A pseudonymous researcher has posted a suspicious trade by a collection of Hyperliquid wallets that some crypto traders suspect of having a special relationship with Robinhood.

Continuing a pattern of curious trades, the “insider” opened a prescient short on Hyperliquid’s HOOD perpetual futures contracts — crypto derivatives that mimic the price of Robinhood’s common stock — mere hours before Robinhood’s scheduled first-quarter earnings release. 

After its disappointing earnings, shares of Robinhood’s stock fell sharply yesterday evening, rewarding the traders’ leveraged short in after-hours trading.

The trader(s) at the center of the allegations are wallets ending in 177D, bc7b, acf9, and their various sockpuppets. They first transacted on July 16, 2025, and have gained attention from various Hyperliquid commentators.

Critics claim that the trader gained advance knowledge of Robinhood’s earnings results this week, secretly opening a directional bet against the stock via crypto exchanges to avoid actual stock short-sales that might have exposed them to greater regulatory scrutiny.

Robinhood trading correlation versus causation

Thoroughly convinced of the accusation that correlation equals causation, a researcher posted a thread about wallets that were funded by Robinhood withdrawals that subsequently traded on Hyperliquid and MEXC wallets ahead of Robinhood-related listing announcements.

Even though funds for some of the wallets trace to Coinbase, the researcher emphasized Robinhood-derived withdrawals and Robinhood-related news to allege the “insider” and even “employee” frame which is now circulating on social media.

However, correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation, and the bridge between suspicious trading and wallets actually belonging to a Robinhood employee relies on thin evidence.

As fully expected by markets, the U.S. Federal Reserve held its benchmark fed funds rate range steady at 3.50%-3.75% on Wednesday, marking the fourth straight meeting without a change as officials weigh persistent inflation risks against signs of slowing economic growth.

“In considering the extent and timing of additional adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will carefully assess incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks,” said the Fed in its policy statement.

There were four dissents to the rate decision, one dovish and three hawkish. Fed Governor Stephen Mirran preferred trimming rates by 25 basis points, while Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari, and Lorie Logan wanted to hold rates steady while removing any easing bias.

Under pressure ahead of the news, bitcoin BTC$75,529.00 remained about 0.5% lower over the past 24 hours, trading just below $76,000. U.S. stocks continued with modest declines, the Nasdaq down 0.35%. Yields are shooting higher, the two-year Treasury up 9 basis points to 3.93% and the 10-year up 5 basis points to 4.40%.

Today’s central bank meeting is likely to be the last to be presided over by Jerome Powell, whose term as chairman ends on May 15. His replacement, Kevin Warsh, passed a Senate Banking Committee vote earlier Wednesday, putting him on track to take over as Powell steps down. The three hawkish dissents suggest that Warsh will have a difficult task to push through rate cuts even if that is the direction he would like to go.

Attention will next turn to Powell’s post-meeting press conference as traders look for clues on the path forward for monetary policy.

After pulling back sharply earlier this month amid hopes for a lasting peace between the U.S. and Iran, oil prices have rebounded to near their post-war highs, with WTI crude trading just shy of $105 per barrel.

Higher energy costs naturally feed through to headline inflation numbers, but they can also slow economic activity. It puts the U.S. central bank in a difficult position: which of its mandates — prices or economic growth — should it prioritize?

Meta (META), the social media giant behind Facebook and Instagram, has started to offer stablecoin payout to creators, signaling a return to crypto-powered payments years after shelving its Libra project.

The feature is currently available to a limited group of creators in Colombia and the Philippines, according to a Meta website. Eligible users can link a crypto wallet and receive payouts in Circle’s USDC token on the Solana or Polygon blockchain networks.

The service is supported by payments firm Stripe, which will provide crypto-related reporting for users. Creators may receive tax documents from both Meta and Stripe tied to their earnings and digital asset transactions. A Stripe spokesperson confirmed the company’s involvement.

The news comes after Meta sought the help of third-party vendors to administer stablecoin payments on its platforms, with Stripe among the leading contenders for the integration, CoinDesk reported in February.

The move puts Meta, with over 3 billion users across its social media platforms globally, among the largest tech firms experimenting with stablecoins for real-world payments, using blockchain rails to move money globally to users without relying on traditional banking systems. Stablecoins — cryptocurrencies whose prices are tied to fiat currencies — are increasingly viewed as a faster and cheaper payment method. Visa, for example, reported that it’s stablecoin settlement network hit $7 billion in annualized transaction volume, growing 50% in a quarter.

The initiative marks Meta’s return to stablecoins after it attempted to introduce the Libra token, later renamed Diem, only to shut down the project amid regulatory scrutiny in 2022.

Read more: Stripe doubles down on blockchain and stablecoins, aiming to become ‘AWS for money’

Bitcoin is trading at $75,282 as of Wednesday afternoon, down 1.2% over 24 hours and 4.4% on the week, as crypto markets extended losses following the Federal Reserve’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged.

Ether fell harder, changing hands at $2,225 after a 2.8% daily drop and 7.3% weekly loss. Solana dropped 2.1% to $82, XRP fell 2% to $1.35, and BNB shed 1.8% to $612. Dogecoin was the lone green name in the top 10, up 2.2%.

The total crypto market cap fell to $2.6 trillion, down 1.4% on the day, with Bitcoin dominance at 58%, according to CoinGecko.

Contentious Decision

The FOMC kept the federal funds target range at 3.50% to 3.75%, but the vote split 8-4, the most contested decision since October 1992. Governor Stephen Miran dissented in favor of a 25 basis point cut, while regional presidents Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari, and Lorie Logan opposed the easing-bias language in the statement, per CNBC.

In their post-meeting statement, the committee acknowledged that “Inflation is elevated, in part reflecting the recent increase in global energy prices.” CME FedWatch is now pricing no further cuts through the rest of 2026, a hawkish repricing from the dot plot delivered in March.

The meeting was widely viewed as Chair Jerome Powell’s last, with the Senate Banking Committee earlier in the day advancing Kevin Warsh’s nomination as next chair on a party-line vote. JPMorgan Asset Management chief global strategist David Kelly told CNBC that the pattern of dissent amounted to “a renewed declaration of independence” and “a shot across the bow at Kevin Warsh.”

ETF Flows

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs logged $89.68 million in net outflows on Tuesday, bringing the two-day total to roughly $353 million, according to SoSoValue data.

The reversal snapped a nine-session inflow streak that had pulled in over $2.1 billion for the Bitcoin ETF complex.

Spot Ether ETFs extended their own losing streak with $21.8 million in net outflows on Tuesday. Their two-day total now exceeds $36 million in outflows after a 10-day inflow streak that delivered more than $633 million.

Strategy Keeps Buying

Despite the ETF reversal, Strategy continues to accumulate. Michael Saylor’s firm disclosed in an April 27 8-K that it bought 3,273 BTC for $255 million between April 20 and April 26 at an average price of $77,906, lifting total holdings to 818,334 BTC. The purchase was funded entirely through the company’s at-the-market common stock program, with no preferred issuance during the period.

With BTC now under $76,000, Strategy’s $75,537 average cost basis is once again within striking distance of unrealized losses.

A $59 million RLUSD settlement was completed on the XRP Ledger on April 29 at a total transaction fee of $0.000188, cited by on-chain researcher Ripple Bull Winkle as live proof that Ripple’s payment network is already handling large-scale cross-border settlements in production.

RLUSD settlement of $59 million was completed on the XRP Ledger on April 29, settling with a fee of just $0.000188, according to on-chain researcher Ripple Bull Winkle, whose findings were cited in a Coinpedia report alongside the same day’s NYSE Arca filing naming XRP as an eligible commodity trust asset. The transaction is notable not because large XRP Ledger transactions are new but because $59 million at sub-penny cost represents exactly the institutional settlement use case Ripple has promoted as RLUSD’s primary function: a tool for corporate treasury operations, cross-border settlements, and on/off-ramp flows where the cost and speed profile of SWIFT rails is structurally inferior.

RLUSD Settlement Demonstrates XRP Ledger at Institutional Settlement Scale

As crypto.news reported, RLUSD was designed from the outset for enterprise-grade financial applications rather than retail stablecoin use, with Ripple explicitly targeting institutional settlement, cross-border remittances, and tokenized asset collateral as the primary deployment scenarios. The integration of RLUSD directly into Ripple Payments allows the stablecoin to flow within the same on-ramp, off-ramp, and treasury infrastructure that Ripple’s existing institutional clients, including BKK Forex and iSend, already use for daily operations. A $59 million transaction for $0.000188 in fees is operationally meaningful for any institution currently using SWIFT for the same corridor, where equivalent flows carry correspondent banking fees in the range of 0.5% to 1% of notional value plus a two-to-three-day settlement delay. The same transaction on SWIFT would carry estimated costs between $295,000 and $590,000 in total fees and would not settle until the following business week.

Why This Settlement Matters Beyond the Fee Number

As crypto.news documented, Ripple’s institutional expansion in April 2026 has been the most concentrated single-month push the company has made in its history, with the KBank proof-of-concept signed April 27, the Travelex Bank partnership reaffirmed, and the US Faster Payments Council naming Ripple a G20 payments innovator all arriving within the same two-week window as today’s $59 million settlement. A live production settlement of that size on the XRP Ledger, using RLUSD rather than XRP directly, also demonstrates that Ripple’s stablecoin strategy is functioning alongside the XRP bridge asset model rather than replacing it, consistent with what Ripple has publicly described as its dual-rail approach to institutional settlement infrastructure. As crypto.news tracked, the XRP Ledger processed $59 million in this single settlement while XRP itself remains range-bound near $1.43, suggesting that network utility is expanding faster than price discovery has absorbed it.

RLUSD launched in December 2024. Its market capitalization has since grown toward $300 million, with Ripple describing it as the settlement layer for its enterprise treasury platform offering corporate clients a unified view over fiat, RLUSD, and XRP balances in a single integration.

Las Vegas — Eric Trump took the stage at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas with a message: the asset’s best days aren’t ahead, they’re already here.

The American Bitcoin (ABTC) co-founder and chief strategy officer declared that the convergence of institutional adoption, corporate treasuries, and mainstream financial access has made this bitcoin’s most important moment to date.

“What bitcoin has done in the last six months relative to the previous three years is transformational,” said Trump. “We are in the greatest period I’ve ever seen.”

Trump pointed to major banks now offering bitcoin-backed mortgages and custody services as evidence of a Wall Street reversal. “People are not selling it. People are holding it. Bitcoin is becoming sticky,” Trump said, adding that limited supply and growing demand from both institutions and sovereign governments are compressing the market structurally.

Moderator Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst, framed the shift through the lens of the ETF market, noting that bitcoin ETFs have been among the most successful product launches in the instrument’s history, democratizing access for everyday investors in a way previously reserved for institutions.

“I’ll ride out the volatility,” said Trump. “We’ll see who wins in a 10-year period of time.”

Current Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell will continue to stay on the central bank’s board as Governor after his term ends in May.

Speaking at a press conference following the central bank’s decision to hold interest rates steady at 3.5%-3.75% on Wednesday, Powell voiced concerns about the legal action against the central bank, saying it is causing him to stay, even though he plans to keep a “low profile.”

“I worry that these attacks are battering the institution and putting at risk the thing that really matters to the public, which is the ability to conduct monetary policy without taking into consideration political factors,” Powell said.

When the administration of President Donald Trump closed its criminal investigation into Powell, it left room to revisit the case. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said the matter would stay under review by the Fed’s inspector general and warned prosecutors could reopen it if new facts emerged.

That statement, along with later remarks from President Donald Trump and his aides, raised concern that Powell could still face legal pressure. Powell said even though he wanted to leave, he had “no choice” but to stay.

Fed leave rates unchanged

The Fed’s rate hold came as expected, but the dissent from three Governors stood out, according to 21shares macro analyst Matt Mena. “The Fed’s decision to keep rates steady wasn’t the shocker, but those three dissenters calling for a strike on any easing guidance threw a bucket of ice on the market’s pivot party,” Mena said. The hawkish tone weighed on risk assets, with bitcoin BTC$75,451.60 slipping under the $75,000 support mark as traders brace for a retest of the $73,000 level.

Focus has also shifted to potential policy changes ahead. “Markets may begin to price a [Kevin] Warsh pivot that favors rate cuts, and more importantly, the imminent passage of the CLARITY Act,” Mena said, adding that if momentum returns, “the path to $85,000–$90,000 looks like a clear shot.”

Crypto has always been a risky space in which to put one’s money, but the current rate of hacks has even multi-cycle veterans spooked.

In 2026 alone, a grand total of $1.08 billion has been stolen in at least 68 incidents.

Three major thefts account for the vast majority of the losses, two of which came in April. It’s been a particularly rough month with 30 incidents so far, an average of more than one a day.

Just this past week, Protos has identified 13 individual losses, including three on the same day this article was written. Although these were mostly for lower amounts, they totaled over $11 million of losses.

In an attempt to keep readers up to date (not to mention staying on top of it ourselves!) Protos has put together a catalogue of crypto hacks; entries cover 2026 so far, generally with a $100,000 loss cut-off.

Protos’ hack tracker can be found on the Live section of our website.

Read more: LayerZero among bridges Lazarus using to launder loot

Security firms struggling to keep up with crypto hacks

Facing such an onslaught of hacks, even specialist crypto security firms seem unable to keep pace. 

Team members from crypto projects Alchemix, Trading Strategy and Yearn Finance all scolded Peckshield on Wednesday for its “reckless” alerts, which implied their products were to blame for losses from insecure third-party contracts.

Read more: Crypto security firms more concerned with social media clout than the details

Even the experts aren’t exempt from falling victim to hackers. The business development manager of CertiK, a crypto audit firm whose reputation is already somewhat shaky, took to X to warn that his Telegram account had been hijacked by scammers to spread malware using “fake meeting links.”

More hacks or greater visibility?

The advent of widespread AI use is increasingly seen as a major factor in the recent perceived uptick of hacks, especially those targeting smaller and/or older contracts.

The near-constant stream of incidents may be down to a genuine uptick in activity or simply increased visibility.

As well as AI-powered tools being used to find and exploit vulnerabilities, they increase researchers’ ability to monitor and pluck out noteworthy transactions from the background noise of blockchain data.

Either way, it’s a significant amount of the overall DeFi sector, claims Pigi Finance.

It analyzed five years of hacks and estimates that 3.37% of DeFi assets are lost in protocol exploits, per year. This excludes “bridge hacks, CEX collapses, wallet drains [and] phishing,” focusing on “pure protocol-level risk.”

But as security standards harden, especially amongst projects holding significant funds, the focus for big paydays has moved elsewhere.

Neither of April’s two monster hacks, Drift Protocol’s $280 million and Kelp DAO’s $290 million losses, were smart contract exploits.

ImmuneFi’s Mitchell Amador, analyzing a similar timeframe, says “protocol security has improved dramatically.” Despite the number of loss events decreasing, both total losses and average loss per incident are down sharply from 2022 highs.

As the largest recent losses show, the juiciest crypto hack targets now involve long term social engineering and spear-phishing, with the ultimate aim to compromise privileged machines.

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