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Investors in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are maintaining their investment allocations in software, semiconductors, and cryptocurrencies amid geopolitical risks in the Middle East stemming from the conflict with Iran, Cointelegraph reported. They are reportedly using the downturn in AI and technology stocks as a buying opportunity. According to eToro, UAE investors have increased their holdings in core AI infrastructure stocks by as much as 125%. MicroStrategy, a prominent stock with significant cryptocurrency exposure, ranked eighth among their most-held stocks.

Whale Alert reported that 250 million USDC has been minted at the USDC Treasury.

Strengthening regulations for the tokenization market and digital finance could bring an annual economic benefit of approximately A$24 billion ($17 billion) to Australia, according to a new report from the country's Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) and the Council for the Digital Economy.

Northern Trust (Nasdaq: NTRS), one of the three largest U.S. trust banks, has announced an agreement with Digital Asset Holdings to develop custody capabilities for financial asset tokens. The bank will integrate the Canton Network, a blockchain infrastructure for financial institutions, to build an application that allows institutional investors to securely store and manage digital assets.

New York Fed President John Williams said inflation will be "well above" 3% over the next few months.

The cryptocurrency market is poised for a large-scale collapse because it lacks real value, is drained by $50 billion in annual operating costs, and is running out of new capital, argued Yang Haipo, founder of crypto exchange CoinEx. He claimed that while the total crypto market capitalization exceeds $2 trillion, the supply of stablecoins acting as effective collateral is estimated to be only between $250 billion and $300 billion, implying a real leverage of eight to 10 times. "This means that if 5% to 10% of all crypto holders attempt to cash out simultaneously, liquidity could evaporate, leading to a price crash," Yang explained. He noted that funds flowed from retail investors in 2017, institutions in 2021, and ETFs in 2024, but the capacity for new capital inflows is now exhausted. According to Yang, costs such as salaries for approximately 1.6 million industry employees, mining expenses, and exchange operating fees are continuously eroding internal capital. Meanwhile, real revenue generated from external sources like stablecoin payments covers only a fraction of these operational costs. "The entire system is structured to collapse the moment the inflow of new investor funds falls below the annual operating expenses," he concluded.

Major exchanges have seen $112 million worth of futures liquidated in the past hour. In the past 24 hours, $341 million worth of futures have been liquidated.

An Iranian parliamentary official has announced a plan to collect transit fees for the Strait of Hormuz through Iranian banks, the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) reported. This follows a previous statement from Iran that it would demand payment for the tolls in cryptocurrencies such as BTC and stablecoins.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has fallen below $74,000. BTC is trading at $73,947.05 on the Binance USDT market.

DoubleZero (2Z) has launched DoubleZero Edge, a platform designed to transmit data from the Solana chain in real time, CoinDesk reported. The service utilizes a dedicated fiber optic network and multicast methods instead of the public internet, which is said to reduce data transmission times and eliminate latency, offering an advantage to traders.

The three major U.S. stock indices opened higher today. - S&P 500: +0.12% - Nasdaq: +0.06% - Dow Jones: +0.20%

Iran has emphasized to Pakistan that the United States must withdraw its excessive demands, according to Iran's Tasnim News Agency.

Ukrainian authorities have arrested a member of an international cybercrime network who was wanted by the FBI for causing over $100 million in damages in the United States and Europe, Cointelegraph reported. During the arrest, Ukrainian police seized a total of $11 million in assets, including $3 million worth of cryptocurrency. The investigation revealed that the individual had been living in Ukraine under a forged identity after issuing documents claiming he was deceased.

Hyperbridge, which suffered an exploit on its Polkadot (DOT) bridge to Ethereum, announced via its official X account that it has revised its estimated losses upward from $237,000 to $2.5 million. The company stated that while the theft was initially believed to be confined to the Ethereum bridge, it was later discovered that incentive pools on Base, BNB Chain, and Arbitrum were also compromised. Hyperbridge added that the stolen funds are being moved to Binance and that it plans to distribute bridged cryptocurrencies to compensate for losses if recovery efforts fail.

Drift (DRIFT), which lost approximately $295 million in a hack earlier this month, has unveiled a recovery framework for affected users on its official blog. The project is establishing a Recovery Pool, to which Tether will contribute up to $127.5 million and other partners will add $20 million. The pool will also be funded by a $100 million revenue-sharing program, ecosystem grants, and market maker loans. Drift stated it is collaborating with law enforcement and blockchain analysis partners to trace the stolen assets, with any recovered funds to be added to the pool. Affected users will be issued a special recovery token, separate from the existing governance token, which can be used to make a claim on the recovery pool.

AllUnity, a joint venture by Deutsche Bank subsidiary DWS, crypto market maker Flow, and Galaxy, is expanding liquidity pools for its euro-pegged stablecoin EURAU to major decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap and Raydium, Cointelegraph reported. AllUnity is an issuer compliant with Europe's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation and holds an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). The company plans to establish trading pairs with major U.S. dollar stablecoins to enhance euro liquidity and increase accessibility for institutional investors.

BNB Chain will implement its Osaka/Mendel hard fork on the mainnet at 2:30 a.m. UTC on April 28, the project announced in a blog post. The upgrade includes two main changes. First, it will limit Blob transactions on a per-block basis to prevent large transactions from slowing down block processing. Second, it will introduce an in-memory voting pool to process validator votes directly from memory. This will improve fast finality, enhancing the speed and stability of transaction confirmations.

The number of initial jobless claims in the U.S. for the past week was 207,000, coming in below the forecast of 213,000. Weekly jobless claims are a key metric the Federal Reserve uses to gauge the health of the labor market when making interest rate decisions. A figure higher than expected can signal increased layoffs and a cooling labor market, potentially giving the Fed a reason to cut rates. Conversely, a lower-than-expected number suggests a robust labor market, which could support the Fed's decision to hold or raise rates to curb inflation.

Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Cain, the successor to Charles Brown Jr., stated that the United States is prepared to resume military operations against Iran at a moment's notice. He also emphasized that the joint forces' blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would apply to all ships entering or leaving Iranian ports, regardless of their nationality.

MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor announced via X that the company has added a new metric to its official website showing its Bitcoin holdings per share. The figure is intended to provide an intuitive understanding of the company's BTC assets relative to its stock. Currently, MicroStrategy holds 780,897 BTC, with 0.00205812 BTC per MSTR share.

The U.S. military announced in a statement on April 16 that it has expanded the scope of its maritime blockade on Iran, according to Reuters. The blockade now covers items such as weapons, ammunition, crude oil, petroleum products, steel, and aluminum.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Hegseth has urged Iran to make a wise choice in its negotiations with the United States.

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, argued on X that traditional finance institutions like Citadel and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) are publicly supporting cryptocurrency while privately lobbying to hinder its market growth. Thorn noted that Citadel and SIFMA have urged the U.S. SEC's crypto task force to strongly apply existing securities laws when tokenized stocks are traded using crypto-native technologies like DeFi and Automated Market Makers (AMMs). In response, Galaxy Digital sent a letter to the agency asserting that AMMs are not exchanges, liquidity providers (LPs) are not dealers, and applying securities laws from a technology-neutral perspective is excessive. He emphasized that Bitcoin has already won its battle with traditional finance, and the next front is tokenized stocks.

Macro investor and Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal stated on X that two key metrics will determine the future valuation of blockchains: value transacted per user and the total number of users. He argued that Metcalfe's Law, which posits that a network's value is proportional to the square of its connected users, is the most suitable model for blockchain valuation. Pal explained that the value transacted per user will increase as the financial system migrates to blockchain technology, led by stablecoins and followed by asset tokenization. "As traditional finance holds assets that dwarf other sectors, the value flowing into blockchains will grow as tokenization progresses," he said. Pal added that the growth in total users will be driven by AI agents. Although their individual transaction sizes will be small, they will form a user base many times larger than that of humans. He concluded, "In 10 years, everything other than these two pillars will be a rounding error."

Bitcoin's price is rising even as its funding rate has dropped to -0.005%, the lowest level since 2023, CoinDesk reported. The funding rate is a fee exchanged between long and short traders in perpetual futures to keep the contract price in line with the spot price. A negative rate indicates that short positions are paying long positions, signaling a prevalence of bearish bets. The media outlet noted that similar patterns occurred before the market bottomed out during the COVID-19 crash in March 2020, China's crypto mining ban in mid-2021, and the FTX collapse in 2022. The trend was also observed during the Silicon Valley Bank crisis and a tariff-related issue in 2023. The persistence of negative funding rates while the price climbs suggests the market is rallying against bearish sentiment, indicating that the liquidation of short positions could fuel further upward momentum.