Trading in tokenized versions of traditional assets surged in the first quarter, with perpetual swaps tied to commodities and equities drawing billions in weekly volume and bringing 24/7 activity to a wider range of markets.

Weekly trading volume of such assets jumped to $30.7 billion, or 1.72% of the total crypto derivatives market, by end-March, crypto exchange BitMEX, said in a report published Thursday. That’s up from 0.03% in December, according to the exchange, which invented the tools in 2014.

Commodities powered the rise. Contracts linked to silver, gold and crude oil saw sharp gains as price swings and geopolitical tension fueled demand. Oil trading alone climbed to $6.9 billion in weekly volume after the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran started Feb. 28, prompting a surge in round-the-clock oil trading volumes.

While commodities saw a 65,000% jump in volume during the quarter, there’s context to the figure. Precious metals saw a historic rally at the beginning of the year, with silver topping $100 per ounce for the first time and gold rising nearly 24%, before both gave back nearly all of the gains.

Equities saw a similar breakout. Perpetual swaps tied to stocks grew 908% over the quarter to roughly $4.9 billion in weekly volume, BitMEX found.

At its peak during the February metals rally, total weekly volume across perpetuals tied to traditional investments hit $54.5 billion.

The price of oil started surging at the outbreak of hostilities with Iran, given the country’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil flows.

Perpetual swaps differ from traditional futures contracts by removing expiry dates. Instead, they use a funding rate, a periodic payment between long and short holders, to keep prices aligned with the underlying assets, allowing the instruments to trade round-the-clock with no expiry.

That permanent access to traditional financial markets is what’s driving the growth of tokenized perpetual swaps, BitMEX noted. The current macroeconomic volatility has served as a catalyst to boost volumes, and exchanges have capitalized by launching TradFi perpetuals.

The AI healthcare pivot inside the OpenAI Foundation became concrete this week as the organization announced it is finalizing more than $100 million in Alzheimer’s research grants this month across six research institutions, making the disease the first major target of what the Foundation has committed to as at least $1 billion in 2026 grantmaking.

The OpenAI Foundation’s Alzheimer’s page frames the disease plainly: “Alzheimer’s is one of the hardest and most heartbreaking diseases families face — and one of the toughest problems in medicine.”

Wait, that quote contains an em dash. Let me use the quote without the dash:

The OpenAI Foundation’s Alzheimer’s page describes the disease as “one of the hardest and most heartbreaking diseases families face.” The Foundation’s approach is pragmatic rather than speculative. Rather than developing new compounds from scratch, the grants prioritize repurposing existing FDA-approved molecules, a lower-risk strategy that shortens the path from discovery to patient access. Over 100 Alzheimer’s drugs have failed in clinical trials since 2000. The Foundation’s position is that AI’s ability to reason across complex, heterogeneous biological datasets can surface mechanisms and biomarkers that conventional research has repeatedly missed. Grantee institutions include UCSF and the UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design.

The UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design has already used AI-driven protein design models to engineer molecules that engage, modify, and degrade targets critical to Alzheimer’s disease progression. The Foundation describes this as the beginning of a collaborative pipeline, with the goal of validating AI-designed molecules in cells, tissues, and animals before advancing to clinical testing. The biomarker focus is equally significant. The recent approval of the first Alzheimer’s blood test created a new tool for assessing a patient’s condition without invasive procedures. The Foundation is funding work to expand that toolkit, making it possible to measure a drug’s effect on disease progression in clinical trials and to identify high-risk patients earlier.

Why This Represents a Structural Shift in OpenAI’s Mission

The scale gap is the most striking number in this announcement. The OpenAI Foundation granted $7.6 million in all of 2024. The Alzheimer’s grants alone exceed that by a factor of 13. The $1 billion 2026 target is 130 times larger than last year’s total. This is the activation of a dormant philanthropic vehicle using capital from the company’s recapitalization. The Foundation’s Executive Director role remains unfilled, meaning Trefethen and the life sciences team are building programs at this scale without a fully constituted leadership team in place.

What the Investment Signals for AI in Science

As crypto.news has reported, the credibility of frontier AI companies’ stated missions, including OpenAI’s, is directly tracked by institutional investors and markets watching the AI infrastructure buildout. As crypto.news has noted, OpenAI’s capital and talent decisions in 2025 and 2026 have had direct market effects on AI-adjacent crypto assets and broader perceptions of the AI sector’s long-term trajectory. The Foundation expects to make further Alzheimer’s grants throughout 2026 and is actively seeking to expand partnerships to additional scientists and research institutions.

Binance has added a prediction markets feature to its Binance Wallet, giving users a way to trade on the likelihood of real-world events without leaving the app.

The rolloaut connects Binance Wallet to Predict.fun, a decentralized platform built on BNB Smart Chain and it isn’t supported in every region in which the exchange operates. The platform was built by a former Binance employee and lets users earn yield while positions remain open.

Prediction markets let users buy shares tied to outcomes such as election results, sports matches or economic data releases and have seen their popularity explode. Prices range from $0.01 to $0.99 and reflect crowd estimates of probability.

Users can now place trades using funds already held in Binance spot or funding accounts. It also removes blockchain transaction fees by covering gas costs, a step that could lower the barrier for retail users.

Binance said the feature runs through a keyless wallet system, which splits control of private keys to reduce single points of failure. Users must create a separate prediction account to access the service.

The company does not operate the markets directly or act as a counterparty, it said. Instead, it provides access to a third-party application.

The move comes following prediction markets’ monthly trading volumes surging 200-fold in the last two years from less than $100 million to more than $20 billion, according to TokenTerminal data.

Prediction markets are currently dominated by Polymarket and Kalshi, which together capture more than 97% of the market and have been growing steadily while gaining institutional backing. Kalshi recently secured $1 billion in funding at an $11 billion valuation, and Polymarket seeing up to $2 billion in commitments from the owner of the New York Stock Exchange.

Data shows Bitcoin (BTC) investors who had held their positions for over seven years took profit last week by selling $271 million in BTC.

A similar wave of “OG whale” selling in January coincided with a more fragile market that lacked buyer demand, triggering a sharp dip in the BTC price. Current onchain data reflects a much stronger market where BTC supply absorption and reduced selling may allow Bitcoin to hold its place in the $70,000-$72,000 range.

OG Whale BTC supply meets strong absorption

Data from Capriole Investments shows that the Bitcoin “OG whale spent value” moved roughly $271 million on Sunday. That marks the largest surge in activity for this cohort since Jan. 10, when a $280 million outflow spike preceded a 13% correction to $78,700 from $90,000 within two weeks.

While the whale movement may raise concerns among investors, this activity historically aligns with measured profit-taking rather than with chaotic selling.

Glassnode suggests a stronger absorption capacity from other holders. Data show that the 30-day net position change for long-term holders remained positive at 88,000 BTC on April 9. This follows a reversal from deeply negative flows of -152,000 BTC recorded in February, easing the prior overhead supply pressure.

The accumulating cohorts also continued to expand their holdings. Cointelegraph reported that the total balance exceeded 4.3 million BTC on Tuesday, rising further to 4.5 million on Thursday.

This indicates a sustained transfer of coins into stronger hands, reducing the impact of selling from older wallets. 

Related: Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ETF trails BlackRock with $30M in first-day inflows

Bitcoin “stress cycle” has not reversed yet, says analyst

CryptoQuant analyst MorenoDV highlighted two key indicators shaping the current BTC positioning. The short-term Sharpe Ratio has dropped to -40, a level historically associated with major accumulation phases in 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2023.

At the same time, the buy-and-sell pressure delta (30) indicates a completed capitulation phase, marked by intense sell pressure below -0.05. The metric is now moving toward neutral territory, signaling that forced selling has eased while demand gradually rebuilds.

Past cycles show that the highest asymmetry emerges once the delta re-enters clear buy-pressure zones. The current readings sit between exhaustion and confirmed demand recovery.

The analyst noted that the macro conditions and liquidity flows continue to shape the pace of this transition, adding, 

“For investors with a cycle-aware framework, the data suggests we are closer to the beginning of an opportunity than the end of one.”

Related: Bitcoin price surfs US PCE inflation as trader keeps $80K BTC price target