Bitcoin & Crypto Holding up Strong, 3rd Highest Inflows into Digital Assets & FOMC ahead

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This Week’s Top Stories

“60-Day Deadline for Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Ending on May 5, 2025 & Positive Comments regarding Crypto From Atkins and Lutnick.” – This Week

• On Monday, May 5, the 60-day deadline for the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to deliver an “evaluation of the legal and investment considerations for establishing and managing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile” is coming to an end. It has been quiet around this topic lately, but market participants can expect public disclosures and potentially meaningful developments next week.
• The new chairman of the SEC, Paul Atkins stated that he will work closely with Congress and the Trump administration to develop a regulatory framework for digital assets, signaled a clear shift in strategy, and that he anticipates huge benefits from digital assets overall.
• The U.S. Secretary Commerce, Howard Lutnick, said in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine that the U.S. wants to accelerate bitcoin mining and support the construction of a power infrastructure to reduce the reliance on the public power grid. Lutnick also expressed his view that bitcoin should be seen as a commodity and not as a currency, and that it also should be treated as such.

“Arizona has Passed two Bitcoin Reserve Bills, now Awaiting Governer’s Signature.” – Monday, 28 April 2025

• The U.S. state of Arizona’s Legislature has passed two bitcoin reserve bills, which are now both awaiting the state’s Governor Hobbs’s signature to go into effect. Her signature would allow the state treasurer and retirement system to invest up to 10 percent of available funds in Bitcoin and other digital assets.

“The Ethereum Foundation’s Next Chapter.” – Monday, 28 April 2025

• On Monday, the Ethereum Foundation published a blog post titled “The Ethereum Foundation’s Next Chapter”, announcing a moment of transition and opportunity, and that the Ethereum Foundation will focus on scaling the Ethereum mainnet, blobs, and improving UX and application layer development.
• They also acknowledged that the Foundation needs to accelerate the journeys of developers, founders, and institutions through the pathways towards building on Ethereum and adopting Ethereum and emphasized that we all need to build the future of Ethereum together as a community-led future.

A Quick Crypto Overview: Bitcoin Dominance up 13 Percent YTD

Bitcoin and the broader crypto market have continued their upward trend this week, with Bitcoin up more than 3 percent on the week at the time of writing, trading at $96’700. Bitcoin dominance is up again for the week, bringing year-to-date gains to more than 13 percent.
While Bitcoin is still managing to lift up much of the rest of the crypto market, the current dynamics are clear: there is Bitcoin, with its clear value proposition, and then there is the rest of the altcoin market, with a diverse set of narratives and ideas – mostly different implementations of decentralized technology platforms and applications.

This week, Virtuals Protocol’s VIRTUAL token is outperforming the other top 100 tokens, being up 100 percent, followed by Monero (up 24 percent) and PENGU (up 22 percent). Some other memecoins such as BONK or BRETT are also up 14 to 20 percent, while Layer 1 coins such as ATOM, AVAX, or DOT are slightly down on the week.

Chart of the Week: BTCUSD / Gold

Bitcoin is currently trading below its 2021 high against gold. The BTCUSD-to-gold ratio hit a new all-time high in December but has since lost significant ground, as gold has been on an absolute tear, with the bid from central banks really taking off, putting in a 26-year high. The demand for predictably working reserve assets seems to continue to skyrocket in the current macro situation, from which both assets could benefit.

While the gold chart shows some sign of (temporary?) exhaustion, the below chart hints at a possible catch-up trade for Bitcoin when compared to gold – current developments with the U.S. potentially buying more Bitcoin in budget-neutral strategies could accelerate this trend further. Especially if the Trump administration should decide to sell gold to buy more Bitcoin – as it was already a topic of discussion previously.

What’s Happening On-Chain? A New Rollup For Ethereum, Ethena partners with TON Foundation & DeFi Metrics

Yesterday, the new neutral rollup built for Ethereum, Ethereum R1 was announced on X. The post claims for it to align perfectly with Ethereum values of public funding and community control. They stated that general-purpose L2s should be like commodities – simple, replaceable and free from centralization, they also claim that Ethereum R1 is grounded in credible neutrality, decentralization, and censorship resistance.

Ethereum R 1 seems to be 100 percent donation funded, stage 2 from its first day on, there will be a public good funding until 2030 and a burning of all fees thereafter, it claims to be replaceable by design and there is no token. You can read more about it here.

In other news, Ethena announced a partnership with the TON Foundation to introduce the USDe and sUSDe stablecoins into the Telegram ecosystem. The Ethena products will also be integrated into Telegram’s native wallet.

When taking a look at some metrics in the DeFi world, one can observe that while DEX volume is still well below the levels between November and February (down almost 60 percent from the January levels), it is well above every month of 2024 (except March 2024), and the volume has not decreased further in April when compared to March – it actually slightly increased again after three months of pulling back.

Interestingly, the number of new tokens appearing on DEXs is only down roughly 20 percent from its January high, with over 370’000 new tokens having appeared on DEXs last week, compared to 458’000 in the week of Trump’s inauguration back in January. This dynamic highlights the decline in overall trading activity over the past months – likely due to overall market situations such as the tariff war and macro conditions – but it also showcases the resilience of market participants in launching new tokens despite this negative sentiment.

Digital Asset Fund Flows: 3rd Largest Net Weekly Inflows on Record

Last week, digital asset investment products saw $3.4 billion in net inflows, marking the highest amount since December 2024 and the third largest weekly net inflow on record. Bitcoin amounted for most of the inflows, taking in $3.18 billion, followed by Ethereum with $183 million. Interestingly, Solana was the only altcoin with outflows, losing $5.7 million last week.

This week started very strong again for the U.S.-listed Bitcoin spot ETFs, as they have brought in net new inflows of more than $1.1 billion so far this week. Ethereum on the other hand saw small net inflows of $90 million this week so far.

Strategy and Saylor were in the news again this week. First, they announced that they had acquired an additional 15’000 BTC for almost $1.5 billion the week before, and on Thursday, May 1, Strategy raised its 2025 Bitcoin yield target from 15 to 20 percent, and their Bitcoin USD gain target for 2025 from $10 to $20 billion. They also announced a new $21 billion at-the-market equity offering to acquire more Bitcoin.

The chart below shows the increased buying of Bitcoin through the U.S.-listed spot ETFs over the past weeks, which have, in combination with Strategy acquiring 15,000 BTC last week, bought up more than one-third of all the Bitcoin that will be mined in the entire year of 2025 – crazy!

Market Sentiment: The Stock Market is Marked by Uncertainty, While Crypto is in Greed

The CNN fear and greed index continues to hang around fear levels (40) after having stayed a short amount of time in neutral levels. The sentiment survey from AAII supports this current sentiment in the U.S. stock market, as still almost 60 percent of the AII members voted that they are bearish for the coming six months and only 20 percent indicated a bullish stance. The tariff situation and growing indices for a potential recession seem to be of concern for many, despite the recent recovery in asset prices.

Other Relevant News

• Matt Hougan, CIO at Bitwise, stated that Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and UBS are expected to fully open access to spot Bitcoin ETFs by the end of 2025. – Link

• According to Bloomberg, Morgan Stanley plans to launch spot crypto trading on its ETrade platform next year, allowing clients to buy and sell Bitcoin and Ether. – Link

Looking Ahead: 60-Day Deadline for BTC Strategic Reserve, 13F Filings & Macro

Bitcoin and the crypto market are continuing to hold up exceptionally well this week. Next week, the FOMC will publish its interest rate decision and statement on Wednesday evening CET. This conference is of particular interest, as it will be important to see how the current tariff situation really affects their view on the market, and market participants are on the lookout for comments regarding potential interest rate cuts soon. For the meeting on Wednesday, the focus is more on their outlook and not on the interest rate decision itself, as over 93 percent of traders are expecting them to keep the current target rate unchanged at 425–450 bps.

The end of the 60-day deadline regarding the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve and the Digital Asset Stockpile in the U.S., for Scott Bessent and his team, coming up this week, could bring some new key developments regarding Bitcoin and digital assets in the USA. One eye should also be on developments in Arizona, as the governor could sign the bill and bring it into effect at any moment.

We have mentioned it a couple of times already, but the significant 13F filings should be published soon – and there could be some spicy surprises in there.

Finally, the Pectra upgrade for Ethereum is around the corner, and in combination with the pivot from the Ethereum Foundation regarding the scaling of the L1, this upgrade could signal the beginning of a more positive sentiment towards Ethereum.

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week.

Monday, 5 May 2025

• Switzerland – CPI

Tuesday, 6 May 2025

• Switzerland – Unemployment Rate

• Eurozone – PPI

• USA – 10-Year Note Auction

Wednesday, 7 May 2025

• USA – FOMC Statement, Interest Rate Decision, Press Conference

Thursday, 8 May 2025

• USA – Initial Jobless Claims

• USA – 30-Year Bond Auction

Friday, 9 May 2025

• China – CPI, PPI