Decentral Block Post

Bybit is shutting down more of its Web3 services after axing its non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace earlier in April.

According to an April 16 announcement, the exchange is shutting down its Cloud Wallet (a hosted custodial wallet​), Keyless Wallet (non‑custodial multiparty computation wallet with no seed phrase​), NFT marketplace, multi‑chain decentralized exchange (DEX)​ DEX Pro and the Swap & Bridge cross‑chain swap widget​ on May 31.

Source: Bybit Web3

On April 28, Bybit will also discontinue Web3 Points, its internal loyalty program that rewarded onchain activity with redeemable points for fee discounts, airdrop boosts and early-bird perks.​

On the same day, the exchange will shut down its inscription marketplace, the decentralized NFT marketplace NFT Pro, the gateway to the Apex Pro derivatives DEX, its fiat-to-crypto on-ramp, and its initial DEX offering service.

Related: Bybit recovers market share to 7% after $1.4B hack

Fartcoin (FARTCOIN), a Solana-based memecoin launched in October 2024, has soared over 370% from its yearly low, outperforming Bitcoin (BTC) even as global trade tensions weigh on broader risk assets.

These are the five key reasons why FARTCOIN is rising faster than top cryptocurrencies.

FARTCOIN/USDT vs. BTC/USD 30-day price chart comparison. Source: TradingView

PEPE boom similarities fuel FARTCOIN hype

FARTCOIN’s recent surge mirrors the early stages of Pepe’s (PEPE) meteoric rise.

In 2023, PEPE launched with a rapid ascent to a $1.8 billion market cap before crashing down to $255 million, according to the PEPE/WETH weekly chart.

From there, it bottomed out, consolidated, and then entered a second, even more powerful rally that carried it beyond a $4 billion valuation.

North Korean hackers linked to the $1.4 billion Bybit exploit are reportedly targeting crypto developers using fake recruitment tests infected with malware. 

Cybersecurity outlet The Hacker News reported that crypto developers have received coding assignments from malicious actors posing as recruiters. The coding challenges have reportedly been used to deliver malware to unsuspecting developers.

Malicious actors approach crypto developers on LinkedIn and tell them about fraudulent career opportunities. Once they convince the developer, the hackers send a malicious document containing the details of a coding challenge on GitHub. If opened, the file installs stealer malware capable of compromising the victim’s system.

The scam is reportedly run by a North Korean hacking group known as Slow Pisces, also referred to as Jade Sleet, Pukchong, TraderTraitor and UNC4899. 

Cybersecurity professionals warn of fraudulent job offers 

Hakan Unal, senior security operations center lead at security firm Cyvers, told Cointelegraph that the hackers often want to steal developer credentials and access codes. He said these actors often look for cloud configurations, SSH keys, iCloud Keychain, system and app metadata, and wallet access. 

Mantra’s recent token collapse highlights an issue within the crypto industry of fluctuating weekend liquidity levels creating additional downside volatility, which may have exacerbated the token’s crash.

The Mantra (OM) token’s price collapsed by over 90% on Sunday, April 13, from roughly $6.30 to below $0.50, triggering market manipulation allegations among disillusioned investors, Cointelegraph reported.

While blockchain analysts are still piecing together the reasons behind the OM collapse, the event highlights some crucial issues for the crypto industry, according to Gracy Chen, CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitget.

“The OM token crash exposed several critical issues that we are seeing not just in OM, but also as an industry,” Chen said during Cointelegraph’s Chainreaction daily X show, adding:

“When it’s a token that’s too concentrated, the wealth concentration and the very opaque governance, together with sudden exchange inflows and outflows, [...] combined with the forced liquidation during very low liquidity hours in our industry, created the big drop off.”

🎙️ CEXs hit with outages as AWS runs into trouble. The question is, do we need more decentralization?

Today, @RKBaggs and @ZVardai are joined by @GracyBitget, CEO of @Bitgetglobal on #CHAINREACTION to unpack the problem!https://t.co/OPoyu1IORC

As Polygon lays the groundwork for mainstream Web3 adoption in India by bringing blockchain access to over 450 million Reliance Jio users, it remains focused on balancing speed, scalability and affordability, without compromising on decentralization.

Polygon is working with Jio, a telecom giant owned by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, to find ways to infuse blockchain technology into its existing services. The duo is currently adding blockchain-based capabilities to the JioSphere web browser, which would have been expensive, cumbersome and time-consuming via traditional methods.

“We’re building at an insane pace, onboarding massive partners, and pushing blockchain into the mainstream, but with that growth comes the responsibility to make sure we’re doing it the right way,” Polygon’s co-founder, Sandeep Nailwal, said while discussing Polygon’s India-focused initiatives with Cointelegraph. 

Preserving decentralization while ensuring system scalability

“Scalability and decentralization don’t have to be either-or, and that’s exactly the balance we’re focused on at Polygon,” Nailwal said as he underscored the importance of keeping the core values of blockchain intact: security, transparency and decentralization.

At the same time, Nailwal revealed that Polygon is investing heavily in zero-knowledge technology to make scaling more seamless across the ecosystem. “The goal is to give developers and users the best of both worlds: faster, cheaper transactions without compromising trust or decentralization,” he added.

Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon saw $1.26 billion in BTC unstaked from its platform, reducing the protocol’s total value locked by 32%. 

On April 17, blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain flagged several addresses that had unstaked a total of 14,929 Bitcoin (BTC) from the staking platform. The security firm flagged four addresses that had unstaked 299 BTC, 499 BTC, 1,000 BTC and 13,129 BTC. 

One address held a majority of the unstaked assets worth $1.1 billion. With BTC prices hovering at around $84,400, the total unstaked BTC was worth about $1.26 billion.

The unstaking event saw Babylon’s total value locked (TVL) drop by 32%. According to data tracker DefiLlama, Babylon’s TVL declined from $3.97 billion to $2.68 billion after the unstaking.

Source: Lookonchain

Unstaked Bitcoin may be “staked back” to Babylon 

Community members are speculating on who was behind the unstaking. One X user suspected that the Bitcoin may belong to the Chinese government, while another said the move may simply be a rotation, risk-off, or a trader getting liquid.

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is involved in discussions on establishing strategic digital asset reserves with several countries, its CEO, Richard Teng, reportedly said.

Binance has been advising multiple governments on establishing strategic Bitcoin (BTC) reserves and formulating crypto asset regulations, Teng said in an interview with the Financial Times on April 17.

“We have actually received quite a number of approaches by a few governments and sovereign wealth funds on the establishment of their own crypto reserves,” Teng told the FT.

Teng did not identify any countries but said that the United States is “way ahead on that front.”

US fuels global crypto reserve spree

According to Teng, the main reason for governments approaching Binance for help in handling potential strategic reserves is the new crypto-friendly agenda in the US.

Bitcoin (BTC) has a new gold-inspired $155,000 target, as analysis describes both assets as “remarkably impressive.”

In a post on X on April 16, trading and analytics account Cryptollica predicted BTC/USD would copy gold to hit new all-time highs.

Analysis sees key BTC price similarities to gold

Bitcoin has made headlines for its inability to follow in gold’s record-breaking footsteps in 2025.

While XAU/USD continues to see repeated record highs, BTC/USD is down 9.3% year-to-date, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows.

BTC/USD 1-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Despite calls for an imminent “blow-off top” for gold, Bitcoin bulls hope that after a delay of several months, its “digital” equivalent will follow suit.

The cryptocurrency market is still recycling old narratives, with few new trends yet to emerge and replace the dominant themes in the first quarter of 2025.

Artificial intelligence tokens and memecoins were the dominant crypto narrative in the first quarter of 2025, accounting for 62.8% of investor interest, according to a quarterly research report by CoinGecko. AI tokens captured 35.7% of global investor interest, overtaking the 27.1% share of memecoins, which remained in second place.

Out of the top 20 crypto narratives of the quarter, six were memecoin categories while five were AI-related.

AI tokens, memecoins, were leading crypto narratives in Q1 2025: CoinGecko

“Seems like we have yet to see another new narrative emerge and we are still following past quarters’ trends,” said Bobby Ong, the co-founder and chief operating officer of CoinGecko, in an April 17 X post. “I guess we are all tired from the same old trends repeating themselves.”

Related: Bitcoin still on track for $1.8M in 2035, says analyst

A Russian finance ministry official has reportedly said the country should be developing its own stablecoin after a recent freeze on wallets linked to the sanctioned Russian exchange Garantex by US authorities and stablecoin issuer Tether. 

Deputy director of Russia’s Finance Ministry’s financial policy department, Osman Kabaloev, said the Kremlin should be exploring the possibility of developing a stablecoin like Tether’s (USDT) to avoid similar actions in the future, according to April 16 reports by Reuters and the state-owned news agency TASS.

“We do not impose restrictions on the use of stablecoins within the experimental legal regime. Recent developments have shown that this instrument can pose risks for us,” Kabaloev told TASS.

“This leads us to consider the need to develop internal instruments akin to USDT, potentially pegged to other currencies.”

On March 6, the US Department of Justice collaborated with authorities in Germany and Finland to freeze domains associated with Garantex, which authorities claimed processed over $96 billion worth of criminal proceeds since launching in 2019.

Stablecoin operator Tether also froze $27 million worth of its stablecoin on March 6, forcing Garantex to halt all operations, including withdrawals.

The tone of Bitcoin-related social media posts has flipped to bullish according to crypto analytics platform Santiment, despite Bitcoin continuing to swing around $85,000.

“Traders are showing optimism that BTC can regain $90K, which will likely be dependent on tariff and global economy news as the week progresses,” Santiment said in an April 16 X post. The last time Bitcoin (BTC) traded above $90,000 was March 6.

Traders regaining confidence in Bitcoin

Santiment’s social media tracker, which measures how social media users feel about crypto based on the tone of their posts, moved into “bullish territory” on April 16 with a score of 1.973. 

Before that, it was neutral, with a score below 1.606, as social media users were unsure about where Bitcoin’s price was headed as it “has been repeatedly crossing above and below $85K,” Santiment added.

Bitcoin tapped as high as $86,000 on April 15 before retracing down to $83,000 the following day. Bitcoin is trading at $84,390 at the time of publication, according to CoinMarketCap.

A US federal judge has agreed to pause a lawsuit filed by 18 state attorneys general and the crypto lobby group DeFi Education Fund against the Securities and Exchange Commission after all parties said new SEC leadership could make the action moot.

Kentucky District Court Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove ordered a 60-day stay on the case on April 16, noting a mid-March filing from the SEC that “this case could potentially be resolved” due to a leadership transition at the regulator.

He added that the parties must file a joint status report within 30 days.

Paul Atkins, a Wall Street adviser who has held board positions with crypto advocacy groups, was sworn in as the new SEC chair earlier this month, replacing acting chair Mark Uyeda and taking over from Gary Gensler.

The 18 attorneys general, all hailing from Republican states, filed the lawsuit with the DeFi Education Fund against the securities regulator in November, alleging that the SEC exceeded its authority when targeting crypto exchanges with lawsuits, accusing the regulator and then-chair Gensler of “gross government overreach.” 

Transaction costs on the Ethereum network have dropped to the lowest level in five years as the amount of activity on the blockchain is in a lull, according to the onchain analytics platform Santiment.

Ethereum network fees are now around $0.168 per transaction and the reduction in fees coincides with fewer people sending Ether (ETH) and interacting with smart contracts, Santiment marketing director Brian Quinlivan said in an April 17 blog post.

“When many people are using Ethereum, users bid higher fees to get their transactions confirmed faster This drives the average costs up,” Quinlivan said.

“When fewer people are transacting, like we see now, users don’t need to bid much. As a result, the average fee drops,” he explained. “It’s essentially a supply and demand system.”

Source: Santiment

Quinlivan said that, from a trading perspective, low fees can preclude a price rebound, still, he added that traders appear to be patiently waiting for the global economic uncertainty to pass before scaling up their usual frequency of Ether and altcoin transactions.

The firm behind the Solana-based automated market maker (AMM) Raydium has launched its memecoin-making protocol, LaunchLab, which looks to compete with Pump.fun.

The arrival of LaunchLab on April 16 comes a month after Pump.fun, previously a key contributor to Raydium’s revenue, severed ties with the firm by moving its token migration from Raydium’s liquidity pools to its own new decentralized exchange, PumpSwap.

LaunchLab will leverage Raydium’s liquidity pools and aim to dethrone Pump.fun as the leading Solana memecoin launchpad.

Raydium said LaunchLab provides memecoin enthusiasts with customizable bonding curves and no migration fees, while tokens that raise 85 Solana (SOL) — currently worth $11,150 — will transition to Raydium’s AMM instantly.

Around 10 LaunchLab tokens have already surpassed this threshold, according to the LaunchLab platform.

Artificial intelligence startups received the lion’s share of venture capital investments across the globe in the first quarter of 2025, according to new data from Pitchbook.

“Investors still have an AI FOMO [fear of missing out] problem,” the research firm said in an April 17 report, which revealed that 57.9% of global venture capital dollars in Q1 went to AI and machine learning startups.

Comparatively, the first quarter of 2024 saw just 28% of VC dollars channeled into AI startups.

Pitchbook said the capital flowing into AI was even more concentrated in North America, with 70% of venture funding in the region going into AI startups in the first quarter.

The global AI sector raised $73 billion in the first quarter, which was more than half of the total value of AI-related deals made last year. However, more than half of that was for OpenAI, which closed a $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank on March 31.

Despite recent major developments in the crypto industry, the market has just posted its weakest Q1 performance in years — but a crypto analyst is pointing to several catalysts that could make Q2 more promising.

“Frustrating. That’s the best word to describe the past quarter,” Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan said in a recent market report, calling Q1 the “best worst quarter in crypto’s history.”

Bitcoin and Ether took an unusual hit in Q1

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, saw price declines of 11.82% and 45.41%, respectively, over Q1 2025 — a quarter that has historically seen strong results for both assets. Since 2013, Q1 has been Bitcoin’s second-strongest quarter on average (51.2%) and historically the best for Ether (77.4%), according to CoinGlass data.

Historically, Q1 2025 is the second-best performing quarter for Bitcoin on average, but it’s the best for Ether. Source: CoinGlass

Hougan pointed to a few key catalysts that could help crypto deliver more upside to Q2. 

He noted the rise in global money supply, which “after years of tightening, central banks across the globe are signaling a shift toward monetary easing and M2 expansion.”

Over the past 30 days, crypto market participants have bridged more than $120 million in liquidity to Solana (SOL) from other blockchains, signaling renewed confidence in the network. Traders transferred the highest amount from Ethereum (ETH) at $41.5 million, followed by a $37.3 million influx from Arbitrum, according to data from Debridge.

Meanwhile, users on Base, BNB Chain and Sonic moved $16 million, $14 million and $6.6 million, respectively.

Total transferred amount from other chains to Solana. Source: debridge

The return of liquidity to Solana paints a stark contrast to the network's recent challenges. Following Argentina’s LIBRA memecoin scandal, which ensnared President Javier Milei, Solana saw investors move $485 million to other blockchains like Ethereum and BNB Chain.

The current liquidity influx to Solana coincides with the return of double-digit price rallies from memecoins as POPCAT, FARTCOIN, BONK and WIF rose 79%, 51%, 25% and 21%, respectively, over the past seven days.

Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Ventures Fund I LP is expected to raise around $175 million to $180 million by the end of June to build a portfolio of 30 crypto and blockchain startups.

According to an April 17 Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter, the fund —  which has had a focus on payments and stablecoins — has surpassed its goal of raising $150 million.

The fund closing above target comes at a time when crypto venture capital is thin on the ground despite an industry-friendly administration in the United States. 

Earlier this year, Novogratz’s firm reported that 2024 was also a tough year for crypto VC despite potential market drivers such as Bitcoin ETFs, the memecoin craze, and AI agents, which it said were “not particularly suited to venture capital.” 

Venture capitalists invested $11.5 billion into crypto and blockchain-focused startups across 2,153 deals in 2024, it reported. This was slightly higher than the $10 billion invested in 2023 but way down from over $30 billion invested in 2022. 

The founder and lead developer of Ethereum Name Service has warned his X followers of an “extremely sophisticated” phishing attack that can impersonate Google and trick users into giving out login credentials. 

The phishing attack exploits Google’s infrastructure to send a fake alert to users informing them that their Google data is being shared with law enforcement due to a subpoena, ENS’ Nick Johnson said in an April 16 post to X. 

“It passes the DKIM signature check, and GMail displays it without any warnings - it even puts it in the same conversation as other, legitimate security alerts,” he said. 

The fake subpoena appears to be from a Google no-reply domain. Source: Nick Johnson

As part of the attack, users are offered the chance to view the case materials or protest by clicking a support page link, which uses Google Sites, a tool that can be used to build a website on a Google subdomain, according to Johnson. 

“From there, presumably, they harvest your login credentials and use them to compromise your account; I haven’t gone further to check,” he said.

Crypto exchange Coinbase has distanced its blockchain network Base from a memecoin it shared that saw massive backlash after the token rapidly gained, then dropped in value by millions of dollars.

Base posted to X on April 16 with an image promoting the network with its marketing tagline, “Base is for everyone,” it also shared a link to a token of the same name on Zora, a social network where users can make posts into tokens for others to speculate on.

In just over an hour after it was created, the Base is for everyone token hit a peak market capitalization of $17.1 million — then dropped by nearly 90% over the next 20 minutes to a market value of $1.9 million, DEX Screener data shows.

The Base is for everyone token’s market cap saw a slight recovery after a rapid, nearly 90% fall in value soon after its launch. Source: DEX Screener

The token has since made a slight recovery and was trading around $7.7 million at the time of publication.

A Coinbase spokeswoman distanced Base from the token, telling Cointelegraph that “Base did not launch a token.”