Crypto Pulse Media

XRP dipped 1.50% to $1.42 as rising oil prices and stalled US–Iran talks pressured global risk sentiment.
Brent crude climbed above $105.50 for a fifth straight day, while US yields and the dollar rose and global equities weakened.
GraniteShares delayed its 3x Long and Short XRP ETFs to May 7, marking the fifth postponement in three weeks amid regulatory pressure.
XRP (XRP) failed to extend its upside momentum on Friday, dropping by circa 0.50% to $1.42. The downside moves came as oil remained strong and global risk sentiment suffered due to a lack of progress in the US–Iran peace talks.
XRP remained under pressure as oil prices extended gains for a fifth straight day, with Brent crude rising above $105.50 a barrel amid stalled US–Iran de-escalation talks.
The macro impact spread across markets. US 10-year Treasury yields and the dollar index both headed for their first weekly gains in a month, while global equities tracked by MSCI’s All-Country World Index (ACWI) moved toward a weekly decline.
The lack of progress has kept the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, disrupting global oil flows and raising supply concerns.
GraniteShares has delayed the launch of its 3x Long and 3x Short XRP ETFs from April 23 to May 7, marking the fifth postponement in three weeks.
The 3x Short XRP ETF would be the first regulated product allowing traders to short XRP with 3x leverage through a standard US brokerage account.
The delay follows earlier SEC pushback on similar products, including ProShares’ decision to withdraw its own 3x XRP ETF plans in December 2025. Another delay on May 7 could put the 2026 launch in doubt.
Bitwise said a new crypto cycle is taking shape and that assets like XRP could be among the beneficiaries, ahead of CIO Matt Hougan’s scheduled appearance at XRP Las Vegas on April 30.
The asset manager’s comments come as XRP remains a focus for institutional crypto products and conference-driven market narratives.
Bitwise has a commercial interest in broader crypto adoption through its digital asset investment products, making its XRP remarks notable but not independent of industry exposure.
He urged investors to focus on confirmed Ripple partnerships and real XRP Ledger usage rather than rumors of undisclosed government deals
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XRP rose about 1.77% to an intraday high near $1.46 as Trump announced an extension of the Iran ceasefire, lifting global risk sentiment.
Oil remained elevated near $98 per barrel, highlighting ongoing geopolitical risk and potential inflation pressure that could limit crypto upside.
Ripple moved 75 million XRP (~$107 million) between April 20–21, with roughly 50 million routed to Coinbase-linked wallets, sparking speculation but no clear sell-off impact.
XRP (XRP) rose in tandem with global equities on Wednesday after US President Donald Trump announced an extension of the Iran ceasefire, boosting investor confidence and supporting broader risk appetite across financial markets.
Trump’s latest Iran comments kept crypto markets focused on geopolitics Wednesday.
He said in Truth Social posts that Pakistan had asked the US to hold off on fresh strikes and that Washington would extend the ceasefire until Iran submits a new proposal and talks are concluded “one way or the other
At the same time, he warned that without the blockade, “there can never be a Deal with Iran,” underscoring how fragile the truce remains.
Oil prices stayed elevated despite the ceasefire extension, with tBrent trading near $98.16 a barrel on Wednesday after recent sharp gains, showing that traders still see a meaningful risk of supply disruption around the Strait of Hormuz.
That matters for XRP because the token has recently traded as a high-beta risk asset: when ceasefire headlines lift equities and broader sentiment, XRP tends to benefit, but persistently high oil prices can keep inflation fears alive and limit upside by tightening the macro backdrop for crypto.
Ripple moved 75 million XRP, worth about $107 million across a series of company-linked wallets and intermediary addresses between April 20 and April 21, according to data tracked by Whale Alert.
On-chain data shows that roughly 50 million XRP was eventually routed to Coinbase-linked wallets, raising doubts that Ripple may want to sell the stash via the US crypto exchange.
Still, large XRP movements of this kind are common in Ripple’s ecosystem and are typically associated with exchange liquidity management, ODL flows, or internal fund reshuffling.
XRP price action remained relatively stable during the transfers, reinforcing the view that the move did not reflect unusual selling pressure.
This structure typically precedes an upside breakout if confirmed by strong volume. A decisive move above the neckline could open the door toward the $1.65–$1.70 range, aligning with the pattern’s measured target.
However, failure to hold above the $1.40 support may invalidate the setup and delay the anticipated bullish momentum in the near term.
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Gaming took 63% of all Web3 venture funding in 2022, but by 2025 its share had fallen to single digits as capital rotated into AI, real-world assets and layer-2 infrastructure.
Investors and studios poured billions into tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) before building blockchain-based games containing tradable properties. Then capital shifted into AI, asset tokenization and infrastructure, and more than 300 games shut down, turning Web3 gaming into a cautionary tale about chasing speculation over product-market fit.
Capital was destroyed at every layer simultaneously," the report states, pointing to venture capital, retail NFT buyers, gaming guilds and Telegram's 300-million-user tap-to-earn wave as parallel casualties. Hamster Kombat alone lost 96% of its users within six months of launch. YGG, the flagship gaming-guild token, trades 99.6% below its November 2021 peak.
Individual post-mortems are brutal. Pixelmon raised $70 million in a 2022 NFT mint and, four years on, still has no public game. Ember Sword burned through $18 million over seven years of development before shutting down last May with no refunds. Gala Games is embroiled in a lawsuit alleging its co-founder diverted $130 million in tokens. Square Enix quietly wound down its Symbiogenesis experiment last July.
The failure wasn’t just a bad cycle or weak execution. The data indicate it was a structural mismatch between a model built around financial incentives and an audience that consistently signaled it wanted entertainment instead.
At the heart of the boom was GameFi, the play-to-earn model that turned gameplay into a financial feedback loop.
Players bought tokens or NFTs, earned rewards in those same assets, and cashed in as long as newcomers kept piling in. Once the inflows slowed, the math broke down. Token prices slumped, rewards thinned out, and users walked away — dragging entire in-game economies down with them.
Axie Infinity, the sector's one-time flagship, watched daily active users crater from roughly 2.7 million at the peak to around 5,500 today, according to DappRadar data.
The demand side never caught up with the flood of capital. Even at the height of the mania, just 12% of gamers had tried a crypto game, according to a Coda Labs survey, cited by Caladan.
Capital allocation made the problem worse. Studios raised tens or hundreds of millions of dollars before shipping viable products, removing the pressure to build games that could retain players.
The most telling data point may be where the money went instead. Gaming commanded 62.5% of all Web3 venture investment in 2022; by 2025, its share had collapsed to single digits as AI, real-world-asset tokenization and layer-2 infrastructure absorbed the displaced capital.
Even Animoca Brands, the sector's most prolific backer, has cut gaming to roughly 25% of its portfolio and is pivoting to stablecoins, RWAs and AI.
At the same time, development timelines stretched three to five years, while tokens traded in real time and demanded constant momentum. By the time many projects were ready to launch, their associated tokens had already collapsed.
The result is a sector that expanded rapidly on speculative demand and contracted just as quickly when that demand faded. More than 300 blockchain games have shut down, according to DappRadar, and remaining investment has shifted away from titles toward infrastructure.
What was once pitched as the future of gaming now looks more like a cautionary example of what happens when financial engineering runs ahead of product market fit.
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Pantera Capital is urging London-listed Satsuma Technology to liquidate its remaining bitcoin holdings and return cash to shareholders.
Satsuma acknowledged receiving requests for capital returns but did not disclose which investors were involved. Executive Chairman Ranald McGregor-Smith said the firm is reviewing options to address these demands while balancing the interests of all shareholders, according to Bloomberg.
In August 2025, Satsuma raised 164 million pounds ($221 million) through an oversubscribed convertible note backed by major crypto investors including Pantera, ParaFi, Kraken, and Digital Currency Group.
The collapse in Satsuma's share price has left its market value below that of its 646 BTC holdings. Leadership turmoil has compounded the decline, with a director exiting in February and CEO Henry Elder stepping down in March.
Bitcoin then surged past $126,000 before falling 50% to $60,000 by early February, eroding confidence in corporate treasury strategies tied heavily to digital assets.
SATS traded at 21 pence ($0.28) on Thursday, a drop of 12.5% on the day.
Neither Satsuma not Pantera immediately responded to CoinDesk's request for comment.
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The state's complaint highlights language used by prediction market platforms as language for gambling, not investing.
Thinly disguising unlawful conduct doesn't make it lawful," Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a press release announcing the complaints on Thursday.
The question underneath the lawsuits is straightforward: are these contracts financial instruments under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), or bets under state gambling law? The answer determines whether a fast-growing market operates under a single federal rulebook or is carved up across 50 states under the jurisdiction of local gaming regulators. And it's almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court.
Wisconsin’s complaints, filed in Dane County, target three parallel ecosystems.
One names Crypto.com and its derivatives arm. Another goes after Polymarket and affiliated entities. A third pulls in Kalshi alongside distribution partners Robinhood and Coinbase (both Robinhood and Coinbase route prediction market orders to Kalshi), arguing the platforms together facilitate sports betting for state residents.
Across all three, the legal theory is that so-called “event contracts” are wagers: users pay money to take a position on a real-world outcome and receive a fixed payout if they are correct.
In one example cited in the filings, traders could buy contracts tied to NCAA tournament games at prices that reflect implied probabilities, with winning positions paying out $1 and losing ones returning nothing.
State prosecutors also cite Kalshi's own Instagram ads, which claim the platform is "The First Nationwide Legal Sports Betting Platform," and Polymarket's, which calls itself "a platform where people can bet on the outcome of future events."
The state argued that the structure of prediction markets falls squarely within its statutory definition of a bet, regardless of how the products are labeled or who takes the other side of the trade.
The complaints also emphasize that platforms generate revenue by charging transaction fees on each contract, likening the model to a casino taking a cut of wagers placed on its floor
The industry’s defense rests on federal preemption. Kalshi, in particular, has argued that its contracts are swaps listed on a regulated exchange and therefore fall under the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction.
That position received a boost earlier this month when the Third Circuit sided with the company, treating the regulator’s decision not to block the contracts as effectively settling the jurisdictional question.
Across the U.S., state courts are consistent in taking a different position.
Nevada called the contracts "indistinguishable" from gambling. New York AG Letitia James said "each contract is a bet
For now, Wisconsin’s suits add to a growing list of state challenges, each building a record that could ultimately force the Supreme Court of the United States to decide whether calling something a financial contract is enough to keep it from being treated as a bet.
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Key priorities include defining clear SEC and CFTC oversight roles, protecting non-custodial developers, simplifying disclosure rules, and avoiding a patchwork of state laws.
The letter cites the risk of returning to "regulation by enforcement," referring to a series of court cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that defined policy under President Joe Biden.
More than 100 signatories are backing the effort. These include high-profile companies including Coinbase, Circle Internet, Kraken, Ripple, Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Consensys, Anchorage Digital and Galaxy Digital alongside developer groups, state blockchain associations and university chapters of Stand With Crypto.
The coalition flagged six priorities for lawmakers to address. These include preserving consumer rewards tied to payment stablecoins, defining oversight roles for the SEC and CFTC, and protecting developers who build non-custodial tools.
It also called for disclosure rules that are easier to follow and a federal standard that avoids a patchwork of state laws.
Other major jurisdictions, such as the European Union, have already enacted comprehensive cryptocurrency frameworks, and the group warned that the absence of U.S. legislation risks pushing investment, jobs and development offshore.
America needs clear, comprehensive rules for digital asset markets. It is a global race to the top, and it is important for the U.S. to lead,” Ji Hun Kim, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, in an email.
The Senate Banking Committee can build on years of bipartisan work and the GENIUS Act's success by advancing legislation that delivers regulatory clarity, robust consumer protections, and strong safeguards for developers. A markup will move us closer to durable rules that ensure the U.S. sets the global standard for digital asset markets,” Kim said.
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Quantum fears focus on vulnerable early wallets, but market data suggests even a worst case sell-off would be large, not catastrophic.
Quantum doomsayers warn that this would unleash a flood of supply and crash the market. The numbers suggest otherwise.
The threat of quantum computing is not in question.
Roughly 1.7 million BTC sit in Satoshi-era addresses that could be vulnerable under such a scenario. That is about $145 billion at current prices in potential sell pressure, which sounds catastrophic, but is in fact manageable.
During bull markets, long-term holders (investors that have held bitcoin for at least 155 days) routinely distribute between 10,000 and 30,000 BTC per day. At that pace, the entire Satoshi-era supply equates to roughly two to three months of typical profit taking. In the most recent bear market, more than 2.3 million BTC changed hands in a single quarter, exceeding the full quantum “target,” with no systemic collapse.
In addition, monthly exchange inflows approach 850,000 BTC. Derivatives markets cycle through notional volumes equivalent to the entire Satoshi stash every few days. What appears massive in isolation becomes relatively ordinary when set against bitcoin’s existing liquidity and turnover
A sudden, concentrated release would still matter. It would likely drive volatility and could trigger a prolonged downturn, according to Check. But even that scenario assumes economically irrational behavior. Any actor capable of accessing such a trove would be incentivized to distribute gradually, likely hedging through derivatives to minimize slippage and maximize returns.
Bitcoin markets routinely absorb supply on the same order of magnitude as the P2PK era coins. The timeframe is measured in months, not years.
The real issue is not mechanical sell pressure. It is governance. The bigger issue is potentially freezing the Satoshi coins, through BIP-361, then letting everything play out as it should.
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Di Bartolomeo argues that last weekend the market achieved – in real time – a notable feat that no regulator, auditor or commentator has ever done.
ntil last Friday, April 17, lending stablecoins into Aave, widely considered the gold standard of DeFi, paid 2.32% APY. The Federal Reserve's overnight rate was 3.64%. Taken at face value, the market was pricing an unregulated, open-source smart contract as a lower credit risk than the United States Treasury.
In 48 hours, that ended. The market did in real time what no regulator, auditor, or commentator had managed to do: it repriced DeFi credit risk
Rank the dollar-credit options by yield before last weekend, and the hierarchy made no sense. Treasury overnight: 3.64%. Ledn's investment-grade Bitcoin-backed ABS senior tranche, priced in February at BBB-: 6.84%. Strategy's STRC perpetual preferred: 11.50%. U.S. credit cards: 21% against a 4% default rate. And Aave, sitting well below it all: 2.32%.
Something had to give. Luca Prosperi argued earlier this year that DeFi stablecoin rates should carry a 250–400 basis-point premium over the risk-free rate, implying 6.15–7.76%. The Bank of Canada's April 2nd report took the opposite view, citing Aave's 0.00% non-performing loan rate as proof that DeFi's architecture delivers defaultless lending through strict collateral requirements and price-based enforcement.So what does this all mean? Either DeFi had solved credit risk, or the market had stopped pricing it.
On April 18th, an attacker exploited Kelp DAO's LayerZero-powered cross-chain bridge to mint roughly 116,500 unbacked rsETH tokens — about 18% of the circulating supply, worth around $292 million. The synthetic tokens were moved into Aave as collateral. The attacker borrowed an estimated $190–230 million of real assets against collateral that, when it mattered, didn't exist. Aave's incident report acknowledged the protocol functioned as designed; the shortfall is structural, not technical. Kelp and LayerZero have since publicly blamed one another for the 1/1 validator configuration that made the exploit trivial.
Only one side could be right. Last weekend, we found out which.
Rates responded accordingly. Aave stablecoin deposit APYs went from 3–6% pre-exploit to 13.4% within two days. Morpho's USDC vault, which powers Coinbase's consumer loan product, jumped from 4.4% APR on April 18th to 10.81% the next day as the liquidity scramble rippled outward. Total DeFi TVL across the top 20 chains fell by more than $13 billion.
The contagion was instant. DeFi protocols are interoperable by design, and "looping" — borrowing on one platform and redepositing the proceeds as collateral on another — means a hit to Aave is a hit to everything built on top of Aave. Roughly 20% of Aave's historical borrow volume has come from recursive leverage. Within 48 hours, $6–10 billion in net outflows left Aave. Utilization on WETH, USDT, and USDC pools hit 100%. Depositors couldn't withdraw. Borrowers couldn't source stablecoin liquidity. Stranded users borrowed another $300 million against their own locked stablecoin deposits at 75% LTV, often at a loss, just to access cash.
There is no bankruptcy law inside a DeFi protocol. If you withdraw first, you keep everything. If you are among the last, you don't — and you may absorb a disproportionate share of the losses. Regulated lenders have a legal duty to halt operations the moment they realize they cannot cover liabilities, and bankruptcy courts can claw back from parties who benefited unfairly. The Celsius, BlockFi and FTX wind-downs were grueling, but creditors recovered assets, and the people responsible faced a judge.
Here is the part that won't make headlines, and that allocators need to understand.In DeFi, there is no process. There is no court. There is no recovery. There is no one to hold accountable
That has direct consequences for risk sizing. If you can estimate the total loss but cannot predict how it will be distributed, you cannot estimate your own exposure. It may be zero. It may be everything. It depends on how fast you moved, and on how fast the people next to you moved.
DeFi is not going away. The architecture has real utility, and permissionless markets have always existed — across every asset class and in every era. But they have never been risk-free, and they have always carried a premium over their regulated equivalents. The 48 hours following the April 17 incident reminded the market that the same rule applies onchain.
Institutional allocators sizing DeFi exposure for the coming year should take the signal seriously. The 2.32% Aave APR before last weekend did not reflect the underlying risk, and the market has now adjusted. Where DeFi rates settle from here is for the market to decide. But the mispricing is over. Last weekend proved it.
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The emergency response prevented stolen funds from moving, but sparked debate over governance, control and the limits of decentralization on Layer 2s.
At the center of the debate is the role of Arbitrum’s Security Council, a small, elected group chosen by token holders every 6 months, empowered to act in emergencies. In this case, it exercised those powers to take control of funds associated with the exploit, effectively locking them away pending further governance decisions
Supporters see this as a system working as intended, preventing tens of millions of dollars from being laundered and buying time for potential recovery. Critics, however, argued the move underscores a different reality: That even in ostensibly decentralized systems, ultimate control can still rest with a handful of actors.
For Arbitrum insiders, however, the decision was far from a reflexive intervention. According to Steven Goldfeder, co-founder of Offchain Labs, the company that originally created and supports Arbitrum, the starting point was inaction.
The default was do nothing,” Goldfeder said to CoinDesk, describing the early stages of the Security Council’s deliberations. “Then this idea actually emerged [from a security council member]… a way to do it in a very surgical way… without affecting any other user, not affecting the network performance and not having any downtime.”
The result was what Arbitrum has described as a “freeze.” But technically, the move required something more active: The use of privileged powers to transfer funds out of the attacker-controlled address and into a wallet with no owner, effectively rendering them immobile.
That distinction is at the heart of the decentralization debate. In its purest form, decentralization implies that no individual or group can unilaterally interfere with transactions once they are executed, often summed up by the phrase “code is law.” Critics worry that if a small group can step in to stop a hacker, the same mechanism could, in theory, be used in other situations as well, whether under regulatory pressure or political influence.
In simpler terms, the concern is less about this specific case and more about precedent: If intervention is possible, where is the line drawn, and who decides
That capability, now demonstrated in practice, raises broader questions about the boundaries of decentralization on Layer 2 blockchains, and the tradeoff between security and neutrality.
While the Security Council is elected by token holders, it is still a relatively small group capable of acting quickly and, in this case, decisively.
Patrick McCorry, the head of research at the Arbitrum Foundation and who coordinates with the Security Council, emphasized that this structure is by design.
The Security Council is “a very transparent part of the system,” according to McCorry; “You can see exactly what powers they have.” In addition, he said, “they’re elected by token holders… not hand-picked by us [Arbitrum Foundation + Offchain Labs]
Currently, the Security Council is selected through recurring on-chain elections, with token holders voting every six months to appoint its 12 members
From that perspective, Arbitrum’s model reflects a different interpretation of decentralization, one where authority is delegated by the community, rather than eliminated entirely.
Some critics have argued that a decision of this magnitude should have gone through token-holder governance. But Goldfeder pushed back on that idea, arguing that speed and discretion were essential.
The DAO cannot be consulted, because the second the DAO is consulted, that essentially means North Korea is consulted,” he said, referring to ongoing investigative efforts suggesting the attacker’s ties.
“If you say, ‘hey guys, should we move these funds?’ then you might as well do nothing," he said.
Supporters of the move say that reality highlights a different tradeoff, one between ideals and practical risk management. Without some form of emergency intervention, stolen funds in crypto are typically unrecoverable, and large exploits can cascade through the ecosystem.
From this perspective, the Security Council functions less as a centralized authority and more as a last-resort safeguard, designed to step in only under extreme conditions.
We’re no more or less decentralized today than we were yesterday,” Goldfeder said.
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Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke allegedly tried to conceal his bets about the raid on Venezuela that led to Nicolas Maduro's arrest.
The defendant allegedly violated the trust placed in him by the United States Government by using classified information about a sensitive military operation to place bets on the timing and outcome of that very operation, all to turn a profit," U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. "That is clear insider trading and is illegal under federal law."
Van Dyke allegedly created a Polymarket account on Dec. 26, 2025 and placed 13 bets through Jan. 2, 2026 on contracts anticipating whether U.S. forces would land in Venezuela, remove Maduro, invade Venezuela and similar contracts.
In tandem with the criminal pursuit, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is pursuing an insider trading complaint in federal court, the agency said in a Thursday statement
"The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about U.S. operations and yet took action that endangered U.S. national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way," said CFTC Chairman Mike Selig.
Van Dyke is an active duty soldier with the U.S. Army Special Forces, colloquially known as "green berets," and was based out of Fort Bragg. According to the indictment, he "was involved in the planning and execution" of the military operation to detain Maduro.
After the raid, Van Dyke allegedly withdrew the funds, converted the winnings to a bridged version of USDC, sent them to "a foreign cryptocurrency 'vault'" and then began withdrawing funds and moving them into a brokerage account, the filing said.
The filing noted that the fact someone had made a massive profit on these Polymarket bets had been noticed by news organizations, and it alleged that Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his account and changed his email to attempt to conceal his identity.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Polymarket said, "when we identified a user trading on classified government information, we referred the matter to the DOJ [and] cooperated with their investigation."
U.S. President Donald Trump, during a press scrum, told reporters that he would look into allegations of federal reporters placing prediction market bets using confidential information, Bloomberg reported.
The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino," he said. "And you look at at what’s going on all over the world, in Europe and every place they’re doing these betting things. I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it conceptually."The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino," he said. "And you look at at what’s going on all over the world, in Europe and every place they’re doing these betting things. I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it conceptually."
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A $20 billion hit from the KelpDAO exploit highlights systemic risks, while flat ETH-denominated growth and a shift to stablecoins point to ongoing fragility in DeFi
The KelpDAO exploit, which the bank said erased about $20 billion in TVL within days, exposed structural risks.
An attacker breached a cross-chain bridge, minted $292 million in unbacked rsETH and used it as collateral to drain lending protocols, leaving roughly $200 million in bad debt. Contagion spread beyond directly affected platforms, underscoring how DeFi’s interconnectedness can amplify shocks.
Much as traditional investors shift towards cash in uncertain times, crypto participants have responded to recent exploits by seeking refuge in stablecoins," wrote analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou in the Wednesday report.
Hacks and exploits remain a central risk for crypto because they directly undermine trust in systems that rely on code rather than intermediaries. Smart contract bugs, phishing and cross-chain bridge flaws can expose large pools of locked assets, with attackers often needing to exploit just a single weak point to trigger outsized losses.
These vulnerabilities are amplified by the complexity and interconnectedness of blockchain infrastructure. Cross-chain bridges, for example, expand functionality but also increase the attack surface, and have been responsible for billions of dollars in losses because they rely on complicated designs, shared infrastructure and sometimes weak validation mechanisms.
Beyond the immediate financial damage, repeated exploits erode confidence across the ecosystem. Each major hack can drive users and institutions away, prompt stricter regulation and slow adoption, making security a foundational constraint on crypto’s growth.
The bank's analysts noted hack losses this year are tracking 2025 levels, with infrastructure and bridge exploits still the primary vulnerability despite gains in smart contract auditing.
Growth also remains muted. While TVL has partially recovered in dollar terms, it is largely unchanged in terms of ether (ETH), suggesting limited organic expansion and raising questions about DeFi’s ability to scale for institutional use, the report said.
In periods of stress, investors continue to rotate into stablecoins. Following the exploit, capital flowed from DeFi lending into Tether’s USDT, which benefits from deeper liquidity and faster off-ramps, reinforcing its role as a preferred flight-to-safety asset, the report said.
#KelpDAOExploitFreeze
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AI agents are executing transactions, forming “agentic finance.” Crypto is the financial backend for these autonomous systems. Learn use cases, risks, and what experts say.
AI agents have become one of the most trending topics over the last year. A recent PwC survey of over 300 companies found that 79% are already adopting AI agents in some form. This explosive growth reflects a broader shift: AI agents are evolving from advisory roles to execution roles.
Initially deployed to help with chatbot services and copiloting roles, AI systems are now actively planning, deciding and acting on predefined parameters set by humans, including financial transactions. The result is the early formation of “agentic finance.” This is a new primitive wherein AI agents essentially execute financial actions within predefined rules such as limits, permissions and goals.
Agentic finance can be understood in three layers. The agentic commerce layer focuses on discovery and decision-making. For example, an AI agent can search for the best hotel deal for an upcoming trip. The agentic payments layer handles execution, where the agent completes a transaction once approved.
Finally, the asset management layer represents the full stack, where the agent can manage portfolios, handle payments and dynamically optimize financial strategies based on real-time market trends. While this may seem as if we are giving AI agents full autonomy, that is not the case. It’s conditional delegation, wherein users retain control through constraints while offloading execution.
Theoretically, AI agents do have a use case in the financial space; however, they don’t neatly fit in with existing traditional financial infrastructure. Structurally, AI agents lack direct access to global banking rails and are designed to operate 24/7. This structural mismatch is where crypto comes into play.
Stablecoins offer AI agents access to programmable, always-on money, blockchains enable instant and global settlement, and crypto wallets provide permissionless access to funds. Essentially, these components form a financial layer that is better suited to machine-driven activity. Crypto is thus increasingly becoming the infrastructure for autonomous systems, rather than only being an asset class.
Early implementations are already visible. Machine-to-machine payments powered by API access and data providers have made the inter-merchant rails stronger and faster. In the consumer context, autonomous commerce has allowed users to optimize retail research, using agents to get the best deals for travel, subscriptions and shopping.
Meanwhile, in crypto-native environments, trading agents are widely deployed for portfolio management, yield optimization and trading strategies. On the enterprise side, supply chain management and vendor payments have been easily automated via AI agents, cutting down on errors and resource expenditure. At this stage, most activity remains business-to-business and infrastructure-driven, rather than consumer-facing.
Beyond use cases, AI agents also play an integral part in driving new investable categories as well as demand for crypto itself. As AI agents can’t operate on existing infrastructure rails, demand is growing for agent-native wallets, stablecoin payment rails and data or compute marketplaces.
Coinbase, for example, has launched x402, an open payments protocol designed for agent-native transactions. This shift is particularly relevant for micropayments, where high transaction volumes and low value make traditional rails inefficient. For the first time, non-human users are participating in the financial system and driving activity. AI agents have become a new class of ‘user’ for crypto networks.
Despite the momentum, we are still in the early stages, and there are risks and limitations. Security is the primary concern, particularly around rogue or exploited agents executing unintended transactions. Questions around authorisation, liability and regulatory treatment are still under scrutiny and are being actively defined. For widespread adoption, we must build trust for users. This comes through regulatory clarity from all involved stakeholders, so projects can build with clarity and confidence while safeguarding user funds and interests.
Over the next twelve months, this technology will continue to grow and mature. Signals that matter include growth in agent-driven transaction volume, emergence of agent-native wallets and payments protocols, and deeper integration between stablecoins and AI-driven systems. Finally, regulatory clarity will heavily shape the pace and scope of adoption across different industries and fields.
AI agents are not a theoretical concept; they are already executing transactions in limited environments. As the trend develops, crypto is increasingly emerging as the financial backend for machine-driven economies. For now, this is an infrastructure and long-term thematic play; however, that is changing with rising adoption rates. Advisors should track it as a next-wave driver of crypto utility.
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Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, told two congressional panels this week that the military is running a live Bitcoin node for cybersecurity testing and views the protocol as a tool of national power in competition with China.
The House comments were the first public confirmation by a sitting US combatant commander that the military is directly participating in the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network.
We have a node on the Bitcoin network right now," Paparo said, responding to questions from Rep. Lance Gooden. "We're not mining Bitcoin. We're using it to monitor, and we're doing a number of operational tests to secure and protect networks using the Bitcoin protocol.
A Bitcoin node is a computer that stores the full history of the blockchain and enforces the network's rules, relaying validated transactions across the peer-to-peer network. Unlike mining, it does not earn rewards and does not require specialized hardware
Running a node is how participants in Bitcoin verify the network state independently rather than trusting third parties. There are an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 publicly reachable full nodes on the network as of early 2026, with the real number likely higher because many operate behind firewalls
One node out of tens of thousands poses no threat to Bitcoin's independence or its resistance to any single party controlling it.
But a US military combatant command running that node is notable because Bitcoin's design has long been framed as a defense against takeover attempts by powerful governments, and INDOPACOM is the command responsible for US military operations across the Indo-Pacific, including the theater of strategic competition with China.
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Persistently high energy costs risk keeping inflation sticky, leaving the Federal Reserve with limited room to cut interest rates, a negative backdrop for risk assets. Bitcoin, in particular, remains highly sensitive to interest rates and global liquidity conditions rather than real economic activity. Rising costs for essentials like fuel and food could also reduce investors’ willingness to allocate capital to speculative assets.
These risks are already showing up in markets. WTI crude has climbed to around $95 from $79 late last week, while government bond yields are rising across major economies. The U.S. 10-year yield has increased by eight basis points to 4.32% this week, and it's U.K. counterpart has risen by 18 basis points to 4.96%.
Oil prices are rising alongside yields and widening volatility spreads, signaling tighter financial conditions and increasing market risks,” said Michael Kramer, founder and CEO of Mott Capital Management.
Speaking of key indicators, U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs continue to show sustained demand, with funds seeing their fastest inflows in a month based on the seven-day moving average of net flows tracked by Glassnode.
Still, some analysts are urging caution, arguing that the rally lacks broad-based support in the spot market.
The recent Bitcoin price increase is completely driven by demand in the perpetual futures market. Meanwhile, spot demand is still contracting (although at a slower pace). The same happened in January, when Bitcoin peaked at $98K. There are risks of a correction if traders start taking profits while spot demand continues to contract,” Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, said on X.
The market capitalization of USDT, the largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, has hit a record high of $188.88 billion. Meanwhile, speculation in non-serious tokens such as is reaching fever pitch, with overcrowding in bullish bets. Stay alert!
The chart shows fluctuations in the ratio between bitcoin’s price and gold, displayed in candlestick format. The red line represents the 50-day moving average, the white line the 100-day moving average and the yellow line the 200-day moving average.Long
The ratio has been steadily rising and has now topped the 100-day average. More importantly, the 50-day average could soon move above the 100-day average, confirming a bullish crossover. As the name says, it suggests a bullish shift in momentum.That would mean continued outperformance of bitcoin relative to gold.
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XRP is flat over the past 24 hours, but down more than 60% from its summer 2025 peak.
Such large-scale movements, often referred to as “whale transactions,” are closely monitored in crypto markets because they can hint at institutional or high-net-worth investor intentions. In many cases, inflows of this magnitude to centralized exchanges are interpreted as a potential signal that holders may be preparing to sell or rebalance their positions. This is because assets sent to exchanges are typically made more liquid and readily tradable than those held in direct custody in personal wallets.
That said, transfers to exchanges could also mean repositioning assets, engaging in over-the-counter settlement processes, or moving funds for custody-related purposes.
Still, the timing and size of the transfer is noteworthy for those trading the payments-focused cryptocurrency. As always in crypto markets, large movements can influence perception, even when their ultimate intent remains uncertain.
XRP is trading at about $1.33, flat over the past 24 hours, but down more than 60% since peaking in the summer of 2025.
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The engineering organization behind Cardano submitted nine proposals totaling $46.8 million for the 2026 voting cycle, down from $97.5 million last year.
Cardano, like most major blockchains, maintains a shared pool of money funded by network fees, which community representatives vote to allocate toward development work. Input Output historically has been the largest recipient because it employs most of the engineers building the underlying software.
The reduced ask is the first concrete step in a plan to phase out that dependency. Input Output said it now aims to shrink its annual request each year until the company can sustain itself on its own revenue, with community funds going instead to a broader set of smaller engineering groups.
By the end of 2026, Input Output expects smaller, more specialized teams to take on most of the work it currently does in-house, including firms such as VacuumLabs and Midgard Labs that focus on specific layers of the Cardano software.
The nine proposals group into two themes. The larger funds a consensus upgrade called Leios, which Input Output claims will increase Cardano's transaction processing capacity by 10 to 65 times, targeting more than 1,000 transactions per second.
For context, that would move Cardano from a relatively slower chain to one competitive with Solana and the fastest Ethereum layer-2 networks on throughput alone. Leios is scheduled for a test release in June and full deployment by year-end.
The second flagship proposal funds a system called Pogun, which aims to bring Bitcoin-based decentralized finance to Cardano. In practice, it would let bitcoin holders borrow and earn yield on their holdings through Cardano without giving custody to a centralized intermediary. Pogun's lending component is targeted for public release in the second quarter.
Smaller proposals cover performance improvements to Cardano's smart contract engine, security testing infrastructure, developer tools, and expanded API services.
Each proposal names specific delivery leads and ties funding to delivery milestones rather than releasing money upfront. Imagine paying a contractor in stages as different parts of a house are completed, instead of handing over the full budget at the start of construction.
Voting opens Tuesday and runs through May 24. The decisions are made by roughly 1,000 elected delegates known as DReps, who represent ADA holders much as proxy representatives do in a publicly traded company. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Input Output, is scheduled to release a video this week making the case directly to those delegates.
The vote will test whether Cardano's governance, which has expanded significantly over the past two years, treats Input Output like any other grant applicant or continues to approve its requests largely on a basis of deference.
Last year’s $97.5 million proposal passed, but in the interim the Cardano Foundation has taken over the project’s grant-funding arm, and Intersect, the governance organization running this vote, has assumed stewardship of core Cardano software. Both shifts mean alternatives to Input Output now exist in a way they did not when previous votes went through.
Meanwhile, Input Output also cited progress in the ecosystem in its release. A new Cardano stablecoin, USDCx, reached 14.6 million tokens in circulation within weeks of its launch. Total assets deposited on Cardano, a common measure of a network's usage, rose from $137.5 million to $142.7 million over the same period.
Whether the full slate passes, gets partially funded, or is reshaped entirely by DReps will signal how much the Cardano community's thinking has shifted now that the tools to fund development without Input Output exist.
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GSR is entering the asset management space with a new Nasdaq-listed ETF that actively manages a basket of bitcoin, ether and solana while offering investors a chance to earn staking yields.
The launch comes as crypto ETFs have gained traction with both retail and institutional investors seeking easier access to digital assets through traditional brokerage accounts. While most U.S.-listed crypto ETFs to date have focused on single assets, particularly bitcoin, some have moved to basket funds, similar to Core3, which bundles multiple tokens into a single product and adjusts allocations on a weekly basis.
GSR said the fund aims to reflect two main themes in crypto markets: bitcoin’s role as a macro asset and the growth of blockchain platforms such as Ethereum and Solana, which support applications like stablecoins and tokenized assets.
The fund allocates actively across the three assets and rebalances weekly based on research-driven signals designed to pursue additional returns,” GSR said in a press release.
Framework Digital Advisors will serve as the fund’s investment adviser.
The move expands GSR’s business beyond trading and market making into asset management.
The firm has spent more than a decade providing liquidity and over-the-counter trading services in crypto markets and is now looking to package that expertise into investment products.
The ETF also introduces staking rewards, a feature not commonly available in traditional investment vehicles but one that has been added to some existing crypto ETFs, including the largest, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). This feature the fund to generate yield from certain blockchain networks while holding assets.
GSR has spent over a decade building efficient crypto markets, and with Core3, we are extending that expertise into a product accessible to a broader range of investors,” GSR CEO Xin Song said.
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True Market Mean and Short-Term Holder cost basis form a critical $78.2K to $79.2K range that could define the next major move
The True Market Mean filters out lost, dormant, and economically inactive coins, leaving only the cost basis of participants who are actually present in the market, making it a more precise gauge of where real selling pressure resides
Just above sits the Short-Term Holder realized price (STHRP) at $79,200, according to checkonchain. This cohort, defined as investors holding coins for fewer than 155 days, tends to be more reactive to price swings. With spot prices below their average entry, these participants remain at a slight loss. Bitcoin tested the STHRP in mid-January around $98,000 and got rejected
A sustained move above this zone could shift both levels into support, strengthening bullish momentum. Conversely, failure to reclaim them may prolong bitcoin’s consolidation phase, with potential downside
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The lack of a de minimis exemption for crypto payments and staking rewards taxed at receipt creates a huge reporting burden, the data shows.
Each form is also sent to the customer and creates a reconciliation task for the taxpayer who receives it. On top of that, standard tax software does not handle crypto transactions. Kraken estimated the additional burden on an active crypto holder at $250-$500 a year for dedicated tax software, on top of standard filing costs.
The hours taxpayers spend reconciling these micro-transactions, often with incomplete data, generate costs wildly disproportionate to any revenue the IRS will collect from them," Kraken said.
The Tax Foundation estimates individual returns already cost Americans a combined $146 billion in time and expenses, the exchange said, and the National Taxpayers Union Foundation puts the average time for non-business filers at about 13 hours and $290 per return.
Brokers reporting for 2025 provide gross proceeds without cost basis, meaning the form shows what was sold, but not what it was bought for. Kraken said it fielded thousands of client questions about forms that captured only one side of the calculation.
Kraken pointed to two parts of the tax code that cause problems. One is the lack of a de minimis, or low-level, exemption for crypto payments, which means even small purchases with crypto can trigger a taxable event that needs to be declared.
Imagine you walk into a Steak ’n Shake and pay for a $7.99 meal with Bitcoin through a payment app. You have triggered a taxable event,” Kraken wrote as an example. “You are technically required to look up the cost basis of the specific Bitcoin you spent, calculate whether you had a gain or loss on that fraction of a coin, and report it on Form 8949.”
That’s the same argument libertarian think tank Cato Institute recently made. According to the institute, buying a cup of coffee every day with BTC “can result in over 100 pages of tax filings.”
The second issue is staking. Rewards earned on staked assets are treated as ordinary income at the moment of receipt, based on the token’s market price that day. Most holders keep those tokens instead of selling them, meaning they owe tax on tokens that haven’t been sold.
If the token price falls between receipt and filing, the tax can exceed the asset's current value. Kraken calls this phantom income and says a large share of the sub-dollar 1099-DAs it issued were staking distributions.
Legislation moving through Congress includes a de minimis provision, but is limited to stablecoins. Kraken is pushing for a broader inflation-indexed exemption, paired with anti-abuse guardrails to prevent structuring.
The exchange is also asking Congress to let taxpayers elect when staking rewards are taxed, either at receipt under current rules or at sale, when a gain or loss is realized.
Kraken says its systems and those of other exchanges already support both reporting methods, but the choice needs to be authorized.
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Volo Protocol lost about $3.5 million from three vaults holding WBTC, XAUm, and USDC.
Early Wednesday, the protocol confirmed a security breach that drained a total of roughly $3.5 million in digital assets from three of the vaults. Assets locked in other vaults were not affected, it said in a post on X.
The ~$28M in TVL across all other Volo vaults is safe. The exploit was isolated to 3 specific vaults, and we have confirmed no shared attack vector exists with the remaining vaults," the protocol said, adding that it is “prepared to absorb” the financial loss rather than pass it on to users.
The attack hit vaults holding wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), Matridock's tokenized gold token, XAUm, and the dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC. In response, the protocol froze all vaults and began working with the Sui Foundation and onchain investigators to contain the damage and trace funds.
Since the incident, Volo has "frozen" $500,000 in assets through coordination with ecosystem partners, meaning those funds have been immobilized onchain to prevent any movement or withdrawal. Still, the majority of the stolen funds remain under investigation.
The breach adds to growing unease across decentralized finance, where a string of exploits has raised questions about smart contract security and protocol oversight. The timing is particularly sensitive, coming just days after the weekend's KelpDAO exploit, in which an attacker drained millions by artificially minting unbacked liquid restaking tokens, rsETH.
The aftermath has rippled across the DeFi, triggering collateral damage in multiple protocols, including leading lending platform Aave, where users rushed to withdraw funds because of the heightened uncertainty.
To date, decentralized finance has suffered roughly $7.78 billion in hacks, according to data from DeFiLlama. Bridge protocols — which enable the transfer of assets across blockchains — account for another $2.90 billion in losses. Combined, the figure exceeds $10 billion, roughly equivalent to the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies ranked between 10th and 15th globally.
Volo says it will publish a full post-mortem once its investigation is complete and remediation steps are finalized.
But for DeFi users and investors, a broader pattern is becoming harder to ignore: while institutional adoption is accelerating, relatively little of that capital appears to be flowing into improving security, with exploits continuing to arrive in clusters.
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