Tariffs and Tensions

Daily Updates:

• With BTC currently trading close to $95K, its month-over-month performance is more than 9%. Comparatively, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 trade at -1% and 0.78% respectively since March 28.
• Today, futures for US equities have opened lower while BTC is slightly up on the day – continuing signs of the decoupling between the two that we have noted previously. 
• In those previous analyses, which readers can find in more detail here, we have argued that Bitcoin benefits from a fundamental number of tailwind drivers that will help support its price despite a murkier macro environment. 
• However, even in a macro environment that has overall been a headwind there are some factors that may be supporting BTC given its nature as a non-dollar asset: President Trump’s public berating of Chair Powell and his monetary policy decisions, and a significant weakening of the US dollar are notable examples. 

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• Last week ETH outperformed BTC, something we have seen less and less of during this current crypto cycle. While its weekly performance was better than BTC, on the month the token is down 4%. Options markets are pricing in a flat term structure of volatility for ETH and its put-call skew has mostly been on the downward path since reaching an April high of 6% last week. Traders in perpetual swap markets are also not looking to take a meaningful view on ETH either, as funding rates continue to remain close to 0%.

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• Overall, one of the main narratives still gripping financial markets is President Trump’s 90-day tariff pause announced on April 9. As we approach day 20 of that 90, the US administration has yet to negotiate a single trade deal. 
• During a Time Magazine interview last Friday, Trump said that he expects trade deals to be wrapped up within 3-4 weeks, adding that his decision to pause most of his ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs had nothing to do with the bond market selloff – “they didn’t tell me. I did that … the bond market was getting the yips, but I wasn’t”. 
• That comment seems quite the contrast to his statement on April 9, the day of the tariff pause when he told reporters “The bond market is very tricky. I was watching it” and “I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy."
• Later in the day, aboard Air Force One, Trump suggested another pause to his tariffs was “unlikely”. 
• His Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, echoed a similar sentiment regarding trade deals last week too. Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Bessent said the US administration is working on trade deals with 17 trading partners and that the US has “a process in place, over the next 90 days, to negotiate with them”. China is not among those 17 nations, but according to Bessent, China’s “business model is predicated on selling cheap, subsidized goods to the US” so “if there’s a sudden stop in that, they will have a sudden stop in the economy, so they will negotiate.”

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• On his Truth Social network platform, Trump posted yesterday that his tariff program will have the potential to reduce the income tax for US citizens who earn less than $200,000 per year. During his presidential campaign, Trump had advocated for the idea that tariff revenue could replace income taxes.
• Senator Cynthia Lummis criticized the Federal Reserve’s recent withdrawal of certain crypto-regulated guidance, calling it “lip service” in a series of posts on X. She argued that the Fed continues to violate the law regarding master accounts, relies on reputation risk in bank supervision – unlike the OCC and FDIC – and has not withdrawn its Policy Statement on Section 9(13), which deems BTC and digital assets “unsafe and unsound”.
• Trump-backed Defi platform, World Liberty Financial (WLF), has signed a Letter of Intent with the Pakistan Crypto Council (PCC) to pursue blockchain innovation, stablecoin adoption, and DeFi growth in Pakistan. 
• DeFi Development Corp, previously Janover, has filed with the SEC to raise up to $1B to support its new Solana-focused treasury strategy, following an initial $48.2M SOL investment under new leadership.

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• In the IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) April 2025 press briefing, the organisation expressed concerns about the potential risks of governments holding BTC as part of their reserves. This discussion largely focused on El Salvador, the first country to adopt BTC as a legal tender. The IMF has cautioned against such strategies, suggesting that it may expose the country to significant financial instability and is advocating for more regulation to limit the use of crypto reserves by governments to mitigate these risks.

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• On Sunday, approximately 3,520 BTC ($330.7M) were transferred in what on-chain analyst ZachXBT suspects to be a theft. However, the specific identity of the victim is not disclosed, and the stolen funds were quickly laundered through more than six exchanges.
  The Bitcoin was then converted into Monero (XMR) by swapping it through these exchanges, leveraging Monero’s privacy features to obscure the transaction trail. The large volumes of swaps, combined with thin liquidity, triggered an immediate 50% spike in XMR’s price, which later stabilized to a 35% gain over the past 24h, with XMR trading at $267.055 this morning. 

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• Ripple has officially ruled out plans to go public in 2025, according to the statements by the CEO, Brad Garlinghouse and President, Monica Long in a recent CNBC interview. Long emphasized that Ripple remains financially strong, with billions in cash reserves, and does not require external funding at this time. The company recently repurchased shares at an $11.3B valuation, down from $15B in 2022. 

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• Separately, ETF issuer ProShares has received approval from the SEC to launch three XRP futures-related ETF products. The ETFs will not be a Spot ETF, but instead offer leveraged exposure to XRP through the Ultra XRP ETF (2x leverage), the Short XRP ETF and the Ultra Short XRP ETF (-2x leverage). Given that the ETFs are futures-based, they provide exposure to the price movements of XRP futures contracts, and will therefore track the price of XRP through the XRP Index. Unlike a Spot ETF, this will not require the purchasing of XRP tokens.

This Week’s Calendar:

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Charts of the Day:

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