Crypto Daybook Americas: BTC Price Returns to Positive for the Year

By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Bitcoin (BTC) was little changed Monday, adding less than 1% amid renewed trade tensions and concerns of geopolitical instability that spread into the Indian subcontinent, where India and Pakistan are exchanging small-arms fire.

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The cryptocurrency rose 0.75% in the past 24 hours, turning positive for the year and decoupling from traditional risk assets as investors questioned the durability of the U.S.’s role as the global financial anchor. The broader market, measured through the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, rose 2.2%.

Stock-index futures in the U.S. are pointing to a slight drop and gold fell over 1% with investors likely taking profit from the precious metal’s 25% year-to-date rally. Equities endured a sell-off after China denied talks with the U.S. to reach a tariff deal.

“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,” Greg Cipolaro, the global head of research at NYDIG, wrote in a note.

While the cryptocurrency’s longer-term correlation to U.S. equities remains high, the short-term price action points to a market starting to treat BTC less like a tech stock proxy and more like a non-sovereign safe haven, according to NYDIG’s report.

Options and futures data suggest bitcoin’s rally, which saw it rise 9% last week, is still in its early stages. Funding rates for offshore perpetual swaps only recently turned positive, and call overwriting remains more popular than aggressive bullish positioning.

Bitcoin’s appeal as a politically neutral asset appears to be growing. The note shows that since President Donald Trump’s April 2 "Liberation Day," bitcoin has outperformed U.S. Treasuries, the Swiss franc and gold.

The broader backdrop remains volatile. Measures of equity (VIX), bond (MOVE), and currency (CVIX) volatility have jumped in recent weeks. While they are expected to recede slightly, the outlook is for them to remain elevated for the foreseeable future, the note said.

Despite bitcoin’s growing appeal, macro and geopolitical events remain “the primary drivers of flow,” according to Jake O., an OTC trader at Wintermute who flagged in an email that bitcoin call calendar spreads targeting $110,000 in June remain “the preferred structure for those reaching for topside."

This week investors will see an inflow of major corporate earnings reports, as well as the latest consumer income and expenditure report and April's nonfarm payrolls on Friday. The data could provide further insights into a potential earlier-than-expected interest-rate cut, which Trump has been calling for. Stay alert!

What to Watch

Crypto: April 28: Enjin Relaychain increases active validator slots to 25 from 15 to enhance decentralization. April 29, 1:05 a.m.: The Lorentz hard fork network upgrade gets activated on BNB Chain’s BSC. The upgrade reduces block time to 1.5 seconds, cutting latency, speeding up confirmations and improving user experience. April 30, 9:30 a.m.: ProShares will launch 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.

Macro April 28, 8:00 a.m.: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases March unemployment data. Unemployment Rate Prev. 2.5% April 29, 4:00 a.m.: The European Central Bank (ECB) releases eurozone March M3 money supply data. M3 YoY Est. 4.1% vs. Prev. 4% April 29, 10:00 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases March JOLTs report (job openings, hires, and separations). Job Openings Est. 7.5M vs. Prev. 7.568M Job Quits Prev. 3.195M April 30, 8:00 a.m.: Brazil’s Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases March unemployment rate data. Unemployment Rate Prev. 6.8% April 30, 8:00 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, 10:00 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 Prev. 2.8% PCE Price Index MoM Prev. 0.3% PCE Price Index YoY Prev. 2.5% Personal Income MoM Est. 0.4% vs. Prev. 0.8% Personal Spending MoM Est. 0.4% vs. Prev. 0.4%

Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data) April 29: PayPal Holdings (PYPL), pre-market, $1.16 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

(Estimates based on FactSet data)

Token Events

Governance votes & calls Uniswap DAO will vote on establishing a licensing and deployment framework for Uniswap v4 to accelerate its adoption across multiple chains. The proposal grants the Uniswap Foundation a blanket exemption to deploy v4 on any DAO-approved chain and gives the Uniswap Accountability Committee authority to update deployment records.Voting starts April 24 and ends on April 30. Uniswap DAO is voting on a proposal to renew the Uniswap Accountability Committee (UAC) for Season 4, extending its mandate until the end of 2025. Voting ends April 29. Balancer DAO is voting on allocating $250,000 worth of ARB to a multisig controlled by contributors to fund testing of new automated market maker (AMM) pool models. 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 April 30: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.89% of its circulating supply worth $24.77 million. May 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 2.28% of its circulating supply worth $277.48 million. May 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 5.67% of its circulating supply worth $11.63 million. May 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.73% of its circulating supply worth $14.41 million. May 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.56% of its circulating supply worth $13.95 million. May 9: Movement (MOVA) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $11.94 million.

Token Launches April 28: Sign (SIGN) to be listed on Binance, BingX, BitMart, Bitget, KuCoin, Gate.io and others. April 28: Snek (SNEK) to be listed on Kraken. 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.



Conferences

CoinDesk's Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

The attackers behind a $6 million hack of Solana-based Loopscale offered to return most of the stolen funds while demanding a 20% bounty.

"We are agreeable to collaborating with you to reach a white hat agreement," the attackers said in an on-chain message sent to Loopscale. "However, we would like to negotiate the bounty percentage; our expectation is 20%. To demonstrate our commitment to a cooperative approach, we will immediately return the 5000 wSOL funds following the transmission of this message."

"However, a successful collaboration is contingent on two conditions: first, a full release of liability for our actions, and second, an official reconciliation announcement from your team, along with notification to all on-chain partners to cease fund tracking and freezing," the message added.

The attackers stole over 5.7 million USDC and 1,200 SOL (worth around $180,000 at the time) from Loopscale’s storage pools on April 26.

They manipulated the system Loopscale uses to set prices for its RateX PT token, which helps decide how much digital assets are worth when used as collateral (like a deposit for a loan).

The hackers tricked the system into thinking the token’s price was different, allowing them take more money than they should have. This affected 12% of all the money Loopscale was holding, specifically hurting people who had put their money into the USDC and SOL vaults.

Loopscale stopped all activity on the platform to prevent more theft. It initially let some users repay loans while keeping withdrawals from the vaults locked to stay safe.

The protocol figured out the problem was in the price-checking system, not the RateX token itself. On Sunday, it offered the hacker a deal: Return 90% of the stolen money (worth $5.3 million) and keep 10% (about $592,000) with no legal trouble.

Derivatives Positioning

Global open interest across all futures instruments on centralized exchanges currently totals $119 billion.

According to data from Laevitas, among assets with over $100 million in open interest, the largest week-over-week increases have been recorded in MemeFi, Virtuals Protocol, Bonk, TRUMP and Worldcoin.

Looking at the liquidations heat map of BTC/USDT pair on Binance, the next major price levels are positioned at $95,124 and $95,691, with liquidation clusters totaling $38.7 million and $31.2 million, respectively.

Analyzing the orderbook for the same pair, the largest sell limit orders are stacked at $97,000 and $100,000, with ask sizes of 178 BTC and 242 BTC.

Market Movements:

BTC is up 0.5% from 4 p.m. ET Friday at $95,077 (24hrs: +1.19%)

ETH is up 0.51% at $1,812.79 (24hrs: +0.35%)

CoinDesk 20 is up 1.2% at 2,800.46 (24hrs: +2.08%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 2 bps at 2.95%

BTC funding rate is at 0.0027% (2.9499% annualized) on Binance

DXY is up 0.14% at 99.61

Gold is up 0.31% at $3292.7/oz

Silver is down 0.15% at $32.94/oz

Nikkei 225 closed +0.38%% at 35839.99

Hang Seng closed -0.04% at 21971.96

FTSE is up 0.36% at 8445.32

Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.6% at 5185.19

DJIA closed on Friday +0.05% at 40,113.50

S&P 500 closed +0.74% at 5525.21

Nasdaq closed +1.26% at 17,382.94

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.07% at 24,710.5

S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.37% at 2,530.65

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is up 39 bps at 4.28%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.16% at 5541

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.16% at 19,503

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.05% at 40,232

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 64.20% (-0.11%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01907 (-0.21%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 829 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): 49.3 PH/s

Total Fees: 5.18 BTC / $486,920

CME Futures Open Interest: 143,115 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 28.6 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 8.10%

Technical Analysis

Bitcoin posted its strongest weekly performance since the U.S. presidential election, rallying 10.1% to reach $93,778.

After reclaiming the yearly open at $93,403, price action remains in a pivotal zone — trading within the weekly order block that triggered the previous breakdown from range highs.

For further confirmation of strength, BTC will need to secure a daily close above $94,970 to avoid forming a swing failure pattern.

Crypto Equities

Strategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $368.71 (+5.24%), up 0.62% at $371.00 in pre-market

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $209.64 (+2.83%), down 0.20% at $209.22

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$20.63 (-0.24%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $14.30 (+2.07%), down 0.14% at $14.28

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.77 (-0.26%)

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $8.31 (+10.36%), down 0.36% at $8.28

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.01 (+1.69%), up 0.447% at $9.04

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $14.56 (+3.56%)

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $36.84 (+6.97%), up 0.43% at $37.00

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $45.50 (+0.64%), down 1.65% at $44.75

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: $380 million

Cumulative net flows: $ 38.40 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1.11 million

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: $104.1 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.41 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.38 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

Despite dipping to new range lows of $74,458 earlier this month, bitcoin is now on track to post its largest monthly gain since November 2024.

While You Were Sleeping

In the Ether