In markets
The past three weeks have seen one of the biggest reversals in US stock market history, with around A$10.8 trillion/US$7.8T added to the S&P 500, bringing it to its highest level on record. But spiking inflation and high energy costs are also increasing the odds of a financial crisis, depending on how long the Iran war continues. While the US blockade is successfully piling pressure on the Iranian government, and its oil storage capacity is nearing full, IRGC hardliners have taken charge of negotiations and seem ill-disposed towards compromise.
On the positive side of the ledger, a pro-crypto Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, could be confirmed this week, and a Who’s Who of administration officials are speaking at the annual Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas. There are also rumours of a major announcement regarding the US national Bitcoin reserve “in the next few weeks.”
Santiment reports that Bitcoin wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 Bitcoin have been “accumulating rapidly” over the past two weeks, snapping up 40,967 Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has neared the A$100K+/US$80K mark a couple of times this week, but quickly retreated. It finishes the week up 1.5% to trade around A$107,548 (US$77,264). Ethereum fell less than 1% to trade around A$3,210 (US$2,305). XRP lost 2.2%, Solana 1.1%, Cardano -0.5%, while Dogecoin clawed back 3.7%. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is at 33, or Neutral, having recovered from just 8 at the start of the month.
From the OTC desk
Institutional demand for Bitcoin treasury bonds shows no signs of slowing
Metaplanet’s recent issuance of US$50M in bonds to fund Bitcoin purchases was swiftly absorbed by the market, signalling that institutional appetite for Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) exposure remains strong. Further reinforcing this trend, Strategy raised US$2.2B through preferred stock in April, pushing its share price back toward par value. With Strategy’s average Bitcoin purchase price sitting at $75,537 per BTC below the current spot price of BTC, confidence in the DAT ecosystem appears to be growing. For institutional investors seeking Bitcoin exposure through traditional financial instruments, Strategy’s position being in profit offers a significant vote of confidence to the ecosystem.
AAVE fights back: A structured recovery plan after a US$290M blow
Following a KelpDAO hack last week that resulted in approximately US$290M in losses, AAVE saw a significant drop in total value locked over the weekend. However, the protocol has responded with both strong community support and a clear recovery roadmap. Initiatives such as DeFi United have stepped in, committing ETH to help stabilise the protocol. AAVE has since announced a structured, three-phase plan to restore collateral support for rETH, centred around the gradual conversion and injection of ETH into the bridge locking contract. This phased approach is designed to allow for the progressive unfreezing of affected assets, with the aim of returning stability and confidence to the protocol.
OTC desk activity
- Buying interest seen over the week, with a focus on altcoins
- Seeing strong one-way on-ramp flows
Key Economic Calendar Events (AEST)
- Wednesday, Apr 29 2026 – 11:30 AM – AU Inflation Rate YoY (Consensus 4.7%).
- Thursday, Apr 30 2026 – 04:00 AM – US Fed Interest Rate Decision (Consensus 3.75%).
- Thursday, Apr 30 2026 – 02:00 PM – SG Unemployment Rate Preliminary
- Thursday, Apr 30 2026 – 07:00 PM – EA GDP Growth Rate QoQ Flash (Consensus 0.2%).
- Thursday, Apr 30 2026 – 07:00 PM – EA Core Inflation Rate YoY Flash (Consensus 2.3%).
- Thursday, Apr 30 2026 – 10:15 PM – EA ECB Interest Rate Decision (Consensus 2.15%).
- Thursday, Apr 30 2026 – 10:30 PM – US GDP Growth Rate QoQ Adv (Consensus 2.2%).
- Thursday, Apr 30 2026 – 10:30 PM – US Core PCE Price Index YoY (Consensus 3.1%).
- Friday, May 01 2026 – 09:30 AM – JP Tokyo Core CPI YoY (Consensus 1.7%).
In headlines
Bitcoin fork = free money?
Longtime Bitcoin dev Paul Sztorc has wanted to scale Bitcoin and add programmability via an update he calls Drivechains for a decade now. But his proposals have failed to get activated, so he’s instead launching the eCash Bitcoin fork in August, with seven drivechains offering functions like privacy and prediction markets. Bitcoin holders will receive 1 eCash for every 1 Bitcoin they own, which could either mean a nice bonus or a tax headache. Bitcoiners are warning that a replay attack stealing your actual Bitcoin could occur if the new chain doesn’t have sufficient hashpower, but Sztorc says that can’t happen if the correct software is used. The fork will reassign half of Satoshi’s Bitcoin, a move that has proven controversial.
CLARITY Act is now a coin flip
All signs point to the CLARITY Act’s markup in the Senate Banking Committee now occurring in May, with the odds of the bill passing this year slipping to 47% on Kalshi. There are just 9 or 10 sitting weeks left to pass the bill, and a lot of other legislation is competing for attention. The text on the stablecoin yield compromise is yet to be released, and the next big roadblock is shaping up in the form of ‘ethics’ provisions to stop President Trump and his family from profiting from crypto. A coalition of more than 100 crypto firms, including Coinbase and Ripple, has urged the committee to proceed to markup, and at a crypto event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said he wants the bill passed and would sign it immediately. Crypto lobbyists have raised US$180 million (A$250M) to support pro-crypto candidates in the upcoming US midterm elections. That’s US$45 million (A$62.5M) more than the 2024 election, and may increase the chances of getting CLARITY passed.
Litecoin attacked
Litecoin experienced a coordinated attack on the chain that resulted in a 13-block reorganisation to rewind 32 minutes of network activity. There was considerable debate over whether the attackers were performing double-spend attacks or creating invalid transactions. The code bug that led to the attack was partially patched weeks earlier, enabling the legitimate hashrate to regain control.
Bitcoin ETFs recover
The Bitcoin ETFs have seen a nine-day streak of inflows totalling US$2.12 billion (A$2.94B), pushing the ETFs back into positive territory for the year. CoinShares reports that digital asset funds overall took in US$1.2 billion (A$1.66B) last week, for a fourth consecutive positive week.
The US military is running a Bitcoin node
Top US military official Admiral Samuel Paparo told Congress this week that the government is running a Bitcoin node. “We’re using it to monitor, and we’re doing a number of operational tests to secure and protect networks using the Bitcoin protocol,” he said.
DeFi Unites
Total value locked in DeFi has plunged to a 12-month low of US$84 billion (A$117B) in the wake of the US$292 million (A$406M) KelpDAO hack, which triggered contagion across the sector. But an extraordinary recovery effort called DeFi United has seen almost all of the missing rsETH’s Ether backing donated by individuals, including AAVE founder Stani Kulechov, as well as by projects and companies such as Mantle, Consensys, EtherFi, Ethena, Layer Zero, Lido, and others. Arbitrum’s security council contributed by taking the drastic decision to freeze more than 30,000 stolen ETH.
Singapore scammers thwarted
Singapore’s Anti-Scam Centre (ASC) and Cyber Investigation Branch (CIB) teamed up with local crypto exchanges, including Independent Reserve, to prevent SGD$2.86 million (A$3.12M) in potential financial losses to 90 scam victims. The police used blockchain analysis for over a month, from mid-March, to identify potential victims and warn them in advance that they were being scammed.
Quantum prize debacle
Q Day is coming fast, according to Project 11, which paid out a 1 Bitcoin prize to a researcher who reportedly broke a 15-bit elliptic curve key using publicly accessible quantum hardware. Unfortunately, the prize has turned into a credibility nightmare, after a former Bitcoin dev performed the same feat on non-quantum hardware using 20 lines of Python. Meanwhile, Solana has published a roadmap for a massive protocol upgrade to make the protocol post-quantum secure using Falcon signatures. It will require every single SOL holder to migrate.
Should have used Bitcoin
It’s not clear if the Iranians are actually charging Strait of Hormuz tolls in Bitcoin, but they have a better understanding of its value proposition as uncensorable hard money after the Trump administration froze US$344 million (A$478M) in centralised USDT on the Tron network linked to the regime.
Crypto adoption slows
Global cryptocurrency adoption dropped 11% in the first quarter, marking the second consecutive quarterly decline and the sharpest pullback since the 2022 bear market. TRM Labs’ Q1 Global Crypto Adoption Index shows the steepest decline in markets with high speculative activity, such as the US, South Korea, the UK, and Germany, but markets where crypto is used for payments and savings, such as Turkey and Venezuela, saw adoption increase. Latin America and South Asia remained stable
The Moonshot Dispatch
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