Weekly Market Insight: April Week 4

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Market Updates

21 Apr 2025

Headline News

Bitcoin price increased by 1.7% last week, showing resilience compared to the S&P 500’s 1.5% decline over the same period. Bitcoin dominance has climbed for seven consecutive weeks, drawing a net inflow of $15.85 million into BTC ETFs despite ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty last week.

Macro-Outlook

President Trump is considering temporary relief on auto tariffs (currently at 25%) and auto parts (set to take effect on May 3). A mineral agreement with Ukraine is expected to be signed on Thursday.
US-China dialogue remains vague, with Chinese officials insisting on respect before engaging further. Meanwhile, the White House has floated potential tariffs of up to 245% in response to China's retaliatory actions. Trump later clarified that talks with Chinese authorities are ongoing.
The ECB cut interest rates by 25bps to 2.4%. Euro-denominated stablecoins surged 26% in April, driven by US Dollar depreciation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell reaffirmed a cautious, wait-and-see stance on monetary policy. Trump voiced frustration with Powell on social media. Kalshi, the largest regulated prediction market, places the odds of Powell’s removal at 24%, though such a move would challenge constitutional norms.
US retail sales rose 1.4% in March, slightly beating expectations of 1.3%.

Upcoming Economic Calendar including,

Thursday, April 24, 8:30pm: US Durable Goods Orders in March

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview

Visa is reportedly joining Paxos' USDG consortium together with Robinhood, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, Anchorage Digital, Bullish and Nuvei.
Canary Funds filed a staked TRX ETF application with the SEC.
VOXELUSDT on Bitget was exploited (reportedly in millions of dollars) due to a likely market-making bot bug causing the bot to trade in a big spread. The bot bid the price to increase 10% and sold back to a lower price every few seconds. Traders detected and placed opposite bets repeatedly to profit from the bug. Bitget detected the abnormal trading activities and rolledback those exploited trades.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

Solayer has launched the first Emerald Reward program, rewarding users with LAYER tokens for purchasing items with the Emerald Visa card.
Converge, RWA Layer-1 powered by Ethena and Securitize, released technical specification and roadmap, introducing ENA as the staking token, USDtb and USDe as the gas token. The new blockchain will be built in collaboration with Arbitrum, Celestia and Conduit.
Arbitrum launched Timeboost, allowing users on Arbitrum One and Nova to bid for faster transaction inclusion through a private mempool.
Astar Network reduced token inflation from 4.86% to 4.32% with the new dynamic inflation, allocating more weight on AdjustableStakersPart.
Babylon announced Sui to become a Bitcoin Secured Network (BSN) as part of Babylon's Phase 3, enabling use of Bitcoin as the staking asset to secure Sui Network.

Dapps

A16z announced an additional $55 million investment in ZRO, with a 3-year lockup.
Balancer v3 went live on Avalanche with Boosted Pools and programmable Hooks features.
Avantis launched Zero-Fee Perpetuals on Base, charging fees only if the trades realised in profit.
Felix Protocol, Liquity v2 fork on Hyperliquid, enables UBTC collateral for minting stablecoins on Hyperliquid.
F(x) Protocol deposited protocol-owned wstETH and USDC to Aave to generate extra yield for Stability Pool stakers.
Euler went live on BNB Chain with a $100K incentive program. Euler's TVL has crossed $1 billion.
Spark Finance has allocated $50 million to Maple's SyrupUSDC and potentially increase to $100 million in the future. Maple's TVL has crossed $1 billion as well.
Jupiter released Jupiter Pro, an advanced trading platform on Solana with real-time analytics and 10x lower fees. Jupiter also introduced a new aggregator, Juno, improving execution by 4.6x with new router algorithm and additional sources.
Raydium launched LaunchLab, its own version of Pump.fun.
Defi App has integrated Sonic Network to their platform with zero gas and bridges.
ElizaOS launched auto.fun, a no-code token launch platform with token graduation to Raydium and swap fees from graduated tokens are used for AI16Z buyback.
Glow Finance launched an undercollateralised lending platform on Solana via margin account.

Upcoming Alpha and Governance

GMX passed the proposal to select LayerZero as its messaging partner for multichain expansion, including GMX, GM tokens and cross-chain governance.
Zora, the SocialFi platform on Base where users are able to tokenise posts on the platform, is expected to launch ZORA token on April 23. Base released a tokenised post "Base is for everyone" last week, currently trading at a market cap of approximately $8 million.
While the Arizona Bitcoin Reserve Bill is still currently pending the final House vote, Texas has scheduled a Bitcoin Reserve hearing on April 23.
Dolomite, the leading lending protocol on Berachain, is expected to launch DOLO token on April 24 with 36% initial circulation supply.
Initia, the new Layer-1 blockchain that offers interwoven rollups (Layer-2 with custom VM, gas token and transaction ordering) and enshrined liquidity, is expected to launch its mainnet and token INIT on April 24. INIT is currently trading at approximately $750 million FDV on the perpetual market.
Solana will be holding the Crossroads conference from April 25 to 26 in Istanbul.
Pendle announced increasing YT fees from 3% to 5% from May 2 onwards. All fees will be distributed to vePENDLE holders in stables. The adjustment is expected to increase the overall protocol revenue by 30% or vePENDLE APY by 60%.
Aptos proposed to reduce the staking rewards rate from 6.8% to 3.79% over 3 months, aiming to encourage more DeFi activities beyond staking.
Vitalik proposed replacing EVM with RISC-V architecture to boost performance of Ethereum execution layer by 100x.

Token Unlock

PLUME token unlocked on April 21, amount representing 5.48% of the token supply.
RON token unlocked on April 27, amount representing 5.28% of the token supply.
GRASS token unlocked on April 30, amount representing 1.35% of the token supply.
OP token unlocked on April 30, amount representing 1.99% of the token supply.
SUI token unlocked on May 1, amount representing 2.71% of the token supply.
ENA token unlocked on May 2, amount representing 1.69% of the token supply.
JTO token unlocked on May 7, amount representing 3.54% of the token supply.
MOVE token unlocked on May 9, amount representing 2.04% of the token supply.

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