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$ETH An upgrade of Pectra is scheduled for May 7. The activation of Fusaka is expected to take place at the end of 2025.

The developers also discussed the issues raised by Vitalik Buterin's proposal to transition the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to an open RISС-V architecture. First and foremost, this raised the question of the feasibility of continuing work on the EVM Object Format (EOF) improvement. In March, there were changes in the leadership of the Ethereum Foundation. After management reshuffles, the organization shifted its focus to user experience and L1 scaling issues.

#EthereumFuture The Ethereum team will test a fourfold increase in the gas limit. Ethereum developers are considering an increase of more than four times the gas limit on the network as one of the key features of the planned Fusaka hard fork.

The proposal EIP-9678 presented during the ACDE call provides for testing the parameter with a ceiling of 150 million units. In February, Ethereum validators supported the increase of the gas limit from the level of 30 million. According to Ycharts, the value has risen by ~20% to 35.95 million.

$BTC In CryptoQuant, they recorded the activation of 'dormant' bitcoins. From January to March, around 62,800 BTC, which had been inactive for over seven years, suddenly 'woke up' and changed wallets. In comparison, during the same period last year, only 28,000 BTC were moved, according to CryptoQuant.

The increase in this indicator was 121%. In April, CryptoQuant discovered the activation of 1,057 BTC, which had been inactive for the last 7-10 years. The trigger could have been the panic in the stock market following the 'liberating' tariffs of U.S. President Donald Trump.

$BTC In CryptoQuant, the activation of 'sleeping' bitcoins has been recorded. From January to March, about 62,800 BTC, which had been dormant for more than seven years, suddenly 'woke up' and changed wallets. For comparison, during the same period last year, only 28,000 BTC were moved, according to CryptoQuant.

The increase in this indicator was 121%. In April, CryptoQuant discovered the activation of 1,057 BTC that had been inactive for the last 7-10 years. The impulse could have been the panic in the stock market following the 'liberating' tariffs of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The inflow into spot Bitcoin ETFs over the last four days reached $2.34 billion. On April 23, investors directed $916.9 million into spot ETFs based on digital gold, totaling $2.342 billion over the last four days.

The previous day, funds received a record $936.4 million since January 21. The total inflow increased to $37.61 billion. AUM amounted to $106.39 billion.

On April 23, the key contributors to the positive dynamics were:

IBIT from BlackRock — $643.2 million;
ARKB from ARK Invest & 21 Shares — $129.5 million;
FBTC from Fidelity — $124.4 million.

$TRUMP President Donald Trump will hold a gala dinner for 220 largest holders of the meme coin TRUMP. The event will take place on May 22 at his private golf club in Washington. On April 17, 40 million TRUMP, previously distributed among the project's creators, entered the market. Despite the risk of selling pressure, the token rose by about 14% in the following days. On January 19, the meme coin MELANIA, of the President's wife Melania Trump, was launched.

#DinnerWithTrump Trump invited the largest holders of the meme coin TRUMP to a gala dinner. Participants can increase their chances of receiving an invitation by holding coins from April 23 to May 12. The more TRUMP in the account, the higher the chances of attending the dinner. A leaderboard has been published on the project's website.

Out of 220 invited, the 15 largest holders will be able to attend an 'exclusive reception' before the dinner with Trump and receive a 'VIP tour of the White House'.

At the time of writing, TRUMP is trading at $12.5, according to CoinGecko. The daily increase is 32.7%, and the weekly increase is 59.5%.

#MarketRebound In Bernstein, five factors for the continued growth of Bitcoin were named. The five catalysts for further Bitcoin growth are as follows:

A more stable capital base and a wave of acquisition by institutional investors. During February-March, the outflow from BTC-ETFs amounted to ~$4 billion, and in April it slowed down significantly. About 80 corporations hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, some of which continue to increase their positions.
New purchases for strategic reserves. Experts expect that the USA might potentially expand its Bitcoin reserves. Proposals are being considered for financing through the revaluation of gold certificates or the issuance of bonds backed by the first cryptocurrency.
Adoption by banks. Digital assets are becoming mainstream thanks to regulators and institutional interest — they are exploring stablecoins for cross-border settlements and expanding their presence in the storage, management, and trading segments. Momentum around 'stable coins.' The expected shift in regulation in the USA will manifest technology beyond the cryptocurrency market, primarily in the field of remittances and B2B payments.
A push from asset managers

$ETH The Ethereum Foundation focuses on scaling L1 and improving UX. After reshuffles in the leadership of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), the organization shifted its focus to user experience (UX) and L1 scaling issues. This was stated by its co-director Tomasz Stanczak. According to him, the goal of the changes is to give Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin more time for research and exploration, rather than dealing with everyday tasks and crisis management.

On March 1, Xiao-Wei Wang and Stanczak became the new co-executive directors of EF. The former has worked in the organization for seven years as a researcher and contributed to the development of the Beacon Chain. The latter is the founder of the Nethermind project and one of the early members of the Flashbots team.

On February 25, former CEO of EF Aya Miyaguchi announced her transition to the role of president.

According to Stanczak, Buterin's recent posts have advanced promising directions and helped realign the community around the organization's core values.

#SaylorBTCPurchase Experts assessed the impact of Strategy's purchases on the Bitcoin price. The billion-dollar acquisitions of digital gold by Strategy had virtually no long-term impact on its value. This is stated in a study by TD Cowen, writes CoinDesk.

On average, Strategy's coin purchases account for about 3.3% of weekly trading volume and are weakly dependent on price fluctuations, analysts noted. When excluding eight weeks from the sample during which the corporation paused, the figure rose to approximately 8.4%.

The correlation coefficient between the weekly volume of Bitcoin purchases by Strategy and the asset's price at the end of the week was only 25%.

This conclusion refutes the theory popular among skeptics that the corporation's actions support the quotes of the first cryptocurrency and that without constant demand for it, the price would fall.

$SOL Former SEC Chairman Acknowledged: Bitcoin is the Only Valuable Crypto Asset. The vast majority of cryptocurrencies lack a real economic basis and exist solely due to market expectations. This was stated by former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler in an interview with CNBC. Gensler emphasized that Bitcoin remains the only recognizable asset in the industry: "Seven billion people know about it. But who has heard of 10,000 other tokens?" he said. In Gensler's opinion, the crypto asset market resembles precious metals, where there are many options, but only gold and silver attract serious investments.

The former regulator also condemned Donald Trump's tariff policy, noting that his administration inflicted "self-harm."

Gensler stressed that the risks associated with China remain elevated and could shake U.S. financial markets. In January, the former SEC chairman stated that he "never called" Bitcoin and Ethereum securities.

#SolanaSurge Glassnode reported a decrease in investor appetite for Bitcoin. The realized capitalization of Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $872 billion, however, data shows a decline in appetite for Bitcoin at the current price level. This is reported by Glassnode. Analysts from the platform noted that the monthly growth of the indicator has slowed to 0.9%, despite its record values. This indicates a reluctance from the market to take risks.

Realized capitalization accounts for the total value of an asset based on the price at its last movement. The metric reflects the actual invested capital. Its inflow remains positive, but the slowdown in growth suggests a reduction in the number of new investors and the activity of current Bitcoin holders.

Experts also noted that the chart of realized profits and losses, adjusted for volatility, has shown almost equal balance in recent weeks.

#BinanceLeadsQ1 ChatGPT was trained to accurately determine location from photographs. Once again, there is a buzz around the new AI models from OpenAI. This time, users are widely determining locations from photographs using ChatGPT. On April 16, OpenAI released two new neural networks — o3 and o4-mini. Their key feature is 'thinking in images' instead of their usual analysis.

Users discovered that the models' ability to analyze images along with internet searches makes them a powerful tool for determining locations from photographs. o3 excels at identifying cities, landmarks, restaurants, and bars from barely noticeable visual cues.

#PowellRemarks The Fed stated the possibility of easing cryptocurrency restrictions for banks. In the future, institutions may have their requirements related to digital assets 'relaxed.' This was stated by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. According to the head of the Federal Reserve, the central bank intends to encourage innovation but not expose consumers to risks or undermine the reliability and stability of institutions.

Powell described the recent initiatives of lawmakers regarding stablecoins as 'positive.' On April 16, in an interview with the Financial Times, Binance CEO Richard Teng acknowledged the friendly approach of the U.S. administration towards digital assets, including plans to create a regulatory framework and a national crypto reserve.

The top executive reported on the platform's cooperation with the authorities of several countries regarding the establishment of an SBR.

#MetaplanetBTCPurchase Project Eleven offered 1 BTC for the quantum hacking of Bitcoin's cryptography. The research project Project Eleven has proposed a prize of 1 BTC for breaking the maximum possible ECC key using Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer. The open competition Q-Day Prize will last until April 5, 2026. The task is directly aimed at the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA), which underpins Bitcoin's security model.

Experts from Project Eleven have prepared a set of ECC keys with security levels ranging from one to 25 bits for the competition. Participants in the application must disclose instructions for the developed hacking program, the general approach, methods used, and hardware specifications. All results obtained will be published in open access.

According to the project, over 6.2 million BTC worth about $500 billion are currently stored in wallets with open keys and may be at risk due to the advancement of quantum computing. The Project Eleven initiative aims to assess the practical level of risk associated with these concerns.

#CongressTradingBan Journalists learned about the sales of confiscated cryptocurrencies by the Chinese authorities. Local authorities in China are using private companies to sell confiscated cryptocurrencies abroad to replenish the budget. This is reported by Reuters, citing transactional and court documents.

The lack of clear rules on how officials should manage seized cryptocurrency has led to "inconsistent and opaque approaches." Some lawyers fear that this may facilitate the creation of corrupt schemes, the agency clarified.

The sale of digital assets has become a significant source of income. By the end of 2023, local authorities owned approximately 15,000 BTC (approximately $1.4 billion).

Currently, Bitbo estimates the number of bitcoins at the disposal of Chinese officials to be 194,000 BTC (approximately $16.3 billion). In this regard, the country is second only to the USA with 207,189 BTC (approximately $17.37 billion).

#CanadaSOLETFLaunch Canada will launch the first spot Solana ETFs with staking functionality. On April 16, Canadian companies will present the world's first spot Solana ETFs to the market. This was reported by Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas. The expert shared a screenshot of a message from TD Bank, stating that the Ontario Securities Commission approved four products from Purpose, Evolve, CI, and 3iQ.

The funds will offer Solana staking functionality, which could potentially provide higher returns compared to similar products based on Ethereum and reduce the costs of owning the ETFs, according to TD Bank's statement.

Balchunas noted that in March, Volatility Shares already launched two futures SOL ETFs in the US, which "didn't do much." The asset volumes under their management remain small: about $5.1 million in one fund and $8.7 million in another, according to The Block tracker.

Recall that on February 7, the SEC accepted a 19b-4 application from NYSE Arca to amend rules that would make it possible to list a spot exchange-traded fund based on Solana ETFs from Grayscale Investments.

#BitcoinWithTariffs Bitcoin reserves of public companies increased by $57 billion. The volume of the first cryptocurrency on the balance sheets of public companies grew by 16% in Q1 2025. This was reported by Bitwise analysts.

The figure reached 688,000 BTC. Over three months, companies increased their reserves by 95,431 BTC (to ~$56.7 billion).

In Q1, at least 12 public companies invested in Bitcoin for the first time.

Among the new holders, the largest number of coins was purchased by the Hong Kong construction firm Ming Shing. It bought 833 BTC through its subsidiary Lead Benefit: 500 BTC in January and 333 BTC in February.

Another new member of the "Bitcoin club" is the public streaming platform Rumble, which acquired 188 BTC in March. Bitwise noted that the total number of public companies holding digital gold increased to 79.

$BTC Tether will join the OCEAN mining pool developed by Bitcoin Core. The company behind the USDT stablecoin, Tether, will connect its current and future Bitcoin hash rate to the OCEAN mining pool launched by Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dash Jr. According to the statement, OCEAN allows miners to create their own block templates using the open-source DATUM protocol. This solution reduces reliance on centralized intermediaries and increases the resilience of the first cryptocurrency's blockchain to censorship. Back in November 2023, the company announced a $500 million investment in mining the first cryptocurrency.

Tether participated in the first round of funding for the Volcano Energy project for mining digital gold in El Salvador using geothermal energy from a volcano with a $1 billion investment. The firm also invested $100 million in Bitdeer by Jihan Wu.

$BTC The Scottish school will implement payments in bitcoins "the first in the UK." The Lomond School boarding school will start accepting tuition payments in bitcoins in the fall of 2025. This was reported by the BBC.

Representatives of the educational institution located in the Scottish town of Helensburgh noted that they made the decision in response to requests from parents of students, including foreign ones.

According to the administration, the initiative aligns with the school's adopted "ideals of independent thinking and innovation."

Payments will be implemented in several stages. Initially, the received cryptocurrency will be converted into pounds sterling to "reduce currency risks." The institution does not plan to accept other assets besides bitcoin.

According to statements from Lomond School, this is the first case of implementing crypto payments among private schools in the UK.

The cost of tuition is up to £38,000 (about $49,700 or 0.58 BTC at the time of writing) per year. The school accepts local and foreign students from three to 18 years old.