Kalshi added Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter as a policy adviser as the prediction market company faces legal and political pressure in the United States. 

The move places another well-known political figure around the company at a time when regulators, lawmakers, and state officials continue to examine prediction markets and event contracts.

Kalshi said Cutter joined from Precision Strategies, the firm she co-founded in 2013. The company said the appointment will help it “deepen its relationships in DC and across the country.” 

Kalshi co-founder and chief executive Tarek Mansour said Cutter can help the company get its message to the right people because of her experience in government and politics.

Cutter is a longtime Democratic strategist with experience in presidential and congressional politics. Her arrival adds a new policy voice to Kalshi as the company pushes to explain prediction markets to officials and the wider public. Cutter described Kalshi as a data-based platform at a time when public debate is often driven by noise and division.

The appointment also fits a broader effort by Kalshi to build ties across both major US parties. In January 2025, Kalshi named Donald Trump Jr. as a strategic adviser. That move gave the company a Republican-linked figure as it tried to expand its standing in Washington.

Kalshi opened a Washington office in January 2026 and has since held nearly 200 meetings with lawmakers and officials from across the political spectrum. That outreach shows how closely the company is tying its growth plans to policy work as prediction markets face closer review.

Legal fights keep building

Kalshi’s policy push comes as state and federal authorities continue to clash over who controls prediction markets. Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois moved against platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket under state gambling laws. 

In response, the CFTC filed lawsuits arguing that federal law gives the agency “exclusive jurisdiction” over these markets.

Lawmakers have also raised concerns about trading tied to sensitive political and military events. Some Democrats called for more scrutiny after “suspicious trades” linked to the US invasion of Iran. 

In March, Kalshi said it would add guardrails to block politicians, athletes, and other relevant people from trading in certain markets, aiming to reduce insider trading and manipulation risks.

Santiment said traders were watching a small group of digital assets as the market moved into the weekend. 

The social platform placed Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Bitcoin (BTC), USDC, Pippin, and Chainlink among the coins drawing the “highest trader interest” across online discussions.

Ethereum and Bitcoin stay in focus

Ethereum drew strong attention as traders discussed security, custody, and market activity. Posts centered on a new white paper about quantum computing risks tied to ECDSA signatures, which protect Ethereum accounts, admin keys, and some on-chain data.

At the same time, traders tracked reports that the Ethereum Foundation staked “around 45,000 to 70,000 ETH.” Social activity also picked up around ETF flow data, Charles Schwab’s plan to offer spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading, and Ethereum’s price near the $2,000 level.

Bitcoin also remained active in social discussions during the same period. Much of the debate followed a Google Quantum AI white paper that raised fresh talk about how quantum systems could affect Bitcoin’s long-term security model.

Traders also linked Bitcoin’s recent move near the “$67,000 to $70,000” range to wider macro pressure. Social posts pointed to Middle East tensions, oil market fears, corporate treasury buying, and planned retail access through Charles Schwab’s crypto product.

Solana and USDC face risk-driven chatter

Solana social activity rose after reports of a major Drift Protocol exploit that “drained roughly $270 million to $286 million.” Traders also discussed losses across projects tied to the Solana ecosystem and the effect on network confidence.

Online posts also focused on outage claims, failed transactions, slow confirmations, and wallet connection issues. Validator updates and project comments added to the discussion as traders watched for signs of recovery.

USDC also moved into focus after investigator ZachXBT published a dossier about Circle’s compliance record. The report claimed Circle had seen “over $420 million in compliance lapses since 2022” tied to delayed freezes and response actions.

That report spread across X, Reddit, and Telegram. Traders also discussed USDC’s role in cross-border payments, DeFi liquidity, and multichain transfers while questioning custody and freeze controls.

Pippin and Chainlink draw attention

Pippin gained traction as traders treated it like a social-driven memecoin. Posts described it as a token powered by online hype, fast price swings, and rising community attention instead of project fundamentals.

Chainlink drew interest after reports of a quarterly unlock of about 19 million LINK. Traders focused on the share sent to Binance, the amount moved to multisig wallets, and new discussion around Chainlink integrations and oracle tools.

Bitcoin traders with mid- to large-sized holdings continued to lock in losses at a startling pace in Q1 2026, according to on-chain analytics from Glassnode. Data shows that wallets holding 100–10,000 BTC realized losses averaging about $337 million per day—the strongest quarterly signal of capitulation since 2022. The developing pattern combines with persistent losses among long-term holders to raise questions about how far the market may slide before a potential bottom forms.

Key takeaways

• In Q1 2026, sharks (100–1,000 BTC) realized losses around $188.5 million per day, while whales (1,000–10,000 BTC) realized roughly $147.5 million per day, totaling about $336 million daily on average and roughly $30.91 billion in realized losses for the year so far.
• These figures place Q1 2026 among the most severe periods for on-chain realized losses among large BTC holders, behind only Q2 2022’s peak daily loss rate of about $396 million.
• Long-term holders (coins held for more than six months) are also selling at a loss, with losses running near $200 million per day on a 30-day average since late 2025, signaling broader capitulation beyond the largest wallets.
• Analysts note that the current pressure mirrors some of the macro and systemic stress seen in 2022, involving inflation concerns, liquidity outflows, and investor risk-off dynamics tied to macro events and sector-wide volatility.
• Looking ahead, some market observers point to a potential bottom in the $40,000–$50,000 range, but acknowledge substantial uncertainty as macro risks persist and on-chain dynamics evolve.

Capitulation among BTC whales and sharks

Glassnode’s realized loss metric tracks the dollar value of losses locked in when BTC is sold below its purchase price. In Q1 2026, the two key cohorts—sharks (addresses holding 100–1,000 BTC) and whales (1,000–10,000 BTC)—showed pronounced downside pressure. Sharks realized losses at an average of about $188.5 million per day, while whales contributed roughly $147.5 million daily. Combined, large holders have locked in around $30.91 billion in realized losses for 2026 thus far.

These levels mark one of the harshest on-record periods for large holders and come as BTC faces a confluence of macro headwinds. In Q2 2022, Bitcoin experienced more than a 50% price drop, followed by further declines as liquidity drained during the Terra collapse, Celsius disruptions, and the broader market turmoil surrounding the collapse of major crypto ventures. The current quarter’s pace suggests a renewed wave of capitulation among mid- to large-sized investors are bracing for additional downside as macro risks intensify.

Beyond the immediate price action, the on-chain data underscore a reluctance among significant holders to endure ongoing macro stress without reinforcing downside protection. The net result is pressure on supply dynamics and potential liquidity constraints that could complicate a swift recovery if risk-off sentiment persists.

Long-term holders under pressure

Another facet of the broader drawdown in BTC comes from Long-Term Holders (LTHs). Glassnode’s Long-Term Holder Realized Loss chart indicates that losses among LTHs remain elevated, averaging approximately $200 million per day on a 30-day basis since November 2025. In the view of Glassnode analysts, a cooldown toward daily losses well below $25 million would be a meaningful signal of exhaustion in selling pressure and a prerequisite for the base formation that historically precedes a sustainable bull market transition.

“A meaningful cooldown toward levels below $25M per day would represent a more compelling signal of exhaustion in selling pressure. A prerequisite for the base formation that historically precedes a sustainable bull market transition.”

Macro headwinds and the road ahead

The Q1 2026 snapshot arrives amid a broader mix of risk factors that have historically intersected with BTC drawdowns. Analysts cite inflation dynamics tied to energy and geopolitical developments, as well as innovation-driven market turbulence—ranging from concerns around quantum-resilience to the AI-driven risk trade—as pressures that can amplify drawdowns in risk assets, including Bitcoin. These factors echo the kind of rapid-downside catalysts seen during 2022’s crypto bear market, complicating calls for a rapid turnaround.

Some market observers have floated a potential bottom in the vicinity of $40,000–$50,000, framing it as a plausible reversal zone if supply-demand dynamics align with a cooling in realized losses and a stabilizing macro backdrop. Yet others caution that until on-chain metrics show sustained improvement and macro uncertainty lightens, a definitive bottom remains elusive.

This analysis reflects advanced on-chain research and is not investment advice. Investors should monitor how realized losses trend in the coming quarters and how on-chain activity aligns with price action before drawing conclusions about a durable bottom.

As the market weighs these signals, the next steps for BTC investors may hinge on whether the current capitulation can ease and whether price formation can establish a technical base that precedes any meaningful recovery.

TLDR:

• LayerZero has integrated 165+ chains and processed over $200B in volume, creating deep operational lock-in for builders.
  
• Canton Network processes $8T in monthly RWAs and $350B daily in Treasury repo, with LayerZero as its only live interoperability rail.
  
• On-chain data shows coordinated ZRO accumulation between $1.30–$2.00, with sizing patterns inconsistent with typical retail behavior.
  
• Activating the fee switch on $150B in annualized volume would shift ZRO’s valuation from pure optionality to measurable cash flow.

LayerZero, Canton Network, and Zero Blockchain are drawing attention as a potential interoperability stack in the crypto space.

Analysts and on-chain observers are tracking how these three protocols connect crypto-native messaging, institutional liquidity, and execution infrastructure.

The arrangement positions ZRO as a central asset across gas, staking, and value capture functions. Early accumulation patterns and institutional backing are adding weight to the narrative.

Institutional Rails and Network Lock-In

LayerZero has integrated over 165 chains and processed more than $200 billion in cross-chain volume. That scale creates what researchers describe as “infra gravity.” Once an application builds on a messaging layer, migration becomes operationally expensive.

Switching providers for marginal fee savings means reworking compliance systems, risk models, and liquidity routing. That dependency is where network effects become structural rather than speculative.

Canton Network adds a different dimension to this stack. It connects over 800 institutional firms, including Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. The network processes roughly $8 trillion in real-world assets monthly and around $350 billion in U.S.

Treasury repo volume daily. LayerZero is currently the only interoperability rail operating inside that environment. That positioning means the cross-domain liquidity rails for institutions are already in place.

Researcher Nick Research noted on X: “LayerZero is the only interoperability rail live inside that environment. It means if institutional liquidity ever needs to move cross-domain, the rails are already chosen.”

That framing points to a first-mover advantage that is operational rather than theoretical. The integration is live, not pending.

Zero Blockchain rounds out the stack as an execution layer. Its backers include Citadel Securities and the DTCC. Those are not venture bets on technology — they are strategic positions from firms that process real financial volume. The thesis is that interoperability with proper execution controls is where value capture actually concentrates.

On-Chain Signals and the Fee Switch

On-chain data has started reflecting accumulation behavior ahead of any major narrative shift. Clusters of wallets funded through Coinbase Prime accumulated tens of millions in ZRO between $1.30 and $2.00.

The buying patterns showed identical sizing and tight timing, which does not match typical retail activity. Long-duration holders including a16z and ARK have also taken multi-year positions in the asset.

The fee switch is the mechanism that would make this shift visible at the protocol level. Currently, LayerZero routes approximately $150 billion in annualized cross-chain volume with no protocol revenue.

Once fees activate, the valuation framework moves from optionality toward cash flow. That transition tends to reprice assets quickly when it happens on top of an embedded network.

Nick Research summarized the stack plainly: “LayerZero is the messaging layer → Canton is the institutional liquidity pool → Zero is where that liquidity can actually settle and scale.”

The value capture relative to how far network effects have already progressed remains the core observation driving current interest.

• Total stablecoin supply hit a record $315B in Q1 2026, up ~$8B QoQ – the slowest growth since Q4 2023, but still expansion during a market contraction.
• Stablecoins accounted for 75% of total crypto trading volume in Q1 – the highest share on record.
• Total stablecoin transaction volume topped $28 trillion, exceeding Visa and Mastercard combined.
• USDC supply surged 220% since late 2023 to ~$78B; USDT’s market share slipped amid the divergence.
• Retail-sized transfers fell 16% – the steepest drop on record – while bots drove approximately 76% of all stablecoin transaction volume.
• Yield-bearing stablecoins now represent a $3.7 billion subsector, introducing new fragmentation and regulatory risk.

SpaceX has submitted a confidential draft registration to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation and a raise of up to $75 billion — what would be the largest initial public offering in financial history.

The filing, internally codenamed “Project Apex,” was first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed independently by CNBC and Reuters. SpaceX has not publicly commented. A confidential filing allows a company to submit its financials to the SEC for regulatory review before making them public — a standard step before a roadshow.

According to CNBC, 21 banks have been lined up to manage the offering, with Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley holding senior bookrunner roles. SpaceX is also exploring a dual-class share structure to preserve insider voting control and plans to allocate up to 30% of shares to retail investors — roughly three times the typical norm.

At $1.75 trillion, SpaceX would rank above every S&P 500 company except Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon.

The valuation rests primarily on Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet division. The service ended 2025 with 9.2 million subscribers across 150 countries, generating approximately $16 billion in annual revenue, with projections pointing toward $22 billion by year-end 2026. SpaceX merged with Musk’s AI venture xAI in February 2026, folding the Grok chatbot and social network X into a single entity that Musk valued at $1.25 trillion at the time. The company has accumulated more than $24.4 billion in federal government contracts since 2008, spanning NASA, the Air Force, and Space Force, according to FedScout.

Musk’s Path to Trillionaire Status

Musk owns approximately 44% of SpaceX. His current net worth sits at roughly $823 billion, according to Forbes. A successful listing at the target valuation would push him toward becoming the first individual in history to surpass $1 trillion — and the first person to simultaneously lead two separate trillion-dollar publicly traded companies. Tesla currently carries a market cap of approximately $1.4 trillion.

The filing positions SpaceX ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic, which are both reportedly weighing public offerings before year’s end. If all three proceed, Bloomberg has described 2026 as potentially the most consequential year for technology IPOs since the dot-com era.

The SpaceX name has long been exploited in crypto markets through impersonation scams — a pattern documented across multiple platforms and token launches — though the IPO itself represents an altogether different category of market event. It arrives at a moment of intensifying institutional appetite for new financial products, a trend visible across crypto ETF launches and alternative asset offerings that Wall Street is moving quickly to capture.

Bitcoin price slipped toward its lowest levels of 2026 on April 4 as social sentiment also weakened. 

Data from Santiment showed bearish Bitcoin commentary rising across X, Reddit, and Telegram while the asset traded near $66,800.

Santiment said Bitcoin recorded its highest level of bearish discussion since February 28. The platform found that positive comments fell to 0.81 for every bearish comment, showing that negative talk now leads online discussion.

The shift came as crypto market volatility stayed high and pushed Bitcoin below the $70,000 mark. The data also showed that traders posted about five bearish comments for every four bullish ones across major social platforms.

Retail traders appeared more cautious as Bitcoin pulled back to one of its weakest levels this year. The drop in price and the rise in negative commentary pointed to growing fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the broader market.

Spot demand is weakening while leverage stays elevated. That suggests that buyers in the spot market have slowed down, even as leveraged positions remain active and add pressure during volatile trading sessions.

Institutions continue to buy

While retail sentiment weakened, institutional demand remained more stable. Bitcoin ETFs continued to attract attention, and corporate holders such as Strategy and Metaplanet kept adding exposure despite the latest market decline.

This contrast showed a clear split in market behavior. Smaller traders reacted to price weakness and online sentiment, while larger players focused on longer-term positioning during the current pullback.

As crypto.news recently reported, exchange supply keeps falling, but macro risks still cloud the setup. Lower exchange balances often suggest reduced selling supply, but broader economic pressure still affects market direction.

Elon Musk’s X is rolling out a security feature that will automatically lock any account that mentions cryptocurrency for the first time — requiring additional verification before posting resumes — a direct response to a wave of account hijacking campaigns exploiting social trust to promote scam tokens.

The auto-lock triggers on an account’s first-ever cryptocurrency-related post. Once triggered, the account is locked, and the user must complete verification before regaining access. Bier described it as targeting the core attack vector: hackers gain account access through phishing emails, lock out the original owner, and use the account’s established follower trust to promote fraudulent tokens, fake giveaways, and memecoins.

“This should kill 99% of the incentive,” Bier wrote in response to a user’s account of how they lost control of their profile to a phishing attack disguised as a copyright violation notice. The attacker had used a pixel-perfect fake login page to harvest the user’s credentials and two-factor authentication codes before locking them out and beginning scam promotion.

What This Targets

Crypto-linked account hijacking on X has been a documented and persistent problem since the platform’s days as Twitter. The auto-lock builds on earlier platform efforts to eliminate mention-spam campaigns and coordinated account behavior used in crypto promotions. Long-term users who have never posted about cryptocurrency will face verification on their first such post, while legitimate accounts, Bier indicated, can regain access quickly through the process.

Bier also publicly criticized Google for allowing phishing emails to reach users through Gmail. “Google isn’t doing shit to stop the phishing,” he wrote — framing the auto-lock as a platform-level workaround to a vulnerability upstream that X cannot directly control.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has documented how social media crypto scams have surged into a multi-billion dollar problem, with victims often unable to recover funds given the irreversibility of on-chain transfers. This structural reality is what makes hijacked accounts with established follower trust so valuable to attackers — and what the auto-lock directly targets by severing the link between account access and immediate monetization via crypto promotion.

Limitations

Critics have flagged that the measure only intervenes after an account has already been compromised via phishing. If email providers do not better filter phishing emails upstream, the attack chain remains intact. The feature could also create friction for legitimate first-time crypto posts from established accounts, though Bier indicated the verification process will be brief for genuine users.

As broader crypto hack and phishing losses have shown improvement in recent months — with February 2026 recording the lowest monthly total since March 2025 — the $285 million Drift Protocol exploit this week is a sharp reminder that headline risk remains high. X’s new feature addresses one specific and high-volume attack vector within a much larger ecosystem of crypto-linked fraud.

Crypto has spent years obsessing over speed, fees and scalability. Now it may have to confront a more existential question: what happens when its core security breaks?

That question is moving from theory to urgency. Quantum computers, machines that use the principles of quantum physics to process information in fundamentally different ways than today’s computers, could eventually solve the kinds of mathematical problems that underpin modern encryption.

Discussions around post-quantum cryptography have intensified across the industry in recent weeks, especially after new research from Google and academic collaborators suggested that such systems could one day break widely used encryption, potentially cracking systems like Bitcoin’s in minutes rather than years.

While Bitcoin developers scramble to find a solution and Ethereum prepares for the event, Solana is trying to get ahead of that scenario.

Cryptography firm Project Eleven has teamed up with the Solana Foundation to experiment with post-quantum security, technology designed to withstand quantum attacks that could render today’s cryptography obsolete. The early work is already surfacing a difficult reality: making Solana quantum-safe may come at the expense of the performance that defines it.

In practice, that effort has meant moving beyond theory and into live testing. Project Eleven has worked with the Solana ecosystem to model how the network would behave if its current cryptography were replaced, including deploying a test environment using quantum-resistant signatures — the digital keys that authorize transactions. The goal is not just to prove the technology works, but to understand what breaks when it’s pushed to scale.

The early results show a clear tradeoff.

The new, quantum-safe “signatures” that approve transactions are much larger and heavier than those used today, roughly 20 to 40 times larger, Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden, who founded the project, after years in crypto and venture capital, brings a mix of military and industry experience to the problem, told CoinDesk. That means the network can handle far fewer transactions at once. In testing, a version of Solana using this new cryptography ran about 90% slower than it does today, Pruden said.

That tradeoff cuts directly at the heart of Solana’s design. The blockchain has built its reputation on high throughput and low latency, positioning itself as one of the fastest networks in crypto. But post-quantum cryptography — while more secure against future threats — comes with heavier data and computational requirements, making it harder to maintain those speeds.

‘Pick any wallet’

Solana may also face a more immediate structural challenge than its peers.

Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, where wallet addresses are typically derived from hashed public keys, Solana exposes public keys directly. That difference matters in a quantum scenario. “In Solana, 100% of the network is vulnerable,” Pruden said.

“A quantum computer could pick any wallet and immediately start trying to recover the private key.”

Pruden, a former Army Green Beret, first became interested in Bitcoin while deployed in the Middle East, later worked at Coinbase and joined Andreessen Horowitz’s venture team on its first fund. He then became an early leader at privacy-focused blockchain Aleo before launching Project Eleven, a firm focused on preparing digital assets for what he calls “Q-day,” the moment quantum computers can break today’s cryptography.

Some developers in the Solana ecosystem, meanwhile, are looking at simpler, more immediate fixes. One example is something called ‘Winternitz Vaults’, which uses a different kind of cryptography that’s believed to be safer against quantum attacks. Instead of changing the entire network, these tools focus on protecting individual wallets, giving users a way to secure their funds now while bigger, system-wide upgrades are still being figured out.

Despite those hurdles, Solana has moved faster than much of the industry in at least one respect: experimentation. “There’s something tangible,” Pruden said. “We actually have a testnet with post-quantum signatures.” He added that the Solana Foundation “deserves credit for at least engaging and wanting to do the work.”

Across crypto, that level of engagement remains rare. While some ecosystems, most notably Ethereum, have begun discussing long-term migration paths, concrete implementation has been limited.

The broader challenge is not just technical, but social: upgrading cryptography in decentralized systems requires coordination across developers, validators, applications and users, all of whom must move in sequence.

For Pruden, the risk is that the industry waits too long to begin that process. “This is a tomorrow problem — until it’s today’s problem,” he said. “And then it takes four years to fix.”

Read more: Here’s how bitcoin, Ethereum and other networks are preparing for the looming quantum threat