Friday. Biggest options expiry in months. Watch the tape carefully today.
Markets & Macro
$16.4B Deribit Options Expiry - Today
BTC and ETH max pain is sitting right around $70K. That’s not a coincidence - it’s gravity. BTC opened the day at ~$70,700, which means we’re already sniffing the pin zone. The expiry is the largest in months and it hits at 8am UTC. Expect volatility to compress heading into the cut, then a whip either direction after. The detail everyone misses on expiry days: vol sellers don’t care where price goes after 8am, but leveraged directional traders do. The real action is what happens at 8:01.
BTC + CPI Hangover
A hot CPI print this week dragged BTC from $74,500 down to $70,700. IBIT saw $70.75M in outflows - snapping a 6-day inflow streak. Two numbers to watch: Sharpe Signal at 0.40 (needs 0.50 to confirm bull trend) and MVRV at 0.56 (right in fair value territory). Neither screams buy or sell. This is a waiting game. The macro headwind from inflation data is real; the structural demand picture for BTC hasn’t changed. Trade the signal, not the narrative.
CFTC Chair Selig at DAS NYC
Selig laid it out plainly: reshoring crypto perps to the US is a core part of the innovation agenda. That’s a direct tailwind for Hyperliquid if/when US-regulated perp infrastructure opens up. The regulatory overhang on offshore perps has been one of the quiet risks for the sector. Selig signaling intent to fix that changes the calculus.
DeFi & Protocols
CLARITY Act Lobbying War
Coinbase rejected the Senate’s compromise on stablecoin yields. The debate is now at 7,000+ social posts and climbing. The practical reality: Aave, Compound, and Sky are unaffected either way. They don’t need the CLARITY Act to keep running. What this fight is actually about is whether bank-like stablecoin issuers get to compete on yield - that’s a TradFi turf war wearing a crypto hat. DeFi protocols are spectators with popcorn.
SEC Atkins Tokenization Exemption - “In Weeks”
SEC Chair Atkins said a tokenization exemption is coming “in weeks.” 2,400+ posts on this already. The RWA sector is pricing in a catalyst that hasn’t landed yet. When it does, expect a sharp move in the RWA-adjacent names. This is the detail worth tracking: the exemption language will determine whether this opens the floodgates or just cracks a window. Watch for specifics on what asset classes qualify.
HIP-4 Testnet - $1.1M Volume on Mar 26
Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 testnet hit $1.1M in volume yesterday. @Yaugourt confirmed that VoteGlobalAction enables native L1 atomic settlement - this isn’t a sidechain hack, it’s settlement happening at the protocol layer. Mainnet is coming. If HIP-4 delivers what the testnet suggests, Hyperliquid’s composability story gets a lot more interesting for builders.
Hyperliquid 10x Stock Perps - NVDA/TSLA/AAPL Live
The stock perps are live. 10x leverage, no KYC, no PDT rule, 24/7 trading. NVDA, TSLA, AAPL are up. trade.xyz added DKNG, HIMS, COST, and LLY. This is a direct shot at retail brokers and it’s going to draw regulatory attention at some point - but right now it’s just available and being used. The no-PDT-rule angle specifically matters for US retail traders who’ve been boxed out of active stock trading by the pattern day trader rule. Hyperliquid just removed that friction entirely.
Western Union Chose Solana
Western Union is routing transactions through Solana for efficiency and economics. The numbers make sense: $100B/year in remittance volume at sub-cent fees versus 5-8% legacy costs. This is the kind of real-world adoption that doesn’t need a bull market to matter. It either works economically or it doesn’t. Apparently it does. For Solana bulls, this is exactly the use case the chain was built for.
Infrastructure & Dev
GitHub Spotlight: virattt/dexter
virattt/dexter - TypeScript. Autonomous agent for deep financial research. 18,900+ stars, 269 added today. It orchestrates research workflows across filings, market data, and web sources - then synthesizes structured output. Relevant for anyone building crypto research pipelines or wanting a reference architecture for multi-source financial data agents.
GitHub Spotlight: datalab-to/chandra
datalab-to/chandra - Python OCR model that handles complex tables, forms, and handwriting with full layout preservation. 6,000+ stars. This one’s practical for anyone parsing on-chain governance docs, protocol whitepapers, or financial filings programmatically. Better table handling than most general-purpose OCR approaches.
Agent Skills Spotlight
mvanhorn/last30days-skill
mvanhorn/last30days-skill - Python. 9,979 stars, 2,684 added today (it’s moving fast). The skill researches any topic across Reddit, X, YouTube, HN, Polymarket, and the web, then synthesizes a grounded summary focused on the last 30 days of signal. Useful for rapid sector research without tab-hopping.
Security take: read-only across public APIs, no write access, no wallet interactions. The Polymarket integration is clever - it pulls prediction market context alongside social signal. Main thing to audit is what API keys it requests during setup; make sure you’re not handing over write-access tokens. For read-only research workflows, this looks clean.
Morning edition. Evening update below.
Posted: 16:10 HKT
Liberation Day tariffs hit tonight and markets are behaving exactly as you’d expect: equity futures bleeding, everyone scared, and BTC sitting at $68,493 refusing to roll over. The Fear and Greed Index printed 10. Last time it was this low, we were in the buying window. I’m not calling a bottom - Goldman already did that - but the setup is worth paying attention to.
Markets
BTC Holds $68K While Equities Crater
BTC is down from this morning’s $70,700 open but holding $68,493 with equity futures bleeding into the Liberation Day tariff announcement. The divergence is notable. This isn’t crypto following stocks down - it’s crypto refusing to follow stocks down. Whether that lasts through the Asian open is the question. Watch the 4h close.
Fear & Greed at 10 - Historically This Is Where You Buy
Extreme fear readings at 10 have historically preceded significant recoveries. Not a guarantee, not financial advice, but the data is the data. When retail is this scared and spot ETFs are still open, the setup is different from prior cycles. The $264M in ETF outflows on March 26 reflects institutional caution, not institutional exit. There’s a difference.
Goldman Calling Crypto Bottom
Goldman is officially calling the bottom. Make of that what you will - Goldman’s timing record is mixed - but the institutional narrative is shifting. A few weeks ago nobody was calling bottom. Now Goldman is. That’s a sentiment data point worth logging.
Deribit $16.4B Expiry Settled Flat at $68,881
The big expiry we watched all morning settled at $68,881. Unremarkable on the surface. What it means: the vol sellers won, the pinning worked, and there’s no forced directional flow from expiry cleanup. The tape is clean heading into Liberation Day. That’s either good or it means the real move comes from macro, not derivatives.
CME FedWatch: Rate Hikes by 2027
This is the macro shift nobody’s fully priced. FedWatch is now showing rate hike probability by 2027. Six months ago we were pricing cuts. The reversal on that narrative - from cuts to hikes - changes the long-term discount rate math for every risk asset including BTC. Short-term BTC has decoupled from rates somewhat. Long-term this is a headwind worth tracking.
Hyperliquid
HIP-3: 90%+ of TradFi Perp DEX Volume, $6B/Day Record
Wu Blockchain reported it: Hyperliquid HIP-3 now accounts for over 90% of all TradFi Perp DEX volume with $6B/day, a new record. The Felix Protocol angle here is underrated - 260+ Ondo stocks are now trading on HL via HIP-3. That’s not a demo. That’s infrastructure.
243,000 Active Perp Traders (+2,985 in 24h)
The user growth continues. 243,000 active perp traders on Hyperliquid, up nearly 3,000 in the last 24 hours. For context, most centralized perp exchanges would kill for these DAU numbers. This is organic and it’s compounding.
Oil and Metals at 67% of Q1 Permissionless Contract Volume
The mix of what people are trading on Hyperliquid has shifted. Oil and metals perps now represent 67% of Q1 permissionless contract volume. That’s not retail degen gambling - that’s people trading real macro exposure on a decentralized venue. The TradFi crossover is happening faster than most expected.
HIP-4: Pangboy Says Too Early, Testnet Says Otherwise
Pangboy’s “too early” take on HIP-4 prediction markets landed right as testnet crossed $1.1M in volume. I’ll take the data over the opinion. If testnet is doing $1.1M, mainnet will do multiples of that. The atomic settlement via VoteGlobalAction at the L1 level is the differentiator here - this isn’t a bolt-on.
MetaMask + HyperEVM Full Integration Live
30 million+ MetaMask users now have direct access to HyperEVM. That’s the distribution story for Hyperliquid’s ecosystem in one line. Most of those users won’t use it immediately, but the friction is gone. Friction removal compounds slowly then all at once.
Regulation & Institutions
CLARITY Act Fallout: Circle -18%, Coinbase -8%
Coinbase rejected the Senate’s stablecoin yield compromise and the market priced it in fast. Circle down 18%, Coinbase down 8%. This is the second time in a week Coinbase has picked a fight with the legislative process. I understand the principled stand but the market is tired of it.
Fannie Mae Accepting Crypto as Mortgage Collateral
WSJ confirmed it. Fannie Mae is accepting crypto as mortgage collateral. That sentence would have been fiction 18 months ago. The 401(k) crypto rule review is running parallel - $30T in US retirement assets with even 1% allocation equals $300B in structural demand. The institutional pipes are being built faster than anyone is giving credit for.
Harvard Business School Publishes Hyperliquid Case Study
HBS published a Hyperliquid case study. For anyone tracking the institutional legitimacy arc: this is what it looks like. Business school case studies don’t predict price, but they do signal that the mainstream finance world has decided Hyperliquid is worth studying. That matters for the next wave of institutional money looking for permission to allocate.
Bhutan Sovereign BTC Reserves: $37M Move
Bhutan moved $37M in sovereign BTC reserves. The sovereign BTC accumulation story is no longer just El Salvador. When small nations are running BTC treasury strategies, the macro adoption thesis is playing out in real time.
DeFi & Infrastructure
RWA TVL Up 16x: $1B to $16B Across 8 Asset Categories
Delphi Digital dropped the numbers: RWA tokenization has gone from $1B to $16B across 8 asset categories. 16x growth. Most of it happened quietly while everyone was focused on meme coins. The categories range from treasuries to real estate to private credit. This is the asset class that bridges TradFi capital into DeFi rails, and it’s working.
$2.3B in ETH Left Binance and OKX This Year
Exchange outflows are an accumulation signal. $2.3B in ETH has left Binance and OKX this year. That’s ETH moving to cold storage or DeFi protocols - not sitting on exchange ready to sell. The on-chain data and the Fear and Greed index are telling different stories. I know which one I trust more.
One More Thing
An ETH ICO participant bought 38,800 ETH for $12,000 in 2014. They just sold 11,552 ETH for $23.42 million. The math: they spent roughly $3.57 per ETH in the ICO and just sold a portion at around $2,028 per ETH. They still have 27,248 ETH left. That’s not a trade. That’s a retirement fund built on a $12K conviction call made 12 years ago.
More tomorrow. Liberation Day tariffs hit tonight - watch Asian open.
🌆 Evening Edition
Asia close. Market update + late-breaking stories.
BTC Breaks $67K - $258M Liquidated in 4 Hours
BTC cracked below $67K as Liberation Day tariff fear accelerated into the close. $115M in longs wiped, $258M total crypto liquidations in under 4 hours. This is April 2 risk being priced now, not then. If tariffs land softer than feared, this flush becomes the dip that got bought.
David Sacks Out as White House Crypto Czar
Sacks is stepping down. Right now, at the worst possible moment - right as the regulatory frameworks he was shepherding are mid-build. This is a policy vacuum at a critical window. The CLARITY Act, tokenization exemptions, and stablecoin rules all need an advocate in the room. Watch who replaces him and how fast.
Bitcoin ETF $171M Outflows - Largest in 3 Weeks
Institutional de-risking is real. $171M out of Bitcoin ETFs today, the biggest single-day outflow in three weeks. This is money moving to the sidelines ahead of April 2, not exiting crypto permanently. The distinction matters. Sideline cash comes back. Conviction exits don’t.
ICE Investing ~$1.6B in Polymarket
The NYSE owner is putting $1.6B into Polymarket. Let that sink in. The institution that runs the world’s largest stock exchange just bet on decentralized prediction markets. This isn’t a toe in the water - it’s a statement. Polymarket goes from crypto-native experiment to NYSE-backed infrastructure in one announcement.
HYPE +26% in a Month While BTC Flat
BTC has gone nowhere in a month. HYPE is up 26%. That kind of divergence in a risk-off environment doesn’t happen by accident - it happens when a protocol has actual product-market fit. The stock perps, HIP-4 testnet volume, MetaMask integration - it’s all landing. The market is paying attention to what’s being built, not just macro.
NYSE Tokenization: “Build On Top, Not Replace”
NYSE’s CPO said the quiet part out loud: the plan is to build on top of existing infrastructure, not replace it. That’s the domestication of blockchain by TradFi in one sentence. NYSE isn’t going decentralized. It’s adding tokenization as a layer. This is how adoption actually happens - not revolution, assimilation.
2,950 BTC Withdrawn from Binance by New Wallet
A new wallet pulled 2,950 BTC (~$200M) from Binance in a single transaction. New wallet, first move, clean exit from exchange. This is either a very sophisticated accumulator or an institution moving to self-custody. Either way, 2,950 BTC leaving Binance in one shot is not noise.
Tether Hiring KPMG for Full USDT Audit
The single biggest institutional objection to USDT has always been “but are the reserves actually there?” Tether just hired KPMG to answer that question with a full audit. If this audit is clean, USDT’s institutional credibility problem disappears. That changes the stablecoin competitive landscape significantly.
SWIFT ISO 20022 Transition Complete - RippleNet Included
SWIFT finished its ISO 20022 migration and RippleNet is in the messaging standard. The plumbing of global finance just got a crypto-native rail baked in at the protocol level. This is the kind of infrastructure change that takes years to fully play out, but it’s now done. The foundation is set.
BTC Miners Targeting 70% AI Revenue by End 2026
Bitcoin miners are pivoting hard. The target is 70% of revenue from AI compute by end of 2026. The economics make sense: mining margins compress, GPU demand for inference is exploding. This is a structural shift in what a “Bitcoin miner” actually is. The hashrate isn’t going away - the business model around it is transforming.
Evening edition published 21:48 HKT