Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Reasserts Itself as Stocks, Bonds Fall, Gold Hits Record High
By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
«There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.» Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Few quotes better capture the current turbulence in global markets. For decades, the classic portfolio of 60% equities and 40% bonds was considered the cornerstone of balanced investing. This allocation typically offered protection in downturns through bonds, while equities drove returns in times of economic growth.
We saw this play out during crises like 2008 and 2020, when iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) surged amid global uncertainty. Today, that dynamic has been upended. With persistent geopolitical tension ignited by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, stubborn inflation and slowing growth, Treasury yields have climbed and bond prices fallen. TLT is now down some 50% from its 2020 highs.
The equity side of the portfolio isn’t faring much better. U.S. stocks are underperforming, caught in what some are calling a broader «Sell America» trade. Even the dollar, which typically strengthens in risk-off environments, is weakening as capital flows shift toward the yen and euro.
In this new regime, alternative assets are taking center stage. Gold has surged to $3,500 an ounce for the first time, cementing its role as a haven. To underscore its meteoric rise: the precious metal has added about $6 trillion in market cap this year, triple the market cap of bitcoin (BTC) at its all-time high. Gold ETF inflows, measured over a 90-day rolling period, are approaching 9 million ounces, the biggest surge since 2022 and among the largest in the past decade.
Bitcoin, while lagging behind gold, is also reasserting itself. It has reached new highs in dominance within the crypto market and is beginning to diverge from U.S. tech stocks. It’s increasingly behaving like an uncorrelated asset, valuable in a diversified portfolio. This Friday, $6.7 billion in bitcoin options are set to expire, including $330 million in call options at the $100,000 strike price, setting the stage for a potentially volatile final week of April. Stay alert!
What to Watch
- Crypto:
- April 22: The Lyora upgrade goes live on the Injective (INJ) mainnet.
- April 25, 1 p.m.: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Crypto Task Force Roundtable on «Key Considerations for Crypto Custody«.
- April 28: Enjin Relaychain increases active validator slots to 25 from 15, to enhance decentralization.
- April 29, 1:05 a.m.: BNB Chain (BNB) — BSC mainnet hardfork.
- April 30, 9:30 a.m.: ProShares expects its XRP ETF, offering exposure through futures and swap agreements, to begin trading on NYSE Arca.
- 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.
- Macro
- Day 2 of 6: World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) spring meetings in Washington.
- April 22, 8:30 p.m.: Statistics Canada releases March producer price inflation data.
- PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%
- PPI YoY Prev. 4.9%
- April 22, 6 p.m.: Fed Governor Adriana D. Kugler will deliver a speech titled «Transmission of Monetary Policy.»
- April 23, 8 a.m.: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases retail sales data.
- Retail Sales MoM Prev. 0.6%
- Retail Sales YoY Prev. 2.7%
- April 23, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases (flash) U.S. April purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.
- Composite PMI Prev. 53.5
- Manufacturing PMI Est. 49.4 vs. Prev. 50.2
- Services PMI Est. 52.8 vs. Prev. 54.4
- Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
Token Events
- Governance votes & calls
- Aave DAO is discussing partnering with Ether.fi to create a custom Aave market on EVM layer 2 to “facilitate on-chain credit for everyday payments through the Ether.fi Cash credit card program.”
- April 23, 9 p.m.: Manta Network to host a townhall meeting with its founders.
- April 24, 8 a.m.: Alchemy Pay to host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on its 2025 roadmap.
- April 30, 12 p.m.: Helium to host a community call meeting.
- Unlocks
- April 30: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.89% of its circulating supply worth $21.83 million.
- May 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 2.28% of its circulating supply worth $170.93 million.
- May 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 5.67% of its circulating supply worth $10.46 million.
- May 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.73% of its circulating supply worth $11.92 million.
- May 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.56% of its circulating supply worth $13 million.
- May 9: Movement (MOVA) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $11.23 million.
- Token Launches
- April 22: Hyperlane to airdrop its HYPER tokens.
- April 22: BNB to be listed on Kraken.
- April 23: Zora to airdrop its ZORA tokens.
- April 24: Initia (INIT) to be listed on Binance, CoinW, WEEX, KuCoin, MEXC, and others.
Conferences:
- CoinDesk’s Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.
- Day 1 of 3: 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)
- April 26: Crypto Vision Conference 2025 (Manilla)
- April 26-27: Harvard Blockchain in Action Conference (Cambridge, Mass.)
- April 27: N Crypto Conference 2025 (Kyiv)
- April 27-30: Web Summit Rio 2025
- April 28-29: Blockchain Disrupt 2025 (Dubai)
- April 28-29: Staking Summit Dubai
- April 29: El Salvador Digital Assets Summit 2025 (San Salvador)
- April 29: IFGS 2025 (London)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
- Pope Francis’ death on Easter Monday triggered significant activity in crypto markets and prediction platforms as traders aimed to capitalize on the news.
- LUCE, a Solana-based memecoin tied to the Vatican’s Holy Year 2025 mascot, surged 45% in value, reaching $0.013, according to CoinGecko data.
- Daily trading volume in the token skyrocketed to $60.27 million from $5 million the previous day, despite the price being down 95% from its November peak of 30 cents.
- Although unaffiliated with the Vatican, LUCE has attracted around 44,800 holders.
- Meanwhile, a Polymarket bet on who will be the next pope has attracted over $3.5 million in volumes since going live on Dec. 31, with over 18 candidates in the mix.
- As of Tuesday morning, Pietro Parolin leads odds at 37%, followed by Luis Antonio Tagle at 23% and Matteo Zuppi at 11%.
Derivatives Positioning
- HBAR, XLM and TRX have seen the most growth in perpetual futures open interest among major tokens in the past 24 hours. However, only TRX has seen a positive cumulative volume delta, implying an influx of new money predominantly on the bullish side.
- BTC’s open interest in has increased to 695K BTC, the most since March 25. ETH’s open interest held shy of the recent record above 11.9 million ETH.
- Perpetual funding rates for most major tokens remain marginally positive in a sign of cautiously bullish sentiment.
- On Deribit, BTC’s short and near-dated calls are now trading at par or a slight premium to puts, another sign of renewed bullishness. ETH puts, however, continue to trade at a premium to calls.
- Block options flows have been muted on Paradigm, with calendar spreads and April put spreads lifted in BTC and ETH.
Market Movements:
- BTC is up 1.45% from 4 p.m. ET Monday at $88,539.04 (24hrs: +1.16%)
- ETH is up 3.43% at $1,628.60 (24hrs: -0.84%)
- CoinDesk 20 is up 1.49% at 2,544.64 (24hrs: -0.3%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 3 bps at 2.98%
- BTC funding rate is at -0.0058% (-2.1353% annualized) on Binance
- DXY is up 0.1% at 98.38
- Gold is up 4.28% at $3,456.97/oz
- Silver is up 0.5% at $32.57/oz
- Nikkei 225 closed -0.17% at 34,220.60
- Hang Seng closed +0.78% at 21,562.32
- FTSE is up 0.49% at 8,315.81
- Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.28% at 4,922.48
- DJIA closed on Monday -2.48% at 38,170.41
- S&P 500 closed -2.36% at 5,158.20
- Nasdaq closed -2.55% at 15,870.90
- S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.76% at 24,008.86
- S&P 40 Latin America closed unchanged at 2,384.47
- U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is unchanged at 4.42%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.98% at 5,235.75
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 1.02% at 18,105.00
- E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.87% at 38,660.00
Bitcoin Stats:
- BTC Dominance: 64.39% (-0.09%)
- Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01839 (1.88%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 840 EH/s
- Hashprice (spot): $45.0 PH/s
- Total Fees: 6.56BTC / $572,645
- CME Futures Open Interest: 139,765 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 25.5 oz
- BTC vs gold market cap: 7.22%
Technical Analysis
- If you feel gold’s rally is overstretched or overdone, think again.
- The ratio between gold’s spot price and its 200-day simple moving average, currently 1.3, is well below highs seen in 2011-2012 when the yellow metal rose to its then-record price of $2,000.
- The ratio went as high as 5.80 in the 1980.
- Bitcoin tends to follow gold with a lag of couple of months.
Crypto Equities
- Strategy (MSTR): closed on Monday at $317.76 +0.18%), up 2.02% at $324.19 in pre-market
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $175 (-0.02%), up 1% at $176.75
- Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$15.38 (+0.13%)
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $12.29 (-2.92%), up 2.36% at $12.59
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $6.29 (-2.63%), up 2.07% at $6.42
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $6.39 (-3.62%)
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.47 (-0.53%), up 2.68% at $7.67
- CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $11.74 (-2.49%)
- Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $29.83 (-8.17%)
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $36.59 (+0.03%), unchanged in pre-market
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
- Daily net flow: $381.3 million
- Cumulative net flows: $35.86 billion
- Total BTC holdings ~ 1.11 million
Spot ETH ETFs
- Daily net flow: -$25.4 million
- Cumulative net flows: $2.24 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~ 3.30 million
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
- The chart shows the price of eggs in the U.S. has increased by over 200% since 2024, outperforming BTC’s 100% surge. Gold and the S&P 500 have gained 46% and 21%, respectively, over the same period.
- In other words, asset price growth has failed to compensate holders for the inflation on Main Street.
While You Were Sleeping
- Bitcoin, Euro Options Signal Bullishness Against Dollar Amid Equity and Bond Market Downturns (CoinDesk): Preference for BTC and euro call options over dollar exposure suggests investors are rotating out of U.S. assets and into bitcoin, the euro and gold.
- Dow Headed for Worst April Since 1932 as Investors Send ‘No Confidence’ Signal (The Wall Street Journal): Scott Ladner, chief investment officer at Horizon Investments, said the Trump administration’s policies have made the U.S. economy increasingly unstable and difficult to gauge, deterring investment.
- Bitcoin Runs Into Resistance Cluster Above $88K. What Next? (CoinDesk): Behavioral aspects of trading could influence whether bitcoin rallies further or faces a new downturn from the resistance zone.
- Bearish Dollar Bets Move Toward Levels That Raise Risk of Recoil (Bloomberg): Despite widespread bets against the dollar, steady demand for Treasuries and technical signals suggest a rebound is likely, though gains may be limited or short-lived if negative news continues.
- Japanese Investors Sold $20B of Foreign Debt as Trump Tariffs Shook Markets (Financial Times): Much of Japan’s selling likely involves U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the U.S. government, said Tomoaki Shishido, senior rates strategist at Nomura.
- Bitcoin, Stablecoins Command Over 70% of Crypto Market as BTC Pushes Higher (CoinDesk): Bitcoin dominance rose to 64.6%, the highest since January 2021, as ether slumped and the ETH-to-BTC ratio fell to a five-year low of 0.01765.
In the Ether
CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2556.62, up 2.1% (+52.39) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.
Fifteen of 20 assets are trading higher.
Leaders: SUI (+7.5%) and POL (+7.5%).
Laggards: FIL (-4.5%) and XLM (-1.6%).
The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.
Tally, a leader in on-chain governance tooling, has secured $8 million in Series A funding aimed at scaling its governance technology to more crypto-native decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Tally is best known for the Tally Protocol, which powers infrastructure to help leading protocols conduct effective on-chain governance of their DAOs, including Arbitrum, Uniswap DAO, ZKsync, Wormhole, Eigenlayer, Obol and Hyperlane.
«We’ve built this complete stack of software for operating these on-chain organizations,» Dennison Bertram, CEO and co-founder of Tally Protocol, said in an interview with CoinDesk. «We can take you from your idea to launching your token, to distributing your membership or ownership, all the way to the value accrual for your protocol.»
The platform began as a DAO governance tool and has evolved into the most widely adopted software stack for on-chain organizations across the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, it said in a release.
«On-chain governance and capital formation could, in theory, dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of forming and operating organizations by moving these processes entirely into software rather than traditional jurisdictions guided by platforms like Tally,» Bertram said.
One day, on-chain organizations might be seen as a way to compete with nation states, he argued, referencing the costly and lawyer-intensive process of registering foundations and other legal entities typically used for crypto.
«Whoever embraces crypto really fully might actually be embracing fully the future,» he said.
Fixing vote turnout for better governance
One issue that Tally aims to tackle with funding from the Series A is low voter participation and apathy in DAO governance, which has led to sometimes controversial outcomes.
Last year, for example, a group of CompoundDAO token holders, called Golden Boys, successfully passed a controversial proposal to create a yield-bearing product called goldCOMP.
Despite initially gaining traction, the proposal faced significant controversy due to perceived irregularities, low voter turnout and a lack of widespread community engagement.
Ultimately, the Golden Boys agreed to cancel goldCOMP, which highlighted the broader issue of governance apathy within DAOs rather than any technical exploit or malicious intent.
«Many of the people that you should expect to vote ‘no’ on something like this didn’t show up,» Bertram said in an earlier interview. «What it shows is that the democratic process of governing a DAO is imperfect and needs improvement.»
To address this, Tally has developed staking mechanisms designed to reward active governance participants economically. Users can stake their governance tokens to receive Tally Liquid Staked Tokens (tLSTs), earning passive, auto-compounding yields while retaining voting rights within DAOs.
“This fundraise is really about leaning into the original vision,” Bertram said. “Now that we’ve proven that this works, that you can have these large organizations, it’s time to really scale it up.”
Institutions are getting involved in DAOs
Bertram also emphasized that recent regulatory clarity and shifts in attitude toward crypto governance in the U.S. have opened the door for increased institutional participation in DAOs.
“With this clarity, we’re going to get a lot more participation, not necessarily from average Joe token holders, but actually from large organizations that depend on the infrastructure they’re building on,” he said. “These organizations are going to need and want the ability to actually govern the infrastructure that they operate on.”
Ultimately, Bertram sees Tally’s role as pivotal in advancing decentralized governance and unlocking greater economic value for token holders by directly rewarding active, informed participants.
«Given the new acceptance of crypto as a key driver of future value in America, it’s time to scale it beyond crypto and make it a core primitive for creating new organizations,” he said.
The round was led by Appworks and Blockchain Capital with participation from BitGo amongst others.
Tally previously raised $7.5 million in 2021 across two funding rounds.
Uncategorized
Dutch Bank ING Said to Be Working on a New Stablecoin With Other TradFi and Crypto Firms
Dutch bank ING is working on a stablecoin, looking to take advantage of Europe’s new cryptocurrency regulations that came into force last year, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.
ING’s stablecoin project could take the form of a consortium effort involving other banks and crypto service providers, both people said.
“ING is working on a stablecoin project with a few other banks. It’s moving slow as multiple banks need board approval to set up a joint entity,” one of the sources said.
ING declined to comment.
Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets regime [MiCA] requires stablecoin issuers across EU member countries to hold an authorization license, while promoting the potential of euro-denominated stablecoins (the vast majority of the stablecoins in circulation are pegged to the U.S. dollar).
MiCA’s stablecoin rules, which also require issuers to maintain significant reserves in banks based in Europe, have strengthened compliant offerings like Circle’s euro stablecoin EURC over its main rival Tether, according to a note early this year from JPMorgan.
Banks like ING entering the European stablecoin space means French lender Société Générale, the first big bank to offer a stablecoin through its SG Forge innovation division, will soon have some competition.
Read more: Stablecoin Market Could Grow to $2T by End-2028: Standard Chartered
CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: SUI and POL Rise 7.5%, Leading Index Higher
Dutch Bank ING Said to Be Working on a New Stablecoin With Other TradFi and Crypto Firms
DAO Infrastructure Provider Tally Raises $8M to Scale On-Chain Governance
-
Fashion6 месяцев agoThese \’90s fashion trends are making a comeback in 2017
-
Entertainment6 месяцев ago
The final 6 \’Game of Thrones\’ episodes might feel like a full season
-
Fashion6 месяцев ago
According to Dior Couture, this taboo fashion accessory is back
-
Entertainment6 месяцев ago
The old and New Edition cast comes together to perform
-
Sports6 месяцев ago
Phillies\’ Aaron Altherr makes mind-boggling barehanded play
-
Business6 месяцев ago
Uber and Lyft are finally available in all of New York State
-
Entertainment6 месяцев ago
Disney\’s live-action Aladdin finally finds its stars
-
Sports6 месяцев ago
Steph Curry finally got the contract he deserves from the Warriors