Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

The Fed decided to keep interest rates unchanged this week, but Trump is advocating for a reduction. While there wasn't a complete pause on QT, the Treasury runoff slowed from $25 billion to $5 billion, indicating that the Fed is concerned about downside risks. Bitcoin spot ETFs had six consecutive days of net inflows while Ethereum spot ETFs experienced a 13-day streak of net outflows. Liquidity conditions are tightening in both on-chain and futures markets.

Options Market

Although there weren't any clear signs of market rallying back to all-time highs, the persistent selling pressure seen from the past few weeks seemed to ease further. The realised volatility calmed down - BTC to sub 40 and ETH to sub 50. The implied volatility drifted lower in tandem. The negative volatility carry flipped to positive as gamma sellers returned. Put skew was flattening as prices stablised and the downside pressure eased. BTC continued to show a more confident view from the pricing. April 2 tariff deadline looms but the option pricing suggests another week of calmness.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• According to the official announcement, Binance has now completed the integration of USDC on the Aptos network and has opened deposit services.

   

• The total number of addresses on the Monad testnet has surpassed 25 million, with approximately 14.41 million new addresses added in the past seven days. The total number of transactions has exceeded 400 million.

   

• Pump.fun has announced the launch of PumpSwap, putting the project in direct competition with automated market makers specializing in on-chain token trading within the Solana ecosystem.

   

• Crypto wallet infrastructure company Privy has raised $15 million in funding, led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Hongshan, Paradigm, and Coinbase.

   

• Hyperliquid has announced the introduction of staking tiers, where the tier level and trading fee reductions will be determined based on the amount of staked HYPE. This update is expected to go live on or after April 30.

   

• Meteora has announced the launch of the Meteora Rising incubator, which will provide funding for tools that help liquidity providers (LPs) optimize, automate, or track their positions on DLMM.

   

• EOS Network has announced that it will be rebranded as Vaulta, shifting its focus to Web3 banking services. This transition will be accompanied by a token swap expected to take place by the end of May.

   

• Crypto prediction platform Yeet has raised $7.75 million in funding, led by Dragonfly, with angel investors including Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz and LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino.

Macro

The major indices recovered from the fall in the previous week: the DJIA added +1.6%, the S&P 500 +0.5%, and the Nasdaq +0.2%. Chinese equities continue the decline over the week: the Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.60%, the CSI 300 -2.29% and the Hang Seng index -1.13%.