Major tokens fell as much as 5% on Thursday as traders took profits on a steady move higher from earlier this week, with memecoin dogecoin (DOGE) leading losses among the largest assets.

Bitcoin (BTC) clung to the $93,000 zone in the past 24 hours, but XRP, Solana’s SOL, BNB Chain’s BNB and DOGE showed losses above 2%. Ether (ETH) fared relatively better with a 1.5% slump.

Overall market cap decreased 2.5%. The broad-based CoinDesk 20, a liquid index tracking the largest tokens by market cap, fell over 3%.

Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. bagged over $916 million in inflows on Wednesday. Some traders point to the asset’s growing safe haven as a catalyst underpinning this surge in flows.

“The inflows are driven by a declining U.S. dollar index, and Bitcoin’s growing safe-haven appeal amid equity market volatility,” Vugar Usi Zade, COO at Bitget, told CoinDesk in an email. “The massive ETF inflows reflect Bitcoin’s strengthening position as a leading crypto asset, with growing institutional adoption.

“Its reduced correlation with equities and safe-haven narrative position it as a diversification tool, though short-term challenges like weak investment signals require sustained macro catalysts,”

Bitcoin’s safe-haven narrative has been growing in the past week on its relevant resilience, mirroring gold’s price rise, even as bond yields and U.S. equities corrected amid the ongoing tariff wars.

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump said he had no intention to fire Federal Reserve Chair Powell and that a deal with China (which is facing tariffs as high as 245% on some items) would significantly reduce some of its levies.

The mixed signals and frequent tone shift are jading traders, however, who continue to monitor comments for further cues on positioning.

“Macro risks remain, but one critical overhang appears to be cleared. Trump is signaling no intention to replace Fed Chair Powell for now. The reassurance has prompted a modest pullback in long-end yields, helping reduce a key tail risk,” Singapore-based QCP Capital said in a broadcast message Thursday.

“The broader outlook, however, is anything but simple. Trade frictions, geopolitical jitters, and regulatory opacity continue to cast long shadows,” the firm added.

DeFi Development Corp (JNVR), formerly known as Janover, added another $9.9 million in Solana’s SOL to its corporate treasury, pushing total crypto holdings to 317,273 SOL or about $48 million, the company said on Wednesday.

The purchase, made through BitGo’s over-the-counter desk, includes a tranche of locked SOL. These are tokens typically tied to vesting or bankruptcy proceedings that can’t yet move on-chain but are cheaper than spot prices.

“By gaining access to locked discounted inventory through a trusted partner like BitGo, we’re able to accumulate some of our SOL below market prices while deepening our alignment with the Solana ecosystem,” CEO Joseph Onorati said in a statement.

Janover, which was renamed to DeFi Development earlier this week, began as a real estate data and software company but has shifted to position itself as U.S. public company offering direct exposure to the Solana ecosystem to investors through its balance sheet. The pivot happened after a group of former executives of crypto exchange Kraken, including Onorati, acquired a majority stake in the firm this month.

The company noted that with the latest purchase, each of the firm’s 1.5 million outstanding shares now represents 0.22 SOL, up 40% from earlier disclosures.

Corporations have been buying SOL to provide TradFi investors with exposure to the token, and this trend has been gaining momentum recently. SOL Strategies, the publicly traded company helmed by CEO Leah Wald—former co-founder of digital asset manager Valkyrie Investments—spearheaded the movement. Earlier today, the firm announced that it had secured an up to $500 million convertible note facility to ramp up its investments in the Solana network.

Read more: Janover Takes Page From Saylor Playbook, Doubling SOL Stack to $20M as Stock Soars 1700%

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.

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, the Ethereum protocol reporter on CoinDesk’s Tech team.

In this issue:

• Vitalik Buterin Proposes Replacing Ethereum’s EVM With RISC-V
• Matter Labs, ZKsync Developer, Sued for Alleged Intellectual Property Theft
• Scroll’s Euclid Upgrade Pushes It Into ‘Stage 1’ Decentralization Era
• EigenLayer Adds Key ‘Slashing’ Feature, Completing Original Vision

This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.

Network News

SWAPPING THE EVM FOR RISC-V?: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared a new proposal that would radically overhaul the system that powers its smart contracts. ​​Buterin’s suggestion, which he posted on Ethereum’s primary developer forum, involves replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the software engine that powers programs on the network, with RISC-V, a popular open-source framework that offers built-in encryption and other benefits. The EVM has long played an essential role in Ethereum’s development. Other chains that use it can seamlessly connect with apps on Ethereum, and developers on EVM-based networks can transition more smoothly to building applications directly within the Ethereum ecosystem. Buterin argued that transitioning Ethereum to a RISC-V architecture will “greatly improve the efficiency of the Ethereum execution layer, resolving one of the primary scaling bottlenecks, and can also greatly improve the execution layer’s simplicity.” — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

MATTER LABS SUED FOR ALLEGED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT: Matter Labs, the company behind layer-2 blockchain ZKSync, has been sued by BANKEX, a defunct digital asset banking platform, for intellectual property theft. According to a complaint filed Mar. 19 with the New York State Supreme Court, former BANKEX employees Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev allegedly stole the company’s technology to start Matter Labs, which received over $450 million in venture capital funding and has become a major player in the blockchain industry. The complaint, which names BANKEX CEO Igor Khmel and the BANKEX Foundation as plaintiffs, alleged BANKEX was approached by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 2017 to build operational software for “Plasma,” a technology that was seen at the time as a way to make Ethereum cheaper to use. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

SCROLL EUCLID UPGRADE BRINGS IN STAGE-1 DECENTRALIZATION ERA : Scroll, the Ethereum layer-2 network, shared that it has launched its Euclid upgrade, which the team called its most significant protocol transformation to date.According to Scroll Labs, a key consequence of the upgrade is that it transitions Scroll from a “stage 0” to a “stage 1” rollup, meaning the network will retire some centrally-controlled safety features in an effort to become more decentralized. “Euclid represents the biggest leap forward for Scroll since its inception,” the team wrote in a blog post shared with CoinDesk. “It’s a statement about Scroll’s future and its commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the ZK Rollup arena.” — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

EIGENLAYER ‘SLASHING’ FEATURE FINALLY GOES LIVE: Almost one year to the day after Ethereum protocol EigenLayer launched its “restaking” network to unprecedented industry fanfare, the network is finally adding a core feature that was, until now, glaringly absent: “slashing.”Eigen Labs hopes slashing — EigenLayer’s system for keeping “restakers” honest by revoking collateral if they act maliciously — will finally realize the year-old protocol’s original pitch. “We are happy to say now that the whole promise has been delivered,” said EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan. — Sam Kessler Read more.

In Other News

• Traders shorting Strategy (MSTR), the bitcoin buyer whose share price gained 13% in March, may be struggling to find enough stock to repay the lenders who underpinned their bets the company’s value would fall. More than $180 million worth of trades in MSTR stock failed to settle last month, data from the SEC and Fintel show. These events, known as Failures to Deliver (FTDs), happen when a seller doesn’t deliver shares to the buyer by the settlement deadline, now just one business day after the trade (T+1). — James Van Straten and AI Boost Read more.
• Bitcoin (BTC) has become the fifth-largest asset by market capitalization, reaching $1.86 trillion and surpassing Google (GOOG) as it breaks through $94,000. This marks the highest position bitcoin has ever attained in the rankings, even though its market cap previously exceeded $2 trillion when its price was over $109,000. At that time, however, tech stocks were significantly more elevated than they are at the moment. — James Van Straten Read more.

Regulatory and Policy

• Paul Atkins has taken the oath to formally become chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which returns Mark Uyeda to his previous role as a Republican Commissioner after three busy months of service as the agency’s stand-in chief. Atkins permanently replaces the former chair, Gary Gensler, who the crypto industry had widely seen as its chief antagonist in the U.S. government. — Jesse Hamilton Read more.
• Fundraising for sophisticated crypto investment vehicles has yet to fully experience the anticipated positive headwind of the Donald Trump presidency, according to a new report by the Crypto Insight Group. Momentum “remains positive but slower than [fund] managers anticipated under the new Trump administration,” the Hedge Fund Outlook 2Q25 report said. — Jamie Crawley Read more.

Calendar

• April 30-May 1: Token 2049, Dubai
• May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto
• May 19-23: Solana Accelerate, New York City
• May 20-22: Avalanche Summit, London
• May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas
• June 30-July 3: EthCC, Cannes
• Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore

Canada will host an election next week, where voters will consider a range of issues — the economy, housing, trade relations with the U.S. — as they choose their elected officials, who in turn will choose the next Prime Minister of the country.

You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at the intersection of cryptocurrency and government. Click here to sign up for future editions.

Canada’s top choices

The narrative

Crypto is not a major electoral issue during this year’s Canadian election. Neither leading Prime Minister candidate has campaigned on digital assets, but here’s how they’ve discussed the issue in the past.

Why it matters

Canada infamously had massive crypto exchange collapses over the past few years, leading to concerted efforts from its provincial regulators to enact guardrails on the digital asset industry. While exchanges like Coinbase are calling for policies like a Canadian government task force or a bitcoin reserve, so far the leading candidates for Prime Minister seem to have other issues on their minds (namely: U.S. relations and trade, housing and the economy).

Breaking it down

When Canadians go to the polls next Monday, they’ll be choosing their Member of Parliament. The party with a majority of seats will form the country’s new government, and the leader of that party will become the new Prime Minister.

While the Conservative Party and its leader Pierre Poilievre held comfortable leads in polling averages through late-January 2025, the Liberal Party saw a massive surge in popularity after U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs with Canada (and most other countries). The Liberal Party, now with leader Mark Carney, has held a significant edge ever since, according to both polling data and Polymarket. Carney took over from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party last month.

Pierre Poilievre

Poilievre is a longtime Bitcoin and blockchain advocate who has led the Conservative Party since September 2022. He owns shares in a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). In 2022, he promised to turn Canada into the “blockchain and crypto capital of the world” during a campaign speech (a phrase Trump later used on the 2024 campaign trail).

“I want to take control of money away from politicians and bankers, and give it back to the people,” he said. “We need to give people the freedom to choose other money. If the government is going to abuse our cash, we should have the right to opt to use other, higher-quality cash.”

He even bought shawarma using bitcoin during his campaign for Conservative Party leader, discussing digital assets in a 30-minute interview with the owner of the restaurant.

He supported Canada’s trucker protest, which dubbed itself the “Freedom Convoy” in early 2022 to object to a vaccine mandate for any truckers crossing the U.S.-Canadian border. At the time, the Canadian government sought to freeze financial support for the protestors, including by sanctioning crypto wallets tied to the truckers.

While Poilievre does not appear to have specifically linked Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to the truckers who may have lost banking access, he did call bitcoin “the single most important asset you could own.”

Poilievre has also opposed the Bank of Canada’s research into a central bank digital currency, arguing that it could infringe on privacy rights or let lawmakers target benefits to supporters. Last year he supported a bill which would have banned a Canadian CBDC outright (echoing U.S. Republicans who have done the same here).

Canadian magazine Maclean’s reported that while Poilievre has said less about crypto in recent days, the Conservative Party as a whole still tends to support the industry, citing various Members of Parliament who have introduced bills or otherwise discussed crypto.

Poilievre did seem to discuss crypto publicly less after FTX’s dramatic collapse in 2022, which his political opponents used to issue warnings about his prior advocacy for digital assets. Poilievre may also be reckoning with Trump’s unpopularity in Canada, and seeking to distance himself from policies that may imitate the U.S. President’s.

Mark Carney

Carney was the head of both the Bank of Canada and later the Bank of England. While he hasn’t said a lot about Bitcoin, he did give a speech on the “future of money” in London in March 2018, where he criticized digital assets’ use, citing speculative mania and a lack of vendors willing to accept it as a payment tool.

“The long, charitable answer is that cryptocurrencies act as money, at best, only for some people and to a limited extent, and even then only in parallel with the traditional currencies of the users,” he said. “The short answer is they are failing.”

Carney pointed to transaction throughput, ease of access and other issues as barriers to digital asset adoption, but said his concerns with digital assets at the time were “not meant to dismiss them.”

“Their core technology is already having an impact. Bringing cryptoassets into the regulatory tent could potentially catalyse innovations to serve the public better,” he said. “Crypto-assets are an attempt to create the financial architecture for peer-to-peer transactions. Even if the current generation is not the answer, it is throwing down the gauntlet to the existing payment systems. These must now evolve to meet the demands of fully reliable, real-time, distributed transactions.”

Carney praised distributed ledgers in particular, and suggested that existing digital asset infrastructure could eventually lead to the creation of a central bank digital currency, though he said “there are also broader societal questions” around issues like privacy should a central bank pursue a CBDC.

Just over a year later at the Economic Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Carney suggested that a global hegemonic digital currency backed by central bank digital currencies could bolster the world economy against the role of the dollar.

“The dollar’s influence on global financial conditions could similarly decline if a financial architecture developed around the new [Synthetic Hegemonic Currency] and it displaced the dollar’s dominance in credit markets,” he said in August 2019. “By reducing the influence of the US on the global financial cycle, this would help reduce the volatility of capital flows to EMEs.”

Stories you may have missed

• How Some Bitcoin Mining Firms Try to Game U.S. Customs Controls: Crypto mining firms may undervalue the cost of their equipment when importing their chips to the U.S. to evade customs dues, intermediaries in the industry tell CoinDesk’s Tom Carreras.
• Crypto Ally Paul Atkins Sworn In to Replace Gary Gensler Atop U.S. SEC: Paul Atkins, after his Senate confirmation earlier this month, is now the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
• U.S. Derivatives Watchdog Weighs 24/7 Action With Crypto Oversight on Horizon: The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission published a request for comment on what 24/7 derivatives trading might look like.
• Trump’s Official Memecoin Surges Despite Massive $320 Million Unlock in Thin Holiday Trading: The TRUMP memecoin shot up over 9% last weekend after $320 million in tokens unlocked, though it’s still down more than 88% in the past few weeks.

This week

Friday

• 17:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. ET) The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will hold the latest of its crypto roundtables, this time focusing on custody issues.

Elsewhere:

• (The New York Times) Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had another group chat where he shared details about an impending military strike in Yemen. Unlike the Signal chat which included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Hegseth himself set this group up, and included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, the Times reported. NBC later reported that the information about the strike came from a message sent by an Army general through “a secure U.S. government system.”
• (Reuters) The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation plans to lay off a fifth of its employees, or 1,250 people, it told its staff according to Reuters.
• (AP News) The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced it would lay off 1,500 employees, but this move has been paused by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
• (The New York Times) Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat representing Maryland, met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully sent to El Salvador to be imprisoned without a trial or hearing, and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s administration tried to stage the photos of his meeting with Van Hollen by placing glasses “with cherries and salted rims” for photos, the Times reported.

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at nik@coindesk.com or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.

You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.

See ya’ll next week!

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the founder of now-defunct crypto and foreign exchange investment company PGI Global, with violating federal securities laws, alleging he ran a “Ponzi-like scheme” that defrauded investors of nearly $200 million — and spent $57 million of customer money on Lamborghinis, real estate and luxury goods.

Ramil Palafox, 59, of Las Vegas, Nevada, also faces parallel criminal charges tied to his role at PGI Global. In March, a Virginia grand jury charged him in a sprawling 23-count indictment that included eight counts of wire fraud. Due to what prosecutors described as Palafox’s “substantial ties” to the Philippines, including dual citizenship, the judge overseeing his criminal case issued an order on Tuesday that he should remain in custody until further notice.

According to court documents, PGI Global was a crypto investment scheme that ran from January 2020 to October 2021. Approximately 90,000 investors around the world purchased membership packages with either bitcoin or fiat currency that promised hefty returns on their investments — up to 3% daily and a 200% total return. But instead of actually investing his clients’ money, prosecutors say Palafox spent over a quarter of the funds unjustly enriching himself and his family members, and used the rest to pay back earlier investors in the scheme until it collapsed.

“Palafox used the guise of innovation to lure investors into lining his pockets with millions of dollars while leaving many victims empty-handed,” said Laura D’Allaird, chief of the SEC’s new Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit, in a press statement. “In reality, his false claims of crypto industry expertise and a supposed AI-powered auto-trading platform were just masking an international securities fraud.”

Since the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term in January, the SEC has overhauled its approach to crypto regulation, dropping investigations and some litigation against crypto companies tied to purported securities violations. But despite its about-face on the so-called “regulation-by-enforcement” practiced during former Chair Gary Gensler’s tenure, the SEC has promised that it will continue to go after crypto-related securities fraud.

Similarly, the DOJ has narrowed its approach to crypto-related prosecution, disbanding its crypto task force and instructing staff not to criminally charge regulatory violations in cases involving crypto. In a memo to staff last month, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told prosecutors to focus their efforts on going after “individuals who victimize digital asset investors.”

In Palafox’s case, the SEC is aiming to get investors’ money back, plus interest and civil penalties, as well as get injunctive relief that would prevent him from similar crimes in the future. The SEC is also seeking to get money back from several of Palafox’s family members, including his wife, Marissa Mendoza Palafox, and his brother-in-law, Darvie Mendoza.

In a submission to the court, the DOJ has said that Palafox — if found guilty — is facing “at least 108-135 months’ imprisonment,” or 9 to 11 years.

Palafox’s lawyer declined to comment.

Over the past several years, global discourse around blockchain has been dominated by the United States — its legislative gridlock, inter-agency turf wars, and intermittent moments of regulatory clarity. As the U.S. continued to grapple with its internal contradictions, other jurisdictions have sought to fill the void. Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Gibraltar positioned themselves as crypto hubs. Yet, each of them faced a critical limitation: none were natural centers of technological innovation at global scale.

Canada, by contrast, holds an often-overlooked but exceptionally strategic position. Not only is it geographically and culturally aligned with the United States, but it also shares a kindred entrepreneurial ethos. More importantly, Canada has deep, organic roots in blockchain innovation. Ethereum — arguably the most important programmable blockchain platform, second only to Bitcoin by market capitalization — was conceived in Toronto.

William Mougayar is the Toronto-based author of the best-selling book, The Business Blockchain. Consensus 2025 takes place in Toronto May 14-16.

Blockstream, the core Bitcoin infrastructure company, is based in Montreal. It is commonplace to find Canadian engineers, developers, and executives playing pivotal roles in leading U.S. blockchain firms. Thousands more contribute independently as blockchain technologists and software developers.

Beyond this historical significance and talent base, Canada has a critical structural advantage: agility. Where the United States is weighed down by institutional complexity, Canada can be nimble.

In the U.S., the path to coherent crypto regulation remains tangled in bureaucratic inertia. Legislation shuttles between the House and Senate, often stalling or contradicting itself. Agencies such as the SEC and CFTC continue to compete for jurisdiction. Even with the appointment of a White House crypto czar and an executive director, implementation continues to lag. For all its ambition, the U.S. regulatory machine moves like a supertanker — slow to pivot and burdened by procedural friction.

Canada, in contrast, benefits from fewer layers of government, closer coordination between agencies, and a regulatory culture that — when sufficiently motivated — can respond with speed and clarity. This structural simplicity presents a rare opportunity: Canada can leapfrog the U.S. by becoming the first G7 nation to adopt a coherent, innovation-friendly blockchain strategy.

Here’s what that plan could look like:

• Welcome global blockchain companies. Attract top-tier talent and startups with streamlined immigration pathways, R&D credits, targeted tax incentives, and bold partnerships.
• Establish a crypto-friendly tax regime. Modernize tax policy to support — not penalize — the use and holding of digital assets. Capital gains treatment, staking income, and token issuance rules must be clarified and calibrated to encourage innovation.
• Clarify and streamline regulation. Strong consumer protection and financial integrity remain essential, but ambiguity and overreach risk undermining innovation. Canada can offer clear, proportionate, and globally respected rules of engagement.
• Mandate crypto access within Canadian banks. Facilitate institutional adoption by encouraging banks to integrate blockchain systems and enable seamless, secure access to regulated crypto platforms, including holding stablecoins.
• Integrate blockchain into capital markets. Empower TMX and provincial exchanges to list approved digital assets and stablecoins. Allow registered dealer-brokers to offer decentralized finance (DeFi) products to retail and institutional clients.
• Promote blockchain use within the government. Encourage public agencies to pilot blockchain applications, sharing results and best practices to accelerate adoption across departments and services.
• Establish a national cryptocurrency reserve. In coordination with the Bank of Canada, explore holding select digital assets on the national balance sheet — an idea whose time has come.

All of these steps are part of a larger imperative: future-proofing Canada’s economy. Blockchain is no longer an emerging technology — it is actively reshaping sectors such as finance, digital identity, supply chains, and gaming. Countries that lead in its adoption will reap the economic dividends and shape the architecture of the digital age.

The United States may have scale, momentum, and an aggressive mindset, but it is also paralyzed by internal conflict and structural inefficiencies. Canada, by contrast, is small enough to be agile, yet large enough to make an impact.

Canada must act. The opportunity to lead in blockchain innovation is still wide open. Canada is uniquely positioned to seize it. No matter the outcome of the election on April 28, any serious national agenda must include a bold and forward-thinking blockchain policy.

TRUMP, marketed as Donald Trump’s official crypto token, rallied on Wednesday as an invitation to a dinner event with the U.S. President for token holders appeared on the project’s website.

“Join President Donald J. Trump at his Private, Members-Only Club in Washington, D.C. for Dinner!,” a banner about the event on the project’s website said.

The invite is targeted for the 220 largest token holders, per the event’s website.

The token surged over 70% following the news briefly hitting $16, its strongest price since early March. Later it retraced to below $13, still up 43% over the past 24 hours.

The event, notably, comes after $300 million worth of previously locked-up TRUMP tokens were added to circulation on April 18, according to Tokenomist data. Some 75% of all existing tokens are still locked up, with the next unlock coming up in July increasing the supply by over $600 million of coins.

The TRUMP token, launched only days before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on January 20, was met with industry-wide backlash for capitalizing on the attention and Trump’s public office and heavy allocations to insiders.

The launch also marked the peak in speculative froth on crypto markets. Bitcoin (BTC) declined over 30% from record prices in the following weeks, while many smaller, more speculative cryptocurrencies suffered 80%-90% drawdowns.

Despite today’s rally, TRUMP coin still trades more than 80% below its January 19 record price of $73.

Read more: TRUMP Coin’s Biggest Critics Are Crypto Industry Insiders

A project aiming to expand Bitcoin’s utility is tackling the collateral requirements of bridging the blockchain to programmable layer 2s.

Rollup project Citrea deployed its Clementine Bridge on the Bitcoin testnet. The bridge uses the BitVM2 programming language to expand the provision for decentralized finance (DeFi) on Bitcoin, by using it to verify layer 2s and sidechains that are fully programable in the way Bitcoin isn’t.

“A secure bridge between Bitcoin and a secondary layer has always been a bottleneck for using BTC in a programmable environment,” Citrea said on Monday.

Clementine is designed to solve this by providing a trust-minimized way to bridge bitcoin (BTC) for use in DeFi environments.

The BitVM family of computing paradigms, which could allow Ethereum-style smart contracts on Bitcoin, often lies at the heart of attempts by developers to make the network more programmable and thus allow BTC to power DeFi activities.

However, BitVM is hampered by the requirement to deposit BTC as a security mechanism each time a computation is initiated.

“We reuse the operator’s collateral, allowing them to facilitate multiple peg-outs with a single collateral,” Citrea co-creator Ekrem Bal told CoinDesk in a Telegram message.

Peg-outs refer to the process of moving assets from a sidechain back to Bitcoin, triggering the release of the locked BTC collateral on the main chain.

Citrea deployed Clementine on the original BitVM design last September. Citrea’s latest bridge uses BitVM2, an upgrade that boasts improvements such as allowing any participant to challenge suspicious transactions, not just a fixed set of operators.

Shares of Sol Strategies (HODL), a Toronto-listed digital-asset firm, jumped after the company said it secured an up-to $500 million convertible note facility to ramp up its investments focused on the Solana network.

The capital will be exclusively used for purchasing SOL tokens and expand the firm’s blockchain validator operation, the company said in a release. HODL shares surged as much as 18% to C$2.16 before paring some of the gains, but were still up 7% from yesterday’s close.

“This is the largest financing facility of its kind in the Solana ecosystem-and the first ever directly tied to staking yield,” CEO Leah Wald said in the statement. “Every dollar deployed is immediately yield-generating, and accretive to both our balance sheet and our validator business. This structure is not only innovative-it is highly scalable.”

The initial $20 million tranche of the deal, signed with New York-based private equity investment firm ATW Partners, is expected to close by May 1, the company said. The interest on the convertible notes will be paid out in SOL, calculated as up to 85% of the staking yield on SOL staked with the firm’s validators.

The company said it is also exploring a move to the Nasdaq stock exchange in the U.S., giving it access to a deeper investor base. The move follows similar plans of Canada-listed digital asset investment firm Galaxy Digital, which is set to debut on Nasdaq in May after being granted regulatory approval earlier this month.

SOL Strategies, led by Wald, co-founder of digital asset manager Valkyrie Investments, spearheaded the movement of adapting Michael Saylor’s bitcoin treasury strategy to alternative cryptocurrencies. The firm held 267,151 SOL tokens as of last month, worth over $40 million at current prices. It also bought three validator businesses last month, bringing the total amount of SOL staked at the firm’s validators to 3,351,617 SOL, or over $500 million.

U.S.-listed real estate firm Janover, now known as DeFi Development Corp, recently followed SOL Strategies’ footsteps in pursuing a Solana-focused crypto treasury and validator operator strategy.

Read more: Janover Takes Page From Saylor Playbook, Doubling SOL Stack to $20M as Stock Soars 1700%

This is a daily technical analysis by CoinDesk analyst and Chartered Market Technician Omkar Godbole.

Bitcoin (BTC) has finally surpassed a key resistance that limited recovery rallies earlier this year, after rising over 5% to $93,500 in 24 hours.

The leading digital asset by market value has topped the “Ichimoku Cloud,” confirming a bullish shift in momentum, while other major cryptocurrencies lag.

The Ichimoku cloud, developed by a Japanese journalist in the 1960s, is used to identify support and resistance, momentum, and trend change in price actions. The indicator comprises five lines: Leading Span A, Leading Span B, and the gap between the two representing the cloud, Conversion Line or Tenkan-Sen (T), Base Line or Kijun-Sen (K), and a lagging closing price line.

Crossovers above and below the cloud represent bullish and bearish shifts in the market trend, and BTC has moved above the cloud, as seen in the chart below.

The bullish breakout means the cloud can now act as support, arresting potential price pullbacks just as it acted as resistance, capping recovery rallies in February and March. BTC is also back to trading above the widely tracked 50-, 100-, and 200-day simple moving averages (SMAs).

This move now puts the focus on the resistance at $100K, a major psychological level, followed by record highs above $109K. Meanwhile, support is seen at $88,550, which marks the convergence of the 200-day SMA and the Ichimoku cloud.

A move below the same would negate the bullish outlook.

Altcoins lag

Major altcoins such as payments-focused XRP, leading meme token DOGE, Cardano’s ADA, Ethereum’s native token ETH, and Solana’s SOL are yet to chart a BTC-like bullish breakout above the Ichimoku cloud.

The above coins, though buoyant alongside BTC’s ascent, have yet to make their respective bullish breakouts.