Crypto World
Aptos-Based Perp DEX Merkle Trade Shutters Business
The move comes amid a broader Aptos TVL decline and less than two years after Merkle closed a $2 million seed round with participation from Aptos Labs.
Merkle Trade, the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange on Aptos by trading volume, said in an X post on Feb. 3 that it will begin winding down operations over the coming weeks.
The team said the decision followed “careful consideration” and comes after the platform processed nearly $30 billion in cumulative trading volume since launch. Without specifying a reason for the winddown, the statement concludes: “But we are proud of what we built, and grateful to everyone who was part of it.”
According to the announcement, new positions will be disabled on Feb. 6, with all remaining positions forcibly closed on Feb. 10. Merkle Trade’s native MKL token will become redeemable without fees or withdrawal delays, while a final revenue distribution is scheduled for Feb. 12, after which staked MKL can also be redeemed, the announcement said.
The price of MKL spiked 11.5% in the past 24 hours, though the token is down 90% from its all-time high in December 2024.
Launched in late 2023, Merkle Trade offered non-custodial derivatives trading alongside features such as trading missions and loot boxes, leaning heavily into game-like mechanics.
That approach helped Merkle raise $2.1 million in a seed round in April 2024 led by Hashed and Arrington Capital, with participation from Aptos Labs, Morningstar Ventures, Amber Group and others.
By May 2024, total value locked (TVL) on the platform peaked at more than $7.4 million, according to DefiLlama data. Since then, TVL has fallen by more than half to about $3.47 million, making Merkle Trade the 17th-largest protocol by TVL on Aptos at press time.
Among the four Aptos-based perp DEXs listed on DefiLlama, however, Merkle is the leader by far, accounting for $12.4 million of the total $13.68 million in perp volume on the chain in the past 24 hours.
Aptos Struggles
Merkle’s slide in TVL since 2024 reflects weakness across the broader Aptos ecosystem, where total value locked is currently around $332.6 million, making it the 16th-largest chain by DeFi TVL.
Current TVL across the ecosystem is down more than 70% from December 2024 where it was over $1.2 billion, and back to levels last seen in the summer of 2024.
App revenue on the network, however, increased in 2025, though it remains relatively low. Weekly revenue from decentralized applications (DApps) on Aptos is led by DEX PancakeSwap, with $44,396 followed by Merkle Trade with $29,575.
By comparison, the top-four chains by app revenue today — Solana, Hyperliquid L1, Ethereum and EdgeX — have all recorded over $1 million in the past 24 hours.
The broader perp DEX sector exploded in 2025, with 24-hour volumes now outpacing most centralized exchanges. Hyperliquid has led the sector by trading volume, with rivals Lighter and Aster sometimes taking the lead.
Traditional finance giants Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities are both considering entering prediction markets, with each separately weighing up how they wish to get involved in the fast-growing sector.
“I think at some point we likely will have prediction markets,” Rick Wurster, the CEO of the banking and investing titan Schwab, told investors during a call on Thursday.
He added that prediction markets weren’t “of tremendous interest” when he recently asked a group of Schwab clients about them, but it was an area the company would “take a hard look at, and it would be quite straightforward for us to offer.”
Prediction markets such as the popular Kalshi and Polymarket have exploded in use over the past few months, with both platforms seeing a record combined total monthly trading volume of $23.6 billion in March, according to Token Terminal.
However, Kalshi, Polymarket and other prediction market platforms have also caught the ire of some US state regulators, who have accused them in court of offering unlicensed sports betting.
Some federal lawmakers have also vowed to crack down on prediction markets, claiming the platforms weren’t doing enough to stamp out insider trading.
Wurster said Schwab’s potential offering would steer away from allowing bets on areas such as sports, politics and pop culture as it looks to position itself as a partner for building long-term wealth.
“Prediction markets that are not aligned to that are not something that we want to pursue,” he said. “If you look at the stats on the success of gamblers, they’re not strong, and people generally lose money.”
Citadel “keeping an eye” on prediction markets
Meanwhile, Citadel Securities president Jim Esposito said at a Semafor conference in Washington, DC, on Thursday that the company is “absolutely keeping an eye on developments” in prediction markets.
“We’re not there yet, there’s not that much liquidity,” he added, but said that the market is likely to “ramp and scale,” and it was “certainly possible” that the market-making firm would potentially look to get involved.
Related: Democrats question CFTC chair on insider trading in prediction markets
Esposito said Citadel was “not looking at sports at the moment at all, I don’t see us entering that market,” but did signal an interest in some event contracts.
He added that Citadel could see its retail and institutional clients use some event contracts as a hedge for risks to their investments, such as contracts for elections, which have been known to move markets.
“That’s going to be some of the biggest risks to investors’ portfolios that they’re going to have to grapple with,” Esposito said. “Having a clean and distinct way to hedge certain risks, I think there’s a good use case and industrial logic to it.”
Magazine: Should users be allowed to bet on war and death in prediction markets?
Crypto World
Tokenized Treasuries Cross $13.74B as Institutions Shift Focus From Issuance to Utility
TLDR:
- Tokenized U.S. Treasuries have reached $13.74B onchain, marking a shift from proof of concept to real utility.
- Standard Chartered and OKX launched a collateral mirroring programme using tokenized money market funds for trading.
- BounceBit’s Prime platform connects regulated custody with onchain execution through off-exchange settlement flows.
- Circle acquired Hashnote to position USYC as yield-bearing collateral within its expanding digital asset platform.
Tokenized U.S. Treasuries have reached $13.74 billion in onchain value, according to RWA.xyz. This milestone marks a turning point for digital asset markets.
The category has moved past proving tokenization is feasible. Now, the focus shifts toward making those assets functional within real financial infrastructure.
Major institutions are already responding to that shift with concrete programmes and integrations.
From Passive Holdings to Active Collateral Use
The first phase of tokenization centered on bringing familiar assets onto blockchain networks. That work is largely done. The next phase is about putting those assets to work once they are onchain.
Faster-moving collateral, productive capital deployment, and treasury-backed assets that serve active roles are now the priorities.
Franklin Templeton captured this thinking directly in its framing of tokenized money market funds. The firm noted that tokenization creates new utility and use cases, not simply a digital version of an existing instrument.
Its Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund invests at least 99.5% of assets in U.S. government securities, cash, and related repos.
Standard Chartered and OKX announced a collateral mirroring programme with Franklin Templeton. The programme allows institutional clients to use crypto and tokenized money market funds as off-exchange collateral for live trading. That development moves the market clearly beyond passive holding toward active capital markets use.
BlackRock’s BUIDL and Ondo’s USDY have also helped define the institutional profile of tokenized Treasuries onchain.
Together, these products combine recognizable underlying assets, short-duration government yield, and compatibility with digital asset workflows.
Those three qualities make tokenized Treasuries one of the most relevant real-world asset categories for crypto-native markets today.
Infrastructure Built Around Capital Efficiency
BounceBit has positioned its RWA stack around the idea that tokenized cash equivalents should not stop at issuance. The platform integrated Ondo’s USDY as its first tokenized RWA.
It later expanded to source tokenized cash equivalents from Franklin Templeton’s Benji and BlackRock’s BUIDL through Securitize.
BounceBit’s Prime platform connects regulated custody with onchain execution. Client assets are custodied at Standard Chartered and mirrored to trading venues through an off-exchange settlement flow. That structure allows capital to remain controlled while being deployed more efficiently across strategies.
The platform targets yield above the risk-free rate through structured strategies built on tokenized cash equivalents and market-neutral trading.
Rather than passive exposure, Prime is designed to turn tokenized collateral into a working part of institutional treasury and trading operations.
Circle’s acquisition of Hashnote brought USYC into Circle’s platform, with Circle positioning it as yield-bearing collateral for digital asset markets.
That move, alongside the growth of BUIDL and Benji integrations, shows a consistent direction. Stablecoins built the base layer for onchain dollars. Tokenized Treasuries are now building the next layer for onchain yield-bearing capital.
In the latest bond news, Henry Paulson, who steered the U.S. financial system through the 2008 collapse as Treasury Secretary, is warning that the $35 trillion U.S. debt load could trigger a Treasury bond market crash, and calling for an emergency “break-glass” contingency plan to be ready before it hits.
The transmission channel to crypto is direct: a disorderly bond sell-off tightens dollar liquidity fast, and tight dollar liquidity historically punishes risk assets before any safe-haven Bitcoin narrative has time to develop.
30-year Treasury yields have already crossed 5%, a threshold last breached in October 2023 during the inflation-driven spike and essentially unseen before that since the pre-Great Recession era. That’s not a warning sign in isolation. It’s a warning sign with Paulson’s voice behind it.
Key Takeaways:
- Who warned: Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury Secretary 2006–2009 and architect of the 2008 TARP bailout, issued the alert.
- What he said: Paulson described a potential Treasury demand collapse as having “vicious” effects – likening the timing to hitting “the wall” unpredictably due to the “law of economic gravity.”
- What he wants: An emergency “break-glass” or “emergency brake” debt plan ready on the shelf before a crisis materializes.
- Bond market context: 30-year Treasury yields crossed 5% recently; U.S. debt has grown from $10 trillion in 2008 to over $35 trillion by 2025.
- April 2025 precedent: Treasury yields surged sharply amid Trump tariff escalation, defying safe-haven expectations and coinciding with equity sell-offs – a preview of correlated risk-off pressure.
- Crypto transmission channels: Dollar liquidity tightening, risk-off rotation away from speculative assets, and potential cascading liquidations in leveraged crypto positions.
- Pushback: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed comparable warnings from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon on June 1, 2025, calling his track record on such predictions poor.
- Watch: 10-year Treasury yield level relative to 4.8% resistance, upcoming Fed communications, and BTC’s correlation to the DXY during any yield spike.
Discover: The best crypto to diversify your portfolio with
Bond News: How a Bond Market Shock Actually Reaches Crypto, and Which Assets Get Hit First
The question isn’t whether Paulson is right about Treasury market fragility. It’s whether crypto trades as a safe haven or a risk asset when it is proven right, and history gives a clear answer, at least in the short run.
A disorderly Treasury sell-off forces dollar liquidity higher as investors dump bonds and demand cash. That dynamic hits leveraged positions first. Crypto markets, where open interest across derivatives venues has been climbing sharply, carry exactly that leverage profile, elevated exposure that becomes a liability the moment dollar funding costs spike.
The April 2025 episode clearly illustrated the mechanism. When Treasury yields surged amid tariff-escalation fears, crypto did not decouple toward safety. It sold alongside equities, in defiance of the digital-gold narrative. Correlation to risk assets held. That’s the bear case in one data point.
Paulson’s specific concern, that demand for Treasuries could collapse suddenly and without obvious warning, governed by what he calls the “law of economic gravity”, implies a non-linear shock rather than a gradual yield drift.
Non-linear shocks are what liquidation cascades are built from. A 10-year yield breaking decisively above 5% with accelerating momentum would be the confirmation threshold worth watching.
Bitcoin Safe Haven or Risk-Off Casualty: What the Bond Stress Means for Crypto Prices
The idea sounds clean. If bonds start losing credibility, capital has to go somewhere, and Bitcoin, with its fixed supply and non-sovereign nature, becomes an obvious alternative, which is why big players keep that thesis in the background.
But the timing is where people get caught.
In a real bond market shock, the first move is not rotation; it is panic, and in that phase, everything gets sold, including Bitcoin, just like what happened in March 2020 when BTC dropped hard before turning higher.
Ethereum and major altcoins are currently at technical inflection points, making them particularly vulnerable to a macro liquidity shock, which could be the deciding factor. ETH does not carry the same hard-money narrative as BTC and would likely underperform in a genuine risk-off episode driven by sovereign debt stress.
Jamie Dimon’s parallel warning, that investor demands for higher Treasury yields could spike mortgage rates independently of Fed policy, reinforces Paulson’s thesis from a different angle. Bessent’s public dismissal of Dimon on June 1 suggests official Washington is not in crisis mode. But bond markets are already pricing something the Treasury Secretary isn’t fully acknowledging.
Discover: The best pre-launch token sales
The post Former Treasury Chief Warns Bond Market Crash Could Hit Crypto Outlook appeared first on Cryptonews.
A California federal judge has cleared Caitlyn Jenner of a class-action push stemming from her JENNER memecoin, ruling that the token does not meet the basic securities requirements under U.S. law. In a Thursday order, U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. said the plaintiffs failed to plausibly plead that JENNER tokens were investment contracts because the venture did not pool investor money or use funds to develop a related product or technology.
Defendants stated that “the $JENNER token is a memecoin on the Ethereum blockchain intended solely for entertainment purposes,” and that its value would increase because Jenner would use her fame and influence to promote it, increasing demand. Promotion alone, however, does not establish a common enterprise absent pooling or a structure linking investor fortunes.
The case traces back to November 2024, when a group of JENNER memecoin buyers filed suit against Jenner and her late manager, Sophia Hutchins, alleging an unregistered securities offering and that investors lost thousands as the token’s price collapsed. The plaintiffs claimed that Jenner’s campaign-promised activities and fee mechanics would drive a return for investors. In May 2025, Blumenfeld had already tossed the suit for failure to state a claim, and an amended complaint was filed later that month, led by Lee Greenfield, a UK citizen who said he had invested more than $40,000.
In the amended filing, plaintiffs argued that investors pooled their assets as Jenner promised that once the token reached a market value of $50 million, a 3% transaction fee would fund token buybacks, marketing, donations to a political campaign, and a separate token representing ownership in Jenner’s Olympic gold medal. Blumenfeld pointed out that the amended complaint heavily focused on donations to Donald Trump’s campaign but did not clearly explain how such donations would deliver a financial return to investors. He also noted that the plan to distribute fractional ownership in the gold medal was announced after most purchases and was never executed.
The judge declined to give the class another chance to amend the complaint and indicated that claims tied to contracts and common-law fraud under California law would be more appropriate in state court. The decision leaves the securities-related claims resolved in federal court, while signaling that related state-law claims may proceed separately on different grounds.
JENNER first surfaced on the Solana blockchain via the memecoin creatorPump.fun in May 2024. The project quickly found itself embroiled in controversy after Jenner and other celebrities behind memecoin launches claimed they were allegedly scammed by Sahil Arora, a figure linked to the project’s early promotion efforts. Jenner subsequently relaunched JENNER on Ethereum, a move that investors said diluted the value of the original Solana token, which had peaked at nearly $7.5 million in June 2024 before retreating sharply.
The court’s ruling highlights a central challenge in memecoin litigation: promotional activity alone does not automatically create a securities partnership or an investment contract unless funds are pooled and a plausible path to investor returns can be demonstrated. The decision does not provide a broad endorsement of memecoins as safe investments, but it narrows the legal route for investors who relied primarily on celebrity promotion to claim securities violations.
For investors and builders in the memecoin ecosystem, the ruling reinforces the importance of transparent token mechanics and verifiable fundraising structures. It also underscores that, even in high-profile celebrity launches, the line between entertainment-focused tokens and regulated securities remains a contested frontier—one that regulators continue to scrutinize, particularly as new token categories emerge and promotional campaigns accelerate.
Key takeaways
- The court dismissed the federal securities claims against Caitlyn Jenner in the JENNER memecoin case, ruling the token did not plausibly constitute an investment contract because funds were not pooled and no related product or technology was developed with investor money.
- The decision preserves the possibility that related California-law claims could proceed in state court, though the federal securities case is resolved on the merits for now.
- The amended complaint failed to convincingly connect promised uses of a 3% fee and public donations to tangible financial returns for investors, according to the judge’s order.
- JENNER originated on Solana in May 2024, later migrated to Ethereum after controversies and claims of misrepresentation, with the token peaking at about $7.5 million in mid-2024 before collapsing.
- The ruling underscores that promotional activity alone is insufficient to show a common enterprise or an investment contract; structure and fund flows matter significantly in securities analyses of memecoins.
Context and implications for the memecoin landscape
The ruling arrives at a time of heightened regulatory attention toward memecoins and celebrity-led token launches. While it narrows the scope for investors to pursue federal securities claims in similar cases, it does not absolve promoters from potential liability on other legal grounds. The case illustrates that courts will closely examine whether investor money was actually pooled and whether a credible pathway exists for investors to obtain a financial return, beyond hype and promotional activity.
Looking ahead, observers will watch whether California state courts continue to pursue related contract or fraud theories and how parties might frame future campaigns to balance promotional potential with clear, investor-centric tokenomics. As the ecosystem evolves, the balance between creative branding and legally compliant fundraising remains a central concern for issuers, platforms, and legal counsel navigating a rapidly shifting regulatory environment.
Readers should monitor developments around memecoin regulation, enforcement actions, and any new guidance from U.S. authorities as they analyze cases where celebrity-led launches intersect with traditional securities law principles. The outcome in this case serves as a notable data point in the broader discourse on what constitutes a security in the fast-moving world of blockchain-enabled hype tokens.
US media personality and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner has escaped a class-action lawsuit after a federal judge ruled her memecoin was not a security under US law.
California federal judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. wrote in an order on Thursday that the lawsuit failed to plausibly plead that Caitlyn Jenner (JENNER) tokens were investment contracts, as they didn’t pool investor money or use funds to develop “any related product or technology.”
“Defendants stated that ‘[t]he $JENNER token is a memecoin on the Ethereum blockchain intended solely for entertainment purposes,’ and that its value would increase because Jenner would use her fame and influence to promote it, increasing demand,” the order said.
“Promotion alone, however, does not establish a common enterprise absent pooling or a structure linking investor fortunes,” it added.
A group of JENNER memecoin buyers first sued Jenner and her late manager, Sophia Hutchins, in November 2024, claiming they lost thousands of dollars as the token’s price collapsed and that JENNER was an unregistered securities offering.
Blumenfeld tossed the suit in May 2025 for failure to state a claim, and the group filed an amended complaint later that same month, led by Lee Greenfield, a UK citizen who claimed he lost more than $40,000 investing in JENNER.
The amended complaint had argued that investors had pooled their assets as Jenner promised that once the token reached a market value of $50 million, a 3% transaction fee would fund token buybacks, marketing, donations to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and a token for ownership in Jenner’s Olympic gold medal.
Blumenfeld wrote that the amended complaint heavily focused on planned donations to Trump, but didn’t explain how investors believed that doing so would provide a financial return to them.
“Nor is it clear that the alleged plan to distribute fractionalized ownership interests in Jenner’s gold medal has any bearing on Greenfield’s claim, since the plan was not announced until August 2024—after the last of his purchases—and was never executed,” he added.
Related: TRUMP whales load up as Mar-a-Lago luncheon approaches
Blumenfeld denied allowing the class group another chance to amend the lawsuit and added that claims regarding contracts and common law fraud under California law were best sent to state court.
JENNER was first launched on the Solana blockchain via the memecoin creator Pump.fun in May 2024. It was soon embroiled in controversy after Jenner and other memecoin launching celebrities claimed they were scammed by Sahil Arora, a claimed collaborator on the tokens.
Jenner relaunched the token on Ethereum, which investors claimed diminished the value of the original Solana token. The token has since essentially lost all of its value after hitting a peak value of nearly $7.5 million in June 2024.
Magazine: Memecoins: Betrayal of crypto’s ideals… or its true purpose?
Crypto World
Solana Price Prediction: SOL Is a Legacy Trap at $79 While AlphaPepe AI DEX Generates Real Traction for Early 1,000x Gains
Solana trades at $79, down 31% year to date and 73% from its January 2025 high of $293. DEX volume collapsed 62% in three weeks. Active traders fell from 4.4 million to 400,000. Meme coin trading crashed 81%. A whale unlocked 1.82 million SOL worth $163 million in a single transaction. The network has never been healthier. Record TPS, Alpenglow upgrade momentum, SEC commodity classification. None of it has moved the price. SOL at $79 with a $47 billion market cap needs $79,000 per token for 1,000x. That is the legacy trap. While SOL grinds against it, AlphaPepe is generating real traction at $0.01494 with $890,000 raised, a live AI DEX, and 1,000x math that requires $15 billion, not $33 trillion.
Why the Solana Price Prediction Is Trapped
The meme economy that powered SOL’s 2024 rally has broken. New token launches on Pump.fun dropped 80% since January. The TRUMP token wiped $2 billion across 800,000 wallets. Stablecoin transfers fell 80%. The four million traders who left took the revenue model with them.
Standard Chartered revised its target from $310 to $250. Resistance between $95 and $105 has rejected every rally. Even the $250 bull case is a 3.2x requiring ETF inflows, a Fed pivot, and a DEX volume recovery with no current momentum behind it. The Solana price prediction is a macro story wearing a network price tag. The macro is not cooperating.
AlphaPepe AI DEX Generates the Traction SOL Cannot Convert
AlphaSwap is doing what Solana’s collapsed DEX economy stopped doing. The AlphaPepe cross-chain AI DEX screens contracts for exploit patterns before users interact, surfaces whale movements across chains, and collects fee revenue today. Not from meme speculation. From infrastructure utility in a category growing at 22.3% annually toward $120 billion.
The developer proved their engineering across 500 million Shibarium mainnet transactions. A 10/10 BlockSAFU audit verified the contract. Supply fixed at 1 billion. Instant delivery. Zero vesting. Stakers earning 85% APR. Q2 DEX launch approaching. Tier 1 CEX follows.
Over $890,000 from 7,700 wallets. 100 new addresses daily. Stage 13 at $0.01494 with the price climbing every few days and jumping when stages fill. A $2,000 entry secures 133,869 tokens. At $1.50 that reaches $200,803. At $3.50 it crosses $468,541. Buyers at $2,000 or above can apply code ALPHA50 for a 50% bonus. SOL needs $47 billion in new capital for a 2x. AlphaPepe needs Q2 for 1,000x.
The Legacy Trap Has a Floor. The Presale Has a Deadline.
SOL will recover when macro turns. The network deserves a higher price. But the Solana price prediction at $79 is capped by a market cap that makes exponential returns impossible. AlphaPepe at $0.01494 with $890,000 raised and a live AI DEX is not capped by anything except the listing date. Stage 13 is filling.
Click To Visit AlphaPepe Official Website To Enter The Presale
FAQs
Why is SOL a legacy trap at $79?
SOL’s $47 billion market cap needs $79,000 per token for 1,000x. DEX volume collapsed 62%, active traders dropped from 4.4 million to 400,000, and the price is down 31% YTD despite record network performance.
How does AlphaPepe generate real traction?
AlphaSwap is a live AI DEX collecting fee revenue with contract screening and whale tracking. Over $890,000 raised across 7,700 wallets at $0.01494.
Is the AlphaPepe presale still open?
Stage 13 at $0.01494 with over $890,000 raised and 7,700 holders. Instant delivery, no vesting, Q2 DEX launch approaching.
Disclaimer: This is a Press Release provided by a third party who is responsible for the content. Please conduct your own research before taking any action based on the content.
Comparing market value SUI Avalanche Pepeto right now reveals something massive. $9.17 million flowed into a presale while AVAX and SUI jump on CME futures news and a South Korean payments deal per CoinGecko. Sui Foundation just confirmed sponsorship of the Hong Kong Web3 Festival on April 20-23.
The wallets that got rich from crypto did one thing: they bought before the crowd noticed. AVAX trades at $9.67 and SUI at $1, but Pepeto already has the exchange built, the listing locked, and 100x written into the math between presale and listing day.
Sui (SUI) trades at $1 with a $4.2 billion cap. Avalanche (AVAX) sits at $9.67 with $4.17 billion. CME Group locks in AVAX and SUI futures on May 4 pending CFTC approval, while Ava Labs signed an MOU with South Korean payment giant NHN KCP on April 14 to build a payments-optimized L1 using Avalanche infrastructure.
The math sits in plain view: two Layer 1s pricing in months of slow institutional buildup, against a presale at six zeros that packs that wait into one event.
Comparing Market Value SUI Avalanche Pepeto Side-By-Side
Pepeto: The Ground Floor That SUI And Avalanche Cannot Reset
SUI and AVAX earned their seats at $4.2 billion and $4.17 billion. But tokens already trading on every exchange rarely deliver the biggest wins. Those land on coins still hidden in presale. Pepeto pulled in $9.17 million because the tools are built and the Binance listing is locked. Tokens already move between Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana on the bridge for free.
Trading on PepetoSwap costs zero. Not Uniswap’s 0.3%, flat zero. The full bag stays intact from entry to exit. While listing day pulls closer, 182% APY rewards stack tokens into every wallet daily, which means the supply that reaches the market on day one shrinks while demand lands against a thinner float.
Why Smart Money Fills The Presale While Layer 1s Consolidate
The valuation gap puts the case on the table. The presale market cap looks tiny next to either coin, and that gap is the entire opportunity. The engineer who built Pepe and watched it touch $11 billion built every tool here. SolidProof signed off before any wallet entered. At $0.0000001865 you are buying ahead of the chart even existing.
The moment trading opens, that price is gone. Every BNB winner and every OKB holder shares one story: they bought when nobody was looking. Pepeto is that story right now, and the only thing between the wallets that win and the ones that regret is whether you move while the door is still cracked open.
Sui (SUI) Price At $1.00 As Hong Kong Web3 Festival And CME Futures Build Bullish Pressure
Sui (SUI) trades at $1.00 per CoinMarketCap with a $4.2 billion cap, holding the $0.80 to $1.0 range that flagged a breakout last week. Sui Foundation locked in sponsorship of the Hong Kong Web3 Festival on April 20-23, and CME futures activate May 4. Sui Stack (S2) rolls out this year with free stablecoin transfers.
Changelly targets $1.25 for May, about 23% from here. Support at $0.95, resistance at $1.10. The strongest near-term call lands short of what a presale paired with one listing event delivers.
Avalanche (AVAX) Price At $9.67 As NHN KCP Deal And Spot ETF Filings Build Demand
Avalanche (AVAX) holds $9.67 per CoinMarketCap with $4.17 billion in market cap and the spot AVAX ETF (VAVX) live since January with staking baked in. NHN KCP signed the payments L1 MOU on April 14, RWA TVL on Avalanche doubled to $2.1 billion since April 2025, and 80+ subnet chains run on the network.
Support at $9.65, resistance at $13. Marzell Crypto flagged $34 once the trendline cracks, a 230% move on an unknown timeline. The presale floor moves on listing day.
Closing Thoughts
Comparing market value SUI Avalanche Pepeto makes the call straightforward. SUI at $4.2 billion and AVAX at $4.17 billion give you safer plays with single-digit upside on a multi-month view. Pepeto gives you a working exchange, a confirmed listing, and a presale price that neither of them will ever see again.
Every BNB winner bought when the name was still unknown, and the Pepe cofounder cracked that exact window again on the Pepeto presale entry. Six months down the road you either hold the position that changed everything, or you replay this entry in your head for the rest of the year while the numbers sit in plain view.
Click To Visit Pepeto Website To Enter The Presale
FAQs
How does comparing market value SUI Avalanche Pepeto help investors?
The comparison reveals the upside gap. SUI at $4.2B and AVAX at $4.17B cap near 23% to 230% over months, while Pepeto targets 100x from one Binance listing event.
Is Sui (SUI) a stronger buy than Pepeto right now?
No, Pepeto at presale pricing prints listing returns SUI cannot match at $4.2 billion. Sui (SUI) trades at $1 with CME futures launching May 4, capping near-term upside under 25%.
Disclaimer: This is a Press Release provided by a third party who is responsible for the content. Please conduct your own research before taking any action based on the content.
TLDR:
- An attacker drained 116,500 rsETH worth $292M from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge in one attack.
- Stolen rsETH was deposited on Aave, Compound, and Euler as collateral to borrow ETH, creating bad debt.
- Kelp DAO paused rsETH contracts on Ethereum mainnet and multiple L2s while coordinating with security experts.
- Over $600M was stolen from more than 10 DeFi protocols in two weeks, with AI accelerating hacker capabilities.
Kelp DAO suffered a major security breach involving its LayerZero-powered rsETH cross-chain bridge. The attacker drained 116,500 rsETH tokens worth approximately $292 million from the protocol.
The stolen assets were then used as collateral on major lending platforms to borrow ETH. Kelp DAO paused rsETH contracts across the Ethereum mainnet and several Layer 2 networks amid the crisis.
Security experts from multiple organizations quickly joined the investigation as it got underway.
How the Kelp DAO rsETH Bridge Exploit Unfolded
The attacker targeted the LayerZero bridge within Kelp DAO’s cross-chain system. Some 116,500 rsETH tokens were drained during the attack.
The stolen funds were transferred to lending platforms including Aave, Compound, and Euler. There, the attacker used rsETH as collateral to borrow ETH, creating bad debt across those protocols.
Kelp DAO confirmed the breach through its official X account that day. The protocol stated it had identified suspicious cross-chain activity involving rsETH.
Contracts were paused across mainnet and several Layer 2 networks accordingly. The team coordinated with LayerZero, Unichain, auditors, and security experts on root cause analysis.
Aave and several protocols froze or paused rsETH-related markets in response. This step aimed to limit further losses across affected platforms.
The AAVE token fell to $99.60 amid reports of growing bad debt from the exploit. Activity in impacted markets slowed as users closely tracked the situation.
Kelp DAO advised users to rely solely on its official handle for accurate updates. No attacker was publicly identified while investigations remained active.
Multiple security firms assisted Kelp DAO’s internal team throughout the analysis process. The full breach scope had not been confirmed at the time of reporting.
$600 Million Stolen From DeFi Protocols in Two Weeks
The Kelp DAO breach came amid a broader wave of DeFi attacks in April 2026. Over $600 million was stolen from more than 10 protocols in two weeks.
Analyst Jeremy noted that AI is helping hackers execute attacks more efficiently. He identified the Kelp DAO incident as the year’s biggest DeFi hack.
Drift Protocol also lost $285 million to North Korean hackers using AI-powered social engineering. Those hackers spent months building insider trust before striking.
Once positioned, the full attack unfolded in just 12 minutes. Rhea Finance separately lost $18 million through fake token pools that misled its oracle into approving withdrawals.
Further incidents targeted Grinex, Hyperbridge, Aethir, Dango, and Silo Finance. Grinex, a sanctioned Russian exchange, lost $15 million before suspending all operations.
An attacker on Hyperbridge minted one billion fake bridged DOT tokens notionally worth over $1 billion. However, thin liquidity meant only around $237,000 was actually extracted.
CoW Swap and Zerion were also hit in the same two-week stretch. CoW Swap’s frontend was hijacked through a DNS attack that led users to a phishing page.
Zerion suffered credential theft through North Korean social engineering. The pattern across all these attacks reflects an expanding threat to the broader DeFi sector.
TLDR:
- Security researcher Alex “Scalar” Sol reported four Zcash vulnerabilities on April 4, 2026, via coordinated disclosure channels.
- A crafted Orchard transaction with an all-zeros randomized key could crash any reachable zcashd or Zebra node instantly.
- A turnstile accounting bug introduced in zcashd v5.10.0 could be triggered by routine peer-to-peer duplicate block headers.
- Mining pools ViaBTC, Luxor, F2Pool, AntPool, and Foundry all deployed patches before the public release on April 17, 2026.
Zcash vulnerabilities have been patched across two full-node implementations following a coordinated security disclosure.
On April 17, 2026, Zcash Open Development Lab released zcashd v6.12.1, while the Zcash Foundation released Zebra v4.3.1. Security researcher Alex “Scalar” Sol reported the issues on April 4, 2026.
Four vulnerabilities were addressed, covering a node crash bug, a consensus enforcement gap, and a turnstile accounting bypass. No user funds were compromised, and no ZEC supply inflation occurred at any point.
Four Bugs Identified Across Both Zcash Full-Node Clients
The most directly exploitable bug was an Orchard transaction crash present in both zcashd and Zebra. A crafted transaction with an all-zeros randomized key encoding could immediately crash any node processing it.
Repeated broadcasting of such a transaction could effectively prevent nodes from participating in the network. No transactions triggering this condition were found on the Zcash mainnet before the patch.
A related enforcement gap also existed between the two implementations. Zebra already enforced a protocol requirement on ephemeral public keys within Orchard actions, but zcashd did not.
This meant a crafted transaction could be accepted by zcashd while being rejected by Zebra. Such a transaction could have forced a visible chain fork between nodes running different clients.
A separate bug in zcashd, introduced with v5.10.0 in August 2024, could disable turnstile accounting under certain conditions.
Receiving a duplicate block header from a peer could silently reset pool balance tracking to null. This condition could arise from ordinary peer-to-peer network behavior, not only from deliberate attack. The turnstile tracks ZEC balances across shielded and transparent value pools and serves as a critical safety layer.
Even so, this bug was not independently exploitable to steal or inflate ZEC. The official disclosure confirmed that “exploiting it to steal funds would require a separate, independent balance vulnerability on top of it.”
Any resulting turnstile violation would also have been publicly visible as a detectable chain anomaly. No such anomaly occurred on the Zcash mainnet before the fix was deployed.
Mining Pools Deploy Patches Before Public Disclosure
Zcash Open Development Lab addressed the disclosure directly, stating: “Mining pools representing a supermajority of the network’s hash power, and the primary operator running Zebra in mining production, deployed patches prior to this disclosure.”
ZODL engineers Kris Nuttycombe and Daira-Emma Hopwood authored the zcashd patches and reviewed each other’s work.
Nuttycombe addressed the Orchard crash, enforcement gap, and turnstile accounting bug. Hopwood authored hardening patches for integer overflow undefined behavior and exception safety.
Mining pools ViaBTC, Luxor, F2Pool, and AntPool — each running zcashd — were contacted directly for coordination. Foundry, which runs Zebra in mining production, also deployed its patch ahead of public release.
The Zcash Foundation’s Conrado Gouvêa separately developed and delivered the Zebra patch. This outreach ensured network stability was preserved throughout the entire disclosure process.
The zcashd v6.12.1 release also included broader hardening changes beyond the core vulnerability fixes. A chain supply value checkpoint was added at NU6.1 activation to enable future corruption detection.
Integer overflow protections were added across pool balance accumulation routines in multiple code paths. These additions provide an extra defense layer against edge-case exploitation scenarios.
This marks the second set of Zcash vulnerabilities disclosed within a month. On X, Zcash Open Development Lab stated: “We have no evidence that any of these bugs were exploited.
User funds and privacy were never at risk, and no ZEC supply inflation was possible.” Alex “Scalar” Sol also reported the March 2026 Sprout verification vulnerability through the same coordinated channels. Users running either zcashd or Zebra should upgrade to the latest patched versions immediately.
The Bitcoin mining landscape tightened again as the network’s difficulty dipped on the latest adjustment, underscoring the pressure facing public mining operators that have been selling BTC to fund ongoing costs amid higher energy prices and a subdued price environment. Data from CoinWarz placed the current mining difficulty at about 135.5T, a roughly 1.1% decline over the prior 24 hours, signaling a modest relief for issuers still dealing with razor-thin margins.
Looking ahead, CoinWarz estimates the next adjustment will push the difficulty higher to around 137.43T, with the change expected on May 1, 2026, at about 01:24 PM UTC. The calculation places the shift at 1,865 blocks from now, roughly 12 days, 18 hours, and 41 minutes of lead time. These sequential moves illustrate the ongoing tug-of-war between miners’ costs and the rewards embedded in the BTC network’s protocol.
Key takeaways
- The Bitcoin network’s mining difficulty fell to roughly 135.5T, a 1.1% drop in the last 24 hours, signaling continued strain in a sector under cash-flow pressure.
- The next difficulty adjustment is projected to rise to about 137.43T on May 1, 2026, after 1,865 blocks, roughly 12 days and change from now.
- Publicly traded mining firms sold more BTC in Q1 2026 than in all of 2025 combined, totaling over 32,000 BTC, according to TheEnergyMag.
- Consolidated BTC sales by MARA, CleanSpark, Riot, Cango, Core Scientific and Bitdeer exceeded 20,000 BTC in Q2 2022, a period associated with the Terra-Luna collapse and a then-deep bear market.
- CoinShares’ Q1 2026 mining report shows about 20% of miners are unprofitable under current economics, highlighting persistent profitability headwinds despite operational changes by miners.
Record BTC liquidation and its implications for the sector
Publicly traded Bitcoin miners have increasingly relied on selling mined BTC to cover ongoing operating costs, a practice that has intensified as price swings and energy costs squeeze margins. The EnergyMag’s compilation indicates that in Q1 2026, a cohort of major players—MARA, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, Cango, Core Scientific and Bitdeer Technologies—sold more than 32,000 BTC in aggregate. That figure surpasses the total BTC sold in all four quarters of 2025 combined, underscoring how the economics of mining have shifted toward cash preservation and liquidity management in a tougher market.
To put the scale in perspective, the Q1 2026 tally surpassed the 20,000 BTC sold in Q2 2022, a period that overlapped with the Terra-Luna collapse and a broad crypto downturn. The parallel illustrates how the sector’s response to stress has evolved: where miners once leaned on revenue timing and hedging, they now face a higher burden to convert freshly minted BTC into fiat to pay for electricity, hosting, and other fixed costs as the market’s risk premium remains elevated.
Miners typically unwind BTC holdings to meet operating expenses denominated in fiat, making their cash flow acutely sensitive to both BTC price fluctuations and the cost of power. The broader backdrop has grown more challenging as energy prices have trended higher in many regions and the crypto bear market extended its course through late 2025 and into 2026. The difficulty trend compounds these pressures: even as the price swings rattle sentiment, the network’s computational difficulty continues to trend upward, complicating profitability for operators with under-water margins.
Profitability under pressure: a closer look at the data
CoinShares’ Q1 2026 mining report provides a sobering frame for the environment miners operate within. The study notes that about one-fifth of miners are unprofitable under current economics, a figure that signals that a significant slice of the mining sector remains at a break-even or loss point given prevailing BTC prices and energy costs. The report characterizes Q4 2025 as the most challenging quarter for Bitcoin mining since the April 2024 halving, due largely to a sharp price correction in October 2025 that pulled BTC from peaks around $125,000 to roughly $86,000 by year-end. Coupled with rising difficulty, these dynamics compressed margins and forced many operators to contend with tighter balance sheets.
Alongside these dynamics, the sector’s debt and capital expenditure plans—driven by the need to deploy new hardware and secure low-cost power—continued to shape strategic decisions. As operators balance capex with income, the ability to sustain production without eroding balance sheets remains a material question for 2026. The broader market has watched for any regulatory developments that could alter energy costs, tax treatment of mining, or access to cheaper electricity in key basins, all of which could tilt profitability in the months ahead.
Why this matters for investors and builders
From an investor perspective, the combination of rising difficulty and persistent BTC sales by miners creates a nuanced risk profile. On one hand, a higher difficulty suggests that continuing hardware investment could be necessary for those seeking to maintain production levels and capture block rewards. On the other hand, if miners’ cash flow remains constrained, they may favor further asset sales or debt-funding mechanisms, potentially creating selling pressure on BTC and altering the supply dynamics in the near term.
For builders and infrastructure operators, the current environment highlights the importance of energy strategy and location economics. Regions with access to affordable power remain the most competitive, and those with regulatory clarity around mining operations could attract future deployments. The fact that a significant share of miners remains unprofitable increases the emphasis on efficiency gains—from chip technology and cooling innovations to load management and energy hedging strategies.
Regulators, too, are watching profitability trends as a signal of the sector’s resilience. As the mining industry contends with structural shifts—price volatility, energy costs, and the ongoing evolution of carbon and energy policies—the sector’s next moves could influence broader market sentiment and adoption of blockchain-based use cases that rely on robust, secure mining networks.
What to watch next
The next Bitcoin network difficulty adjustment—expected in early May 2026—will be a key data point for assessing whether miners can sustain operations under the current cost structure. Additionally, BTC price action into spring and summer 2026 will interact with mining economics in meaningful ways. Investors and operators should monitor energy price trends, operational expenditures, and any regulatory signals that could alter the cost of running mining facilities. If the sector can stabilize cash flow and leverage efficiency gains, the coming quarters may reveal a more resilient mining landscape even as the market remains cautious.
Ultimately, the story today is one of a sector recalibrating to a tougher macro and micro environment. How mining firms adapt—through cost discipline, technology upgrades, and strategic hedging—will shape the degree to which Bitcoin mining remains a volatile but enduring edge of the crypto economy.
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