Crypto World
XRP Price Prediction: Ripple Conspiracy Theories and Broken NDAs
XRP price is holding its ground, and prediction and conspiracies are starting to pop up. Trading at the $1.4 range, XRP is still sandwiched between a critical support floor and a resistance ceiling for all week.
The conspiracy theories circulating in XRP communities aren’t new, but the volume of leaked NDA claims and alleged Ripple back-channel deals has spiked noticeably in the past 48 hours, and price action is starting to reflect the uncertainty.
Between April 22–24, XRP cycled through sharp sentiment swings without meaningfully breaking either direction. April 22 saw bullish momentum targeting $1.47, only for April 23 to flip with bearish pressure pointing toward $1.39.
That regulatory silence, combined with persistent whispers about undisclosed institutional agreements, has been keeping the XRP community in a state of charged anticipation.
Discover: The best pre-launch token sales
XRP Price Prediction: $1.50 Next Week?
XRP at the current range is in a narrow, almost frustratingly stable range. Volume has contracted slightly, down to low $2 billion, suggesting conviction is thin on both sides. These points consistently lead to consolidation.
Key levels are clearly defined. Support sits at $1.35, with the critical breakdown level at $1.32. Resistance is still above $1.47, then psychological $1.50. Our analytical model identifies $1.44–$1.47 as the immediate bull target if support holds. Only 39% of technical signals currently favor bulls, with only 9 buy signals.
XRP needs to defend the current $1.40 range and break $1.47 on volume for it to eye the $1.50 target. However, a close below $1.35 could accelerate downside with a potential dip to $1.28.
The price could resolve either way before next week. The setup is coiled.
Discover: The best crypto to diversify your portfolio with
LiquidChain Free From NDAs and Conspiracies
XRP’s upside is capped by its market cap reality. A move to $1.50 represents something under 10% gain. For traders who’ve already captured the post-SEC-settlement rally, that math doesn’t excite. Ripple’s banking partnerships are real, the adoption narrative is intact, but the asymmetric opportunity has compressed. That’s exactly when early-stage infrastructure plays attract attention.
LiquidChain is a Layer 3 blockchain built to unify Bitcoin’s capital, Ethereum’s DeFi depth, and Solana’s execution speed into a single environment with a unified liquidity layer. Instead of fragmented, siloed chains, developers deploy once and access users across all three ecosystems simultaneously.
A new layer emerges. Only a few see it first. — LiquidChain (@getliquidchain) March 24, 2026
The future is LiquidChain 
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Assets from BTC, ETH, and SOL are verifiably represented on the L3 without wrapping, creating deep fungible markets. The architecture pairs a Solana-class execution environment with trust-minimized state verification for seamless cross-chain composability.
The presale has raised $700k at a current price of $0.01452 per $LIQUID with more than 1600% APY in staking bonus, only for early buyers. Features include Single-Step Execution, Verifiable Settlement, and the Deploy-Once Architecture that dramatically reduces developer overhead.
Traders interested in the cross-chain thesis can research LiquidChain here before the presale window closes.
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Crypto World
Powell’s Final FOMC: Grading His Wins, Losses, and the Mixed Bag He Leaves for Trump’s Fed Pick Kevin Warsh
Jerome Powell will gavel his last FOMC press conference on Wednesday, closing eight years atop the Federal Reserve with rates frozen at 3.50 to 3.75 percent and headline inflation back at 3.3%.
His successor, Kevin Warsh, Trump’s pick, walks into a corner office stacked with unfinished business, an oil-driven CPI spike, a $6.7 trillion balance sheet, and a crypto market that learned to live and die by Fed liquidity.
Powell vs Yellen: The Inheritance Gap
Janet Yellen handed Powell calm waters in February 2018. Rates sat near 1.5%, headline inflation hugged the 2% target, and the balance sheet was already shrinking by design.
Powell took over as a former lawyer and private equity executive, not an academic economist. He inherited a soft landing in progress and tried to keep it going with gradual hikes through 2018 before the trade war forced a pivot.
Yellen’s four years produced no recessions and almost no surprises. Powell’s eight years included a pandemic shutdown, the largest balance sheet in history, the worst inflation reading since 1981, and three regional bank failures inside ten days.
The Wins: From Pandemic Rescue to a Near-Soft Landing
Powell’s defenders point to March 2020 as his strongest hour. The Fed cut rates to zero, restarted asset purchases, and stood up nine emergency lending facilities in less than three weeks.
“Powell pushed back against some mild hawkish resistance to the jumbo emergency rate cut on March 15, 2020,” highlighted economist Nick Timiraos.
That liquidity wave saved markets and arguably saved Bitcoin’s first institutional cycle. Bitcoin (BTC) climbed from roughly $5,000 in March 2020 to a November 2021 peak above $69,000, tracking the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet toward $9 trillion.
The second redemption arc came later. Powell ran the most aggressive tightening cycle since Paul Volcker, taking the policy rate from zero to 5.5% without triggering a deep recession or a labor collapse.
By late 2024 he also reframed the official tone on digital assets. At the DealBook Summit, Powell called Bitcoin “like gold, only it’s virtual,” a single sentence that helped push BTC above $103,000 inside a session.
“It’s just like gold only it’s virtual. People are not using it as a form of payment, or as a store of value. It’s highly volatile. It’s not a competitor for the dollar, it’s really a competitor for gold,” Powell said.
The Losses: Transitory Inflation and the Bank Scare
The “transitory” call of 2021 still defines the criticism. Powell waited until March 2022 to start hiking even as Consumer Price Index (CPI) prints exceeded 7%, a delay Warsh has called a “fatal policy error.”
“Once you let inflation take hold in the economy, it is more expensive and harder to bring it down, and so the fatal policy error going back four or five years is still a legacy that we are dealing with… we need a regime change in the conduct of policy,” stated Kevin Warsh, testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, April 21
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The late start forced 11 hikes inside 16 months. That pace caught regional lenders flat-footed, and Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic all failed in March 2023 after losses on long-duration Treasuries.
“JAYPOW [Jerome Powell] might have broken US banking system. 2008 it was a banks portfolios of bad credit – aka subprime. 2023 it was banks portfolios of long duration bonds like UST and MBS??? If it goes down then remember Mar ‘20, big down, bailout, then big up! My body is ready,” said Arthur Hayes in a March 10, 2023 post.
Communication missteps deepened the damage. Forward guidance became a moving target through 2022 and 2023, and trader confidence in the Summary of Economic Projections dropped to multi-year lows.
Political bruises followed in 2025, when the Department of Justice opened and then dropped a probe of Powell that briefly froze Warsh’s confirmation calendar.
What is in the Bag for Trump’s Fed Chair Pick Kevin Warsh?
Warsh inherits a Fed running on tighter liquidity than markets had hoped. The federal funds target sits at 3.50 to 3.75% for a third straight meeting, and the March dot plot still pencils in only one cut for 2026 and one for 2027.
Inflation is moving the wrong way. CPI jumped to 3.3% in March from 2.4% in February after a 21.2% monthly spike in gasoline prices tied to the Iran war.
Policymakers lifted their 2026 core PCE projection to 2.7% from 2.4% in the same release.
Warsh has telegraphed a sharp pivot. He told senators at his confirmation hearing that the Fed needs a “different, new inflation framework,” signaled that he would scrap the post-meeting press conference cadence, and pledged not to act as anyone’s “sock puppet.”
He also wants the $6.7 trillion balance sheet smaller. Warsh argued under oath that a leaner Fed footprint could leave interest rates lower, inflation better, and the economy stronger.
All these language points toward faster quantitative tightening (QT) rather than rate cuts.
The Crypto Angle: Hawkish on Rates, Friendlier on Bitcoin
Crypto traders are sorting through a paradox. Warsh is more hawkish than Powell on inflation discipline yet more openly favorable on digital assets, and that combination cuts both ways for risk markets.
His public record now includes calling Bitcoin a “sustainable store of value,” ruling out a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), and saying crypto is already part of the United States financial system.
He also disclosed more than $100 million in holdings spanning Layer 1 networks, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols, and Bitcoin payment infrastructure.
Hawkish liquidity policy still pressures BTC in the short term. Bitcoin has retreated from its January peak as the dot plot hardened, and traders are increasingly caught between a Fed that wants to hold and a nominee who wants to shrink.
A longer-run case for Bitcoin lives inside the same trade. Former Fed governor Mark Spindel has argued that aggressive central bank policy strengthens the case for non-sovereign reserves, and Warsh’s framework could test that thesis from the inside.
What to Watch on Wednesday
The April 29 press conference will hand Powell his last microphone. Markets will parse every farewell line for:
- Hints about the cuts that did not arrive
- The inflation fight that is reigniting, and
- Whether Powell hands Warsh a clear baton or a contested one.
Powell can still stay on the Board of Governors until 2028, an option he has not ruled out.
If he steps fully aside on May 15, the next FOMC will be Warsh’s first, and the policy regime he wants to rewrite will start rewriting itself in real time.
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The post Powell’s Final FOMC: Grading His Wins, Losses, and the Mixed Bag He Leaves for Trump’s Fed Pick Kevin Warsh appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Bitcoin was “rejected” from the $80,000 price level, which is its next resistance zone on the way to reclaiming the $100,000 psychological price level.
Bitcoin has flashed another upward move, trading around the upper $70,000s after a roughly 13% surge since the start of April. Yet sentiment among holders remains unusually cautious, according to veteran analyst Matthew Hyland, who argues that the rally lacks genuine conviction and is instead being treated as a pendulum in a cautious market.
“There does not seem to be much euphoria or interest; many just projecting it to fit their bias,” Hyland said in a post shared on X over the weekend, underscoring a prevailing sense of disbelief even as prices push higher. The Bitcoin narrative remains dominated by a sense that the longer-term cycle could still tilt downward before any durable bottom forms.
Bitcoin consensus points to “another leg lower” by October
Hyland’s assessment sits against a broader view in which the market expects a further pullback before a potential capitulation or bottom. Even after a pullback to roughly $60,000 in February — about 53% off the October 2025 all-time high near $126,100 — a sizeable portion of traders still projects a cycle bottom later in 2026. The current price action has revived debates about whether a fresh down leg is imminent or whether the market is laying the groundwork for a sustained rally.
Bitcoin is currently hovering around $77,000, marking a gain of about 13% in the past month, according to data tracked by CoinMarketCap. The move comes as traders weigh whether the market is merely catching a breath before another leg higher or entering a phase of renewed volatility.
On the trading front, prominent trader Peter Brandt suggested on X that Bitcoin could print an “investable low” in September or October. He noted that the low may or may not breach the February 2026 trough, while maintaining a longer-term price range that could extend into the hundreds of thousands by 2029. The sentiment reflects a bifurcated view in which a durable bottom remains elusive, even as price action hints at renewed energy in the market.
Meanwhile, Michael van de Poppe, founder of MN Trading Capital, signaled no reason to doubt the ongoing rally, a stance that aligns with a subset of traders who view current price action as a continuation of an ongoing upcycle rather than the onset of a new bear market phase. The discord between skepticism and optimism highlights the clash between narrative and data in a market that has stubbornly defied easy categorization since last year.
Market bottoms don’t form when everyone expects them
The sentiment community has long warned against relying on consensus to time a bottom. Santiment, a crypto-market intelligence platform, argues that true market bottoms rarely emerge when a crowd is confidently forecasting them. In its recent notes, Santiment reiterated that bottoms tend to crystallize when the broader consensus has grown dangerously bearish about downside risk, rather than when traders insist prices must go lower. The caveat adds nuance to the debate around Oct 2026 timing and the possibility of a more protracted accumulation phase rather than an abrupt reversal.
In context, the market remains cautious but not paralyzed by fear. While some analysts point to technical milestones that could confirm a bottom, others warn that the absence of a crowded bottom signal can itself be a warning sign that selling pressure could re-emerge at any sign of a pullback.
As a backdrop to these debates, investors are weighing a range of historical benchmarks. Bitcoin’s fall from its late-2021 highs and the subsequent consolidation have kept market participants in a state of heightened sensitivity to macro shocks, regulatory developments, and shifts in liquidity. The $86,000 level has been flagged by some as a potential inflection point; a decisive move above that threshold could embolden bulls, while a failure to clear it might renew fears of a deeper correction.
What this implies for traders and builders
The current mood—ranging from cautious optimism to guarded skepticism—highlights a market that remains driven by both macro sentiment and on-chain signals. For traders, the risk-reward calculus hinges on whether Bitcoin can sustain its momentum and clear key resistance levels without triggering a renewed wave of profit-taking. For developers and builders in the space, the mood matters insofar as it shapes funding, network activity, and the pace at which infrastructure and use cases mature in a climate of mixed sentiment.
From a broader sector perspective, the disagreement among well-known voices underscores the fragility of timing signals in a market that has endured a choppy, multi-year cycle. The emphasis shifts from chasing a precise bottom to constructing robust strategies that can withstand a range of outcomes, including the possibility of a protracted accumulation or a fresh drawdown before facts on the ground can settle the narrative.
Where the story goes next
What remains uncertain is how quickly macro risk appetite will shift and whether a fresh catalyst can propel BTC above meaningful resistance, or whether a fresh risk-off impulse will undermine the rally. The next several weeks could be pivotal in confirming whether we are in a new leg higher, a consolidation phase, or a retest of February’s lows. In the meantime, market observers will be watching for price action around the $86,000 mark and any break above or below that threshold, along with evolving sentiment signals that could betray impending trend changes.
Readers should stay tuned to price action around critical levels, the pace of institutional inflows or outflows, and how consensus shifts in response to macro or regulatory developments. The coming months may offer clearer signals about whether the cycle is entering a fresh bullish phase or heading into a more extended period of indecision.
Crypto World
BeInCrypto Institutional Research: 15 Market Intelligence & Data Platform Behind On-Chain Visibility
Best Market Intelligence & Data Platform is an award category within The BeInCrypto Institutional 100, an annual research-driven program recognising institutional digital asset excellence across 26 categories and six pillars.
This category sits in Pillar 3: Access to Digital Assets. The 15 companies below are its longlist, drawn from data platforms serving institutional crypto intelligence workflows between April 2025 and March 2026.
A shortlist will be named in May 2026, and the winner will be announced at Proof of Talk in Paris on June 2–3, 2026.
- Longlist: 15 companies covering regulated indices, on-chain dashboards, wallet labelling, protocol financials, DeFi TVL, research platforms, and hybrid market data APIs
- Candidates screened: Starting pool of more than 30 data and intelligence providers across the global institutional crypto stack; 15 advanced to this longlist
- Scoring (Track A): Editorial quantitative 50%, Advisory Council 50%
- Criteria assessed: Data coverage and depth, institutional adoption, product innovation, research quality, funding and maturity, market standing, independence
- Sources: Company disclosures, press releases, regulator filings, and private-market data platforms, including PitchBook, Tracxn, and Crunchbase
| # | Company | Founded · HQ | Key People | Scale & Funding | Core Capability | Milestone |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kaiko | 2014 · Paris | Ambre Soubiran (CEO) | $1B valuation; $79M raised 15,000+ analysts in the network |
Institutional market data, indices | Benchmark provider for CBOE, D2X, Gemini Tokenized equities data partnership (2026) |
| 2 | Nansen | 2019 · Singapore | Alex Svanevik (CEO) Evgeny Medvedev (Co-founder) |
$88M+ raised; 170 employees 500M+ labeled wallets across 30+ chains |
On-chain analytics, wallet labeling | Nansen 2 AI platform launched $23B institutional liquidity report (2025) |
| 3 | Dune Analytics | 2018 · Oslo | Fredrik Haga (CEO) Mats Olsen (Co-founder) |
$1B valuation; $79M raised 15,000+ analysts in network |
SQL dashboards, on-chain analytics | smlXL acquisition (2024) Industry-standard query layer |
| 4 | Messari | 2018 · New York | Ryan Selkis (CEO) Dan McArdle (Co-founder) |
$61M raised; 137 employees 170TB enterprise data coverage |
Research, governance analytics | Crypto Theses 2026 published AI Copilot research tool launched |
| 5 | Glassnode | Zug, Switzerland | Leadership team | 7,500+ on-chain metrics 1,700+ assets covered |
On-chain data, derivatives analytics | Expanded derivatives coverage (2025) Joint research with Coinbase Institutional |
| 6 | CCData (CryptoCompare) | 2014 · London | Leadership team | FCA-regulated benchmark provider ISO 27001 + SOC 2 certified |
Market data, indices, benchmarks | Data feeds for Bloomberg and S&P ETF and ETP benchmark provider |
| 7 | Coin Metrics | 2017 · Boston | Talos (parent company) | Acquired by Talos (2025) $100M+ deal value |
Network data, indexing, feeds | Talos integration across execution stack Bletchley Index institutional benchmark |
| 8 | CoinGecko | 2014 · Singapore / KL | TM Lee (Co-founder) Bobby Ong (Co-founder) |
Independent data aggregator Millions of monthly users |
Market data aggregation, API | GeckoTerminal for DEX pricing Widely used independent pricing source |
| 9 | Arkham Intelligence | 2020 · United States | Miguel Morel (CEO) | 500M+ labeled wallets Binance Labs-backed |
Entity-labeled blockchain intelligence | Identified $25B US gov holdings Intel Exchange bounty model |
| 10 | DeFiLlama | 2020 · Open-source | 0xngmi (lead) Charlie Watkins (Co-founder) |
7,000+ protocols tracked $150B+ DeFi TVL coverage |
DeFi analytics, TVL aggregation | Standard TVL reference across industry Transparent methodology adoption |
| 11 | Amberdata | 2017 · Miami | Shawn Douglass (CEO) TongTong Gong (COO) |
$47M+ raised Backed by Franklin Templeton, Nasdaq |
Hybrid on-chain + market data API | AI-driven Amberdata Intelligence (2025) Unified institutional data platform |
| 12 | Token Terminal | 2019 · Helsinki | Henri Hyvärinen (Co-founder) Aleksis Tapper (Co-founder) |
Institutional subscription model Protocol financial datasets |
Protocol financials, valuation metrics | Standardized crypto financial statements Widely used in allocator reports |
| 13 | Artemis Analytics | 2022 · United States | Jon Ma (Co-founder) Michael Nadeau (Co-founder) |
Early-stage institutional platform Venture-backed |
Cross-chain fundamentals, metrics | Comparative blockchain dashboards Institutional research workflows |
| 14 | IntoTheBlock | 2018 · New York | Jesus Rodriguez (CEO) | Institutional client base ML analytics platform |
On-chain signals, DeFi risk | DeFi risk analytics for institutions Perseus enterprise analytics platform |
| 15 | Flipside Crypto | 2017 · Boston | Dave Balter (CEO) | $50M+ raised Community-driven model |
Analytics, ecosystem data bounties | Community analyst network insights Ecosystem data across L1s and L2s |
About This List
The BeInCrypto Institutional 100 — Market Intelligence & Data (2026 Long List) identifies the platforms providing data infrastructure for institutional crypto workflows. These firms supply benchmarks, analytics, research, and APIs used across trading desks, asset managers, and protocol teams.
Methodology
This category evaluates market intelligence and data platforms under Track A of the BIC 100 methodology: 50% quantitative metrics and 50% Advisory Council scoring.
Assessment spans seven criteria: data coverage and depth, institutional adoption, product innovation, research quality, funding maturity, market standing, and independence.
Data was verified using company disclosures, press releases, regulatory filings, and private-market sources, including PitchBook, Tracxn, and Crunchbase. Figures reflect the most recent available data at publication.
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Crypto World
XRP Price Prediction Faces $1 Warning as Motley Fool Turns Bearish, But One Presale Keeps Growing
The XRP price prediction took a hit on April 25 after The Motley Fool published a warning telling investors not to buy the token until a major bank partnership is secured. XRP trades at $1.42 after falling 60% from its July 2025 high of $3.65, and the same week Morgan Stanley announced a dedicated fund to manage reserves for the stablecoin industry, according to CoinDesk.
Those numbers paint a clear picture. But nobody built lasting wealth buying large caps at resistance during a sideways market. The real returns came from finding the cheaper entry before the crowd arrived, and Pepeto’s presale at $0.0000001866 is attracting early money at a pace nothing else in 2026 has matched.
Bull runs never distribute gains equally. BTC leads, altcoins follow, and then early stage tokens deliver the outsized returns that rewrite portfolios in days. The proof lives on chain.
A single PEPE wallet that started with $2,184 across 1.5 trillion tokens saw the value peak near $43 million, with Lookonchain recording a $10.3 million cash out. Glauber Contessoto spent $180,000 on DOGE at $0.045 and hit seven figures within sixty days, per CNBC. A Dogwifhat position on Solana grew from $1,800 to $11 million, and one BONK holder converted $26,667 into over a million in less than seven days.
Not one of those projects shipped a product at launch. The outlook for XRP points to months of sideways trading, and April 2026 sits exactly 24 months past the 2024 halving. The window for presale entries is open right now.
XRP Price Prediction Compared: Pepeto and XRP (Ripple) in 2026
Pepeto: The Early Entry Every Cycle Rewards
Every presale success story follows the same pattern: enter early, ride the move, take profit before the mainstream arrives. Pepeto fits all three conditions, and adds something those earlier tokens never offered. A working exchange with zero fee swaps, a cross chain bridge spanning Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana, and an AI scanner that spots dangerous contracts before capital touches them.
The developer who created the original Pepe token built this protocol from scratch, and a former Binance specialist runs the listing strategy toward an expected exchange debut.
SolidProof completed the audit before the raise opened, and more than $9.45 million has been committed while the Fear and Greed Index stays deep in fear, the same reading that pushed retail out before every previous major listing run.
Staking at 178% APY compounds daily while the XRP price prediction headlines play out on their own slow timeline. At $0.0000001866, the working exchange makes the listing target a floor rather than a ceiling. Wallets entering through the Pepeto official website now are positioning before the first public candle sets a price the presale will never see again.
XRP (XRP) Price at $1.42 as Triangle Squeeze Builds Near Breakout
XRP (XRP) trades at $1.42 on April 25, down 61% from its $3.65 all time high reached in July 2025, according to CoinMarketCap.
Spot XRP ETFs have attracted over $1.24 billion in inflows since late 2025, and the SEC classified XRP as a digital commodity in March 2026. But Ripple’s own stablecoin RLUSD threatens to replace XRP as a bridge currency. Support holds at $1.40 with resistance near $1.46, and roughly 60% of circulating supply sits at a $1.42 cost basis, creating a wall of sellers at every approach.
Conclusion:
Wallets adding Pepeto at presale pricing are positioned for the kind of returns the XRP price prediction needs years to deliver. The presale winner story follows the same pattern every time: a small group gets in early, the entry disappears, and the rest of the cycle is spent calculating what slipped away.
Pepeto carries the same BNB-era demand structure at presale pricing, paired with meme coin momentum no established token has offered this early in a cycle. The CoinMarketCap listing shows the Binance opening is close, the raise is at $9.45 million with 178% APY staking running daily, and the entry through the Pepeto official website is still open. Secure the position before the window closes.
Click To Visit Pepeto Website To Enter The Presale
FAQs
What is the XRP price prediction for 2026 after the 60% drop from all time highs?
The XRP price prediction for 2026 remains uncertain as the token trades at $1.42 with resistance at $1.46 and 60% of supply held at break even levels creating constant selling pressure. The Motley Fool warns investors to wait for a major bank partnership before buying.
Why is Pepeto drawing attention over large cap tokens like XRP right now?
Pepeto offers a presale entry at $0.0000001866 with an expected Binance listing, three working exchange tools, and a SolidProof audit, creating presale to debut returns that XRP at 61% below its all time high cannot generate from current levels.
Disclaimer: This is a Press Release provided by a third party who is responsible for the content. Please conduct your own research before taking any action based on the content.
Iran’s parliament speaker pushed back at U.S. claims of energy leverage on Sunday, arguing Tehran still holds unplayed supply cards as Strait of Hormuz oil exports remain 95% below normal flows.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf framed the standoff as a poker game of supply versus demand levers, taunting Washington that U.S. summer gasoline demand will amplify the price pain at home.
Ghalibaf Counters U.S. Bragging With Card-Counting Math
Ghalibaf is a hardliner and former Revolutionary Guards commander who often addresses global traders. His latest message answers Washington officials boasting about superior energy leverage.
He laid out a balance sheet equating supply cards with demand cards. Iran’s side covers the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, and regional pipelines.
He marked Hormuz as partly played, while Bab el-Mandeb and pipelines remain unused. The U.S. side already deployed Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases and absorbed some demand destruction.
However, his sarcastic closer warned Americans will not cancel summer vacations, so the bill will land at the gas pump.
“Add summer vacation to the right unless they want to cancel it for the US!”
Per Ghalibaf, the punchline targets U.S. peak driving demand from May through September.
Goldman Sachs Confirms Historic Supply Shock
Goldman Sachs data showing the depth of the disruption. Total oil exports through Hormuz have collapsed roughly 95% from normal flows near 20 million barrels per day.
Gulf crude production has fallen by about 14.5 million barrels per day, or 57% versus pre-war levels. Available empty tanker capacity in the region is down by half, equal to about 130 million barrels of slack.
However, Goldman analysts caution that recovery hinges on pipeline capacity, available tankers, and well flow rates.
They estimate only 70% of lost supply returns within three months of any reopening, and 88% within six months.
Extended shut-ins risk reservoir damage, raising the chance that full restoration takes several quarters.
Trump Pitches U.S. Crude as Pain Drags Into Summer
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has rejected the idea that Washington lacks leverage. He argues the U.S. produces more oil than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined and rarely imports through Hormuz.
Trump has urged China and European buyers to redirect orders to American producers. He has also told U.K. allies to drill in the North Sea, while defending his “Drill, Baby, Drill” agenda.
In contrast to past crises, he has warned voters that pump prices may stay elevated and could rise before the November midterms.
That message lines up with Ghalibaf’s taunt about peak gasoline season. Brent crude continues trading near $100 per barrel, with markets sensitive to any further escalation or inflation pass-through.
Tehran’s signal lands as physical supply realities harden. Whether Iran activates its remaining cards or keeps them in reserve will shape U.S. driving season prices in the weeks ahead.
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Crypto World
Stellar DeFi Hits $200M TVL as Institutional Capital and Real-World Assets Take Center Stage
TLDR:
-
- Stellar’s DeFi TVL has crossed $200M for the first time, marking a record high across its protocols.
- Real-world assets including government bonds and real estate are now tokenized and flowing onto Stellar.
- Institutional investors are deploying serious capital, raising compliance and liquidity standards on the network.
- Soroban’s smart contract platform is lowering costs and expanding DeFi application development on Stellar.
- Stellar’s DeFi TVL has crossed $200M for the first time, marking a record high across its protocols.
Stellar has reached a new milestone in its decentralized finance journey. The network’s Total Value Locked across DeFi protocols has crossed $200 million for the first time.
This record comes as institutional investors and real-world asset tokenization continue to reshape the ecosystem. The growth reflects a structural shift rather than a short-lived speculative rally.
Capital flows tied to traditional financial instruments are identified as the primary driver behind this upward trend.
Real-World Assets Drive the Network’s Record TVL
Real-world assets are driving Stellar’s TVL to record highs. Government bonds, real estate, and tokenized instruments are now flowing into the network.
This marks a departure from earlier crypto cycles driven largely by retail speculation. Capital tied to tangible assets tends to be more stable and predictable.
Institutional players are not merely testing the waters on the blockchain. Their entry brings higher compliance and transparency standards to the platform.
Unlike retail-driven booms, institutional flows sustain liquidity over longer periods. This steadies the network against the sharp volatility often seen in crypto markets.
Analyst @SylvianGuibal noted this wave is driven by professional players seeking reliable and scalable infrastructure. The shift reflects a broader trend of tokenizing traditional finance on blockchain networks.
The network’s established track record in cross-border payments made it a natural fit for this capital. Existing regulatory relationships add an extra layer of confidence for these new entrants.
RWA inflows and institutional backing are redefining DeFi activity on Stellar. The ecosystem is moving away from high-risk protocols toward structured financial products.
This may attract participants from regulated financial markets. Over time, the network could connect conventional banking systems with decentralized finance.
Soroban Accelerates DeFi Growth Across the Ecosystem
Soroban, the network’s native smart contract platform, is adding momentum to the ecosystem’s current growth. It enables developers to build a new class of DeFi applications.
The platform offers lower transaction costs, enhanced programmability, and faster execution. These features make building efficient financial tools more practical.
With Soroban active, the range of products on the blockchain has expanded considerably. Developers can now construct complex instruments not previously possible on the network.
This opens the door to lending protocols, decentralized exchanges, and structured investment products. Each new application draws additional users and capital into the ecosystem.
Soroban’s adoption aligns with the current wave of institutional interest in the network. As larger financial players seek capable and cost-effective blockchain platforms, Soroban presents a strong case.
Lower fees translate to more efficient capital deployment for asset managers. This technical advantage is producing measurable results in real adoption.
Together, Soroban’s capabilities and the inflow of real-world capital are forming a reinforcing cycle on Stellar. As more developers build, more users arrive, and more capital follows.
The network is no longer growing at the margins of DeFi — it is moving toward its center. Current growth appears rooted in practical financial demand rather than short-term speculation.
Strategy’s Bitcoin (BTC) treasury climbed to a record $63.46 billion as of April 26, with the company holding 815,061 BTC across 107 purchase events at an average cost of $75,528 per coin.
The treasury has gained nearly $2 billion over the past week, rising from $61.56 billion as Bitcoin extended its rally and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor signaled continued accumulation.
Strategy Cements Position as Largest Corporate Bitcoin Holder
The new high follows the firm’s most aggressive month of buying in well over a year. Strategy added 34,164 BTC for roughly $2.54 billion last week at an average price of $74,395 per coin, its largest single-week purchase in 17 months.
That acquisition vaulted the company past BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust as the largest publicly disclosed Bitcoin holder, second only to the dormant wallets attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. Strategy now controls roughly three-quarters of all Bitcoin held by corporate treasury vehicles.
The firm’s cost basis sits at $75,528, and current spot prices place its unrealized gain at 3.08%, or $1.9 billion above what it has paid for its stack to date.
April Purchase Marks 17-Month Buying Peak
The April buying spree was financed through a mix of capital instruments rather than through dilutive common stock issuance. Strategy raised $2.18 billion through the sale of STRF perpetual preferred equity and added $366 million from at-the-market sales of MSTR shares, according to company filings.
Saylor has also pointed to a 9.5% Bitcoin yield year-to-date in 2026, the firm’s internal metric for measuring how much its BTC-per-share ratio has grown for common shareholders. That figure forms the core of MicroStrategy’s case to equity holders for continuing to issue capital to buy the asset.
The company’s monthly buying pace has put a one million BTC target back into analyst conversations, with some projections placing the milestone within reach by late 2026 if current capital market conditions hold.
Saylor Signals Continued Bitcoin Buying
Critics like Peter Schiff have warned of a potential “death spiral” in Strategy’s preferred equity model, arguing that sustaining the 11.5% yield on STRC requires either stronger Bitcoin performance or continuous capital raises that could dilute shareholders.
However, Saylor’s posture suggests the buying cadence will not slow. Bitcoin’s broader rally into April has been uneven, with profit-taking around the $76,000 level capping earlier breakout attempts. The
Whether Strategy can sustain its current pace will depend on demand for STRF and other preferred instruments, and on Bitcoin staying above the firm’s blended cost basis.
With 815,061 BTC already on the balance sheet and Saylor signaling more buying ahead, the next test is how quickly the company can close the gap to its rumored seven-figure target without straining the capital structure that has made the strategy work so far.
The post MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin Holdings Hit $63.46 Billion Record appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Scallop, a money market on Sui Network, lost about 150,000 SUI on Sunday after an attacker drained a deprecated rewards contract tied to the protocol’s sSUI spool.
The team froze the affected contract within minutes and pledged full reimbursement from its treasury. Core operations resumed in under two hours.
Another Sui Exploit Hits Peripheral Code, Not the Core Protocol
Scallop disclosed the incident at 12:50 UTC on April 26 through a public notice on X. The attacker targeted a side contract powering rewards for the sSUI spool. That spool is the protocol’s incentive layer for SUI depositors.
The affected contract was frozen immediately, according to the team. Core lending and borrowing pools stayed untouched. User deposits remained safe across every other Scallop market.
Two hours later, Scallop confirmed the freeze had been lifted on the core contracts. Withdrawals and deposits resumed at 14:42 UTC.
Most users on the Sui network were unaffected by the morning’s events.
“Scallop will fully cover 100% of the loss,” the money market articulated.
Stale Package Code From 2023 Sat Behind the Exploit
Independent on-chain analysis points to a deprecated V2 spool package as the entry point. Scallop published the code in November 2023, more than 17 months before the attack. On Sui, deployed packages are immutable. Old versions stay callable unless explicitly version-gated.
The bug centered on an uninitialized last_index counter, which tracks accumulated rewards for stakers. The attacker staked roughly 136,000 sSUI to exploit it.
This math treated the position as if it had existed since the spool launched in August 2023.
The spool index had grown to about 1.19 billion over 20 months. That allowed the exploiter to harvest around 162 trillion reward points. Those redeemed one-to-one for 150,000 SUI from the rewards pool.
The transaction hash 6WNDjCX3W852hipq6yrHhpUaSFHSPWfTxuLKaQkgNfVL captures the on-chain proof of the drain.
A Familiar Pattern Across Sui DeFi
The incident follows a string of Sui exploits in recent weeks. Volo Protocol lost roughly $3.5 million earlier this month in a similar peripheral incident. Each case targeted side contracts rather than core protocol logic.
It also lands one week after a major bridge incident on Ethereum, which produced roughly $292 million in unbacked liquid restaking tokens. Both attacks happened over weekends, when liquidity is thin and response times can lag.
Neither the Sui Foundation nor Mysten Labs has made a public statement on the matter.
For Scallop, however, the financial damage looks contained. The protocol confirmed it will absorb the entire loss without diluting user yields.
The team has not released a full post-mortem yet, with a prospective publishing of a complete audit of every remaining legacy package likely to shape the broader Sui DeFi response.
The deeper question is how Sui builders should manage immutable code and forgotten attack surfaces.
The post Another DeFi Exploit Drains 150,000 SUI From Scallop’s Deprecated Contract appeared first on BeInCrypto.
The biggest Bitcoin treasury company’s data shows holdings are profitable, having gained about 3.3% amid Bitcoin’s rally to about $78,000.
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