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Altcoins have lagged Bitcoin year-to-date, but BNB price shows relative resilience, trading only 10% lower than the previous cycle’s all-time high.
BNB Chain shows a robust activity, consistently ranking third in daily transactions, active addresses, and TVL, while leading in the number of DApps.
The blockchain’s weakest point is its revenue, which still lags compared to competitors.
Altcoin price action has been underwhelming for much of the 2023-2026 cycle, pushing many crypto traders to focus primarily on Bitcoin. However, with moderate optimism returning to the markets, a closer look reveals that not all altcoins are struggling. In fact, the total altcoin market cap remains solidly above $1 trillion — $1.17 trillion, to be exact — and its 9% surge over the past week offers a glimmer of hope.
Among the major altcoins, BNB Chain (BNB) stands out for its relative strength and stability. Currently ranked as the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, behind BTC, ETH, USDT, and XRP, BNB is valued at around $89 billion. Some analysts see it as one of the most resilient altcoins in the current cycle.
As João Wedson, the founder of Alphractal, pointed out, using data from the cryptocurrency drawdown heatmap:
“While most altcoins have suffered drops of up to -98.5% from their all-time highs, BNB stands out alongside BTC as one of the least affected cryptocurrencies — and more impressively, it's one of the few that has reached a new all-time high this cycle.”
For Wedson, this resilience isn't just about price action — it’s also backed by solid foundations, such as BNB Chain’s well-developed ecosystem and BNB’s rising role in DeFi. He calls BNB “one of the rare altcoins with real utility, strong fundamentals, and growing adoption, making it the strongest-performing altcoin alongside BTC.”
Is BNB really the most resilient altcoin?
Looking solely at price performance among top smart contract platforms’ coins tells a more nuanced story. BNB has indeed reached a new all-time high during this cycle, but so have XRP (XRP), TRX (TRX), and SOL (SOL) — though in Solana's case, the new high barely surpassed its 2021 peak by just 1%.
When comparing current prices to their previous cycle highs (mostly from May or November 2021), BNB is now down only about 10%. That’s significantly better than ETH (ETH), which is down 63%, and Solana, down 40%. However, XRP (+19%) and TRX (+49%) have performed even better.
One of BNB’s monetary advantages lies in its low dilution risk. According to Messari’s Market Cap/Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) ratio, 96.51% of BNB’s supply is already in circulation. That’s in line with Ethereum (99.93%) and TRX (99.96%), indicating a relatively low risk of future token inflation. In contrast, Solana (86.33%) and especially XRP (58.33%) could face significant future dilution.
While BNB’s price performance has been relatively strong, it alone doesn't entirely justify its reputation for resilience; fundamentals offer deeper insight.
BNB Chain activity drives the altcoin’s value
Beyond speculation, BNB’s value is defined by its use in BNB Chain — an umbrella term now used to define both BNB Smart Chain (the original blockchain) and the Beacon Chain (used for governance and staking). BNB Chain specializes in gaming, DeFi, launchpads, and other large-scale consumer DApps. More recently, it also got into the memecoins game, soaking up some of Solana’s volume. Being the key altcoin on the leading centralized exchange also helps.
According to Messari, BNB Chain processes around 4 million daily transactions on average, ahead of Ethereum (1 million), XRP Ledger (1.8 million), but behind Tron (5.5 million) and far behind Solana (54 million non-vote transactions daily).
In terms of daily active addresses, BNB Chain also performs well with about 1.1 million, beating Ethereum (384,800) and XRP Ledger (55,600), but trailing Tron (2.4 million) and Solana (3.7 million).
Where BNB Chain really shines is in the number of DApps. According to DappRadar, BNB Chain supports 5,686 DApps — more than Ethereum (4,987), with Polygon (2,402) trailing in third. This reinforces Wedson’s assertion of a “massive” BNB ecosystem and places BNB Chain in a strong position to lead the charge once Web3 fully matures.
BNB Chain also ranks 3rd in total value locked (TVL) in DeFi, with $5.8 billion, behind Ethereum ($50.5 billion) and Solana ($8 billion), according to DefiLlama. The blockchain seems to pay special attention to developing its DeFi activity. On March 24, its DEX trading volume even managed to briefly outpace all other blockchains, hitting a weekly total of $14.3 billion.
Related: ‘Vitalik: An Ethereum Story’ is less about crypto and more about being human
BNB Chain revenue has room for growth
Blockchain revenue plays a crucial role in its long-term sustainability and growth. It is commonly assessed through the total transaction fees generated.
In 2024, Ethereum led the pack with $2.5 billion in fees, followed by Tron ($2.1 billion), Bitcoin ($923 million), and Solana ($751 million), according to CoinGecko. BNB Chain closed the top 5 with $194 million. Since XRP has little utility, its blockchain’s revenues were only $1.1 million.
So far in 2025, the revenue rankings are shifting, but BNB Chain remains 5th. In the past 30 days, Tron has taken the lead with $272 million in fees, followed by Solana ($34.7 million), Ethereum ($20.8 million), and BNB Chain ($17.1 million), per Messari data.
Overall, while BNB may not always top the charts across every metric, it consistently holds a respectable third place among the leading smart contract platforms. Its healthy activity metrics contribute to maintaining relative price stability within the sector.
The blockchain’s revenue remains its weakest point compared to competitors. However, if the promise of Web3 is realized and adoption accelerates, BNB Chain’s dominance in the DApp space could become its biggest strength.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
Opinion by: Steven Smith, head of protocol and applied research, Tools for Humanity
Blockchains were designed as systems of trust that are transparent, decentralized and accessible. The age of AI has, however, introduced significant new challenges. Nearly half of all internet traffic is generated by bots, with up to 80% of blockchain transactions now automated and AI agents accounting for most onchain activity.
While some bots serve legitimate and helpful purposes, others — like those used for airdrop farming and fake account creation — clog networks, drive up fees, and monopolize space and resources.
It’s up to humans to protect the blockchains we know and love, ensuring that people aren’t unfairly disadvantaged by automated systems, insulated from the effect of maximal extractable value attacks and exploits, and free from the need to pay significant gas fees to be included in a block.
The bot takeover is already here
AI bots are becoming more integral to networks and capable of more sophisticated exploits, dominating trading volumes, driving up gas fees, and manipulating decentralized finance (DeFi) markets.
In some cases, networks have seen failure rates surge past 75% due to bot-induced congestion. Even Ethereum’s mempool is increasingly flooded with automated transactions, forcing human users to compete for scarce block space.
The problem extends beyond blockchain networks — it’s affecting the entire economy. AI-powered bots are set to disrupt traditional banking and financial services, threatening the very foundations of how money is managed and transactions are conducted.
It’s only a matter of time before bad actors begin deploying new AI-driven fraud tools at scale, creating an unprecedented security nightmare for financial institutions, businesses and users alike.
This has already begun. AI-driven botnets fueled a 55% surge in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the banking and financial services industry during 2024.
If action isn’t taken, humans risk ceding control of both decentralized and traditional financial systems to automated systems optimized for speed and scale — not fairness or accessibility.
Scalability alone won’t solve this problem
So far, the response to these issues has focused on scalability. Layer-2 solutions, rollups and high-performance execution clients make transactions faster and cheaper.
Scaling without a focus on human users, however, leads to unintended consequences. Lower fees mean attackers can cause much grief for little cost, and bots can flood networks more easily. Meanwhile, faster transactions mean AI traders can outcompete human investors even faster.
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This has played out repeatedly already. A spam attack on Zcash severely disrupted its blockchain. During its token launch, Manta Network suffered a DDoS attack, slowing withdrawals and frustrating users. On Ethereum, bots have been used to manipulate gas prices during high-traffic periods, resulting in delayed transactions and higher transaction fees for real humans.
While scalability is critical, it’s equally important to prioritize another fundamental element of blockchain design: proof-of-human.
Proof-of-human infrastructure
Proof-of-human infrastructure is a mechanism that digitally verifies a person’s humanness and uniqueness. This is key to keeping control of blockchain systems in human hands, giving real people the power to ensure blockchains don’t become automated playgrounds for bots — especially as AI agents continue to scale.
Proof-of-human systems ensure blockchain architecture evolves with a human-first approach. Networks should allocate guaranteed block space for verified human users, ensuring that automated trading bots don’t push out essential transactions.
Introducing gas subsidies for human users can also prevent them from being priced out during periods of extreme network congestion. Optimized execution clients can enhance efficiency while implementing safeguards against bot-driven spam.
Blockchain architecture has made remarkable strides in scalability, interoperability and security. We also still need to ensure positive experiences for humans. As an industry, it’s fundamental to provide the ability to distinguish between real people and bots online to ensure the sector can continue to grow in the long run.
The choice is ours. We can allow unproductive bots to take over our networks, pushing out human users and undermining the core promise of decentralization. Or, we can implement the necessary parameters to keep blockchains human-centric and ensure greater control over productive bots, ensuring fairer access, security and sustainability.
Now is the time to act. The future of blockchain and bringing more humans onchain depend on it.
Opinion by: Steven Smith, head of protocol and applied research, Tools for Humanity.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Today in crypto, crypto exchange Coinbase announced the launch of its Bitcoin Yield Fund on May 1 to offer 4%–8% returns for institutional investors seeking passive income on Bitcoin holdings, Bitget sent legal letters to users it accused of manipulating token contracts, and US President Donald Trump said federal income taxes will be reduced or eliminated.
Coinbase to launch yield-bearing Bitcoin fund for institutions
Coinbase, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, is launching the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund on May 1, aiming to offer Bitcoin (BTC) exposure for institutional investors outside the US.
The fund targets an annual net return of 4% to 8% on Bitcoin holdings, according to an April 28 blog post by Coinbase.
“To address the growing institutional demand for bitcoin yield, Coinbase Asset Management is excited to introduce the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund (CBYF),” the company wrote.
The fund is backed by multiple investors, including Aspen Digital, a digital asset manager based in Abu Dhabi and regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority.
The yield will be generated through a cash-and-carry strategy, through the difference between spot Bitcoin prices and derivatives.
Unlike Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL), Bitcoin holders can’t generate passive income through staking — a gap the fund is aiming to fill, according to the announcement:
“Bitcoin yield funds have emerged to address this limitation, but these funds generally require institutional allocators to take on significant investment and operational risk.”
The new fund seeks to lower the investment and operational risks typically associated with Bitcoin yield products, which Coinbase says will better align with the risk appetite of institutional investors.
Bitget sends legal letters to alleged VOXEL manipulators
Bitget’s lawyers have sent letters to eight account holders at the crypto exchange, accusing them of manipulating the price of perpetual futures contracts tied to the VOXEL token and pocketing $20 million in total.
Bitget’s head of Chinese operations, Xie Jiayin, said in an April 27 X post that those behind the eight accounts will receive the legal letters in “quick succession,” and it will redistribute any recovered funds to its other users.
VOXEL is the native utility token of Voxies, a free-to-play, 3D turn-based tactical RPG game built on the Ethereum blockchain.
Bitget said on April 20 that it found “abnormal trading activity” on its VOXEL/USDT perpetual futures contract and paused accounts it suspected of market manipulation.
The trading pair clocked over $12 billion in volume, dwarfing the metrics of the same contract on Binance. After the pause, Bitget rolled back the irregular trades to claw back the gains.
Trump says federal income taxes will be “substantially reduced” or eliminated
US President Trump said federal income taxes would be "substantially reduced" or eliminated altogether once the proposed trade tariffs take full effect.
The US President said that the accompanying tax reduction will focus on those earning less than $200,000 per year.
"It will be a bonanza for America. The External Revenue Service is happening," Trump wrote in an April 27 Truth Social post.
President Trump previously floated the idea of eliminating the federal income tax collected by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and replacing revenues from income taxes with tariffs collected on imported goods.
The US President's April 27 Truth Social post revealed the first concrete details of the proposed plan since Trump and members of his cabinet began touting comprehensive tax reform in October 2024.
Ethereum’s Fusaka hard fork is expected to take place in the third or fourth quarter of this year, according to an Ethereum Foundation official.
In an April 28 X post, Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Tomasz Kajetan Stańczak said that the organization is aiming to deploy the Fusaka Ethereum network upgrade in Q3 or Q4 2025. Still, the exact rollout schedule has not been decided yet.
The comments come amid controversies over the upcoming implementation of the EVM object format (EOF) upgrade for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). As Stańczak pointed out, EOF is expected to be a part of the Fusaka network upgrade.
The EVM is the software that runs Ethereum smart contracts. EOF would implement a series of protocol changes, known as Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs), with profound implications for how it operates. EOF introduces an extensible and versioned container format for the smart contract bytecode that is verified once at deployment, separating code and data for efficiency gains.
Related: Researcher proposes scaling Ethereum gas limit by 100x over 4 years
Wrap, stamp once, send
Bytecode is a low-level, compact set of instructions. Solidity smart contracts must be compiled into bytecode before the EVM can execute them.
EOF defines a container module for smart contract bytecode, replacing today’s free-form bytecode blobs with a better-defined structure. These objects would be composed of:
A header starting with the 0xEF00 hexadecimal value, followed by a one-byte version number to ensure upgradability.
A section table, providing metadata about the contents of the container. Each entry comprises one byte setting for the kind of entry and two bytes for the entry’s size.
Sections with the actual content, with at least one code section and any necessary data sections — more types of sections could be added through future EIPs.
This structure streamlines EVM operation, allowing for higher efficiency and lower processing overhead. This upgrade would result in a cleaner developer environment and easier-to-understand deployed smart contracts.
Don’t JUMP, RJUMP instead!
EIP-4200, one of the EOF EIPs, provides an alternative to the JUMP and JUMPI instructions, which allow the program to move execution to any arbitrary byte offset. This kind of execution chain leads to hard-to-spot bugs (the JUMP value being wrong in some instances may not be easy to predict) and makes it easy to hide malware in data blobs and move the execution pointer there.
This practice is known as dynamic jump, and EIP-4750 (under review) proposes disallowing dynamic JUMP/JUMPI inside EOF smart contracts, rejecting them entirely during a later phase of EOF deployment. In its current form, this EIP replaces them with call function (CALLF) and return from function (RETF) function calls. Those new instructions would ensure that destinations are hardcoded into the bytecode, but legacy pre-EOF smart contracts would be unaffected.
Developers who opt to use JUMP or JUMPI after the upgrade will have their bytecode go through deploy-time validation, which ensures that they can never jump into data or the middle of another instruction. This verification would take place via EIP-3670’s code-validation rules, plus the jump table (EIP-3690), so every destination is checked.
As an alternative to those functions, EOF implements RJUMP and RJUMPI instead, which require the destination to be hardcoded in the bytecode. Still, not everyone is on board with EOF implementation.
Related: Ethereum community members propose new fee structure for the app layer
EOF has its haters
EOF is the implementation of 12 EIPs with profound implications for how smart contract developers work. Its supporters argue that it is efficient, more elegant, and allows for easier upgrades down the line.
Still, its detractors argue that it is over-engineered and introduces further complexity into an already complex system such as Ethereum. Ethereum developer Pascal Caversaccio lamented in a March 13 Ethereum Magicians post that “EOF is extremely complex,” as it adds two new semantics and removes and adds over a dozen opcodes. Also, he argued that it is not necessary.
He said all the benefits could be introduced in “more piecemeal, less invasive updates.” He added that the legacy EVM would also need to be maintained, “probably indefinitely.”
Caversaccio also explained that EOF would require a tooling upgrade, which risks introducing new vulnerabilities due to its large attack surface. Also, he said, “EVM contracts get much more complicated due to headers,” while currently empty contracts weigh just 15 bytes. Another developer raised a separate point in the thread:
“Perhaps as a meta point, there seems to be disagreement about whether major EVM changes are desirable in general. A stable VM, on which people can invest in building up excellent tooling and apps with confidence, is much more valuable.“
Caversaccio appears to be in good company in his opposition to EOF. A dedicated poll on the Ethereum polling platform ETHPulse shows that 39 voters holding a total of nearly 17,745 Ether (ETH) are opposed to the upgrade. Only seven holders of under 300 ETH voted in favor.
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Peter Chung, head of research at quantitative trading firm Presto, has repeated his prediction that Bitcoin (BTC) will reach $210,000 by the end of 2025.
In an April 28 interview with CNBC, Chung cited institutional adoption and global liquidity expansion as the primary drivers behind his long-term bullish outlook.
The analyst acknowledged that market conditions this year haven’t been as expected, specifically the challenging macroeconomic environment and market reaction.
However, he described the recent corrections as a “healthy” adjustment, suggesting they have laid a stronger foundation for Bitcoin’s progression toward becoming a mainstream financial asset.
“In hindsight, I think it was actually a healthy correction which has paved the way for the further re-rating of Bitcoin as a mainstream asset,” he said.
Related: Bitcoin trades at ‘40% discount’ as spot BTC ETF buying soars to $3B in one week
Bitcoin’s dual role
Chung also discussed Bitcoin’s dual nature, describing it as both a “risk-on asset” and “digital gold.”
He said that Bitcoin typically behaves like a high-risk asset driven by user adoption and network effects.
However, during periods of financial instability, such as the 2022 outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict or the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank collapse, Bitcoin tends to act as a safe-haven asset, similar to gold.
“These moments are rare,” Chung explained, “[They] only happened when the market has doubts about the stability of the US dollar-dominated financial system.”
While Bitcoin has lagged behind gold during recent market turbulence, Chung suggested BTC could “catch up” and potentially outperform traditional safe-haven assets by year’s end.
Chung also reaffirmed Presto’s target for Ether (ETH), maintaining its valuation model based on the ETH-to-BTC ratio, reflecting confidence in Ethereum’s ongoing network improvements.
Related: New Bitcoin price all-time highs could occur in May
Bitcoin hits $94,000 as institutional adoption expands
Echoing Chung’s view, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said in a recent post on X that Bitcoin’s surge to $94,000 has occurred with minimal retail participation, noting that Google searches for “Bitcoin” remain near long-term lows.
According to Horsley, the current rally is being driven by institutional investors, financial advisers, corporations, and even nation-states.
“The types of investors buying Bitcoin is expanding,” Horsley said.
Corporate Bitcoin treasuries already hold nearly $65 billion worth of BTC, according to data from BitcoinTreasuries.NET.
On April 22, analysts from Standard Chartered and Intellectia AI said institutional Bitcoin demand from exchange-traded funds and traders seeking to hedge against macroeconomic risk could cause Bitcoin’s price to more than double this year.
Magazine: Financial nihilism in crypto is over — It’s time to dream big again
When Donald Trump was running for president, he pledged to build 10 new US cities, dubbed “freedom cities,” from scratch, designed to improve the quality of life for Americans.
These new high-tech communities were to be created on public land, and they were going to be free of the “nightmare of red tape,” including lengthy environmental reviews, that had hampered the development of affordable housing in many parts of the US.
Freedom cities aren’t really a new idea. They are a rebranding of charter cities, which have been around since the late 1800s. Still, Trump’s proposal won the gung-ho support of many of Silicon Valley’s tech bros, whose backing helped tilt the last US presidential election in his direction, and many of whom — e.g., the PayPal mafia consisting of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and Balaji Srinivasan — were also enthusiastic early supporters of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
In mid-March, the new administration made some tentative moves to make freedom cities a reality. Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner announced a Joint Task Force on using underutilized federal land suitable for housing.
“America needs more affordable housing, and the federal government can make it happen by making federal land available to build affordable housing stock,” they wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
How serious is one to take this idea of new, free-floating cities to be built on federally owned land? The administration says freedom cities are needed to help quell the national housing crisis.
But others suggest that building new communities free from many state and federal laws and rules, like the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act, is to create places that are, in effect, outside of the law — “where the rules are suspended and don’t apply anymore to certain people.” And if so, what does that mean for the rest of the country?
“These are not normal times”
“In normal times, I might say the idea that the US federal government would spearhead a program to build any number of master-planned cities is rather preposterous,” Max Woodworth, an associate professor in the geography department at Ohio State University, told Cointelegraph, adding:
“But these are not normal times, and the current administration seems open to things that might previously have been dismissed, fairly or unfairly, as impossible or misguided.”
Freedom cities have their critics. They have been called a “devious scam,” aimed at bringing back “the bad old ‘company towns’ of yesteryear with a fresh coat of modern cryptofascist varnish.”
Indeed, company “scrip” was the medium of exchange in towns like Pullman, Illinois, built by George Pullman, owner of the Pullman Palace Car Company, in the late 19th century, whereas today “cryptocurrency is a key component of freedom cities,” the New Republic reported.
The history of chartered cities is checkered at best, commented Woodworth, and looking ahead much will depend on how they are designed and managed. “Over the years, there have been ‘new city’ plans intended to manifest fascist, communist, social-democratic, libertarian and post-colonial political agendas. For better and worse, urban space is very commonly used as a laboratory for different overt political projects.”
But maybe these are mischaracterizations. “Anyone who thinks Freedom Cities would be lawless should read fewer comic books and more copies of The Wall Street Journal,” Tom Bell, a professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, told Cointelegraph. “Building cities takes money, and investors don’t like lawlessness.” He added:
“That is not to say that all the usual regulations would apply in Freedom Cities; investors don’t like red tape, either. The goal is not getting rid of all regulation but rather finding new and better ways to guide investment, construction and business.”
Bell, who has been working with others to develop a Freedom Cities Act, would require a city’s board to favor developers’ applications that achieve the same outcomes as applicable current federal regulations, “but through alternative and more efficient enforcement regimes.”
Jeffrey Mason, head of policy at the Charter Cities Institute, also supports enabling federal legislation for freedom cities. “We’ve proposed that a process be created by which freedom cities could propose the waiving or other modification of highly burdensome regulations in sectors of strategic importance or in frontier technologies, much like the regulatory sandboxes adopted by various states in recent years,” he told Cointelegraph.
Others see a model along the lines of New York’s Brooklyn Navy Yard, the former military installation that was later transformed into an industrial park. It now houses more than 300 businesses and has become a model for other such projects in the US, writes Mark Lutter and Nick Allen. “The second Trump administration has opened the door to Freedom Cities. They can play an important role in American revitalization.”
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Indeed, the recent joint announcement by the Departments of the Interior and of Housing and Urban Development “suggests that the administration is actively thinking about how a very small share of federal land could be used to build more housing, and possibly entirely new cities,” added Mason.
It’s in the details
But more clarity may still be needed. “At this point the idea of freedom cities being bandied about is so vague that it’s impossible to have clear conceptions or misconceptions of them in the first place,” said Woodworth.
The devil could be in the details. “There seems to be some excitement around freedom cities among libertarian-leaning intellectuals and investors whose ideal freedom city would be places that are very business-friendly,” said Woodworth.
Again, this does not mean that “anything goes.” But it’s not hard to imagine a tax and regulatory regime at work in the jurisdiction of the freedom city that is favorable to corporate interests, said Woodworth. “Indeed, the impetus for freedom cities seems to be precisely to create exceptional conditions that make an end run around the regulatory thicket that frustrates a lot of people, including in the crypto business.”
Why do crypto bros like freedom cities?
How does one, in fact, explain the strong interest in freedom cities among some of the cryptocurrency community’s high-profile partisans?
“The crypto community has been interested in new cities, charter cities and other innovative governance mechanisms for a long time,” Mason told Cointelegraph.
“I think the common interest in decentralization drives a large part of this, but I also think the crypto community is passionate about innovation and building new things, so there’s natural alignment.”
New vistas of innovation may tantalize both groups, “and they sense that existing institutional structures rooted in a 20th-century world hamper its potential,” opined Woodworth. “New cities, theoretically at least, might offer the prospect of designing a setting that can unleash the sector to discover where it can go in terms of innovation and new applications.”
Bell added, “The crypto community doubtless sees in freedom cities the promise of a regulatory regime that at least is not overtly hostile to fintech innovation and that perhaps even welcomes it. There are lots of bold new ideas floating around the crypto space. Freedom Cities might offer a chance to put the best of them to work.”
Bell would like to see quicker progress, though. He noted that Trump proposed the creation of 10 freedom cities in March 2023 while running for office, but “since then, so far as outward signs go, the administration has not followed up on the president’s promise.”
Various parties eager to see freedom cities created have been urging Congressional members to enact the necessary legislation, he added. So far, “that effort has yet to bear fruit.”
Two case studies: California Forever and Próspera
In any event, the challenges of building a 21st-century city from scratch in the United States shouldn’t be underestimated, as those Silicon Valley billionaires who invested in the troubled California Forever real estate enterprise could probably attest.
California Forever intended to develop new industries, novel sources of clean energy and safe, walkable neighborhoods with affordable homes in an underpopulated part of California, 60 miles north of San Francisco.
Designed as an eco-friendly, walk-only community that would house up to 400,000 souls on previous farmland, it’s instead become a cautionary tale illustrating “the cultural and regulatory barriers to building today,” write Mark Lutter, founder and executive director of the Charter Cities Institute, and Nick Allen, president of the Frontier Foundation.
The project has been “on hold” for two years pending an environmental study of its plan.
The project’s backers made some missteps, to be sure. They purchased $900 million of farmland in sparsely populated Solano County without revealing anything about the identities of the enterprise’s backers or plans for a new city.
When details finally did emerge, community relations soured. They frayed further when the project’s backers filed a $500-million antitrust lawsuit saying that farmers who had refused to sell their land to them were colluding to raise prices, The New York Times reported.
Related: US gov’t actions give clue about upcoming crypto regulation
On the positive side, the project underscored that San Francisco is not building enough housing units, which has caused a huge spike in rents there and is driving away local residents. Something similar, if less extreme, is happening in other US cities today, a key reason why the Trump administration’s freedom cities initiative is gaining attention.
Próspera’s island “paradise”
By comparison, the overseas-based Próspera chartered-city project avoided many of those same regulatory and zoning problems that vexed California Forever thanks to a welcoming Honduras government — at least initially.
The owners of Próspera, a Delaware Registered Company, persuaded Honduras to give them a 50-year lease and permission to build a startup city on the the island of Roatán with a regulatory system designed for entrepreneurs “to build better, cheaper, and faster than anywhere else in the world,” according to the for-profit company’s website.
Próspera has raised $120 million in investments since its founding in 2017, including from venture-capital funds backed by tech billionaires Peter Thiel, Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen, among others.
It operates in a special economic development zone within Honduras, but it has its own government, is modestly taxed, and has a flexible regulatory structure largely of its own devising. Disputes are settled by the Próspera arbitration center. Indeed, the new city’s court system reportedly makes use of retired Arizona judges who operate totally online.
Próspera has been able to persuade Western-based companies to set up new businesses within its zone, including experimental medical facilities, “which run clinical trials unburdened by F.D.A. standards,” according to The New York Times.
To say that the Honduras-based startup city is crypto-aligned might be an understatement. In January 2025, Próspera received a strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures “to expand economic freedom globally.”
In February, it hosted a “crypto cities summit.” The island has a Bitcoin Center, which instructs visitors in crypto’s whys and wherefores. Indeed, Próspera calls itself “one of the most Bitcoin-friendly jurisdictions in the world,” and it invites visitors to “connect with fellow Bitcoiners, tour Próspera, and relax in paradise.”
Recently, however, the charter city may have lost its way. Próspera has a $11-billion claim against the State of Honduras that still awaits a ruling from an international arbitration tribunal, and some of its one-time supporters have become disenchanted. “It’s like a gated community. They’re just trying to isolate themselves and do what’s best for them,” Paul Romer, a Nobel-winning economist and former supporter, told Bloomberg recently.
In short, developing a charter city isn’t always a breeze — not even in paradise.
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Michael Saylor’s Strategy added to its massive Bitcoin stash last week as the cryptocurrency surged above $90,000.
In an April 28 announcement, Strategy reported acquiring 15,355 Bitcoin (BTC) between April 21 and 27.
The latest purchases cost Strategy $1.42 billion at an average price of $92,737 per BTC, increasing the company’s aggregate BTC holdings by roughly 3% to a total of 535,555 BTC worth more than $50 billion.
Strategy’s latest buy is its largest since late March, when the firm bagged 22,048 Bitcoin for $1.92 billion at an average price of $86,969 per BTC.
Strategy’s Bitcoin yield is at 13.7%
Announcing the purchase on X, Strategy co-founder Saylor said the firm has achieved the BTC yield of 13.7% year-to-date.
“As of April 27, we hodl 553,555 BTC acquired for approximately $37.90 billion at $68,459 per Bitcoin,” Saylor noted.
Strategy’s BTC yield — an indicator representing the percentage change of the ratio between its BTC holdings and assumed diluted shares — amounted to 74% in 2024.
The company expects to reach a BTC yield target of 15% in 2025.
“You can still buy BTC for less than $0.1 million”
Strategy’s Bitcoin purchase came as the cryptocurrency caught significant bullish action last week, surging 8% from around $87,000 to nearly $94,000 in the period from April 21–27, according to data from CoinGecko.
Bitcoin traded at $95,442 at the time of writing, slightly above its price on Jan. 1, but still lower than its all-time high price above $109,000 seen on Jan. 21.
As Strategy beefed up its Bitcoin stash alongside a BTC rally, Saylor continued posting bullish messages to the community on social media.
Related: Over 13K institutions exposed to Strategy as Saylor hints at BTC buy
“You can still buy BTC for less than $0.1 million,” Saylor wrote on April 25.
In another X post preceding the purchase announcement, Saylor said: “Stay humble. Stack sats [satoshis].” He linked the message to a screenshot of Strategy’s portfolio tracker reflecting the company’s BTC purchases on the timeline of the price chart.
The news comes as Strategy is inching toward a $100 billion market capitalization, with MSTR shares surging roughly 23% YTD and trading at $368.7 at the time of publication, according to data from TradingView.
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sUSD depeg, explained: Why Synthetix’s stablecoin fell below $0.70
In a significant and concerning event in the cryptocurrency space, sUSD, the native stablecoin of the Synthetix protocol, saw its value plummet to $0.68 on April 18, 2025.
This drop represents a dramatic 31% deviation from its intended peg of 1:1 with the US dollar, a threshold that is fundamental to the concept of stablecoins. As the name implies, stablecoins are designed to maintain a stable price, which is crucial for their role as a reliable store of value within decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
For stablecoins like sUSD, maintaining this price stability is essential for ensuring confidence in their usage. However, the steep drop in sUSD’s value sent shockwaves through the crypto community, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty.
The question arises: How did this once-stable digital asset fall below its peg, and why does this matter to the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem?
SUSD depeg was triggered by a protocol shift (SIP-420) that lowered collateralization and disrupted peg-stabilizing incentives. Combined with Synthetix’s (SNX) price drops and liquidity outflows, confidence in sUSD weakened.
Understanding SIP-420 and its impact
SIP-420 introduces a protocol-owned debt pool in Synthetix, allowing SNX stakers to delegate their debt positions to a shared pool with a lower issuance ratio. This shift boosts capital efficiency, simplifies staking, and enhances yield opportunities while discouraging solo staking by raising its collateralization ratio to 1,000%.
Before SIP-420, users who minted sUSD had to over-collateralize with SNX tokens, maintaining a 750% collateral ratio. This high requirement ensured stability but limited efficiency.
SIP-420 aimed to improve capital efficiency by reducing the collateral ratio to 200% and introducing a shared debt pool. This meant that instead of individual users being responsible for their own debt, the risk was distributed across the protocol.
While this change made it easier to mint sUSD, it also removed the personal incentive for users to buy back sUSD when its price dropped below $1. Previously, users would repurchase sUSD at a discount to repay their debts, helping to restore its value. With the shared debt model, this self-correcting mechanism weakened.
Consequences of the change
The combination of increased sUSD supply and reduced individual incentives led to a surplus of sUSD in the market. At times, sUSD comprised over 75% of major liquidity pools, indicating that many users were offloading it at a loss. This oversupply, coupled with declining SNX prices, further destabilized sUSD’s value.
But this is not the first time Synthetix has experienced volatility. The protocol, known for its decentralized synthetic asset platform, has seen fluctuations during past market cycles, but this recent depeg is one of the most severe in the history of the crypto industry.
For instance, Synthetix has faced volatility before — during the 2020 market crash, mid-2021 DeFi corrections, and post-UST collapse in 2022 — each time exposing vulnerabilities in liquidity and oracle systems. A 2019 oracle exploit also highlighted structural fragility.
The significance of sUSD’s depeg extends beyond this individual asset and reveals broader issues in the mechanisms supporting crypto-collateralized stablecoins.
What is sUSD, and how does it work?
sUSD is a crypto-collateralized stablecoin that operates on the Ethereum blockchain, designed to offer stability in a highly volatile crypto market.
Unlike fiat-backed stablecoins such as USDC (USDC) or Tether’s USDt (USDT), which are pegged to the US dollar through reserves held in banks, sUSD is backed by a cryptocurrency — specifically, SNX, the native token of the Synthetix protocol.
Minting sUSD:
- The process for minting sUSD involves staking SNX tokens into the protocol.
- In return, users receive sUSD tokens, which can be used within the Synthetix ecosystem or traded on the open market.
- To ensure that the sUSD token maintains its value, it is over-collateralized, meaning users must stake more SNX than the value of the sUSD minted.
Historical collateralization ratio (C-Ratio):
- Historically, the collateralization ratio has been set around 750%, meaning that for every $1 of sUSD minted, users need to stake $7.50 worth of SNX tokens.
- The high collateralization ratio ensures a buffer against the price volatility of SNX, which is critical for the system’s stability.
In an effort to improve capital efficiency, Synthetix introduced SIP-420, which brought significant changes:
- The required C-Ratio was lowered from 750% to 200%, allowing users to mint more sUSD with less SNX.
- Previously, each user was responsible for their own debt.
- With SIP-420, debt is now shared across a collective pool, meaning individual users are less directly impacted by their own actions.
As a result of these changes, combined with market factors like declining SNX prices, sUSD has struggled to maintain its $1 peg, trading as low as $0.66 in April 2025. The Synthetix team is actively working on solutions to stabilize sUSD, including introducing new incentive mechanisms and exploring ways to enhance liquidity.
Did you know? Synthetix uses a dynamic C-Ratio to manage system stability. Your active debt shifts with trader performance; profits increase debt, and losses reduce it. Through delta-neutral mechanisms in perpetual futures, liquidity providers absorb imbalances until opposing trades restore balance. It’s a system of shared, fluctuating risk.
Is sUSD an algorithmic stablecoin?
One of the common misconceptions surrounding sUSD is its classification as an algorithmic stablecoin. To clarify, sUSD is not algorithmic — it is crypto-collateralized.
The key distinction is important because algorithmic stablecoins, such as the now-infamous TerraUSD (UST), rely on algorithms and smart contracts to manage supply and demand in an attempt to maintain their peg, often without actual collateral backing. In contrast, sUSD relies on the value of the underlying collateral (SNX tokens) to maintain its price.
The sUSD peg is not fixed in the same way that fiat-backed stablecoins like USDC are. The Synthetix system allows for some natural fluctuation in the peg. While sUSD aims to stay close to $1, it’s not fixed — instead, the protocol relies on smart, built-in mechanisms to help restore the peg over time when it drifts.
Here are the key mechanisms post-SIP-420:
- Lower collateralization ratio (200%): As mentioned, the required backing for minting sUSD was reduced, allowing more sUSD to enter circulation with less SNX. This increases capital efficiency but also heightens the risk of depegging.
- Shared debt pool: Instead of individual debt responsibility, all stakers now share a collective debt pool, weakening natural peg-restoring behavior.
- sUSD lockup incentives (420 Pool): To reduce circulating sUSD and help restore the peg, users are incentivized to lock their sUSD for 12 months in exchange for a share of protocol rewards (e.g., 5 million SNX).
- Liquidity incentives: The protocol offers high-yield incentives to liquidity providers who support sUSD trading pairs, helping absorb excess supply and improve price stability.
- External yield strategies: The protocol plans to use minted sUSD in external protocols (e.g., Ethena) to generate yield, which can help offset systemic risk and reinforce stability mechanisms.
These restoration mechanisms primarily function through incentives. For example, if sUSD is trading below $1, users who have staked SNX may be incentivized to buy discounted sUSD to pay off their debts at a reduced cost. This type of system relies heavily on market dynamics and the incentives of participants to help stabilize the peg.
Did you know? The C-Ratio is calculated using the formula: C-Ratio (%) = (Total SNX value in USD / active debt in USD) × 100. It changes as the price of SNX or your debt share fluctuates — crucial for minting synths and avoiding penalties.
Synthetix’s recovery plan: How it aims to restabilize sUSD
Synthetix has formulated a comprehensive three-phase recovery plan aimed at restoring the stablecoin’s peg to the US dollar and ensuring its long-term stability.
Synthetix founder Kain Warwick recently published a post on Mirror proposing a solution to fix the sUSD stablecoin. His plan outlines how the community can work together to restore the peg and strengthen the system.
1. Bring back good incentives (the “carrot”)
- Users who lock up sUSD will earn SNX rewards, helping reduce the amount of sUSD in the market.
- Two new yield-earning pools (one for sUSD and one for USDC) will let anyone supply stablecoins and earn interest — no SNX required.
2. Add gentle pressure (the “stick”)
- SNX stakers now have to hold a small percentage of their debt in sUSD to keep earning benefits.
- If the sUSD peg drops more, the required sUSD holding goes up — more pressure to help fix the peg.
According to Warwick, this plan restores the natural loop: When sUSD is cheap, people are motivated to buy it and close their debt, pushing the price back up. Kain estimates it might take less than $5 million in buying pressure to restore the peg — totally doable if enough people participate.
Once incentives are realigned and sUSD regains its peg, Synthetix will roll out major upgrades: retiring legacy systems, launching Perps v4 on Ethereum with faster trading and multi-collateral support, introducing snaxChain for high-speed synthetic markets, and minting 170 million SNX to fuel ecosystem growth through new liquidity and trading incentives.
The sUSD shake-up: Key risks crypto investors can’t ignore
The recent sUSD depeg is a stark reminder of the inherent risks that come with crypto-collateralized stablecoins. While stablecoins are designed to offer price stability, their reliance on external factors, such as market conditions and the underlying collateral, means that they are not immune to volatility.
Crypto-collateralized stablecoins like sUSD face heightened risk due to their reliance on volatile assets like SNX. Market sentiment, external events, and major protocol changes can quickly disrupt stability, making depegging more likely — especially in the fast-moving, ever-evolving world of DeFi.
Here are some of the critical risks that crypto investors should be aware of:
- Dependence on collateral value: The stability of sUSD is directly tied to the price of SNX. If SNX falls in value, sUSD becomes vulnerable to under-collateralization, threatening its peg and causing it to lose value.
- Protocol design risks: Changes in the protocol, such as the introduction of SIP-420, can have unintended consequences. Misalignments in incentives or poorly executed upgrades can disrupt the balance that keeps the system stable.
- Market sentiment: Stablecoins operate on trust, and if users lose confidence in a stablecoin’s ability to maintain its peg, its value can rapidly drop, even if the protocol is sound in design.
- Incentive misalignment: The removal of individual incentives, such as those seen with the 420 Pool, can weaken the protocol’s ability to keep the peg intact, as it reduces the motivation for users to stabilize the system.
- Lack of redundancy: Stablecoins should have robust fallback strategies to mitigate risks from single points of failure. A failure in one mechanism, like a protocol upgrade or design flaw, can quickly spiral into a full-blown crisis.
To protect themselves, users should diversify their stablecoin exposure, closely monitor protocol changes, and avoid over-reliance on crypto-collateralized assets like sUSD. Staying informed about governance updates and market sentiment is key, as sudden shifts can trigger depegging.
Users can also reduce risk by using stablecoins with stronger collateral backing or built-in redundancies and by regularly reviewing DeFi positions for signs of under-collateralization or systemic instability.
Coinbase, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, is launching the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund on May 1, aiming to offer Bitcoin (BTC) exposure for institutional investors outside the US.
The fund targets an annual net return of 4% to 8% on Bitcoin holdings, according to an April 28 blog post by Coinbase.
“To address the growing institutional demand for bitcoin yield, Coinbase Asset Management is excited to introduce the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund (CBYF),” the company wrote.
The fund is backed by multiple investors, including Aspen Digital, a digital asset manager based in Abu Dhabi and regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority.
Related: Michael Saylor hints at Bitcoin purchase as whales stack aggressively
The yield will be generated through a cash-and-carry strategy, through the difference between spot Bitcoin prices and derivatives.
Unlike Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL), Bitcoin holders can’t generate passive income through staking — a gap the fund is aiming to fill, according to the announcement:
“Bitcoin yield funds have emerged to address this limitation, but these funds generally require institutional allocators to take on significant investment and operational risk.”
The new fund seeks to lower the investment and operational risks typically associated with Bitcoin yield products, which Coinbase says will better align with the risk appetite of institutional investors.
Related: Stacks Asia expands Bitcoin initiatives with Abu Dhabi partnership
Bitcoin momentum mainly driven by institutional interest
Coinbase cited growing institutional crypto adoption as the reason behind the launch of the funds, which may have been the reason behind Bitcoin’s significant price recovery over the past week.
Bitcoin rose by more than 9% in the week leading up to April 28, bolstered by exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows, which recorded their second-highest week of inflows at over $3 billion, Farside Investors data shows.
Bitcoin’s recovery to $94,000 was mainly supported by growing “ETF inflows and corporate buying,” amid lagging retail interest, Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research, told Cointelegraph, adding:
“Retail interest may surge if Bitcoin breaks $100,000, fueled by media hype and FOMO. Monitor the $94,000–$95,000 resistance for potential retail re-engagement.”
On April 21, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes predicted that this might be the “last chance” to buy Bitcoin below $100,000, as the incoming US Treasury buybacks may signal the next significant catalyst for Bitcoin price.
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Wallet interoperability still remains the vision for Web3 gaming, according to Arthur Madrid, the co-founder and CEO of the decentralized metaverse and gaming platform The Sandbox.
In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph at the Crypto Polo event in Dubai, Madrid and his fellow The Sandbox co-founder and chief operating officer, Sebastien Borget, told Cointelegraph that Web3 gaming interoperability remains the goal for The Sandbox. Madrid said:
“So, the vision is still kind of obvious for us. It’s like you need to be able to play any games using one wallet that will enable you to combine the utilities of all that you collected and all what you earned.”
The Sandbox CEO said that one of the main narratives they’ve seen in the last couple of months is that players can move from one game to another using a single wallet. The executive told Cointelegraph that players accessing games with one wallet and using their items on different platforms remains an exciting topic for Web3 gaming enthusiasts.
Web3 gaming still “booming” as tools become accessible
Madrid added that despite a market slowdown, the Web3 gaming space is still booming. The executive told Cointelegraph that the tools and infrastructure needed to create new games have become more accessible.
“I can feel that the tools you need to create games are becoming more accessible. If you look the number of games that have been created on gaming platforms over the last two years, it's still booming,” Madrid told Cointelegraph.
The executive also said that a new generation of programmers and programming tools is working on new types of gameplay. Madrid added that the space needs only one good game that could serve as the catalyst for the broader adoption of Web3 technology in gaming.
“The thing is, you always need this moment where one game is making a difference. You have this moment of rebirth,” Madrid said.
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The Sandbox co-founder highlights a shift in NFT utility
Borget told Cointelegraph that the non-fungible token (NFT) space is now seeing a shift in focus. The executive said that their team is seeing more maturity in the industry as it shifted from using NFTs to do fundraising and just profile pictures to better use cases.
Borget said this was driven by consumers demanding more use for their digital assets. The executive said that creators and developers must focus on adding more value to their NFTs to keep up with this demand.
“At The Sandbox, we still continue to see more demand for our virtual land, avatars and other NFT collections, such as Jurassic World, because they can be used across the game right away,” Borget said.
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