Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Public companies continue to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets, CyberKongz free after years long SEC probe, Standard Chartered makes extremely bullish prediction for stablecoin market, Trump is reportedly building a crypto game, a UK legislator has social account hacked, Solana ETFs hit market in Canada today, and so much more below.

Happy Wednesday … something big is coming. Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

As of 4/15/2025. Data per CoinMarketCap.

  • Bitcoin fell to $83,600 intraday, retreating from an earlier high of $86,440; XRP dropped over -2% to $2.08, and ADA slipped -4% to $0.61

    • Crypto market sentiment turned negative, with the CoinDesk 20 Index falling over -2%

  • Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s speech today is highly anticipated; markets are looking for signs of possible early rate cuts amid rising recession talk

    • Upcoming U.S. retail sales data for March (due Wednesday) is forecasted to show a 1.2% monthly rise, possibly easing recession fears if it exceeds expectations

    • After hours Nvidia shares dropped -8% after revealing a $5.5B expected write-down tied to export restrictions on its H20 chip to China (RT)

Headline Roundup
The major headlines driving crypto markets

  • AWS glitch forces Binance and KuCoin to suspend withdrawals and pause some operations which caused widespread panic (TS)

  • Trump is reportedly working on a real estate crypto game – see full details here

  • NFT collection ‘CyberKongz’ says that the SEC is no longer investigating the firm after a 3 year legal battle (TB)

  • The U.S. Bitcoin Reserve could be developed with tariff revenue according to Trump’s executive director, find out how here

  • OpenSea now allows Solana token trading ahead of highly anticipated SEA token launch (DT)

  • Janover to receive Solana from staking operations agreed in non-binding LOI signed with Kraken (BW)

  • Semler Scientific files to raise $500M to buy more Bitcoin (X)

  • Mantra, OM, jumps 60% following recent crash, yet still down ~ 85% all time (DF)

  • Movement is conducting an internal investigation after market maker issues (BW)

  • Pump.fun’s decentralized exchange PumpSwap weekly trading volume reaches new high of $2.3B (DF)

  • Blackrock’s BUIDL fund crosses $2.3B valuation, with the firm now holding $48B of BTC and $1.9B of ETH (DF)

  • Standard Chartered bets big on stablecoins with $2T market cap prediction by 2028 (TB)

  • Revenue splits of USDC between Coinbase have been probed by SEC since 2023 (DT)

  • Sui Network and Babylon Labs announce official partnership for bitcoin-secured network (DF)

  • Arbitrum Foundation proposes governance shift for Arbitrum DAO, including veto option (DF)

  • OpenEden stablecoin hits $100M valuation for RWA tokenization (DF)

  • Sky and Spark protocols deploy $25M into Maple Finance lending pool, with options to reach $50M (TB)

Venture Capital

  • Treehouse Finance completes another SAFT round, valuing the project at $400M pre-token launch (TB)

  • Optimum, a web3 memory startup incubated out of MIT, raises $11M seed round led by 1kx (CD)

  • Tether makes strategic investment into Fizen for stablecoin adoption and self-custody solutions (DF)

  • Hyperion closes strategic funding round from OKX Ventures and Aptos Labs (AF)

Launches

  • Solayer launches Emerald Card, a Visa debit card with crypto rewards (BW)

  • Spot Solana ETFs to launch in Canada today that will include staking (TB)

Regulation

  • Ethena halts operations in Germany as due to regulatory roadblocks (DT)

  • Hayvn Group fined $12.5M by Abu Dhabi regulators for insufficient AML protocols (DT)

  • A bipartisan bill has been introduced in the U.S. for accelerating blockchain innovation (CT)

  • Debanking is the biggest barrier for crypto adoption and legislation is the biggest support mechanism (CT)

Cybersecurity

  • KiloEx token drops 32% following $7.5M oracle exploit (NE)

  • A zkSync admin wallet was hacked leading to a $5M for the Ethereum L2 (DF)

  • X account of Member of UK Parliament hacked to promote scam coin (CT)

  • Fuse and Check Point partner to build a blockchain firewall (CN)

  • Aztec develops ‘StealthNote’ for to protect employees and anonymous whistleblowers (TB)

Extra Reads

Chart of the Day

A recent report from Ark Invest states that Bitcoin volatility falls to historic lows

Meme Dump

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