CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
The week kicked off straight into weakness as crypto markets tanked from Friday through the weekend, likely in anticipation of Trump’s April 2nd Liberation Day. While the market recovered into the week, as the details surrounding Trump’s tariff plan emerged, the market collapsed again, falling back into range lows. Total crypto market cap dropped 6.51% from $2.950T to $2.758T as markets weakened against the worsening macroeconomic backdrop.
Bitcoin (BTC) closed the week 4.21% lower, while Ethereum (ETH), as always, trailed behind, closing the week at 8.75% lower from the prior week.
Daily liquidations largely centered around long liquidations, with last Friday’s price action taking out just over $400M in long positions. The rest of the action in the week was centered around Liberation Day, with a total of more than $500M in longs and shorts being collectively liquidated in a single day. Funding rates continue to largely remain flat, with most just trading around in the low positive to low negative range. Even cryptocurrency majors such as SOL and XRP are showing negative funding rates, highlighting the market’s bearish stance.
📌 USDT deployer, Tether, acquired 8,888 BTC in Q1 2025, bringing their total BTC holdings to over 100K BTC. - Link
📌 Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) acquires 22,048 BTC for $1.92B at $86,969 per BTC. - Link
📌 Bitcoin mining giant, Marathon Digital, files to sell $2B in stock to finance future purchases of Bitcoin. - Link
Why does it matter?
This week’s market action was largely guided by the expectations towards the tariffs levied in the week from Trump’s Liberation Day plan. While the markets derisked early on in anticipation for the worst, a gradual recovery in the week gave the bulls some hope especially alongside positive news regarding Bitcoin purchases from entities such as Tether, Strategy, Marathon Digital and Gamestop. However, Liberation Day arrived and markets sold off hard. Both crypto and traditional equities plunged on the news, with the S&P 500 closing the week down 5.09%, while the Nasdaq fared worse at 5.35% down.
Unsurprisingly, with the increased volatility and uncertainty, market participants fell back to Bitcoin, pushing Bitcoin dominance up by more than 1.78% this week, to close the week off at 62.85%, just 3% off its short term highs from early February.
Despite the market’s weakness, several select altcoins outperformed strongly this week, including Eos (EOS), Pendle (PENDLE), Solayer (LAYER), Compound (COMP) and Grass (GRASS). Other strong performers include gold-related tokens such as Pax Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) as Gold continues to make new highs.View CMC Gainers & Losers board
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Narrative of the Week 📰
Trump’s long-awaited “Liberation Day” arrived, with Trump dropping a full list of tariffs on 185 different countries, shaking up the market on its implications.
📌 US President Donald Trump announces the reciprocal tariffs to be levied on 185 countries, with notable tariffs including 32% on Taiwan and 67% on China. - Link
📌 Market analysts have criticized the method behind deducing tariff rates on US exports as “nonsensical” and “laughable”, not to mention the lack of consideration for services as exports in the computation. - Link
📌 Average US tariff rate is now estimated to be around 22.5-26% with the estimated impact of a global trade contraction of $750B or ~1% of global GDP. - Link
Why does it matter?
The promise of Trump’s tariffs on the world has been a looming threat on the markets ever since he took power in early January. While many assumed it was mostly a bluff, the past three months have shown otherwise. With the slew of tariffs being implemented across the board, global trade is most certainly likely to slow, even with potential negotiations to come. This could easily push us into a global recession, a phenomenon which analysts have been warning for the past few months. Additionally, on top of these tariffs, a further tariff on auto parts is yet to take effect in early May, which could make the economic situation even worse.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 USDC stablecoin issuer, Circle, files their S-1 with the SEC for their upcoming IPO. - Link
📌 Tron founder, Justin Sun alleges that First Digital Trust, the company behind the FDUSD stablecoin, is insolvent. First Digital Trust has since released a statement refuting the claims. - Link
📌 Decentralized biotech protocol, BioDAO launches Bio V1 on Solana and Base, allowing users to use their BIO token holdings to back selected projects on their launchpad, as well as supporting AI agents to automate scientific tasks. - Link
📌 Web3 security tool, Harpie, announces its shutdown after failing to create a profitable business model around the tool. - Link
📌 Gaming DAO, Treasure DAO, announces plans to restructure and pivot amidst deteriorating financial conditions. - Link
Why does it matter?
The Circle IPO filing is the latest development in the stablecoin narrative, a popular narrative lately in the crypto space. However, despite centralized stablecoin issuers being a popular investment target after seeing the success of Tether, many have had their doubts after Circle’s released financials. Circle has a notable sensitivity to the Fed’s rates due to their reliance on interest income from short term treasury instruments. This reliance on the current elevated rates coupled with a relatively low operating margin of 10% has made several analysts question the attractiveness of Circle as an investment. This is especially so when compared with Tether, their closest competitor.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Ostium, a DEX for commodities, forex, stocks and crypto, has launched their points program, rewarding users based on volume and referrals. Retroactive points will also be awarded to early users. - Link
📌 The exploiter who stole 2,930 ETH from Starknet-based lending protocol, zkLend, appears to have been phished in an attempt to launder his proceeds, according to a message from the exploiter. - Link
📌 DeFi suite, Frax Finance, announces plans to expand to Solana, with the official deployment of both frxUSD and FXS on the chain. - Link
📌 HyperUnit launches ETH deposits directly from Ethereum mainnet and spot trading on Hyperliquid. Spot ETH deposited can also be used within the HyperEVM ecosystem, like BTC deposited via HyperUnit. - Link
📌 Mantle introduces Mantle Banking, seeking to offer seamless on and off-ramp services, multi-currency fiat accounts, RWA and high-yield opportunities, virtual cards for payments and more. - Link
📌 Bitcoin staking protocol, Babylon, unveils tokenomics for BABY, their governance token. The token will have an inflation rate of 8%, with 4% allocated to BABY stakers and the other half to be allocated to Bitcoin stakers. - Link
📌 F(x) Protocol introduces fxSAVE, a yield-bearing token built on f(x) Protocol’s wstETH strategy. Users can deposit either USDC or fxUSD to earn yield that is auto-compounded back into the fxSAVE token. - Link
Why does it matter?
This cycle has been focused a lot on real-world integrations, especially with a focus on the connection between traditional finance and DeFi. One of the larger under-tapped markets has been on-chain versions of traditional markets. While many have tried in the past with little traction, the crypto space today provides a more conducive environment for such a protocol to flourish. Ostium is not the first or only player in the market, but it also won’t be the last to emerge. This subsector is still very nascent and the winner is yet to be decided.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 Several memecoins saw large intraday drops, with some as large as 50%, triggered by an initial drop of the AI memecoin, ACT. This price action was a result of a sudden reduction in leverage limits on Binance, which resulted in liquidations of multiple related positions. - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Next-gen market making and order flow monetization platform, Warlock, raises $8M in a seed round led by Polychain, with support from Greenfield Capital, TRGC, Symbolic Capital and more. - Link
📌 New Proof-of-Work AI L1 blockchain, Ambient, raises $7.2M in a seed funding round with investors including a16z crypto, Delphi Digital and Amber Group. - Link
📌 AI infrastructure protocol, Cambrian Network, raises $5.9M in a seed round led by a16z crypto’s CSX, with participation from the Blockchain Builders Fund. - Link
📌 Crypto-gaming platform, Ultra, raises $12M in a funding round led by NOIA Capital through its NOIA Digital Assets Fund. - Link
📌 Solana-based collectibles platform, DRiP, has been acquired by DEX aggregator, Jupiter Exchange, for an undisclosed amount. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Interwoven rollup network, Initia, opens claims for the INIT token airdrop, distributing 5% of the total token supply to early network testers, advocates and early users. - Link
📌 On-chain trade terminal, Definitive, announces their EDGE token airdrop, releasing 16% of the token supply to early Definitive users and active on-chain traders on other platforms such as Hyperliquid and Jupiter. - Link
📌 Bitcoin DeFi protocol, PumpBTC, opens claims for the PUMP token airdrop, which will remain open for the next 30 days. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: @sherlock_hodles
Did Trump place any tariffs on our coins? It sure seemed like it from the charts.
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