Crypto

[PRESS RELEASE – Johannesburg, South Africa, April 9th, 2026] VALR, Africa’s largest crypto exchange by trade volume, has integrated with Onafriq, the continent’s leading digital payments gateway. This partnership enables VALR users across Africa to fund their accounts directly through mobile money in local currencies, significantly broadening access to digital financial services for millions of […]

North Korea’s crypto playbook now spans fake developers, conference contacts and major DeFi exploits reaching deep across the industry. This month’s $285 million exploit on Drift, a decentralized exchange (DEX), was the largest crypto hack in over a year, when exchange Bybit lost $1.4 billion. North Korean state-backed hackers were named as prime suspects in both attacks. This past autumn, attackers posed as a quantitative trading firm and approached Drift’s protocol team in person at a major crypto conference, said Drift in an X post Sunday. “It is now understood that this appears to be a targeted approach, where individuals from this group continued to deliberately seek out and engage specific Drift contributors, in person, at multiple major industry conferences in multiple countries over the following six months,” said the DEX. Read more

Ethereum developer Joe Schiarizzi says most pro-crypto lawmakers in D.C. “just want a check” and don’t actually understand the technology—or its potential.

XRP ETP Inflows Hit $120M: Institutional Shift Signal The post XRP Ripple Just Outpaced Bitcoin in Weekly ETP Inflows: Is $120 Million a Sign Institutions Are Loading Up? appeared first on Cryptonews.

MSBT launched at 0.14%, below BlackRock's IBIT at 0.25% and Grayscale's Bitcoin Mini Trust at 0.15%, making it the lowest-cost spot BTC ETF.

Most U.S. lenders remain in a wait-and-see mode as deposit risks, regulatory shifts and new competition complicate strategy, according to the report.

Long-term agreement between Meta and CoreWeave signals growing demand for scalable AI compute and inference capacity.

Bitcoin Depot said a hacker stole 50.9 BTC, worth about $3.7 million, after gaining access to internal systems linked to corporate wallets. Crypto ATM operator Bitcoin Depot said it lost 50.9 Bitcoin, worth about $3.7 million, after a hacker gained access to some of its internal systems. The breach happened on March 23 after the attacker took control of credentials linked to Bitcoin Depot’s corporate Bitcoin (BTC) wallets, according to a Monday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said that customer accounts, platforms and personal data were not affected. Bitcoin Depot added that the attack has not had a major impact on daily operations, and said it has insurance that may cover some of the losses. “As the investigation of the incident is ongoing, the full scope, nature and impact of the incident are not yet completely known,” the filing said. Read more

On April 8, Morgan Stanley’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund began trading on the NYSE Arca under the ticker MSBT, logging 1.6 million shares and roughly $34 million in volume on its highly anticipated first day. The MSBT fund purchased 430 Bitcoin on day one, following $30.6 million in net inflows. Speaking on this performance, Bloomberg […] The post Morgan Stanley’s new Bitcoin ETF puts pressure on BlackRock’s IBIT after debut appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Crypto exchanges are seeking market share of TradFi trading venues, but tokenized commodities adoption is limited by pricing and liquidity concerns. Update April 9, 2026, 1:00 p.m. UTC: This article has been updated to include a comment from Mamadou Kwidjim Toure, CEO and founder of tokenization platform Ubuntu Tribe. Cryptocurrency exchanges are taking market share from traditional finance (TradFi) trading venues through tokenized commodities products, but finding that mainstream adoption of tokenized precious metals is limited by pricing and liquidity issues. Silver perpetuals have peaked at about 40% of the equivalent volume of the Comex Silver (SI) Contract, the world’s largest silver futures market that accounts for over 70% of global exchange-traded silver futures volume, according to a Thursday report from Binance Research. Read more

BitMEX said commodity perpetual swaps volume jumped from $38.1 million to $25 billion in Q1 as traders flocked to 24/7 gold, silver and oil exposure. BitMEX said in a Thursday report that commodity perpetual swaps were the fastest-growing segment of TradFi perps in the first quarter of 2026, with weekly volume rising 65,463% from $38.1 million to $25.0 billion. The report said silver, crude oil and gold drove most of that growth. By the week of March 15, Silver (XAG) accounted for 34.8% of the market share of tokenized commodities, followed by crude oil (CL) for 27.7%, gold (XAU) at 27.5% and Silver on Hyperliquid for 6%, according to a Thursday report. BitMEX said the March entry of crude oil added a new leg to the market, attributing that move to Iran-related geopolitical tensions and broader demand for 24/7 commodity exposure on crypto-native venues. Read more

Commodities led the growth, with oil trading reaching $6.9 billion in weekly volume after geopolitical tensions, while stock perpetual swaps grew 908% to roughly $4.9 billion.

Iran may accept BTC for oil tanker passage through the Strait of Hormuz, while Morgan Stanley just helped drive a huge day for Bitcoin ETFs.

Altcoin volatility spiked as Fartcoin crashed 28% from its peak, while Hyperliquid recorded $84 million in liquidations.

Check out which cryptocurrencies will no longer be available on Binance from April 23.

The liquidation was so large relative to the order book that Hyperliquid's auto-deleveraging mechanism activated, forcibly closing profitable short positions on the other side of the trade to prevent the system from accumulating bad debt.

Whales and options traders are betting on a massive BTC reversal toward $80,000 as a fragile Iran ceasefire fuels hopes for a supply squeeze and a breakout.

But analysts say the $3M loss on Hyperliquid likely masked a larger net gain through hedged positions placed on other platforms.

Bitcoin needs to regain momentum with higher trading volumes for BTC to reclaim $80,000 as support and sustain the recovery. Bitcoin’s (BTC) relief rally to $72,000 appears to be cooling off, but analysts said that the BTC price may “continue rising” in the short term. Key takeaways: Bitcoin must flip the short-term holder realized price at $80,000 into support to confirm the trend change. Read more

Bhutan has moved another 319 BTC, taking the total to over 9,000 BTC since late 2024, and trimming its sovereign stash by around 70%. Bhutan moved more Bitcoin from its sovereign-linked wallet on Thursday, further reducing its once sizeable BTC stash and extending its months-long selling.  Arkham data showed a wallet attributed to the Royal Government of Bhutan and its investment arm Druk Holding & Investment, transferred about 319 Bitcoin (BTC), worth roughly $22.68 million, bringing total outflows since late October 2024 to more than 9,000 BTC. The transfer follows a series of recent wallet movements by the country flagged by Arkham. In March alone, the Bhutan-tagged wallet moved more than 1,667 BTC (roughly $120 million), taking Bhutan’s Bitcoin holdings from about 13,000 BTC in late 2024 to 3,654 BTC in April, according to Arkham Intelligence’s tracking dashboard. Read more