Market Watch
Things to Watch This Week (Apr 28 - May 3)
May 2 - U.S. Employment Report
This week, markets will focus on the employment report, a critical input for the Fed's upcoming May 6-7 meeting. Labor market resilience will be a key as investors assess the Fed’s next policy moves under rising political pressure.
Random Musing This Week (Apr 28 - May 3)
Tether, SoftBank Group, and Jack Mallers Launch Twenty One
Last week, Cantor Equity Partners' stock surged more than 170% following the announcement of its business combination with "Twenty One," a new Bitcoin-native platform backed by Tether, SoftBank Group, and Jack Mallers (CEO of Strike). He will also lead Twenty One as its Chief Executive Officer.
According to Cantor’s investor presentation, Twenty One plans to acquire approximately 42,000 BTC initially, positioning it as one of the largest corporate Bitcoin holders globally, alongside Strategy. Twenty One also plans to engage in a range of Bitcoin-related activities, including Bitcoin-related financial and advisory services, offering Bitcoin-related debt and equity structured products, and Bitcoin-related lending.
In its presentation, Twenty One also emphasized the "potential diminishing returns" for Strategy(formerly MicroStrategy) that solely accumulates Bitcoin without building additional value. Instead, Twenty One aims to combine Bitcoin ownership with a broader range of financial services to differentiate itself from legacy Bitcoin holding models.
Despite starting with a relatively smaller Bitcoin position, Twenty One is positioned to pursue a more capital-efficient path to growth.
Recap of Top Stories (Apr 21 – Apr 25)
Interesting
PayPal, Coinbase partner to eliminate trading fees on PYUSD in bid to boost adoption
Commentary: PayPal and Coinbase have partnered to remove trading fees from the stablecoin PayPal USD (PYUSD) to boost its adoption. Users can now buy, sell and trade PYUSD on Coinbase without any platform fees and redeem PYUSD 1:1 for USD directly on the exchange.
This new partnership comes after PayPal unveiled a 3.7% annual yield for individuals holding PYUSD in their PayPal or Venmo wallets starting in the summer of 2025.
Securitize debuts new crypto index fund with Mantle's $400 million backing
Commentary: Real-world asset tokenization firm Securitize launched a new institutional crypto index fund in partnership with Mantle, which committed $400 million as the fund's anchor investment.
The Mantle Index Four (MI4) fund is said to provide exposure to top crypto assets — including BTC, ETH, SOL and U.S. dollar stablecoins — with a goal of becoming the "S&P 500 of crypto." Allocations are made reflecting market capitalization and risk, a release said.
CME Group to launch XRP futures
Commentary: The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group, which operates the largest financial derivatives exchanges worldwide, recently announced that XRP futures contracts will go live on May 19.
Investors can choose between micro-sized contracts, featuring 2,500 XRP, or standard contract sizes of 50,000 XRP. All XRP futures contracts will be cash-settled. In January 2025, the CME Group signaled an impending launch of XRP futures before quietly pulling the related page from its website.
Lutnick's Cantor plans $3 billion bitcoin venture with SoftBank and Tether
Commentary: Cantor, currently led by the son of U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, is planning to set up a $3 billion bitcoin investment vehicle with SoftBank, Tether and Bitfinex, according to the Financial Times.
The initiative involves setting up a new entity named 21 Capital, which would aim to create a “publicly listed alternative” to the Michael Saylor-led Strategy.
Coinbase is considering applying for US banking license
Commentary: US-based publicly traded crypto exchange Coinbase confirmed that it is considering applying for a US federal bank charter. In a statement sent to Cointelegraph, Coinbase said it is considering pursuing a US federal bank charter, according to a company spokesperson. “This is something Coinbase is actively considering but has not made any formal decisions yet,” the spokesperson told Cointelegraph.
The comments follow recent reports suggesting that Coinbase and multiple other major crypto firms were planning to apply for US banking licenses. Coinbase, stablecoin issuers Circle and Paxos, and crypto custodian BitGo were the other firms mentioned.
Trump Media and Crypto.com finalize agreement to launch slate of 'Made in America' crypto-related ETFs
Commentary: The company behind U.S. President Donald Trump's Truth Social social-media platform has finalized its agreement with crypto exchange Crypto.com and asset management firm Yorkville America Digital to launch a series of exchange-traded funds and products through its fintech brand Truth.Fi. The binding agreement between the firms follows a non-binding deal floated last month.
The exchange-traded products are anticipated to include a unique basket of crypto-related equities, bitcoin and other altcoins with a "Made in America" focus, according to a statement on Tuesday.
MANTRA founder will burn $82 million worth of his OM tokens to 'rebuild trust' following $5 billion crash
Commentary: The founder and CEO of real-world asset-focused Layer 1 blockchain MANTRA, John Patrick Mullin, said he plans to burn his allocation of 150 million of the network's tokens in an effort to "rebuild trust" and demonstrate an "unwavering focus" to build the network.
MANTRA also said it is in "ongoing conversations with key ecosystem partners" to increase the number of burned tokens to 300 million, about 16.5% of the network's supply of 1.8 billion. "This strategic burn will lower the bonded ratio from 31.47% to 25.30%, resulting in an increase in staking APR," MANTRA said.
Paul Atkins, nominated by Trump, has been sworn in as SEC chair
Commentary: Paul Atkins has officially been sworn in as the 34th chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The April 21 announcement comes nearly two weeks after Atkins’ position was confirmed by the US Senate in a 52-44 vote on April 9.
Atkins is widely expected to lead a more crypto-friendly SEC than former chair Gary Gensler under the Biden administration. The SEC has also dismissed several crypto probes and enforcement actions undertaken by the Gensler-led SEC in recent months, including cases involving Coinbase, Consensys, Gemini and Uniswap.
Vitalik Buterin floats swapping Ethereum's EVM for RISC-V to boost scalability
Commentary: In a new forum post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposes boosting Ethereum’s scalability by using RISC-V as the virtual machine language of smart contracts, rather than the current EVM bytecode.
"The beam chain effort holds great promise for greatly simplifying the consensus layer of Ethereum," Buterin wrote. "But for the execution layer to see similar gains, this kind of radical change may be the only viable path."
Bitget detects irregularity in VOXEL-USDT futures, rolls back accounts
Commentary: Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget discovered "abnormal trading activity" on the VOXEL/USDT perpetual futures contract on April 20, between 8:00 to 8:30 UTC, and paused accounts that the exchange suspected of market manipulation.
Bitget will roll back the accounts suspected of market manipulation within 24 hours, clawing back gains made from the trades. The crypto exchange also plans to compensate users who suffered losses due to the alleged market manipulation and will announce a compensation plan soon.
Charles Schwab CEO says spot crypto trading will 'likely' launch within 12 months
Commentary: Charles Schwab Corp. CEO Rick Wurster, who assumed the position in January, has pursued offering spot crypto trading support to the financial services firm's clients, predicting a change in the U.S. government's crypto regulatory environment. On a recent earnings call, Wurster laid out a more solid timeline for the company's crypto efforts.
Schwab reported a surge of 40% in quarterly profits on the call as investors rebalance their portfolios amid the volatile market environment. Some of those investors may be looking to invest in crypto, according to Wurster.
Upcoming Market Events
April 30 - U.S. February PCE Price Index
May 2 - U.S. Employment Report (Apr)
May 7 - U.S. FOMC Interest Rate Decision
May 13 - U.S. CPI (Apr)
May 15 - U.S. Retail Sales (Apr)
May 30 - BTC CME May (BTCK25) Options Expiry