By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
As the trade war between the U.S. and China escalates, with the latter raising tariffs on the former from 84% to 125% this morning, bitcoin (BTC) and the wider cryptocurrency market appear relatively unfazed.
Bitcoin is down a mere 0.15% over the last 24 hours, and China’s recent escalation hasn’t stopped its ongoing recovery. The cryptocurrency is now trading above $82,000. The wider crypto market, measured by the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, is stable with similar performance.
The same can’t be said about other assets. Gold rose to a new $3,227.5 record making Tether’s XAUT — a gold-backed cryptocurrency — the top-performing digital asset. Meanwhile, the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) dropped below 100 after enduring its biggest drop since 2022. At the same time, the yield on 10-year Treasuries kept rising to now stand near 4.4%.
“The question of a potential dollar confidence crisis has now been definitively answered — we are experiencing one in full force,” ING strategists, including Francesco Pesole wrote in a note reported on by The Telegraph.
Inflation in the U.S. actually declined at the headline level last month, which could prompt the Federal Reserve to resume cutting rates at its next meeting. Still, the market may have interpreted the lower figures as potentially waning demand, deepening the crisis.
That “confidence crisis” is seemingly seeing every asset gain against the dollar, except crypto. Bitcoin investors realized losses of up to $250 million over 6-hour windows during the recent drop, according to Glassnode, which points out that “realized losses are shrinking – suggesting early signs of seller exhaustion.” Stay alert!
Spartan Council is voting on increasing the liquidation ratio for SNX solo stakers, with an initial increase to 250% on April 11, to 500% on April 18, and “high enough to deprecate solo SNX staking” on April 21. Voting ends on April 19.
GMX DAO is discussing the deployment of GMX V2 Botanix’s Spiderchain, which it describes as being “positioned as the first bitcoin Layer 2 designed to unlock bitcoin DeFi.”
A stablecoin (sUSD) tied to decentralized derivatives exchange Synthetix suffered a depeg on Friday, tumbling down to $0.86. The depeg stemmed from a governance proposal named SIP-420, which involved shifting Synthetix from individual staking to pooled staking.
The proposal meant that 2.5 times more sUSD would be minted per staked synthetix (SNX) token, but it also meant that stakers had no incentive to buy sUSD as all debt sat on the staking pool as opposed to individual wallets.
The Synthetix team said on Discord that it will “continue to increase incentives for Curve pools,” and that “the sUSD peg is critical. “An MEV (Miner Extractable Value) bot named “Yoink” exploited weaknesses in Wayfinder’s PROMPT token airdrop, using a front-running strategy (reordering transactions to jump ahead of legitimate claims) to steal approximately 119 ETH (or $200,000 at current prices) from Kaito users. Onchain data shows the bot swapped claimed tokens for ETH, draining funds until the airdrop was paused.
Wayfinder, an AI blockchain project, launched the PROMPT token airdrop for users who staked PRIME (Echelon Prime’s governance token) or earned “Yaps” on Kaito, a platform that analyzes social media for crypto insights. The bot targeted Kaito “Yappers” who completed social missions, with TokenTable halting claims to fix the issue and promising user compensation.
MEV attacks, where malicious actors manipulate Ethereum transaction ordering for profit, are increasingly sophisticated with AI-driven bots like Yoink. TokenTable confirmed the smart contract’s security, is addressing failed transactions, and will provide a detailed report once the claim process resumes.
On most exchanges, notional open interest in BTC futures has increased more than the cryptocurrency’s price in the past 24 hours, suggesting an influx of new money as the market looks to carve out a bottom.
A similar pattern is seen in SOL and DOGE futures, while traders remain cautious in the ETH and XRP futures markets.
Funding rates for the top 25 coins remain between 0% to 10%, suggesting cautiously bullish sentiment.
BTC’s options-based implied volatility term structure has normalized, while ETH’s remains in backwardation, indicating fears of outsized price volatility in the short term.
Flows have been mixed on Deribit, with call spreads booked in BTC and SOL put rolling via OTC platform Paradigm.
BTC is unchanged from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $82,013.36 (24hrs: +0.81%)
ETH is up 1.9% at $1,559.54 (24hrs: +5.22%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 3.43% at 2,379.04 (24hrs: +0.64%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 17 bps at 3.4%
BTC funding rate is at -0.0018% (-2.0049% annualized) on Binance
DXY is down 1.1% at 99.75
Gold is up 2.51% at $3,234.50/oz
Silver is up 1.79% at $31.22/oz
Nikkei 225 closed -2.96% at 33,585.58
Hang Seng closed +1.13% at 20,914.69
FTSE is down 0.51% at 7,872.98
Euro Stoxx 50 is down 1.72% at 4,736.11
DJIA closed on Thursday -2.5% at 39,593.66
S&P 500 closed -3.46% at 5,268.05
Nasdaq closed -4.31% at 16,387.31
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -3% at 23,014.90
S&P 40 Latin America closed -3.2% at 2,255.64
U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 4 bps at 4.4%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.38% at 5,281.75
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.44% at 18,403.00
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.4% at 39,637.00
BTC Dominance: 63.55 (0.50%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01898 (-0.78%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 901 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $42.4
Total Fees: 5.2 BTC / $424,070
CME Futures Open Interest: 129,830
BTC priced in gold: 25.5/oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 7.24
BTC’s 30-day momentum indicator, measuring the rate of change in prices over four weeks, has recently turned up, diverging from the weakness in prices.
The indicator’s divergence, coupled with Wednesday’s bullish outside day candle, suggests the path of least resistance is to the higher side.
A potential move past the descending trendline would open doors to resistance at $88,000 (the late March high), followed by $92,000, which acted as strong support early this year.
Strategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $272.34 (-8.26%), up 4.48% at $284.54 in pre-market
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $169.62 (-4.22%), up 2.46% at $173.80
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$14.35 (-5.53%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $11.74 (-4.63%), up 4.17% at $12.23
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $6.79 (-7.99%), up 2.65% at $6.97
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $6.82 (-9.19%), up 2.79% at $7.01
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.13 (-6.55%), up 3.51% at $7.38
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $12.01 (-8.04%), up 4.08% at $12.50
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $32.63 (-7.2%), up 4.17% at $33.99
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $41.07 (-4.80%), down 0.41% at $40.90
As the U.S.-China trade war escalates, analysts anticipate that Beijing will devalue the yuan to counter Trump’s tariffs, potentially leading to a capital flight into bitcoin.
Options market, however, shows no signs of hedging downside risks in yuan in anticipation of a major devaluation.
The 25-delta risk reversal for the USD/CNH was slightly above 1, representing a moderate bias for calls that would protect from yuan devaluation. Higher values were observed ahead of the previous yuan devaluation episodes of 2015 and 2016, according to The Brookings Institution’s Senior Fellow Robin Brooks.
Ripple and SEC File Joint Motion to Pause Appeals (CoinDesk): The two parties reached an agreement in principle to resolve all remaining issues, including appeals and claims involving Ripple founders Garlinghouse and Larsen, according to attorney James Filan.
BOJ’s Retreat From Bond Buying Spurs Bid to Lure Foreigners (Bloomberg): Officials are pitching Japanese bonds abroad more aggressively as domestic demand wanes, stressing stronger yields, streamlined trading access, and a steady economic outlook to attract new buyers.
