(13/52) Weekly Market Insight | April Week 2 | Tug of War Between Anticipation and Reality

Headline News: Tug of War Between Anticipation and Reality

• Broader markets have staged a tentative rebound on expectations of a US-brokered diplomatic de-escalation in the Middle East. However, with active hostilities persisting, it remains premature to price in a definitive resolution. Concurrently, markets are actively pricing in renewed inflation risks stemming from elevated oil prices, which triggered a repricing of monetary policy expectations across major central banks, specifically the BOJ, ECB, BOE, and BOC, alongside hawkish tail-risk repricing for the US Federal Reserve. This shifting rate environment threatens to apply sustained downward pressure on risk assets and could catalyze further unwinding of global carry trades.

Macro-Outlook: No Peace Deal

• US and Israeli strikes intensified on Iranian infrastructure, including petrochemical plants in Khuzestan. Iran retaliated with multiple ballistic missile salvos fired at Israel. Iran also rejected Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum for a peace deal and Strait of Hormuz reopening, increasing risks of escalation.
• The US retail sales increased by 0.6% in February, slightly higher than the market forecasts of 0.5%. The ISM manufacturing PMI increased to 52.7 in March, also higher than the market forecasts of 52.5.
• The US JOLTs job opennings decreased to 6.882 million in February, lower than the market expectation of 6.92 million. The non-farm payrolls increased 178K in March, well above the market expectations of 60K. The unemployment rate decreased to 4.3% in March, below the market expectations of 4.4%, indicating a relatively resilient labor market.
• After Fed Chair Powell shared, the Fed remained inclined to hold rates steady and look past the Middle East-driven oil shock. The markets have repriced the probability of a rate hike in 2026 from 22.2% to 0.2% after the speech, and holds approximately at 10.5% at the end of last week.

The Upcoming Economic Calendar includes,

• Monday, April 6, 10:00pm: US ISM Services PMI in March
• Tuesday, April 7, 8:30pm: US Durable Goods Orders in February
• Thursday, April 9, 2:00am: FOMC Minutes
• Thursday, April 9, 8:30pm: US PCE Price Index, Personal Income and Personal Spending in February; US Q4 Final GDP
• Friday, April 10, 8:30pm: US Inflation Rate in March
• Friday, April 10, 10:00pm: Michigan Consumer Sentiment in April

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: The Largest Money Market DeFi Remade

• Charles Schwab announced the upcoming launch of “Schwab Crypto” accounts, enabling direct spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading inside existing brokerage accounts.
• Coinbase received conditional approval for a national trust charter from the OCC, expanding trusted custody and banking services across its platform.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• Polygon launched private mempools, routing transactions directly to block producers via a new private RPC to deliver full MEV protection and eliminate frontrunning or sandwich attacks.
• Plume introduced tokenized payroll in partnership with Toku and WisdomTree Prime, eligible contributors can now receive a portion of their salary directly in shares of a regulated money market fund, integrating RWAs into everyday financial workflows.
• ADI Chain, the institutional L2 for stablecoins and RWAs in MENA, launched Predictstreet as the official prediction market partner of the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Dapps

• Aave launched V4 on Ethereum, introducing a new architecture that supports broader assets and market structures while maintaining Chainlink oracle security.
• Hyperliquid released its official Android app, now available exclusively via the verified Google Play Store.
• Arcium launched Umbra publicly, a privacy-focused Solana wallet for anonymous transfers, swaps and yield powered by Arcium’s encrypted supercomputer.
• Spark added wBTC as collateral on SparkLend, expanding BTC-backed borrowing options beyond constrained venues.
• The Drift Protocol on Solana was exploited for ~$285 million. Attackers used social engineering and durable nonces to trick the Security Council into pre-signing transactions, introduced a fake collateral token via wash trading, and drained liquidity from key vaults like JLP, SOL, and BTC staking pools.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• Solana began testing quantum-resistant signatures with Project Eleven, with early results showing signatures up to 40× larger and network performance roughly 90% slower, highlighting the scalability trade-offs required for future quantum-safe cryptography on high-throughput chains.
• Linea announced its strategic pivot to RISC-V architecture after three years of direct EVM arithmetization, citing reduced complexity, immediate prover starts via narrower traces, and full alignment with Ethereum Foundation’s RISC-V commitment for enshrined rollups.
• Lista DAO activated LISTA Tokenomics 2.0, fully retiring the veLISTA staking model with immediate unlocks for all staked tokens, redirecting protocol revenue to LISTA buybacks for a deflationary supply path, starting on April 7.

Token Unlock

• LINEA token unlocks on April 10, representing 4.31% of the token supply.
• BABY token unlocks on April 10, representing 23.5% of the token supply.
• DBR token unlocks on April 17, representing 12.5% of the token supply.
• KAT token unlocks on April 18, representing 8.08% of the token supply.
• ZRO token unlocks on April 20, representing 9.78% of the token supply.
• KAITO token unlocks on April 20, representing 7.29% of the token supply.
• AVNT token unlocks on April 23, representing 7.84% of the token supply.
• XPL token unlocks on April 25, representing 4.94% of the token supply.