Decentral Block Post

Coinbase has listed futures contracts for the XRP token on its US derivatives exchange, the cryptocurrency platform said on April 21.

The contracts are overseen by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and offer traders “a regulated, capital-efficient way to gain exposure to one of the most liquid digital assets,” the company said in a post on the X platform.

Coinbase’s XRP (XRP) futures include standard contracts representing 10,000 XRP and retail-oriented “nano” contracts representing 500 XRP each, or approximately $1,000 as of April 21, according to regulatory filings.  

The contracts are the latest crypto futures to launch on Coinbase’s derivatives exchange, which also features Solana (SOL) and Hedera (HBAR) futures contracts, both added in February. 

Source: Coinbase

Related: Coinbase in talks to buy derivatives exchange Deribit: Report

Astra Fintech, a global blockchain payments provider, has launched a $100 million fund to support the Solana ecosystem's growth throughout Asia, according to an April 21 announcement.

Through the fund, Astra Fintech plans to deploy capital to accelerate projects and form partnerships with developers, companies, and regulators. The fund’s base of operations will be in South Korea, a country Solana's venture arm invested in after the collapse of the Terra ecosystem in 2022.

The fund will focus on projects and developers working on PayFi solutions — a conglomeration of systems that use blockchain technology to facilitate payments. Astra’s main suite of products attempts to blend traditional finance with digital currencies.

According to data from Electric Capital, Solana and Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) blockchains are currently within the top 10 blockchains for developer activity, only behind Ethereum.

In 2021, Solana created a $5 million development fund to spur projects in Southeast Asia. The region is a hotspot for Web3 games, a crypto use case that has proliferated on Solana due to the blockchain’s fast speeds and low transaction costs.

A group of investors has filed a class-action lawsuit against decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Meteora, alleging the firm was involved in manipulating the launch and market price of the M3M3 token.

In an amended complaint filed on April 21 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the plaintiffs allege that venture capital firm Kelsier Labs, Meteora, and four current or former executives “intentionally misrepresented” information in the M3M3 launch in December 2024.

The investors claimed that they suffered at least $69 million in losses between December 2024 and February 2025 after the parties presented “trusted leaders in the Solana ecosystem” as being behind the token launch, rather than a “blatant fraud” in which sales were manipulated to artificially inflate the price.

“This artificially-inflated valuation communicated highly misleading information to non-insider investors, who reasonably relied on Defendants’ representations that the $M3M3 launch was fully accessible to the public and conducted in a transparent manner fair to non-insider investors, and thus reasonably relied on $M3M3 market price as a meaningful measure of its value,” the complaint reads. “The post-launch price spike also served to corroborate Defendants’ aggressively-marketed, but misleading, assertions that $M3M3 had intrinsic value and a comparatively low risk profile.”

Class-action lawsuit against Meteora, Kelsier Labs, and current and former executives. Source: PACER

The lawsuit is one of many involving different crypto firms that have alleged fraud through violations of US securities laws. Though the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), under acting chair Mark Uyeda since US President Donald Trump took office, has scaled back or dismissed many enforcement actions involving digital assets, the agency said in February it still intended to pursue cases against fraudulent token projects.

More than 70 cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are slated for review by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this year. According to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas, the list includes proposed ETFs holding a range of assets, from altcoins to memecoins to derivatives instruments.

“Everything from XRP, Litecoin and Solana to Penguins, Doge and 2x Melania and everything in between,” Balchunas said in an April 21 post on the X platform. “Gonna be a wild year.”

Crypto ETFs’ SEC review schedule. Source: Eric Balchunas/Bloomberg

Related: ARK adds staked Solana to two tech ETFs

Uncertain institutional demand

The planned funds listings come as institutional investors turn increasingly bullish on crypto as an asset class. 

Upward of 80% of institutions say they plan to increase allocations to crypto in 2025, according to a March report by Coinbase and EY-Parthenon. 

ARK Invest has added exposure to staked Solana (SOL) to the portfolios of two of its exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the asset manager said in a client email reviewed by Cointelegraph. 

As of April 21, the two ARK funds — ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) and ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) — now hold shares of 3iQ’s Solana Staking ETF (SOLQ), a Canadian ETF holding staked SOL, ARK said. 

The two ARK funds are designed to offer broad exposure to emerging technologies, and comprise a mix a technology stocks — including crypto-focused companies such as Coinbase, Block, and Robinhood — and spot cryptocurrencies, according to ARK’s website.

According to ARK, adding the SOL ETF shares makes “ARKW and ARKF the first US-listed ETFs to gain exposure to Solana.”

In March, asset manager Volatility Shares launched two ETFs that offer exposure to SOL using financial derivatives, but spot Solana ETFs are still awaiting approval by US regulators.

Upexi, a brand owner that specializes in supply chain management, is diversifying into the cryptocurrency sector. On April 21, the company announced a $100 million raise, with over 90% earmarked for building a Solana (SOL) treasury strategy.

After the announcement, shares of Upexi have skyrocketed from a $2.30 close on April 17 to $16.79 at this writing, marking a 632% jump for the day.

UPXI intraday performance on the Nasdaq. Source: Google Finance

Many “prominent” crypto venture capitalist firms participated in the $100 million raise, according to an announcement. Backers include the family office of Arthur Hayes, Delta Blockchain Fund, Delphi Ventures, Hivemind, Borderless, and White Star Capital, among others. The round was completed with a sale of around 44 million shares of common stock at a price of $2.28.

According to Upexi's recent financials, it posted a profit of $3 million in the last quarter of 2024, down 34.8% or $4.6 million from the same time period in 2023.

Companies mimic Strategy

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) was one of the first mainstream companies to adopt a cryptocurrency treasury strategy. It started purchasing Bitcoin (BTC) in August 2020, and its stock price has jumped significantly since then. Currently, over 13,000 companies have exposure to Strategy.

The US Dollar Index (DXY) plunged below the 98 level on April 21, falling to a three-year low. That catapulted gold to a new all-time high, and Bitcoin (BTC) also showed strength, rising above $88,000. 

BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom chief investment officer Arthur Hayes believes it may be the “last chance” to buy Bitcoin below $100,000. Hayes expects the Federal Reserve to announce US Treasury buybacks, which will act as a “Bazooka” for Bitcoin’s price trajectory.

Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360

The whales seem ready for the move higher, as they have been accumulating in March and April. According to Glassnode data, the number of wallets holding more than 1,000 Bitcoin increased from 2,037 in late February to 2,107 on April 15.

Could Bitcoin bulls sustain the higher levels, triggering a rally toward $100,000? Will the altcoins follow? Let’s analyze the charts to find out.

S&P 500 Index price analysis

The S&P 500 Index (SPX) recovery hit a wall at the 20-day exponential moving average (5,399) on April 14.

New filings from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reveal that several cryptocurrency firms and their executives made significant contributions to US President Donald Trump’s inauguration fund after the results of the 2024 election. 

According to FEC filings made public on April 20 by the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams donated more than $245,000, Solana Labs donated $1 million, and software firm Consensys sent $100,000 in January to support the then-president-elect’s inauguration. Many major crypto firms had previously announced their support of Trump through donations to the inaugural fund, including Coinbase, Ripple Labs, Kraken, Ondo Finance, and Robinhood.

Jan. 9 contribution from Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams to Trump-Vance inauguration fund. Source: FEC

Altogether, the fund reported more than $239 million in net donations between Nov. 15 and April 20 from companies and individuals. These included $1 million from McDonald’s, $1 million from Meta, $1 million from Apple CEO Tim Cook, $1 million from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and various contributions from Delta Air Lines, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Nvidia, PayPal, Target, and Coca-Cola. 

Since Trump took office on Jan. 20 and appointed Mark Uyeda as acting chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency has dropped multiple investigations and enforcement actions against crypto firms, including those that donated to the president’s 2024 campaign or inauguration fund. In February, Uniswap reported that the SEC had dropped its probe into the firm, and Consensys founder Joseph Lubin said the agency had agreed to end a separate lawsuit. 

Memecoins, stablecoin issuers, and future elections

Trump’s memecoin, launched on Jan. 17 on the Solana blockchain — along with his wife Melania’s, which was available a few days later — has many in the crypto industry and members of Congress voicing concern over conflicts of interest potentially arising from the president appearing to capitalizing on his position.

Bitcoin (BTC) doubled down on its divergence from stocks at the April 21 Wall Street open as US trade war tensions escalated. BTC/USD 1-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Trade war reactions fuel BTC price gains

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD matching month-to-date highs above $88,000.

Bitcoin continued higher after the weekly close to catch up with gold as the latter set fresh all-time highs of $3,430 per ounce.

XAU/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

By contrast, stock markets came under renewed selling pressure, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index both down over 2% at the time of writing.

Newfound BTC price strength thus appeared to end lockstep trading with equities as part of reactions to trade-war headlines.

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

Bitcoin is the principal asset of the cryptocurrency world and even one of the world’s top 10 most valuable assets, recognized for its role as a store of value. Yet a huge percentage of the Bitcoin (BTC) supply remains dormant for years, meaning the crypto market only works with a fraction of the circulating supply each year. 

This idle Bitcoin has an enormous amount of untapped financial potential.

Bitcoin’s principal narratives are “store of value” and “never sell.” Today’s decentralized finance (DeFi) tools, however, enable yield gain by holding Bitcoin and taking advantage of dormant Bitcoin, which just sits in investors’ wallets and does nothing. 

Existing dormant Bitcoin is not being fully utilized 

Dormant Bitcoin has not been used for long periods, usually one or more years. According to Glassnode, as of early 2025, the active supply that has not moved in more than one year is approximately 62%.

Pseudonymous Bitcoin stock-to-flow (S2F) model creator PlanB attacked Ethereum and mocked the project’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin.

PlanB mockingly reposted a June 2022 X post by Buterin in which the Ethereum co-founder said S2F “is really not looking good now.” PlanB responded with a new posting stating, “Ethereum is really not looking good now.”

Source: PlanB

In his response to Buterin’s criticism from years ago, PlanB claimed Ethereum and the network’s coin, Ether (ETH), are centralized and premined, pointing to its shift to proof-of-stake (PoS) and changes in its issuance rate. He said that those features “are harmful and deserve all the mockery they get,” echoing Buterin’s old comment about S2F.

Related: Bitcoin analyst PlanB transfers Bitcoin to ETFs to avoid 'hassle with keys'

PlanB’s criticism of Ethereum

In a separate X post, PlanB explained that an Ethereum full node requires nine terabytes of disk space, meaning he “can not run it” on his hardware. The kind of node in question is probably an Ethereum archival node, which, according to Etherscan data, requires over 21.8 terabytes (TB) with the Geth client.

A little-known VOXEL trading pair on cryptocurrency exchange Bitget suddenly clocked over $12 billion in volume on April 20, dwarfing the metrics of the same contract on Binance.

The activity centered on VOXEL/USDT perpetual futures, where traders reported instant order fills — an anomaly many described as a bug that allowed savvy traders to rack up outsized profits by exploiting unusual price behavior.

The atypical metrics drew Bitget’s attention. In the fallout of its early investigation, the exchange suspended accounts suspected of market manipulation and rolled back irregular trades that occurred throughout the day. Traders who copped losses during that period were offered compensation.

Bitget’s response and remediation plan may have prevented lasting investor damage, but the episode is the latest in a series of cases that raise questions about how exchanges handle market makers, internal systems and user safeguards. While Bitget promotes an open API and regularly touts its global market maker program, it has yet to disclose who was behind the April 20 activity or what technical factors led to it.

The lack of incident-level detail has fueled speculations comparable to similar breakdowns on Binance — the world’s largest exchange by trading volume — that included the sudden price crashes of cryptocurrencies GoPlus (GPS) and MyShell (SHELL) in March. Binance kicked out an unnamed market maker it found responsible for manipulation, but the lack of disclosure added fuel to the crypto industry’s infamous rumor mongering.

Despite Bitcoin (BTC) price reaching its highest level in over three weeks, traders on Bitfinex reduced their leveraged long (bullish) positions on margin contracts by more than $100 million between April 17 and April 19.

This reduction has led to speculation that Bitcoin whales may be anticipating a price correction or, at the very least, are not confident in further short-term gains. Let’s look closer at whether this could be the case.

Bitfinex Bitcoin whales remain bullish

Bitcoin surged above $86,000 on April 21 after US President Donald Trump openly discussed the possibility of replacing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Trump criticized Powell for not acting swiftly enough to ease monetary policy.

Additionally, investors are increasingly risk-off due to concerns about a recession as the global trade war escalates, particularly given the ongoing uncertainty in US-China relations.

The rationale behind this profit-taking in margin markets is especially noteworthy, as Bitcoin’s price has remained below $90,000 since early March, prompting some investors to question the likelihood of a sustainable decoupling from traditional markets.

El Salvador, the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, is working with the computer chip giant Nvidia to implement artificial intelligence for national development.

El Salvador signed a letter of intent to collaborate with Nvidia on “sovereign AI to drive innovation and economic growth,” the National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) of El Salvador announced on X on April 21.

As part of the collaboration, El Salvador will benefit from Nvidia’s AI tools, resources and expertise, enabling the development of sovereign AI capabilities targeting priorities related to culture, language, environment and economy.

“El Salvador will focus on building domestic AI infrastructure, upskilling the workforce, and creating solutions to address local challenges such as improving healthcare delivery, advancing education, and boosting economic productivity,” the announcement said.

AI training for state officials and developers

El Salvador’s latest collaboration with Nvidia marks the country’s commitment to encouraging AI usage to optimize multiple processes within the government and society.

Scammers are once again capitalizing on the popularity of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, with fake tokens again emerging as part of potential phishing attacks.

A wallet linked to former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao received 90 million fake Grok (GROK) tokens on April 21, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield.

The tokens are “likely a scam,” since the “deployer distributed it to multiple addresses via multisend,” PeckShield said.

Source: PeckShieldAlert

The X platform’s Grok AI chatbot has no official cryptocurrency and no plans to launch one in the future.

Related: Bitcoin up 33% since 2024 halving as institutions disrupt cycle

Major cryptocurrency firms, including stablecoin issuer Circle and crypto custodian BitGo, are reportedly considering applying for bank charters or licenses.

According to an April 21 Wall Street Journal report citing people familiar with the matter, Circle, BitGo and others are considering applying for some form of banking license. Other firms cited include the publicly traded US-based crypto exchange Coinbase and the stablecoin issuer Paxos.

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted a preliminary conditional approval for a US bank charter to Paxos in 2021. The report comes as the US continues to reshape stablecoin regulations.

US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently said that as digital assets gain mainstream adoption, establishing a legal framework for stablecoins is a “good idea.” Speaking at a recent event in Chicago, Powell recognized that after a “wave of failures and frauds,” the crypto space delivered a consumer use case that “could have wide appeal.”

Related: Stablecoins are powering deobanks

Michael Saylor’s Strategy, one of the world’s largest publicly listed corporate Bitcoin holders, added another major purchase to its growing portfolio as the cryptocurrency trades near $85,000.

Strategy acquired 6,556 Bitcoin for $555.8 million from April 14–20, at an average price of $84,785 per coin, the firm announced in its latest Form 8-K filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

The latest purchase accounts for 1.2% of Strategy’s total Bitcoin holdings of 538,200 BTC as of April 20, acquired for the aggregate amount of $36.5 billion at an average price of $67,766 per BTC.

An excerpt from Strategy’s Form 8-K filing. Source: Strategy

The latest Bitcoin purchase was funded using proceeds from the Common ATM and STRK ATM stock offerings, including the sale of 1,755,000 Strategy shares for $547.7 million and 91,213 shares of Series A preferred stock sold for $7.8 million.

Strategy expands buying after a pause

The latest purchase follows Strategy’s 3,459 BTC acquisition reported on April 14, which was the first announced purchase by the firm after March 31.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov expressed concerns over a growing threat to private messaging in France and other European Union countries, warning that Telegram would rather exit certain markets than implement encryption backdoors that undermine user privacy.

In an April 21 post to his “Du Rove’s channel” on Telegram, he posted a message about the EU’s increasing efforts to weaken messaging encryption by adding backdoors, a method that would allow authorities to bypass encryption and access private user data.

Durov cited initiatives from French and EU lawmakers to require messaging apps like Telegram to implement backdoors for police access and stressed Telegram’s commitment to digital privacy.

“Telegram would rather exit a market than undermine encryption with backdoors and violate basic human rights,” Durov stated, adding: “Unlike some of our competitors, we don’t trade privacy for market share.”

Backdoors can be exploited by criminals

In his message, Durov highlighted that the biggest problem behind encryption backdoors lies in their accessibility not only by authorities but also by hackers and foreign agents.

Crypto casinos generated more than $81 billion in revenue in 2024, even as regulators in key jurisdictions continued to block access to the platforms, according to a new report.

Citing data from the anti-online-crime platform Yield Sec, the Financial Times reported that wagers paid in crypto in 2024 generated $81.4 billion in gross gaming revenue (GGR). This metric refers to the difference between bets taken and winnings paid out.  

Yield Sec data also showed that the annual revenue for crypto casinos has increased five times since 2022, despite gambling sites being blocked in the United States, China, the United Kingdom and the European Union. 

Crypto casino Stake rivals traditional betting platforms

Betting platform Stake reported that its GGR in 2024 was around $4.7 billion, up 80% since 2022. This puts it on a par with some of the biggest gambling groups, such as Entain and Flutter. Entain reported $5 billion, while Flutter reported $14 billion in revenue in 2024. 

Stake offers traditional casino games, including blackjack, roulette and slots. The platform also allows users to bet on sports. Users on the betting platform generally transact in crypto, with account balances being deposited and withdrawn directly into crypto wallets.