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The mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is celebrating his 50th birthday today, as his innovation revolutionizes global finance and now attracts major economic powers. Today, April 5, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic creator of Bitcoin. According to information on his old profile from the P2P Foundation, Nakamoto was said to have been born on April 5, 1975, although this date may be more symbolic than factual. This date was likely not chosen by chance. It corresponds precisely to the 42nd anniversary of the American presidential decree 6102, signed on April 5, 1933, which banned American citizens from owning gold to stabilize the dollar. Despite fifteen years of research and speculation, Nakamoto’s identity remains the greatest mystery in the tech world. Many candidates have been proposed, from the cryptographer Adam Back to the developer Nick Szabo. In March 2024, a British court definitively dismissed the claims of Craig Wright, calling his assertions that he is Satoshi “deliberately false.” An HBO documentary from October 2024 suggested that the Canadian developer Peter Todd might be Nakamoto , a claim he firmly denied. What remains indisputable is the importance of this anonymity for the decentralized nature of Bitcoin. Without a central authority figure, Nakamoto’s invention has been able to grow as a truly distributed network, true to its original philosophy. In fifteen years, Nakamoto’s creation has come an extraordinary way. From a niche experience within cypherpunk communities, Bitcoin has become an asset valued at over $1.6 trillion that is transforming the global financial landscape. The adoption of Bitcoin as a strategic reserve by the U.S. government marks a historic turning point. Last month, President Donald Trump signed a decree establishing a strategic reserve of Bitcoin, officially integrating crypto into the financial system of the world’s leading power. Meanwhile, Nakamoto’s treasure remains intact. The 1.1 million bitcoins linked to his addresses, dormant since early 2010, are now worth over $90 billion. This fortune would place Nakamoto among the 20 richest people in the world, surpassing even Bill Gates. Nakamoto’s genius lies not only in the technical design of Bitcoin, but also in his decision to remain anonymous. By disappearing from the public scene in 2011, he allowed his creation to become truly decentralized, without an authority figure. The message inscribed in Bitcoin’s Genesis block — referring to the bailout of banks by the British government in 2009 — remains a powerful symbol of his vision for an alternative monetary system, free from central authorities. At 50, whether an individual or a group, the legacy of Satoshi Nakamoto now transcends his own identity. He has given rise not only to a technology, but to a movement that continues to transform our understanding of money and economic sovereignty.

What if Bitcoin was about to rewrite history… alone? While stock markets plummet in free fall and gold takes a pause after its last glow, the first cryptocurrency proudly holds its head high. It no longer clings to the wheel of its elders. No. It gallops ahead. A phenomenon that some already describe as the great decoupling. A new era where Bitcoin no longer follows anyone, not even gold. And in the distance, like a star in the sky of financial imagination: 100,000 dollars. Analyst fantasy? Leap of faith? Or simply the logical continuation of a scenario already written… The scenario could have looked like a remake of 2020: shocking announcement from the White House, panic in the markets , massive sell-off of risky assets. And yet… Bitcoin held strong. While American stock markets were down 10.65% and gold, despite a historic peak of $3,167, was down 4.8%, BTC climbed 4.5%, once again crossing the $84,700 mark. On X, James Seyffart is astonished: I am really a bit shocked by Bitcoin’s resilience. I never believed it would hold above $80,000 in such a massive sell-off of risky assets… Even gold is down? The same sentiment is echoed by Crypto Rover, who exclaims: American stocks are crashing. Gold is crashing. Bitcoin is rising. An incredible force! This is where enters an old couple from the financial world: gold and Bitcoin. The famous “gold leads, Bitcoin follows“, a theory that has returned like an obsessive refrain among analysts. What if history were to repeat itself? In 2019 already, gold rose by 15%… before the Bitcoin price exploded by +170%. This time, some, like MacroScope, see in a return to 100K “a strong signal that a new long-term movement is underway“. A passing of the torch. A rite of passage. The mythical barrier of $100,000 is no longer just a shiny number that dazzles in the dreams of maximalists. It’s a milestone, a signal. For some, crossing it would mark the beginning of a new long-term cycle, a cycle where Bitcoin definitively emancipates itself from its status as an alternative asset to become… an obvious choice. But beware of the sirens. The BTC/XAU ratio, which measures Bitcoin’s strength against gold, shows a bearish fractal, identical to the one that preceded a massive drop in 2021. If the scenario repeats itself, a correction towards $65,000, even $20,000, is not excluded. Yes, even in this golden dream, the ground can shift beneath our feet. And as if that weren’t enough, the economic horizon remains turbulent: the Fed curbs enthusiasm, pushes back hopes for rate cuts, while Donald Trump raises the threat of a global trade war. So, dream or reality, is this threshold of $100,000? One thing is certain: Bitcoin is in the process of inventing its own grammar. It writes its score against the clock. And while indexes stumble, precious metals hesitate, it carves its path towards the unknown, altitude, audacity. For Arthur Hayes, this rising tension orchestrated by Trump could well become the very essence of a new bullish cycle: “ the tariffs will propel gold and Bitcoin to new heights.” The best may still be to come.

In a geopolitical context undergoing significant restructuring, two notable initiatives are shaking the hegemony of the dollar. Brazil and China are making a strategic shift by favoring their national currencies for bilateral exchanges. Meanwhile, Russia and Iran announce the launch of a new common currency to circumvent Western sanctions. These distinct but converging movements illustrate a shared desire among influential BRICS members: to build a financial system less dependent on the greenback and assert monetary sovereignty in the face of external pressures. Brazil and China are taking a new step in their common strategy of dedollarization. Thus, their already robust trade relations are now taking a more pronounced monetary turn, with a declared intention to gradually switch to payments in local currencies. This approach has been publicly confirmed by official Brazilian representatives. Here are the essential facts: This Sino-Brazilian rapprochement is therefore not merely a statement of intent. It signifies a concrete strategic shift towards regionalizing financial flows, driven by institutional means and strong political alignment. In a more speculative but no less symbolic vein, Russia and Iran, two other powers aligned in an increasingly resistant opposition to Western hegemony, claim to be working on the creation of a new common currency within the BRICS bloc. Kazem Jalali, Iran’s ambassador to Russia, has declared that: The creation of a new unique currency within the framework of the BRICS association is what Russia and Iran are working on to free themselves from dependence on the dollar. This announcement comes in the context of increasing economic sanctions against both countries, which are seeking alternatives to maintain the stability of their economies. However, the details surrounding this project remain very vague. The Iranian ambassador has provided no timeline, precise mechanism, or even concrete elements regarding the progress of this initiative. Nothing indicates whether this currency is in the active design phase or if it is merely a stated political intention. The lack of transparency fuels skepticism. Some observers do not rule out a communications operation more than a viable project in the short term. Such ambiguity contrasts with the more pragmatic progress of the Sino-Brazilian couple. Beyond the project itself, this announcement does reflect a desire to rethink the global economic order. If a common currency were to come into existence at the BRICS level, an idea repeatedly mentioned over the years, it could reshuffle the cards of global financial equilibria, provided that the political, technological, and economic obstacles surrounding its creation are overcome. For now, this prospect remains uncertain.

Since Ripple’s inception, its innovativeness in fin-tech has been centralized around augmenting global payments. In the referential talk by SMQKE , Marcus Treacher, the ex-head of the Ripple tech team, shed more light on the company’s consistent and long-standing position about ISO 20022 —a standard that could potentially be the next big thing in global financial messaging. SMQKE has also pointed out that the ISO 20022 protocol, which enables data to be shared among financial systems without any interruptions, appeared in 2004—the year of Ripple’s establishment. This parallelism, as argued by SMQKE, is something worthy of citation. As other companies are still trying to adopt the new compliance framework, Ripple has never ceased to make everything ready for compliance from the beginning till now. “We’ve always had a real focus on removing all that friction,” Treacher said, emphasizing the company’s intent from the beginning. RippleNet, established in 2016 and 2017, was a direct response of Ripple to the fragmented condition of the market of cross-border transactions. It took on a logical supervision layer, which was a good fit for the ISO 20022’s call for uniform, enriched financial messaging. RippleNet was always focused on and prioritized the accuracy and complement of the data parallel to the payments it handled. Each traditional SWIFT and TIPS network is still using old messages that they operate with. Ripple, in turn, migrated to the new standard with compatibility in mind. Despite this, the U.S. Federal Reserve is not free of the problem with the old infrastructure. ISO 20022 is a standard that addresses these issues, and Ripple has not only accepted the transformation but has also welcomed the shift. Treacher emphasized that Ripple’s idea was more of making the process of moving across borders simple, better than anything to a certain technology. At first, XRP was used for liquidity provision between different fiat currencies, and then later, its role was taken by the Interledger Protocol , which was faster for fiat-to-fiat transactions. Pegah Soltani, Ripple’s Head of Payments Products, echoed this focus in a separate interview shared by SMQKE. She described ISO 20022 as a global standard that boosts competition, encourages innovation, and delivers better data within each transaction. Her comments underscore Ripple’s broader ambition to not just be compliant—but influential. After protocol integration, Ripple’s advancement didn’t come to a standstill. As an example, RLUSD, a dollar-backed stablecoin, was brought to the Ripple Payments system by the company in April 2025. The coin, which was released just the past December, has a market capitalization of $250 million. Still, not everything has been smooth sailing. XRP, Ripple native token, is 5.25% surge amidst the President Donald Trump announced a new wave of tariffs, triggering market-wide concerns.

According to data available on DeFiLlama’s fees page, which tracks fees across various DeFi protocols, there was a huge spike in fees on the Polymarket platform. The surge in fee generation could be attributed to a rise in user activity or transaction volume on the platform. Historically, the Polymarket prediction market platform records increased engagement during high-profile events, such as elections, major sports outcomes, or significant global developments, as punters scramble to place bets or speculate on outcomes. On a monthly scale, the DefiLlama data shows that April has been Polymarket’s most profitable month in terms of fees. This is just the fifth day in the month, but the platform appears to have already amassed more than half of its all-time fees. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. The data appears even more interesting on the weekly and daily fee charts. The weekly data shows that there was only average activity on the platform between January and March, but that changed in April, which is still in its first week at the time of this publication. The daily fee data revealed even more. It showed that Polymarket fees did not really spike until April 3, when it recorded $7.33M. It has since maintained a value above $7M on a daily basis, reinforcing the platform’s recent spike. Polymaket may be one of the rare winners of the “Liberation Day” tariff announcements by Donald Trump on April 2, 2025. The announcement saw him unveil a sweeping tariff plan targeting goods from nearly all countries, and it sent shockwaves through the traditional financial markets. The Dow reflected this, reportedly dropping 3,700 points between April 2 and 3, while Polymarket’s recession odds jumped from 51% to 60% by April 4. This reflects a frenzy of activity from punters who scrambled to wager on the economic outcomes directly tied to the tariff news. Public sentiments on X from April 3 align with this, showing Polymarket’s recession odds rose from 33% to 47% and inflation bets above 4% jumped from 17% to 48% within 48 hours, alongside a $2 trillion wipeout in US stock market value. The spike in activity and fees aligns with Polymarket’s historical pattern of fee spikes during high-stakes events—like the 2024 US presidential election, which saw election bets push fees to notable heights. The tariff announcement is expected to drive economic chaos with traders flooding markets like “US recession in 2025?” or “Will the NYSE hit a circuit-breaker?”—both of which saw sharp probability shifts on Polymarket. An increased amount of trades equates to more USDC flowing into the platform, pumping the fee totals tracked by DeFiLlama, even if Polymarket has stated that it doesn’t pocket them directly. Another rationale for the spike is a change in Polymarket’s operations—for example, a change in its fee structure. However, the platform claims it has not changed its fee structure in a significant way that introduces trading, deposit, or withdrawal fees as a primary revenue model. Polymarket has always operated with a no-fee model. Its official documentation and statements from CEO Shayne Coplan highlight the platform’s focus on growth over monetization, so while it may charge fees in the future, there is no timeline of when they may be implemented yet. The platform has, in the past, generated revenue indirectly through spreads on trading and liquidity provision rather than directly imposing fees on users. Even though Polymarket saw a huge spike in income, according to DefiLlama, it still falls behind Tether with its cumulative revenue. Tether’s rival, Circle took the final top-three spot in terms of cumulative fees and revenue. Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) are stablecoin issuers whose incomes are linked mainly to the interest earned on the reserves backing their stablecoins, even though some additional revenue comes from redemption or issuance fees. Both companies operate identical business models, and their primary revenue comes from investing their reserves in interest-bearing instruments, such as US Treasury bills, which have yielded 3.5%-5% annually in recent years thanks to elevated interest rates. Nevertheless, data shows that Tether makes more profit than Circle, with recent estimates suggesting the USDT issuer earned over $18 million in revenue in the last 24 hours, while Circle reported $6.35 million. This is even though USDT’s circulating supply is only about 2.3 times greater than USDC’s. In fact, on a per-unit basis, Tether reportedly generates roughly 20 times more profit per stablecoin than Circle. Another reason for this huge difference could be Tether’s affinity for taking on riskier or higher-yield investments. Meanwhile, Circle, regulated as it is, has said its reserves are held in safe assets like Treasuries and cash, which yield a predictable but modest return. Tether is less transparent about its reserves only listing “secured loans” and other non-transparent assets which suggests it could be chasing higher returns not minding the added risk. There is also the fact that Circle is at a structural disadvantage because of its inability to keep more of its revenue in-house. This is because of its deal with Coinbase, which gives it a cut of USDC’s economics, diluting Circle’s per-unit profit. Tether has no such major partner and retains full control over its issuance and redemption process, which allows it to keep more of its revenue in-house. It also charges a 0.1% redemption fee for converting USDT back to fiat, providing a small but steady revenue stream, especially with high-volume users. Circle, on the other hand, offers users fee-free redemptions, leading to what has been tagged “vampire attacks,” an arbitrage process where users swap USDT for USDC to cash out cheaper. Overall, Tether has more market dominance than Circle, which allows its reserves to grow faster, thereby compounding interest earnings. Cryptopolitan Academy: Want to grow your money in 2025? Learn how to do it with DeFi in our upcoming webclass. Save Your Spot