BTC is currently trading around $66,300 and ETH around $3,250. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are CORE, ZBC, and NEAR. The global crypto market cap is $2.56T up 1.9% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$91b and BTC dominance is around 55%.
The big news over the weekend was the Bitcoin halving, which occurred at block 840,000 at 0:09 UTC on April 20th. Mining pool ViaBTC mined the block and collected the newly halved 3.125 BTC block reward as well as 38 BTC ($2.1m) in fees as users bid up to be included in the halving block (ViaBTC also received the first Satoshi mined after the halving, known as an Epic Sat). The average fee paid in the block was 0.0123 BTC (~$800), with someone paying $500k to send $0.70. Much of the heightened demand for block space was driven by Runes, a new Bitcoin fungible token standard that went live at the halving and that some believe may replace BRC-20s. Runes-related transactions comprised the bulk of transactions after the halving, but are currently around a quarter of network transactions and the elevated fees on Bitcoin have also died down with it currently costing roughly 115 sat/vB (~$11) to send a transaction.
All in, BTC is up 4% since the halving, though much of this is due to lower fears of a widespread conflict in the Middle East. Looking ahead, we will get European PMIs on Tuesday, US GDP and a Bank of Japan interest rate decision on Thursday, and US PCE inflation on Friday.
Notable news includes: The IRS released a draft 2025 digital asset reporting form for US taxpayers; a stablecoin bill recently introduced by Senators Lummis and Gillibrand is receiving industry pushback for its proposed ban of algorithmic stablecoins; JP Morgan CEO Dimon stated that Bitcoin is a “fraud” and a “Ponzi scheme”; Singapore’s Triple-A is set to integrate PayPal’s PYUSD by the end of June; Telegram will introduce USDT payments on The Open Network; Hong Kong investment firm Victory Securities revealed its fees for its upcoming BTC and ETH spot ETFs at 15-25 bps of the secondary transaction value; Grayscale proposed a fee on its new Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC) ETF of 15 bps though the fee may still change; Kraken acquired TradeStation’s crypto business; a federal jury convicted crypto trader Avi Eisenberg of fraud and market manipulation for his $110m exploit of Mango Markets; and, the Own The Dog DAO acquired the rights associated with the Shiba Inu meme behind Dogecoin.
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Author:
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
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