Bitcoin’s Strength, Ethereum’s Upgrades & the Future of Crypto Market

Apr 23, 2025

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This week, we explore BTC’s continued strength—driven by ETF inflows, its digital-gold narrative and favorable option skew—while ETH sees institutional outflows. We highlight strong performances from AI-linked tokens like Render, FET, and TAO, and discuss how crypto has outpaced equities since Liberation Day.
In macro, we unpack the potential for BTC decoupling, rising political influence on monetary policy, the IMF’s global growth downgrade, and implications of a weaker U.S. dollar. We also assess the impact of upcoming key data releases like PCE and JOLTs, and what they signal for risk assets.
Our research team dives into what defines a crypto bear market, how today’s market compares to prior cycles, and what VC funding trends reveal beyond just price action.In industry news, we cover Circle’s launch of a new B2B payments and remittance network, its reported application for a banking charter, and comments from Charles Schwab’s CEO on the potential rollout of spot crypto trading in the next 12 months.
Onchain, we provide updates on Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra upgrade, Vitalik’s proposal to shift Ethereum’s EVM to RISC-V, and the growing momentum in tokenized treasuries, now topping $6B in onchain TVL.
Finally, we share the latest from Coinbase, including the launch of XRP futures through Coinbase Derivatives, our new brand campaign, and upcoming institutional events covering Ethereum's roadmap and crypto-AI convergence.

Topics Covered:

Market Trends: BTC ETF inflows, ETH outflows, AI token strength, and BTC vs SPX performance since Liberation Day
Macro Outlook: BTC decoupling potential, politicized monetary policy, IMF forecast cuts, USD weakness, PCE & JOLTs data
Research Insights: Are we in a crypto bear market? VC activity and long-term indicators
Industry News: Circle’s B2B launch, banking ambitions, and Schwab’s spot crypto outlook
Onchain Developments: Ethereum Pectra upgrade, RISC-V proposal, and tokenized treasuries growth
Coinbase Updates: XRP futures live, new Coinbase ad, Bloomberg coverage, and two upcoming webinars on Pectra and AI

Host:
Ben Floyd, Head of Execution Services

Speakers:
David Duong, Head of Institutional Research
Brock Miller, Senior Staff Software Engineer
Greg Sutton, Senior CES Sales Trader

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