Bitcoin Flips Green for 2025—Because Apparently ’Store of Value’ Means Rollercoaster

BTC claws back year-to-date gains—just in time for Wall Street to pretend they believed in it all along.

Subheader: The Rebound Nobody Predicted (But Everyone Will Claim They Saw Coming)

After months of institutional hand-wringing, Bitcoin’s back above water—proving crypto winters thaw faster than a banker’s conscience. Technicals show bullish divergence, but let’s be real: this market runs on vibes and Elon Musk tweets.

Closing Thought: If volatility is a feature, not a bug, then Bitcoin’s delivering exactly what it promised—and still giving traditional finance suits night sweats.

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

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.

• Day 2 of 4: 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, El Salvador)
• April 29: IFGS 2025 (London)
• April 30-May 1: TOKEN2049 (Dubai)
• May 6-7: Financial Times Digital Assets Summit (London)
• May 11-17: Canada Crypto Week (Toronto)
• May 12-13: Dubai FinTech Summit
• May 12-13: Filecoin (FIL) Developer Summit (Toronto)
• May 12-13: Latest in DeFi Research (TLDR) Conference (New York)
• May 12-14: ACI’s 9th Annual Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance Forum on Fintech & Emerging Payment Systems (New York)
• May 13: Blockchain Futurist Conference (Toronto)
• May 13: ETHWomen (Toronto)

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

• Daily net flow: $380 million
• Cumulative net flows: $ 38.40 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1.11 million

• 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

• Bitcoin Turns Positive Year-to-Date as It Veers Toward Digital Gold Narrative (CoinDesk): Bitcoin has a strong correlation with gold and a weaker correlation with the Nasdaq 100, distancing itself from tech stocks and showing resilience to broader economic instability.
• ProShares Gets SEC Greenlight for Three XRP ETFs (CoinDesk): ProShares will introduce leveraged and inverse XRP ETFs on April 30. Its application for a spot XRP fund remains under review.
• China Says It Can Live Without U.S Farm and Energy Goods (Financial Times): The vice chair of the National Development and Reform Commission said the country could secure alternatives to U.S. feed grains and would face little impact from halting U.S. energy imports.
• The Russian Military Moves That Have Europe on Edge (The Wall Street Journal): Western officials and analysts say Russia is expanding bases, boosting recruitment and upgrading infrastructure along NATO’s eastern flank.
• The Dollar’s Weakness Creates an Opportunity for the Euro. Can It Last? (The New York Times): Expectations of major German borrowing and bloc-wide bonds are drawing investors, though officials say the euro will likely compete with safe havens like gold and the Swiss franc.
• Why Crypto Leaders Are Feeling Optimistic About the Future: ‘The Crypto Revolution Is Happening’ (TIME): Crypto leaders say passing focused stablecoin rules could cement U.S. financial leadership, but warn delays or loopholes favoring offshore firms risk undermining trust and competitiveness.

In the Ether