Crypto soothsayer

Daily outflow from spot Bitcoin ETFs reached a record $526 million 🗒 On May 1st, the outflow from spot Bitcoin ETFs hit a 🏔 peak since the approval of the products—$563.8 million. BlackRock's IBIT recorded a negative trend for the first time—minus $36.93 million. 👀 From Fidelity's FBTC, clients withdrew $191.1 million—more than from Grayscale's GBTC ($167.3 million). 🙀 In ARKB from Ark Invest, the outflow amounted to $98.1 million—the third largest in history. 🤔 The total inflow into these products since their registration has decreased to $11.2 billion. By the end of April, this figure had dropped by $343.5 million. Looks like institutions are quite disappointed in Bitcoin 😁

📉 DeFi's TVL dipped by $10 billion in April, a 7% fall, closing at $138.6 billion. 👆Despite the drop, Base and Bitcoin saw gains, each surpassing $1 billion in TVL. 🙀 Avalanche and Solana experienced the sharpest declines among top blockchains. Ethereum continues to lead with 69% of the total DeFi TVL. 💪 Bitcoin's growth, nearly 39%, was driven by new L2 infrastructure and industry hype, pointing to its expanding functionalities in DeFi.

MicroStrategy has announced a Bitcoin-based identity verification protocol 🔬MicroStrategy has unveiled the 🍊 Orange Decentralized Identity, a new protocol for identity verification built on Bitcoin. ⌨️ This system utilizes unspent transaction outputs (UTXO) on the Bitcoin blockchain to store user information. 🪪 It allows for the creation and updating of documents with only minor restrictions on size and content, by leveraging SegWit technology.

Changpeng Zhao is in prison, Roger Ver is arrested. 👀 Should Jack Dorsey get ready? 🇺🇸 U.S. federal prosecutors are examining the financial transactions of Jack Dorsey’s companies—alleging that Square processed thousands of transactions involving sanctioned countries and conducted several crypto transactions for 💣 terrorist groups. ✔️ Previously, U.S. authorities sentenced the founder of Binance to 4 months in prison, and also charged Roger Ver with fraud and tax evasion.

Bitcoin remain sideway as Federal Reserve maintains current interest rate 📉 Federal Reserve left interest rate unchanged, maintaining the highest level in over 23 years. 🪑Fed Chair Jerome Powell remains cautious, indicating no imminent rate hikes and suggesting that rate cuts are unlikely until there's greater confidence in achieving a sustainable 2% inflation target. 👀 This decision continues to impact the crypto market, with Bitcoin and Ethereum trading sideways.

Pike Finance suffered nearly $2 million in losses due to two attacks On April 30, assailants attacked the DeFi protocol ⛰Pike Finance, extracting 99,970 ARB, 64,126 OP, and 479 ETH, amounting to roughly $1.68 million. 🤷 Just a few days prior to this, on April 26, another breach occurred when hackers exploited a different vulnerability to steal about $300,000 in USDC. 🙀Pike developers revealed that the thefts were enabled by a flaw in the initializing smart contract, allowing the thieves to circumvent the external security system without needing administrator`s access, which led to the fund withdrawals. ✔️In response, the protocol team is offering a 20% reward of the recovered assets or for information leading to the identification of the culprits.

Tether's Net Profit Hits Record $4.5 Billion in Q1 💰 Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin, reported a record-breaking net profit of $4.52 billion from January to March. 💲The company generated roughly $1 billion in operating profit, largely from interest earned on 🇺🇸 U.S. Treasury obligations, according to the financial report. 💵 Investments in these treasury instruments surpassed $74.2 billion, with the total assets, including cash and other equivalents like those held through repurchase agreements, reaching $92.7 billion. ⬆️ Tether’s equity rose to $11.37 billion, and its excess reserves increased by $1 billion to $6.26 billion. 👀 The issuance of USDT surged by $12.5 billion in the first quarter, bringing the total to $110.3 billion. The audit firm BDO verified that 90% of the tokens are backed by cash or cash equivalents.

Bitcoin risks collapsing to $50,000 - Standard Chartered 🙀 A breakthrough in the Bitcoin price below the $60,000 mark has again opened the way to the $50,000-52,000 range. This was warned by Standard Chartered. ℹ️ They cited a combination of cryptocurrency-specific and broader macroeconomic factors as the "new woes" factor. ✔️ By the former, the bank means a five-day outflow from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs and a weak response to the launch of their counterparts in Hong Kong. 🤔 After the decline in the digital gold quotes below $58,000, there was a risk of liquidations as more than half of the spot ETF positions are "underwater", so the risk of liquidation of some of them should also be taken into account, experts note. 👀 Regarding macroeconomics, experts mentioned the deterioration of liquidity indicators since mid-April, noting their impact on the cryptocurrency market.

🙀 Roger Ver arrested for tax evasion ❗️Roger Ver, also known as "Bitcoin Jesus" and founder of Bitcoin.com, was 👮‍♀️arrested in Spain on U.S. charges of tax evasion, with plans for extradition to face additional charges of mail fraud and filing false tax returns. 😡 Authorities claim Ver hid his cryptocurrency assets from the U.S. IRS, leading to $48 million in damages. He reportedly controlled around 70,000 BTC through two companies, which he sold for about $240 million, misleading his accountant and the IRS in the process. Ver used legal services to file tax returns that significantly undervalued his companies. Although he renounced his 🇺🇸 U.S. citizenship in 2014 and moved to Saint Kitts and Nevis, the Justice Department asserts he was still required to pay U.S. taxes on specific incomes from U.S.-based corporations MemoryDealers and Agilestar. 🤔

🤷 Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has been sentenced to 4 months in prison for violating anti-money laundering laws, although prosecutors sought three years. 👀 Did his sincere repentance help? Amid this news, the price of Bitcoin ⬇️dropped to $59,000, although many had expected it to fall to $56,000. Is more to come? 🤔