News & Research

Jesse Pollak, a developer for Coinbase's Layer 1 chain Base, said that agentic payments—where AI can autonomously pay for services like data access, computing resources, and travel bookings—will become a key trend, CoinDesk reported. He highlighted the x402 protocol, an open-source payment protocol being co-developed by Coinbase, Microsoft, Google, and Mastercard that enables payments through simple API calls. Pollak added that to date, around $48 million in payments have been processed through the protocol, with approximately 95% of this volume occurring on the Base chain.

Jupiter, a Solana-based decentralized crypto swap aggregator, announced via X on April 24 that it added another 211,474 JUP (approximately $36,000) to its Litterbox Trust. The project is accumulating JUP by depositing 50% of its protocol revenue into the trust over the next two years. A total of 9,405,535 JUP ($1.63 million) has been added this month, bringing the cumulative amount to 113,508,785 JUP, valued at around $19.56 million.

The upcoming $75 billion initial public offering (IPO) for SpaceX could absorb liquidity from risk assets like Bitcoin (BTC), CoinDesk reported. When combined with potential IPOs from OpenAI and Anthropic, this effect could draw more than $240 billion from the market by the end of the year. Market observers are concerned that capital allocated for these major IPOs could erode the risk-on liquidity pool shared by tech stocks, AI, and cryptocurrencies. This situation is drawing comparisons to Coinbase's public listing in 2021, after which BTC hit a peak on the day of the listing before correcting by approximately 50% within six weeks. Some analysts noted that such institutional milestones often serve as signals for a cycle top.

U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs recorded net inflows of approximately $23.4 million on April 24, according to data from Farside Investors. This marks a return to net inflows just one day after the funds experienced net outflows. - BlackRock ETHA: -$7.7 million - BlackRock ETHB: +$32.3 million - Fidelity FETH: -$1.2 million

Bitmine (BMNR) staked an additional 112,040 ETH, worth $260.13 million, over the past four hours, Onchain Lens reported. As of April 23, the company was staking approximately 70% of its total holdings.

The Altcoin Season Index from crypto data platform CoinMarketCap has risen one point from yesterday to 38. The index is calculated by comparing the price performance of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization against Bitcoin, excluding stablecoins and wrapped tokens. The metric indicates an altcoin season when 75% of these top 100 coins outperform Bitcoin over a 90-day period. The opposite scenario is considered a Bitcoin season. A score closer to 100 suggests a stronger altcoin season.

The North Carolina Blockchain and AI Initiative has sent a letter to U.S. Republican Senator Thom Tillis, urging him to proceed with deliberations on the Clarity Act, according to Eleanor Terrett, host of Crypto in America. The letter counters the NC Bankers Association's opposition to interest on stablecoins, arguing that the so-called 'shadow banking' issue has already been addressed by the Genius Act, which places stablecoin issuers under federal supervision. The initiative warned that a blanket ban on stablecoin interest would drive capital offshore rather than reduce risk.

Paul Sztorc, the developer who first proposed the Bitcoin sidechain 'Drivechain', announced on his X account that he plans to launch a new Bitcoin hard fork called 'eCash' this August. He explained that Bitcoin holders will receive an equivalent amount of the new coin; for instance, someone holding 4.19 BTC will receive 4.19 eCash. Sztorc noted that the eCash Layer 1 node is nearly a copy of Bitcoin Core, will be mined using the SHA-256d algorithm, and will maintain code compatibility. He added that 'Drivechain', a sidechain designed to introduce programming capabilities to Bitcoin, is also planned for launch alongside eCash.

Tether has announced that it has frozen over $344 million in USDT held in two addresses in cooperation with the U.S. government. The action was taken immediately after the addresses were identified to prevent any further transfer of the funds. The freeze was based on information provided by several U.S. law enforcement agencies following the detection of fund flows linked to illicit activities.

The spot Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) chart analyzes the order book for the BTC/USDT spot pair. The top section shows a volume heatmap, while the bottom section displays the CVD. - The volume heatmap at the top tracks the volume of trades at specific price levels. The background color becomes brighter when the price lingers in a certain range or moves significantly. Areas with brighter colors may act as potential support or resistance levels. - The CVD indicator at the bottom represents buy and sell orders categorized by trade size. As buy orders increase, the corresponding colored line rises. The yellow line represents orders between $100 and $1,000, while the brown line indicates large orders between $1 million and $10 million.