Zach Witkoff, a co-founder of Donald Trump-linked World Liberty Financial, recently had a video of his 2022 arrest, where officers located a bag of cocaine on his person, surface.

The bodycam footage from the arresting officers was published by The Newsground, “an independent publication launched in March 2026” by Scott Stedman.

During the arrest, Witkoff repeatedly insisted he was friends with Marc Roberts, who runs Club E11even, where Witkoff was being arrested, resulting in the security guard insisting that Witkoff should “stop dropping names.”

Read more: Who is behind World Liberty Financial, Trump’s new crypto?

Zach is the son of Steve Witkoff, who serves as Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East and was also a co-founder of World Liberty Financial.

Witkoff wasn’t prosecuted following this arrest.

Besides serving as co-founder of World Liberty Financial, Witkoff also intends to lead World Liberty Trust Company, a stablecoin-focused trust company that applied for a national charter.

Protos reached out to World Liberty for comment on Witkoff’s previous arrest, but it didn’t immediately respond.

Beef with Justin Sun

World Liberty Financial and Justin Sun have been in a slow-moving, months-long confrontation since World Liberty chose to blacklist a substantial portion of Sun’s WLFI tokens.

This slow-rolling conflict finally came to a head with Sun suing World Liberty, while simultaneously insisting that he still fully supports President Trump.

Sun claims that World Liberty “wrongfully froze all of my tokens, stripped me of my right to vote on governance proposals, and have threatened to permanently destroy my tokens by burning them.”.

Bitcoin’s path to $100k hinges on Kevin Warsh’s Fed bid and the CLARITY Act’s shrinking window, as Washington rewires crypto market structure.

Bitcoin (BTC) at $100,000 is back on the table if its recent rally holds, but the outcome hinges on Washington’s next moves on the Federal Reserve and the Clarity Act. A crypto‑friendly Fed chair and a comprehensive US market‑structure bill could cement the surge — or fizzle out, if politics get in the way.

Bitcoin has climbed about 10% over the past two weeks to trade near $78,000, even as it remains roughly 38% below its October peak while the S&P 500 has pushed to fresh all‑time highs. Polymarket traders now price just a 28% chance that the next big catalyst — Kevin Warsh’s confirmation as Fed chair by May 15 — actually happens, down from 92% in March.

The $100,000 level is the “next magnet” for Bitcoin if momentum continues, according to Luca Köymen, investment strategist at Sygnum Bank, who told DL News the “structural story is where we see the bigger signal.” He argued that “clearer bank access, no CBDC competition, and a chair who treats crypto as embedded rather than exotic is a bigger deal than a quarter or two of marginally more hawkish tone.”

Fed regime change risk

US President Donald Trump has already banned a central bank digital currency via an executive order titled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” blocking federal agencies from creating or endorsing a retail CBDC. Trump has nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh — widely seen as a crypto bull — to replace Jerome Powell when his term ends on May 15.

During his Senate confirmation hearing this week, Warsh told lawmakers that cryptocurrencies are already part of the “fabric” of the US financial system and called a US CBDC a “bad policy choice” he would not support as chair. Köymen said Warsh would be “the most crypto‑literate chair in Fed history,” adding that he “understands the technology and has publicly called Bitcoin a disciplining force on bad policy.”

Still, Warsh’s confirmation is far from assured. Republican Senator Thom Tillis has raised concerns about market stability under Warsh, and a hold from his office has helped drag Polymarket odds for confirmation by May 15 down to 28%.

Clarity Act window narrows

In a recent note, Thorn put passage odds around 50% this year, saying the bill risks falling off the agenda entirely after midterms if it misses the current window. Polymarket traders now give the Clarity Act roughly a mid‑40s percentage chance of being signed into law in 2026, down from more than 80% earlier in the year.

For Köymen, early passage would lock in a structural win. “Passage of the Clarity Act before the midterms would finally provide the market structure framework US crypto markets need,” he said, arguing that, alongside potential tweaks to bank leverage rules, the package would improve financial conditions for Bitcoin and broader crypto assets.

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin is trading sideways over the past 24 hours at around $78,049, according to price data from crypto.news. Ethereum has slipped roughly 1.9% over the same period to about $2,344.

In a previous crypto.news story, analysts highlighted how Fed personnel shifts have repeatedly realigned Bitcoin’s macro narrative. Another crypto.news story examined Trump’s CBDC ban and its implications for private digital assets, while a third story explored why the Clarity Act is seen as a last shot at comprehensive US crypto legislation before midterms.

Crypto exchanges are increasingly offering bank-like services such as lending and yield products, but without the protection traditional financial institutions provide, according to a report issued Thursday by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

“What looks like a high-yield savings product is, in reality, an unsecured loan to a lightly regulated shadow bank,” said the report, which does not necessarily reflect the views of the BIS, an international financial institution owned by 63 central banks from around the world.

The 38-page report also noted that the crypto industry’s largest participants have evolved beyond simple trading platforms into what it described as “multifunction cryptoasset intermediaries,” bundling services that would typically be separated across banks, brokers and exchanges.

The authors said the biggest concern is how fast “earn” and yield products are growing, and that they are widely marketed to retail users as tools to generate passive income on their crypto assets. While these offerings often promise attractive returns, their structure is closer to unsecured lending than savings, the report said.

“These platforms are effectively taking deposits and recycling them into risky activities — but without the safeguards that make traditional banking stable.”

In many cases, crypto exchange users relinquish control and, sometimes even ownership, of their digital assets to the platform, which then uses the funds for lending, trading or market-making strategies. The returns paid to customers are a share of the profits generated from these activities.

While these arrangements are similar to bank deposits, they lack the insurance traditional finance offers. There may also be a lack of transparency on how the assets are used.

“From the customer’s perspective, these products are generally an unsecured claim on the intermediary,” the report said, warning that users are exposed to the platform’s solvency in the event of losses.

The BIS pointed to the collapse of Celsius Network and FTX as examples of how users are exposed and victims of the weaknesses it says are still rampant within the industry.

“What unraveled at Celsius and FTX wasn’t just poor management, it was a system built on leverage, opacity and deposit-like promises without protection,” the report said.

The report cited the flash crash of October 2025, which triggered an estimated $19 billion in forced liquidations across crypto derivatives markets, saying the slide highlighted how quickly these dynamics can spiral.

Ethereum’s latest 33% rebound from sub-$1,800, multi-year lows has cooled, but a confluence of technical signals, on-chain dynamics, and renewed institutional interest suggests the path to a larger upside remains intact for now. With long-term support holding and supply-side pressures easing, analysts see a potential breakout that could push ETH toward the high three- or even four-figure thousands, should the fractal patterns of prior cycles repeat.

Key takeaways

• ETH’s current bounce sits atop a long-standing ascending trendline that has historically marked macro bottoms, with a weekly MACD cross now confirmed and RSI recovering from oversold territory.
• On-chain data indicate a tightening supply dynamic as accumulation ramps up and exchange outflows intensify, signaling a structural shift that could absorb liquidity and support higher prices.
• Institutional demand is re-emerging, evidenced by a rising Coinbase premium for ETH and sustained inflows into spot ETH ETFs after a period of dormancy.
• Demand is broadening across markets, with strong futures activity on Binance and large holders increasing their ETH stockpiles, underscoring a renewed interest from professional buyers.

Fractal setup hints at a much larger ETH rally

Analysts are watching a chart pattern that mirrors prior cycles in which ETH surged from similar structural baselines. Ether has been tracing a bounce off a multi-year trendline that has historically functioned as a macro-price bottom. When these patterns previously aligned with bullish momentum, April 2025 and mid-2022 saw ETH rally roughly 260% and 130% from their respective lows, respectively.

Crypto trader CryptoJack highlighted the ongoing trend, noting that the asset is “holding a long-term ascending trendline support” and asking whether history could repeat itself. On-chain and technical indicators reinforce the optimism: the weekly MACD has turned bullish, a signal that has preceded notable upside moves in ETH’s recent history. Ash Crypto echoed this sentiment, pointing out that the last two times this MACD configuration appeared, ETH advanced by 183% and 75% respectively. The implication is that a bullish setup is not merely a local rebound but a potential pivot toward a much larger rally.

The combination of a constructive chart geometry with improving momentum signals—alongside a recovery in the weekly RSI from levels associated with macro lows—strengthens the case for a meaningful upside swing if the fractal plays out. If the pattern holds, the potential upside could place ETH in a broad corridor between roughly $3,000 and $6,300, depending on how liquidity and demand evolve in the coming weeks. Traders are watching whether the same structural footholds that supported prior rallies will again act as launchpads for a renewed bull run.

On-chain dynamics point to a supply squeeze

Beyond charts, Ethereum’s on-chain metrics are painting a clearer picture of supply-side dynamics tilting toward bullishness. A notable shift is evident in the balance between accumulation and selling pressure on exchanges. The Binance ERC-20 Stablecoin Whale Activity Index shows a widening gap between daily accumulation addresses and exchange depositing addresses. In recent readings, accumulation addresses rose to 2,434, while deposit addresses declined to 2,300, signaling that larger holders are building positions rather than preparing to dump.

Analyst GugaOnChain, in a CryptoQuant QuickTake analysis, described this shift as a “supply shock underway.” The argument is straightforward: if more addresses are accumulating ETH or transferring it into cold storage and diversified vehicles, while fewer addresses are poised to sell, the immediate liquidity available to sellers tightens. This dynamic historically precedes more pronounced upward price moves when buying demand from long-term holders and institutions remains robust.

Confirmation of tightening supply also comes from exchange flow data. Glassnode’s latest figures show a substantial outflow from ETH reserves on exchanges, with the net position change over the past 30 days dipping by about 1.4 million ETH as of April 2—the largest such spike in seven months. The current net position change hovers around a negative 351,300 ETH (30 days), underscoring a trend where tokens move off exchanges and into custody or yield-generating vehicles rather than to be sold into the market.

Such outflows are typically interpreted as favorable for price in the near term, particularly when accompanied by rising accumulation. The narrative is that demand from a broader community—ranging from high-net-worth holders to structured investment products—outpaces immediate selling pressure, allowing price discovery to tilt higher even in the absence of a broad retail surge. When combined with improving sentiment across markets, the “supply squeeze” thesis gains further traction.

Institutional demand re-emerges across demand channels

Fundamentally, what happens with ETH over the next few weeks may hinge on how institutional demand evolves. A notable indicator in favor of stronger demand is the Coinbase premium for ETH, which measures the price gap between ETH/USD on Coinbase and Binance. This metric flipped into positive territory on April 4 and rose to roughly 0.055 by April 14, its highest level since October 2025. The premium has since moderated but remains above the level seen during the most risk-averse phases of last year, signaling renewed buying interest from institutions, particularly in the United States, according to CryptoQuant data.

On the futures side, derivatives volumes have been supportive in recent days. Cointelegraph notes that ETH futures on Binance rose to near a two-month high, with buy-taker volume surpassing $5 billion as aggressive buyers re-entered the scene. This activity, alongside rising spot demand, can help to underpin a broader price move if backed by durable hedging and risk-taking by professional participants.

Spot market demand has also strengthened via exchange inflows. Over a streak of 10 consecutive days, spot Ethereum ETFs recorded net inflows totaling about $590 million—the longest inflow run since December 2024. That inflow burst occurred alongside a near-quadruple-digit rally in late 2024, illustrating how ETF activity can catalyze and sustain upside momentum when institutional appetite returns in earnest.

In another sign of institutional footing, Bitmine Immersion Technologies—the largest public holder of ETH—pired its exposure higher with a purchase of 101,627 ETH in a recent run. The move underscores renewed appetite for ETH among large-scale investors and reinforces the view that institutional demand remains a meaningful driver of price formation as markets digest macro risk and the evolving landscape of on-chain activity.

What to watch next

If the current blend of favorable technical signals, supply dynamics, and institutional demand persists, Ethereum could transition from a rebound to a sustained up-leg. The key watchpoints are the durability of the on-chain supply squeeze, the trajectory of the Coinbase premium, and the pace of ETF inflows—each acting as a proxy for whether new demand can outstrip any transient selling pressure.

Traders will also be paying attention to broader macro catalysts and regulatory developments that could influence liquidity and risk appetite in the crypto space. While the path to $6,000 or beyond seems ambitious, a continued flow of buying interest from institutions, steady ETF inflows, and a persistent reduction in near-term selling pressure would be necessary to sustain such a run.

As ever, readers should monitor whether the fractal pattern observed in prior cycles repeats under similar market conditions and whether the on-chain tightening persists in the face of macro volatility. The next few weeks will reveal whether ETH can translate its improving internal momentum into a durable breakout or whether the current setup merely marks another intermediate phase in a longer, more complex cycle.

Bitcoin (BTC) eased from a brief run of near three-month highs on Thursday as traders shifted focus to the weekly close and the broader macro backdrop. After punching higher earlier in the week, the flagship crypto retraced toward the mid-to-upper $70,000s, with the market eyeing whether the next weekly candle can sustain the ascent or mark a pause before the next leg.

Trading data pointed to BTC/USD hovering around $77,200 ahead of the U.S. session, following a surge to around $79,500 the day prior. The $80,000 level remained a stubborn hurdle, keeping a decisive breakout out of reach for now. In this context, the weekly close looms large, serving as a potential referendum on whether the rally has enough momentum to break into a new phase or whether liquidity needs another catalyst before meaningful upside ensues.

Key takeaways

• BTC/USD retraced after trading near multi-month highs, slipping to about $77,200 before the New York open, with intraday peaks around $79,500 and a stubborn barrier near $80,000.
• The weekly candle close takes on heightened importance as traders gauge whether upside momentum can be sustained beyond a short-term liquidity pullback.
• The bull market support band—defined by the 21-week EMA and the 20-week SMA—has re-emerged as a focal point after a six-month absence from strong support, with traders watching for a sustained move back above this zone.
• Macro drivers remain in focus, with the Federal Reserve’s next policy decision and oil prices cited as key catalysts. CME’s FedWatch Tool points to a very low probability of an imminent policy change, while oil’s trajectory could influence inflation expectations and risk appetite.

Reasserting the bull market band: a technical crosshair reappears

Market technicians highlighted the return of Bitcoin’s bull market support band, a price corridor formed by the 21-week exponential moving average and the 20-week simple moving average. This band previously provided a cushion for Bitcoin during prior upswings but fell away as the market challenged new highs earlier this year. In the latest cycle, observers noted that BTC has again flirted with reclaiming the band, signaling a potential shift in the longer-term technical landscape.

“Bitcoin is attempting to break back above the bull market support band,” commented a trader tracking the charts. The focus now shifts to the weekly close, with several analysts noting that Bitcoin has not traded above this band since October 2025. A sustained move above the band could be interpreted as renewed demand and a possible confirmation of a broader uptrend, while a failure to hold could invite renewed caution among risk markets.

In this context, sentiment hinges on how the weekly candle closes, rather than a single daily print. The pattern underscores the ongoing tension between near-term price action and longer-term structural levels that have historically helped define the market’s trajectory.

Macro catalysts in view: policy, oil, and the path ahead

The immediate calendar offers limited volatility from macro headlines, but the coming week is expected to bring a fresh wave of U.S. inflation data and the Federal Reserve’s policy decision. Market participants have largely priced in a steady stance from the Fed, with tools tracking percentage chances of a rate move pointing to a negligible probability of policy change at the next meeting.

As noted by market observers, the “oil and policy” dynamic remains a principal driver. Oil’s trajectory—whether it remains below a critical threshold or breaches higher—can influence both inflation expectations and the risk appetite across asset classes, including crypto. A vendor note from QCP Capital summed up the sentiment: “The cleanest tells from here are still oil and policy. Oil below $100 would support the relief case, while clearer Fed signalling would help compress the policy premium.”

Meanwhile, traders and analysts continue to weigh the persistence of macro headwinds against the potential for a softer inflation backdrop to unlock policy accommodation later in the cycle. The balance between geopolitical risk, energy prices, and macro cooling will likely shape BTC’s trajectory in the weeks ahead.

What this means for traders and investors

For market participants, the key takeaway is the careful watch on the weekly close as a potential inflection point. If Bitcoin can sustain above the bull market band and close the week with strength, it could lay the groundwork for renewed upside momentum. Conversely, a rejection at these levels or a downside break could signal renewed consolidation risk or a retest of nearby support zones.

From a risk-management perspective, the coming data prints and the Fed’s stance will be critical. A clear shift in policy expectations or a decisive signal on inflation could recalibrate risk premia across markets, including crypto, potentially amplifying volatility around price levels that have historically been pivotal for trend direction.

Investors should also monitor liquidity dynamics around major milestones. As traders have observed in prior cycles, price moves that “take out highs” without immediate follow-through may indicate liquidity is being reallocated toward larger positions, which could translate into sharper moves once buyers decide to step in. In this context, the next weekly close and the alignment (or misalignment) with the bull market band will be important barometers of where Bitcoin’s trend stands as the market navigates a still-uncertain macro environment.

This article is provided in accordance with editorial guidelines and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consider their risk tolerance before engaging in crypto markets.

Looking ahead, market watchers will be keen to see whether the weekly close confirms the reestablishment of the bull market band as a structural support zone and how the macro backdrop evolves with Fed expectations and energy prices. The coming days should offer clearer signals on Bitcoin’s longer-term direction as traders weigh technical signals against the evolving macro narrative.

Until last Friday, April 17, lending stablecoins into Aave, widely considered the gold standard of DeFi, paid 2.32% APY. The Federal Reserve’s overnight rate was 3.64%. Taken at face value, the market was pricing an unregulated, open-source smart contract as a lower credit risk than the United States Treasury.

In 48 hours, that ended. The market did in real time what no regulator, auditor, or commentator had managed to do: it repriced DeFi credit risk.

The mispricing

Rank the dollar-credit options by yield before last weekend, and the hierarchy made no sense. Treasury overnight: 3.64%. Ledn’s investment-grade Bitcoin-backed ABS senior tranche, priced in February at BBB-: 6.84%. Strategy’s STRC perpetual preferred: 11.50%. U.S. credit cards: 21% against a 4% default rate. And Aave, sitting well below it all: 2.32%.

Something had to give. Luca Prosperi argued earlier this year that DeFi stablecoin rates should carry a 250–400 basis-point premium over the risk-free rate, implying 6.15–7.76%. The Bank of Canada’s April 2nd report took the opposite view, citing Aave’s 0.00% non-performing loan rate as proof that DeFi’s architecture delivers defaultless lending through strict collateral requirements and price-based enforcement.So what does this all mean? Either DeFi had solved credit risk, or the market had stopped pricing it.

Only one side could be right. Last weekend, we found out which.

The 1/1 problem

On April 18th, an attacker exploited Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered cross-chain bridge to mint roughly 116,500 unbacked rsETH tokens — about 18% of the circulating supply, worth around $292 million. The synthetic tokens were moved into Aave as collateral. The attacker borrowed an estimated $190–230 million of real assets against collateral that, when it mattered, didn’t exist. Aave’s incident report acknowledged the protocol functioned as designed; the shortfall is structural, not technical. Kelp and LayerZero have since publicly blamed one another for the 1/1 validator configuration that made the exploit trivial.

The contagion was instant. DeFi protocols are interoperable by design, and “looping” — borrowing on one platform and redepositing the proceeds as collateral on another — means a hit to Aave is a hit to everything built on top of Aave. Roughly 20% of Aave’s historical borrow volume has come from recursive leverage. Within 48 hours, $6–10 billion in net outflows left Aave. Utilization on WETH, USDT, and USDC pools hit 100%. Depositors couldn’t withdraw. Borrowers couldn’t source stablecoin liquidity. Stranded users borrowed another $300 million against their own locked stablecoin deposits at 75% LTV, often at a loss, just to access cash.

Rates responded accordingly. Aave stablecoin deposit APYs went from 3–6% pre-exploit to 13.4% within two days. Morpho’s USDC vault, which powers Coinbase’s consumer loan product, jumped from 4.4% APR on April 18th to 10.81% the next day as the liquidity scramble rippled outward. Total DeFi TVL across the top 20 chains fell by more than $13 billion.

No bankruptcy, no court, no recourse

Here is the part that won’t make headlines, and that allocators need to understand.

There is no bankruptcy law inside a DeFi protocol. If you withdraw first, you keep everything. If you are among the last, you don’t — and you may absorb a disproportionate share of the losses. Regulated lenders have a legal duty to halt operations the moment they realize they cannot cover liabilities, and bankruptcy courts can claw back from parties who benefited unfairly. The Celsius, BlockFi and FTX wind-downs were grueling, but creditors recovered assets, and the people responsible faced a judge.

In DeFi, there is no process. There is no court. There is no recovery. There is no one to hold accountable.

That has direct consequences for risk sizing. If you can estimate the total loss but cannot predict how it will be distributed, you cannot estimate your own exposure. It may be zero. It may be everything. It depends on how fast you moved, and on how fast the people next to you moved.

What happens next

DeFi is not going away. The architecture has real utility, and permissionless markets have always existed — across every asset class and in every era. But they have never been risk-free, and they have always carried a premium over their regulated equivalents. The 48 hours following the April 17 incident reminded the market that the same rule applies onchain.

Institutional allocators sizing DeFi exposure for the coming year should take the signal seriously. The 2.32% Aave APR before last weekend did not reflect the underlying risk, and the market has now adjusted. Where DeFi rates settle from here is for the market to decide. But the mispricing is over. Last weekend proved it.

Reppo landed a $20m strategic commitment from Bolts Capital to scale its prediction market protocol and “Datanets,” aiming to turn staked human judgment into high‑quality AI training data.

Decentralized prediction market network Reppo has secured a $20,000,000 strategic investment commitment from Bolts Capital to back the next phase of its protocol development and ecosystem growth, the Reppo Foundation said on April 23.

The foundation said the funding will also be used “to promote the use of prediction markets to solve the training data bottleneck issue,” positioning Reppo at the intersection of crypto-native market design and AI infrastructure.

Bolts Capital’s commitment is structured as a strategic investment, underscoring that this is not just balance-sheet capital but a longer-term wager on Reppo’s core thesis and the wider prediction-market-as-data narrative.

Turning human judgment into AI training data

Reppo’s central idea is to convert human judgment into verifiable, incentivized data streams using prediction market mechanisms, rather than relying solely on traditional data-labeling pipelines.

According to the project, this design directly targets “the current challenges in acquiring high-quality data for AI training,” where noisy, biased, or low-signal datasets can cap model performance even as compute scales.

By forcing participants to stake capital on their beliefs and be financially accountable for being wrong, prediction markets can, in theory, produce sharper probability estimates and richer behavioral signals than conventional surveys or annotation tasks.

Building decentralized Datanets for models

Reppo says its protocol supports multimodal data processing, spanning text, images, audio, and video, all organized through decentralized data networks it calls “Datanets.”

These Datanets are pitched as infrastructure for model training, evaluation, and fine-tuning, effectively turning a prediction market layer into a continuous source of scored, time-stamped, and incentive-aligned data.

The $20,000,000 commitment is meant to accelerate both protocol development and ecosystem expansion around these Datanets, from new prediction-market primitives to tooling for AI teams that want to plug Reppo-derived data into their pipelines.

If Reppo can prove that markets can reliably generate better training and evaluation data than conventional labeling shops, Bolts Capital’s bet could mark an early, high-conviction signal that crypto prediction markets are maturing from speculative casinos into critical plumbing for AI development.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) celebrates its fifth birthday today. Unfortunately, celebrations have been a little muted.

The project’s once massive pool of high-profile celebrity supporters that included the likes of Paris Hilton,, Mark Cuban, and Jimmy Fallon, has dwindled, and online interest has cratered.   

Indeed, searching Google Trends for the term “Bored Ape Yacht Club” reveals that interest in the company is 97 times lower than it was during the NFT frenzy of 2022. 

During the height of NFT and Bored Ape Mania, the likes of Snoop Dogg and Eminem promoted the project and the short-lived metaverse fad onstage at various times. 

Eminem at least put his money where his mouth is, reportedly buying an Ape for roughly $462,000. Unfortunately, top offers for the same NFT are now sitting at around 8.83 ether (ETH), or $20,000.

Eminem hasn’t posted anything about NFTs or BAYC on his X account since 2022.

Snoop, also spent big, paying $366,000 for four Apes back in 2021. However, the top offers for these four NFTs are worth just shy of $28,000.

And while he’s maintained some support for the floundering project, his enthusiasm seems to have waned. Despite calling it a “cultural juggernaut” at the time, he’s posted very little about the project on X since 2022.  

Read more: Yuga Labs directs royalties to bankrupt FTX US

Celebrities aren’t talking about Bored Ape Yacht Club anymore

While Snoop Dogg has continued to mention BAYC from time to time, he now appears to be using it as more of an attention getter for other projects than anything else.

For example, a trip arranged by BAYC for holders to visit Snoop’s compound to celebrate 4/20 ended up being just a promotional stunt for his family’s ice cream brand, Dr Bombay — named after his Ape — which hasn’t posted on X in years.

While Snoop was briefly present at the event, and there was little to no BAYC-themed promotion from him on social media, save for a shoddy AI-generated video of his Ape and a single repost of an old image. 

Other celebrities such as, Justin Bieber, Serena Williams, Neymar Jr, Post Malone, DJ Khaled, Paris Hilton, Mark Cuban, and Jimmy Fallon have all supported the BAYC brand. 

Canadian pop elf Bieber paid roughly $1.3 million for his very own Ape in 2021. Its current top offer is roughly $19,000 and he’s seemingly not happy, having posted nothing at all about BAYC or NFTs. 

Brazilian footballer Neymar Jr. spent over $1.1 million on two APES in 2022, however these are now worth somewhere in the region of $57,000.

Surprise surprise, Neymar hasn’t posted about NFTs or BAYC since 2022. 

Talk show host Fallon spent $224,000 buying an Ape in 2021 but its value has since slid to just $19,000.

He hasn’t talked about it on X since. 

DJ Khaled, Paris Hilton, Mark Cuban, and Serena Williams have all neglected to mention BAYC since 2022 on X while Post Malone brings up no results for either NFTs or BAYC.

Perhaps worst of all, none of these celebrities wished BAYC a happy birthday today. 

XRP is grinding in the mid‑$1.40s, trapped between stubborn resistance and strong support as fresh “digital commodity” clarity, ETF rails and April seasonality fight flat flows.

XRP (XRP) is still down roughly 60% from its 2018 all‑time high near $3.65, even after a strong bounce off the low‑$1 area earlier this year. April is historically XRP’s best month, with average returns above 20%, and 2026 is already one of its strongest April performances since 2025, driven by renewed regulatory clarity and an altcoin rotation bid. The SEC’s decision to fully drop its lawsuit against Ripple resets the narrative: the token moves from “regulatory orphan” back to credible settlement rail, which institutions actually model in their payment stacks.

XRP market structure and history

Spot XRP is currently trading around 1.42–1.45, with most short‑term models clustering April fair value between 1.40 and 1.63. Price is compressing in a range where 1.30–1.35 acts as major support and 1.50–1.52 caps upside; above that, 1.70–1.80 opens quickly, with thin historical resistance until the high‑$1.70s. On daily charts, XRP is trading above short‑term SMAs (3–50 day) but still below the 100–200 day averages, which remain a drag; this is classic mid‑cycle repair, not euphoric blow‑off.

Volume tells the real story. Open interest in XRP derivatives is currently far below 2025 peaks and ETF flows have cooled from hundreds of millions a week to low single‑digit millions, even registering net outflows in March. Yet social sentiment is perversely strong: XRP carries one of the best positive‑to‑negative mention ratios among majors, even as price underperforms. That is exactly the kind of positioning that produces violent squeezes when a catalyst finally hits.

Recent headlines matter:

• Ripple is currently leaning into the “institutional rails” pitch, with at least a quarter of surveyed big allocators planning to add XRP exposure in 2026.
• A joint SEC–CFTC release is now classifying XRP as a digital commodity, with the CLARITY Act markup sitting in the near‑term pipeline.
• ETFs tied to XRP, including leveraged products, are already live and giving traditional funds cleaner access.

Base case: XRP is currently trading in an accumulation band; I expect a grind higher into the 1.65–1.80 zone as regulatory headlines crystallize and ETF outflows stabilize. That implies roughly 15–25% upside from here, with volatility compressing first, then expanding on a clean break of 1.50–1.52 on rising volume.

Bear case: a failed breakout above 1.50 that rejects back into the range and loses 1.30 support sends XRP toward 1.15–1.20, where there is stronger historical holder density. In that scenario, leveraged longs get rinsed, and April’s “seasonality edge” dies right there.

Moon‑boy case: structurally possible, not yet probable. The 3–5 region some analysts tout would require a synchronized risk‑on regime, BTC making new highs, and a second wave of ETF inflows as banks roll out real XRP‑based payment products. I am currently treating that as an option, not a forecast.