A member of idol group Kasotsuka Shojo (Virtual Currency Girls) wearing a bitcoin mask (Kazuhiro Nogi/Getty Images)

Analyst: “We are now clearly in a bull market phase” as bitcoin hits highest level since February

So far this month, bitcoin is up nearly 15%, surpassing April’s historical average.

4/22/26 9:59AM

Bitcoin jumped past $78,500 Wednesday, its highest level since early February. The asset is up 3% over the past 24 hours as optimism builds following President Trump’s extension of the ceasefire with Iran. So far this month, bitcoin is up 14.77%, surpassing April’s historical average of 11.47%, according to CoinGlass.

Underscoring the enthusiasm, CoinMarketCap’s Crypto Fear and Greed Index stands at 62 (greed), its highest level since late July.

“We are now clearly in a bull market phase, characterized by the market shrugging off negative news, including the re-closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the very recent record DeFi hack of 2026, where $300 million was stolen from KelpDAO. Despite both events occurring only in the past week, bitcoin is breaching new levels and sits at a more than two-month high,” Ishmael Asad, a research analyst at Bitwise, told Sherwood News.

Several analysts echoed the bullish sentiment, citing the realized price as a gauge for a potential upward trajectory.

Zach Pandl, Grayscale head of research, wrote in a post that as the realized price for bitcoin transacted over the last one to three months stands at $74,000, recent buyers are back to breakeven. He added that bitcoin moving higher would indicate that more recent buyers would move into positive profit and loss, a potential signal of the start of a bull market.

Pandl told Sherwood that we are seeing increasing evidence that bitcoin has put in a durable bottom.

“A sustained break above $80K would increase our conviction further. From a fundamental standpoint, progress on the CLARITY Act in the US Senate may hold the key,” Pandl said.

Wave Digital Assets’ head of international portfolio management, Rajiv Sawhney, told Sherwood that the rally was off the back of Trump extending the ceasefire indefinitely, as the market continues to treat these extensions as a path toward eventual resolution rather than a binary risk.

“Hence, outside of total war escalation, any negotiations or prospects for negotiations are, in general, priced into an eventual-resolution end state,” Sawhney said.

Sawhney added, however, that the KelpDAO hack and its knock-on secondary effects remain an overhang for crypto, as lending on Aave, the largest DeFi money market protocol, remains in limbo.

“As such, while BTC may be able to contend with a move higher towards $80K, the broader cryptocurrency complex may not necessarily follow suit,” he said.

Finally, bitcoin ETFs continue to stay in the green, though recording a meager $11.84 million in inflows on Tuesday, stemming solely from BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF, and the newly launched Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust.

In April, bitcoin ETFs have registered $1.87 billion in inflows, their best month since October.

Lacie Zhang, a research analyst at Bitget Wallet, told Sherwood that the near-term setup looks constructive, with expectations for bitcoin to trade within the $75,000 to $90,000 range in the coming weeks. A move toward the upper end depends on sustained institutional inflows and continued macro stability.

Sage D. Young

6/5/26

Zcash nosedives after counterfeit vulnerability revealed

The privacy-focused cryptocurrency has dropped more than 40% in the last 24 hours, shedding $3.8 billion in market capitalization.

$62B

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy6/5/26

Bitcoin digital asset treasuries (DATs) have taken a big hit amid bitcoin’s tumble, shedding $62 billion in value since the asset’s October 6 all-time high, Artemis data shows, with their fully diluted market cap dropping to $72 billion from $134 billion in early October.

Meanwhile, bitcoin, which has fallen below $62,000 on Friday morning, is down 50% from its all-time high. DAT pioneer Strategy’s market cap stood at $102.2 billion on October 6, according to Macro Trends, and is now down to $45.6 billion, a 55% decline. Strategy has been in hot water since it sold 32 bitcoin earlier this week, and because its digital credit instrument, STRC, has been trading below its par value. Shares of Strategy are down 17% in the past week.

Sage D. Young6/4/26

“Sentiment for crypto is firmly in the gutter” as sector sinks, with tokens hitting multiyear lows

On Thursday, altcoins swept lower as bitcoin weakened. The tokens with the biggest losses in the last 24 hours are NEAR, ethena, and Zcash, each declining double digits in the period.

Other tokens have dropped to lows not seen in over a year in the past 24 hours:

Ethereum dropped 4.4% to under $1,780, a level not seen since April 2025.
XRP declined 4.5% to an 18-month low last hit in November 2024.
Solana decreased 6% to trade below the $70 mark, its lowest price since December 2023.
Dogecoin slid below $0.09, a 27-month low last seen in February 2024.

“Sentiment for crypto is firmly in the gutter as fears surrounding BTC/STRC and its potential overflow compound and overshadow anything that can be read as positive news (e.g. CLARITY movements),” according to Sean Dawson, head of research at crypto options platform Derive.xyz.

“[Altcoins] are high beta plays to BTC and are typically sold heavily in a downturn. Simply put, I’d be even more bearish on alts,” Dawson told Sherwood News.

“Further, liquidity has been drained into this year’s ‘superhot’ narrative of AI/data centers. In other words, there are just better, more exciting opportunities elsewhere,” Dawson added.

One cryptocurrency that has bucked the downtrend has been worldcoin, the native token for World, the digital identity project backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. While the broader crypto market has been pushing lower, WLD has jumped nearly 5% in the last 24 hours and 90% in the past seven days, data from CoinGecko shows.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

6/4/26

Bitcoin nears February lows amid $1.4 billion exiting its ETFs

“This week has been painful in crypto. There is really no other way of putting it.”