crtypto & forex news

Bitcoin is holding above $76,000 as the market tests resistance and the broader environment remains uncertain. The price is constructive, but the forces operating beneath it tell a more complicated story — and top analyst Darkfost has identified a signal in the Hash Ribbons that adds a specific layer of structural context to where Bitcoin stands right now. The Hash Ribbons is an indicator that functions as a barometer of miner activity, comparing the 30-day and 60-day moving averages of Bitcoin’s hashrate to identify when mining operations are genuinely under stress. Understanding why that reading matters requires a brief look at the economics pressing on miners right now. Today’s block reward is 3.125 BTC — a number that sounds meaningful at current prices but represents a fraction of the 50 BTC that early miners received per block. The dollar value of that reward has grown enormously over time, but so has the cost and complexity of earning it. Rising mining difficulty demands in...

Bitcoin may have pulled back briefly after days of upward action, but its price is still holding firm above the pivotal $77,000 mark backed by growing bullish sentiment across the broader cryptocurrency market. While BTC’s price has displayed upside momentum, the on-chain indicator points to a steady decline in activity among short-term holders. Short-Term Holder Activity Cools While Bitcoin Edges Higher Following its renewed upside performance, a subtle but crucial shift is starting to emerge in the Bitcoin market. This important shift is being observed among Short-Term BTC holders as the STH Active Supply Ratio continues to decline even while price gradually moves in the upside direction. It is worth noting that this metric represents the percentage of total circulating supply held by these investors, which is defined as native units that have moved at least once in the last 180 days. Furthermore, it measures the portion of supply that price-sensitive players control. Particular...

XRP has never lacked ambitious price forecasts, but a warning from crypto analyst ChartNerd is aimed at the extreme end of that optimism. As XRP is trading at $1.39, down over 60% from its all-time high of $3.65 reached in July 2025, the analyst is part of those pushing back hard against a culture of wishful thinking that could become more hazardous than any bearish call ever could be. Extreme XRP Targets Can Trap Investors Across cycles, through lawsuits and legal victories, exchange delistings and regulatory clarity, the XRP community has produced some of the most ambitious price forecasts in the crypto industry. There have been multiple predictions of the altcoin becoming repriced and trading around targets like $100, $1,000, or even as high as $18,000 and $25,000. According to crypto analyst ChartNerd, these price targets being thrown around for XRP are FAR more dangerous and unrealistic than the sub-$1 calls, which are at least grounded in historical data. The point is not ...

XRP is holding above $1.40 as the market approaches what feels like a defining moment — a price level that has served as both support and resistance through weeks of consolidation, with buyers and sellers increasingly aware that the next decisive move is building. The price action is cautious. The data beneath it is beginning to shift. An Arab Chain analysis tracking XRP’s risk-adjusted performance on Binance has identified an improvement that cuts against the hesitant price action. The Sharpe Ratio — which measures the quality of returns relative to the volatility required to generate them — has climbed to approximately 0.065, its highest reading of April. That follows a period of decline that began at the end of March and extended into early April, during which holders were bearing risk without being adequately compensated by returns. The distinction the Sharpe Ratio draws is one that the price chart alone cannot make. A rising price in a high-volatility environment can still repre...

While it may not be as significant as its Bitcoin and Ethereum counterparts , the Dogecoin ETF remains one of the most historic achievements in the cryptocurrency sector this year. As the ETF landscape gains momentum, DOGE ETFs have just hit a notable milestone that could bolster demand for these newly launched investment products. Dogecoin Investment Product Debuts On Major European Exchange A new milestone for mainstream crypto adoption is taking shape, and this time it is centered around Dogecoin, the largest meme coin in the market. The Dogecoin Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) have secured another achievement that allows these products to gain more ground globally. In the face of growing demand for ETFs, 21Shares’ Dogecoin ETP just went live on Xetra, the largest ETF exchange in Europe. The listing is a major step in making DOGE more accessible to institutions, turning it from a retail-driven asset into a more accessible investment product alongside leading assets such as Bitcoin ...

Coinbase Institutional has released its latest second-quarter (Q2) outlook for the crypto market, offering a read on what institutional investors said about Bitcoin (BTC) as the industry moves into Q2.  What Coinbase Thinks About Q2 2026 In the report , Coinbase frames its overall position as neutral for the second quarter of the year, pointing to the kind of uncertainty that makes it difficult to press directional bets in the near term. The firm said persistent, elevated uncertainty tied to the current geopolitical situation is one of the main reasons it isn’t leaning heavily toward either upside or downside trades. In that environment, Coinbase expects a more balanced approach to risk and return rather than aggressive positioning.  It also notes that, even with broader uncertainty dominating decision-making, there are still specific, “idiosyncratic” factors that can influence crypto outcomes.  Among them, Coinbase highlights regulatory developments and the growing ...

Ethereum is struggling to reclaim the $2,400 level as the broader market consolidates and buyers search for the conviction needed to push through overhead resistance. The price chart shows hesitation. The on-chain data, however, is showing something quite different — and it is coming from the same entity that has been quietly reshaping Ethereum’s supply structure for months. Data from Arkham Intelligence confirms that Bitmine has staked another 112,656 ETH, worth approximately $260 million at current prices. The transaction is the latest in a series of large, deliberate commitments that have been building since the company began its Ethereum treasury strategy earlier this year. Each stake has been followed by another. The pace has not slowed. The direction has not changed. A company that started with a thesis about Ethereum’s long-term value has been executing against it consistently, at scale, through market volatility, through price weakness, and through the kind of uncertainty th...

Much of the crypto market has spent 2026 fixated on XRP’s price chart, which has shed more than 60% from its 2025 peak. However, Ripple itself has been doing something far more consequential , which has been dismantling the structural barriers that have kept crypto on the sidelines. One of the clearest signals came from Ripple’s own statements around custody, where it described secure, compliant custody as the governance layer that everything else runs on. Ripple Is Quietly Solving Crypto’s Biggest Bottleneck XRP has always been at the center of every move made by Ripple. In fact, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse had previously noted that the token  is the company’s North Star. However, Ripple’s push to position XRP at the center of global finance does not begin with payments. It begins with custody.  According to recent insights from Ripple , the company made it clear that the biggest obstacle to institutional adoption is not speed or cost, but the absence of a secure, comp...

South Korea’s internet-only lender K bank has signed a strategic partnership with Ripple to test blockchain-based overseas remittances, marking another bank-facing expansion for Ripple’s payments infrastructure in Asia. The agreement, announced Monday by K bank and first reported by The Korea Herald, was signed at the lender’s headquarters in Seoul. K bank CEO Choi Woo-hyung and Ripple Asia-Pacific Managing Director Fiona Murray attended the ceremony alongside officials from both companies. K Bank Taps Ripple For Blockchain Remittance Tests The partnership centers on whether Ripple’s global network and blockchain infrastructure can improve the speed, cost efficiency and transparency of K bank’s overseas remittance system. For Ripple, the deal extends its long-running institutional payments strategy into South Korea’s digital banking market. For K bank, it gives the lender a live testing track for blockchain-based cross-border settlement at a time when stablecoins and tokenized paym...

The latest threat to Bitcoin’s cryptography is quantum computing. A researcher called Giancarlo Lelli has now won a one Bitcoin prize for using quantum hardware to crack a small cryptographic key linked to the same family of mathematics that protects Bitcoin.  This sounds terrifying at first glance, as it threatens the future of billions worth of Bitcoin. However, it also needs careful handling, because the truth is more complicated than breaking Bitcoin’s encryption. Researcher Makes Successful Attack On Elliptic Curve Cryptography The event came from Project Eleven’s Q-Day Prize, which was awarded to independent researcher Giancarlo Lelli. Lelli used publicly available quantum hardware to break a 15-bit elliptic curve cryptography key, using a variant of Shor’s algorithm to derive a private key from a public one.  The previous public quantum attack record was a 6-bit cryptographic key in September 2025, which means Lelli’s 15-bit result extends the record by a factor ...

Ethereum has clawed back above $2,300, with bulls now setting their sights on the $2,400 level that has capped the recovery throughout the consolidation phase. The price action is improving — but a CryptoQuant analysis has identified a development in the network data that suggests the current price level may be telling an incomplete story about where Ethereum actually stands. The analysis examines Ethereum’s active addresses — the number of unique wallets engaging with the network on a daily basis. The 100-day moving average of that metric has just reached an all-time high of approximately 587,000 active addresses. Not a multi-year high. Not a cycle high. An all-time high — a level of sustained daily network engagement that Ethereum has never seen before in its history. The timing creates a divergence that the data describes as unprecedented. Ethereum’s price is sitting more than 50% below the peak it reached in October. Its network usage, measured by the most sustained and smoothed ...

After a bullish weekend, Bitcoin appears to be gaining more upside momentum with its price back above the $77,000 level as buying pressure increases across the market . Meanwhile, underneath the price performance, a critical junction may be forming for the flagship cryptocurrency asset, which could determine the next potential price direction. How The Bitcoin Price Dynamics Are Playing Out While Bitcoin’s price is displaying renewed upward strength, a key on-chain metric is hinting at the asset nearing an important confluence zone. This region, where several indicators and technical levels coincide, frequently serves as a pivotal battlefield for buyers and sellers. These zones have historically seen significant price movements as market factors come together and volatility starts to increase. According to Darkfost, a verified author at the CryptoQuant platform, this trend can be observed through the Bitcoin Supply Distribution Heatmap.  The metric combines three interesting e...

XRP has entered the final stretch of April with one of its strongest on-chain accumulation signals of the year . Data from Santiment shows that 34.94 million XRP left exchanges in a single 24-hour period on April 24, making it the sixth-largest exchange outflow day recorded so far in 2026. The move comes as XRP is trading around $1.43, having clawed back from the $1.30 levels that defined much of early April.  Millions Of XRP Leave Exchanges In Major On-Chain Signal Exchange outflows measure the volume of tokens being withdrawn from trading platforms into private wallets, and this is a bullish move that shows holder intent to accumulate their tokens. According to data from on-chain analytics platform Santiment, XRP investors recently went through one of their highest 24-hour accumulations from crypto exchanges so far this year. Notably, Santiment’s data shows that XRP’s latest outflow spike reached 34.94 million tokens in one day. These 34.94 million XRP tokens that flowed o...

According to the latest report, major Litecoin mining pools were hit by a Denial-of-Service (DOS) attack this weekend due to a zero-day vulnerability in the network. The Litecoin Foundation confirmed that the bug has been patched and the network is fully operational. Litecoin Attacker Attempts Double-Spend Exploits On Cross-Chain Protocols On Saturday, April 25, the Litecoin Foundation reported in a post on the X platform that a Denial-of-Service attack occurred on its network. According to the foundation, this exploit, enabled by a zero-day bug in the network’s MimbleWimble Extension Block (MWEB) privacy layer, allowed the bad actor to attempt double-spends against cross-chain swap protocols. The foundation explained that the vulnerability allowed non-updated mining nodes to facilitate an invalid MWEB transaction, which enabled individuals to peg out coins to third-party decentralized exchanges. This DOS attack caused a disruption to the normal operations of major mining pools, th...

Iran’s decision to accept Bitcoin as payment for oil shipping tolls through the Strait of Hormuz gave fresh weight to a question already circulating in Washington: does the US military actually understand crypto well enough to use it as a tool of national power? A Waterway And A Currency About 20% of the world’s oil supply moves through the Strait of Hormuz . Iran announced it would accept Chinese yuan, dollar-pegged stablecoins, and Bitcoin for tolls on ships passing through. Officials at the Bitcoin Policy Institute told reporters that Iran leans toward stablecoins — but Bitcoin has a quality stablecoins don’t. Stablecoins can be frozen by their issuers at the contract level. Bitcoin cannot. No single entity controls the network, which means no one can shut it down or block a transaction. US Admiral Calls Bitcoin Key to Cybersecurity and Power Projection Admiral Samuel Paparo sees Bitcoin as a strategic tool for U.S. cybersecurity and national power, emphasizing its proof-of-w...

The price of Bitcoin has been enjoying significant bullish momentum over the past few weeks, with last week delivering the largest gains in over three months. According to different pundits, the flagship cryptocurrency’s latest rally above $79,000 was primarily driven by demand in the perpetual futures market rather than the spot market . Recent on-chain evaluation shows that the buying pressure on the Bitcoin derivatives side has yet to simmer down over the past few days. BTC Net Taker Volume Surges To Around $145 Million In an April 25th post on the X platform, pseudonymous analyst Darkfost revealed that the bulls have continued to dominate the Bitcoin perpetual futures market. This on-chain observation is based on a surge in the Net Taker Volume metric, which measures the difference between the volume of long (buy) and short (sell) orders in the derivatives market of a particular cryptocurrency. The on-chain metric can be used to identify the market’s most dominant participant (...

Bitcoin’s price action has been climbing steadily off its February low around $61,300, but what stands directly ahead is not just another resistance zone. It is a statistical threshold that has held firm through multiple market cycles. According to data, every time Bitcoin has staged a 30% recovery from a cycle low, it has gone on to new highs without revisiting that low. The record is six for six, covering more than 13 years of market history.  The 30% Bitcoin Recovery Rule Bitcoin dropped to a yearly low near $61,300 in early February during a broad market sell-off that spread across both crypto and traditional risk assets. That has been the most recent bottom for this year, and the cryptocurrency has mostly held up above this point despite multiple calls of new bottoms below $50,000 from multiple analysts. A dataset highlighted by market participant Isaiah Douglass has brought attention to Bitcoin’s recovery after this low. The claim is that once Bitcoin recovers 30% from...

Bitcoin was built with many of the qualities typically associated with a safe-haven asset: it is portable, censorship-resistant, and independent of traditional financial systems. In theory, those characteristics make a compelling case for BTC as a refuge in times of instability, particularly in a world facing geopolitical tensions, inflation risks, and growing uncertainty around legacy institutions. How Long It Might Take For Bitcoin To Be Widely Accepted The idea that most Bitcoiners believe Bitcoin is already a full-fledged safe-haven asset misses an important nuance. Crypto analyst Willy Woo has mentioned on X that when an asset is independent of the system and thrives even if the system collapses, there are certain properties that should be expected of a true safe-haven asset. Meanwhile, BTC clearly carries these properties. In extreme scenarios, such as war, a seed phrase can preserve wealth across borders. Despite its characteristics, Bitcoin still tends to trade like a ris...

Iran had already begun collecting crypto payments from ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz when US authorities moved to cut off the money. On Friday, the Treasury Department announced it had frozen over $340 million in cryptocurrency tied to Iranian military and political groups — the same amount stablecoin issuer Tether had quietly locked down just 24 hours earlier. Bitcoin Tolls At A Global Chokepoint Reports say Iran had been charging vessels in Bitcoin for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz , one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes for oil and other cargo. Reports disclose that Iran had already banked revenue from those crypto tolls. The move came amid an ongoing standoff over the strait, where Iranian forces reportedly attacked three ships and US naval forces established a blockade. US President Donald Trump said this week that the US and Iran had reached a ceasefire agreement. But tensions on the water tell a different story. The attacks on commercial ships an...

Barely a month after its first transaction with BitMine, the Ethereum Foundation has announced another sale of significant amounts of Ether tokens to the digital asset treasury (DAT) company. BitMine Picks Up Additional 10,000 ETH From Ethereum Foundation In an April 24th post on the X platform, the Ethereum Foundation disclosed that it has “finalized the terms” of a 10,000 ETH sale, with BitMine as the counterparty in an over-the-counter (OTC) deal. This OTC transaction was reportedly completed at an average cost of $2,387 (equivalent to nearly $24 million in value). This latest transaction comes a month and 10 days after the Ethereum Foundation sold 5,000 ETH (worth roughly $10.21 million at the time) to the Chairman Tom Lee-led digital asset treasury firm. Similar to the previous sale, proceeds from this transaction will fund the EF’s core operations & activities, including protocol R&D, ecosystem development, community grant funding, and more. As disclosed in the last...