Coindesk

Strategy (MSTR) has added 6,556 bitcoin (BTC) to its balance sheet, spending $555.8 million in the process, according to a regulatory filing published on Monday.

The purchase was funded using proceeds from the company’s two at-the-market (ATM) stock offering programs, the filings notes.

The firm, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, sold 1.76 million shares of its Class A common stock and over 91,000 shares of a preferred stock series — STRK – between April 14 and April 20.

The common stock sale brought in $547.7 million, while the preferred shares added another $7.8 million. The latest acquisition boosts Strategy’s total holdings to 538,200 BTC, purchased at an average price of $67,766 per coin.

The Michael Saylor-led company has spent $36.47 billion on bitcoin to date. Shares of MSTR are up 2.77% in pre-market trading as BTC rose to $87,300.

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Bitcoin’s censorship-resistant, decentralized setup empowers individuals by facilitating peer-to-peer transactions without government interference or corporate control.

You’ve probably heard that from a Bitcoin maxi many times.

It’s an idea that resonates even more strongly today in light of reports that President Donald Trump is exploring ways to remove Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, which is the world’s most powerful central bank.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett talked about Trump’s intentions Friday and markets responded early Monday by selling the dollar and the U.S. stock futures. The Dollar Index, which tracks the currency’s exchange rate against major fiat currencies, slipped to a three-year low of 98.00 while gold touched new highs above $3,400 per ounce.

Bitcoin rose past $87,000, confirming a bullish breakout from its recent sideways trading between $83,000 and $86,000 to suggest more gains ahead. The uptick saw gaming, AI and memecoins outshine other sectors of the crypto market, with smaller tokens like ENJ and MAGIC chalking out gains in excess of 50% in 24 hours. MANTRA still tanked 15%.

“A weaker dollar could draw renewed attention from American investors, highlighting bitcoin’s potential as a hedge against declining dollar value,” said Matrixport, a crypto financial services platform.

On-chain data warned of heightened volatility as prices potentially near the $90,000 mark. “Cost‑basis clusters show little overhead supply below that range, implying the market could advance quickly before a larger tranche of holders reaches break‑even and begins taking profit,” analytics firm IntoTheBlock said in a Telegram post.

In other news, Charles Shwab CEO Rick Wurster said the financial services firm is “hopeful and likely to be able” to support spot crypto trading within the next year. Wurster said that more and more clients are seeking information about crypto.

Slovenia’s Finance Ministry proposed a 25% tax on capital gains on profits from selling cryptocurrencies for fiat or spending tokens for goods and services. The tax is proposed to go into effect from 2026.

Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, proposed replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with RISC-V, an open-source instruction set architecture used to develop custom processors for a variety of applications. Buterin said the proposal address one of Ethereum’s key scaling bottlenecks by dramatically improving the efficiency and simplicity of smart contract execution.

Speaking of Ethereum, it briefly fell behind its chief rival, Solana network in terms of the total staked value of their respective native tokens, ETH and SOL. Uniswap founder Hayden Adam warned that Ethereum could fall behind Solana if it goes back to relying on the layer 1 bockchain instead of the layer-2 scaling products.

In macro news, China said it will retaliate against countries that work with U.S. to isolate Beijing in the trade war started by Trump. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto:
  • April 21: Coinbase Derivatives will list XRP futures pending approval by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
  • April 25, 1 p.m.: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Crypto Task Force Roundtable on “Key Considerations for Crypto Custody“.
  • April 29, 1:05 a.m.: BNB Chain (BNB) — BSC mainnet hardfork.
  • April 30, 9:30 a.m.: ProShares expects its XRP ETF, offering exposure through futures and swap agreements, to begin trading on NYSE Arca.
  • April 30, 10:03 a.m.: Gnosis Chain (GNO), an Ethereum sister chain, will activate the Pectra hard fork on its mainnet at slot 21,405,696, epoch 1,337,856.
• Macro
  • April 21-26: World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) spring meetings take place in Washington.
  • April 22, 8:30 p.m.: Statistics Canada releases March producer price inflation data.
    • PPI MoM Prev. 0.4%
    • PPI YoY Prev. 4.9%
  • April 22, 6 p.m.: Fed Governor Adriana D. Kugler will deliver a speech titled “Transmission of Monetary Policy.”
  • April 23, 8 a.m.: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases retail sales data.
    • Retail Sales MoM Prev. 0.6%
    • Retail Sales YoY Prev. 2.7%
  • April 23, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases (flash) U.S. April purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.
    • Composite PMI Prev. 53.5
    • Manufacturing PMI Prev. 50.2
    • Services PMI Est. 52.9 vs. Prev. 54.4
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • April 22: Tesla (TSLA), post-market
  • April 30: Robinhood Markets (HOOD), post-market
  • May 1: Block (XYZ), post-market

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Aave DAO is discussing working with Ether.fi to create a custom Aave market on EVM layer 2 to “facilitate on-chain credit for everyday payments through the Ether.fi Cash credit card program.”
  • April 23, 9 p.m.: Manta Network to host a townhall meeting with its founders.
  • April 24, 8 a.m.: Alchemy Pay to host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on its 2025 roadmap.
  • April 30, 12 p.m.: Helium to host a community call meeting.
• Unlocks
  • April 22: Metars Genesis (MRS) to unlock 11.87% of its circulating supply worth $127.9 million.
  • April 30: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.89% of its circulating supply worth $22.78 million.
  • May 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 2.28% of its circulating supply worth $167.97 million.
  • May 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 5.67% of its circulating supply worth $10.57 million.
  • May 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.73% of its circulating supply worth $12.12 million.
• Token Launches
  • April 21: Balance (EPT) to be listed on Bitget Bybit, KuCoin, Gate.io, LBank, MEXC, BingX.
  • April 22: Hyperlane to airdrop its HYPER tokens.
  • April 22: BNB to be listed on Kraken.

Conferences:

• CoinDesk’s Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.
  
• April 22-24: Money20/20 Asia (Bangkok)
• April 23: Crypto Horizons 2025 (Dubai)
• April 23-24: Blockchain Forum 2025 (Moscow)
• April 24: Bitwise’s Investor Day for Bitcoin Standard Corporations (New York)
• April 26: Crypto Vision Conference 2025 (Manilla)
• April 26-27: Harvard Blockchain in Action Conference (Cambridge, Mass.)
• April 27: N Crypto Conference 2025 (Kyiv)
• April 27-30: Web Summit Rio 2025
• April 28-29: Blockchain Disrupt 2025 (Dubai)
• April 28-29: Staking Summit Dubai
• April 29: El Salvador Digital Assets Summit 2025 (San Salvador)
• April 29: IFGS 2025 (London)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• Bitget, a centralized crypto exchange, will reverse trades and compensate users due to “abnormal trading” in its perpetual futures market for VOXEL, a token linked to the Polygon-based RPG game Voxie Tactics.
• Early Sunday, VOXEL’s trading volume surged past bitcoin’s 24-hour volume — with the token’s value surging over 300% in a week — despite being only the 723rd-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
• An X user claimed six-figure profits from a sub-$100 investment, attributing the surge to a potential bug in Bitget’s market-making robot,. The trade rollback will likely erase these gains.

• Bitget’s investigation revealed possible market manipulation by certain accounts, prompting the exchange to activate its risk-control system and plan a trade rollback within 24 hours.
• Affected users who incurred losses will receive compensation, and Bitget is continuing its investigation.

Derivatives Positioning

• The market-wide futures open interest has climbed to $37.22 billion, the highest since March 24, according to Velo Data. The figure represents open interest in all coins listed on Binance, Bybit, OKX, Deribit and Hyperliquid.
• ETH is the best performing major token in terms of futures open interest growth, followed by BTC and LINK.
• Speaking of OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta, ETH also leads the pack with the highest positive reading, implying an influx of buying pressure in the market.
• On Deribit, BTC and ETH risk reversals for short- and near-dated expiries have flattened out, recovering from the recent persistent negative prints that represented bias for protective put options.

Market Movements:

• BTC is up 3.19% from 4 p.m. ET Sunday at $87,270.44 (24hrs: +3.63%)
• ETH is up 2.54% at $1,631.90 (24hrs: +3.17%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 0.8% at 2,268.01 (24hrs: +3.77%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 47 bps at 2.47%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0044% (4.776% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is down 1.11% at 98.26
• Gold is up 2.04% at $3,395.65/oz
• Silver is up 1.12% at $32.89/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed -1.3% at 34,279.92
• Hang Seng closed +1.61% at 21,395.14
• FTSE is closed at 8,275.66
• Euro Stoxx 50 is closed at 4,935.34
• DJIA closed on Thursday -1.33% at 39,142.23
• S&P 500 closed +0.13% at 5,282.70
• Nasdaq closed -0.13% at 16,286.45
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.36% at 24,192.81
• S&P 40 Latin America closed +1.64% at 2,383.75
• U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is unchanged at 4.33%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 1.04% at 5,275.00
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 1.16% at 18,168.25
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.92% at 38,969

Bitcoin Stats:

• BTC Dominance: 64% (0.23%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.1873 (0.54%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 858 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $45.22
• Total Fees: 5.48 BTC / $479,045
• CME Futures Open Interest: 141,280 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 25.7 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 7.2%

Technical Analysis

• Bitcoin’s breakout has set the stage for a continued move higher to $90,000.
• However, trading volume has dipped, suggesting low participation in the price recovery.
• A low-volume rally often ends up being short-lived.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $317.20 (1.78%), up 3.13% at $327.12 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $175.03 (1.64%) up 1.4% at $177.49
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$15.36 (-1.41%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $12.66 (2.76%), up 2.69% at $13.00
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $6.46 (1.57%), up 2.63% at $6.63
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $6.63 (0.61%), down 0.45% at $6.60
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.51 (3.16%), up 1.86% at $7.65
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $12.04 (1.09%), up 2.41% at $12.33
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $32.49 (4.79%)
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $36.58 (-1.64%), up 2.1% at $37.35

ETF Flows

U.S. equity markets were closed on Friday.

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• XRP’s short- and near-dated risk reversals continue to be priced negative, a sign of persistent demand for put options, which offer downside protection.

While You Were Sleeping

• Pope Francis, Voice for the Poor Who Transformed the Catholic Church, Dies at 88 (CNN): The first Latin American pope died weeks after returning to public life following a life-threatening case of pneumonia.
• China Vows Retaliation Against Countries That Follow U.S. Calls to Isolate Beijing (CNBC): China said it will respond to U.S. tariff deals that undermine its interests, accusing Washington of “unilateral bullying” and warning it risks returning global trade to “law of the jungle.”
• BNB, SOL, XRP Spike Higher as Bitcoin ‘Digital Gold’ Narrative Makes a Comeback (CoinDesk): Bitcoin’s correlation with U.S. equities appears to be weakening as its price increasingly tracks gold, which has held firm while stocks decline, according to LVRG Research’s Nick Ruck.
• Stablecoin Giant Circle Is Launching a New Payments and Remittance Network (CoinDesk): The fintech firm will unveil a new payments and cross-border remittance product on Tuesday.
• Over $380M Worth of Crypto Stolen During Bybit’s $1.4B Hack Has Gone Dark (CoinDesk): The exchange’s CEO said that 27.6% of the funds stolen by the North Korean Lazarus Group “flowed into mixers then through bridges to P2P and OTC platforms.”
• Bitcoin’s Breakout Signals BTC Potentially Rallying to $90K-$92K: Technical Analysis (CoinDesk): Bitcoin’s price surged past $87,000, breaking out of a week-long consolidation between $83,000 and $86,000. The target range previously served as a strong support zone.

In the Ether

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

Bitcoin’s (BTC) recent range play resolved bullishly early Monday, shifting focus to the $90,000-$92,000 range, which was previously a strong support zone.

The leading cryptocurrency by market value rose past $87,000, convincingly breaking out of a week-long consolidation between $83,000 and $86,000. The renewed willingness among the bulls to lead the price action indicates the resumption of the recovery from the April 7 lows under $75,000.

It also means potential for a continued move higher to the $90,000-$92,000 range, which acted as the floor, arresting price drops from December to early February. The support zone was eventually breached in late February, spurring a rapid decline to under $75,000.

The range breakout is seen on the hourly chart (left).

It follows the recent invalidation of the bearish trendline, characterizing the sell-off from record highs, as seen on the daily chart. BTC has also surpassed the 30-day exponential moving average (EMA) of price highs, indicating a bullish shift in momentum.

The focus, therefore, is on the $90,000-$92,000 range, the former support zone from early this year. Those tracking moving averages should note that the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) is now located at $88,245.

The bullish outlook risks invalidation should prices fall all the way back to $85K by the day’s end (UTC).

Circle, the firm behind the $60 billion USDC stablecoin, is launching a new payments and cross border remittance network on Tuesday — the company’s “next product move” — from its plush New York City headquarters, high on the 87th Floor of One World Trade Center.

The launch event is aimed at banks, fintechs, payment service providers, remittance providers and USDC strategic partners. It will feature Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire sharing his vision for the stablecoin giant’s next move within the payments space, according to an invite seen by CoinDesk.

New and incipient regulations around the globe are opening up the stablecoin space, where Circle has shared the limelight with larger rival Tether. It makes sense then that Circle — a firm that has successfully pivoted during its years in the crypto space — should look to consolidate its position and return to its roots as a payments company.

“Circle is launching a payments network that is initially targeting remittances but is ultimately aiming to rival Mastercard and Visa,” said a person familiar with the plans.

Stablecoins have reached an adoption level where the technology could disrupt global money transfers in a way similar to WhatsApp and international calls, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz said in recent report.

In a recent interview, crypto custody tech specialists Fireblocks pointed to billions being moved around by payments services providers doing things like cross border payments using stablecoins like USDC and USDT.

Circle was in the news most recently, after the firm announced plans to go public in the U.S., only to postpone the date of its IPO thanks to choppy and uncertain market conditions.

Circle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Surging gold prices and bitcoin’s (BTC) relatively strong price action amid a global market sell-off have some traders revisiting the latter’s role as “digital gold” — a big narrative in bitcoin’s early years but one that has lost steam in recent times.

BTC zoomed above $87,000 in Asian morning hours, with Cardano’s ADA, BNB Chain’s BNB, XRP and ether (ETH) adding as much as 1.5%. The spike reversed all declines since Thursday, with tokens such as Solana’s SOL up 5.2% in the past week.

The tariff-driven trade wars have sparked fears of inflation and currency devaluation, prompting comparisons of the asset to gold’s historical role as a hedge.

“Although bitcoin has had a close correlation with U.S. equities, it seems to be changing with a stronger tie to the rise of the price of gold, which has been a safe haven while equities have plummeted,” Nick Ruck, director at LVRG Research, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message on Monday.

“Bitcoin crossed $87,000 as a sign of renewed investor confidence as the market continues to stabilize after panicking over tariffs. It’s also worth noting that Bitcoin’s digital gold narrative is taking off as both assets have grown in tandem,” Ruck said.

Gold set fresh highs Monday with a push above $3,380 per ounce, bringing year-to-date gains to 25%. Bitcoin has dropped more than 20% from a January peak of $108,000, though Monday’s push over $87,000 sent the asset to its highest level since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” in early April.

Pressure on the greenback has continued to grow as the dollar index (DXY) crashed to a three-year low, with some pointing out that most bad news has been “priced in” and that bitcoin could see upside in the coming days.

“Trump’s inclination to remove Jerome Powell as Fed Chair and force interest rate cuts is causing people to sell the U.S. dollar and U.S. government debt, moving to other safe haven assets such as gold, European bonds, and now, Bitcoin,” Jeff Mei, COO at BTSE, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message Monday.

“After all, when rates are cut, more money flows into the money supply, devaluing the U.S. dollar. In general, downward pressure on the US dollar is growing and this could be a driving catalyst for Bitcoin to become a safe haven asset,” Mei added.

Meanwhile, here’s a machine’s view of the markets today, powered by the CoinDesk Markets AI bot.

ADA Price Analysis

• Cardano’s ADA is above 63 cents with strong technical indicators pointing to continued upward momentum despite macroeconomic headwinds.
• Price action formed a clear ascending channel with strong support at $0.612, which successfully held during multiple retests.
• Notable volume spike occurred on 2025-04-21 00:00 when volume reached 68M (3x average), propelling price through key resistance at $0.630.
• Fibonacci extension levels suggest 64 cents as the next target, with an overall range of 0.031 (5.1%), indicating substantial volatility.
• RSI remains below overbought territory despite the rally, suggesting potential for continued upward momentum.
• Consolidation near previous resistance suggests accumulation rather than distribution.

XRP Price Analysis

• XRP’s decisive breakout signals a potential end to months-long sideways trading, with technical indicators pointing to further gains ahead.
• Fibonacci retracement levels suggest potential continuation toward $2.15, with the 61.8% extension pointing to $2.18 as the next target if bullish momentum persists.

SOL Price Analysis

• SOL breaks decisively above $135 resistance, surging 10.2% to establish new support levels with strong volume confirmation
• Key technical battle emerges between $129 support and $144 resistance zones, with on-chain data showing 5.75% of realized volume concentrated at these critical levels
• Price action formed a clear ascending channel with higher lows and higher highs, particularly evident in the April 19-21 rally.
• Volume significantly increased during upward movements, confirming the strength of the bullish trend.
• The 48-hour momentum indicators show bullish divergence with price maintaining strength above the 20-hour moving average.

BNB Price Action

• BNB breaks $600 barrier with 3.2% surge as large holders accumulate during market volatility.
• Recent quarterly token burn removed 1.57 million BNB worth over $1 billion, supporting price momentum.
• Open interest in BNB rose 3.3% to $760 million despite negative funding rates, with 68% of traders betting on continued price increases.
• BNB broke out of its consolidation range with a 3.2% surge from $592.63 to $601.74.
• Price action shows clear bullish momentum with increasing volume, particularly during the breakout candle where volume spiked to 55,661 units.
• Fibonacci extension targets suggest potential continuation toward the $605-610 zone if current momentum persists.

Publicly-listed Metaplanet announced fresh bitcoin (BTC) purchases on Monday as BTC went above $87,300, reversing last week’s loses.

Metaplanet picked up 330 BTC bring its overall holdings to 4,855 BTC, worth over $420 million, based on current prices.

This is the Japanese firm’s third bitcoin purchase this month, even as broader markets reel from tariff concerns amid a general lack of optimism. Earlier this month, Metaplanet became the tenth-largest public holder of BTC.

However, Metaplanet is not the only Japanese firm raking up bitcoin.Fashion brand ANAP Holdings purchase approximately 16.6591 BTC, valued at around 200 million yen (approximately $1.4 million), last week.

The holdings will be overseen by its subsidiary, ANAP Lightning Capital. The company plans to conduct quarterly market value assessments of its BTC holdings, with any gains or losses reflected in its profit and loss statements.

Its BTC yield from quarter-to-date is at 12.1% so far, with the previous quarter’s yield at 95%. BTC Yield is a custom metric used by the firm to assess the performance of its strategy. This measures the growth of bitcoin per fully diluted share.

Bitcoin has fared relatively better than U.S. equities in such a time of financial instability. U.S. equities lost $5.4 trillion in value in two days after President Trump unveiled his reciprocal tariffs earlier in April, which sent the Nasdaq tumbling down 11% at the time. BTC fell a relatively smaller 6%, in comparison.

Metaplanet’s stock on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is up nearly 0.9% since open.

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou said that 27.95% of the funds lost in the $1.4 billion exploit engineered by the North Korean Lazarus Group have gone dark or become untraceable.

“Total hacked funds of USD 1.4bn around 500k ETH. 68.57% remain traceable, 27.59% have gone dark, 3.84% have been frozen. The untraceable funds primarily flowed into mixers then through bridges to P2P and OTC platforms,” Zhou said in an executive summary published on X on Monday.

The untraceable funds were moved into mixers before being transferred through bridges to P2P (peer-to-peer) and OTC (over-the-counter) platforms, the post explained, mentioning the use of Wasabi, a crypto mixer, to wash off a certain amount of BTC, following which a portion of these funds entered into other mixers, including Railgun, Tornado Cash and CryptoMixer.

The malicious entity then executed multiple cross-chain swaps through Thorchain, eXch, Lombard, LiFi, Stargate and SunSwap, with the final stage involving the conversion of these illicit funds into more liquid assets.

The North Korea-linked Lazarus Group hacked Bybit in February, draining 500,000 ether (ETH) by taking “control of the specific ETH cold wallet and transferring all the ETH in the cold wallet to this unidentified address.”

Forensics reveal that of the hacked funds, a total of 432,748 ETH, representing 84.45%, has been transferred from ether to bitcoin via Thorchain. Notably, 67.25% of these funds, amounting to 342,975 ETH (around $960.33 million), has been converted into 10,003 BTC and distributed across 35,772 wallets with an average of 0.28 BTC per wallet.

Further, 1.17% of the funds, or 5,991 ETH (approximately $16.77 million), remains on the Ethereum blockchain, stashed across 12,490 wallets.

Lastly, the Lazarus Bounty initiative has received 5,443 bounty reports in two months, of which, 70 have been deemed valid. Zhou said the exchange needs “more bounty hunters that can decode mixers as we need a lot of help there down the road.”

Bitcoin (BTC) outshined the otherwise volatile alternative cryptocurrencies early Monday as the dollar index crashed to a three-year low on reports that President Donald Trump is exploring ways to remove the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

BTC rose over 2% to $87,200, hitting the highest since April 2, according to data source CoinDesk. The move marked a bullish resolution to the recent consolidation between $83,000 and $87,000. Major alternative cryptocurrencies such as payments-focused XRP, Ethereum’s ether and Cardano’s ADA rose over 1% each, lagging BTC.

In FX markets, hedge funds sold the U.S. dollar against major currencies, including euro, yen and the Aussie dollar, driving the dollar index to 98.5, the lowest since April 2022, according to data from charting platform TradingView. The DXY has declined by 10% in three months. Weakness in the dollar typically eases financial conditions, greasing risk-taking in financial markets.

Meanwhile, gold’s rally continued, with the per ounce price reaching a record high of $3,382, taking the year-to-date gain to 28%. Futures tied to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq traded 0.5% lower.

Observers suggest that National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett’s comment on Friday regarding Trump’s intention to remove Powell likely triggered the selling of the dollar, along with upticks in BTC and gold.

“The move in bitcoin to $87,000 appears to be driven by a sharp drop in the U.S. dollar and a +2% rally in gold, both triggered by Trump’s push to replace Fed chair Powell. While a trade deal with Japan may be announced soon, the key catalyst today is the perceived thread to Fed independence,” Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, told CoinDesk.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday that “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough,” while reiterating calls for lower interest rates on the following day. Early last week, Powell said that the Fed would wait for more data on the economy before changing the borrowing cost while warning of stagflation.

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee warned that a move by Trump to terminate Jerome Powell would undermine the credibility of the Fed.

Hashprice, a key metric used to gauge miner revenue, is currently hovering near a five-year low, according to HashRate Index—a stark reminder of how difficult the mining business has become.

In simple terms, the metric is the income miners can expect per unit of computing power, denoted by per petahash (PH/s). It can be denominated in U.S. dollars or BTC, although it’s most commonly quoted in USD for practical comparison.

At present, hashprice sits at $44.00 PH/s, only slightly above its August 2024 low, when bitcoin reached $49,000 amid the yen carry trade unwind. Currently, bitcoin is trading around $84,000.

Despite the higher BTC price, miner revenue is dwindling, which paints a dire picture of the mining industry as a whole after the recent halving event cut the rewards by half. Rising competition, higher mining difficulty, lower transaction revenue, and spiking energy costs have added more pressure to the revenue.

However, it’s not all bad. At around $44.00 PH/s levels, depending on what type of mining machines miners are using, miners can still be near or at breakeven, although far from 2021’s mining bull run.

Looking ahead, deteriorating market conditions, stagnant bitcoin prices, and geopolitical uncertainty, such as potential tariffs affecting mining operations, could create further headwinds for the industry.

This is reflected in the performance of the Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI), which is down 50% year-to-date while BTC fell about 10%, underscoring the challenging environment facing the mining sector.

It makes sense that miners are increasingly pivoting into other revenue streams, such as reallocating computing power for artificial intelligence.

Read more: Bitcoin Mining Stocks Plunge as Revenue Craters Amid Market Carnage

The price action for XRP and bitcoin (BTC) resembles a tightly compressed spring on the verge of uncoiling with a sudden release of energy.

That’s the message from a key volatility indicator called Bollinger Bandwidth. Bollinger Bands are volatility bands set at plus two and minus two standard deviations above and below the 20-period moving average (SMA) of an asset’s market price. The bandwidth measures the space between these bands as a percentage of the 20-day moving average.

In the case of XRP, the Bollinger bandwidth has narrowed to its lowest level since October 2024 on the 4-hour chart, where each candle represents price action for a four-hour period. The 4-hour chart interval is quite popular in the 24/7 crypto market, allowing traders to analyze and predict short-term price movements. Bitcoin’s 4-hour chart mirrors the Bollinger bandwidth pattern in XRP.

The long-held belief is that tighter Bollinger bandwidth, reflecting a quiet period in the market, is akin to a compressed spring ready for significant movement.

During these calm phases, the market accumulates energy that is eventually released once a clear direction is established, often leading to dramatic rallies or sharp price declines/ Both XRP and bitcoin surged in November-December following an extended range-bound period that left their bandwidth at levels comparable to those observed today.

That said, tighter bands do not always indicate a bullish volatility explosion; they can also foreshadow a sell-off. For example, the bands tightened in October 2022, signaling a significant move ahead, which materialized on the downside after FTX went bust.

It remains to be seen whether this latest spring compression will trigger bullish volatility or lead both tokens into a tailspin. The recent hawkish comments from Federal Reserve’s Chairman Jerome Powell and selling by some whales favor the latter.

Stay alert!