OVERVIEW

Bulls Are Doing Pushups In The Middle Of The Highway Again 🐂

Here’s What’s Happening 👇️

Crypto today looks like a market trying to hold a memorial service and a pep rally at the same time. $BTC ( ▲ 0.55% ) is still upright, which passes for leadership in a sector where half the board trades like it owes money to dangerous people. 🥷 

$ETH ( ▲ 0.34% ) keeps drifting around (but higher) like it forgot why it walked into the room. Alts like $XLM ( ▼ 1.55% ) are doing slightly better/worse depending no how you look at them.

The whole thing still hinges on a bunch of boomers agreeing to something in Mordor on the Potomac and stuff happening in the Middle-East. 🔥

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:

Source: TradingView

PLEASE
Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really, Want 🧂

Every year (for the past four years), I like to change things up a little. Then I ask for feedback from the saltiest group of salty readers out there. 🤦 

The results have been great! The News In Three Sentences is popular, on-chain analysis and interpretation is a hit, and some other smaller changes have been the result of you telling me what you like.

Or don’t like. Sometimes in very mean ways. How mean? Like walking-two-blocks-to-the-liquor-store-but-then-feeling-better-mean.

And it’s that time of year to try something new. So let me know what you think!

• Email me here: jmorgan@stocktwits.com 

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• Or send you adoration on X: Hi.

NEWS
Things You Should Know 🧠

• Bithumb has started provisional seizure proceedings to recover the last 7 BTC from its February payout disaster, after accidentally entering “Bitcoin” instead of “won” during an event reward distribution.

• Binance announced it will delist BIFI, FIO, FUN, MDT, OXT, and WAN, with spot trading ending on April 23 at 03:00 UTC.

• The National Crime Agency said its April 9 update on Operation Atlantic identified more than 20,000 victims across the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. and froze more than $12 million in suspected criminal proceeds. It also said investigators identified more than $45 million stolen in cryptocurrency fraud schemes globally, much of it tied to approval phishing and investment scams.

• TRM Labs said Iran has accepted transit payments through the Strait of Hormuz in Chinese yuan, Bitcoin, or possibly USDT since mid-March 2026, with charges reaching up to $2 million per vessel. TRM also said the system was formally codified on March 30-31 and could generate up to $20 million per day from oil tankers alone.

• A solo miner running about 70 TH/s mined block 944,306 and collected the full 3.128 BTC reward, worth roughly $222,000. I hope, one day, that will be me.

NEWS
Things You Didn’t Know That You Should Know 🧠

• MEXC listed 4 more $ONDO ( ▼ 1.58% ) tokenized stock pairs – Eaton and 3 iShares ETFs. Same old story: take assets with market hours, slap them on-chain, and remove bedtime.

• ECGI says Rezy.Fi is live, the mortgage RWA workflow passed sandbox testing, and the investor portal should launch next week.

• Oceanus and HashKey signed an MOU to bring regulated stablecoin settlement into Asian trade finance and commodity flows.

• Broadridge’s DLR averaged $354 billion in daily repo volume in March, with nearly $8 trillion processed for the month.

• Fairmint acquired The RWA Desk to get closer to the Wall Street crowd shaping on-chain equity markets.

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ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Today’s Ticker 🎯

Today’s ticker is $XLM ( ▼ 1.55% ) . Not as poorly named as $OP ( ▲ 0.42% ) , but still a poorly named crypto. Why? Because while every other major crypto ticker is in the green today but this turd is stuck at -2% (as of 1424 EST).

Well, That’s A Mighty Fine Report You’ve Got There Friend

Seriously, how is this thing performing so bad today? I ask because Messari’s Matt Kreiser dropped their crazy detailed Sate of Stellar Q4 2025 report. Some highlights below:

• Stellar’s all grown-up: non-stablecoin RWAs topped $1 billion in January, with growth driven by Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, Spiko’s T-bill products, and RedSwan’s tokenized real estate.

• Stablecoins kept moving higher: Stellar’s stablecoin market cap rose 53% YoY to $244 million, helped by PYUSD launching on the network and USDC growing to $223 million.

• Institutions keep poking around: U.S. Bank is testing custom stablecoin issuance on Stellar, leaning on the network’s low costs, fast settlement, and compliance-friendly asset controls.

• DeFi and privacy both got a lift: TVL climbed 284% in 2025 to $172.6 million, while the X-Ray upgrade added the groundwork for zero-knowledge privacy features.

Get the full report here.

The summary is shared with permission from Matt. He said it was ok. I have e-mail proof and the thought the dad joke I included was funny.

On-Chain Data Says: Three metrics working in XLM’s favor

Click to enlarge.

• TVL nearly quadrupled while price did the opposite, so there’s real things real things happening independent of speculation.

• Addresses holding 10,000 XLM or more haven’t moved meaningfully through the entire decline. That cohort absorbed a 60%-plus price drop without distributing.

• The 1-year active supply climbed from 21% in April 2025 to 31ish% by September and has held there.

On-Chain Data Says: Three metrics working against it

Click to enlarge.

• The RVT Ratio started at 150 in April 2025, briefly compressed to 178 during the June rally, then expanded relentlessly crossing 200 in May, 250 by late summer, and now above 320. The network is doing less economic work per dollar of market cap every week.

• Active addresses last peaked above 12 million in September 2025, now running 389K in the most recent reading. That’s a 97% contraction from the September peak.

• Transaction fees spiked to $59K during the June rally confirming real demand, fell back to $20-30K through summer, and have since collapsed to $2K-$5K per week currently.

OLD NEWS
Crypto Stuff That Happened Today, But A Long Time Ago 📜

Here’s what was happening in the newsletter a year ago today:

• Kevin O’Leary went full tariff goblin – he wanted a 400% tariff on China.

• Crypto ads were all over elite soccer – every Champions League quarter-finalist had some kind of crypto tie-in.

• Hedera got nuked by fake Nvidia rumor fumes – a bogus AI partnership post helped wipe roughly $1B off HBAR’s market value.

• Virgil Griffith got out of prison – after 63 months, he was released and headed to a halfway house.

Here’s what was happening in the newsletter two years ago today:

• Crypto got smacked by CPI nerves – the prior day’s bullish move basically got kneecapped by macro jitters and looming inflation data.

• SushiSwap governance looked shady – the community was fighting over a treasury vote that critics said smelled like centralized control and last-minute wallet games.

• Bitcoin ETFs were on a monster inflow streak – BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC were setting records and proving institutions wanted Bitcoin exposure with training wheels.

OLD NEWS
Other Stuff That Happened Today, But A Long Ass Time Ago ⌛️

April 9, 1865

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. The two commanders met in the home of Wilmer McLean to work out the surrender terms, a moment McLean later summed up with, “The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.”

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵️

🏛️ Alchemy Pay Added More Licenses

Alchemy Pay spent March stacking regulatory wins with a Hong Kong SFC Type 1 uplift for virtual asset dealing, a Delaware money transmitter license, and 150,000-plus testnet addresses on Alchemy Chain in one month. It also kept bolting tokens onto the fiat on-ramp, including ADI, SUN, APTM, BDX, and RSR. Alchemy Pay.

💸 Circle Gave Singapore the Payouts API

Circle Mint Singapore partners can now use the Payouts API for third-party USDC payouts, extending a feature that had previously been limited to the U.S. entity. The setup is aimed at automated, compliant cross-border payout flows with less manual mess and better alignment with Singapore’s Travel Rule expectations. Circle.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Real World Asset Tokenization (RWA) News 🪙

🧾 Core PCE Slipped a Hair, So the Fed Still Gets to Pretend This Is Fine

February headline PCE came in at 2.8% YoY and 0.4% MoM, while core PCE eased to 3.0% YoY from 3.1% and stayed at 0.4% MoM. Truflation said its mapped PCE had already dropped to 1.2% in February before rebounding, with its April 9 reads at 2.42% for PCE and 2.25% for core PCE. The official data still showed up late enough to feel like a history lesson, which is why Truflation got the victory lap. Truflation.

🏛️ Ondo Says Tokenized Stocks Don’t “Split Liquidity” – They Just Make TradFi People Nervous

Ondo argues tokenized equities are not siphoning liquidity away from U.S. markets but extending access to them, with its model keeping creation and redemption tied to U.S. market hours and settlement anchored in traditional guidelines. They say its design now represents roughly 70% of tokenized equities and cites internal data showing 75% of trades came in under 2 bps spread and 95% under 5 bps from February 2 to April 7. Ondo Finance.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, & Lending News 🏦

🎂 Pancake Burned More CAKE Again and Kept a Straight Face Calling It Ultrasound

PancakeSwap posted a March net mint of negative 2,199,351 CAKE, marking its 31st straight month of supply reduction and a 0.645% cut to total supply as of April 7. It minted 674,316 CAKE and burned 2,873,667, with swaps and perpetual trading fees doing most of the heavy lifting. For once, the bakery math checks out – more tokens went into the oven than came out. PancakeSwap.

🛟 ReacDEFI Built a Seatbelt for Leverage

ReacDEFI is now live on Ethereum and Base, letting users set trigger and target health factors plus choose collateral deposits, debt repayment, or both. The system checks positions on a schedule, steps in before hard liquidation, and restores buffer while the trade can still recover. Reactive Network.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Protocol News 🏦

📶 Helium Brought Signal to Band Camp, Which Is More Useful Than Most Festival Headliners

At Okeechobee, 13 Helium Hotspots scaled from a Monday baseline of 197 subscribers to a Saturday peak of 6,620, with 9,500 unique subscribers and about 1.9TB of data moved over the event. Friday alone pushed roughly 600GB, and the network held up through four days of dense, ugly demand. Helium Network.

⚡ TON Got Fast

TON says Catchain 2.0 cut finality from roughly 10 seconds to about 1 second, with 400 millisecond block times and streaming updates now live on mainnet. That gives payments, trades, and Telegram Mini Apps the kind of response time users expect from software built in this century. The catch is that annual inflation is expected to rise from around 0.6% to around 3.6%. Telegram.

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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in AVAX, ADA, PUDGY, WLD, NEAR, INJ, LTC, LINK, ZEC, XLM, and FET. 📋