Good Morning,

Binance has confirmed it is advising multiple governments and sovereign wealth fund’s about crypto reserves, traders got rugged by Coinbase’s unofficial coin, a Brazilian man is going to jail for 170 years because of a crypto crime, Bitwise dropped their official Q1 market report … and much more

Happy Monday. Let’s start the week of strong, up & to the right 📈. Let’s dive in.

Also Happy Easter to those who celebrate 🐰

Market Snapshot

As of 4/20/2025. Data per CoinMarketCap.

  • Bitcoin at one point surged past $87,000, boosted by a weaker U.S. dollar and political uncertainty surrounding the Fed’s independence

    • Ethereum also rose above $1,650, helped by investor optimism around upcoming network upgrades aimed at improving scalability

    • Altcoins like Solana and XRP saw gains, while meme coins such as Dogecoin and TrumpCoin experienced sharp swings

    • Overall sentiment leaned bullish, though volatility remained high due to speculative trading and macroeconomic concerns

Headline Roundup
The major headlines driving crypto markets

  • Did Coinbase rug us? A full breakdown of the epic “Base” coin failure here

  • Binance CEO confirms governments have approached the firm about creating crypto reserves (WG)

  • The SEC has dropped 10 crypto cases in Q1 Alone – here’s the list

  • $10T AUM brokerage firm Charles Schwab to offer spot crypto trading by 2026 (CB)

  • Pump.fun co-founder says the firm does not plan to release a token in response to Base incident – see his full statement here

  • Kraken makes layoffs to streamline business units ahead of IPO (CD)

  • Italian minister says US stablecoins pose bigger threat than tariffs (CT)

  • Canary Capital files with SEC for staked TRX ETF (TB)

  • VanEck shoots for May offering with crypto-related stocks ETF offering (TB)

  • A quantum computing firm is offering 1 BTC bounty for anyone that can break bitcoin’s cryptography (TB)

  • Circle announces refund protocol for safer stablecoin payments (AI)

  • Hashkey Capital capital looks to offer Asian XRP Tracker Fund (CD)

  • Aptos proposes nearly halving staking rewards to promote on-chain yield (TB)

  • Kraken now offers 20x leverage for forex perpetual pairings (TB)

  • Upcoming kids show to include crypto wallet feature (TC)

  • Magic Eden Aeason 2 of ME token rewards unveiled (BW)

  • sUSD stablecoin de-pegs even further to new low of $0.66 (DT)

  • Galaxy proposes ‘market-driven’ voting approach for Solana (TB)

  • International retail giant SPAR accepts bitcoin in Switzerland store (BM)

  • Harvard-led bitcoin mining study slammed by environmental professionals (TB)

  • Vitalik Buterin suggests replacing Ethereum Virtual Machine contract language (CT)

Venture Capital

  • Galaxy Ventures plans to back 30+ startups with newest $180M fund plans (99)

  • LayerZero secures $55M backing from A16Z Crypto (CN)

  • ZND, a digital finance platform, has secured a $20M token investment commitment from Rollman Management Digital (CT)

  • Wintermute, a prominent cryptocurrency market maker, has announced a significant investment in Euler Finance, a decentralized lending protocol (AI)

  • EdgeX Labs receives strategic investment from Ryze Labs to advance global edge computing (CC)

Launches

  • AI launchpad modeled after Pump.fun created by Eliza Labs (TB)

  • EigenLayer launches ‘slashing’ feature a year after announcement (CD)

  • Treeverse, a game built on Ethereum, launches first rewards season on immutable (DT)

Regulation

  • MoonPay CEO calls for federal and state-level stablecoin legislation (CT)

  • A16Z wants updated custody regulations for Registered Investment Advisors (DT)

  • Crypto reserve bill passes Arizona house committee (TB)

  • Arizona governor threatens to block bitcoin bill (BL)

  • Central African Republic president hints at law related to coin causing massive spike (DT)

  • Dennis Dioukarev formally requests Swedish government to review strategic bitcoin reserve (DF)

Cybersecurity

  • Brazilian court sentences men to 170 years for $190M Ponzi scheme (DT)

  • Estonian fraudsters of $577M scheme mistakenly ordered to self-deport (CD)

  • Crypto casino founder resigns and arrested after losing $3.7M (BL)

  • Zoom phishing attack targets Manta founder (CN)

  • AWS outage makes crypto community question centralized backbone (DF)

  • Crypto exchange eXch is shutting down due to $1.4B Bybit hack ties (DT)

Extra Reads

Chart of the Day

Stablecoin transactions surpass Visa payment transactions 📈

Meme Dump

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