DUBAI, UAE — Tokenization firm Securitize and decentralized finance (DeFi) specialist Gauntlet are planning to bring a tokenized version of Apollo’s credit fund to DeFi, a notable step in embedding real-world assets into the crypto ecosystem.

The two firms are unveiling Wednesday a leveraged-yield strategy offering centered on the Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED), a tokenized feeder fund that debuted in January and invests in Apollo’s $1 billion Diversified Credit Fund. The strategy will run on Compound Blue, a lending protocol powered by Morpho,

The offering, called Levered RWA Strategy, will be first available on Polygon (POL). It is expected to expand to the Ethereum mainnet and other blockchains after a pilot phase.

«The idea behind the product is we want our securities to be plug and play competitive with stablecoin strategies writ large,» Reid Simon, head of DeFi and credit solutions at Securitize, said in an interview with CoinDesk.

DeFi strategy built on tokenized asset

The introduction comes as tokenized RWAs — funds, bonds, credit products — gain traction among traditional finance giants. BlackRock, HSBC, and Franklin Templeton are among the firms exploring blockchain-based asset issuance and settlement. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries alone have pulled in over $6 billion, according to data from RWA.xyz.

While institutions are experimenting with tokenization, the next challenge is making these assets usable across DeFi applications. That includes enabling their use as collateral for loans, margin trading or building investment strategies not possible on legacy rails.

The strategy employs a DeFi-native yield-optimization technique called «looping», in which ACRED tokens deposited into a vault are used as collateral to borrow USDC, which is then used to purchase more ACRED. The process repeats recursively to enhance yield, with exposure adjusted dynamically based on real-time borrowing and lending rates.

All trades are automated using smart contracts, reducing the need for manual oversight. Risk is actively managed by Gauntlet’s risk engine, which monitors leverage ratios and can unwind positions in volatile market conditions to protect users.

«This is expected to deliver the institutional-grade DeFi that our industry has promised for years,» Morpho CEO and cofounder Paul Frambot said. «This use case uniquely demonstrates how DeFi enables investors in funds like ACRED to access financial composability that is simply not possible on traditional rails.”

The vault is also one of the first uses of Securitize’s new sToken tool, which allows accredited token holders to maintain compliance and investor protections within decentralized networks. In this case, ACRED investors first mint sACRED that they can use for broader DeFi strategies without breaking regulatory rules.

«This is a strong example of the institutional-grade DeFi we’ve been working to build: making tokenized securities not only accessible, but compelling to crypto-native investors seeking strategies that objectively outpace their traditional counterparts,” Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said in a statement.

By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Cryptocurrencies fell slightly in the past 24 hours, with the broad market CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index dropping 1.4%. Bitcoin (BTC) is little changed around $95,000. These figures are well within recently volatility ranges and come on the back of a strong monthly performance — BTC is on track to rise 15% in April, the most since November.

The market has been grappling with growing pessimism surrounding the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs on nearly every country and optimism that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates earlier than expected.

Stock prices have rallied over the past week on expectations Trump would lower the tariffs and the continuation of interest-rate cuts, according to Spanish bank Bankinter.

“Yet the perspective could turn for the worse from today, applying the logic of the data, because — regardless of tariffs and rate cuts — part of the damage has already been done, chiefly to confidence, which is the market’s foundation,” the bank wrote in a note.

Indeed, various major companies, including P&G, UPS, PepsiCo, American Airlines and GM, have lowered or pulled their earnings forecasts. Bankinter pointed out that French first-quarter GDP data released today showed a quarter-on-quarter increase that was entirely inventory-driven, while consumption, investment, and exports are weakening.

That bodes poorly for the U.S. figure, set to be released at 8:30 a.m. Some market observers, including Bankinter, suggest it could contract sharply. Bitcoin’s rise so far this year, contrasting with the stock market’s worst 100 days of a presidential administration since 1974, could be further evidence the cryptocurrency is starting to be used as a hedge.

As mentioned earlier in the week, Greg Cipolaro, the global head of research at NYDIG, wrote in a note that BTC has been acting “more like the non-sovereign issued store of value that it is.”

Bitcoin has decoupled from U.S. equities after the trade war between the U.S. and China escalated and has been seeing bets on it rise. This month, spot bitcoin ETFs posted monthly total net inflows of little over $3 billion according to SoSoValue data, further pointing to a flight to the cryptocurrency space amid the uncertainty. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto:
  • April 30, 9:30 a.m.: ProShares will debut three ETFs that will provide leveraged and inverse exposure to XRP: ​​the ProShares Ultra XRP ETF, the ProShares Short XRP ETF and the ProShares UltraShort XRP ETF.
  • April 30, 10:03 a.m.: Gnosis Chain (GNO), an Ethereum sister chain, will activate the Pectra hard fork on its mainnet at slot 21,405,696, epoch 1,337,856.
  • May 1: Coinbase Asset Management will introduce the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund (CBYF), which is aimed at non-U.S. investors.
  • May 1: Hippo Protocol starts up its own layer-1 blockchain mainnet built on Cosmos SDK and completes a migration from Ethereum’s ERC-20 HPO token to its native HP token, enabling staking and governance.
  • May 1, 9 a.m.: Constellation Network (DAG) activates the Tessellation v3 upgrade on its mainnet, introducing delegated staking, node collateral, token locking and new transaction types to enhance network security, scalability and functionality.
  • May 1, 11 a.m.: THORChain activates its v3.5 mainnet upgrade, adding the TCY token to convert $200 million in debt into equity. TCY holders earn 10% of network revenue, while native RUNE remains the protocol’s security and governance token. TCY activates May 5.
  • May 5, 3 a.m.: IOTA’s Rebased network upgrade starts. Rebased moves IOTA to a new network, boosting capacity to as many as 50,000 transactions per second, offering staking rewards of 10%-15% a year and adding support for MoveVM smart contracts.
  • May 5, 10 a.m.: The Crescendo network upgrade goes live on the Kaspa (KAS) mainnet. This upgrade boosts the network’s performance by increasing the block production rate to 10 blocks per second from 1 block per second.
• Macro
  • April 30, 8 a.m.: Brazil’s Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases March unemployment rate data.
    • Unemployment Rate Est. 7% vs. Prev. 6.8%
  • April 30, 8 a.m.: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases (preliminary) Q1 GDP growth data.
    • GDP Growth Rate QoQ Prev. -0.6%
    • GDP Growth Rate YoY Prev. 0.5%
  • April 30, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases (advance) Q1 GDP growth data.
    • GDP Growth Rate QoQ Est. 0.4% vs. Prev. 2.4%
  • April 30, 10 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases March consumer income and expenditure data.
    • Core PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.1% vs. Prev. 0.4%
    • Core PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.6% vs. Prev. 2.8%
    • PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0% vs. Prev. 0.3%
    • PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.2% vs. Prev. 2.5%
    • Personal Income MoM Est. 0.4% vs. Prev. 0.8%
    • Personal Spending MoM Est. 0.6% vs. Prev. 0.4%
  • May 1, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment insurance data for the week ended April 26.
    • Initial Jobless Claims Est. 224K vs. Prev. 222K
  • May 1, 9:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases Canada April purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.
    • Manufacturing PMI Prev. 46.3
  • May 1, 10:00 a.m.: Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases U.S. April economic activity data.
    • Manufacturing PMI Est. 48 vs. Prev. 49
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • April 30: Robinhood Markets (HOOD), post-market, $0.33
  • May 1: Block (XYZ), post-market, $0.97
  • May 1: Reddit (RDDT), post-market, $0.02
  • May 1: Riot Platforms (RIOT), post-market, $-0.23
  • May 1: Strategy (MSTR), post-market, $-0.11
  • May 8: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $2.08
  • May 8: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market
  • May 8: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Compound DAO is voting on moving 35,200 COMP ($1.5 million) into a multisig safe to test selling covered calls on COMP for USDC, lend that USDC in Compound for extra yield, then use the returns to buy back COMP and repeat — targeting a roughly 15 % annual gain. Voting ends May 2.
  • April 30, 12 p.m.: Helium to host a community call meeting.
  • May 5, 4 p.m.: Livepeer (LPT) to host a Treasury Talk session on Discord.
• Unlocks
  • May 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 2.28% of its circulating supply worth $261.2 million.
  • May 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 5.67% of its circulating supply worth $12.31 million.
  • May 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.73% of its circulating supply worth $12.99 million.
  • May 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.56% of its circulating supply worth $13.08 million.
  • May 9: Movement (MOVA) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $12.31 million.
• Token Launches
  • May 2: Binance to delist Alpaca Finance (ALPACA), PlayDapp (PDA), Viberate (VIB), and Wing Finance (WING).
  • May 5: Sonic (S) to be listed on Kraken.

Conferences

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

• Day 4 of 4: Web Summit Rio 2025
• Day 1 of 2: TOKEN2049 (Dubai)
• May 6-7: Financial Times Digital Assets Summit (London)
• May 11-17: Canada Crypto Week (Toronto)
• May 12-13: Dubai FinTech Summit
• May 12-13: Filecoin (FIL) Developer Summit (Toronto)
• May 12-13: Latest in DeFi Research (TLDR) Conference (New York)
• May 12-14: ACI’s 9th Annual Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance Forum on Fintech & Emerging Payment Systems (New York)
• May 13: Blockchain Futurist Conference (Toronto)
• May 13: ETHWomen (Toronto)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• Solana-based Housecoin (HOUSE) zoomed to nearly $100 million market cap early Wednesday driven by a 24-hour price bump of 63% that brought its price to just under a cent.
• HOUSE has surged more than 900% in the past three weeks, mainly on niche popularity in crypto circles and mentions from well-followed X accounts.
• The trending memecoin is a satire on the real estate market, where prime locations are priced out for most of the general populace.
• Holding HOUSE is, jokingly, considered by its cult to be holding actual property even though the token is intrinsically valueless and not backed by any real-world assets.
• While its momentum and accessibility offer trading opportunities, its volatility, lack of clear fundamentals, and memecoin risks demand caution.

Derivatives Positioning

• Among large-cap assets on Binance, PEPE and ADA hold negative funding APRs of -14.7% and -11.2%, respectively, according to Velo data. In contrast, TON, XLM, and XMR have seen funding APRs spike to 11%, highlighting a clear divergence in speculative positioning across major tokens.
• In terms of open interest, BSW, DRIFT and PROMPT are among the top gainers, with daily open interest rising by 61%, 58%, and 33%, respectively — signaling idiosyncratic, intraday interest in these assets.
• ALPACA, a BNB Chain asset, recorded over $55 million in short liquidations in the past 24 hours. That’s the largest of any asset, according to CoinGlass data. The surge followed heavy short positioning after Binance’s delisting announcement a week ago, before a 550% price rally triggered widespread liquidations.

Market Movements

• BTC is down 0.19% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday at $94,915.28 (24hrs: unchanged)
• ETH is down 0.57% at $1,805.20 (24hrs: -1.48%)
• CoinDesk 20 is down 0.51% at 2,751.84 (24hrs: -1.27%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 19 bps at 2.99%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0008% (0.8377% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is up 0.19% at 99.43
• Gold is down 1.16% at $3,278.15/oz
• Silver is down 1.64% at $32.36/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed +0.57% at 36,045.38
• Hang Seng closed +0.51% at 22,119.41
• FTSE is up 0.13% at 8,474.22
• Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.24% at 5,174.41
• DJIA closed on Tuesday +0.75% at 40,527.62
• S&P 500 closed +0.56% at 5,560.83
• Nasdaq closed +0.55% at 17,461.32
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.31% at 24,874.48
• S&P 40 Latin America closed unchanged at 2,548.27
• U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 5 bps at 4.17%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.28% at 5,568.25
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.44% at 19,556.00
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.22% at 40,596.00

Bitcoin Stats

• BTC Dominance: 64.54 (0.16%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01902 (-0.31%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 837 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $49.08
• Total Fees: 6.17 BTC / $585,773.63
• CME Futures Open Interest: 134,825 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 28.9 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 8.19%

Technical Analysis

• With bitcoin and most digital assets breaching key high-timeframe liquidity levels, a market pullback now appears likely.
• Solana, along with many altcoins, has broken its weekly market structure with a strong upward move that swept liquidity at $153 before facing rejection at the 100-day exponential moving average (EMA) level.
• Bulls will want the price action to print a higher low with the 100-day EMA on the weekly time frame sitting at $137, aligning with the weekly orderblock of demand.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed at on Tuesday $381.45 (+3.3%), down 0.41% at $379.88 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $206.13 (+0.42%)
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at $21.09 (-0.57%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $14.22 (+1.5%), down 0.28% at $14.18
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.42 (-2.75%), down 0.40% at $7.39
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $8.29 (+0.61%), down 0.48% at $8.25
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.44 (-1.52%), down 0.24% at $8.42
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $14.19 (-0.98%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $33.97 (-3.96%), up 4.95% at $35.65
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $40.97 (-2.87%), up 2.49% at $41.99

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: $172.8 million
• Cumulative net flows: $39.16 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1.15 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: $18.4 million
• Cumulative net flows: $2.50 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.44 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• Alpaca Finance (ALPACA) emerged as the top gainer on centralized exchanges with a price that’s surged nearly 2,500% over the past seven days.
• The rally is driven by a significant short squeeze, following heavy short positioning in the wake of Binance’s April 24 delisting announcement.
• As a result, the token surged to a multiyear high of $1.375.

While You Were Sleeping

• Telegram’s TON Takes On Real World Assets With Libre’s $500M Tokenized Bond Fund (CoinDesk): Libre plans to tokenize $500 million in Telegram debt as the Telegram Bond Fund (TBF) on the TON blockchain.
• BlackRock Looking to Tokenize Shares of Its $150B Treasury Trust Fund, SEC Filing Shows (CoinDesk): The new «DLT» shares are expected to be bought and held through BNY, which plans to use blockchain technology to keep a mirror record of ownership for its clients.
• SEC Delays Dogecoin and XRP ETF Decisions (CoinDesk): The SEC delayed decisions on the Bitwise DOGE ETF and the Franklin XRP Fund until June 15 and June 17, respectively.
• Investors Turn to Emerging Market Debt After Trump Tariffs Hit U.S. Treasuries (CNBC): As confidence in Treasuries as a safe haven weakens, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa could see more bond demand, said Carol Lye, citing yield premiums and potential currency appreciation.
• Chinese Investors Pile Into Gold Funds at Record Pace (Financial Times): China’s gold ETF holdings have doubled to 6% of the global total, with $7.4 billion in inflows this month accounting for more than half of global demand.
• Asia Hedge Funds Add Japan, India After Tariff Shock, Says Morgan Stanley (Reuters): Funds increased exposure to Japanese tech, industrials and materials while retreating from Chinese consumer shares, as global investors expect Washington to strike trade deals with Tokyo and New Delhi.

In the Ether

The Nasdaq exchange filed a 19b-4 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday to approve listing and trading shares of the 21Shares Dogecoin ETF.

Asset manager 21Shares submitted an S-1 registration with the SEC on April 10, as reported, in partnership with the House of Doge — the Dogecoin Foundation’s corporate arm — to help promote the fund.

The ETF aims to track the performance of dogecoin, as measured by the CF DOGE-Dollar US Settlement Price Index, adjusted for the Trust’s expenses and other liabilities.

It is a passive investment vehicle that will hold DOGE directly. The Trust will not utilize leverage, derivatives, or any similar arrangements to meet its investment objective, the filing mentioned.

Coinbase Custody Trust will hold the fund’s tokens and serve as the official custodian for the ETF.

The filing comes as the SEC postponed its decision on Bitwise’s spot DOGE ETF application, extending the review period until June 15.