(16/52) Weekly Market Insight | April Week 5 | The “Worst is Over” Rally

Headline News: The “Worst is Over” Rally

• Bitcoin once surged past $79,000 and ended with a 6.57% gain last week, propelled by robust Q1 corporate earnings that lifted the US stock markets and market sentiment pricing in a de-escalation of immediate geopolitical risks in the Middle East. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded their fourth consecutive week of net inflows, pushing month-to-date accumulation to $2.44 billion.

Macro-Outlook: Absence of Negotiation

• The anticipated second round of US-Iran peace talks has been canceled. The US cited fragmented Iranian leadership, and extended the ceasefire without a future deadline. Concurrently, Iran’s IRGC had escalated tensions by threatening to sever critical undersea internet cables in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz blockade is still in place.
• US businesses started to apply for the $166 billion in invalidated IEEPA tariff refunds, though concurrent Section 122 global import surcharges are projected to recapture an estimated $35–50 billion (roughly 20–30% of the refund pool) .
• The US retail sales increased by 1.7% in March, higher than the market expectations of 1.4%. The spending boosted by gasoline spending with higher disposable income due to higher tax refunds during the month.
• The DOJ has officially dropped its criminal investigation into Fed Chair Powell. The closure of the probe clears the path for the Senate to confirm Kevin Warsh, who is scheduled to succeed Powell as Fed Chair on May 15. Meanwhile, the market expected a 99% probability the rate would remain unchanged this week.

The Upcoming Economic Calendar includes,

• Wednesday, April 29, 8:30pm: US Durable Goods Orders in March
• Thursday, April 30, 2:00am: US FOMC Meetings
• Thursday, April 30, 8:30pm: US Q1 GDP, PCE Price Index, Personal Income and Personal Spending in March
• Friday, May 1, 10:00pm: US ISM Manufacturing PMI in April

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: DeFi United

• Charles Schwab considered launching prediction markets tied specifically to financial events while avoiding sports and pop-culture betting.
• DoorDash piloted stablecoin driver payouts via the Tempo blockchain, advancing everyday crypto payments.
• GSR launched its first actively managed crypto ETF investing across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana (including staking) with a 1% fee.
• Kalshi reportedly plans to launch crypto perpetual futures trading.
• Coinbase introduced Agentic Market as the homepage of the agent economy, letting agents monitor commerce trends, discover and monetise services without API keys.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• Canton Network launched a proof-of-concept with Mizuho, Nomura, JSCC, and Digital Asset that demonstrated 24/7 real-time collateral workflows using Japanese Government Bonds.
• Optimism shipped PrivacyBoost on the OP Stack, a ZK+TEE confidential computing module delivering sub-500ms private transactions, selective disclosure for regulators/auditors, and compliance features.
• Starknet activated the Shinobi upgrade, introducing native in-protocol proof verification that enables real privacy at the consensus layer for shielded assets like STRK20 and strkBTC.

Dapps

• KelpDAO had fully secured a recovery fund from several DeFi protocols including Mantle, Arbitrum, Ether.fi, Lido, Golem etc and donation from DeFiUnited.world.
• Arkham launched decentralized trading on Solana, enabling users to track and instantly trade the best new tokens using its on-chain intelligence.
• Jupiter unlocked tokenized US stocks as collateral on Jupiter Lend, enabling users to borrow stables up to 75% LTV or loop positions with up to 3.8x leverage while earning xPoints.
• Succinct Labs launched ZCAM, an iPhone camera app that cryptographically signs photos and videos at the moment of capture using Apple’s Secure Enclave and App Attest, enabling independent verification that content is unaltered and non-AI-generated.
• Aethir powered Axe Compute’s, a US public listed GPU-as-a-Service provider, $260M multi-year enterprise deal for 2,304 NVIDIA B300 GPUs on its decentralized GPU cloud.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• 1inch co-founder hinted launching intent-based P2P lending with fixed rates as the fix.
• Ripple unveiled its roadmap to make the XRP Ledger quantum-ready by 2028.
• Base is expected to launch Azul upgrade on May 13, delivering multiproof-driven Stage 2 decentralization, performance-focused client consolidation, and Ethereum Osaka spec alignment.
• The highly anticipated Layer-2, MegaETH, announced launching its TGE on April 30.
• Polymarket announced planning to launch crypto-perpetuals with early access sign-up now open.
• TON is expected to drop 83% of the network fees to a fixed 0.00039 TON (~$0.0005) per transaction regardless of network load, with most transactions soon becoming fully gasless.

Token Unlock

• ZORA token unlocks on April 30, representing 3.73% of the token supply.
• EIGEN token unlocks on May 1, representing 5.33% of the token supply.
• FF token unlocks on May 1, representing 4.06% of the token supply.
• EDGE token unlocks on May 2, representing 4.25% of the token supply.
• ZAMA token unlocks on May 2, representing 5.21% of the token supply.
• ADI token unlocks on May 9, representing 7.18% of the token supply.
• LINEA token unlocks on May 10, representing 4.08% of the token supply.
• FHE token unlocks on May 10, representing 7.09% of the token supply.