crypto

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy4/28/25

Bitcoin crosses $95,000 for first time since February

It’s off to the races this Monday for bitcoin, which crossed $95,000 for the first time since February 24.

As Michael Saylor tends to do, following a teasing post on X, “Stay humble. Stack sats,” the Strategy cofounder said Monday morning the company acquired “15,355 BTC for ~$1.42 billion at ~$92,737 per bitcoin and has achieved BTC Yield of 13.7% YTD 2025.”

Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder, now has 553,555 bitcoin, worth roughly $52 billion at today’s prices.

Things are shaping up well for bitcoin, which has been on an upward trajectory since last week.

Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered Bank, wrote in a Monday note that bitcoin “is headed for the next leg higher.”

“We expect a strategic asset reallocation away from US assets to trigger the next sharp upswing in bitcoin in the coming months,” he said.

He predicts bitcoin will reach a “fresh all-time high of $120k in Q2. Then onto my $200k end-year forecast,” which isn’t quite as bullish as Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest projection of $2.4 million by 2023, but still more than double its current price.

According to him, several factors are supporting the bullish view:

“US Treasury term premium (which has a close correlation to BTC) is at a 12-year high. Time-of-day analysis suggests that US-based investors may be seeking non-US assets. Meanwhile, Bitcoin accumulation by ‘whales’ (major holders) has been strong.”

The record ETF flows from last week is another bullish indicator for bitcoin.

0.00%

Today

More Crypto

crypto

Sage D. Young17h

Ripple launches treasury platform to manage cash and cryptocurrencies

Ripple, the firm closely tied to the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, XRP, introduced a new treasury platform for digital asset and traditional cash management for users like financial officers, treasurers, and accountants.

Ripple’s move comes more than three months after it acquired treasury software provider GTreasury for $1 billion, one of several steps to grow the firm’s position in corporate finance.

Combining Ripple’s blockchain rails and GTreasury’s software, the new platform’s goal is to simplify treasury operations. It eliminates settlement delays with payment times of three to five seconds and optimizes yield from working capital 24/7 through tokenized money market funds such as BlackRock’s BUIDL and overnight secure repo markets with RLUSD, according to a Tuesday blog post.

Ripple Treasury also aims to provide “real-time cash positions, automated forecasting, and seamless reporting across traditional cash, digital assets, RLUSD, and XRP holdings,” the blog post stated.

Last year, Ripple filed its national banking license application with the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, while the firm’s subsidiary Standard Custody & Trust Company applied for a Federal Reserve master account, which would allow Ripple to hold RLUSD reserves directly with the Fed.

XRP has seen $2.4 billion in trading volume in the last 24 hours, increasing 1.8% in the period. The token’s all-time high was set in July 2025 at $3.65. Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs had nearly $9.2 million worth of inflows on Tuesday, bringing cumulative inflows to $1.4 billion.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin is underperforming precious metals now, but experts warn of “short-sighted” view

The debate on investing in digital gold vs. actual gold continues, but it’s helpful to put each one’s performance in context.

Bitcoin Medals Manufactured At Sakamoto Metal

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin miners hit with downgrades, winter storm

While the bitcoin hashrate has crashed, experts say this is a temporary reaction to the weather.

US-CRYPTOCURRENCY-CLIMATE-EMPLOYMENT-CHINA

Sage D. Young1/27/26

Crypto money laundering activity totaled more than $82 billion in 2025, more than 8x higher than 2020’s figure of $10 billion, according to a Tuesday report published by crypto analytics firm Chainalysis. Chinese-language networks dominated the ecosystem, accounting for roughly 20% of the illicit activity, or $16.1 billion, last year:

“Compared to other laundering endpoints, since 2020, inflows to identified CMLNs [Chinese-langugage money laundering networks] grew 7,325 times faster than those to centralized exchanges, 1,810 times faster than those to decentralized finance (DeFi), and 2,190 times faster than intra-illicit on-chain flows.”

Tom Keatinge, director at the Centre for Finance & Security at security think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Chainalysis that the rapid development of Chinese-language networks is an “an unforeseen consequence” of China’s imposition of capital controls.

“Wealthy individuals seeking to move money out of China and evade these controls provide the impetus and liquidity pool needed to service organized crime groups based in the West,” he noted.

Keatinge told Chainalysis, “The professional enablers of this capital flight provide the services necessary to match these two independent yet mutually beneficial needs.”

Chinese-language networks offer six primary money movement techniques to clean dirty money, which include recruiting individuals to rent out their financial identities, selling illicit cryptocurrency at a discounted rate, and obscuring fund origins through multiple transactions.

Overall, this Chinese ecosystem processed nearly $44 million per day last year.

crypto

Sage D. Young1/26/26

Avalanche joins class of cryptocurrencies with at least one ETF

Investment management company VanEck on Monday introduced the first exchange-traded fund offering spot exposure to AVAX, the native token for the Avalanche blockchain and the latest cryptocurrency with an ETF.

The new investment vehicle also aims to provide staking rewards for holders, according to the press release. AVAX, which has seen over $354 million in trading volume in the last 24 hours, is up slightly today. The token is trading at $11.70 as of 1:20 p.m. ET, a far cry from its all-time high of $144.96 in 2021.

The nascent VanEck fund joins a group of its crypto-specific ETFs, including the firm’s bitcoin ETF, with $1.4 billion in total assets; its ethereum ETF, which holds $147.5 million; and its solana ETF, with assets totaling $27.9 million.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.

©2026 Sherwood Media, LLC