading activity on Solana DApps totaled $15.8 billion, exceeding the combined volume of Ethereum scaling solutions by more than 50% during the same period.

Blockchains ranked by 7-day DEX volumes, USD. Source: DefiLlama

Solana reclaimed the top spot in DEX activity, surpassing Ethereum after a 16% gain over seven days. This was supported by a 44% increase in volume on Pump-fun and a 28% rise on Raydium. In contrast, volumes declined on the three largest Ethereum DApps—Uniswap, Fluid, and Curve Finance. A similar trend occurred on BNB Chain, where PancakeSwap, Four-Meme, and DODO saw reduced volumes compared to the previous week.

It would be unfair to measure Solana’s growth only by DEX performance, as other DApps handle much smaller volumes. For example, Ondo Finance tokenized a total of $250 million worth of assets on the Solana network. Meanwhile, Exponent, a yield farm protocol, doubled its TVL over the past 30 days. Similarly, the yield aggregator platform Synatra experienced a 43% jump in TVL during the past week.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced industry insiders from Kraken, Exodus, Anchorage Digital, and others would be participating in its crypto task force’s roundtable discussion on custody.

In an April 16 notice, the SEC said commissioners Hester Peirce and Caroline Crenshaw, acting chair Mark Uyeda and crypto task force Chief of Staff Richard Gabbert will sit down with Mark Greenberg, crypto exchange Kraken’s vice president of consumer business and product, Anchorage Digital Bank’s Chief Risk Officer Rachel Anderika and Exodus Chief Legal Officer Veronica McGregor. Other representatives will include those from WisdomTree, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, and Fireblocks.

“It is important for the SEC to grapple with custody issues, which are some of the most challenging as we seek to integrate crypto assets into our regulatory structure,” said Peirce, who heads the SEC task force.

Notably, Uyeda was listed as acting chair of the commission at the April 25 event, despite the US Senate confirming that Paul Atkins would head the regulatory body on April 9. It’s unclear when Atkins will be sworn in as SEC chair, but at the time of publication, the regulator had not listed him as a current commissioner.

Related: US gov’t actions give clue about upcoming crypto regulation

Bitcoin (BTC) remains under pressure as macroeconomic uncertainty continues to weigh on its price action. After making a strong bounce from the local bottom near $75,000 on April 7 and 9, analysts are beginning to question whether BTC could be gearing up for a reversal of the downward trend that’s persisted since the start of the year.BTC/USD 1-day, RSI 1-week. Source: Marie Poteriaieva, TradingView

For some, like the veteran trader Peter Brandt, this trendline is nothing but hopium. As he noted in his X post,

“Of all chart construction, trendlines are the LEAST significant. A trendline violation does NOT signify a transition of the BTC trend. Sorry.”

Others, however, see more reason for cautious optimism. Analyst Kevin Svenson highlighted a possible weekly RSI breakout, pointing out that “Once confirmed, weekly RSI breakout signals have proven to be among the most reliable macro breakout indicators.” 

Ultimately, price is driven by supply and demand—and while both sides of the equation are beginning to show subtle signs of recovery, they are yet to reach the levels needed for a proper breakout. Furthermore, the bulls must cut through a dense sell wall near $86,000 to confirm the reversal. 

Bitcoin demand — Are there early signs of recovery?

According to CryptoQuant, Bitcoin’s apparent demand — measured by the 30-day net difference between exchange inflows and outflows — is showing early signs of recovery after a sustained dip into negative territory.

Publicly listed Bitcoin miners sold over 40% of the collective coins mined in March, representing the largest monthly BTC liquidation for mining firms since October 2024 and reversing the post-halving trend of accumulating Bitcoin (BTC) for a corporate treasury strategy, according to TheMinerMag, which screened data from 15 publicly traded mining companies.

The increased liquidations come amid widespread macroeconomic uncertainty in financial markets and the business sector, likely signaling that companies are selling their BTC to reduce shortfalls caused by the current economic climate.

Mining firms offloading BTC to cover operational expenses contributes to selling pressure on the cryptocurrency, which can result in a price volatility. According to CoinGlass, Bitcoin posted a 2.3% loss in March, following a 17.39% correction the previous month.

Related: CleanSpark to start selling Bitcoin in 'self-funding' pivot

Miners struggle amid macroeconomic turmoil

High costs, operational hurdles, and fierce competitiveness within the Bitcoin mining industry are amplified by the effects of a trade war on businesses, financial markets, and global supply chains.

As digital assets gain mainstream adoption, establishing a legal framework for stablecoins is a “good idea,” said US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

In an April 16 panel at the Economic Club of Chicago, Powell commented on the evolution of the cryptocurrency industry, which has delivered a consumer use case that “could have wide appeal” following a difficult “wave of failures and frauds,” he said.

Powell delivers remarks at the Economic Club of Chicago. Source: Bloomberg Television

During crypto’s difficult years, which culminated in 2022 and 2023 with several high-profile business failures, the Fed “worked with Congress to try to get a [...] legal framework for stablecoins, which would have been a nice place to start,” said Powell. “We were not successful.”

“I think that the climate is changing and you’re moving into more mainstreaming of that whole sector, so Congress is again looking [...] at a legal framework for stablecoins,” he said. 

Former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried has moved from a transit facility to a California prison that once housed infamous gangster Al Capone.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, officials moved Bankman-Fried from the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City briefly to the Federal Correctional Institution in Victorville before transferring him to a facility in Terminal Island in Los Angeles, California. The federal institution was once home to criminals like former Theranos chief operating officer Ramesh Balwani and Capone, who was convicted of tax evasion in 1931.

During his 2023 trial and following his conviction on seven felony counts in 2024, Bankman-Fried was housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York. However, officials moved the former FTX CEO after he was the subject of an interview by right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson — an activity reportedly unsanctioned by authorities.

Related: Sam Bankman-Fried posts for the first time in 2 years, FTX Token pumps

It’s unclear whether Bankman-Fried will remain at the California facility until his tentative release date in 2044. A New York judge initially allowed SBF to remain in the state to assist during the appeal of his conviction and sentence — a process that could be hampered by the former FTX CEO’s current location.