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Bitcoin (BTC) gained 3% on May 1 as a new month saw shorts struggle to keep price pinned.BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin pressures shorts after 3% daily gains

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD reaching $96,955 on Bitstamp, its highest since Feb. 22.

Increasingly close to six figures, Bitcoin rose with US stocks at the Wall Street open as Microsoft gained 10% to become the world’s highest-valued public company.

Reacting, popular trader Daan Crypto Trades suggested that stocks may be on the cusp of a return to sustained bullish trajectory.

“Stocks trade at a key area here,” he wrote in ongoing X analysis.

Opinion by: Vikash Singh, Principal Investor at Stillmark

The Bybit hack resulted in the largest loss of funds to cyber hackers by a cryptocurrency exchange in history. It served as a wake-up call for those complacent about the state of security threats in the digital assets space. Everyone must learn the lesson from this heist — enterprise-grade custody solutions require tech to be accompanied by transparency.

Unlike many previous incidents, this loss of funds was not due to a faulty smart contract, lost/mismanaged keys or deliberate mismanagement or rehypothecation of user funds, but rather a sophisticated social engineering attack that exploited vulnerabilities in operational security. 

This hack differs from earlier eras because it happened to a major global exchange that takes security and compliance seriously. It’s a reminder that, in crypto, there’s no such thing as “good enough” security.

The anatomy of a heist 

A technical overview of the Bybit attack is key for understanding how companies can proactively strengthen their security against such attacks. Initially, a developer machine belonging to Safe, an asset management platform offering multisig Ethereum wallets used by Bybit, was compromised. This initial breach granted the attackers unauthorized access to Safe’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment, including its S3 storage bucket. 

Bitcoin’s expanding institutional adoption may provide the “structural” inflows necessary to surpass gold’s market capitalization and push its price beyond $1 million by 2029, according to Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch.

“Our in-house prediction is $1 million by 2029. So that Bitcoin will match gold's market cap and total addressable market by 2029,” he told Cointelegraph during the Chain Reaction daily X spaces show on April 30.

Corporations are coming for your bitcoin (feat. André Dragosch, Head of Research at Bitwise) #CHAINREACTION https://t.co/5F3cRWBHzq

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) April 30, 2025

Gold is currently the world’s largest asset, valued at over $21.7 trillion. In comparison, Bitcoin’s market capitalization sits at $1.9 trillion, making it the seventh-largest asset globally, according to CompaniesMarketCap data.

Top 10 global assets by market capitalization. Source: CompaniesMarketCap

Related: Bitcoin treasury firms driving $200T hyperbitcoinization — Adam Back

The demand for yield-generating strategies around Bitcoin (BTC) is surging, especially from firms seeking liquidity without liquidating their BTC, according to Ryan Chow, co-founder and CEO of Solv Protocol.

During a fireside chat at the Token2049 conference in Dubai on May 1, Chow said institutional interest in Bitcoin yield products has grown exponentially over the past few years.

Initially, generating Bitcoin yield was nearly impossible. However, recent innovations like staking via proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols and delta-neutral trading strategies have made this possible.

Layer-1 and layer-2 advancements, such as Babylon, have made these strategies more viable. Babylon allows BTC holders to earn yield on their assets, which are used to provide security and liquidity for PoS networks.

“Bitcoin as the largest asset class here, you can stake your Bitcoin to secure the network […] that makes us feel like if it is the answer to really bring utility and also use case,” he said.

Ethereum developers are working to improve blockchain interoperability with two new token standards: ERC-7930 and ERC-7828.

“There’s no standard way for wallets, apps, or protocols to interpret or display this information,” decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem development organization Wonderland wrote in a May 1 X post. Wallets, decentralized applications (DApps), block explorers and smart contracts follow different rules.

“The result? A messy, inconsistent experience that breaks cross-chain UX,“ Wonderland stated.

Wonderland is a group of developers, researchers and data scientists focused on improving the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. The organization partnered with multiple DeFi protocols, including Optimism, Aztec, Connext and Yearn.

Wonderland’s ERC-7828 and ERC-7930 explanation post. Source: Wonderland

In the post, the organization shared what was discussed at a recent Ethereum Foundation interoperability working group call. Teddy from Wonderland explained that the current goal is to finalize both token standards within the next two weeks. He added:

Major European cryptocurrency investment firm 21Shares has filed for a spot Sui exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States, marking another step in its expansion to the US market.

21Shares on April 30 submitted the Form S-1 registration for a spot Sui (SUI) ETF to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Called the 21Shares Sui ETF, the proposed ETF will issue common shares of beneficial interest by seeking to track the performance of SUI held by 21Shares’ US subsidiary.

The US filing comes a year after 21Shares started trading the 21Shares Sui Staking exchange-traded product in Europe in July 2024, with its first listings on Euronext Paris and Euronext Amsterdam.

No ticker or planned exchange yet

The 128-page filing does not specify on which US exchange the new SUI ETF is expected to debut trading. The ETF also doesn’t have a ticker symbol yet.

Amid the intensifying global race to tokenize real-world assets, the market is still too nascent for institutional adoption, according to Chris Yin, the co-founder and CEO of Galaxy-backed RWA platform Plume.

Institutional capital is yet to enter the RWA market, and it will take some time for institutions to see its value, Yin told Cointelegraph on the sidelines of Token2049 in Dubai.

“These things move incredibly slowly, you have to show value, you have to show adoption first,” Yin said, comparing RWA’s currently developing stages with the early days of Bitcoin (BTC) and stablecoins.

“Only now, 10 years later, are they beginning to think about using the stablecoin. The same thing is going to happen in tokenized assets or tokenization,” Yin said.

Tokenized RWAs are far smaller than $21 billion

Yin questioned the accuracy of existing market estimates, which suggest the RWA sector is worth more than $21 billion.

Banking giant Morgan Stanley reportedly plans to list cryptocurrencies on its E*Trade investment brokerage and trading platform.

According to a May 1 Bloomberg report, the firm intends to list crypto assets on E*Trade in 2026. The plan is still in early development, and the bank is said to be exploring partnerships with established crypto firms to power the service. Internal discussions about cryptocurrency support reportedly began in late 2024.

E*Trade homepage. Source: E*Trade

This would not be Morgan Stanley’s first exposure to digital assets. The bank’s wealthiest clients have had access to crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and futures for some time, with the firm’s advisers allowed to pitch Bitcoin ETFs since August 2024.

Related: Morgan Stanley to explore crypto offerings for clients — CEO

Regulatory tailwinds push crypto forward

The news follows previous reports that Morgan Stanley was considering adding cryptocurrency trading to its E*Trade online brokerage platform in early January. The reports at the time cited the expectations of a friendlier crypto regulatory environment.

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin holds $95,000 as Fed rate cut odds rise to 60% for June 18 and the US economy slumps.

Breaking $95,000 could push BTC’s price toward $100,000, while dropping below $93,000 may bring the $84,000 back into the picture.

Key Bitcoin levels to watch remain around the long-term holders’ cost basis.

Bitcoin (BTC) is once again attempting to break above $95,000 on May 1 as markets price in the possibility of the US Federal Reserve cutting rates sooner than expected.

MultiBank Group, the world’s largest financial derivatives institution based in Dubai, has signed a landmark $3 billion real-world asset (RWA) tokenization agreement with United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based real estate giant MAG and blockchain infrastructure provider Mavryk.

The deal represents the largest RWA tokenization initiative globally to date and highlights the upcoming launch of MultiBank’s native utility token, MBG, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph.

The partnership will bring MAG’s ultra-luxury real estate projects — including The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Dubai, Creekside and the Keturah Reserve — onto the blockchain via MultiBank.io’s regulated RWA marketplace.

Once tokenized, these assets will be available to global investors and will generate daily yield for holders directly on the platform.

“$3B worth of MAG’s real estate will be tokenized as individual RWA tokens on MultiBank’s platform, each represented on the Mavryk blockchain, as the underlying layer-1 infrastructure,” Talal Moafaq Al Gaddah, senior executive vice chairman of MAG, told Cointelegraph.

Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX will use a stablecoin linked to US President Donald Trump’s family to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

The World Liberty Financial USD (USD1) US dollar-pegged stablecoin was launched by the Trump-associated crypto platform World Liberty Financial (WLFI) in March 2025.

MGX will use the USD1 stablecoin for its $2 billion investment in the Binance exchange, according to an announcement by Eric Trump during a panel discussion at Token2049 in Dubai. Trump, the son of the president, serves as executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

Source: Cointelegraph

MGX announced its investment in Binance on March 12, marking the first institutional investment in the exchange and one of the biggest funding deals in the entire Web3 industry.

At the time, Binance declined Cointelegraph’s request to disclose what stablecoin was used in the transaction.  

Crypto exchange MEXC has announced a $300 million ecosystem development fund aimed at supporting Web3 projects over the next five years.

The initiative, unveiled at Token2049 in Dubai, is designed to support early-stage blockchain technologies, public chains, wallets, and decentralized tools critical to shaping the future of crypto infrastructure, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph.

Selection criteria for projects looking to participate in the initiative will be announced soon.

“We are committed to strategic investment, focusing not just on exciting ideas and talented developers, but on initiatives with clear long-term potential,” MEXC chief operating officer Tracy Jin said.

She added that the priority is to back projects capable of achieving AAA status within three to five years.

Key points:

Bitcoin traders wait for signals of US economic policy loosening as data forces the Federal Reserve into a corner.

Recession is more likely than not, sources say, amid rising unemployment and resurgent inflation.

Bitcoin and risk assets should ultimately gain from a recession shock.

Bitcoin (BTC) stands to gain as a US recession becomes the “base case scenario.”

Opinion by: Amitej Gajjala, co-founder and CEO of Kernel DAO

The restaking narrative has moved fast — from side conversations in validator circles to the forefront of DeFi infrastructure discussions.

It’s not hard to see why. DefiLlama states that major liquid restaking protocols now hold over $12 billion in total value locked (TVL), with dozens of middleware services aligning their security with Ethereum’s economic base layer. What started as an idea to increase capital efficiency for validators has evolved into a serious attempt to redefine how security is provisioned across decentralized systems.

While restaking is gaining momentum among crypto-native participants, institutions — the kind with multi-year horizons and regulatory constraints — still keep DeFi at arm’s length.

Not because the rewards aren’t attractive. Risk is still poorly understood, isolated and mitigated.

Metaplanet — a Japanese company focused on accumulating Bitcoin — announced it will launch a United States-based subsidiary.

In a May 1 X post, Metaplanet announced that the firm is launching a wholly owned subsidiary in Florida. Furthermore, the new subsidiary is expected to raise up to $250 million of capital to fuel its Bitcoin (BTC) accumulation strategy and tap US institutional investors.

In a separate announcement, Metaplanet cites Miami as the city that will host the new subsidiary’s headquarters. The firm points to Florida as a particularly favorable environment:

“Florida, a rapidly emerging hub for Bitcoin focused companies and financial innovation, recognized for its business-friendly policies and rising status as a global center of capital and technology.”

The company explained that it decided to go to Florida due to its pro-Bitcoin environment, which purportedly led to Bitcoin corporate adoption and financial liberalization. The new subsidiary is also expected to expand the company’s operations into a new timezone.

Related: Eric Trump joins Metaplanet’s strategic board of advisers

Decentralized stablecoin platform Ethena has partnered with The Open Network (TON) to make its stablecoins available to Telegram’s user base of over one billion people.

The partnership, announced on May 1 at Token2049 in Dubai, will see the deployment of Ethena’s USDe (USDE) and Ethena Staked USDe (sUSDe) natively within the TON blockchain.

The sUSDe variant will be integrated under the name tsUSDe, enabling Telegram users to access US dollar-denominated savings directly within Telegram.

Source: Kirill Malev

The deployment involves two major Ethena integrations, including one in the custodial Wallet in Telegram and the second in the TON Space wallet, a self-custodial wallet integrated in the messenger.

One of Ethena’s “most meaningful launches”

Announcing the news on X, Ethena described its TON integration as “one of Ethena’s most meaningful launches to date.”

Fragmentation and complicated user experience remain two of the most significant obstacles to cryptocurrency’s mainstream adoption, according to a new industry report. Most users now use at least two wallets to manage their cryptocurrency investments.

The lack of interoperability across blockchains means users need to create multiple wallets to interact with different networks, with users having at least two wallets rising by 16% over the past year.

According to a research report published by onchain user experience platform Reown and crypto intelligence firm Nansen, 62% of crypto users reported using at least two wallets over the past three months, up from 45% in 2024.

More than 18% of respondents said security was their top concern related to wallet use, while 10.6% cited poor user experience as the biggest issue.

Wallet usage over the past 3 months. Source: Nansen, Reown

Related: Bitcoin volatility lowest in 563 days, Hayes predicts $1M BTC by 2028

AI integration may be next “breakthrough” for crypto wallets

“We’re at a pivotal moment in the evolution of wallet UX,” according to Eowyn Chen, the CEO at Trust Wallet. “The next wave of users, especially those coming from traditional Web2 or emerging markets, are bringing new expectations that challenge how we design tools and interfaces.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has lashed out at The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), calling the publication’s latest report “an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS,” after it claimed the Tesla board was actively seeking his replacement as CEO.

The report, published on April 30, alleged that the board had approached recruitment firms due to concerns over Musk’s political activity and split focus across multiple ventures.

Musk took to X to denounce the article, stating that the WSJ deliberately published false information while knowingly excluding an “unequivocal denial” from Tesla’s board.

Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm also issued a strong rebuttal early Thursday morning, posting on Tesla’s official X account that the board had not contacted recruiters.

“This is absolutely false,” she said. “The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”

Key takeaways:

Strategy’s stock rose 32% in April, its biggest monthly gain since November.

Speculation is building that Strategy will announce a major capital raise during its Q1 earnings call on May 1 as it continues to grow its Bitcoin holdings.

Analysts expect a 1% year-on-year revenue bump to $116.6 million, following the firm’s $120.7 million revenues for Q4 2024.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy closed April with its highest monthly gain since November, ahead of the firm’s highly anticipated earnings call on May 1.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s crypto-tied digital identity project World, formerly Worldcoin, has made its US debut in six cities. 

The project, which aims to verify humans in the age of artificial intelligence, is initially coming to what it calls the “key innovation hubs” of Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco, according to an April 30 announcement.

World offers a crypto token, Worldcoin (WLD), to those who verify their identity with its spherical device called an Orb, which scans a user’s face and eyes.

The firm had previously skirted launching in the US due to regulatory concerns over offering a token, fears now seemingly allayed with the crypto-friendly Trump administration.

The data from World’s Orb scan can be used to make a World ID on the company’s platform that aims to verify that a user is human and can be used to verify that with other platforms, including Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify and Discord.

Crypto losses spiked by 1,163% over April, with the lion’s share of lost crypto coming from a single heist of an elderly US individual’s wallet, says blockchain security firm CertiK.

CertiK said in an April 30 X post that a total of $364 million was lost to exploits, hacks and scams in April, jumping from the $28.8 million recorded by CertiK in March. 

The firm added that white hat exploiters had returned around $18.2 million from exploits on the crypto protocols KiloEx, Loopscale and ZKsync, which brought down the month’s total.

The largest hack in April, and the fifth largest to date, involved an elderly US individual who lost 3,520 Bitcoin (BTC), valued at $330.7 million. The Bitcoin was stolen from their wallet after a hacker used advanced social engineering tactics to gain access on April 30.

Excluding that attack, April’s crypto losses were $34 million, a 21% jump from March.

North Carolina’s House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing the state’s treasurer to invest public funds in approved cryptocurrencies, which will now head to the Senate.

The House passed the Digital Assets Investment Act, or House Bill 92, on its third reading on April 30 by a vote of 71 to 44.

Republican House Speaker Destin Hall introduced the bill in February, which would allow the treasurer to allocate 5% of the state’s investments into designated digital assets.

The investments can only be made after obtaining an independent third-party assessment confirming that the crypto holdings are maintained with a secure custody solution and risk oversight and regulatory compliance standards are met. 

New amendments allow the treasurer to examine the feasibility of allowing members of retirement and deferred compensation plans to elect to invest in digital assets held as exchange-traded products (ETPs).

Key takeaways:

Galaxy Digital plans to begin trading on the Nasdaq on May 16, pending shareholder and Nasdaq approval.

Nasdaq-listed crypto firms posted strong gains in April after a period of macroeconomic uncertainty.

Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz says the listing will broaden the company’s investor base and US presence.

The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) listed crypto investment firm Galaxy Digital is set to move to the US-based Nasdaq on May 16, pending stakeholder approval at its upcoming shareholders meeting.

Nearly 30 crypto advocate groups led by the lobby group the Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for clear regulatory guidance on crypto staking and staking services.

The CCI’s Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA) group argued in an April 30 letter to the agency’s Crypto Task Force lead, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, that staking is fundamentally a technical process, not an investment activity. 

“Staking isn’t niche — it’s the backbone of the decentralized internet,” the letter said. 

The letter responded to the SEC’s call for public input on whether staking and liquid staking, where crypto users lock up their tokens to earn more, should be regulated under federal securities laws.

The coalition called for the SEC to support responsible inclusion of staking features in exchange-traded products (ETPs), and “avoid overly prescriptive rules that could freeze market structures and stifle innovation in the staking space.”

About one in four crypto tokens launched since 2021 have failed in the first quarter of this year amid a crypto market downturn and token creation becoming easier than ever, says crypto data platform CoinGecko.

Since 2021, nearly 7 million cryptocurrencies have been listed on CoinGecko’s token tracking tool GeckoTerminal, and over half, or 3.7 million tokens, “have since stopped trading and are considered failed,” CoinGecko research analyst Shaun Paul Lee said in an April 30 report.

“Alarmingly, the first quarter of 2025 alone saw the collapse of 1.8 million tokens,” he added, which is “the highest number of failures recorded in a single year.” It also comprises just under half of all failures and represents a quarter of all tokens launched since 2021.

CoinGecko recorded tokens with at least one trade before going defunct and only Pump.fun tokens that graduated, or completed the token creation platform’s bonding curve.

There are more crypto tokens than ever, but many are failing to survive in the long term. Source: CoinGecko

Lee linked the recent token die-off to “broader market turbulence” after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, which saw Bitcoin (BTC) hit a peak high but was followed by a sharp downturn in the crypto market.

Key takeaways:

XRP ETF approval odds rise to 85% following a SEC leadership change.

Analysts predict XRP could rise to new all-time highs again in 2025.

XRP price dropped by 5% over the past 24 hours as US GDP data showed a shrinking economy.

However, a strengthening market structure and investors’ growing hope for a spot XRP ETF approval in the United States suggest that the altcoin might revisit its April peak at $2.36 in the short term. 

Trading platform Robinhood has still managed to beat Wall Street estimates as its first-quarter revenues fell and its crypto trading volume cooled from a record high in Q4.

Robinhood’s Q1 results shared on April 30 show revenues fell 8.6% from the previous quarter to $927 million, topping Zacks analyst estimates by 3.16%.

The company’s crypto revenue plummeted nearly 30% quarter-on-quarter to $252 million from the firm’s record-setting Q4 2024.  

The drop could be partly attributed to the Trump administration’s tariffs, which triggered an 18% fall in the crypto market cap over the quarter.

Crypto trading volume on Robinhood also fell 35% over Q1 compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, which the firm attributed to a 10% drop in customer trades placed and a 27% fall in average notional volume per trade.

Key points:

Solana held the $140 support level for a week, a first in more than two months, highlighting traders’ growing confidence.

SOL futures open interest hit $5.75 billion on April 30, showing strong institutional interest.

With rising DEX volumes and a $9.5 billion TVL, SOL could rally to $200 before a potential spot ETF approval on Oct. 10.

Solana’s native token, SOL (SOL), fell 4% between April 29 and April 30 after failing to sustain the $150 level. Despite this short-term decline, traders seem more confident as the $140 support remained intact for a whole week, an outcome that hadn’t happened in over two months.