Crypto World

Bitcoin slides to $66,600 as Trump threatens to hit Iran ‘extremely hard’

Published

3 weeks ago

2 April 2026

Bitcoin slides to $66,600 as Trump threatens to hit Iran 'extremely hard'

Bitcoin fell 2.2% to $66,609 on Wednesday, giving back Tuesday’s gains after Trump’s primetime address to the nation promised to hit Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks rather than offering the de-escalation markets had priced in.

Every major token in the top 10 dropped. Ether slid 2.2% to $2,056, BNB fell 3.9% to $591, XRP lost 2.5% to $1.31, and solana’s SOL led losses at 5.2%, extending its weekly decline to 13%.

The selloff reversed a sharp global rally that had built through Tuesday on Trump’s earlier comments that the war could end within weeks and that a deal with Tehran was not a prerequisite. Asian stocks had surged 4%. S&P 500 futures had jumped. The mood was the most optimistic since the conflict began five weeks ago.

Then the speech happened. In nearly 20 minutes, Trump did not outline any shift in Iran policy, did not provide specifics on how operations would proceed, and did not signal any pathway to a ceasefire.

The Strait of Hormuz, the critical oil shipping lane that has been effectively shut since mid-March, would reopen “naturally” once hostilities subside, he said, without offering a timeline.

Brent crude jumped 5% to above $106 a barrel. Asian shares fell 2.1%. U.S. and European equity futures dropped more than 1.2%. The dollar strengthened. Treasuries dropped on inflation concerns.

The crypto-specific picture is now familiar to the point of numbness. Bitcoin has spent five weeks bouncing between roughly $60,000 and $73,000, selling on every escalation headline, rallying on every de-escalation headline, and ending up roughly where it started.

The Fear and Greed Index sits at 8, deep in extreme fear territory, where it has been stuck between 8 and 14 for the past month.

There is a seasonal argument for optimism. April has historically been one of bitcoin’s strongest months, finishing green 10 out of 15 years with an average gain of 20.9% versus an average decline of 8.8% in down years. Bitcoin also bounced firmly off its two-month uptrend support near $60,000 last week and is attempting to reclaim the 50-day moving average.

But seasonality doesn’t trade against a war. The pattern of the past five weeks — hope, headline, reversal — shows no sign of breaking until the conflict itself does.

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Crypto World

DeFi Platform Volo Hit by $3.5M Vault Attack, Begins Recovery Efforts

Published

7 minutes ago

22 April 2026

NewsAdmin

DeFi Platform Volo Hit by $3.5M Vault Attack, Begins Recovery Efforts

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Volo has disclosed a security breach that resulted in the loss of approximately $3.5 million in digital assets, marking the latest incident in a series of exploits targeting DeFi platforms.

In a Wednesday post on X, the team said the attack affected select vaults and involved assets including Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Matrixdock Gold XAUm and USDC (USDC). “We detected the attack, immediately notified the Sui Foundation and ecosystem partners to contain the damage, and froze the vaults to prevent any further exposure,” the team wrote.

The protocol added that around $28 million in total value locked across other vaults is safe, with the exploit limited to three isolated vaults and no shared vulnerability identified. It also revealed plans to absorb the losses rather than pass them on to users, though details of any remediation plan have yet to be finalized.

Volo is a liquid staking DeFi platform on the Sui blockchain, allowing users to stake their Sui (SUI) tokens and receive voloSUI (VSUI) in return. DeFi is already on edge, as the exploit comes as another liquid restaking protocol, Kelp, was hacked for approximately $293 million over the weekend, which has had a ripple effect across the broader ecosystem.

Volo freezes a portion of lost funds

In two separate updates, Volo said it has frozen or blocked roughly $2 million of the stolen funds so far. In the first update, the protocol said that roughly $500,000 linked to the breach has already been frozen. In a later update, the team claimed it had successfully blocked an attempt by the attacker to bridge 19.6 WBTC, effectively removing those funds from the hacker’s control.

“We are now working with ecosystem partners to determine the best path to return these funds to Volo,” the protocol wrote.

Crypto hacks claim $17 billion in 10 years

As Cointelegraph reported, more than $17 billion has been stolen in crypto over the past decade, with private key compromises identified as one of the major contributing attack vectors, according to DefiLlama.

Roughly 22.3% of incidents are linked to brute-force key compromises, 18.2% to unknown methods and 10% to phishing attacks on multi-signature wallets. The findings show that many of the biggest losses stem from wallet security and user-side weaknesses rather than protocol bugs.

Magazine: 53 DeFi projects infiltrated, 50M NEO tokens could be ‘given back’: Asia Express