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58% of Ethereum’s wealth is hiding in plain sight, and half of DeFi is built on thin air

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58% of Ethereum's wealth is hiding in plain sight, and half of DeFi is built on thin air - 2

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Ethereum’s top holders double in size when tokens and stablecoins are included in on-chain valuations.

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Summary

  • Aggregating ETH with tokens shows top holders control $426 billion, over 2x higher than ETH-only rankings reveal.
  • Including ERC-20s shifts power view, with smart contracts holding nearly 40% of top Ethereum balances.
  • New PPI metric flags self-minted DeFi exposure, warning of fragility if selling pressure triggers unwind risks.

Ethereum’s balance sheet looks nothing like what it looked like a couple of years ago.

A new on-chain analysis has found that 58% of capital held by Ethereum’s largest addresses exists outside of Ethereum (ETH) entirely — sitting in ERC-20 tokens and stablecoins that traditional rankings simply don’t capture.

When Ethereum addresses are ranked by ETH balance alone, the top 10,000 hold a combined $189 billion. Rank those same addresses by total assets — ETH plus ERC-20 tokens and stablecoins — and that figure climbs to $426 billion. The capital sitting at the top of Ethereum’s economy is more than twice as large as conventional rankings suggest.

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The gap is not just a numbers story. It reveals an entirely different cast of major holders. Among the top 1,000 addresses, only 537 appear in both the ETH-only and the aggregated rankings, meaning nearly half of Ethereum’s largest holders are effectively invisible when the market looks at ETH balances alone.

The composition of those holdings tells its own story. ETH now represents just 42% of what the largest addresses hold. Stablecoins account for roughly 26%, with the remaining share spread across ERC-20 tokens. A form of dominance shift has already taken place through quiet balance-sheet accumulation across protocols and tokens while prices remained largely range-bound.

Smart contracts are a central part of this new picture. Through an ETH-only lens, they appeared as minor participants in Ethereum’s wealth distribution. In the aggregated ranking, they control nearly 40% of top-holder capital. This roughly three times their previous share. Risk, the report argues, has migrated from individual holders making decisions to automated mechanisms governed by code, collateral design and token economics.

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That shift in who holds capital leads directly to a harder question: what is that capital actually made of?

To answer it, the report introduces the Printing-Press Index, which is a measure of how much of a protocol’s token holdings are made up of its own self-issued tokens. Among DeFi protocols, that figure clusters around 50%, with names like Uniswap, Aave and Mantle among the examples cited.

58% of Ethereum's wealth is hiding in plain sight, and half of DeFi is built on thin air - 2

The report identifies roughly 20% as the point where self-issued tokens begin to introduce meaningful risk, and 40-50% as the threshold where a protocol enters fragile territory. At those levels, a balance sheet is no longer primarily backed by external capital — it is partially backed by confidence in itself.

Modest selling pressure can impair that confidence, compress liquidity, and trigger the kind of reflexive unwind seen in the LUNA-UST collapse, where a Printing-Press Index near 100% contributed to a full death spiral within days.

The implication for how Ethereum’s economy is analyzed is significant. Once tokens represent the majority of large-address holdings and smart contracts control nearly 40% of that capital, balance size alone becomes a poor indicator of resilience. The Printing-Press Index offers a practical way to look past headline figures and assess what is actually backing the wealth that aggregated rankings are now beginning to reveal.

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Crypto World

Bitcoin ETF inflows hit highest level since February

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ProShares introduces first CoinDesk 20 Crypto ETF under ticker KRYP

Bitcoin traded around $68,780 on Tuesday as U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs posted their strongest daily inflow in more than a month.

Funds added a combined $471 million on April 6, according to SoSoValue data, marking the largest inflow since Feb. 25 and the sixth-biggest daily total this year. The figure remains below January’s peak flow regime, when multiple trading days topped $700 million.

These high inflows come as bitcoin continues to stall below $70,000, with weak spot demand and distribution by large holders capping upside. ETFs have increasingly offset that pressure, acting as a primary source of marginal buying.

Macro signals offer limited direction. Markets are pricing a 98% probability that the Federal Reserve will hold rates steady at its April meeting, according to Polymarket data, with minimal expectations for near-term cuts or hikes.

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Bitcoin’s relationship with global monetary policy may be shifting, with ETFs changing not just the scale of demand but its timing.

A recent Binance Research report finds bitcoin’s correlation with its Global Easing Breadth Index, which tracks 41 central banks, has turned sharply negative since 2024, the same year U.S. spot ETFs were approved. Before then, bitcoin tended to follow easing cycles with a lag. That relationship has now flipped, with the inverse effect nearly three times stronger.

The shift reflects who sets the marginal price. Retail once reacted to macro after the fact. ETF-driven institutional flows are more forward-looking, positioning ahead of expected policy moves.

“BTC may have evolved from a macro ‘lagging receiver’ to a ‘leading pricer,’” Binance Research wrote.

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ETF inflows continue to absorb supply and anchor prices, which could explain the continued daily inflow.

If what Binance Research proposes holds, bitcoin may keep trading as a forward-looking asset, pricing in central bank pivots before traditional markets rather than reacting to them after the fact.

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US Bankruptcy Filings Spike 14% in Q1 2026: What’s Driving the Surge

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Total US bankruptcy filings climbed 14% in the first quarter of 2026, reaching 150,009 cases between January and March, up from 132,094 during the same period last year.

The increase spans consumer and commercial categories alike, according to data from Epiq AACER published by the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI).

US Bankruptcy Filings Surge As Inflation Takes Its Toll

Small business filings showed the most dramatic acceleration. Subchapter V elections surged 67% to 833 from 499 a year earlier. Commercial Chapter 11 filings also rose 37%, climbing from 1,764 to 2,422.

Consumer filings told a similar story. Individual Chapter 7 cases increased 17% to 89,259. Chapter 13 filings rose 8% to 51,962. Total consumer filings reached 141,573. But what’s behind the rise? 

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“Persistent inflation, high interest rates, restricted credit, and global instability continue to compound the economic challenges of struggling families and small businesses,” ABI Executive Director Amy Quackenboss stated.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest report on household finances underlines the pressure. Household debt hit $18.8 trillion by the end of Q4 2025. Credit card balances reached $1.28 trillion, with notable deterioration in mortgage and student loan arrears as well.

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Legislative Response and Outlook

Congress is weighing measures to ease access to bankruptcy protection. Legislation introduced recently by Senator Chuck Grassley in the Senate and Representative Ben Cline would permanently raise the small business reorganization threshold for Chapter 11 to $7.5 million. It would also lift the Chapter 13 debt ceiling to $2.75 million.

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However, relief may not come quickly. The IMF has projected that US inflation will not return to the Fed’s 2% target until early 2027, suggesting elevated borrowing costs will persist well into next year.

Meanwhile, the US national debt recently surpassed $39 trillion, adding further strain to an already stretched fiscal environment. Whether legislative action can keep pace with growing financial distress remains an open question heading into Q2.

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The post US Bankruptcy Filings Spike 14% in Q1 2026: What’s Driving the Surge appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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XRP slips to $1.31 after failed breakout as liquidity dries up

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XRP slips to $1.31 after failed breakout as liquidity dries up


Rejection at $1.35 and collapsing depth raise risk of sharper moves as positioning builds.

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Indonesian Authorities Used Crypto Data to Convict Criminals

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Indonesian Authorities Used Crypto Data to Convict Criminals

Onchain evidence was key to securing the conviction of three individuals for terrorism financing in Indonesia in 2024 and 2025, reflecting a clear shift in the way courts value onchain evidence.

“Indonesian courts have demonstrated that cryptocurrency evidence — wallet addresses, transaction histories, on-chain flows — is not only admissible but can anchor a terrorism financing prosecution,” TRM said in a statement Sunday.

TRM said terrorism financing networks have preferred cryptocurrency as a mechanism of choice to move money, as authorities and regulators have been slow to treat it with the same level of scrutiny as traditional fiat channels, but noted that this is now changing. 

Indonesian authorities traced one defendant sending more than $49,000 worth of USDt (USDT) across 15 transactions from a local exchange to a foreign platform, with the funds later routed to an ISIS-linked terrorism fundraising campaign in Syria, according to the blockchain firm. 

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Indonesia’s financial intelligence team and its counterterrorism police unit, Densus 88, carried out the analysis and presented the findings to Indonesian courts, which accepted the blockchain data as key evidence in each of the three cases.

Source: TRM Labs

Indonesia is not the only country in Southeast Asia using blockchain analytics to catch criminals, TRM said.

“Similar patterns are emerging across Southeast Asia, where governments are investing in blockchain intelligence capabilities and enhancing collaboration between public and private sectors to address illicit finance risks.”

TRM Labs said that Singapore and Malaysia’s financial intelligence units and law enforcement agencies are also building the technical capacity to trace cryptocurrency flows.

Related: Drift Protocol says $280M exploit took ‘months of deliberate preparation’ 

On April 1, Cambodian and Chinese officials captured Li Xiong, a leader of the Huione Group, an organization that served scam centers in Cambodia that carried out “pig butchering” frauds and other investment schemes to steal crypto from victims around the world. 

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Xiong was extradited to China, where he is set to face fraud and money-laundering charges. 

His extradition came three months after the arrest of Chen Zhi, the head of Prince Group, which operates Huione Group.

TRM reported in February that illicit entities received about $141 billion worth of stablecoins in 2025, marking a five-year high.

Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?

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