• Bitcoin (BTC) holds above $81,000 as short-term momentum strengthens.
• Weak network growth signals cautious market participation.
• BTC faces major resistance at $89,500.

Bitcoin has climbed above $81,000, extending its monthly recovery and testing its highest trading range in roughly three months.

At press time, BTC was trading around $81,467 after gaining 5.2% over the past seven days and 17.6% over the last 30 days.

The latest move places Bitcoin in a critical technical zone, with several underlying metrics suggesting the rally is still developing under cautious conditions rather than broad market conviction.

Network activity and derivatives participation remain muted

While Bitcoin’s spot price has improved, on-chain data point to weaker user participation than during previous major rallies.

Active addresses and transaction activity have not increased at the same pace as price, signalling that retail demand remains limited.

This divergence between price and blockchain activity often suggests that current momentum is being supported more by institutional demand and large investors than by widespread organic adoption.

Notably, institutional participation through spot Bitcoin ETFs has surged, with billions in capital inflows helping stabilise prices above key support zones.

However, derivatives market participation has remained relatively restrained compared to previous breakout cycles, with lower speculative leverage and softer futures activity indicating traders are cautious.

In addition, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index currently reads 50, placing sentiment in neutral territory.

This reflects a market that is neither euphoric nor fearful, reinforcing the idea that Bitcoin’s recent strength has not yet triggered widespread speculative enthusiasm.

Technical indicators show bullish momentum

Bitcoin’s short-term technical structure remains positive, with 12 out of 23 major technical indicators leaning bullish currently.

Furthermore, BTC is trading above its 10-day, 20-day, 50-day, and 100-day exponential moving averages, which support continued bullish momentum.

However, Bitcoin remains below its long-term 200-day EMA, showing that macro resistance is still intact.

The 14-day Relative Strength Index stands at 69.5, placing BTC just below overbought territory.

While this suggests strong momentum, traders should closely watch for possible exhaustion if RSI breaks above 70 without stronger volume.

Post-halving cycle points to late-stage expansion

Bitcoin’s fourth halving took place in April 2024, reducing miner rewards to 3.125 BTC per block.

The asset is now approximately 25 months into its post-halving cycle.

Historically, this stage has often aligned with stronger price expansion, heightened volatility, and eventual cycle peaks before larger retracements.

Previous Bitcoin bull cycles reached new all-time highs roughly 1,405 to 1,477 days apart.

Based on this pattern, the current cycle may still have room for further upside, though historical trends also suggest increasing risks of correction as the cycle matures.

Short-term Bitcoin forecast remains cautiously bullish

Looking at the current market structure, the immediate resistance zone sits at $89,479.

A confirmed close above that level could open the path toward the next resistance near $90,975.

However, in case of a pullback, especially if the oversold region is reached, then the key support level sits at $75,109.

A break below $75,109 would likely weaken the bullish structure and raise the probability of deeper corrections.

Moving ahead, traders should carefully monitor the Bitcoin ETF inflows, whale accumulation, and RSI behaviour, for clearer confirmation of whether the current move can develop into a larger sustained rally.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is considering new rules that would protect some non-custodial crypto software developers from broker registration duties.

CFTC Chair Michael Selig said the agency wants to turn its March no-action position for Phantom Technologies into formal rules. The move could give wallet builders clearer treatment under U.S. derivatives laws.

Selig said the agency prefers rulemaking over one-off staff relief. Speaking on Tuesday at Consensus Miami, a conference hosted by CoinDesk, Selig said the CFTC wants to codify the Phantom position “very soon” and give firms clearer guidance.

Selig said rulemaking remains his preferred approach. He said the agency plans to move in stages, giving companies clearer direction as they build and offer software in the U.S.

The plan follows the CFTC’s March 17 no-action letter for Phantom Technologies. The agency said its Market Participants Division would not recommend enforcement against Phantom for failing to register as an introducing broker or associated person, if it meets stated conditions.

The letter covered Phantom’s plan to provide self-custodial wallet software that helps users trade with registered futures commission merchants, introducing brokers, and designated contract markets.

Phantom letter shapes wallet policy

The Phantom letter gave non-custodial wallet providers a clearer path, but it did not create a full market-wide rule. No-action relief usually applies to the facts in one request.

In related coverage by crypto.news, the Phantom decision was described as the CFTC’s first no-action letter for a self-custodial crypto wallet provider. The report noted that Phantom could help users access derivatives trading without broker registration, as long as it did not hold customer funds.

That distinction matters for developers building wallets, front ends, and trading interfaces. The CFTC appears to be drawing a line between neutral software and firms that control customer assets or act as financial middlemen.

The agency has not released the proposed rule text. Any formal rule would likely need public comment before adoption.

SEC guidance adds pressure for clear rules

The Securities and Exchange Commission has also moved toward clearer treatment for crypto interfaces. On April 13, SEC staff issued guidance on broker-dealer registration for user interfaces tied to crypto asset securities.

The SEC said the statement was an interim step while the commission reviews broader crypto market issues. It also said the statement would be withdrawn after five years unless the commission acts before then.

As featured in recent coverage, DeFi groups including the DeFi Education Fund, Aave Labs, Uniswap Labs, Paradigm, and Andreessen Horowitz urged the SEC to turn that temporary position into binding rules.

Those groups backed the view that non-custodial user interfaces should not be treated as brokers when they only translate user instructions into blockchain commands.

Prediction markets remain in federal fight

Selig also said prediction markets fall under the CFTC’s federal authority. He said the agency will keep suing states that try to block federally regulated markets.

As crypto.news reported, the CFTC has already sued Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois over state actions against CFTC-registered event markets. The agency said Congress chose a national framework for these markets instead of separate state rules.

The CFTC also sued New York on April 24, seeking to stop the state from applying gambling laws against federally registered contract markets. Selig said the agency would not allow states to weaken its authority over prediction markets.

Crypto bank Anchorage is launching a new agentic banking service, seeking to give AI agents the ability to access and move money without human interference — an industry that could be worth a trillion dollars, according to its co-founder. 

In an X post on Tuesday, Anchorage co-founder and CEO Nathan McCauley said the firm’s new agentic banking infrastructure gives AI agents the ability to access both traditional finance and crypto payment rails.

Blockchain and tech companies have been rushing to prepare themselves for the future of agentic commerce. Firms such as Stripe argued in February that blockchains will need to eventually be able to process between 1 million and 1 billion transactions per second to handle the network demand coming from AI agents.

“Institutions are experimenting with automation across treasury, payments, and procurement, but they’re doing it on top of systems that were never designed for non-human actors,” said McCauley.

The new banking service would give AI agents a verifiable ID to transact with, preset spending limits, permissions and policies, along with auditability features to maintain regulatory compliance.

The launch came alongside a partnership with Google Cloud, which will provide the intelligence layer that allows AI agents to “discover, negotiate and coordinate” with each other.

Source: Nathan McCauley

Ripple Labs researcher and former head of product marketing Oliver Segovia said the deal also reflects a shifting trend in which tech labs and regulated banks are working more closely together. 

“Hyperscalers typically viewed banks as tier 1 enterprise customers, but moving forward, we’ll start seeing more alliances as labs get deeper into regulated infrastructure and banks build intelligence on top of core systems,” he said in a post on X. 

Related: Ripple CEO says market structure bill not a ‘done deal,’ despite stablecoin compromise

Speaking at the Consensus 2026 conference in Miami on Tuesday, McCauley argued that the sector will be one of the most important “trends of the next decade.”

“This is, in my view, set to be a trillion-dollar industry where we are going to have agents paying each other, agents paying merchants, and agents getting paid,” he said. 

This isn’t the only agentic finance product rolled out in crypto recently.

On Tuesday, the Solana Foundation launched a new gateway service with Google Cloud, allowing AI agents to pay for any APIs using stablecoins on Solana.

On April 30, Tether-backed crypto wallet startup Oobit released a Visa-supported virtual card enabling AI agents to make online purchases with USDT for businesses without requiring human interaction.

The cards are funded with USDT directly from Tether’s treasury, enabling agents to keep using capital without needing to top up via fiat on-ramps or conversions.

 Magazine: AI-driven hacks could kill DeFi — unless projects act now

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DeFi protocol Kelp DAO said it will be migrating its restaking token, rsETH, to the Chainlink oracle platform after the $292 million exploit in April, as it continued to blame the attack on LayerZero’s cross-chain infrastructure.

Hackers stole 116,500 Kelp DAO restaked ETH tokens on April 18 from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge, then used them as collateral on Aave v3 to borrow wrapped Ether.

“After the recent LayerZero exploit, we are taking steps to ensure rsETH is fully secure, which is why we are migrating to Chainlink CCIP,” Kelp DAO said in an X post on Tuesday.

Source: Kelp DAO

The Kelp DAO hack has been one of the year’s largest security incidents, causing broader ecosystem contagion and impacting the interconnected crypto lending market. At the center of the exploit has been an argument over who was responsible for the vulnerability. 

Kelp says it wasn’t warned of the security risks

A day after the exploit, LayerZero released a postmortem arguing the hack occurred because of an inadequate setup tied to Kelp’s decentralized verifier network (DVN), which relied on a single LayerZero DVN as the only verified path rather than requiring multiple independent checks to validate cross-chain transactions. LayerZero said it advised against this setup.

However, Kelp DAO said Tuesday the 1-1 setup is the default and is used by many other protocols, citing data from analytics platform Dune that found roughly half of LayerZero users have a single DVN. It also accused LayerZero of approving the setup and failing to warn about the related security risk.

“Kelp has operated on LayerZero infrastructure since January 2024 and has maintained an open communication channel with the LayerZero team throughout. The question of DVN configuration came up multiple times and these configurations were confirmed as secure at that time,” Kelp DAO added.

Following the hack, LayerZero announced it will no longer validate or approve cross-chain messages for any app that relies on a single verifier, and that it is in the process of migrating protocols using the setup to a multi-DVN. 

LayerZero CEO says many of the claims are untrue

Bryan Pellegrino, co-founder and CEO of LayerZero, said in a reply on X that a “ton” of Kelp’s claims were “just completely untrue.”

Related: US law firm attempts to block transfer of frozen ETH from Kelp exploit

He argued that Kelp originally used the defaults, which were multi-DVN, and later manually changed to a 1/1 configuration, which isn’t recommended for production applications.

“The defaults Kelp is referencing in their screenshot were multiDVN or DeadDVN, which force-rejects an application using the defaults at all and requires them to manually set configuration. rsETH was originally configured to use the default LayerZero configuration of a multiDVN setup of LayerZero Labs + Google,” he added.

Source: Bryan Pellegrino

Pellegrino also said a complete postmortem by external security firms would be published soon. 

North Korea-linked hackers are suspected of being behind the attack on Kelp and the April 1 exploit of decentralized exchange Drift, which totaled $285 million. 

Magazine: Bitcoiners eye ‘sell in May,’ SBF’s bid for new trial shut down: Hodler’s Digest, April 26 – May 2

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Key Points

• Telegram is set to assume the TON Foundation’s primary responsibilities and will operate as TON’s dominant validator
• The network hosts $752 million in stablecoin liquidity and generates $39.7 million in daily DEX trading volume, demonstrating genuine network usage
• Chain fees total approximately $8,086 daily, revealing poor monetization compared to the network’s overall scale
• Monthly unlocks from the TON Believers Fund release around 36.59 million TON, with the upcoming unlock valued at roughly $75 million
• Validator participation requires a minimum stake of 300,000 TON, while Telegram’s expanding influence creates centralization risks

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Unlike most blockchain networks that struggle to build user bases, Toncoin benefits from an inherent distribution advantage. While competing projects allocate resources toward user acquisition campaigns, funding programs, and reward mechanisms, TON operates with a fundamentally different model.

The TON Wallet exists natively within Telegram’s ecosystem. Users maintain custody of their private keys while experiencing streamlined mobile functionality. This blend of security and ease-of-use represents an uncommon achievement in cryptocurrency.

With Telegram’s registered user count exceeding one billion, TON possesses immediate access to an audience size that remains beyond reach for nearly every other blockchain initiative.

During May 2026, Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder, revealed plans for Telegram to succeed the TON Foundation as the network’s primary developmental authority. Additionally, Telegram will assume the position of largest network validator.

This declaration generated significant interest around TON while emphasizing the deepening integration between these two platforms.

Evaluating Network Activity Through On-Chain Metrics

Current DeFiLlama statistics indicate approximately $752 million in stablecoin deposits residing on TON infrastructure. The network processes roughly $39.7 million in daily decentralized exchange volume alongside approximately $1.48 million in perpetual futures trading volume over the same timeframe.

These figures demonstrate that both development teams and end users are actively selecting TON for their operations. Capital is flowing into the ecosystem, accompanied by legitimate trading behavior.

Nevertheless, daily network fees amount to just $8,086, while chain revenue approaches $4,043. When assessed against a market capitalization ranging from $5.6 billion to $5.7 billion, this fee production appears substantially inadequate.

Fee economics carry significance because they indicate how much value the protocol actually retains. Substantial transaction activity paired with minimal fee generation suggests users are engaging with the network without the protocol effectively capturing economic value from that engagement.

Supply Releases and Validator Centralization

CoinGecko data indicates roughly 2.7 billion TON tokens currently exist in active circulation. The project’s foundational documentation established an initial maximum supply of 5 billion tokens, with subsequent incremental expansion occurring through validator compensation mechanisms.

The TON Believers Fund presents an additional consideration. Based on Messari’s analysis, this fund distributes approximately 36.59 million TON monthly. Roughly 1.098 billion TON tokens await future distribution through approximately October 2028.

DeFiLlama’s unlock monitoring system values the forthcoming scheduled release at approximately $75 million. This persistent introduction of supply generates continuous downward market pressure.

Regarding validation infrastructure, TON network participation mandates a minimum commitment of 300,000 TON. Reports suggest practical entry requirements typically exceed this baseline threshold.

With Telegram positioned to become the dominant validator, network control is consolidating around a singular organization. While this arrangement may enhance operational coordination and system stability, it simultaneously reduces the network’s decentralized characteristics.

Telegram’s emergence as TON’s primary validator represents the latest factor influencing how market participants and builders evaluate the network’s trajectory.

XRP is back above $1.42, and traders are starting to focus on a chart setup that sent XRP up 66% in less than two weeks when it appeared in 2025.

News Background

• Analysts flagged a repeating XRP chart fractal from 2025, when a breakout from a multi-week bull flag triggered a rally toward all-time highs above $3.

• A bull flag is a pattern where price jumps sharply, then moves sideways or slightly lower for a while before potentially breaking higher again. Traders usually see it as a pause in momentum rather than a full reversal.

• Current price action again shows XRP breaking out of a bull flag while the 20-day and 50-day moving averages approach a bullish crossover.

• Some traders now view holding above $1.40 as critical, with the level acting as both psychological support and the upper boundary of the recent flag structure.

Price Action Summary

• XRP climbed from $1.4011 to $1.4184, extending its weekly gain to nearly 9%.
• A 74.6M volume spike at 13:00 pushed price to $1.4207 before momentum cooled into consolidation.
• The token spent the final hours stabilizing between $1.417-$1.420 after repeated tests of the $1.422 resistance zone.

Technical Analysis

• XRP continues building higher lows, keeping short-term bullish structure intact above $1.40.
• The repeated tests near $1.42 matter because resistance weakens each time sellers fail to force a deeper rejection.
• Liquidity on Binance has fallen to its lowest level since 2020, which historically creates conditions for outsized moves once ranges finally break.
• The broader setup resembles the 2025 breakout structure where XRP compressed for weeks before accelerating sharply higher.

What traders should watch

• $1.42 remains the key breakout level. A clean move above it opens the path toward $1.47-$1.50.
• Holding above $1.40 is equally important because failed breakouts often turn into fast reversals once momentum fades.
• If the range finally resolves lower, $1.34-$1.37 becomes the first major support zone traders watch.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the country’s Caribbean coast could become a Bitcoin mining hub if it uses clean energy and brings local communities into the plan.

Petro pointed to Barranquilla, Santa Marta, and Riohacha as possible sites. He said the region could follow countries such as Venezuela and Paraguay, where low-cost energy has attracted Bitcoin mining investment.

Petro made the comments in a post on X while responding to a discussion on Bitcoin mining in South America. He said the Caribbean region could receive “an immense boost” from mining tied to renewable energy.

The president also called for talks with the Wayúu community. He said the Indigenous group should be involved as possible co-owners of future projects. The Wayúu mainly live in La Guajira, where Colombia has strong wind and solar resources.

Paraguay model draws attention

Petro’s remarks referred to Paraguay’s growing role in Bitcoin mining. The country has used surplus hydroelectric power to attract miners, including large firms building sites near the Itaipu dam.

As featured in earlier coverage, HIVE Digital acquired Bitfarms’ 200 MW hydro-powered Yguazú site in Paraguay for $56 million. The company said the deal lifted its planned Paraguay mining infrastructure to 300 MW.

That deal shows why energy-rich countries have become more attractive to Bitcoin miners. Mining firms often seek cheap and steady power, while host countries look for ways to turn unused electricity into revenue.

Colombia’s renewable base supports the proposal

Colombia already gets a large share of its electricity from clean sources. The World Bank said the country generates as much as 75% of its power from renewable energy, more than twice the global average.

That energy mix could help Petro frame Bitcoin mining as part of a clean power plan. He has also warned that crypto mining powered by fossil fuels could worsen climate change.

The Caribbean coast may play a key role because of its wind potential. Reuters reported that state oil firm Ecopetrol bought the Windpeshi wind power project in La Guajira, with operations expected by 2028.

Election timing leaves questions

Petro’s proposal faces a tight political timeline. His presidential term ends in August, and Colombia is set to hold a presidential election on May 31. He cannot run again because of term limits.

The next government will decide whether the idea moves forward. Current leading candidates have not made clear public plans on Bitcoin mining or digital assets.