Crypto Daybook Americas: BTC Price Holds Steady, ALPACA, HOUSE Provide the Thrills
ReadBy Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)Cryptocurrencies fell slightly in the past 24 hours, with the broad market CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index dropping 1.4%. Bitcoin (BTC) is little changed around $95,000. These figures are well within recently volatility ranges and come on the back of a strong monthly performance — BTC is on track to rise 15% in April, the most since November.STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy .The market has been grappling with growing pessimism surrounding the potential impact of President Donald Trump's reciprocal tariffs on nearly every country and optimism that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates earlier than expected.Stock prices have rallied over the past week on expectations Trump would lower the tariffs and the continuation of interest-rate cuts, according to Spanish bank Bankinter.“Yet the perspective could turn for the worse from today, applying the logic of the data, because — regardless of tariffs and rate cuts — part of the damage has already been done, chiefly to confidence, which is the market’s foundation,” the bank wrote in a note.Indeed, various major companies, including P&G, UPS, PepsiCo, American Airlines and GM, have lowered or pulled their earnings forecasts. Bankinter pointed out that French first-quarter GDP data released today showed a quarter-on-quarter increase that was entirely inventory-driven, while consumption, investment, and exports are weakening.That bodes poorly for the U.S. figure, set to be released at 8:30 a.m. Some market observers, including Bankinter, suggest it could contract sharply. Bitcoin’s rise so far this year, contrasting with the stock market’s worst 100 days of a presidential administration since 1974, could be further evidence the cryptocurrency is starting to be used as a hedge.As mentioned earlier in the week, Greg Cipolaro, the global head of research at NYDIG, wrote in a note that BTC has been acting “more like the non-sovereign issued store of value that it is.”Bitcoin has decoupled from U.S. equities after the trade war between the U.S. and China escalated and has been seeing bets on it rise. This month, spot bitcoin ETFs posted monthly total net inflows of little over $3 billion according to SoSoValue data, further pointing to a flight to the cryptocurrency space amid the uncertainty. Stay alert!What to WatchCrypto: April 30, 9:30 a.m.: ProShares will debut three ETFs that will provide leveraged and inverse exposure to XRP: the ProShares Ultra XRP ETF, the ProShares Short XRP ETF and the ProShares UltraShort XRP ETF. 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. May 1: Coinbase Asset Management will introduce the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund (CBYF), which is aimed at non-U.S. investors. May 1: Hippo Protocol starts up its own layer-1 blockchain mainnet built on Cosmos SDK and completes a migration from Ethereum’s ERC-20 HPO token to its native HP token, enabling staking and governance. May 1, 9 a.m.: Constellation Network (DAG) activates the Tessellation v3 upgrade on its mainnet, introducing delegated staking, node collateral, token locking and new transaction types to enhance network security, scalability and functionality. May 1, 11 a.m.: THORChain activates its v3.5 mainnet upgrade, adding the TCY token to convert $200 million in debt into equity. TCY holders earn 10% of network revenue, while native RUNE remains the protocol’s security and governance token. TCY activates May 5. May 5, 3 a.m.: IOTA’s Rebased network upgrade starts. Rebased moves IOTA to a new network, boosting capacity to as many as 50,000 transactions per second, offering staking rewards of 10%-15% a year and adding support for MoveVM smart contracts. May 5, 10 a.m.: The Crescendo network upgrade goes live on the Kaspa (KAS) mainnet. This upgrade boosts the network’s performance by increasing the block production rate to 10 blocks per second from 1 block per second.Macro April 30, 8 a.m.: Brazil’s Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases March unemployment rate data. Unemployment Rate Est. 7% vs. Prev. 6.8% April 30, 8 a.m.: Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases (preliminary) Q1 GDP growth data. GDP Growth Rate QoQ Prev. -0.6% GDP Growth Rate YoY Prev. 0.5% April 30, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases (advance) Q1 GDP growth data. GDP Growth Rate QoQ Est. 0.4% vs. Prev. 2.4% April 30, 10 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases March consumer income and expenditure data. Core PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.1% vs. Prev. 0.4% Core PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.6% vs. Prev. 2.8% PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0% vs. Prev. 0.3% PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.2% vs. Prev. 2.5% Personal Income MoM Est. 0.4% vs. Prev. 0.8% Personal Spending MoM Est. 0.6% vs. Prev. 0.4% May 1, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment insurance data for the week ended April 26. Initial Jobless Claims Est. 224K vs. Prev. 222K May 1, 9:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases Canada April purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data. Manufacturing PMI Prev. 46.3 May 1, 10:00 a.m.: Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases U.S. April economic activity data. Manufacturing PMI Est. 48 vs. Prev. 49Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data) April 30: Robinhood Markets (HOOD), post-market, $0.33 May 1: Block (XYZ), post-market, $0.97 May 1: Reddit (RDDT), post-market, $0.02 May 1: Riot Platforms (RIOT), post-market, $-0.23 May 1: Strategy (MSTR), post-market, $-0.11 May 8: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $2.08 May 8: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market May 8: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market(Estimates based on FactSet data)Token EventsGovernance votes & calls Compound DAO is voting on moving 35,200 COMP ($1.5 million) into a multisig safe to test selling covered calls on COMP for USDC, lend that USDC in Compound for extra yield, then use the returns to buy back COMP and repeat — targeting a roughly 15 % annual gain. Voting ends May 2. April 30, 12 p.m.: Helium to host a community call meeting. May 5, 4 p.m.: Livepeer (LPT) to host a Treasury Talk session on Discord.Unlocks May 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 2.28% of its circulating supply worth $261.2 million. May 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 5.67% of its circulating supply worth $12.31 million. May 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.73% of its circulating supply worth $12.99 million. May 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.56% of its circulating supply worth $13.08 million. May 9: Movement (MOVA) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $12.31 million.Token Launches May 2: Binance to delist Alpaca Finance (ALPACA), PlayDapp (PDA), Viberate (VIB), and Wing Finance (WING). May 5: Sonic (S) to be listed on Kraken.ConferencesCoinDesk's Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.Token TalkBy Shaurya MalwaSolana-based Housecoin (HOUSE) zoomed to nearly $100 million market cap early Wednesday driven by a 24-hour price bump of 63% that brought its price to just under a cent.HOUSE has surged more than 900% in the past three weeks, mainly on niche popularity in crypto circles and mentions from well-followed X accounts.The trending memecoin is a satire on the real estate market, where prime locations are priced out for most of the general populace.Holding HOUSE is, jokingly, considered by its cult to be holding actual property even though the token is intrinsically valueless and not backed by any real-world assets.While its momentum and accessibility offer trading opportunities, its volatility, lack of clear fundamentals, and memecoin risks demand caution.Derivatives PositioningAmong large-cap assets on Binance, PEPE and ADA hold negative funding APRs of -14.7% and -11.2%, respectively, according to Velo data. In contrast, TON, XLM, and XMR have seen funding APRs spike to 11%, highlighting a clear divergence in speculative positioning across major tokens.In terms of open interest, BSW, DRIFT and PROMPT are among the top gainers, with daily open interest rising by 61%, 58%, and 33%, respectively — signaling idiosyncratic, intraday interest in these assets.ALPACA, a BNB Chain asset, recorded over $55 million in short liquidations in the past 24 hours. That's the largest of any asset, according to CoinGlass data. The surge followed heavy short positioning after Binance’s delisting announcement a week ago, before a 550% price rally triggered widespread liquidations.Market MovementsBTC is down 0.19% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday at $94,915.28 (24hrs: unchanged)ETH is down 0.57% at $1,805.20 (24hrs: -1.48%)CoinDesk 20 is down 0.51% at 2,751.84 (24hrs: -1.27%)Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 19 bps at 2.99%BTC funding rate is at 0.0008% (0.8377% annualized) on BinanceDXY is up 0.19% at 99.43Gold is down 1.16% at $3,278.15/ozSilver is down 1.64% at $32.36/ozNikkei 225 closed +0.57% at 36,045.38Hang Seng closed +0.51% at 22,119.41FTSE is up 0.13% at 8,474.22Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.24% at 5,174.41DJIA closed on Tuesday +0.75% at 40,527.62S&P 500 closed +0.56% at 5,560.83Nasdaq closed +0.55% at 17,461.32S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.31% at 24,874.48S&P 40 Latin America closed unchanged at 2,548.27U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 5 bps at 4.17%E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.28% at 5,568.25E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.44% at 19,556.00E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.22% at 40,596.00Bitcoin StatsBTC Dominance: 64.54 (0.16%)Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01902 (-0.31%)Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 837 EH/sHashprice (spot): $49.08Total Fees: 6.17 BTC / $585,773.63CME Futures Open Interest: 134,825 BTCBTC priced in gold: 28.9 ozBTC vs gold market cap: 8.19%Technical AnalysisWith bitcoin and most digital assets breaching key high-timeframe liquidity levels, a market pullback now appears likely.Solana, along with many altcoins, has broken its weekly market structure with a strong upward move that swept liquidity at $153 before facing rejection at the 100-day exponential moving average (EMA) level.Bulls will want the price action to print a higher low with the 100-day EMA on the weekly time frame sitting at $137, aligning with the weekly orderblock of demand.Crypto EquitiesStrategy (MSTR): closed at on Tuesday $381.45 (+3.3%), down 0.41% at $379.88 in pre-marketCoinbase Global (COIN): closed at $206.13 (+0.42%)Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at $21.09 (-0.57%)MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $14.22 (+1.5%), down 0.28% at $14.18Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.42 (-2.75%), down 0.40% at $7.39Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $8.29 (+0.61%), down 0.48% at $8.25CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.44 (-1.52%), down 0.24% at $8.42CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $14.19 (-0.98%)Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $33.97 (-3.96%), up 4.95% at $35.65Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $40.97 (-2.87%), up 2.49% at $41.99ETF FlowsSpot BTC ETFs:Daily net flow: $172.8 millionCumulative net flows: $39.16 billionTotal BTC holdings ~ 1.15 millionSpot ETH ETFsDaily net flow: $18.4 millionCumulative net flows: $2.50 billionTotal ETH holdings ~ 3.44 millionSource: Farside InvestorsOvernight FlowsChart of the DayAlpaca Finance (ALPACA) emerged as the top gainer on centralized exchanges with a price that's surged nearly 2,500% over the past seven days.The rally is driven by a significant short squeeze, following heavy short positioning in the wake of Binance’s April 24 delisting announcement.As a result, the token surged to a multiyear high of $1.375.While You Were SleepingIn the Ether