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Michael Saylor’s Strategy, one of the world’s largest publicly listed corporate Bitcoin holders, added another major purchase to its growing portfolio as the cryptocurrency trades near $85,000.

Strategy acquired 6,556 Bitcoin for $555.8 million from April 14–20, at an average price of $84,785 per coin, the firm announced in its latest Form 8-K filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

The latest purchase accounts for 1.2% of Strategy’s total Bitcoin holdings of 538,200 BTC as of April 20, acquired for the aggregate amount of $36.5 billion at an average price of $67,766 per BTC.

An excerpt from Strategy’s Form 8-K filing. Source: Strategy

The latest Bitcoin purchase was funded using proceeds from the Common ATM and STRK ATM stock offerings, including the sale of 1,755,000 Strategy shares for $547.7 million and 91,213 shares of Series A preferred stock sold for $7.8 million.

Strategy expands buying after a pause

The latest purchase follows Strategy’s 3,459 BTC acquisition reported on April 14, which was the first announced purchase by the firm after March 31.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov expressed concerns over a growing threat to private messaging in France and other European Union countries, warning that Telegram would rather exit certain markets than implement encryption backdoors that undermine user privacy.

In an April 21 post to his “Du Rove’s channel” on Telegram, he posted a message about the EU’s increasing efforts to weaken messaging encryption by adding backdoors, a method that would allow authorities to bypass encryption and access private user data.

Durov cited initiatives from French and EU lawmakers to require messaging apps like Telegram to implement backdoors for police access and stressed Telegram’s commitment to digital privacy.

“Telegram would rather exit a market than undermine encryption with backdoors and violate basic human rights,” Durov stated, adding: “Unlike some of our competitors, we don’t trade privacy for market share.”

Backdoors can be exploited by criminals

In his message, Durov highlighted that the biggest problem behind encryption backdoors lies in their accessibility not only by authorities but also by hackers and foreign agents.

Crypto casinos generated more than $81 billion in revenue in 2024, even as regulators in key jurisdictions continued to block access to the platforms, according to a new report.

Citing data from the anti-online-crime platform Yield Sec, the Financial Times reported that wagers paid in crypto in 2024 generated $81.4 billion in gross gaming revenue (GGR). This metric refers to the difference between bets taken and winnings paid out.  

Yield Sec data also showed that the annual revenue for crypto casinos has increased five times since 2022, despite gambling sites being blocked in the United States, China, the United Kingdom and the European Union. 

Crypto casino Stake rivals traditional betting platforms

Betting platform Stake reported that its GGR in 2024 was around $4.7 billion, up 80% since 2022. This puts it on a par with some of the biggest gambling groups, such as Entain and Flutter. Entain reported $5 billion, while Flutter reported $14 billion in revenue in 2024. 

Stake offers traditional casino games, including blackjack, roulette and slots. The platform also allows users to bet on sports. Users on the betting platform generally transact in crypto, with account balances being deposited and withdrawn directly into crypto wallets. 

Investors seeking Bitcoin exposure may be running out of time to purchase below a six-figure price, as US Treasury buybacks may signal the next leg up for the world’s first cryptocurrency.

This might be the “last chance” to buy Bitcoin (BTC) below the $100,000 mark, according to Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and chief investment officer of Maelstrom.

“Seriously fam, this might be the last chance you have to buy $BTC post, hinting at incoming “treasury buy backs” as the “Bazooka” for Bitcoin’s price trajectory.

Source: Arthur Hayes

Treasury buybacks refer to the US Treasury Department repurchasing its outstanding bonds from the open market to increase liquidity, manage federal debt or stabilize interest rates.

These operations can inject liquidity into the financial system, often benefiting risk assets like Bitcoin.

XRP (XRP) has dropped nearly 40% since hitting its multi-year high of $3.40 three months ago.

Still, its ability to hold above key technical support levels, combined with a potentially market-shifting derivatives listing, has prompted some analysts to maintain a bullish outlook for the months ahead.

XRP/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView

Coinbase XRP futures may launch on April 21

From a fundamental perspective, XRP may receive a boost from the anticipated launch of XRP futures contracts on the Coinbase Derivatives platform, scheduled for April 21 under the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) oversight.

Source: X

This development may inject fresh liquidity and institutional interest into the market, helping catalyze the technical breakouts projected above.

XRP price chart painting Wyckoff reaccumulation

XRP’s ongoing consolidation phase resembles a classic Wyckoff reaccumulation pattern, according to technical analyst Charting Guy.

The Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit organization developing the Ethereum ecosystem, is shifting its focus to user experience and layer-1 scaling challenges following its March leadership reshuffle. 

On April 21, the Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak shared an X post detailing how the organization has changed since its change in leadership structure.

Stańczak said the change aims to give Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin more time for research and exploration rather than dealing with day-to-day tasks and crisis management.

“Each time Vitalik shares insights or communicates a direction, he accelerates major long‑term breakthroughs,” he wrote.

Stańczak added that Buterin’s recent posts had advanced promising avenues and helped realign the community around the organization’s core values. 

Bitcoin (BTC) is eyeing new April highs as macro instability suddenly delivers a tailwind for BTC price performance.

Bitcoin is on the way up, nearing $88,000, but few market participants are willing to trust the strength of snap price moves.

A new macro week dawns in the shadow of the US trade war, with Federal Reserve speakers lining up to take to the stage.

Gold is shattering all-time highs again, but this time Bitcoin is starting to react.

US dollar weakness exhibits historic traits as three-year lows spark bullish predictions for Bitcoin and commodities.

Japanese investment firm Metaplanet increased its Bitcoin holdings to more than $400 million after its latest purchase.

Metaplanet acquired 330 Bitcoin (BTC) for $28.2 million at an average price of $85,605 per BTC, bringing its total holdings to 4,855 Bitcoin worth $414 million, according to an April 21 post from Simon Gerovich, the CEO of Metaplanet.

The firm’s Bitcoin yield surpassed 119% year-to-date after its latest investment.

Source: Simon Gerovich

Metaplanet issued 2 billion Japanese yen ($13.3 million) of bonds to buy more Bitcoin on March 31, Cointelegraph reported.

Related: UK firm buys $250M Bitcoin as analysts eye quiet Easter weekend

Opinion by: Dominic Schwenter, chief operating officer of Lisk

The US is in the middle of a crypto boom. Exchange-traded fund approvals have opened the door to institutional adoption, liquidity is increasing, and regulatory clarity is beginning to take shape under a more crypto-aligned administration. Filings from the Securities and Exchange Commission referencing blockchain hit an all-time high in February 2025, signaling a broader shift in how seriously the technology is being taken at the highest levels.

This momentum is good for the industry. US-based crypto companies have spent nearly a decade building through regulatory uncertainty, and they deserve the attention and rewards that are finally arriving. Is institutional support finally showing up? It’s overdue — and well-earned.

Zooming in on the US too much, however, puts the industry at risk of missing what’s happening elsewhere. Some of the most important crypto adoption today takes root in places far outside the spotlight.

The most exciting crypto adoption isn’t happening on Wall Street. It is unfolding in high-growth markets where people use crypto not to speculate but out of necessity. These communities didn’t wait for headlines. They built through every cycle and are now setting the pace for where Web3 is going next.

Synthetix founder Kain Warwick has threatened SNX stakers with “the stick” if they don’t take up a newly launched staking mechanism to help fix the protocol’s ongoing sUSD (SUSD) depeg.

Warwick said in an April 21 post to X that it has now implemented a sUSD staking mechanism to address the depeg, but admitted it is currently “very manual” without a proper user interface. 

However, once the UI goes live, Warwick said, if there isn’t enough momentum, then they may have to “ratchet up the pressure” on the stakers in the sUSD 420 pool.

The sUSD 420 Pool was a new staking mechanism introduced on April 18 by Synthetix that would reward participants with a share of 5 million SNX tokens over 12 months if they locked their sUSD for a year in the pool. 

“This is very solvable and it is SNX stakers responsibility. We tried nothing which didn’t work, now we have tried the carrot and it kind of worked but I’m reserving judgement,” he said.

Crypto exchange Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou says more than two-thirds of the digital assets stolen from the platform in February by North Korea’s Lazarus Group still remain traceable. 

In an executive summary on hacked Bybit funds posted on X on April 21, Ben Zhou said that of the total $1.4 billion hacked, 68.6% “remains traceable,” 27.6% has “gone dark,” and 3.8% has been frozen.

The untraceable funds primarily flowed into mixers, then through bridges to peer-to-peer and over-the-counter platforms, he added. 

In February, hackers associated with the Lazarus Group exploited vulnerabilities in Bybit’s cold wallet infrastructure, stealing $1.4 billion in the largest crypto exchange hack to date.

“Recently, we have observed that the mixer mainly used by the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] is Wasabi,” Zhou said before stating that following the Wasabi washing of BTC, “a small portion of it entered CryptoMixer, Tornado Cash, and Railgun.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says users sending “please” and “thank you” messages to ChatGPT is costing the company tens of millions of dollars.

“Tens of millions of dollars well spent -- you never know,” Altman said on April 16 after being asked to estimate the cost on X.

Source: Sam Altman

Altman’s response sparked discussion about what drives users to interact with AI models in a polite manner.

Some AI users say they interact politely with the bots in case AI becomes sentient and starts treating people based on how they interacted with it in the past.

Source: Zvbear

Others, such as engineer Carl Youngblood, claim they’re motivated to treat the AI well for personal development:

The number of addresses holding more than a thousand Bitcoin has surged in April as whales continue to accumulate. 

More than 60 new wallets holding over 1,000 Bitcoin (BTC) have appeared since early March, a signal of increasing whale activity. 

The number of these whale wallets has increased from 2,037 in late February to hit a four-month high of 2,107 on April 15, according to Glassnode. 

This has returned the metric to levels seen in two spikes in whale addresses in November and December, when crypto markets were surging following the election of US President Donald Trump. 

The all-time high for Bitcoin whale addresses was in February 2021, when it came just short of 2,500.

The Solana network briefly surpassed Ethereum in total staked value of their respective native tokens, SOL and ETH, sparking debate over whether it is actually bullish or bearish for Solana. 

More than $53.9 billion worth of SOL is now staked on the Solana network from 505,938 unique wallet holders, who are making an 8.31% annualized return, blockchain data shows.

The figure briefly overtook the staked ETH market cap on April 20, which now has $53.93 billion worth of value secured from 34.7 million staked tokens, Beaconcha.in data shows.

Source: Alex Svanevik

A contributing factor behind the flippening has been SOL’s strong price performance relative to ETH over the last two years, which has seen the SOL/ETH price ratio rise nearly tenfold from 0.0088 to 0.0866 since June 12, 2023, CoinGecko data shows.

High SOL staking return is stifling Solana DeFi, pundits say

However, the “risk-free” 8.31% return for SOL stakers at the network level — significantly higher than ETH’s 2.98% — may be attracting Solana users away from DeFi activities, such as providing liquidity to automated market makers and lending protocols in exchange for token rewards.

A doomsday-themed Solana NFT project is looking to sell 100,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to buy a Cold War-era nuclear bunker in Rutland, England.

Dead Bruv, the creators of the narrative-driven NFT project Meatbags, plan to mint 100,000 NFTs, with Meatbags holders being airdropped 10,000. The the rest will be sold off starting April 21, starting at $14 a pop, according to a post on the Meatbags X account. 

Holders will gain entry into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), called the Billionaire Bunker Club, a “fully decentralized, community-governed real-world asset onchain,” which will vote on what happens with the bunker if the effort to buy it is successful. 

Source: Meatbags

A few ideas floated by the NFT project include a “members-only survival resort with Doomsday DJ,” a location to hold end-of-the-world festivals, or “an Airbnb with caviar tastings and canned bean room service.” 

UK online auctioneer SDL Property Auctions has the bunker Dead Bruv is hoping to buy listed for a guide price of 650,000 British pounds ($862,257), and an auction date scheduled for April 24. 

Ethereum-based real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform Blocksquare has partnered with a Florida-based real estate company to offer fractional ownership in a pipeline of US commercial properties valued at over $1 billion. 

Announcing the deal on April 18, Blocksquare and Vera Capital said a marketplace would launch in the coming weeks to enable global investors to buy tokenized shares in “dozens of properties” located across seven US states. 

The first tokenized properties that will be up for grabs are part of Vera Group’s existing holdings, which include a three-storey office building in Fort Lauderdale and a retail plaza in Dania Beach, according to two properties listed on Vera Capital’s website.

Source: Vera Capital

“All our assets are already part of the group, so with the Vera Fund they’ve already been purchased, and they are owned by us, managed by us and we are only improving them,” Vera Group CEO Nick Polyushkin said.

Vera Capital is a subsidiary of Vera Group, which also runs a South Florida real estate agency, real estate management company, and a real estate investment fund with over $100 million invested through commercial property acquisitions, land development and residential developments.

Bitcoin prices appear to be breaking out of an extended period of consolidation as the asset climbs to its highest level since late March. 

Bitcoin (BTC) surged above $87,400 on April 21, its highest price since March 28, according to TradingView. It has climbed by more than $3,000 from an intraday low of just over $84,000 on April 20. 

The asset has now gained 16% since its 2025 low of just below $75,000 on April 9, and the distance from its peak price has been reduced to 20%. 

While a 2.4% daily gain is not out of the ordinary for Bitcoin, it has moved the asset to the upper bounds of a range-bound channel that began in early March. 

“Bitcoin is breaking out,” while Nasdaq futures are down 1%, observed Scott Melker, aka “The Wolf Of All Streets.” 

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor hinted at an impending Bitcoin (BTC) purchase by Strategy and said that more than 13,000 institutions now have direct exposure to the company.

The company's most recent acquisition of 3,459 BTC, valued at over $285 million at the time of purchase, on April 14, brought Strategy's total holdings to 531,644 BTC, valued at over $44.9 billion.

Saylor followed up on the BTC chart, which he typically posts on Sundays to signal an imminent BTC acquisition, with a breakdown of investor exposure to the company. The executive wrote in an April 20 X post:

"Based on public data as of Q1 2025, over 13,000 institutions and 814,000 retail accounts hold MSTR directly. An estimated 55 million beneficiaries have indirect exposure through ETFs, mutual funds, pensions, and insurance portfolios."

Strategy's growing popularity among retail and institutional investors is significant due to the company siphoning capital from traditional financial markets and into Bitcoin. Increased capital flows translate into the company accumulating and holding more BTC, slowly increasing the price of the supply-capped digital asset.

Strategy’s chart of Bitcoin acquisitions. Source: SaylorTracker

Related: Has Michael Saylor’s Strategy built a house of cards?

Bitcoin (BTC) has risen roughly 1% for the week, indicating a balance between supply and demand. Analysts expect a quiet easter weekend but are divided about the next directional move in Bitcoin.

Network economist Timothy Peterson said that the US High Yield Index Effective Yield has gained over 8%. There have been 38 such instances since 2010, and Bitcoin has risen 71% of the time three months later. Bitcoin recorded a median gain of 31% and the worst loss of -16%. Based on historical data, Peterson anticipates Bitcoin to trade between $75,000 and $138,000 within 90 days.

Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360

Not everyone shares a bullish view. Bloomberg’s Senior Commodity Strategist Mike McGlone said in a post on X that Bitcoin and the S&P 500 Index may drop toward their respective 200-week simple moving average, which historically acts as a floor during major corrections. Bitcoin’s 200-week SMA is close to $46,000.

What are the critical support and resistance levels in Bitcoin? What cryptocurrencies may rally if Bitcoin breaks above its overhead resistance?

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin has stayed above the 20-day exponential moving average ($83,704) for the past several days, but the bulls have failed to challenge the 200-day simple moving average ($88,098).