Tariffs, TRUMP Dinner & Trends: Crypto Surges, Markets in Motion, Policy Moves May Be Next

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This Week’s Top Stories

“Tariff Talks, Episode #2739” – This week 

• The whole story surrounding the tariffs and the trade war between the U.S. and China continued to unfold this week. There seems to be an information overload, as different participants say different things at different times, to different people. This week, the news mainly came from the U.S. side. On Tuesday, Scott Bessent mentioned that the tariff standoff with China is unsustainable and likely to ease, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump sees good progress on trade talks with China and other countries. 
• Later on the same day, Trump said that the tariff on China will come down substantially from the current level of 145 percent, as he is eyeing tariffs between 50 and 60 percent. He once more expressed optimism about reaching a trade deal with China, highlighting his good relationship with the country. 
• While Trump and his administration mentioned this week that they had spoken to Chinese representatives regarding the tariff situation, the Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said that these reports were false. 
• Earlier today, Friday 25 April 2025, news started circulating that China is considering exempting some U.S. imports from its 125 percent tariff, as Beijing is trying to mitigate the economic fallout from the trade war. In addition, China appears to have quietly rolled back retaliatory tariffs of 125 percent on some U.S.-made semiconductors. 
• There is a lot of talk, a lot of news, and for some of these headlines, there are contradicting statements or no real sources mentioned.

“Trump has no Intention of Firing Fed Chairman Powell.” – Tuesday, 22 April 2025 

• Just last week, the talk of the town was that Trump and his team were bullying Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell – saying he was making a big mistake, calling him a major loser, and that his termination couldn’t come soon enough. 
• This week, however, Trump stated on Tuesday that he has no intention of firing Powell, even though he is dissatisfied with the Fed’s stance on interest rate decisions, as Trump hopes Powell would be a little more active in pushing his idea to lower interest rates.

“Paul Atkins Sworn in as SEC Chairman: We will Work to Ensure that the U.S. is the Best and most Secure Place in the World to Invest and do Business.” – Monday, 21 April 2025 

• On Monday, Paul Atkins was sworn in as the new Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Atkins was previously appointed as an SEC commissioner from 2002 to 2008 and served on the staff of two SEC chairmen between 1990 and 1994. Prior to returning to the SEC, Atkins helped lead efforts to develop best practices for the digital asset sector and is generally known for his interest in – and positive stance toward – the crypto industry.

A Quick Crypto Overview: Markets Are Up This Week

Trump’s comments regarding the tariff situation, as well as making up with Powell and restoring their friendship this week, were picked up positively by the markets, as the U.S. stock market and the overall crypto market are up significantly for the week. 

Gold took a hit this week after reaching yet another all-time high on Tuesday. It is currently down more than 5 percent from its weekly (and all-time) high of $3’500 per ounce and is now slightly down on the week. 

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is up more than 10 percent this week, tagging along with the U.S. indices to the upside rather than following gold’s movement – indicating that the market is still not 100 percent sure whether bitcoin is a risk-off or risk-on asset. 

Bitcoin dominance is trading sideways this week – slightly down, but still significantly up over the past few weeks. 

Ethereum is up more than 7 percent against bitcoin since Tuesday, with altcoins such as SUI (up 66 percent this week), FARTCOIN (up 40 percent), and TRUMP (up 70 percent) outperforming the broader market by a huge margin.

Chart of the Week: The Year After the Bitcoin Halving 

Last weekend marked the first anniversary of the 2024 Bitcoin halving, which took place on 20 April 2024. In anticipation of last year’s halving, we published several articles highlighting various aspects of the event in connection with Bitcoin, the halving cycle, and Bitcoin’s price action. 

Looking at the first three halvings, Bitcoin experienced explosive price movements in the year that followed: 

• After the first halving, Bitcoin surged over 8’400 percent. 

• After the second halving, it rose more than 285 percent. 

• Following the third halving, it climbed over 560 percent. 

Now, how did Bitcoin perform in the year after the fourth halving? 

Let’s look at the chart below: Bitcoin is currently up slightly less than 50 percent since the day of the halving – significantly underperforming compared to the price increases seen after previous halvings. 

It’s important to note that Bitcoin’s price performance in the year before the fourth halving was significantly stronger than it was prior to the second and third halvings, suggesting that some of the “halving hype” may have been front-run last year. 

You can read the full article from last March here.

What’s Happening On-Chain? Scale the Ethereum L1? TRUMP Dinner for Token Holders

This week, Vitalik Buterin proposed a long-term plan on the Ethereum Magicians forum, presenting a radical idea for the future of the Ethereum execution layer. His proposal: replace the EVM with RISC-V as the virtual machine language that smart contracts are written in. The goal is to greatly improve the efficiency of Ethereum L1 by resolving one of its primary scaling bottlenecks. 

According to Vitalik, the upgrade could bring efficiency gains of over 100-fold to the L1. The core concepts – such as accounts, cross-contract calls, and storage – would remain exactly the same. He expects most developers would continue writing smart contracts in Solidity, and legacy EVM contracts would still function and remain fully two-way interoperable. 

While this is still a very early-stage idea and would likely take years to become reality – if ever – it marks an interesting development in the ongoing conversation around scaling Ethereum L1, a topic many in the Ethereum community have repeatedly raised their voices about. 

Do you remember last week when we discussed whether Trump would talk about his memecoin again in the wake of the newest unlocks? Well, this week, the project announced an exclusive dinner event with Donald Trump for the top 220 TRUMP token holders. The price of the TRUMP token jumped more than 50 percent after the announcement on Wednesday and is currently trading at $13 – up 40 percent since then.

Digital Asset Fund Flows: Inflows Are Picking Up Again, Crypto ETFs, 21 Capital & PayPal

Last week, digital asset investment products saw total net inflows of $6 million, ending a three-week streak of net outflows. XRP made the difference, posting nearly $40 million in net inflows, while Ethereum products saw net outflows of $26 million. 

This week, the bitcoin spot ETFs came back to life, with two days – Tuesday and Wednesday – each seeing over $900 million in net inflows. Monday and Thursday followed with roughly $400 million each, bringing total net inflows for the week to $2.6 billion. 

In other news, Eric Balchunas posted on X that over 70 crypto ETFs are currently awaiting SEC approval to list or to offer options. The filings include products for XRP, SOL, LTC, Dogecoin, Pengu, DOT, and many more. The most in-demand applications are for SOL and XRP products, with six and ten institutions applying, respectively. 

Also This week, Cantor Fitzgerald announced a new $3 billion Bitcoin investment initiative in partnership with SoftBank, Tether, and Bitfinex, under a newly formed entity called 21 Capital. The initiative aims to replicate MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin investment strategy. Tether pledged to contribute $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, SoftBank $900 million, and Bitfinex $600 million. These investments would eventually be converted into shares of 21 Capital at $10 per share, implying a valuation of $85’000 per Bitcoin. 

Separately, Cantor’s vehicle will raise a $350 million convertible bond and a $200 million private equity placement for further Bitcoin purchases. Strike founder Jack Mallers is set to join the new company as CEO. 

In the world of stablecoins, PayPal announced this week that it will launch a rewards program to incentivize holding its PYUSD stablecoin for U.S. users. Users will be able to earn an APY of 3.7 percent for holding PYUSD in their PayPal or Venmo accounts. 

At the same time, Coinbase announced an expanded partnership with PayPal to further support the adoption and utilization of PYUSD. 

Meanwhile, Circle announced the Circle Payments Network (CPN) – a pilot program designed to set a new standard for global money movement. The initiative aims to connect financial institutions and orchestrate seamless, borderless payments worldwide. 

Market Sentiment: Greedy Crypto Market vs. Fearful Stock market

While the stock market fear and greed index is still in fear territory (33), the crypto market is already back in greed territory (60), up from fear levels last week. Most AAII members continue to be bearish for the coming six months (55.6 percent are bearish), while the amount of neutral members has risen to 22.5 percent, up from 17 percent last week.

Other Relevant News 

• Spar, a global supermarket chain, has officially accepted Bitcoin payments at its Zug, Switzerland store. – Link 

• The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) released a report saying that cryptocurrencies and DeFi have reached a "critical mass". – Link 

• Strategy has acquired 6’556 BTC for $555.8 million at $84’785 per bitcoin. – Link 

• The Federal Reserve Board has withdrawn previous guidance related to banks’ crypto-asset and dollar token activities, including supervisory letters issued in 2022 and 2023 and joint statements with other regulators. – Link 

• Arthur Hayes’ New Essay “Ski Cut” – Link 

• Charles Schwab CEO says spot crypto trading will 'likely' launch within 12 months. – Link 

Looking Ahead: Tariffs, Earnings, Economic Data, 13F Filings 

The tariffs remain the predominant story in the market right now. It remains to be seen whether this situation will be resolved soon or will take much longer to unfold. Bessent mentioned this week that a trade deal with China will likely take years to finalize, suggesting that markets might have to get used to this uncertainty for quite some time. As time passes, the impact of related headlines will likely subside over the coming weeks and months. It will be important to keep an eye on the 90-day exemption on tariffs for most other U.S. trade partners, which was announced on 9 April, setting the final date for the exemptions to 8 July 2025. 

On another note, it might be worth keeping an eye on U.S. earnings reports. This week, Tesla and Alphabet released their earnings – Tesla missed expectations, while Alphabet beat theirs. Nonetheless, both stocks are trading higher than they were before the earnings releases. Market participants will also likely focus on upcoming economic data, such as the U.S. unemployment data scheduled for release next Friday. 

In the world of crypto, particularly Bitcoin, some interesting 13F filings are expected to be published over the coming weeks. It will be worth watching which companies bought into U.S.-based Bitcoin spot ETFs during the first quarter. 

Bitcoin and some of the other major cryptocurrencies have held up surprisingly well over the past few weeks. It remains to be seen how this story continues to unfold – especially with gold losing momentum this week. Stay tuned! 

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

Wednesday, 30 April 2025 

Eurozone – GDP Q1 

USA – Core PCE Price Index, PCE Price Index 

USA – GDP Q1 

Japan – BoJ Interest Rate Decision 

Thursday, 1 May 2025 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims 

Friday, 2 May 2025 

Eurozone – Core CPI, CPI 

USA – Unemployment Rate 

USA – Nonfarm Payrolls