Tim Draper predicted Bitcoin at $250,000 by the end of the year

🇫🇷 During Paris Blockchain Week, renowned venture capitalist Tim Draper offered his forecast on Bitcoin, predicting a substantial rise in its value by the end of 2024. He believes this surge will be driven by the introduction of spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the expected Bitcoin halving.

🐂 Draper's bullish expectation combines these key market dynamics, envisioning a significant increase in Bitcoin's price. He suggests that the convergence of these factors could potentially elevate Bitcoin's value to $250,000 by the close of the year. Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, according to Draper, have been crucial in drawing fresh interest and investments into Bitcoin.

💵 Moreover, he considers these ETFs as beneficial tools for investors aiming to broaden their investment portfolios and safeguard their assets against the devaluation of fiat currencies.

The upcoming Ethereum hard fork might eliminate the concern of losing private keys.

After the Pectra hard fork🍴, Ethereum might introduce a "social recovery" feature from EIP-3074, eliminating the need for seed phrases. Announced by Tim Beiko, this upgrade enhances Ethereum wallets by allowing asset recovery through smart contracts.

Users must transfer🚴‍♂️ assets to an invoker contract, which then facilitates transactions. This setup lets users recover assets without their seed phrase and even execute transactions without Ether in their wallet to send transactions, as the entity behind the invoker contract can pay 💵 for that upfrontpotentially simplifying processes like token swaps on Uniswap by batching actions into one transaction.

👆However, there's a risk of asset loss if assets are transferred to a malicious contract, though verified contracts are expected post-upgrade. The Pectra hard fork is anticipated in late 2024 or early 2025.

Every Londoner can get £100 in crypto

💂London mayoral candidate Brian Rose plans to give every resident of the city 100 British pounds in LONDON cryptocurrency. The politician wrote about this on his Instagram page.

Rose said that funds for the implementation of the plan will come from a one-time tax. The City's big banks will pay 1% of profits 💰 to support a £1bn liquidity pool, he said.

🥸 The politician added that the token will be accepted in the entire transport network of London, and will also be used to pay for parking spaces and many other things.

"The new crypto token will offer multiple benefits to our city; it would be an acknowledgement that the banking sector accepts it must move with the times as well as providing a welcome injection of additional money to the capital economy, signalling that London plans to be the world’s first crypto-first city"

, wrote Brian Rose.

The bull market shows no signs of ending

💲 The continued price increase of the first cryptocurrency in 2024 is due to additional inflows into American spot Bitcoin ETFs, according to CryptoQuant.

👀 Analysts explained that even from a conservative viewpoint, new ATHs are expected.

👌 Experts noted 🗒 that only three months have passed since the formation of a significant new demand wave. In previous bull markets in 2017 and 2021, the formation of a cyclical peak occurred in the ninth and seventh months following this event, respectively.

Ether.Fi Secures $500 Million Restaking Agreement with Redstone Oracles, Strengthening the DeFi Ecosystem.

Ether.Fi, the top liquid restaking protocol on EigenLayer, has secured a massive $500 million restaking deal with Redstone Oracles. This partnership will enhance Redstone’s oracle protocol, enabling it to transmit data on and off the chain. Redstone Oracles represents a leading "Actively Validated Service" (AVS) network. Along with other AVS networks, Redstone aims to leverage EigenLayer's innovative restaking protocol amidst its growing popularity.

Considering the history of Bitcoin's all-time high (ATH) breaks in previous cycles, one could make the case that the current phase of euphoria (where the market is still exploring price discovery) is relatively early.

👆 In past Euphoria phases, there have been frequent instances of price declines surpassing -10%, with many plunging even further, often exceeding 25%. By comparison, the current market has experienced only two corrections of around 10% or more since surpassing the ATH.

Hong Kong has approved spot ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum.

China Asset Management, Bosera Capital, HashKey Capital Limited, and Harvest Global Investments have announced that the Hong Kong regulator has approved their applications for Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs.

Bitcoin miners might sell off $5 billion worth of BTC following the halving.

Bitcoin miners 🔨 might offload up to $5 billion in BTC in the months after the upcoming halving, as they have in previous cycles, according to analysts from 10x Research.

💵 This potential selling spree could extend over four to six months, possibly causing Bitcoin prices to stagnate, similar to post-halving periods seen before.

Historical data 🗒 shows Bitcoin remained between $9,000 and $11,500 for five months following the 2020 halving. With this year's halving expected on April 20, Bitcoin's price may not see significant gains until around October, reflecting past trends. 🤷

Uniswap Labs has raised the swap fee for interface transactions.

🦄 Uniswap Labs raised the transaction swap fee via the DEX interface from 0.15% to 0.25%. This adjustment does not apply to transactions involving stablecoins and wrapped tokens.

🧑‍💻 Users can bypass these increased fees by utilizing an alternative interface to connect to Uniswap.

⬆️ This fee hike from 0.15% to 0.25%, effective April 10th as per blockchain records, followed an SEC warning to Uniswap Labs regarding a possible lawsuit.

Ethereum creator pumps Railgun price by 200%!

👀 Vitalik Buterin transferred 100 ETH to the DeFi protocol Railgun, which facilitates confidential transactions.

The creator of ETH has been using this protocol for the last six months 🤷, but it caught the media's attention today, and the RAIL token surged over 200% 🚀 (at its peak).

📉 Its price has since decreased somewhat but remains more than double what it was before.

Attackers can gain control of Trust Wallet on iOS due to a critical vulnerability in iMessages!

Trust Wallet has warned its users about a vulnerability in iMessages that could allow attackers to gain control of the wallet even if they didn't encounter any links 🙀.

Developers recommend turning off iMessages as soon as possible until Apple fixes 🔨 the problem.

How to do it?

Navigate to Settings -> Messages -> toggle iMessage off.

Adidas is launching a $2,500 Solana NFT sneaker line within the move-to-earn game 'Stepn'.

The game announced on Monday its collaboration with the sportswear giant Adidas, introducing the Stepn x Adidas Genesis Sneakers collection 👟. This marks the first of several co-branded initiatives planned between the two companies. Throughout their year-long partnership , more NFTs and physical items will be released.

OKX has launched own network

A few hours ago, the mainnet X Layer became available for everyone interested.

❌ Layer (X1) is a zkEVM L2 network where transaction fees are paid with the OKB token. The exchange aims to attract 50 million users to it.

Withdrawals from OKX to X Layer have the lowest fees 🤩

Buterin responded to discussions about his use of the Railgun mixer

Journalist 📝 Colin Wu, who tracked Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's transactions through the Railgun mixer , noted that this tool is also employed by the North Korean hacker group, 👤Lazarus.

The service gained prominence as an alternative following sanctions imposed on 🌪 Tornado Cash.

🧐 Wu referenced an FBI statement from January 2023, which indicated that over $60 million from the Harmony breach had been processed through the mixer.

🥷 In response to Wu's tweet, Vitalik Buterin stated that "privacy is normal."

Railgun uses the privacy pools protocol which makes it much harder for bad actors to join the pool without compromising users' privacy

- he sad.

Bitcoin price drops before each halving - CryptoQuant analyst

He notes that as the fourth Bitcoin halving approaches, its price has dropped ⬇️ by 16.65%, causing concern among crypto investors and traders.

👆 However, such declines are typical before each halving. For example, Bitcoin fell by 40.36% before the second halving and 20.35% before the third, only to later reach new highs 🚀.

Bitcoin has reached a local bottom

The Realized Profit/Loss Ratio has fallen 📉 below 1, indicating that losses have exceeded profits. Historically, on a bullish 🐃 market, this metric signals that Bitcoin has hit a local bottom during a correction.

👆According to Willy Woo, a bearish return is expected only if prices consolidate below $58.9k ⬇️.

The Ore protocol based on Solana has ceased mining operations to avoid overloading the network.

The mining 🔨 protocol Ore on Solana announced the suspension of its mining activities to prevent further disruption to Solana's functionality.

ℹ️ The Ore project has been one of the culprits behind recent network congestion issues. The protocol operated on a Proof-Of-Work (PoW) basis and allowed the mining of ORE tokens.

🙀 Following this announcement by the developers, the price of the token surged dramatically, increasing ⬆️ from $94 to $417 currently, according to CoinGecko.

The Korean won has surpassed the US dollar in trading volume on cryptocurrency exchanges

In the first quarter of 2024, the South Korean 🇰🇷 won exceeded the US dollar in trading volume on Bitcoin exchanges, achieving $456 billion versus $445 billion, according to data from Kaiko.

📈 This level of activity on South Korean cryptocurrency platforms hasn't been seen in two years, fueled by macroeconomic improvements and fierce competition.

👆 At the end of 2023, Bithumb and Korbit initiated aggressive zero-commission campaigns aimed at competing with Upbit, which has dominated the market with an average 82% share over the past three years.

👀 While trading volumes dipped in early April, analysts suggest that the approval of spot ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum in Hong Kong could potentially revitalize the market.

U.S. Senators have introduced a bill for stablecoins - The Block

Kirsten Gillibrand and Cynthia Lummis propose to:

▪️Prohibit unbacked algorithmic stablecoins.

▪️Require stablecoin issuers to hold fiat reserves in banks that back their tokens on a 1:1 basis.

▪️Require stablecoin issuers to implement anti-money laundering systems.

SingularityNet, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol will conduct a token merger

🧐 Three AI-centric blockchain initiatives—SingularityNet, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol—have unanimously received community approval to merge their tokens into a unified currency named ASI, as announced in a recent press release.

📅 In late March, these entities formed the Artificial Superintelligence alliance with a strategic aim to consolidate their individual tokens AGIX, FET, and OCEAN into ASI, positioning it among the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

✔️ The alliance's mission is to forge a decentralized AI infrastructure, enhancing collaboration across platforms. This integration is expected to provide developers and users with enhanced capabilities to foster a more democratic and transparent ecosystem.

🔜 The official merger and the introduction of ASI are scheduled for the upcoming weeks.

Exchanges may run out of bitcoins

👀 Bitcoin exchange reserves will only last for the next nine months, according to data from CryptoQuant.

Analysts have calculated💻 that publicly available exchange reserves have decreased by more than 800,000 BTC, reaching a historic low for the two-year observation period. As of April 16, available exchange reserves are about 2 million BTC.

📝 Assuming a daily inflow to spot Bitcoin ETFs of about $500 million, equivalent to 8,025 BTC, it will roughly last nine months to completely exhaust all available reserves.