Decentral Block Post

US Dollar-pegged stablecoins are on track to reach an aggregate market capitalization of approximately $2 trillion by 2028, according to the United States Department of the Treasury’s Q1 2025 report.

Stablecoins’ cumulative market cap currently stands at roughly $230 billion, but “[e]volving market dynamics [have] the potential to accelerate stablecoins’ trajectory to reach ~$2tn in market cap by 2028,” the Treasury said in the April 30 report. 

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to a traditional asset like the US dollar. According to the report, such tokens are already “ubiquitously utilized as ‘cash on-chain,’ effectively serving as a new payment mechanism.”

Additionally, the emergence of “tokenized [money market funds] has recently created an alternative option to stablecoins, primarily given their yield-bearing feature,” the report reads.

Related: Stablecoins boosting demand for US T-bills: Treasury Dept

Key takeaways:

Ether price printed a rare monthly Dragonfly doji candlestick, which is often seen before major ETH bull market cycles.

ETH is retesting its long-term parabolic support zone that preceded its historic 2017 rally.

The MVRV Z-Score has entered the accumulation zone, signaling undervaluation.

Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), is flashing a combination of technical and onchain signals once seen in the early stages of its 2017 bull run, a cycle that produced over 25,000% gains.

Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao wants to provide free education for up to a billion children worldwide with his Giggle Academy venture, he told an audience at Token2049 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

"In a few years, I think, I want to teach 100 million or 1 billion kids for free,” Zhao told the audience. Giggle is a free online platform that provides elementary education through gamified lessons.

"With the technologies we have today, it's not that hard to make an app that will stick, that's educational, but also glues the kids to the device," the crypto entrepreneur said.

Giggle's concept paper outlines the project's goal of providing K-12 education globally for free by offering non-traditional educational courses in topics such as negotiations, finance, entrepreneurship, sales, legal, accounting, blockchain, and AI in phases.

In April 2024, the Binance co-founder announced he was stepping away from the company and focusing on educational initiatives as he prepared to serve a four-month prison sentence for violating US money laundering laws, which he completed in September 2024.

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin’s price increased by sixfold each time its age increased by 40%.

If the pattern holds, Bitcoin could rally to $351,046 in 2025.

New data highlights a historical pattern that results in Bitcoin (BTC) price increasing by sixfold. Using a logarithmic chart to illustrate the trend from 2011, the model projects BTC price to hit $351,046 in 2025.

According to 21st Capital co-founder Sina, the study plots Bitcoin’s price on a log-log graph, showing a linear relationship that reflects predictable long-term growth driven by network dynamics, a behavior characteristic associated with BTC’s limited supply. 

Tether plans to launch a stablecoin product in the United States as soon as this year, the stablecoin issuer’s CEO, Paul Ardoino, said in an April 30 CNBC interview.

Tether’s flagship stablecoin, USDT (USDT), is already the US dollar’s top “exporter,” Ardoino told CNBC. It has a market capitalization of nearly $150 billion, according to data from CoinGecko. 

Now, Tether is preparing to expand into the US market “by the end of this year or early next year, at the fastest,” Ardoino said, adding that the timing depends on US lawmakers’ progress on stablecoin legislation.

The stablecoin issuer is working to woo US regulators by proactively collaborating with law enforcement and highlighting USDT’s benefits for the US economy.

"We are just exporters of what we believe to be the best product the United States ever created — that is, the US dollar,” the CEO said.

After months of volatility and extreme fear, crypto markets turned a positive corner in the second half of April, highlighting the industry’s big sentiment shift. 

For venture capital, it was business as usual, with investors continuing to pour money into promising startups across layer-1 blockchains, infrastructure, real-world asset tokenization (RWA), and Web3 social media.

This edition of VC Roundup highlights six notable funding deals from April.

Unto Labs raises $14.4M for layer-1 blockchain

Blockchain R&D company Unto Labs raised $14.4 million to continue developing its scalable layer-1 network called Thru. The pre-seed and seed funding was led by venture firms Electric Capital and Framework, with support from angel investors in the Solana engineering community.

The company is led by former Solana contributor Liam Heeger, who argues that “blockchains painted themselves into a corner by inventing custom Virtual Machines (VMs),” which he believes has prevented mainstream adoption.

Key takeaways:

ETH price has underperformed its peers during the current bull market, but gas sponsorship could lure developers and traders back to the network.

Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra upgrade promises to improve staking efficiency, potentially increasing demand for ETH.

Data suggests ETH price bottomed. Will the Pectra narrative reignite bullish momentum?

Since 2024, ETH (ETH) has been more of a meme than a market mover. Unlike most of its rivals, ETH still hasn’t reclaimed its all-time high of $4,870 from November 2021, and it regularly underperforms even in the weak altcoin market. Currently, ETH trades at $1,813, down 56% from its local peak in December 2024.

Blockchain payments firm Ripple has reportedly bid up to $5 billion in an effort to acquire stablecoin issuer Circle, but the offer was rejected.

According to an April 30 Bloomberg report, Ripple put in a bid of $4 billion to $5 billion as part of an attempted takeover of Circle, which was rejected as being too low. Ripple hasn’t considered whether to make another bid to purchase the stablecoin issuer.

The reported acquisition attempt came less than 30 days after Circle applied for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US. Cointelegraph reached out to representatives of Circle and Ripple for comment, but had not received a response from either at the time of publication.

Related: Ripple acquisition of Hidden Road a ‘defining moment’ for XRPL — Ripple CTO

Ripple reportedly had an $11 billion valuation in 2024, an estimate CEO Brad Garlinghouse called “outdated” as of January. The blockchain company purchased prime broker Hidden Road for roughly $1.2 billion in April, claiming the move would help scale activity for XRP and XRP Ledger.

Key points:

Bitcoin’s 7-day volatility is the lowest in 563 days, signaling an impending range expansion.

Bitcoin’s breakout above $95,000 could swiftly take it to $100,000 and above.

Although the probability is low, traders should remain cautious about a pullback in the near term.

Bitcoin (BTC) has been trading in a tight consolidation near the $95,000 level for several days. K33 Research head of research Vetle Lunde said in a post on X that Bitcoin’s 7-day volatility has hit a 563-day low.

Governments outside the US, including Singapore, are increasingly interested in stablecoins not tied to the US dollar, despite their currently limited liquidity, Fireblocks director of policy Dea Markova told Cointelegraph at Token2049.

In an exclusive interview, Markova described the competition with dollar-pegged stablecoins as “all about sovereignty.” She compared the situation to earlier tensions between governments and US payment giants like Visa and Mastercard. “Now we’re seeing the same dynamic with stablecoins — on a smaller scale for now — but they’re definitely emerging as a new arena for sovereign concerns,” she said.

According to Markova, dollar-pegged stablecoins operating in the European Union are already "having a massive headache," particularly from central banks. "Even though they're compliant and regulated, they're having a fixed push back.”

The European Central Bank is increasing pressure to accelerate the development of a digital euro, citing concerns over the systemic impact of dollar-linked stablecoins within the eurozone.

On April 29, the Bank of Italy released a report saying dollar-pegged stablecoins’ reliance on US Treasury bonds could increase systemic risk vulnerabilities.

Key Takeaways:

US GDP shrank -0.3% in Q1, far below +0.3% forecasts, sparking recession fears.

Bitcoin faces selling pressure with its spot volume delta dropping $300 million in 3 days.

Whales are accumulating BTC, but smaller holders are selling, hinting at profit-taking.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price dropped under $93,000 on April 30, after the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data revealed a -0.3% contraction in Q1. While the GDP missed expectations of +0.3%, the GDP Price Index soared to 3.7%—the highest since August 2023. Polymarket odds of a recession in 2025 hit 67%, with consumer confidence at its lowest since May 2020.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the former CEO of crypto exchange Binance, said most European countries were moving “nowhere” in terms of the adoption of digital currencies.

Speaking at the Token2049 conference in Dubai on April 30, Zhao said that areas of the United Arab Emirates were “extremely pro-business,” leading to crypto adoption in Dubai, while others like Bhutan were building national Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) stockpiles. According to Zhao, the US was pressing other countries’ hands by exploring its own policies for a crypto reserve, but those in Europe didn’t seem to be reacting.

“I don’t see Europe in this discussion,” said Zhao, highlighting one exception. “Montenegro is actually quite pro-crypto. We had an active dialogue with [the] prime minister there, and he’s a very forward-thinking person, leader. But other than Montenegro, I don’t have any other, it’s kind of missing on the map.”

Related: ‘Wealthiest US prisoner’: How did Binance founder CZ get there?

Zhao, who has a home in Dubai, resigned as Binance CEO in November 2023 as part of a plea deal with US authorities pursuing charges against the exchange. Since leaving Binance and serving four months in prison in the US, he has become more involved with his educational platform, Giggle Academy. 

Asset manager Grayscale launched the Grayscale Bitcoin Adopters exchange-traded fund (ETF), an investment vehicle that tracks companies employing a Bitcoin (BTC) treasury, or holding strategy.

According to the April 30 announcement, the ETF will provide exposure to companies across seven business sectors, including Bitcoin mining firms, automotive companies, and energy.

Some of the most notable firms in the ETF include Michael Saylor's Strategy, mining company MARA, automotive manufacturer Tesla, BTC treasury company Metaplanet, and aerospace energy firm KULR Technology Group.

Grayscale's Bitcoin Adopters ETF highlights the growing trend of Bitcoin acquisition companies using the scarce digital asset to drive up shareholder prices and to protect their corporate financial reserves against the inflation inherent in fiat currencies.

Related: Cantor plans $3B crypto venture with SoftBank, Bitfinex and Tether: Report

Key points: 

US GDP shrank in Q1, raising recession alarms while also prompting calls for Fed rate cuts.

Bitcoin dropped to $92,910 as GDP figures were released, but sustained buy-side demand could provide support. 

Today’s crypto derisking is likely transitory; market fundamentals remain strong.

Bitcoin (BTC) price took an abrupt tumble as data showed the US gross domestic product (GDP) retracting by 0.3% in Q1, raising alarms among analysts anticipating a recession. Following the news, BTC price dropped to an intra-day low of $92,910, while the DOW and S&P 500 fell by 1% and 1.3% respectively. 

Opinion by: Fraser Edwards, co-founder and CEO, Cheqd

Brutal honesty has its place, especially when confronting discomfort, so here’s one that can’t be sweetened with honey: 96% of imported honey in the UK is fake! Tests found that 24 of 25 jars were suspicious or didn’t meet regulatory standards. 

Self-sovereign identity (SSI) can fix this. 

The UK Food Standards Agency and the European Commission both urge reform to tackle this concern by creating a robust traceability database within supply chain networks to ensure consumer transparency and trust. Data, however, is not the problem. The issue is people tampering with it. 

This is not the first time products have been revealed to be inauthentic, with the Honey Authenticity Network highlighting that one-third of all honey products were fake in 2020, a fraudulent industry amounting to 3.4 billion euros ($3.65 million) of counterfeit goods entering the EU in 2023, as reported by the European Commission.

Chinese artificial intelligence development company DeepSeek has released a new open-weight large language model (LLM).

DeepSeek uploaded its newest model, Prover V2, to the hosting service Hugging Face on April 30. The latest model, released under the permissive open-source MIT license, aims to tackle math proof verification.

Prover V2 has 671 billion parameters, making it significantly larger than its predecessors, Prover V1 and Prover V1.5, which were released in August 2024. The paper accompanying the first version explained that the model was trained to translate math competition problems into formal logic using the Lean 4 programming language — a tool widely used for proving theorems.

The developers say Prover V2 compresses mathematical knowledge into a format that allows it to generate and verify proofs, potentially aiding research and education.

Related: Here’s why DeepSeek crashed your Bitcoin and crypto

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin released another update on what he believes the future of the network should entail.

In an April 30 post on blockchain-based social media platform Farcaster, Buterin outlined his personal areas of focus for Ethereum development this year. These include investigating changes to the network infrastructure to achieve single-slot finality, updates to smart contract execution and enhancements to privacy.

The post comes as the Ethereum network hits a new milestone. GrowThePie data shows that the weekly number of unique addresses interacting with the Ethereum ecosystem reached a new high of over 15.4 million, with nearly 13.45 million on layer-2 protocols.

Buterin recently argued that privacy should be a top priority for developers and proposed solutions to boost privacy on Ethereum. Earlier in April, he also published a short-term privacy roadmap for Ethereum, detailing technical solutions to the network’s transparency.

Buterin’s focus on forward-looking research follows changes at the Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit organization developing the Ethereum ecosystem. Earlier this month, the Ethereum Foundation co-executive director, Tomasz Stańczak, said that Buterin now has more time for research and exploration.

An elderly US individual is reportedly the victim of a devastating $330 million Bitcoin heist, now ranked as the fifth-largest crypto hack in history.

The attacker used advanced social engineering tactics to gain access to the victim’s wallet, onchain investigator ZachXBT said in an April 30 update on X.

The hack took place on April 28, 2025, when ZachXBT flagged a suspicious transfer involving 3,520 Bitcoin (BTC), valued at $330.7 million.

Following the transfer, the stolen stash was quickly laundered through over six instant exchanges and swapped into privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR).

Onchain data shows that the victim had held over 3,000 BTC since 2017, with no prior history of large-scale transactions.

Crypto was born from an open-source ethos, where code was shared publicly, accessible for review and shaped by community contributions. Transparency and verifiability are foundational principles that enable trust in Bitcoin.

But as the space matured, some disadvantages of open source surfaced. Innovative smart contract platforms and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications were forked to create direct competitors — from the wave of Uniswap clones to Ethereum forks — which prioritized speed and lower fees over decentralization.

As a result, some projects opted for closed-source development to protect proprietary designs and reduce the risk of exploits, hoping to delay or deter malicious actors by making the code harder to analyze. This approach is often criticized as “security through obscurity,” where hiding vulnerabilities instead of fixing them becomes a line of defense.

Closed-source systems run counter to crypto’s original vision of decentralization and transparency. What started as a grassroots movement among cypherpunks and hackers is now increasingly mainstream and integrating with the very institutional system it once sought to disrupt.

Solana Loopscale exploit shows why open source can still be more secure

An exploit on Solana’s Loopscale protocol shows that closed source is not a one-size-fits-all solution for keeping malicious actors out. On April 26, just weeks after launching, the closed-source DeFi lending platform suffered a $5.8-million exploit.

Cryptocurrency hackers stole more than $90 million in April, dealing another blow to the industry’s mainstream reputation despite ongoing efforts to improve cybersecurity.

Hackers made off with $92 million of digital assets across 15 incidents in April, according to an April 30 research report by blockchain cybersecurity firm Immunefi.

The total marks a 124% month-over-month increase from March, when hackers stole $41 million.

The month’s largest hack on open-source platform UPCX accounted for most of the damage in April, with over $70 million in losses, while KiloEx lost $7.5 million as April’s second-largest hack.

The KiloEx exploiter returned the stolen funds just days after the attack occurred.