By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Liberation Day is done, and markets finally have clarity on U.S. tariffs. Starting April 5, all U.S. trading partners will face a minimum of a 10% import tariff, with higher, country-specific tariffs kicking in on April 9 for about 60 countries.

President Donald Trump introduced the tariffs based on perceived trade imbalances and non-tariff barriers, saying the goal is to encourage reshoring of production, generate revenue to help fund tax cuts and level the playing field for U.S. manufacturers.

Among the most affected countries is China, which faces a new 34% tariff on top the existing levy, bringing its total to 54%. Many other Asian economies have also been hit hard, while the European Union faces a 20% tariff.

There’s been growing interest in how the U.S. determined the tariff rates, which the administration called reciprocal. One user on X claims to have cracked the formula: Take a country’s trade deficit with the U.S. and divide it by that country’s exports to the U.S.

For example, Vietnam exports $136.6 billion to the U.S. and imports just $13.1 billion, resulting in a $123.5 billion trade deficit. When you divide the deficit by exports, you get about 90%, which aligns with the implied reciprocal tariff rate the U.S. has applied.

Global stocks are under pressure, with the Nikkei 225 losing 2.8% after dropping as much as 4.6% and the FTSE 100 losing more than 1%. Nasdaq futures are down over 3.5%. Vietnam led losses in Asia, falling 5.5% in its worst single-day drop for over four years.

The dollar weakened too, with the yen rallying to 147 against the U.S. currency and the pound to 1.31. The dollar index (DXY) fell to 102.5. Bitcoin (BTC) remains firm above $83,000, though still below its 200-day moving average of $86,400 — a key level it needs to reclaim.

The all-important U.S. 10-year Treasury yield is hovering just above 4%, the lowest level since October, which is seen as a positive for the administration in order to get interest-rates down. Stay alert!

What to Watch

Crypto:

April 5: The purported birthday of Satoshi Nakamoto.

April 9, 10:00 a.m.: U.S. House Financial Services Committee hearing about how the U.S. securities laws could be updated to take into account digital assets. Livestream link.

Macro

April 3, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment insurance data for the week ended March 29.

Initial Jobless Claims Est. 225K vs. Prev. 224K

April 3, 9:00 a.m.: S&P Global releases Brazil March purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.

Composite PMI Prev. 51.2

Services PMI Prev. 50.6

April 3, 9:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases Canada March purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.

Composite PMI Prev. 46.8

Services PMI Prev. 46.6

April 3, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases (Final) U.S. March purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.

Composite PMI Est. 53.5 vs. Prev. 51.6

Services PMI Est. 54.3 vs. Prev. 51

April 3, 10:00 a.m.: Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases U.S. March economic activity data.

Services PMI Est. 53 vs. Prev. 53.5

April 3, 10:00 a.m.: April 3, 10:00 a.m.: The U.S. Senate Banking Committee will meet in executive session to vote on the nominations of Paul Atkins as SEC chair and Jonathan Gould as comptroller of the currency. Livestream link.

April 3, 12:30 p.m.: Fed Vice Chair Philip N. Jefferson will give a speech titled “U.S. Economic Outlook and Central Bank Communications.” Livestream link.

April 4, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases March employment data.

Unemployment Rate Est. 6.7% vs. Prev. 6.6%

April 4, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases March employment data.

Nonfarm Payrolls Est. 140K vs. Prev. 151K

Unemployment Rate Est. 4.1% vs. Prev. 4.1%

April 4, 11:25 a.m.: Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell will give a speech titled “Economic Outlook.”

April 5, 12:01 a.m.: The Trump administration’s 10% baseline tariff on imports from all countries takes effect.

April 9, 12:01 a.m.: The Trump administration’s higher individualized tariffs on imports from top U.S. trade deficit countries take effect.

Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)

No earnings scheduled.

Token Events

Governance votes & calls

Yearn DAO is discussing a revised proposal to endorse and fund “Bearn,” a new sub-DAO for building DeFi products including a yield-backed stablecoin and a BGT liquid locker. The proposal seeks $200,000 for audit costs and $1 million in locked liquidity, offering 5% of BEARN tokens to the Yearn Treasury in return.

Lido DAO is discussing the re-endorsement of wstETH on Starknet as the canonical bridge endpoint following a completed migration from the legacy token.

April 3, 9 a.m.: SafePal, Wallet Connect and Trader to host a monthly community livestream discussing monthly updates for the projects.

April 3, 2 p.m.: Arbitrum to host an X Spaces session on real-world assets on Arbitrum.

April 3, 3 p.m.: Movement to host an X Spaces session on non-fungible tokens.

April 3, 12 p.m.: Seamless Protocol, Morpho Labs and Gauntlet to host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session.

April 3, 12 p.m.: Wormhole to host an ecosystem call covering the latest updates and developments.

April 7, 9 a.m.: OriginTrail to host a “Shaping AI for Good” Zoom talk.

April 7, 4 p.m.: Livepeer to host a monthly community call focused on governance, funding and the strategic direction of its on-chain treasury.

Unlocks

April 3: Wormhole (W) to unlock 47.64% of its circulating supply worth $118.42 million.

April 5: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 3.25% of its circulating supply worth $55.30 million.

April 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.59% of its circulating supply worth $9.73 million.

April 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $19.71 million.

April 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.87% of its circulating supply worth $59.49 million.

Token Listings

April 3: Mantle (MNT), Vine Coin (VINE), CZ’s Dog (BROCCOLI), Moca Network (MOCA) and Nakamoto Games (NAKA) to be listed on DigiFinex.

April 3: Binance to list Gunz (GUN).

April 4: Pintu (PTU), Spartan Protocol (SPARTA), Derby Stars (DSRUN), Veloce (VEXT), BOB, and Kryptonite (SEILOR) to be deslisted from Bybit.

Conferences

CoinDesk’s Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

Day 2 of 2: Southeast Asia Blockchain Week 2025 Main Conference (Bangkok)

Day 2 of 4: ETH Bucharest Conference & Hackathon (Romania)

Day 1 of 4: BitBlockBoom (Dallas)

April 6-9: Hong Kong Web3 Festival

April 8-10: Paris Blockchain Week

April 10: Bitcoin Educators Unconference (Nashville)

April 15-16: BUIDL Asia 2025 (Seoul)

April 22-24: Money20/20 Asia (Bangkok)

April 23: Crypto Horizons 2025 (Dubai)

April 23-24: Blockchain Forum 2025 (Moscow)

April 24: Bitwise’s Investor Day for Bitcoin Standard Corporations (New York)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

Treasure DAO, a decentralized video-game ecosystem, is restructuring to extend its financial runway to February 2026, with chief contributor John Patten resuming a leadership role and proposing a plan to streamline operations, cut costs, and focus on four key products: marketplace, Bridgeworld, Smolworld and AI agent.

As part of cost-cutting measures, 15 contributors have left or been laid off, Patten said in a video posted on X, and game publishing support and the treasure chain will be terminated.

He further proposed withdrawing $785,000 from Flowdesk to increase the DAO’s treasury, which currently holds $2.4 million and 22.3 million MAGIC tokens valued at $2.3 million.

Patten warned that with the current burn rate of $8.3 million annually and a potential decline in MAGIC’s value, the DAO could become unsustainable between December 2025 and February 2026 without these changes.

Derivatives Positioning

BTC, ETH basis on the CME and offshore exchanges is holding at around an annualized 5% after the overnight sell-off.

XRP, BNB and SOL are seeing negative funding rates in a sign of renewed bias for bearish, short bets, according to data source Velo.

XRM, BTC and OM stand out with positive cumulative volume deltas hinting at net buying in the past 24 hours.

The bearish mood in Deribit’s BTC and ETH options now extends out to the end of June as opposed to May before the U.S. tariff announcement.

Market Movements

BTC is down 2.17% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday at $83,799.17 (24hrs: -1.62%)

ETH is down 1.93% at $1,844.66 (24hrs: -3.15%)

CoinDesk 20 is down 0.56% at 2,559.88 (24hrs: -0.07%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 8 bps at 3.02%

BTC funding rate is at 0.0047% (5.0983% annualized) on Binance

DXY is down 1.66% at 102.09

Gold is up 0.32% at $3,149.9/oz

Silver is down 4.14% at $33.07/oz

Nikkei 225 closed -2.77% at 34,735.93

Hang Seng closed -1.52% at 22,849.81

FTSE is down 1.33% at 8,494.33

Euro Stoxx 50 is down 2.13% at 5,191.06

DJIA closed on Wednesday +0.56% at 42,225.32

S&P 500 closed +0.67% at 5670.97

Nasdaq closed +0.87% at 17,601.05

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +1.09% at 25,307.20

S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.3% at 2,448.23

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 7 bps at 4.05%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 3.05% at 5,538.00

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 3.3% at 19,105.25

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 2.53% at 41,416.00

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 62.86 (0.13%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02176 (0.05%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 835 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $47.31

Total Fees: 4.43 BTC / $377,634

CME Futures Open Interest: 138,385 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 26.5 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 7.53%

Technical Analysis

Solana’s SOL token dropped below $125, which acted as demand zone several times last year.

The breakdown of the key support signals continuation of the downtrend, with the next support at $100 followed by $78, the January 2024 low.

Crypto Equities

Strategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $312.54 (+2.13%), down 4.69% at $297.89 in pre-market

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $182.95 (+4.83%), down 5.49% at $172.90

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$17.10 (+4.72%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $12.42 (+4.9%), down 6.28% at $11.64

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $8.02 (+6.37%), down 5.61% at $7.57

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $8.42 (+5.25%), down 6.18% at $7.90

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.02 (+6.08%), down 7.11% at $7.45

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $14.24 (+4.17%)

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $37.03 (+1.4%)

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $47.33 (+3.73%), down 0.72% at $46.99

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: $218.1 million

Cumulative net flows: $36.33 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1.12 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: -$51.3 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.38 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.42 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

Traders on decentralized prediction platform Polymarket now see an above-50% chance of the U.S. economy slipping into a recession this year.

The outlook may weigh on risky assets in the short-term.

While You Were Sleeping

U.S. Recession Odds Surge in Prediction Markets on Tariff Shock. What Next for BTC? (CoinDesk): Recession odds on Kalshi and Polymarket jumped above 50% after the tariff announcement, sending U.S. stock futures and bitcoin lower on trade war fears.

Bitcoin Nears Death Cross, Yuan Tumbles With Asian Markets After Trump Tariffs Put Focus on China’s Response (CoinDesk): Asian equities and U.S. stock futures declined, while bitcoin approached a bearish technical pattern amid escalating trade tensions.

XRP in Focus as RLUSD Sees $100M Minted on Ripple Payments Boost (CoinDesk): Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin saw increased issuance this week following its addition to the company’s payments platform.

Trump’s ‘Reciprocal’ Tariff Formula Is All About Trade Deficits (Bloomberg): The White House said the individualized reciprocal tariffs were set by halving each country’s 2024 trade surplus with the U.S. as a share of its exports.

EU’s Von Der Leyen Vows Response to Trump’s 20% Tariffs (The Wall Street Journal): Von Der Leyen said the bloc is finalizing a response to steel tariffs and warned further retaliatory measures were in the works if talks with the U.S. fail.

‘Absolutely Nothing Good’ Coming out of Trump’s Tariff Announcement: Analysts React to Latest U.S. Levies (CNBC): Analysts warned Trump’s sweeping tariffs could spark stagflation, damage global growth and drive the U.S. into recession, with some noting the measures rival 1930s-era trade barriers.

China Urges U.S. to Immediately Lift Tariffs, Vows Retaliation (Reuters): China’s Commerce Ministry said the U.S. tariffs ignore past multilateral trade agreements and overlook how much Washington has historically gained from global commerce.

In the Ether

The Bitcoin Development Mailing List, a key communication platform for developers of the original blockchain, was briefly offline on Wednesday after an apparent bot attack.

Google flagged the publicly viewable group as containing “spam, malware, or other malicious content.” Users accessing the group received a “permanently removed” message while the issue was being sorted out.

The active group is used to discuss Bitcoin proposals, relay development messages, and flag and solve any issues across the Bitcoin ecosystem. It moved to Google in February 2024. Its previous hosts were the Linux Foundation, Oregon State University Open Source Lab’s infrastructure and SourceForge.net.

“Apparently we’re «permanently removed». Our transgression? We’re «unwanted content,” developer Ruben Somsen posted on X. “Really Google? Open source development is «unwanted»?”

Google’s Workspace Support resolved the issue early Thursday, according to an X post. It did not provide a clear reason for the removal.

Reports suggested the takedown could have been due to a bot attack, where a malicious actor performs an extremely high number of tasks (such as clicks or visits) to disable a service and create havoc within a specific environment.

The intrusion comes as the bitcoin (BTC) price grapples with high volatility amid a shaky macroeconomic environment, stemming from a slew of U.S. tariffs announced Wednesday.

Bitcoin blockchain’s hashrate is surging, revealing a growing dislocation between the network activity and prices for its native token bitcoin (BTC).

On a 14-day moving average, the hashrate, representing the computational power required to mine a block on the proof-of-work Bitcoin blockchain, recently reached an all-time high of 838 exahashes per second (EH/s), and on a 24-hour time frame, it spiked to 974 EH/s, the second highest level ever, according to Glassnode data.

Measuring over a 24-hour window can be misleading due to block time variability, so longer timeframes give more reliable insights. In two days, Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment — which recalibrates every 2016 blocks to maintain a 10-minute block interval — is expected to increase by over 3%, reaching a new peak.

This divergence between hash rate and price is notable. While bitcoin remains about 25% below its all-time high, mining costs continue to rise. For miners to stay profitable and cover operational expenses and capital expenditures, a strong bitcoin price, full blocks and high transaction fees are essential.

Currently, miners earn revenue through two channels: block rewards (3.125 BTC per block in the current epoch) and transaction fees. However, transaction fees are extremely low — averaging around 4 BTC per day, or roughly $377,634. As bitcoin’s block subsidy continues to halve every four years, sustained or increasing transaction activity will be critical to maintaining mining incentives.

Near empty blocks

Developer Mononaut, from Mempool, recently noted that Foundry USA Pool mined the emptiest «non-empty» block in over two years, containing just seven transactions — a rarity only surpassed by a block with four transactions back in January 2023.

In other words, while the rising hashrate paints a picture of a booming network, the near-empty blocks make it the case of a powerful train speeding down the tracks but without passengers.

That’s a cause for concern for Nicolas Gregory, creator of the Mercury Layer and a former Nasdaq Board Director.

“Half-empty bitcoin blocks tell a tale — hawking the store-of-value line could scupper its future,» Gregory said on X.

«I hope bitcoiners realize this space is more than just podcasts, spaces, and the ‘number go up’ digital gold narrative. If we don’t get people using bitcoin for real commerce, it’s game over,» Gregory added.