Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

Bitcoin double-bottomed at $75k in early April, then surged due to the 90-day tariff pause, ranging around $84k for 2 weeks before quickly rising to $95k, demonstrating strong performance against equities. Bitcoin ETFs received an additional $442M in net inflows, totaling $2.78B over the past five days. Meanwhile, the altcoin market remained stagnant until this recent Bitcoin pump, with only a few tokens squeezing shorts. SUI leads all altcoin movements, climbing an additional 26% to reach $3.78.

Upcoming Macro Calendar - Source: Trading Economics

Options Market

After weeks of consolidation, the market finally had a relief rally following Trump showing the willingness to negotiate a trade deal with China. The front-end implied volatility rose on the rally and quickly retraced to the pre-rally level to end the week flattish. Realised volatility shifted slightly higher to get closer to the implied volatility, hence a flat volatility carry. Skew moved to favour calls for both BTC and ETH with ETH being less bullish. ETHBTC ratio bounced back from the low but it is way too early to claim a trend reversal.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• The official TRUMP meme coin account announced on social media that on May 22, top TRUMP coin holders will attend a private dinner with President Trump at the Trump National Club in Washington, D.C. Additionally, the initial unlocked tokens and the daily releases scheduled for the following three months will be subject to an additional 90-day lock-up.

   

• ProShares Trust is set to launch an XRP Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) through a public offering scheduled for April 30, 2025.

   

• Loopscale, a modular DeFi lending market built on Solana, suffered an attack due to manipulation of the RateX PT token pricing function, resulting in the theft of approximately 5.7 million USDC and 1,200 SOL, accounting for about 12% of the platform’s total funds.

   

• Manus, a development team, completed a $75 million funding round at a valuation of nearly $500 million, led by Benchmark.

• The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) plans to launch XRP futures on May 19, pending regulatory approval. MilkyWay Foundation, the liquid staking protocol on Celestia, announced that the MILK token airdrop claim page is now live. 10% of the total MILK token supply will be allocated for the airdrop.

   

• Infrared Finance, a liquid staking protocol built on Berachain, launched a points program to incentivize user participation ahead of its token launch.

   

• Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms (RIOT) has secured a $100 million credit agreement with Coinbase’s credit division, using Bitcoin as collateral to obtain short-term funding for its expansion efforts.

   

• Gaming giant Ubisoft has partnered with Immutable to launch a Web3 trading card game titled Might & Magic: Fates.

Macro

The major indices rebounded as the Trump administration’s tariffs tensions seem to ease: the DJIA added +2.5%, the S&P 500 +4.6%, and the Nasdaq +6.7%. The Trump administration showed signals to alleviate the trade war tension. The stocks were also inspired for the week: Shanghai Composite Index added +0.61%, the CSI 300 added +0.46% and the Hang Seng index +2.82%.