The Ethereum Foundation unstaked over 17,000 ETH worth $40M shortly after approaching its 70,000 ETH staking target.

The Ethereum Foundation has moved to unwind part of its staking position shortly after nearing its stated goal of 70,000 staked ETH.

On Saturday, the Ethereum Foundation unstaked 17,035.326 ETH, worth roughly $40 million, according to Arkham data. The move involved depositing wrapped staked ETH (wstETH) into Lido’s unstETH contract, with ETH expected to be returned once the withdrawal queue completes.

In Ethereum, unstaking is the process of withdrawing ETH that was previously locked to help secure the network through validators. When ETH is staked, it’s deposited into the Ethereum Beacon Chain, where it remains locked while earning rewards. To unstake, a withdrawal request is initiated, and the funds enter a queue period after which the funds are released.

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TRUMP memecoin fell nearly 10% in 24 hours despite a Mar-a-Lago investor gala, with the token still down over 96% from its peak.

Donald Trump’s official TRUMP memecoin extended its decline on Saturday, even as he hosted a closed-door gathering for top holders of the cryptocurrency at Mar-a-Lago.

The token is currently trading at around $2.67, down by nearly 10% over the past day, according to data from CoinMarketCap. It is also down by more than 96% compared to its all-time high of $75.35 registered in early 2025.

The downturn comes despite efforts to maintain visibility through high-profile events. The Saturday event brought together 297 of the largest TRUMP investors for what was billed as the “most exclusive” crypto and business conference, with a smaller group of 29 attending a VIP reception and champagne toast, according to The Independent.

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The group spent tens of millions of dollars on luxury items and real estate, using funds stolen from crypto users in social engineering scams.

Evan Tangeman, a 22-year-old resident of California, was sentenced on Friday to 70 months in prison for his role in a criminal enterprise that stole about $263 million in cryptocurrencies from victims through social engineering scams and burglary.

Tangeman pleaded guilty to the charges in December 2025 and admitted to helping members of the criminal organization launder at least $3.5 million in illicit funds, according to the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) announcement.

He also received three years of supervised release in addition to his prison sentence for his role in the scheme, the DOJ said. 

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Bitcoin advocate Matthew Kratter said US Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo's Senate testimony on Tuesday sounded like it was written by an "intern."

Several members of the Bitcoin community cast doubt on the US government’s understanding of the Bitcoin network after a high-ranking military official told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that the US government runs a Bitcoin node.

“Our research into Bitcoin is as a computer science tool. It's the combination of cryptography, a blockchain, and a proof of work,” US Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo told the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

Bitcoin educator and advocate Matthew Kratter said that it sounded like the admiral was reading from the Bitcoin “Wikipedia page,” casting doubt on Paparo and US Senator Tommy Tuberville’s knowledge of the protocol. Kratter added:

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Need to know what happened in crypto today? Here is the latest news on daily trends and events impacting Bitcoin price, blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, Web3 and crypto regulation.

Today in crypto, US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.12 billion in inflows over nine days, a crypto-aligned political action committee pulled back from a major ad push in a key Texas Senate race, signaling growing friction between digital asset interests and traditional party leadership. Polish prosecutors are investigating Zondacrypto over alleged fraud and access to funds.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have extended their inflow momentum through late April, notching a nine-day streak amid growing investor conviction.

During the period, which spanned April 14 and April 24, total net inflows reached roughly $2.12 billion, with the strongest single-day performance on April 17, when funds attracted $663.91 million. April 14 and April 22 also posted robust gains of $411.50 million and $335.82 million, respectively.

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The CFTC has filed suit to block New York from enforcing gambling laws on prediction platforms, arguing federal regulators have sole authority over event-based contracts.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed a lawsuit against New York to stop the state from applying its gambling laws to federally regulated prediction market platforms, escalating a growing clash over who has authority to oversee these products.

In a complaint lodged in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the CFTC argued that federal law gives it exclusive authority over these markets, asking the court for a declaratory judgment and a permanent injunction against New York’s enforcement actions.

“CFTC-registered exchanges have faced an onslaught of state lawsuits seeking to limit Americans’ access to event contracts and undermine the CFTC’s sole regulatory jurisdiction over prediction markets,” CFTC Chair Michael Selig said.

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Bitcoin market participants favored a short-term return to $73,000 as resistance stayed in place, with some analysis seeing even lower levels.

Bitcoin (BTC) risked a return to $73,000 as the weekend began after bulls failed to reclaim a key trend line.

Key points:

Bitcoin price analysis increasingly sees $73,000 getting retested in the short term.

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Brazil has blocked 27 prediction market platforms, including Kalshi and Polymarket, as new rules classify many contracts as gambling.

Brazilian authorities have moved to shut down 27 prediction market platforms, including Kalshi and Polymarket.

The decision, announced Friday, follows a directive from the Ministry of Finance and enforcement by the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), according to state-owned news outlet Agência Brasil. Authorities claimed that such services fall outside Brazil’s current legal framework and therefore operate illegally.

“We have been monitoring the evolution of this sector in Brazil, which suffered a period of anarchy because there were no rules, no oversight, from 2018 to 2022,” Finance Ministry executive secretary Dario Durigan reportedly said during a press conference at the Palácio do Planalto.

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Recent XRP outflow spikes have often come before short-term price rallies, signaling a potential move higher in May if the pattern repeats.

XRP (XRP) has rallied more than 30% in the last three months, and fresh technical and on-chain signals suggest the XRP/USD pair may have more upside ahead.

Key takeaways:

Exchange outflows, positive whale flows and strong ETF demand raise XRP’s bullish outlook.

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US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.12 billion in inflows over nine days, signaling growing conviction among investors.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have extended their inflow momentum through late April, notching a nine-day streak amid growing investor conviction.

During the period, which spanned April 14 and April 24, total net inflows reached roughly $2.12 billion, with the strongest single-day performance on April 17, when funds attracted $663.91 million. April 14 and April 22 also posted robust gains of $411.50 million and $335.82 million, respectively.

The weakest day came on Friday, with a more modest $14.45 million in net inflows. BlackRock’s IBIT led the day with $22.88 million in inflows. In contrast, Fidelity’s FBTC recorded outflows of $1.69 million, while Bitwise’s BITB and ARK 21Shares’ ARKB saw withdrawals of $8.85 million and $9.02 million, respectively. Other funds, including Grayscale’s GBTC and smaller products, reported largely flat flows.

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A Hyperliquid whale holds large short positions against Bitcoin and several altcoins. Does the position provide any signal on the markets’ future outcomes?

Key takeaways:

A whale linked to asset manager Fasanara Capital holds a $38 million crypto short position, but will it impact Bitcoin’s price?

Negative futures funding rates at Binance and Bybit point to unusual demand for bearish positioning despite BTC’s recent price gains.

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The announced crypto freeze came just one day after Tether said it had frozen $344 million of its USDt stablecoin in response to a request from US law enforcement.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned several wallets tied to Iran, resulting in authorities freezing $344 million in cryptocurrency.

In a Friday X post, Bessent said that the move by OFAC was part of the US’ efforts to “systematically degrade Tehran’s ability to generate, move, and repatriate funds.” The US and Israel launched joint airstrikes on Iran in late February.

“We will follow the money that Tehran is desperately attempting to move outside of the country and target all financial lifelines tied to the regime,” said Bessent.

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The hard fork will introduce a new, competing layer-1 blockchain and seven layer-2 scaling networks, according to Sztorc's announcement.

Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc announced on Friday that a new hard fork of the Bitcoin network called eCash will be deployed in August.

Bitcoin holders will be able to exchange their BTC for eCash at a 1:1 ratio once the hard fork is live, Sztorc said in an X post.

He added that the layer-1 node software for the chain will be a “near-copy” of the BTC Core client software and will use the SHA-256 hashing algorithm used by the Bitcoin blockchain, with a reduced initial mining difficulty to make it easier for participants to mine blocks.

Source: Paul Sztorc

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The US President has confirmed his attendance for the Florida event, but it's unclear whether Tron founder Justin Sun, suing the Trump family's crypto business, will appear.

In a repeat of 2025, top holders of US President Donald Trump’s memecoin, Official Trump (TRUMP), will gather for a private event that many critics have described as selling access to the presidency.

On Saturday, Trump and up to 297 of his memecoin holders will meet at the president’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida. According to the project behind the memecoin, attendees will include stablecoin issuer Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, cryptocurrency exchange Upbit founder and CEO ChiHyung Song, Bitcoin (BTC) advocate Anthony Pompliano, Anchorage Digital co-founder and CEO Nathan McCauley and many others associated with financial institutions, crypto and blockchain.

Notably, however, there was no public statement confirming the appearance of Tron founder Justin Sun, a prominent supporter of the president, an investor in the Trump family crypto business World Liberty Financial, and the TRUMP holder at the top of the memecoin project’s leaderboard, with 2.4 billion points.

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The XAUE protocol lets holders earn yield on tokenized gold through lending and trading strategies while maintaining exposure to the underlying asset.

Aurelion, a Nasdaq-listed company building a Tether Gold-backed treasury, has allocated 10,000 units of the token, worth about $48 million, to a newly launched protocol designed to generate yield on tokenized gold.

The DeFi protocol, XAUE, was introduced earlier this week by the Aurise Foundation as a treasury layer for Tether Gold, allowing tokenized gold to be used in yield-generating strategies while maintaining exposure to the underlying asset.

Aurelion is the rebranded form of wealth and asset manager Prestige Wealth and is positioning Tether Gold as a primary reserve asset. In October 2025, the company raised $150 million in financing, including a $100 million private investment in public equity and a $50 million debt facility, to support the strategy.

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The Bitcoin community continues to debate whether cryptographically relevant quantum computers are imminent or decades away.

Project Eleven, a quantum security research company, awarded a prize to researcher Giancarlo Lelli for using a quantum computer to break a 15-bit elliptic-curve key — a small-scale version of the same cryptography used in Bitcoin, which relies on far larger 256-bit keys.

Lelli was able to derive a private key from the public key paired to it, using a “variant” of Shor’s algorithm, an integer factorization algorithm for quantum computers, according to Project 11’s announcement on Friday.

Bitcoin’s keys are 256 bits long, representing a “large” gap from the 15-bit key Lelli was able to crack, Project 11 said. However, the gap between Bitcoin’s 256-bit keys and the number of bits a quantum computer can factor has “fallen sharply” since 2025. Project 11 added.

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After reporting more than $1.7 million to election officials, a crypto-aligned political action committee has reportedly backed out of advertising for a Texas Senate candidate.

The Fellowship political action committee (PAC), which launched claiming to have more than $100 million from crypto-aligned backers, has reportedly backed out of an advertising deal to support Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a crucial US Senate race.

According to a Thursday report from Axios, Republican leaders contacted US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on his connections to Fellowship, which has been partially funded by Cantor Fitzgerald.

Lutnick, as the former president and CEO and whose sons are now in charge of the financial services company, reportedly faced questioning from Republicans about Fellowship’s support of Paxton, whom on Tuesday the PAC reported spending $1.75 million in supportive advertising.

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Familiar players ramp up Bitcoin and Ether bets as markets hint at a rebound, while institutions test blockchain rails and US lawmakers stall on crypto rules this week.

Familiar names have been aggressively accumulating Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), but this time, their buying comes amid early signs of a market reversal.

This week, Strategy made one of its largest Bitcoin purchases on record, bringing its total holdings well north of 800,000 BTC. Bitmine Immersion Technologies, despite sitting on steep unrealized losses, executed its largest Ether purchase since December.

Beyond digital asset treasuries, traditional finance continues to test blockchain infrastructure, with Japan exploring the use of government bonds onchain. In the United States, regulation is still grinding forward, albeit slowly, as lawmakers remain divided over key market-structure legislation.

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Bitcoin and risk assets faced an uphill struggle after the S&P 500 hit new all-time highs as analysis warned that BTC price support was at risk.

Bitcoin (BTC) stayed glued to $78,000 on Friday with markets “awaiting clarity” from the US-Iran war.

Key points:

Bitcoin stalls in its bid to recapture $80,000, as US stocks tread water.

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A bullish signal from Solana’s MACD indicator hinted at a potential rally, though resistance at $90 could delay the recovery.

Solana’s (SOL) MACD indicator sent a “buy” signal on its weekly chart, an occurrence that has historically preceded parabolic rallies.

Key takeaways:

Solana’s MACD indicator sent a “buy” signal that has led to a 100%-860% SOL price rallies in the past.

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Nakamoto launched a Bitcoin derivatives program with Bitwise and Kraken, aiming to generate options premiums and hedge part of its BTC treasury exposure.

Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto announced on Friday an actively managed Bitcoin derivatives program designed to generate recurring income from volatility while hedging part of its downside exposure.

Nakamoto said the program has been in place since the first quarter of 2026 and uses a portion of the company’s Bitcoin holdings as collateral for a derivatives strategy managed by Bitwise Asset Management in a separately managed account.

Under the arrangement, a portion of the company’s Bitcoin is held in Kraken’s qualified custody solution and used as collateral for a derivatives strategy managed by Bitwise Asset Management in a separately managed account.

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South Africa’s draft capital flow rules would bring crypto under exchange controls, with declaration duties, transaction limits and tougher penalties.

South Africa’s National Treasury has published draft rules that would bring cryptocurrency transactions under the country’s capital flow regime, requiring some holders to declare digital asset holdings and routing certain transactions through authorized providers or Treasury-approved channels.

Published on April 17, the draft Capital Flow Management Regulations bill proposes that crypto holders above a yet-unspecified threshold would be required to declare investments to the treasury within 30 days. In some cases, crypto acquired through an authorized provider for a stated purpose would have to be offered for sale if it was no longer needed for that purpose.

The draft is open for public comment until May 18 and would replace South Africa’s Exchange Control Regulations of 1961, marking the most significant overhaul of the country’s exchange control framework in decades.

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Historically, MSTR’s outperformance signals traders are taking more risk, betting Bitcoin’s worst drawdown phase may be over.

Strategy’s MSTR stock has jumped roughly 25% over the past month, outperforming Bitcoin’s circa 9% gain and reviving a historical signal that has often appeared near BTC cycle bottoms.

Key takeaways:

Historically, a sustained MSTR outperformance versus Bitcoin has preceded the latter’s bear market bottom.

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China’s new online marketing rules tighten an already sweeping crypto ban and place fresh pressure on financial influencers, echoing parallel crackdowns in Europe, Australia and the UK.

China’s central bank and seven other regulators have finalized the “Administrative Measures for Online Marketing of Financial Products” (Announcement No. 9), dated April 21 and publicly released on April 24.

The rules take effect on Sept. 30, 2026, and confine online marketing of financial products to licensed financial institutions and lawfully entrusted third-party platforms, and prohibit any organization or individual from offering online marketing services or any other form of assistance that facilitates illegal financial activities.

The text explicitly folds virtual currency issuance and trading, along with illegal foreign exchange margin business, into the definition of illegal financial activity, reinforcing a stance first made explicit when the People’s Bank of China declared all crypto transactions illegal in 2021.

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The ECB signed deals with three standards bodies to reuse open payment standards for the digital euro and lower integration costs for banks and merchants.

The European Central Bank (ECB) said Friday it has signed agreements with three European standards bodies to reuse existing open payment standards for digital euro transactions, as it seeks to reduce integration costs for banks, merchants and payment service providers. 

According to the ECB, the agreements with the European Card Payment Cooperation, Nexo standards and the Berlin Group will allow the ECB to use standards covering contactless tap-to-pay payments, merchant-to-payment-provider connections and alias-based payments, such as transactions using a mobile phone number.

The ECB said using existing open standards would minimize adoption costs for the market and help create a uniform digital euro user experience across the euro area. However, the standards agreements remain a cost-mitigation step, not confirmation that the digital euro will be cheap to implement.

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Polish prosecutors are investigating Zondacrypto over alleged fraud and fund access issues, while local media report that CEO Przemysław Kral is in Israel.

Zondacrypto’s crisis deepened on Friday after Polish outlet Onet reported that CEO Przemysław Kral had gone to Israel as prosecutors investigate the exchange over alleged fraud and investor losses.

According to the report, Kral has been in Israel for about a week and holds Israeli citizenship, a factor that could complicate any potential extradition to Poland. Polish authorities opened an investigation into Zondacrypto last Friday over alleged fraud and investor losses. Cointelegraph also confirmed that Kral’s email address, previously used to communicate with him, has become unavailable.

The developments come a week after Kral admitted last Thursday that Zondacrypto’s cold wallet holding 4,500 Bitcoin was inaccessible, marking his last publicly known communication at the time of reporting. Polish prosecutors have identified several hundred possible victims and potential losses of at least 350 million Polish zloty (around $97 million), according to Notes from Poland, citing prosecutor spokesperson Michał Binkiewicz.

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Wisconsin’s lawsuit against Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, Polymarket and Crypto.com deepens the battle between state gambling enforcers and federal regulators over sports prediction markets.

Wisconsin’s top law enforcement official has sued a group of fintech and crypto platforms, including Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, Polymarket and Crypto.com, accusing them of facilitating illegal sports betting by offering “event contracts,” according to complaints filed April 23 in Dane County.

Attorney General Josh Kaul is seeking preliminary and permanent injunctions to block the companies from offering sports-related markets to customers in Wisconsin and to have a court declare the operations unlawful under state gambling law and a public nuisance.

The case adds to a growing clash between state gambling laws and federally regulated prediction markets, as regulators and courts across the United States debate whether event contracts are financial instruments or illegal wagers.

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Spot XRP ETFs record net inflows for nine consecutive days, absorbing sell pressure and potentially supporting XRP price recovery over time.

XRP (XRP) has fallen about 5% against Bitcoin (BTC) over the past week, and the confirmation of a bearish pattern now points to the risk of more losses ahead.

Key takeaways:

XRP/BTC’s descending triangle pattern on the weekly chart points to a possible 40% drop.

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Bitcoin price action has one more week to go until it potentially achieves its biggest month's gains since late 2024.

Bitcoin (BTC) will cement its biggest monthly gains since late 2024 if it closes at current levels.

Key points:

Bitcoin is on track to see its best monthly performance since late 2024, narrowly beating April 2025.

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Cryptography company Succinct launched Zcam, an iPhone camera app that signs photos and videos at capture to help prove media authenticity in the AI era.

Cryptography company Succinct has launched Zcam, an iPhone camera app that cryptographically signs photos and videos at the moment of capture to help prove their authenticity.

The company said Thursday that Zcam embeds a tamper-evident record linking media to the device that captured it, allowing viewers to verify that content was not digitally altered or generated by artificial intelligence. 

According to Succinct, the app works by hashing raw image data and signing it using keys generated inside Apple’s Secure Enclave, a hardware-based security module. The resulting signature, along with capture metadata and attestation, is embedded into the file using the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) standard, a framework for attaching tamper-evident provenance data to digital media.

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