News linked to both this project and an event.
Bitdeer, a Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining company, announced its latest Bitcoin holdings data on X. For the week ending April 17, Bitdeer mined 177 BTC but sold all 177 BTC during the same period, resulting in a net addition of 0 BTC. It continues to hold zero BTC.
According to CNBC, a new study shows that adding Bitcoin to traditional gold allocations can effectively boost overall portfolio returns without significantly increasing risk levels. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs released a report stating that cryptocurrency prices may have already bottomed out, and some related stocks offer strong investment appeal; Standard Chartered revised its Bitcoin price forecast downward by half; and analysts noted that, amid the recent sustained downturn in the crypto market, Bitcoin mining profitability has sharply narrowed, making mining unprofitable under current conditions.
American Bitcoin (ABTC), a mining company affiliated with the Trump family, announced that it will release its first-quarter financial results after the U.S. market closes on May 6, 2026. The company’s management team will hold a conference call and webcast to discuss the results at 4:30 p.m. ET on the same day, with live audio streaming simultaneously available via X Space.
Xie Jiayin, Bitget’s Head of Chinese-speaking Markets, revealed significant progress across multiple core business areas. In terms of liquidity, Bitget ranked first globally among centralized exchanges (CEXs) in net fund inflows over the past seven days. Its BTC reserves grew 86% year-on-year to 36,700 BTC. According to TokenInsight’s report, Bitget’s derivatives and spot liquidity both ranked among the top two globally. Strategically, the platform continues advancing its transformation into UEX, a comprehensive exchange. This quarter, Bitget completed a full app redesign, fully launched CFD trading—supporting 79 assets with up to 500x leverage—and expanded its U.S. stock token offering to 263 tickers. Per CoinGlass data, Bitget leads the industry in U.S. stock futures open interest, and its CFD daily trading volume exceeded $6 billion. On the product front, Bitget launched IPO Prime, an innovative token sale platform. Its inaugural offering is preSPAX—a digital token mirroring the listing gains of SpaceX. Additionally, Bitget completed a three-layer reconstruction of its AI trading engine and introduced GetClaw, a cloud-based AI trading assistant enabling users to execute automated live trades via natural-language commands. For its VIP ecosystem, Bitget established a $5 million Protection Fund and distributed nearly 1,000 preSPAX tokens to VIP users in two free airdrops: the first round (760 tokens) was distributed on April 16, and the second round (190 tokens) will be distributed on April 20.
Reportedly, NAT shares computing power, blocks, and addresses with BTC, enabling synchronized generation without any additional operations. This asset is generated every 10 minutes in sync with Bitcoin blocks, with approximately 386 million NAT tokens minted per block (currently valued at ~$38), resulting in a total market cap of roughly $38 million. The issuance rate will gradually decrease as block height and mining difficulty increase. The code is fully open-source.
According to Decrypt, Rick Wurster, President and CEO of Charles Schwab, stated that the company may offer prediction market services in the future—but will focus on financial-event-related contracts, such as those tied to inflation, while avoiding themes like pop culture, politics, and sports. Earlier reports indicated that Charles Schwab plans to launch Bitcoin and Ethereum trading services within the coming weeks, with a flat transaction fee of 0.75% per trade. The company also intends to gradually expand its cryptocurrency business, including enabling digital asset deposits and withdrawals, and broadening the range of supported tokens.
According to Cointelegraph, Polish cryptocurrency exchange Zonda is mired in a withdrawal crisis. Current CEO Przemysław Kral released a video statement disclosing for the first time a cold wallet address holding approximately 4,503 BTC (currently valued at roughly $334 million), stating that the private key for this wallet was never transferred during the company’s leadership transition. Kral explained that the private key should have been handed over by Zonda’s founder and former CEO, Sylwester Suszek—but Suszek has been missing since March 2022. Kral denied allegations of fund misappropriation, asserting that Suszek’s disappearance itself proves his innocence. Earlier, blockchain platform Recoveris published an analytical report indicating a sharp decline in Zonda’s hot wallet balances—suggesting insolvency—and triggering a wave of withdrawal requests. Zonda typically processes around 100,000 withdrawals annually, yet received over 25,000 such requests within just a few hours around April 6. Kral stated that the company will pursue legal action against these false accusations and reaffirmed its commitment to fulfilling its financial obligations to customers.
According to GlobeNewswire, Exodus Movement—a U.S.-listed cryptocurrency wallet provider and Bitcoin treasury company—has announced a partnership with Ripple to expand native support for the XRP Ledger (XRPL) within its wallet, as well as add in-wallet support for the stablecoin Ripple USD (RLUSD). Users will be able to directly manage and send XRP assets within the wallet.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Charles Schwab officially announced the launch of Schwab Crypto™ spot cryptocurrency trading services on April 16, which will be rolled out to retail clients in phases over the coming weeks. The service supports direct trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and is accompanied by educational resources and dedicated customer support. It is also integrated with Schwab’s existing investment, trading, wealth management, and banking services.
According to Decrypt, Blockstream CEO Adam Back stated at Paris Blockchain Week that he supports advancing Bitcoin’s quantum resistance upgrade on an opt-in basis, opposing proposals to forcibly freeze quantum-vulnerable addresses. He emphasized that “preparation well in advance is far safer than scrambling to respond during a crisis,” and noted that the Bitcoin community possesses strong coordination capabilities to rapidly address critical vulnerabilities. Previously, developer Jameson Lopp and five others proposed BIP-361 (“Post-Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset”), which advocates phasing out quantum-vulnerable addresses over five years and ultimately freezing coins held in unmigrated addresses—including approximately 1.7 million bitcoins held by Satoshi Nakamoto.
According to The Block, the Washington-based think tank Cato Institute published a critique of the U.S.’s current Bitcoin tax policy. Researcher Nick Anthony pointed out that the existing tax framework—which classifies Bitcoin as “property” rather than “currency”—requires users to calculate capital gains or losses for every single transaction, including routine, small-value purchases. This makes tax filing extremely cumbersome and effectively hinders Bitcoin’s adoption as a payment instrument. In response, the Cato Institute proposed several reform measures, including fully eliminating capital gains taxes on cryptocurrency payments and introducing a de minimis exemption threshold for small transactions. The report also referenced the existing Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act—a bill that would exempt crypto transactions under $200—but Anthony argued that this threshold is too low to reflect real-world consumer spending levels. Currently, the Trump administration has expressed support for establishing a de minimis exemption for cryptocurrency transactions and will continue evaluating related legislative options.
According to a CoinGecko report, the cryptocurrency market continued its bearish trend in Q1 2026, with total market capitalization declining by 20.4% (approximately $622 billion) to $2.4 trillion—down roughly 45% from its October 2025 peak. Key drivers of the downturn included tightened monetary policy expectations following Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Federal Reserve Chair and geopolitical shocks stemming from the U.S.-Iran war. The stablecoin market remained broadly stable, with total market capitalization rising slightly to $309.9 billion. USDT’s supply declined for the first time since Q2 2022, falling to $184.1 billion; USDC grew 2.4% to $77.1 billion; and USD1—issued by WLFI—rose 32.5%, boosted by Binance’s airdrop campaign. In terms of asset performance, crude oil prices surged 76.9% due to supply disruptions caused by the U.S.-Iran war, making it the strongest-performing asset this quarter; gold rose 8.1%; while Bitcoin fell 22.0%, underperforming both the Nasdaq (-7.1%) and the S&P 500 (-4.8%). Regarding trading volume, spot trading volume across top centralized exchanges dropped 39.1% to $2.7 trillion; March volume totaled just $0.8 trillion—the lowest since November 2023. Binance maintained a 37.0% market share. Among decentralized exchanges, Solana retained leadership with a 30.6% share—but was overtaken by Ethereum in March.
According to FinanceFeeds, Morgan Stanley stated that real-world asset tokenization has become the “next major step” for its global business and is now a strategic priority in its initiative to upgrade traditional financial infrastructure using blockchain. The firm plans to integrate traditional and digital assets within regulated environments, advance near real-time on-chain settlement, and launch an institutional digital wallet in the second half of 2026—supporting tokenized traditional investment products as well as crypto assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley is also advancing the development of a tokenized private equity secondary market and building both on-chain and off-chain settlement processes.
According to CoinDesk, Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, stated at Paris Blockchain Week that Bitcoin developers should move forward early with optional post-quantum upgrades—even though practical quantum computers remain far from realization. He noted that Taproot’s flexible design supports integrating new post-quantum signature schemes without affecting existing users. Previously, Jameson Lopp and others proposed BIP-361, aiming to phase out quantum-vulnerable addresses over five years and freeze bitcoins in addresses that fail to complete the migration. Adam Back believes the Bitcoin community can rapidly coordinate a response in an emergency—without needing to predefine freezing arrangements.
Odaily News The ETH/BTC exchange rate has risen to a 10-week high, with Ethereum outperforming Bitcoin recently. The ratio broke through the resistance of the downtrend line since August 2025 and has risen above the 50-day and 100-day exponential moving averages. XWIN Research pointed out that the staff statement issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on April 13 explained that DeFi frontends and wallet interfaces do not need to register as broker-dealers if they meet conditions such as non-custody and a neutral fee structure, which has driven Ethereum's strength.On-chain data shows an upward trend in active addresses, and the Coinbase premium gap is also improving, indicating a recovery in institutional demand in the United States. Enterprise-level accumulation is accelerating; Bitmine accumulated 279,000 ETH in the past 30 days and currently holds 4.87 million ETH, accounting for over 4% of the circulating supply. In the futures market, the global ETH open interest reached $16.37 billion, and the funding rate remains negative, indicating that shorts dominate. However, the open interest on Binance increased by 10.47% to $6.04 billion, and the funding rate turned positive, creating an extreme imbalance between global shorts and longs on Binance.
BitMEX Research published an article proposing an alternative soft fork to BIP-361, suggesting that dormant bitcoins vulnerable to quantum attacks be frozen only upon confirmed existence of a quantum computer capable of stealing bitcoins. The proposal introduces a “canary fund” mechanism: a special bitcoin address whose private key is unknown but theoretically crackable by a sufficiently powerful quantum computer; users may donate BTC to this address as a bounty. If funds are spent from this address, it signals confirmed quantum threat and automatically triggers the freezing mechanism. BitMEX Research states that this proposal serves as a less contentious alternative to the more controversial BIP-361.
On-chain lending platform Votre has raised $3.75 million in seed funding, led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Druid Ventures, and angel investors from Goldman Sachs, Harvard University, and OrangeDAO. Founded in 2025, Votre operates a non-custodial crypto lending platform on Coinbase’s Base Layer 2 network, enabling users to borrow USD—settled the same day—using Bitcoin as collateral, with loan sizes ranging from approximately $25,000 to $5 million. The funds will be used to scale technical infrastructure, increase platform capacity, enhance liquidity management tools, and strengthen risk and compliance systems.
Odaily News Stanford University's "2026 AI Index Report" reveals that the overall electricity demand of current AI systems is already close to half the scale of Bitcoin mining and approaches the national electricity consumption levels of Switzerland or Austria.The report points out that the gap in AI model capabilities between China and the United States is narrowing. In 2025, the U.S. launched approximately 50 representative models, while China launched about 30. Models from institutions such as Anthropic, xAI, Google, OpenAI, Alibaba, and DeepSeek are within the same capability tier.Furthermore, China leads in terms of AI paper citation share (20.6%) and patent quantity (74.2%), while private AI investment in the United States reached $285.9 billion, significantly higher than China's $12.4 billion.
According to GlobeNewswire, Solv Protocol announced a strategic integration with Utexo to launch a native Bitcoin yield solution built on the RGB protocol and the Lightning Network. This solution enables atomic swaps between native BTC and USDT—without wrapping, cross-chain bridges, or custodians. It emphasizes self-custody, privacy protection, and final settlement, aligning with Tether’s prior announcement of natively issuing USDT on an RGB-compatible Lightning Network. Additionally, Solv participated as a strategic angel investor in Utexo’s $7.5 million seed funding round, led by Tether.
Odaily News: Sharon Yeshaya, Chief Financial Officer of Morgan Stanley, stated that tokenization and on-chain finance will become key evolutionary directions for its wealth management business.The company envisions a "tokenized world," where client assets and liabilities can flow as efficiently as capital through blockchain infrastructure, thereby reshaping asset allocation, lending, and cash management methods.Unlike viewing crypto as an independent business, Morgan Stanley plans to embed on-chain capabilities into its core service system, including investment advisory, financing, and liquidity management, to drive an upgrade of the overall financial architecture.This strategy is being gradually implemented through initiatives such as the digital asset pilot with ZeroHash and products like Bitcoin ETFs. Although the crypto business currently accounts for a small portion of the overall system, its position within the future wealth management framework is rapidly rising.