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Exchange-traded funds (ETF) issuer ProShares will introduce three XRP-tracked products this week after a tacit U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval.

It will launch an Ultra XRP ETF (2x leverage), a Short XRP ETF and an Ultra Short XRP ETF (-2x leverage), filings show. Its spot XRP approval stays hanging, however. The SEC has acknowledged several XRP spot ETF applications so far, with fund manager Grayscale’s filing facing a critical May 22 deadline.

ProShares’ approvals come weeks after Teucrium’s 2x XRP ETF started trading earlier this month, becoming the first XRP ETF in the U.S. It racked over $5 million in trading volumes on the first day, becoming the firm’s “most successful” launch to date.

Last week, the CME Group added XRP futures to its largest derivatives exchange in the U.S., alongside BTC, ETH and SOL products.

The flurry of ETFs tracking XRP comes after closely related company Ripple’s long-standing court battle against the SEC, which was fully concluded in March, clearing extensive regulatory headwinds for the tokens.

April has been a month of extreme volatility and tumultuous times for traders.

From conflicting headlines about President Donald Trump’s tariffs against other nations to total confusion about which assets to seek shelter in, it has been one for the record books.

Amid all the confusion, when traditional “haven assets” failed to act as safe places to park money, one bright spot emerged that might have surprised some market participants: bitcoin.

“Historically, cash (the US dollar), bonds (US Treasuries), the Swiss Franc, and gold have fulfilled that role [safe haven], with bitcoin edging in on some of that territory,” said NYDIG Research in a note.

NYDIG’s data showed that while gold and Swiss Franc had been consistent safe-haven winners, since ‘Liberation Day’—when President Trump announced sweeping tariff hikes on April 2, kicking off extreme volatility in the market—bitcoin has been added to the list.

“Bitcoin has acted less like a liquid levered version of levered US equity beta and more like the non-sovereign issued store of value that it is,” NYDIG wrote.

Zooming out, it seems that as the “sell America” trade gains momentum, investors are taking notice of bitcoin and the original promise of the biggest cryptocurrency.

“Though the connection is still tentative, bitcoin appears to be fulfilling its original promise as a non-sovereign store of value, designed to thrive in times like these,” NYDIG added.

Read more: Gold and Bonds’ Safe Haven Allure May be Fading With Bitcoin Emergence

TRUMP, the memecoin tied to U.S. President Donald Trump, is up about 16% in the last 24 hours, even as Democratic lawmakers cite the president’s involvement with the token as potential grounds for impeachment and after a massive unlock earlier in the month.

At a town hall on Friday, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) pointed to the crypto project offering its top holders an invitation to a dinner event with President Trump, calling it a clear case of selling access to the presidency, NBC News reports.

“When the sitting president of the United States is selling access for what are effectively payments directly to him. There is no question that that rises to the level of an impeachable offense,” Ossify said.

U.S. Senators Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also sent a letter on April 25 to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics asking for an investigation to determine if President Trump violated federal ethics rules by inviting top investors.

Read more: Dinner With the U.S. President? All You Need Is $420 Worth of TRUMP

The allegations stem from an announcement that a private dinner will be held on May 22, where the top 220 TRUMP memecoin holders can meet with the U.S. President.

Still, the TRUMP token has kept on rising. The memecoin surged over 70% after the event was announced and has already been up 85% over the last seven days.

The rise came even after the token saw a massive $320 million unlock earlier this month, significantly inflating its circulating supply. In less than three months, TRUMP token is set to endure an additional unlock of 25.1% of its current circulating supply, at the time of writing, worth nearly $780 million.

Despite the recent rise, the token is still down more than 77% from its all-time high above $70, which it saw shortly after launch. Its subsequent price plunge led to an estimated $2 billion of investor losses.

Read more: TRUMP Token Pops 12% After U.S. President Calls It ‘The Greatest of Them All’

Gaming tokens have seemingly been on the sidelines since the 2021 crypto boom. In fact, data from SoSoValue shows that they were the worst-performing crypto basket over the last 12-month period, enduring a 62% drop in the period, compared to a 174% rise on PayFi tokens.

However, under the Trump administration’s crypto-friendly stance, it might be changing.

Gala Games—a blockchain-based gaming platform—says it became the first crypto gaming company to partner with the White House, bringing a Web3 game Easter Egg Hunt to the 2025 Easter Egg Roll. White House official X’s account also mentioned on the social media platform about the tie-up amid a plethora of other collaborations with tech giants.

The GALA token has risen roughly 18% since the announcement, GameFi tokens went up 13%, and the broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, rose 8%.

User engagement

The effort aimed to introduce blockchain to families without overwhelming them.

The game, hosted at easter.gala.games, offered a “free and simple” experience where players collected virtual eggs to win unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs) stored on GalaChain, Gala’s proprietary Layer 1 blockchain, the company said in an announcement shared with CoinDesk.

Players were able to log in, explore, and collect eggs without needing a crypto wallet experience, Gala Games said. Every NFT reward was stored on GalaChain, hinting at future use across Gala’s entertainment projects, including Gala Music and Gala Film.

The Web3 gaming firm told CoinDesk that over 300,000 games have been played since the event launched, with about 100,000 new accounts created. Roughly 17% of participants went on to explore Gala’s other projects, suggesting real user engagement beyond the Easter event.

The project, founded in 2019 by Zynga co-founder Eric Schiermeyer, has been laying the groundwork for broader adoption through partnerships with DreamWorks Animation, NBCUniversal, and collaborations with artists like Snoop Dogg. Earlier this month, Gala Film announced a partnership with LG Electronics to bring Web3 entertainment to TVs, and the company hinted it is working with a government agency on transparency efforts.

Industry reaction

The Easter game marks a real-world test for the project and the broader GameFi sector.

When asked about the lead-up to the event, Schiermeyer shared that the project has been focusing on the high-level tie-up. “We have a team dedicated to government outreach,” they said. “I also spent time at Mar-a-Lago and spoke with the President. But mainly we wanted to help make the event more fun, and I think that sentiment was well received.”

Industry reactions were mixed. Some praised the visibility, while others pointed out that more work is needed for the mass adoption of the GameFi industry.

Jack O’Holleran, CEO of SKALE Labs, told CoinDesk that GameFi has never stopped expanding, but its issue has been visibility instead. The technology, on top of that, has matured. “In the past, you needed to manage your own crypto wallets and pay high gas fees just to play,” he said. “Now, gas-free blockchains and seamless onboarding remove those barriers.”

“Functional values and utility that blockchain brings to gaming cannot be suppressed for much longer,” he added.

Still, a broader adoption of the GameFi sector will require further meaningful collaboration with mainstream gaming outlets. This could potentially open the “floodgates,” O’Holleran added, as player bases for the traditional gaming sector are far beyond the crypto sector’s user count. If so, the “floodgates will be open.”

Meanwhile, Mitja Goroshevsky, co-founder of Gosh, praised the visibility of Gala Games and the GameFi sector via the White House tie-up but warned that the industry must still solve its identity crisis.

“It’s caught between being about gaming and being about trading,” he said.

“Until blockchain games introduce fundamentally new experiences, government partnerships alone won’t drive mass adoption.”

Stripe is preparing to test a new stablecoin payments product aimed at companies based outside the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

The company’s CEO, Patrick Collison, confirmed on social media that Stripe had been planning this offering for nearly a decade and is now opening it up to pilot users.

The announcement comes after Stripe received regulatory approval to acquire Bridge, a payments platform founded by former Coinbase executives Zach Abrams and Sean Yu. Bridge’s infrastructure offers an alternative to traditional systems like SWIFT for cross-border transactions.

Stripe’s stablecoin pilot project comes at a time when companies ranging from crypto firms to TradFi banks are piling into the industry, trying to grab a piece of the red-hot sector. In fact, Citi said stablecoins could be a “ChatGPT” moment for blockchain adoption, and the market, primarily pegged to the U.S. dollar, could grow up to $3.7 trillion by 2030 with regulatory support.

Stripe has a long history with crypto. It was the first major payment processor to support bitcoin payments back in 2014, though it later dropped the feature over BTC’s slow transaction speeds and fees.

Read more: Stablecoins Are a ‘WhatsApp Moment’ for Money Transfers, a16z Says

DeFi Development Corp. (JNVR), formerly known as Janover, is doubling down on its plan to buy more Solana for its treasury as it looks to offer up to $1 billion worth of securities.

The firm, formerly a commercial real estate lending tech platform, revealed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that it plans on using the funds for “general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Solana.” The offering will include common and preferred stock, debt instruments, warrants, and units.

DeFi Development has already acquired approximately $48.2 million of SOL and plans to operate validators on the Solana blockchain to earn staking rewards.

Taking a playbook out of Michael Saylor’s bitcoin buying strategy, corporations have been increasingly buying SOL for their balance sheets to provide TradFi investors with exposure to the token.

SOL Strategies, the publicly traded company helmed by CEO Leah Wald—former co-founder of digital asset manager Valkyrie Investments—spearheaded the movement. Recently, the firm announced that it had secured an up to $500 million convertible note facility to ramp up its investments in the Solana network.

DeFi Development’s new offering comes after a significant leadership shakeup earlier this month. Former Kraken executive Joseph Onorati took over as CEO and chairman, and Parker White, another ex-Kraken engineer, was named chief operating officer and chief investment officer. The company also brought on John Han, a former Binance and Kraken executive, as CFO. DeFi Development adopted a treasury strategy centered around Solana as part of its new direction.

In addition to the $1 billion shelf registration, DeFi Development also filed to register 1.24 million shares on behalf of early investors, including Pantera Capital, Payward (parent company of Kraken), and Arrington Capital.

Shares of DeFi Development Corp surged more than 970% following the leadership shakeup and moved up roughly 4% in after-hours trading on Friday to now stand at $54 per share.

Disclaimer: This article, or parts of it, was generated with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

Bitcoin (BTC) continued its spring rally on Friday and is on track for its strongest weekly showing since Trump’s election victory.

The largest and oldest cryptocurrency held around $95,000 during U.S. afternoon hours, up 1.8% over the past 24 hours. Ethereum’s ether (ETH) followed closely, gaining 2% to hover just over $1,800. Sui’s native (SUI), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Hedera’s HBAR led gains in the broad-market crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index.

Today’s gains cap an exceptional momentum for crypto markets recovering from the early April lows amid tariff turmoil. BTC is up over 11% since Monday, putting it at its largest weekly gain since November 2024, when Donald Trump clinched the U.S. presidency, kickstarting a broad-market crypto rally.

Read more: Bitcoin Traders Target $95K in Near Term; SUI Continues Multiday Rally

Investor appetite from ETF investors also bounced back strongly: U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.68 billion in net inflows this week so far, the largest since December, according to SoSoValue data. (Friday inflow data will be published later.)

BTC decoupling

Bitcoin’s recent strength relative to U.S. stocks and gold underscores BTC’s decoupling from traditional macro assets, said David Duong, Coinbase Institutional’s global head of research.

“It’s rare to witness market inflection points in real time, as we only tend to recognize major regime shifts with the benefit of time and reflection,” Duong said in a Friday report. “This week’s decoupling of bitcoin’s performance from that of traditional macro assets may be as close as we come to such a moment.”

“In our view, this divergence highlights bitcoin’s maturing role as a store-of-value asset—one that is increasingly being viewed by institutional and retail investors alike as resilient against the macroeconomic forces affecting risk assets more broadly,” he wrote.

Doung noted that the thesis is gaining traction with more companies adopting BTC corporate treasuries. Following the success of Michael Saylor’s Strategy, Twenty One Capital, a new firm backed by Tether, Bitfinex, SoftBank, and a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate, also plans to hold 42,000 BTC at launch.

Due in part to recent accumulation, liquidity in the spot BTC market has been “significantly drained,” Dr. Kirill Kretov, lead strategist at trading automation platform CoinPanel, said in a Telegram note. According to the firm’s proprietary blockchain analysis, a large portion of bitcoin liquidity has been withdrawn from actively transacting addresses, including exchanges, since November 2024, exposing markets to volatile price swings.

“The market is thin, vulnerable, and easily moved by large players,” Kretov said. “Sharp swings of 10% up or down are likely to remain the norm for now.”

Bitcoin’s route to fresh records

While the route could be choppy, this week’s rally is likely the early innings of bitcoin’s next leg higher to new records, said John Glover, chief investment officer of crypto lender Ledn.

Based on his technical analysis using Elliott Waves, he said BTC began the fifth and final wave of its multi-year bull market.

Elliott Wave theory suggests asset prices move in predictable patterns called waves, driven by collective investor psychology. These patterns typically unfold in five-wave trends, in which the first, third, and fifth waves are impulsive rallies, while the second and fourth waves are corrective phases.

While retesting this month’s low at $75,000 cannot be ruled out, Glover sees BTC climbing to a cycle top around late 2025, early 2026.

“My expectations continue to be for a rally to $133-$136k into the end of this year, beginning of next,” he said.

Read more: Bitcoin Whales Return in Force, Buy the BTC Price Rally, On-Chain Data Show

The Swiss National Bank has rejected holding bitcoin reserves, citing concerns over cryptocurrency market liquidity and volatility.

“For cryptocurrencies, market liquidity, even if it may seem ok at times, is especially during crises naturally called into question,” said SNB President Martin Schlegel at the bank’s General Assembly meeting Friday.

“Cryptocurrencies also are known for their high volatility, which is a risk for long term value preservation. In short, one can say that cryptocurrencies for the moment do not fulfill the high requirements for our currency reserves.”

Schlegel’s comments were prompted by the Bitcoin Initiative, a bitcoin advocacy group whose research demonstrates that adding bitcoin to Switzerland’s treasury would complement its overall portfolio and yield substantial return with minimal volatility. 

Without bitcoin, the Swiss National Bank’s investments grew by about 10% since 2015. A 1% bitcoin allocation to the central bank’s portfolio would have nearly doubled returns over the same period, according to a Bitcoin Initiative portfolio simulation. Annualized volatility would have increased only slightly.

The Bitcoin Initiative emphasized that bitcoin’s volatility should not be evaluated in isolation, but in terms of its influence on the overall dynamics and performance of the investment portfolio.

“[Bitcoin] price reached new highs, it showed resilience under market stress, and it continues to be highly liquid with trading volumes in the double digit billions, every day and night, even on bank holidays,” said Luzius Meisser, a member of the Bitcoin Initiative and board member of Bitcoin Suisse.

“The Bitcoin network remains one of the most reliable and secure IT systems ever created. And most remarkably, the United States has started a strategic bitcoin stockpile.”

In an emailed statement to CoinDesk, the Bitcoin Initiative suggested the Swiss National Bank’s aversion to bitcoin might be political, as it could be perceived as “an expression of distrust towards other currencies” and harm delicate relations between Switzerland and the European Union.

European Central Bank President Christine LaGarde has consistently criticized bitcoin, calling it “worth nothing” and a “highly speculative asset” linked to money laundering. In January, Lagarde said “I’m confident” that “bitcoins will not enter the reserves of any of the central banks of the General Council” of the ECB.

That was in response to comments made by Czech National Bank Governor Ales Michl that his institution was evaluating adding bitcoin to its reserves. LaGarde argued that bitcoin fails to meet the ECB’s criteria for liquidity, security, and safety from criminal associations.

In February, Poland’s central bank ruled out “keeping reserves in bitcoins under any circumstances” and the Romanian central bank warned banks not to issue loans to crypto companies.

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said in December 2024 that the U.S. central bank was “not allowed to own bitcoin” per the Federal Reserve Act and it’s not looking to change the law.

The Swiss National Bank has bitcoin exposure through stocks that own corporate bitcoin treasuries, including 520,000 shares of Strategy, 8.12 million shares of Tesla, 580,000 shares of MARA Holdings, and 500,000 shares of CleanSpark, as of the end of 2024 according to Fintel data.

Schlegel rejected citizen calls to add bitcoin reserves to the Swiss central bank’s coffers as recently as last month. When it comes to technological advancements, Schlegel noted Thursday that the SNB is running a pilot project using central bank digital currencies to facilitate payments between financial institutions.

By contrast, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order this year that establishes a strategic bitcoin reserve and crypto stockpile, along with a Crypto Council that will evaluate budget neutral ways to supplement U.S. digital reserves. The order further prohibits government agencies from creating or promoting a central bank digital currency in the United States out of privacy concerns for citizens.

Consensus, one of the leading events in the crypto conference calendar, will take place in Miami, Florida, CoinDesk announced today.
Consensus 2026 will take place May 5-7 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The first Consensus was in 2015, starting in New York City. The event went virtual during the pandemic lockdown before moving to Austin, Texas in 2022, 2023 and 2024. This February, CoinDesk held its first Consensus in Hong Kong, attracting more than 10,000 attendees.
Consensus 2025, the North American flagship event, will take place in Toronto May 14-16, featuring headline speakers such as Eric Trump, Charles Hoskinson and Sergey Nazarov. Up to 15,000 people are expected, according to the organizers.

“We are excited to announce that the Consensus conference will be relocating to Miami in 2026,” said Michael Lau, Consensus Chairman.
“As a leading tech and crypto hub, Miami provides an exceptional setting for innovation and collaboration. Its vibrant culture, strategic location, and international connectivity make it an ideal destination for participants from around the world.
“The largest industry-wide conference across the Americas, Consensus in Miami will serve as a pivotal meeting point for innovators and leaders, facilitating the most consequential conversations and business opportunities in this thriving metropolis.”
Tickets for Consensus Miami will go on sale during Consensus 2025 in Toronto.

Z Squared, a firm that specializes in mining dogecoin (DOGE), the dog-themed memecoin that was propelled to mainstream recognition by Elon Musk in 2021, is merging with biopharmaceutical company Coeptis (COEP).

The merger will enable the resulting company to keep DOGE mining operations going, while Coeptis’ pharmaceutical business will be spun out and operated separately. As a result, the firm will become one of the largest publicly-traded companies with a primary focus mining dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies like litecoin (LTC).

“Going public provides us with broader access to capital markets to fuel the growth of our mining operations and pursue additional strategic opportunities we believe will be accretive to shareholders,” Z Squared CEO David Halabu told CoinDesk in an email.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2025. The combined entity will have 9,000 U.S.-based DOGE mining machines. The company declined to share revenue figures with CoinDesk.

Spun out from Bitcoin (BTC) in 2013, Dogecoin follows a similar Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism, meaning that miners compete to solve an algorithmic problem in order to produce the next block on the blockchain; whoever solves it first is awarded coins for their efforts.

At $27 billion in market capitalization, DOGE is currently the eighth largest cryptocurrency, just ahead of Cardano’s ADA and Tron’s TRX.

With the bitcoin mining industry becoming extremely competitive in the last few years, mining operations are seeking new avenues for revenue — by dedicating resources for AI purposes, for example, or mining other cryptocurrencies like dogecoin and litecoin. Bitcoin mining firm BIT Mining (BTCM), for example, announced in December that it had made three times more money mining DOGE and LTC than BTC since it expanded into those cryptocurrencies.

Z Squared isn’t the first crypto miner to go public using this strategy. Other entities such as Core Scientific (CORZ) and TeraWulf (TERA) employed a similar playbook in 2022.

UPDATE (April 25, 18:40 UTC): The article was updated with extra context about bitcoin miners going public through mergers.