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Bitcoin Hodlers Add 10% as BTC Lines Up a Run to $90,000

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Bull Flag Pattern

Bitcoin (BTC) price trades near $75,000, up marginally on the day, following a rejection near $78,380 on April 17.

The pullback has neutralized derivatives positioning, yet long-term holders have added to their stacks at an accelerating pace. That split has set up a narrow single-level decision for the days ahead.

Bitcoin Builds a Bull Flag After a 21% Rally From the March Low

Bitcoin rallied 20.72% from its March 29 low to the April 17 peak at $78,380, a 13,444-point pole move in roughly three weeks. Since the peak, price has traded inside a descending parallel channel, the bull flag structure that typically signals continuation after a sharp advance.

The flag’s upper trendline has been tested twice in recent sessions, on April 18 and again on April 20. The last attempt printed a long upper wick. That wick marks the session where buyers pushed price into resistance and sellers took some control before the close.

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Volume quality tells the same story. Buy-session volume inside the flag has come in below the prior sell-session volume, an asymmetry that reverses the usual bullish read. Volume compression inside a flag is normal. Volume compression where sellers keep outweighing buyers is a weaker signal.

Bull Flag Pattern
Bull Flag Pattern: TradingView

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The pattern itself is still intact. The execution against the ceiling, however, has not delivered the conviction bulls need for a first-attempt breakout. With spot volume sending mixed signals, the next question is whether derivatives positioning is filling the gap.

Open Interest Has Shed Nearly 10% Since the Flag Formed

Since the April 17 peak, Bitcoin open interest, the total dollar value of outstanding perpetual futures positions, has dropped from $30.46 billion to $27.44 billion. That is roughly a 10% reduction across three trading sessions.

The funding rate, the periodic payment between long and short positions in perpetual contracts, has moved from -0.014% on April 17 to -0.002% today. Negative funding means shorts pay longs. The shift toward zero suggests short positioning has been closing out or getting forced out.

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Bitcoin Open Interest and Funding
Bitcoin Open Interest and Funding: Santiment

The bullish contrarian setup would pair rising open interest with deeply negative funding, a sign of shorts stacking into the rally. This chart shows the opposite. Open interest is shrinking while funding normalizes toward zero. New Bitcoin longs are not stepping in to replace the exiting shorts. And even new shorts are waiting on the sidelines.

Interpreted carefully, the derivatives market is not voting in either direction. It is resetting. Clean decks sometimes precede sustainable moves, but a reset alone does not supply the demand a breakout needs. With leverage neutralized, spot positioning becomes the decider.

Long-Term Holders Added More Than 10% Since the Rejection

The Hodler Net Position Change, a Glassnode metric that measures how much long-term holders are accumulating each day, has climbed from 32,942 BTC on April 17 to 36,482 BTC on April 19. That marks a 10.75% jump in hodler accumulation over three sessions, a large swing by Bitcoin’s scale.

Hodler Net Position Change
Hodler Net Position Change: Glassnode

The identity of the sellers becomes clearer when cross-referencing the HODL Waves, a Glassnode distribution that splits circulating supply by wallet age band. The 1-week to 1-month cohort, which captures the most recent speculative buyers, peaked near 4% on April 9 and has since dropped to 2.781% on April 19.

BTC HODL Waves 1w-1m
BTC HODL Waves 1w-1m: Glassnode

That cohort has compressed by roughly 30% in ten days. The pattern is consistent with recent speculative buyers booking profits into the rally, while longer-term holders absorb the supply on the dip.

The rotation from weak to strong hands is happening quietly inside the flag consolidation. The hodler behavior answers the question derivatives could not. Leverage is neutral because spot is doing the buying, and the flag’s next move now hangs on a single price trigger.

Bitcoin Price Levels That Decide the $90,000 Path

Bitcoin price needs a daily close above $75,190.98, the 0.236 Fibonacci level drawn from the $64,869 pole base to the $78,379 peak. That level was tested and rejected on April 20, keeping the flag’s resistance cluster intact.

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A decisive close above $75,190 opens the path for the flag to resolve higher. The pole projection, measured by extending the 20.72% pole move from the breakout point, targets $90,841.57 on the chart. That is roughly a 21% advance from the current zone if the breakout confirms with volume.

Bitcoin Price Analysis
Bitcoin Price Analysis: TradingView

Today’s green candle has not been accompanied by a leverage buildup in derivatives. That is a healthy sign, because the move has room to extend without being immediately exposed to a long squeeze. A confirming breakout would turn the leverage reset from a neutral condition into a loaded spring.

The pattern nuance is the two failed probes at the ceiling. A deeper retest toward the 0.382 level at $73,218 or the 0.5 level at $71,624 could precede a cleaner second attempt. A loss of the 0.618 level at $70,030 would mostly invalidate the bullish pattern.

For now, $75,190 separates the continuation case that targets $90,000 from a deeper retest that could drain the bull flag’s upside.

The post Bitcoin Hodlers Add 10% as BTC Lines Up a Run to $90,000 appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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DeFi TVL Drops on All Top 20 Chains After KelpDAO Exploit

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DeFi TVL Drops on All Top 20 Chains After KelpDAO Exploit

The selloff accelerated after the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit on April 18, which drained 116,500 rsETH through a compromised LayerZero-powered cross-chain bridge.

Data from DefiLlama shows Ethereum, which dominates 53.91% of all DeFi TVL, lost 17.91% of its locked value in the past month. The chain now holds $46.17 billion, down from over $56 billion before the hack wave began.

Is Money Leaving DeFi?

The data shows a clear trend: capital is exiting. This DeFi sector contraction mirrors patterns seen in previous risk-off periods, but the breadth of losses stands out.

Solana dropped 19.04% monthly despite a slight 0.17% weekly gain. BSC fell 5.61%. Even Bitcoin DeFi, which had been growing rapidly with a 71.60% monthly gain earlier in the cycle, lost 1.91% in the past 24 hours as contagion spread.

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The worst performers tell the story. Mantle collapsed 52.01% in 30 days, falling from over $600 million to $303 million. Ink dropped 34.80%. Katana lost 18.65%. Hyperliquid L1 fell 17.73%. Arbitrum, once considered a safe haven for DeFi activity, declined 16.00% monthly.

Only two chains in the top 20 posted positive monthly gains: Tron at 24.07% and OP Mainnet at 82.11%. Both benefited from stablecoin flows seeking perceived safety outside the Ethereum restaking ecosystem.

DeFi Total Value Locked, Source: DeFiLlama

Kelp DAO Hack Triggers Contagion Across DeFi

The $292 million exploit targeted Kelp DAO’s cross-chain bridge infrastructure. Attackers used poisoned RPC nodes and a DDoS attack to manipulate a single verifier configuration, draining funds across Ethereum and Arbitrum in minutes.

The contagion spread rapidly. Aave urged WETH suppliers to withdraw due to rsETH exposure, triggering billions in outflows from the largest DeFi lending protocol. Ethena, Curve Finance, ether.fi, and Tron DAO froze their LayerZero OFT bridges as a precaution.

LayerZero Labs attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, a Lazarus Group subunit previously linked to the Drift Protocol exploit earlier this month.

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Are Users Repricing DeFi Risk?

The TVL decline suggests users are reassessing cross-chain infrastructure risk. Kelp, previously considered one of the top DeFi protocols with over $2 billion in TVL, now faces existential questions about its ability to make users whole.

Plasma lost 28.99% in seven days. Ink dropped 33.30% weekly. These sharp moves indicate active withdrawals rather than passive price depreciation.

Ethereum still dominates with 53.91% of all DeFi TVL, followed by Solana at 6.49%, BSC at 6.34%, Bitcoin at 5.91%, and Tron at 5.89%. But dominance without growth signals a shrinking pie rather than a flight to quality.

The question facing DeFi is whether this represents a temporary repricing or a structural shift in how users evaluate bridge and restaking risk.

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The post DeFi TVL Drops on All Top 20 Chains After KelpDAO Exploit appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Aave Models $124M to $230M in Bad Debt From Kelp Exploit

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Aave Models $124M to $230M in Bad Debt From Kelp Exploit

In a detailed incident report, Aave service providers quantified the protocol’s exposure for the first time and outlined two scenarios depending on how Kelp DAO allocates the loss. LayerZero and Kelp continue to blame each other for the compromised bridge configuration.

Aave service providers on Monday published an incident report quantifying the protocol’s exposure to the April 18 Kelp DAO rsETH bridge exploit, outlining two bad-debt scenarios ranging from $123.7 million to $230.1 million, and recommending an immediate pause of the protocol’s Umbrella safety module.

According to the report, posted to the Aave governance forum, 89,567 of the 116,500 rsETH stolen from Kelp’s LayerZero bridge were deposited across seven attacker-controlled wallets on Aave. Those positions borrowed 82,650 WETH ($190.86 million) and 821 wstETH ($2.33 million).

The single largest position, on Aave’s Ethereum Core market, supplied 53,000 rsETH and borrowed 52,460 WETH, or $121 million, from one wallet. The remaining positions were distributed across Aave’s Arbitrum deployment. All attacker positions currently sit at health factors between 1.01 and 1.03.

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Kelp subsequently recovered 40,373 rsETH by freezing a second attempted drain. That balance is the only confirmed backing for 152,577 rsETH of claims across every L2, a pro-rata backing ratio of 26.46%. Ethereum mainnet rsETH is backed separately by Kelp’s underlying ETH staking deposits.

Two bad debt scenarios

The report declined to commit to a single bad-debt figure, stating that the outcome depends on decisions outside Aave’s control — primarily how Kelp accounts for the loss and whether it updates its LRTOracle exchange rate.

Under Scenario 1, a uniform socialization across all rsETH holders on all chains, each token takes a 15.12% haircut. Total bad debt reaches $123.7 million, with the Ethereum Core WETH reserve absorbing $91.8 million, or a 1.54% shortfall. Mantle absorbs $10.4 million, or 9.54% of its WETH reserve, the most proportionally acute.

Under Scenario 2, losses are isolated to rsETH on L2s. Remote-chain rsETH is repriced to its 26.46% backing ratio, or a 73.54% haircut, while Ethereum mainnet rsETH is unaffected. Total bad debt rises to $230.1 million, all concentrated on L2s.

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In this scenario, Mantle faces a 71.45% shortfall ($77.7 million), Arbitrum 26.67% ($88.4 million), Base 23.28% ($47.5 million), and Ink 18% ($13.9 million). Ethereum Core is untouched.

Umbrella covers only Ethereum Core reserves. Under Scenario 2, it would not activate.

Balance sheet disclosure

The report disclosed the Aave DAO’s financial position. As of April 20, the treasury holds $181 million — $62 million in Ethereum-correlated holdings, $54 million in AAVE tokens, and $52 million in stablecoins. The DAO generated $145 million in revenue in 2025 and $38 million year-to-date in 2026, with operating cash flow of $149 million in 2025 and $40 million year-to-date.

Aave DAO service providers are “leading an effort with ecosystem participants to address a potential bad-debt scenario,” the report said, and the effort has received “indicative commitments from various parties.” It did not identify the parties or quantify the commitments.

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The report also recommended the DAO immediately pause the WETH Umbrella module. As of writing, 18,922 of the 23,507 aWETH staked in Umbrella — approximately 80% — have already entered the 20-day unstaking cooldown. A pause would block further deposits, withdrawals, transfers, and slashing. Coverage under a paused module would need to be handled manually through governance rather than automatically.

A second-order liquidation risk

The report also quantified the risk of further bad debt if ETH falls in price while Aave’s WETH reserves remain at 100% utilization. Because idle WETH balances are below $20 on every affected chain, liquidators cannot receive WETH as underlying and instead receive aWETH receipts, which keeps their capital inside the reserve and slows liquidation throughput.

At a 50% ETH price drop, Aave modeled $100.8 million of residual bad debt on Ethereum alone, with smaller amounts on Arbitrum, Base, Linea, and Mantle. Arbitrum and Base were flagged as particularly vulnerable because wstETH looping positions on those chains run at health factors around 1.03 — meaning first liquidations would trigger at ETH price drops of just 0.77% and 1.77%, respectively.

LayerZero and Kelp continue to trade blame

The Aave report did not assign blame for the underlying bridge exploit. LayerZero and Kelp DAO have continued to publicly attribute the incident to each other.

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In a Sunday post-mortem, LayerZero Labs attributed the attack to the DPRK-linked Lazarus Group. The company said attackers compromised two downstream Remote Procedure Call (RPC) nodes used by its LayerZero-operated Decentralized Verifier Network (DVN), and introduced malicious software that returned forged data only to the DVN, then launched a DDoS attack to force failover to the poisoned RPC nodes.

LayerZero said the protocol itself was not exploited and attributed the attack’s success to Kelp’s use of a 1-of-1 DVN configuration.

In a rebuttal reported by CoinDesk on Monday, a source familiar with Kelp’s position said a communications channel between the two teams had been open since July 2024 and that LayerZero had not issued a specific recommendation to change the rsETH DVN configuration. The source said the compromised DVN was LayerZero’s own infrastructure and that Kelp’s core restaking contracts were not affected.

Yearn Finance core developer known on X as @banteg, published a technical review showing LayerZero’s public V2 OApp Quickstart uses a 1-of-1 DVN setup in its reference configuration across Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. CoinDesk reported approximately 40% of applications on LayerZero currently run 1-of-1 configurations.

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LayerZero has said it will no longer sign messages for any application using a 1-of-1 DVN configuration.

“DeFi has spent years auditing smart contracts. Kelp is the moment the industry realises the threat doesn’t end at the code. Most protocols are completely exposed at the infrastructure layer,” said Yair Cleper, Co-Founder and CEO of MagmaDevs and contributor to Lava Network, a decentralized marketplace for blockchain data providers.

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Bitcoin Preserves Green Weekly Candle as Markets React to US-Iran War

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Bitcoin Preserves Green Weekly Candle as Markets React to US-Iran War

Bitcoin (BTC) begins the last full week of April juggling fresh US-Iran war fears as resistance hurdles line up.

Key points:

  • Bitcoin stays green on weekly time frames with multiple nearby price levels in focus.

  • Elliott Wave analysis concludes that $81,000 is Bitcoin bulls’ next “final boss.”

  • A resurgent US-Iran war threatens to unravel last week’s crypto and risk-asset gains.

  • Bitcoin ETFs see major inflows, but investors’ cost basis is still above $80,000.

  • Bitcoin’s true market mean metric reveals that the current bear market remains “mild.”

BTC price can still make “new highs” this week

Bitcoin still managed a “green” weekly candle despite last-minute sellers driving price below $74,000.

Data from TradingView shows a modest recovery ensuing as the new week begins — despite the lingering threat of geopolitical escalation between the US, Israel and Iran.

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BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Price now has multiple resistance levels overhead, with the nearest being its 21-week exponential moving average (EMA) at $78,400.

Over the weekend, trader and analyst Rekt Capital stressed the influence of that trend line.

“Bitcoin is rejecting from the 21-week EMA (green),” he noted in an X post alongside a print of the weekly chart. 

“It is this rejection that could force a post-breakout retest of the top of the Double Bottom (~$73k) next week, provided Bitcoin Weekly Closes just like this.”

BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital/X

In a subsequent post, Rekt Capital said that a successful retest of the $73,000 area would “confirm the breakout” for the bulls.

Continuing, trader CrypNuevo forecast that BTC/USD would continue to trade in a range with an $80,000 ceiling “for the next month.” They acknowledged that it was “unknown” how high the pair could go should the US-Iran war definitively end.

BTC/USDT one-day chart. Source: CrypNuevo/X

Crypto trader Michaël van de Poppe, meanwhile, remained upbeat, seeing a push beyond last week’s local highs next. He noted that there was a new “gap” open above price in CME Group’s Bitcoin futures market.

“Relatively strong bounce upwards on $BTC on Monday, as markets tend to go risk-off prior to the open. Gold has gone down, so no attached risk,” he told X followers on Monday. 

“Bitcoin bouncing upwards, and given that there’s still a gap to $77.3K, I would assume we’re going to see new highs this week.”

BTC/USDT 12-hour chart. Source: Michaël van de Poppe/X

$81,000 emerges as Bitcoin’s “final boss”

In its latest BTC price analysis, crypto market intelligence platform Decode placed specific emphasis on $81,000 as the resistance level to beat.

As part of Elliott Wave analysis, Decode showed BTC/USD trading between the 200-week and 21-week EMAs.

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“Bitcoin still pinned below the 21 week ema, but looking pretty good overall, and with the final boss at 81k,” it commented.

This “final boss,” Decode explained in subsequent debate on X, “narrows the options from an Elliott Wave perspective, removing short term bearish counts.”

BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Decode/X

$81,000 also represents the average entry price for institutional buyers of the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). 

Nearby, the cost basis for Bitcoin’s short-term holders (STHs) — entities hodling for up to six months without selling — is now at $83,500, per data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant.

Bitcoin STH cost basis data. Source: CryptoQuant

CryptoQuant notes that the STH spent output profit ratio (SOPR) metric — the ratio of STH coins moving onchain in profit or loss — is circling breakeven.

“If SOPR manages to sustainably move back above 1, it would indicate that STHs are once again realizing profits, which is generally positive for the market as long as values do not become excessive,” contributor Darkfost wrote in a QuickTake blog post last week.

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Iran war comeback risks risk-asset “unwind”

The US will release little by way of macroeconomic data in the coming week, but markets have bigger concerns.

With the sudden comeback of the US-Iran war, traders are suddenly revisiting the prospect of higher oil prices and a longer-term knock-in effect on inflation. 

“The sudden change in events has characterized the Middle East conflict since it started at the end of February,” trading resource Mosaic Asset Company commented in the latest edition of its regular newsletter, The Market Mosaic

“And it appears that intensifying hostilities could unwind the bullish action over the past few weeks.”

WTI crude oil fell to its lowest levels since early March last week as markets increasingly bet on the ceasefire and agreements between the US and Iran holding. The fresh breakdown in diplomacy sparked a rebound toward $90 per barrel.

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S&P 500 futures avoided a major correction at the weekly open, trading down around 0.6% on Monday.

S&P 500 futures one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Continuing, however, Mosaic warned that the writing was already on the wall for the equities rally after the S&P hit fresh all-time highs.

“Simply following breadth, sentiment, and positioning by institutional investors helped flag the recent rally. At the same time, warning signs were already emerging as the S&P 500 broke out to record highs,” it wrote. 

“The number of stocks breaking out to new highs is failing [to] confirm the move in the indexes, while buying pressure from a key group of institutional investors has largely run its course.”

S&P 500 relative highs. Source: Mosaic Asset Company

As Cointelegraph reported, oil prices in particular are under the microscope as a US inflation catalyst. The next print of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which will reflect the ongoing impact of the war during April, is due for release on May 12.

Risk-on institutions wake up to Bitcoin

The upshot in risk appetite amid Iran relief had a near-instant impact on Bitcoin institutional investment vehicles.

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In particular, the US spot ETFs saw considerable capital inflows through Friday, with more than 25,000 BTC entering over five days.

“The latest accumulations by spot ETF firms are significant, as the last time they posted a figure this close was in April 2025, when they added 23,900 units,” CryptoQuant noted in a QuickTake blog post on the topic.

US spot Bitcoin ETF netflows (screenshot). Source: Farside Investors

Data from UK-based investment company Farside Investors confirms that on Friday alone, the net inflows to the ETFs were more than $660 million — the largest single-day total since January.

“Aside from the current milestone, BTC spot ETFs are recovering,” CryptoQuant continued. 

“The balance held by the firm offering them has been declining since October, but has risen since the February dip.”

US spot Bitcoin ETF holdings data. Source: CryptoQuant

In BTC terms, the ETFs’ total holdings are now at their highest since November 2025.

Commenting on X, Andre Dragosch, European head of research at crypto asset manager Bitwise, acknowledged that ETF investors’ cost basis is still above spot price at $81,000, increasing the psychological significance of that level as a resistance hurdle.

Bitcoin price downside still on “milder path”

The average Bitcoin hodler remains underwater despite the recent trip to 10-week highs for BTC/USD.

Related: Bitcoin can grow ‘probably a lot bigger’ than $30T+ gold market — Analysis

New research from onchain analytics platform Glassnode also warns that in terms of history, Bitcoin’s current bear-market drawdown remains “mild.”

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In an X article published on Thursday, lead analyst CryptoVizArt used the true market mean (TMM) metric to assess hodler profitability. TMM filters out long-dormant or lost coins to provide a more accurate picture of cost basis for the active BTC supply.

“When BTC trades below TMM, the average active holder is underwater. Since 2016, this has happened ten times with meaningful negative outcomes — episodes lasting from 2 days to over 11 months, with max drawdowns ranging from -0.1%  to -57%,” they summarized.

Bitcoin true market mean chart. Source: Glassnode

Bitcoin is now over 75 days into its latest sub-TMM phase, with TMM itself at $78,200.

A chart plotting 2026 against Bitcoin’s historical average dips below TMM shows price forging a “milder path” than before.

“That said, 75 days is still early. The 2018 and 2022 episodes didn’t bottom until months 5-9,” CryptoVizArt warned. 

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“The signal isn’t ‘all clear’ — it’s ‘watch closely.’ Reclaiming the TMM and stabilizing there would mark active investors returning to profit, historically a strong reset point for momentum.” 

BTC price performance comparison. Source: CryptoVizArt/X