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Bitcoin Slumps Below $94K, but One Analyst Says $500K Forecast Remains in Play

The desultory price action in crypto continued on Tuesday, helping to drag bitcoin (BTC) closer to its lowest level in several months.
In early afternoon trading hours, bitcoin was trading at $93,600, lower by 2% over the past 24 hours and off 10% over the past week.
The broader crypto market as defined by the CoinDesk 20 Index was down 4% over the past 24 hours. Hitting that index was a 16% decline in solana (SOL), which is feeling the pain as the memecoin market may finally have reached peak grift and/or outright criminality over the weekend with the rugpull involving Argentine President Javier Millei. Solana is now down 35% over the past month and has given back all of its post-Trump election gains.
$500K still in play
Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick has previously said he expects bitcoin to eclipse $500,000 by the time Donald Trump leaves office.
Looking past the lame short-term price action, Kendrick — in a morning note on Tuesday — said the recent slate of 13F filings regarding institutional ownership of spot bitcoin ETFs gave him hope.
The type of buyer has evolved from retail to hedge funds and now to banks and sovereigns, said Kendrick, noting a boosted ETF stake from the likes of Goldman Sachs and the initial purchase of a bitcoin ETF by Abu Dhabi.
Kendrick: «Going forward, we would expect more very long-term-long-only money to buy bitcoin and would expect the Abu Dhabi position to be the start of much greater participation by sovereigns.»
Solana slump
Native tokens of protocols tied to the Solana trading environment weren’t spared either. Tokens of decentralized exchanges Raydium (RAY), Jupiter (JUP) posted double-digit losses today, while liquid staking service Jito (JTO) slid 7% lower, with all of them down over 30% from their Friday highs.
The Solana ecosystem, which is benefitted generously as a hub for memecoin trading and launching tokens, is grappling with the fallout from LIBRA, the latest scandalous pump-and-dump token launch that put several key figures in the Solana space and even Argentina’s President Javier Milei in the hot seat.
LIBRA was released on Friday and zoomed to $4 billion market capitalization after Milei’s X post saying the project would support small and mid-sized businesses in the country. The token then lost nearly all its market value as insiders cashed in $100 million and Milei backpedalled his support. Milei now faces fraud charges and a possible impeachment, and Solana-based DEX Meteora co-founder Ben Chow resigned after being implicated in the token launch.
«This is the latest sordid episode emanating from Solana’s memecoin complex,» Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy, said in a Tuesday note. The report pointed out that sentiment towards memecoins began to erode since the TRUMP token
If sentiment weren’t at rock bottom, the upcoming SOL unlock event increasing the token’s circulating supply injects an additional dose of uncertainty in the markets. Estimates vary on the exact amount of tokens to be released into circulation, but one hedge fund analyst forecasted that some 15.725 million SOL, worth roughly $2.5 billion at current prices, will be unlocked over the next three months, with much of the tokens coming from the FTX estate holdings.
«If an unlock of this scale occurs, it could increase the circulating supply of $SOL and potentially impact market dynamics,» Tokenomist analysts said in an X post. «Historical examples of large token unlocks have often led to heightened price volatility. However, it’s essential to note that the precise size of the unlock and the final date are still not publicly disclosed by any official entity.»
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Canary Capital Files for Tron ETF With Staking Capabilities

Canary Capital is looking to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking the price of Tron’s native token, TRX, according to a filing.
The hedge fund submitted a Form S-1 for the Canary Staked TRX ETF with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday. As the name suggests, the fund — if approved — would stake portions of its holdings.
This would be done through third-party providers, with BitGo acting as custodian for the assets. The fund would track TRX’s spot price using CoinDesk Indices calculations.
A proposed ticker as well as the management fee for the product have not been shared yet.
Issuers had initially filed applications for spot ethereum (ETH) ETFs with the staking feature included but removed them in an amended filing later in order to receive approval from the SEC on their proposals.
While the SEC under former Chair Gary Gensler was strictly against staking, issuers have grown more hopeful that they will be able to add the feature to their spot ether funds, among others, with the appointment of crypto-friendly Chair Paul Atkins.
A decision on a February request from Grayscale to allow staking in the Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHE) and the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust ETF (ETH) was postponed by the regulator just a few days ago.
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Feds Mistakenly Order Estonian HashFlare Fraudsters to Self-Deport Ahead of Sentencing

Just four months ahead of their criminal sentencing for operating a $577 million cryptocurrency mining Ponzi scheme, the two Estonian founders of HashFlare were seemingly mistakenly ordered to self-deport by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — an instruction that directly contradicted a court order for the men to remain in Washington state until they are sentenced in August.
In a joint letter to the court last week, lawyers for Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin told District Judge Robert Lasnik of the Western District of Washington that both men had received “disturbing communications” from DHS ordering them to leave the country immediately.
“It is time for you to leave the United States,” an email to Potapenko and Turogin dated April 11 read. “DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”
The email, included with the letter filed last week, threatened both men with “criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties and any other lawful options available to the federal government” if they stayed in the country. It resembles emails that undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike have received over the past few days.
Ironically, Potapenko and Turogin are not in the U.S. of their own volition — they were extradited from their native Estonia at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 on an 18-count indictment tied to their HashFlare scheme. Though they initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, in February they both pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and agreed to forfeit over $400 million in assets. They have both been in the Seattle area on bond since last July.
“Although there is nothing Ivan and Sergei would want more than to immediately go home, they understood that they are also under Court order to remain in King County,” wrote Mark Bini, a partner at Reed Smith LLP and lead counsel for Potenko, wrote in the pair’s joint letter to the court. Bini did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
In his letter, Bini said DHS’s emails had caused both Potapenko and Turogin «significant anxiety.”
“We and our clients have all seen recent news. Immigration authorities make mistakes, and individuals who should not be in custody end up in custody, sometimes even deported to places where they should not be deported,” Bini wrote.
Six days after Bini’s letter to the judge, the DOJ filed its own letter with the court saying that prosecutors had coordinated with DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division and secured a year-long deferral to the self-deportation order.
“This should provide ample time for the sentencing to take place,” the prosecution’s letter said.
DHS did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
Potapenko and Turogin are slated to be sentenced on August 14 in Seattle. Their lawyers have said that they will request to be sentenced to time served, meaning no additional time in prison, and to be sent home to Estonia “immediately.”
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CoinDesk Weekly Recap: EigenLayer, Kraken, Coinbase, AWS

Following last week’s tariff-caused drama, this was a relatively quiet week in crypto. Bitcoin remained stable around $84k. The CoinDesk 20, which tracks about 80% of the market, was up about 4% in the last seven days — i.e. nothing historic.
Still, plenty happened. On Tuesday, much of crypto went offline because of a tech issue at AWS, showing how the decentralized economy isn’t always that decentralized. Shaurya Malwa reported the news early. Bitcoin and other major cryptos slipped on bad news for Nvidia, Omkar Godbole reported.
Mantra, a project focused on real world assets, lost 90% of its value. Explanations varied (the company said it was due to “force liquidations” exchanges).
Meanwhile, EigenLayer, a restaking leader, rolled out a “slashing” feature meant to address security concerns (Sam Kessler reported). OKX, a major exchange, announced plans to set up in California following a $500 million settlement with the SEC over claims it operated previously in the U.S. without a money transmitter license. Cheyenne Ligon had that story.
In less good news, Kraken laid off “hundreds” of staff ahead of an expected IPO. And Coinbase became embroiled in a “front running controversy” linked to a curiously named token on its Base L2. Privacy advocates reacted with alarm to rumors that Binance was about to delist Zcash following a long decline in the value of privacy coins.
In D.C. news, Jesse Hamilton reported on a new wave of crypto lobbyists flooding the capital. Some asked if there are now too many trade groups and whether they really all could be effective.
Friends With Benefits, a buzzy social club for creative technologists, launched a new program to build Web3 products for music, film, publishing and other fun activities. (I wrote that one.)
Of course, there was plenty happening in the economy and markets (Trump’s disgust for Fed chair Powell fed into the unease). But, in crypto, it was pretty much business as usual. Fortunes won, fortunes lost, fortunes deferred.
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