Trump tariffs reignite idea that Bitcoin could outlast US dollar

The lingering fears triggered by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs have analysts increasingly convinced that Bitcoin is now more likely than ever to challenge the US dollar in the years ahead.

“Higher chance Bitcoin survives over the dollar in our lifetime after today,” Bitwise Invest head of alpha strategies Jeff Parks said in an April 9 X post.

Investors will be left with no other option but Bitcoin, says crypto exec

“First time the thought hit me and didn’t feel like theory but an actual truth to grapple with,” Parks added. 

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley shared a similar view, noting that with trust in the US dollar waning and other foreign currencies seen as “even weaker,” investors are left with fewer choices. 

He argued that gold, typically seen as a safe harbor amid uncertainty, also has drawbacks around shipping and storage and implied

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Ethereum whale sells ETH after 900 days, missing $27M possible peak profit

An Ether whale who had held 10,000 Ether for the last 900 days has sold their entire stash and missed out on a peak profit of $27.6 million when the cryptocurrency was worth over $4,000. 

The whale initially bought a total of 10,000 Ether (ETH) across two transactions in October and November 2022 for $13 million at the time for an average price of $1,295 per token, blockchain analytics service Lookonchain said in an April 8 X post.

“He didn’t sell when Ether broke through $4,000. But today, he exited with a $2.75 million profit. The profit at the peak was $27.6 million,” Lookonchain said.

Source: Lookonchain 

The whale sold when Ether was around $1,578, according to Lookonchain. Within the period that the whale wallet was holding its stack, Ether hit a high of

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Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin just 15% of the time since its launch

Ethereum has only outperformed Bitcoin for 15% of all trading days since its launch almost a decade ago, according to analysts.

Since Ether (ETH) began trading in mid-2015, it has underperformed against Bitcoin (BTC) 85% of the time, analyst James Check said in an April 8 X post.

Data shared by Check shows that Ether significantly outperformed Bitcoin in its early years from mid-2015 to around mid-2017, and it had two short periods in late 2019 and early 2020 when the ETH to BTC ratio was in Ether’s favor.

However, Bitcoin has outperformed Ether for the past five years.

ETH/BTC profitable days. Source: James Check

The ETH/BTC ratio, which shows the price of Ether in terms of Bitcoin, fell to a five-year low of 0.018 on April 9, according to

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EU markets regulator says crypto may cause ‘broader stability issues’ as market grows

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has warned that crypto will increasingly threaten traditional financial markets’ stability as the industry grows and becomes more entwined with traditional finance players.

“We cannot rule out that future sharp drops in crypto prices could have knock-on effects on our financial system,” ESMA’s executive director Natasha Cazenave said in an April 8 statement to the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

Cazenave noted, however, that crypto currently only accounts for 1% of global financial assets and is not yet significant enough to cause major “spillover effects” into traditional financial markets.

She warned that interconnections between crypto and traditional markets are rapidly growing — particularly in the more crypto-friendly US — and called for closer monitoring.

“Crypto-assets markets evolve quickly, in an often unpredictable manner, and we need to keep a close eye on these developments,” Cazenave said, adding:

“Turmoil, even in small markets, can

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AI agent platform Virtuals revenue plunges to $500 a day with token down 90%

The artificial intelligence agent creation and monetization platform Virtuals Protocol has seen its daily revenue plummet to just $500 as demand for crypto AI agents continues to wane.

“Probably one of the wildest crypto charts of the cycle,” Blockworks researcher Sharples said in an April 8 X post.

Steep decline in AI agent creation

Sharples said that it has “been about a week” since a new AI agent launched on Virtuals compared to late November when the platform was helping make over 1,000 new AI agents a day, according to Dune Analytics data.

On Jan. 2, when the Virtual Protocol (VIRTUALS) token hit an all-time high of $4.61, Blockworks data shows Virtuals’ daily revenue soared above $500,000. 

However, that seemed to mark the start of a downtrend, signaling a potential top for the AI agent sector. The decline continued even

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Shaquille O’Neal gets judge’s greenlight for $11M Astrals NFT settlement

Former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal has been granted final court approval to settle a class-action lawsuit for $11 million with Astrals non-fungible token (NFT) buyers.

Florida federal court judge Federico Moreno granted approval of the settlement between O’Neal and the class group led by Daniel Harper in an April 1 order made available on April 8.

The deal created a fund of up to $11 million for eligible class members and awarded $2.9 million in attorney fees and costs. All those who purchased Astrals NFTs from May 2022 to Jan. 15 and those who purchased the project’s native GLXY tokens up until mid-January are eligible. 

“The fee sought by lead class counsel has been reviewed and approved as fair and reasonable by plaintiffs,” Moreno’s order read.

O’Neal was hit with the lawsuit in May 2023 over his founding and promotion of the Solana-based Astrals

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Melania Trump’s memecoin team ‘quietly sold’ $30M, says Bubblemaps

The team behind US first lady Melania Trump’s memecoin, Melania Meme (MELANIA), has moved $30 million worth of the token out of the project’s community funds and has begun selling them, says blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps.

Bubblemaps said in an April 7 X post that 50 million MELANIA tokens worth around $30 million “was moved from community funds — and is now being quietly sold, with no explanation from the team.”

It added the tokens were moved to a single wallet before being “split across multiple addresses.” From there, Bubblemaps said $3 million worth were transferred to exchanges, two new $6 million positions were opened, and $500,000 worth of MELANIA was sold.

Source: Bubblemaps

“No one from the MELANIA team has addressed this. Not the movements. Not the selling,” it added.

Bubblemaps said that 92% of MELANIA’s supply is held by “team wallets” and claimed

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Hackers hide crypto address-swapping malware in Microsoft Office add-in bundles

Malicious actors are attempting to steal crypto with malware embedded in fake Microsoft Office extensions uploaded to the software hosting site SourceForge, according to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

One of the malicious listings, called “officepackage,” has real Microsoft Office add-ins but hides a malware called ClipBanker that replaces a copied crypto wallet address on a computer’s clipboard with the attacker’s address, Kaspersky’s Anti-Malware Research Team said in an April 8 report.

“Users of crypto wallets typically copy addresses instead of typing them. If the device is infected with ClipBanker, the victim’s money will end up somewhere entirely unexpected,” the team said.

The fake project’s page on SourceForge mimics a legitimate developer tool page, showing the office add-ins and download buttons and can also appear in search results.

Kaspersky said it found a crypto-stealing malware on the software hosting website SourceForge. Source: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://securelist.com/miner-clipbanker-sourceforge-campaign/116088/" rel="null"

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Trump tariffs could lower Bitcoin miner prices outside US, says mining exec

The Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs could collapse US demand for Bitcoin mining rigs, which would benefit mining operations outside the country as manufacturers will look outside the US to sell their surplus inventory for cheaper, says Hashlabs Mining CEO Jaran Mellerud.

“As machine prices rise in the U.S., they could paradoxically decrease in the rest of the world,” Mellerud said in an April 8 report. “The demand for shipping machines to the U.S. is set to plummet, likely nearing zero.”

“Manufacturers will be left with excess stock originally intended for the US market. To offload this surplus, they’ll likely need to lower prices to attract buyers in other regions,” he added.

Falling mining rig prices could see non-US mining operations scale up and take a larger slice of Bitcoin’s total hashrate, Mellerud said.

Source: Jaran Mellerud

US President Donald Trump unveiled his administration’s “reciprocal tariffs”

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RedStone targets trading latency with new oracle on MegaETH

RedStone, a blockchain oracle provider, has introduced a push-based oracle on MegaETH to tackle latency issues that challenge the efficiency of onchain trading.

According to a spokesperson for RedStone, the new oracle can push new prices onchain every 2.4 milliseconds. Initially debuting on MegaETH, an Ethereum layer-2 network, the product may be rolled out to additional chains in the future.

RedStone said its oracle sources prices from centralized exchanges and delivers them directly to applications or smart contracts via nodes that operate natively on the MegaETH chain.

This “co-location” strategy minimizes latency by eliminating delays typically caused by the physical distance between servers. In the future, RedStone also plans to include price feeds from decentralized exchanges.

Oracles compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) are becoming more popular. According to Alchemy, there are currently 12 decentralized oracle networks operating on Ethereum.

Oracles can make money through data usage fees, licenses,

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