Gate Cryptocurrency News and Market Analysis

Key takeaways: A Hyperliquid whale placed an $80 million bet against Bitcoin and the S&P 500 while going long on Brent crude oil prices. The whale’s history of massive losses and inconsistent signals suggests the trade could fall on the wrong side of the market. Bitcoin (BTC)

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued Bulletin 2026-4, effective April 1, providing a clear regulatory path for Ripple’s national trust bank and allowing it to operate after meeting the conditions to open for business. This bulletin replaces “fiduciary activities” with “the operations of a trust company,” expanding the organization’s service scope, including digital asset custody services. Ripple’s regulatory status has undergone a significant transformation, and in its application for a licensed institution, it seeks a Federal Reserve master account, focusing on the growth and challenges of the digital asset market.

SlowMist analyzed the Drift Protocol hack, pointing out that the core vulnerability was that the multisig mechanism change did not include a time lock. After the attacker gained administrator privileges, they systematically extracted assets by forging tokens, manipulating oracles, and disabling security modules, ultimately stealing about 105,969 ETH. ZachXBT criticized Circle for not freezing USDC in time during this process, which had a negative impact on the industry and sparked widespread discussion.

Pi Network announced that its testnet remote procedure call (RPC) servers are now live, laying the groundwork for building a smart contract ecosystem. Although this news is seen as a positive, the core team’s selling of more than 21.8 million PI tokens, along with the ongoing supply pressure stemming from user top-ups, has still exerted downside pressure on the market. Technical analysis shows that the support level for the PI token is $0.1736; the future price action needs to be closely watched.

The TON core team announced a consensus mechanism upgrade: Catchain 2.0 has started mainnet deployment. The goal is to reduce block confirmation time to about 1 second. This upgrade improves block generation speed and emphasizes that application developers need to adapt to the Streaming API to ensure a good user experience. If they do not adapt, the benefits of the upgrade will be greatly diminished.

Bitcoin demand remains under pressure despite institutional accumulation, with 30-day apparent demand growth standing at negative 63,000 BTC, indicating that broader market selling continues to outweigh purchases by exchange-traded funds and corporate treasuries, according to a report published by CryptoQuant on April 1, 2026.

A CryptoQuant report indicates that as of the end of March, Bitcoin’s “apparent demand” is -63,000 BTC, showing that the market has an oversupply situation, and institutional buying cannot offset retail selling. Starting in mid-2025, the giant whales began large-scale selling, pushing the market into a distribution phase. Although ETF institutional buying has increased, it has not been able to change the weak demand situation, and weakening domestic U.S. demand may further affect the market. Easing geopolitical tensions could become a catalyst for a short-term rebound.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) did not issue its anticipated first batch of stablecoin licenses by the end of March 2026, missing the target timeline previously signaled by officials, with the regulator stating only that the licensing process is advancing and further details will be announced in due course.

Drift Protocol was hacked on April 1, when attackers stole about $285 million in assets, setting the record for the largest loss in DeFi security incidents in 2026. The hackers quickly converted funds to ETH and split up storage, increasing the difficulty of recovery. The industry is currently pessimistic about the likelihood of funds being recovered. This incident will intensify regulatory pressure on the DeFi industry and force developers to strengthen smart contract security.

EDX Markets Holding Company, the cryptocurrency exchange backed by Wall Street firms including Citadel Securities, Fidelity Investments, and Charles Schwab, has applied for a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to offer custody, asset management, and trading settlement services.

On April 1, at least five influential figures in the cryptocurrency space simultaneously posted farewell messages, declaring that they were leaving the industry permanently. The posts quickly spread across X, creating a wave of confusion as the community couldn’t clearly tell where the serious statements ended.

EDX Markets applies for an OCC national trust bank charter, with the aim of providing compliant digital asset custody and trading services, filling the functional gap between traditional finance and the crypto market. This application reflects changes in the U.S. crypto regulatory environment and attracts investment from multiple major financial institutions. If approved, it is expected to strengthen institutional investors’ trust and help EDX stand out in the market.

On April 2, on-chain monitoring firm PeckShield warned that HyperEVM could face a major outage, with blocks and transactions coming to a halt, impacting users’ transaction confirmations and smart contract interactions. The official status page, however, shows “All Systems Operational,” reflecting insufficient monitoring of HyperEVM layer conditions. This outage exposed issues with the new mainnet’s early stability; the specific causes are pending an official announcement.

Bitcoin briefly touched a fresh intra-day high near $68,589 as markets absorbed a mix of geopolitics and macro signals. The move came alongside a broad risk-on rally in U.S. equities, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing more than 1,125 points, the S&P 500 rising around 2.9%, and the

The US Department of Treasury issued a notice of proposed rulemaking on April 1, 2026 outlining principles for determining whether state-level stablecoin regulatory regimes are “substantially similar” to the federal framework established by the GENIUS Act, allowing smaller issuers with less than $10 billion in outstanding supply to opt for state oversight.