Today's news tips:
1. Macroeconomic outlook for next week: Trump "plays too hard", Fed officials will go all out
2. The United States: Some products imported from China are exempted from "reciprocal tariffs", including smartphones, some computers and notebooks, etc.
3.Santiment: The tariff exemption policy triggered a positive reaction in the crypto market, and Bitcoin broke through the resistance level of $83,000
4. Vitalik: The growth of the application layer is the period when good social philosophy is most needed
5. BlackRock CEO: The economic recession may have begun, but the release of new liquidity may become a catalyst for cryptocurrency
6. Binance Futures will launch PUMPUSDT, STOUSDT and FHEUSDT USDT perpetual contracts
7. Bloomberg: The Trump family’s cryptocurrency projects have a total book profit of nearly $1 billion
8. In the past 7 days, NFT transaction volume fell by 4.7% to US$94.7 million, and the number of buyers and sellers fell by more than 70%.
9. OpenAI officially announced that GPT-4 will be retired at the end of this month and will be completely replaced by 4o
Regulatory/Macro
Macroeconomic outlook for next week: Trump "plays too hard", Fed officials will go all out
In the past week, "shorting the United States" has almost become a consensus around the world. In the crisis of confidence triggered by "the rise and fall depends on Trump", US assets have been sold off crazily, especially US bonds and the US dollar. After a week of huge fluctuations, the uncertainty surrounding Trump's tariff policy, the concerns about trade tensions and the possible severe blow to the economy still exist. Investors will pay close attention to further developments and will also turn their attention to the actual economic impact. The following are the key points that the market will focus on in the new week:】
At 0:00 on Tuesday, Barkin, 2027 FOMC voting member and Richmond Fed President, gave a speech on "Getting Through the Economic Fog";
At 6:00 on Tuesday, Harker, 2026 FOMC voting member and President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, will give a speech on the role of the Federal Reserve;
At 7:40 on Tuesday, 2027 FOMC voting member and Atlanta Fed President Bostic will speak on monetary policy;
10:00 on Wednesday, China’s first quarter GDP annual rate;
At 0:00 on Thursday, 2026 FOMC voting member and Cleveland Fed President Hammack participated in a Q&A session;
At 20:30 on Thursday, the number of initial jobless claims in the United States for the week ending April 12;
At 1:15 a.m. Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell will speak at the Economic Club of Chicago;
At 7:00 a.m. on Thursday, 2025 FOMC voting member, Kansas Fed President Schmid and Dallas Fed President Logan will hold a fireside chat on the U.S. economy and banking industry.
Among the upcoming U.S. economic data, retail sales for March, due on Wednesday, will be in focus as investors scrutinize how U.S. consumers reacted to Trump's announcement of broad reciprocal tariffs and his subsequent postponement of some of them. U.S. retail sales are expected to rise 1.4% month-on-month in March, up from 0.2% in February, according to analysts' estimates.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that according to the memorandum signed by U.S. President Trump on the same day, smartphones, routers, and some computers and laptops will no longer be included in the so-called "reciprocal tariff" of 125% previously implemented on Chinese imports. According to the latest policy, products that meet the classification numbers listed in the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule will be exempted from the "reciprocal tariff", including key technology products such as smartphones, routers, some computer equipment and electronic components.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection said importers should declare exemption eligibility when declaring relevant goods. For goods that have been cleared or picked up after April 5, companies must complete relevant declaration corrections within 10 days after the goods are released. Unsettled items can apply for post-aggregation corrections, and settled items that are still within the protest period can also apply for refunds. It is not clear whether these products will still be subject to the 20% tariff that is not part of the "reciprocal tariff" framework. The U.S. International Trade Commission has not yet responded to relevant inquiries, and the White House did not immediately comment.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary says the argument that tariffs are good for the U.S. is fraud
According to CCTV News, on the 11th local time, former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said on a TV program: "The current tariff level is more than ten times higher than when the United States launched the trade war in 2018. I think that in addition to making prices higher, any statement that 'imposing tariffs has other (positive) effects' is fundamentally fraudulent." He also said that the US government's policy of arbitrarily imposing tariffs is very dangerous. He said, "This is the worst economic policy of the United States since World War II, and the most serious act of self-harm."
According to Yonhap News Agency, on April 13, local time, South Korean court officials revealed that the first criminal trial of former President Yoon Seok-yeol is scheduled to be held on the 14th. The report pointed out that Yoon Seok-yeol will become the fifth former South Korean president to be tried for criminal charges. If convicted of leading a rebellion, Yoon Seok-yeol may face life imprisonment or death penalty. It is reported that the Seoul Central District Court of South Korea is scheduled to hear Yoon Seok-yeol's rebellion charges at 10 am local time on the 14th. As a defendant, Yoon Seok-yeol must attend the trial.
According to Sing Tao News, 18 months have passed since the suspected fraud case of virtual asset trading platform JPEX, and the Hong Kong police have successfully frozen 228 million yuan. Hong Kong Election Committee member Wu Jiezhuang is concerned about whether the police can help the victims recover the defrauded money. In response, Hong Kong Police Commissioner Zhou Yiming said that the relevant case is still under investigation and the police will seek legal advice from the Department of Justice on the different people involved in the case. The distribution of the frozen funds can only be determined when the case is concluded.
Zhou Yiming also said that the Hong Kong police have established an electronic bank document system to analyze the flow of funds in bank accounts. In order to target fraudsters who use virtual assets to collect and launder fraudulent funds, they have currently developed a one-stop virtual asset analysis tool with local universities.
Viewpoint
Michael Saylor, founder of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), said at the event that Bitcoin does not need the United States, but the United States needs Bitcoin. The concept of strategic reserves is itself a monetary strategy. What is money in the modern world? The world in the 20th century had $450 trillion in capital currency in the form of private and public equity, foreign real estate, sovereign debt (especially foreign sovereign debt), other countries' currencies, and corporate bonds. Bitcoin is a better currency, so either keep the world as it is or introduce the concept of Bitcoin.
Michael Saylor added that Bitcoin can no longer be stopped because Satoshi Nakamoto ignited the fire, which continues to burn, with tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into the network every day, and Bitcoin will grow from $2 billion to $20 billion, then to $200 billion, $2 trillion, $20 trillion, and $200 trillion.
CZ: I heard someone paid Wall Street Journal employees to smear me
Binance co-founder CZ posted on the X platform: "The Wall Street Journal is trying too hard. They seem to have forgotten who went to jail and who didn't. People who become government witnesses will not go to jail, but will be protected. I heard that someone paid the Wall Street Journal employees to discredit me."
CZ: Assistance and advice to the government is limited to blockchain adoption and education
Binance co-founder CZ tweeted: “I will not get involved in other issues, such as politics, religion, etc. I remain neutral on all other issues and only focus on two topics: blockchain adoption and education.”
Yesterday , Binance co-founder CZ posted on the X platform: "If the government truly supports cryptocurrency, I am happy to provide them with assistance and advice on cryptocurrency adoption and regulatory policies. I provide free advice, and the only limitation is whether I am available."
Santiment said that Trump's tariff exemption policy over the weekend triggered an instant rise in the cryptocurrency market. Compared with 24 hours ago, the impact of high import costs on the technology industry has been greatly reduced, and Bitcoin has hit a high of $85,900.
Historically, crypto assets like Bitcoin tend to move in tandem with tech stocks, especially when investor sentiment shifts to riskier assets. When tech stocks perform well, investors tend to feel more confident buying cryptocurrencies. Therefore, Trump's tariff exemption policy dispels the dark clouds hanging over the tech industry and indirectly eases the pressure on the crypto market. In fact, just hours after the announcement, Bitcoin rebounded to a weekend high of $85,900, breaking through the resistance level of around $83,000.
Furthermore, the exemption of semiconductors and computer parts can be seen as a long-term benefit to the crypto ecosystem. These components are essential for cryptocurrency mining, blockchain infrastructure building, and AI-based crypto tool development. If the production and supply of these parts remain uninterrupted and affordable, it will ensure that the backbone of the crypto industry - both mining and development - continues to operate. This means that crypto exchanges, wallet providers, and tech startups working on blockchain solutions will be able to operate more smoothly.
While Trump's trade policy remains complex and unpredictable, the targeted exemptions for tech equipment provide clear policy direction in the short term and ease market pressure. Investors are now more confident that inflation in consumer electronics will be avoided and companies will not be forced to raise prices or cut innovation. This by no means means the end of tariff concerns, but it does ease one of the biggest concerns facing the cryptocurrency industry.
We have seen a mild bullish reaction in the cryptocurrency market, and stocks should follow suit on Monday, which will drive Bitcoin and altcoins further up. But after the initial reaction, the market will become more interesting, and the public's "FOMO" sentiment may kill any gains.
In response to the statement that "Ethereum's self-update requires a generational/talent replacement. And the next generation needs to be rooted in Ethereum values (such as cypherpunks)", Vitalik Buterin replied in Warpcast: "I actually think that the growth of the application layer is the period when good social philosophy is most needed. For example: suppose C++ was developed by a totalitarian racist fascist. Would it be a worse language? Probably not. C++ is general, and there is not much room for bad social philosophy to destroy it (or for good social philosophy to improve it). Ethereum Layer-1 is not entirely like this: people who don't believe in decentralization will not add light clients, FOCIL, or (well-formed) account abstractions; people who don't mind wasting energy will not spend five years migrating to PoS... But in any case, the opcodes of the EVM are probably roughly the same. Therefore, Ethereum may be 50% general. Applications are about 80% dedicated. What kind of application you build depends largely on your idea of what Ethereum applications (and Ethereum as a whole) will do for the world. Therefore, it becomes crucial to have good ideas on this topic."
In addition, Vitalik listed some applications, including Railgun, Farcaster, Polymarket, and Signal as good ones, and Pump.fun, Terra/Luna, and FTX as bad ones. He believes that the difference in application functions stems from the different beliefs that developers hold about the goals they want to achieve.
In an interview with CNBC, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink sounded the alarm about a possible recession in the United States, warning that a recession may have already begun. Larry Fink pointed to rising economic pressures and protectionist trade policies as key drivers behind what he sees as a slow economic contraction. While recession fears typically roil traditional markets, cryptocurrency investors may have reason to be excited. The impending economic slowdown could prompt the Federal Reserve to reverse its monetary tightening policies, potentially unleashing a new wave of liquidity. According to analysts, this scenario could serve as a major catalyst for digital assets such as Bitcoin.
Larry Fink’s comments are in line with similar predictions from major Wall Street institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. On decentralized prediction markets such as Kalshi and PolyMarket, traders are also increasingly betting that a U.S. recession is imminent.
Senior analyst James Van Straten wrote that the S&P Volatility Index has soared to its highest level since August last year, indicating increased market uncertainty. The ratio of Bitcoin to VIX has hit the long-term trend line of 1903. The last time it hit the trend line was during market volatility before and after the unwinding of yen carry trades. At that time, the price of Bitcoin had fallen to a bottom of around $49,000. In fact, this is the fourth time that the ratio has touched the trend line and bottomed out. Previously, the ratio had first touched the trend line during the peak of the epidemic in March 2020 and in August 2015, and the price rose after both bottoms.
Project News
According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin, DWF Labs has begun to add USD1 liquidity on the chain, which means that the US dollar stablecoin launched by WLFI, a DeFi project supported by the Trump family, can now be circulated and traded on the chain. The DWF Labs address has received 11 million USD1 from WLFI on the ETH and BSC chains in the past 8 days. Today, they began to deploy USD1 liquidity on these two chains:
ETH: USDT/USD1, USDC/USD1, USDf/USD1, and ETH/USD1 liquidity are deployed on Uniswap V3;
BSC: USDT/USD1 and BNB/USD1 liquidity deployed on Pancakeswap V3.
Binance Futures will launch PUMPUSDT, STOUSDT and FHEUSDT USDT perpetual contracts
According to the official announcement, Binance Futures will launch perpetual contracts at the following time:
April 12, 2025 22:30 (GMT+8): PUMPUSDT perpetual contract, with a maximum leverage of 20x;
April 12, 2025 22:45 (GMT+8): STOUSDT perpetual contract, with a maximum leverage of 20x;
April 12, 2025 23:00 (GMT+8): FHEUSDT perpetual contract, with a maximum leverage of 20x.
*Please note that PUMP (LINK), STO (LINK), and FHE (LINK) are already listed on Binance Alpha Markets.
OpenAI said on its website that GPT-4 will be "completely replaced" by GPT-4o from April 30, but GPT-4 will continue to be available through the API.
OpenAI said, "In face-to-face evaluations, it (4o) continues to outperform GPT-4 in writing, coding, STEM, etc." According to the US media The Verge on the 10th, OpenAI will unveil a series of new AI models next week, including GPT-4.1, which will be an improved version of the 4o multimodal model. OpenAI will also launch smaller GPT-4.1 mini and nano versions, as well as the o3 "reasoning" model and a new reasoning model called o4-mini.
Wayfinder Co-founder: A 90-day overview of several key features will be released next week
Wayfinder co-founder Kalos tweeted that an overview of about 90 days will be released next week after discussing the delivery time of the following projects with the engineering team:
- Scalability
- Security Enhancement
- Path creation release
- Validator Release (Pilot)
- Partial switch to Crow-32B
- More agent types and features (contract agent testing framework, portfolio handling)
- Additional network support
- Wayfinder API and more
Kalos also plans to update Parallel, Colony, and Sanctuary in the coming week.
Important data
CryptoSlam data shows that NFT trading volume fell 4.7% to $94.7 million this week. The number of NFT buyers plummeted 77.9% to 128,244, and the number of NFT sellers plummeted 75.2% to 85,792. The number of NFT transactions also fell 6.3% to 1,441,009.
The Ethereum blockchain still dominates, with $36.1 million in transactions, up 41.3% from last week. The Polygon network ranks second with $17.4 million in transactions, up 4.3% year-on-year. The Mythos Chain network follows closely with $14.1 million in transactions, up 2% year-on-year. The Solana network saw a sharp drop of 33.4% in transactions to $6.5 million.
Notable high-value transactions include:
- CryptoPunks #3100 sold for 4,000 ETH ($6,042,922)
- CryptoPunks #1182 sold for 142 ETH ($209,310)
- Pixel Vault Founders DAO #4 sold for 97.08 RETH ($161,511)
- Autoglyphs #462 sold for 98.5 WETH ($149,724)
- CryptoPunks #5361 sold for 69.69 ETH ($108,204)
According to The Data Nerd, 2 hours ago, wallet S4m83 withdrew 18,391 SOL (about $2.43 million) from Coinbase. In one month, the wallet accumulated a total of 255,690 SOL (about $40.4 million), with an average cost of $158.
"The whale with 56,995 ETH on the verge of liquidation" sold the remaining 2,000 ETH three hours ago
According to @ai_9684xtpa, the "56,995 ETH whale on the verge of liquidation" is close to liquidation, with a total reduction of 64,792 ETH. After reducing his position by 35,881 ETH at an average price of $1,562 on April 10 and unloading leverage, he sold the remaining 2,000 ETH again three hours ago at a selling price of $1,575; he currently still holds 688 ETH.
Andrew Kang Doubled His Bitcoin Holdings to $200 Million This Morning
According to Arkham monitoring, Mechanism Capital co-founder Andrew Kang doubled his Bitcoin holdings this morning, with the value of Bitcoin held reaching $200 million and a profit of $6.8 million.
Bloomberg: The Trump family’s cryptocurrency projects have a total book profit of nearly $1 billion
According to Bloomberg, President Trump and his family are involved in almost every area of the crypto industry. They have invested in NFTs and digital collectibles; a decentralized finance project; a proposed stablecoin; a Bitcoin mining plan; and a pair of memecoins, one for the president and one for first lady Melania Trump. According to public data, even taking into account the market volatility caused by the latest round of trade wars, the total book gains of these projects are still close to $1 billion.
