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Bitcoin jumps to 3-week high on Iran ceasefire announcement

Whether the rally is sustainable remains to be seen, but at the $71,000 level, bitcoin is back at the critical resistance level it’s been attempting to break for the past few months.

Bitcoin finally got the break it’s been yearning for, jumping up 5% to a three-week high following the ceasefire announced Tuesday evening. The asset crossed $72,000 Wednesday morning before dropping back to the $71,000 as US markets opened.

Bitcoin moving back toward 71K, in our view, isn’t the move — it’s the signal. It’s the early stages of the market beginning to price in what could be the next major liquidity cycle flowing into digital assets,” said Connor McLaughlin, head of enterprise at Digital Ascension Group.  

However, whether this rally is sustainable remains to be seen, and overall sentiment is optimistic yet cautious.

Pratik Kala, portfolio manager and head of research at Apollo Crypto, said the words like “workable” and “close to resolution” that Trump used in his Truth Social post, referring to the 10-point proposal from Iran, “are very bullish.”

“Markets look forward, bitcoin was coiled, and I think we can continue a multi-week rally. 72K first target, then 78K by the end of the month possible,” Kala said.

Yet others are pointing to the fragile nature of the truce, which hinges in part on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and could still add volatility to bitcoin.

Nic Puckrin, cofounder of Coin Bureau, told Sherwood News that at $71,000, bitcoin is back at the critical resistance level it’s been attempting to meaningfully break for the past few months.

“If it closes the week above this level, institutional positioning could turn this resistance level into support,” he said, adding that it could set the stage for further upward movement, potentially pushing bitcoin toward $90,000 over the coming months.

“However, it’s important to note that the ceasefire doesn’t fix the damage in markets overnight, and it’s only one of the many factors driving sentiment and price for bitcoin,” Puckrin said. “For now, the recovery is fragile.”

Meanwhile, bitcoin ETFs reverted to outflows Tuesday, with a $159 million exodus, according to SoSoValue. But so far in April, bitcoin ETFs remain in the green.

Justin D’Anethan, head of research at Arctic Capital, told Sherwood that continuing ETF inflows give him hope, “but it is kept in check by a broader risk-off sentiment.”

“I suspect many will look back at this level not necessarily as the cycle’s bottom, but as a place that long-term investors were happy to average in. For now, all eyes are on the Strait of Hormuz and any catalysts one way or the other,” D’Anethan said.

Rajiv Sawhney, head of international portfolio management at Wave Digital Asset, also noted that while there is “decent buying from institutions on the ETF side,” from iShares Bitcoin Trust and others, there hasn’t been a material recovery in offshore exchange spot volumes and funding/basis in the market, which “would indicate that investors are willing to take on material risk for a higher recovery.”

In addition, Sawhney said that in the options space, there is a massive positive gamma wall from current levels up to $85,000 to $100,000. 

“This will continue to keep bitcoin locked within the range for the foreseeable future, as dealers will sell into strength to remain delta-neutral, limiting bitcoin’s ability to sustain higher momentum,” Sawhney said.

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Crypto industry lifts on news of Iran ceasefire

News of a ceasefire between the US and Iran has sent cryptocurrencies and digital asset equities rallying, with privacy-focused token Zcash jumping 27% in the last 24 hours and leading market gains.

The price swing, which helped boost the total crypto market capitalization by 4.8% in the period, has resulted in $474.7 million in short positions liquidated worldwide, data from CoinGlass shows.

Since the ceasefire was announced:

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$11.4B

The FBI revealed in a Monday press release that Americans submitted 181,565 complaints of schemes involving cryptocurrency and reported losses totaling around $11.4 billion last year, a 22% increase from 2024.

The age range most affected were people older than 60. Those in this category had the highest crypto complaint count at 44,555 with losses at $4.4 billion, per the annual report from the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a division of the FBI tasked with gathering intelligence on cybercrime.

One cybercrime the report pointed to was cryptocurrency investment fraud, which are sophisticated long-term scams using psychological manipulation, an appearance of legitimacy, and exploitation of cryptocurrencies to deceive victims into investing large sums of money. 

“These scams are largely perpetrated by organized criminal enterprises based in Southeast Asia using victims of human trafficking as forced labor to run the scam operations,” per the report. 

The FBI report comes as the crypto ecosystem is still reeling from a recent $270 million exploit that was planned six months in the making, a change from the initial estimate of multiple weeks.

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Aave sinks as another service provider leaves

The native token of the largest lending protocol in DeFi has shed roughly $163 million in market capitalization, dropping nearly 11% over the past 24 hours, after news that another service provider is leaving. 

Chaos Labs on Monday announced it was stepping down as a risk manager for the Aave DAO, citing concerns over V4 of the protocol and the recent exit of other core contributors. 

The risk management firm, which has been contributing to Aave since November 2022, decided to end its engagement with the protocol in part because of a “fundamental misalignment on how risk should be managed at Aave,” Chaos Labs CEO and founder Omer Goldberg said on X. 

The V4 protocol introduced a new smart contract code base. “When that architecture is rewritten from scratch, the risk infrastructure must follow. As a result, while the scope changed materially, the resourcing did not. Aave Labs may be comfortable with those trade-offs. We are not,” Goldberg stated.  

Chaos Labs’ termination comes after service providers Aave Chan Initiative and Bored Ghosts Developing Labs announced leaving due to centralization concerns with Aave Labs, which is headed by the protocol’s founder, Stani Kulechov. 

In response to Chaos Labs’ recent decision, Kulechov said, “There is no disruption to the Aave Protocol, its smart contracts, asset listings, or network deployments.” Kulechov added that Aave was not supportive of several elements of Chaos Labs’ initial proposal, such as a higher-risk management payment of $8 million. 

Aave has a total value locked of over $24 billion. V4 went live at the end of March and has seen around $10 million in deposits in the first week.

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