Key points:
Bitcoin exchange 100-day average netflows are at their most negative since the start of the current bull market in 2023.
Exchange balances continue to plumb new multiyear lows.
Whales are particularly active buyers this month, while retail shows classic “panic selling.”
Bitcoin (BTC) exchanges are evoking the end of the 2022 crypto bear market as user inflows dry up this year.
Shaquille O’Neal has settled with investors who claim losses from the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, according to an April 23 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The settlement amount remains confidential, with terms expected to be disclosed after investors formally request preliminary court approval, according to court documents.
O’Neal and other celebrities and athletes were accused of promoting FTX and allegedly contributing to investor losses by endorsing the now-bankrupt exchange.
Source: Court ListenerThe case is part of a broader multidistrict litigation effort, where investors are seeking up to $21 billion in damages from FTX insiders, advisers and promoters, far exceeding the $9.2 billion available through bankruptcy proceedings.
Other celebrities embroiled in similar legal troubles for their roles in FTX include NFL quarterback Tom Brady, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, billionaire investor Kevin O’Leary, former NBA player Udonis Haslem, David Ortiz, Naomi Osaka and others.
Decentralized exchange (DEX) KiloEx said it will compensate traders and stakers hurt by a $7.5 million exploit that temporarily shut down the platform earlier in April.
In an April 24 announcement, KiloEx said traders who had positions open while the platform was suspended would get full compensation if their losses increased or profits decreased. The platform said it would pay the difference.
KiloEx urged traders to close their positions immediately once the platform resumes operations, as delaying could affect their profit and losses, which may then impact the compensation amount.
“Please close your position as soon as possible after the platform resumes. Compensation will be calculated based on the platform’s resume time,” KiloEx stated.
Source: KiloExFor the platform’s Hybrid Vault stakers, KiloEx said that the stolen funds were fully reinjected into the vault. As a result, staker earnings and principal will remain unaffected. However, KiloEx said it will still provide an additional 10% annual percentage yield (APY) as a bonus for eligible stakers.
Fintech giant Revolut reported a record-breaking year, doubling its pre-tax profit to 1 billion British pounds ($1.3 billion) in 2024, driven by rapid customer growth and a resurgence in cryptocurrency trading.
According to its annual report published on Thursday, April 24, Revolut’s profit soared from 438 million pounds in 2023, while revenue jumped to 3.1 billion pounds from 1.8 billion pounds.
A key contributor to Revolut’s strong performance was its wealth division, which includes stock and digital asset trading. The segment generated 506 million pounds in revenue — nearly four times higher than in 2023 — as crypto trading activity rebounded.
Revolut’s increasing profit. Source: RevolutRevolut added nearly 15 million new users in 2024, pushing its total customer base past 50 million. This expansion boosted revenue from card payment fees and interest on deposits, the fintech’s two largest income streams.
Founder and CEO Nik Storonsky said in the report that “2024 was another landmark year for Revolut, with continued growth across all key business areas.”
Quantitative easing (QE) is a non-traditional monetary policy tool used by central banks, particularly when interest rates are already low and cannot be reduced further.
It was popularized during the 2008 global financial crisis when traditional monetary tools, like lowering interest rates, were insufficient to stimulate economic growth.
The main goal of QE is to boost the economy by increasing the money supply. This is achieved by encouraging banks to lend more and making borrowing cheaper for consumers and businesses. When central banks implement QE, they purchase government bonds or other securities from the market, injecting cash into the financial system.
Even though people sometimes say QE is like “printing money,” it’s not the same as making new physical cash. Instead, it increases the amount of digital money — meaning the balances held in bank accounts — in the economy. This isn’t cryptocurrency; it’s regular money created by the central bank and used by banks to lend more, which helps boost spending and investment.
BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund has been named the best new ETF product by etf.com, as it recorded its highest inflows since Jan. 21.
On April 23, BlackRock’s iShare Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) was awarded the “Best New ETF” at the annual etf.com ETF awards. In an X post shortly after, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said it “feels right to me.”
“I’m pretty sure this is how I voted. Both of them did things no one has seen [before],” Balchunas said, also referencing the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) winning the “ETF of the Year” award. Over the past 5 years, VOO is up 89%, according to Google Finance data.
IBIT was also the recipient of the Crypto ETP of the year.
IBIT’s two awards came on the same day IBIT recorded $643.2 million in inflows, according to Farside data. It was the highest inflow day since Jan. 21, when it saw $661.9 million, just a day after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, when Bitcoin’s spot price hit an all-time high of $109,000.
US federal prosecutors have asked a district judge to sentence Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg, the crypto user convicted of the $110 million exploit of the decentralized exchange Mango Markets in 2022, to at least six and a half years behind bars.
Ahead of Eisenberg’s May 1 sentencing hearing, US prosecutors are petitioning US District Judge Arun Subramanian for Eisenberg to face between 78 and 97 months in prison, according to an April 22 filing in a New York district court.
Prosecutors argue it’s an appropriate sentence for Eisenberg’s April 2024 conviction for committing wire fraud, commodities fraud and commodities manipulation in connection with the Mango Markets exploit and separate charges that he possessed child pornography.
“This sentence is necessary to, among other things, appropriately reflect the gravity of the defendant’s crimes, promote respect for the law, deter the defendant from future criminal activity, and protect the public,” the prosecutors said.
“Fraud that takes over $100 million from investors and effectively shuts down a business is a shocking violation of criminal law, and it necessitates a sentence commensurate with the crime.”
US federal prosecutors have filed statements from hundreds of victims in their case against Alex Mashinsky, the founder and former CEO of the defunct crypto lender Celsius Network.
The recently sworn-in interim US Attorney for Manhattan, Jay Clayton, said in an April 23 letter to a Manhattan federal court that he was sharing “more than 200 victim impact statements” collected by his office.
The statements span 418 pages of Celsius users, some named and some only using their initials, detailing the impact that the collapse of the firm had on their lives and how much money they had lost as a result.
Some of the statements detailed victims who said they entrusted their life savings to Celsius, believing Mashinsky’s assurances that the platform was safe.
Others wrote they were dismayed at the amount returned to them as a result of the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, which many said was less than the amount they put into the platform.
The ZKsync Association has confirmed the recovery of $5 million worth of stolen tokens from an April 15 ZKsync security incident involving its airdrop distribution contract.
The hacker agreed to accept a 10% bounty and return 90% of the remaining stolen tokens, transferring the ZKsync Security Council almost $5.7 million across three transfers on April 23.
“We’re pleased to share that the hacker has cooperated and returned the funds within the safe harbor deadline,” ZKsync Association posted to X on April 23, which was later reposted by ZKsync’s X account.
Matter Labs, the company behind the ZKsync protocol, also reposted the news shared on X.
The ZKsync X account previously confirmed that no user funds were compromised.
Russia’s finance ministry and central bank are reportedly planning to launch a crypto exchange for qualified investors under an experimental legal regime.
The platform will be aimed at “super-qualified investors,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said during a ministry meeting, according to April 23 reports from Russian media group RBC and Russian news agency Interfax.
“Together with the central bank, we will launch a crypto exchange for super-qualified investors. Crypto assets will be legalized, and crypto operations will be brought out of the shadows,” he said in a statement translated from Russian.
“Naturally, this will not happen domestically, but as part of the operations permitted under the experimental legal regime.”
Anton Siluanov (left) said the Kremlin-backed crypto exchange is only for Russian investors who meet certain income and wealth thresholds. Source: Mehmet SimsekThe Russian central bank announced a proposal on March 12 to allow a limited number of Russian investors with a certain amount of assets to buy and sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) under a three-year experimental regime.
Bitcoin has shown resilience compared to the broader financial market amid macroeconomic uncertainty, but analysts caution it’s still too early to know whether the trend will last.
“We’re not quite there yet, but if Bitcoin holds strength through the upcoming CPI, as well as ongoing Powell-related and equity earnings volatility, the decoupling narrative could evolve from “temporary divergence” to “regime change,” Bitfinex analysts said in an April 23 markets note viewed by Cointelegraph.
The analysts said that while Bitcoin’s (BTC) relative strength against US equities “appears real,” it is yet to be confirmed as structural. The analysts warned that Bitcoin has previously seen short periods of outperformance, only to eventually fall back in line with the broader market.
Cointelegraph recently reported that Bitcoin is increasingly abandoning its stock correlation to copy gold’s upside. At the time of publication, Bitcoin’s price has posted gains of 7.68% over the past 30 days. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are down 6.79% and 8.14%, respectively, as per Google Finance data.
Bitcoin is trading at $93,290 at the time of publication. Source: CoinMarketCapOver the same period, Nvidia (NVDA), which has outperformed Bitcoin over the past decade, fell 15.4%. The analysts attributed the decline to the “effective ban on advanced chip exports to China and tariff-driven volatility.” In May 2024, Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten said there is a “near zero chance of Nvidia outperforming Bitcoin over the next 10 years.”
Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin is set to branch further into Southeast Asia, targeting the growing crypto market in Thailand.
KuCoin is planning to launch a crypto exchange platform offering digital assets and related products in the country, according to an April 23 announcement.
ERX Company Ltd, Thailand’s first Securities and Exchange Commission-supervised digital token exchange, has rebranded as KuCoin Thailand effective April 22, it stated.
The crypto exchange will operate under ERX, which recently received a crypto exchange license from the Thai financial regulator.
“We’re strengthening our ability to offer localized solutions tailored to the Thai market,” said ERX chief executive Att Tongyai Asavanund.
A majority of crypto users are willing to allow artificial intelligence agents to manage part of their investment portfolios, according to the results of a recent CoinGecko survey.
Among the 2,632 crypto participants surveyed, 87% said they would let AI agents manage at least a tenth of their crypto portfolio, CoinGecko’s April 23 report shows.
Around half the respondents said they were willing to let an AI agent manage half their portfolio or less.
“This suggests that despite having doubts as to how safe or secure AI agents are, crypto users are still mainly curious about the technology and want to try using them for trading or investing,” CoinGecko research analyst Yuqian Lim said.
At the same time, around 36% of survey participants said they would allow AI agents to manage the majority of their holdings. A smaller group, roughly 14.5%, were willing to leave their entire crypto portfolio in the digital hands of an AI agent.
The host of The Wolf Of All Streets podcast, Scott Melker, says he’s received word that his face and name are being impersonated by scammers, with at least one victim duped out of $4 million.
On April 23, the crypto investor said, “I’m sick,” reporting that he’d been contacted by a private investigator revealing that a client of his was scammed for $4 million by a Nigerian group using his name and face as bait.
“They’ve apparently scammed a number of people,” Melker said, adding, “They sent him a fake driver’s license to prove it was me,” and used his X avatar as the photo.
The scammers used AI to generate the fake ID and used a fake but convincing-looking email account.
“They do zoom calls with AI,” which are “apparently sophisticated,” said Melker, who added that the scammers have also spoofed accounts of his wife and kids to support identity confirmation.
The Los Angeles Police Department has recovered $2.7 million worth of Bitcoin mining machines it alleges were stolen by a crime ring in a heist at the city’s airport.
The LAPD said on April 22 that detectives from its Cargo Theft Unit, along with the city’s Port Police, the railroad-based Union Pacific Police, and the city’s Airport Police, arrested Oscar David Borrero-Manchola and Yonaiker Rafael Martinez-Ramos over the thefts.
Authorities claimed the pair are “prominent members” of a South American crime ring tied to the theft and sale of stolen goods in and around Los Angeles.
The LAPD said searches of storage unit facilities in the San Fernando Valley, northeast of downtown Los Angeles, recovered $4 million worth of stolen goods, including the Bitcoin (BTC) mining rigs taken from Los Angeles International Airport “as the shipment was about to be loaded onto a plane headed to Hong Kong.”
Detectives also found and seized over $1.2 million in allegedly stolen tequila, clothing, shoes, speakers, coffee, body wash, and pet food.
Twenty One Capital, a new Bitcoin treasury company led by Strike founder Jack Mallers with the support of Tether, SoftBank and Cantor Fitzgerald, is looking to supplant Michael Saylor’s Strategy to become the “superior vehicle for investors seeking capital-efficient Bitcoin exposure.”
Twenty One revealed it plans to launch with 42,000 Bitcoin (BTC) (worth $3.9 billion) with roughly 23,950 BTC coming from Tether, 10,500 BTC from Softbank and 7,000 BTC from Bitfinex, which will be converted into equity at $10 per share, according to an April 23 statement.
The firm is seeking a public listing via a blank-check merger with Cantor Equity Partners and will trade under the ticker XXI on the Nasdaq once it finalizes an agreement with investors to raise $585 million through convertible bonds and equity financing.
“Our mission is simple: to become the most successful company in Bitcoin, the most valuable financial opportunity of our time. We’re not here to beat the market, we’re here to build a new one,” said Mallers, the founder and CEO of Bitcoin payments-focused firm Strike.
“A public stock, built by Bitcoiners, for Bitcoiners.”Twenty One specifically compared its business model to Strategy’s in an investor presentation to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, claiming it is potentially a “superior vehicle for investors seeking capital-efficient Bitcoin exposure.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its annual report detailing complaints and losses due to scams and fraud involving cryptocurrency in 2024.
According to the report released on April 23, the IC3 received more than 140,000 complaints referencing cryptocurrency in 2024, resulting in roughly $9.3 billion in losses. The bureau reported that individuals over the age of 60 had been the most affected by crypto-related fraud, with roughly 33,000 complaints and $2.8 billion in losses.
Source: FBI“Last year saw a new record for losses reported to IC3, totaling a staggering $16.6 billion,” said the report. “Fraud represented the bulk of reported losses in 2024, and ransomware was again the most pervasive threat to critical infrastructure, with complaints rising 9% from 2023," notes the report, adding that, as a group, those over the age of 60 suffered the most losses and submitted the most complaints.
The report added that the resultant losses had increased roughly 66% since 2023, from roughly $5.6 billion to $9.3 billion. The most significant percentage of losses occurred due to crypto investment schemes, while the largest number of complaints related to “sextortion” schemes, in which fraudsters manipulated photos and videos to create explicit content. Other scams included schemes involving the use of crypto ATMs or kiosks.
Related: Crypto scam uses trade war fears to lure victims, Canadian watchdogs warn
Sovereign wealth funds and other institutions were accumulating Bitcoin (BTC) during April 2025, while retail traders were exiting the markets via exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and spot markets, according to John D’Agostino, the head of strategy at Coinbase Institutional.
During a recent appearance on CNBC, the Coinbase executive likened Bitcoin to gold and said that many institutional buyers bought BTC as a hedge against currency inflation and macroeconomic uncertainty. The Coinbase executive said:
"Bitcoin is trading on its core characteristics, which again are similar to gold. You've got scarcity, immutability, and non-sovereign asset portability. So it's trading the way people who believe in Bitcoin would like it to trade.""When you do the work, there's a very short list of assets that mirror the characteristics of gold. Bitcoin is on that shortlist," the executive added.
Governments and financial institutions are increasingly adopting Bitcoin to protect purchasing power and the value of their treasuries in the face of macroeconomic shocks and geopolitical tensions.
Bitcoin recently broke back above the $90,000 level and has reclaimed its ‘decoupling’ narrative. Source: CoinMarketCapRelated: Bitcoin holders back in profit as new capital enters the market — Is $100K BTC price next?
Official Trump (TRUMP) jumped 52% on April 23 after the announcement of an exclusive in-person dinner for the top tokenholders with US President Donald Trump. For some crypto advocates, this marks the end of the bear market, especially as Bitcoin (BTC) bounced back above $93,000, but others raise suspicions on how sustainable the TRUMP memecoin rally really is.
From a purely performance perspective, the Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin has been a disappointment. After soaring above $75 on launch day, its gains quickly disappeared as investors noticed the high concentration of tokens and the short-term vesting period.
At first sight, it is difficult to justify TRUMP’s current market capitalization of $2.6 billion, given that 80% of the supply was allocated to founders and entities controlled by Trump.
Official Trump (TRUMP) market capitalization, USD. Source: CoinMarketCapFor comparison, well-established projects such as Arbitrum (ARB), Jupiter (JUP), and Maker (MKR) hold a capitalization below $1.6 billion. Those token valuations derive from buybacks using treasury reserves or direct benefits in staking and DeFi mechanisms. For instance, Arbitrum, a leading Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, holds $2.4 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL).
Jupiter, the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) on Solana, boasts $2.3 billion in deposits and has accrued $76.6 million in fees over the past 30 days, according to DefiLlama data. Meanwhile, Sky (formerly Maker), the project behind the extremely successful DAI stablecoin, holds $5.9 billion TVL and $28.6 million in 30-day fees.
Traders are embracing diametrically opposed exchange-traded fund (ETF) strategies in a bid to navigate one of the most unpredictable financial markets in recent history, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence.
The year-to-date has seen record inflows to ETFs providing leveraged long exposure to volatile assets such as stocks and cryptocurrencies, as well as funds holding risk-off assets such as cash and gold, the data shows.
“[T]here's basically record flows going into leveraged long ETFs but also cash and gold ETFs as people buy the dip and hedge the dip at the same time. May the best degen win!,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas said in an April 23 post on the X platform.
Leveraged ETFs are funds that aim to multiply the daily performance of assets like stocks or crypto, often by two or three times.
In 2025, leveraged long ETFs attracted net inflows of roughly $6 billion, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Meanwhile, inflows into cash and gold funds approached roughly $4 billion.
