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Solana ($SOL) surged 12% today, driven by announcements of new DeFi integrations and NFT partnerships expanding its ecosystem. Meanwhile, Theta Network ($THETA) saw a healthy 8% uptick amid growing interest in decentralized video streaming services. Oasis Network ($ROSE) experienced a modest 5% gain following updates on privacy-focused smart contract capabilities. In the metaverse space, Decentraland ($MANA) competitors like Bloktopia ($BLOK) showed renewed momentum, climbing 7% after unveiling virtual real estate auctions. On the downside, Helium ($HNT) slipped 4%, impacted by network congestion concerns. Overall, the altcoin market reflects growing investor appetite for blockchain projects prioritizing scalability, privacy, and Web3 content delivery.

4/ Token composition: stablecoins took over. USDT rose from 28% → 44%, @USDC from 16% → 20%. SOL dropped from 16% → 8%, ETH from 11% → 8%. Native assets halved; stables dominated April flows.

The demand for yield-generating strategies around Bitcoin (BTC) is surging, especially from firms seeking liquidity without liquidating their BTC, according to Ryan Chow, co-founder and CEO of Solv Protocol. During a fireside chat at the Token2049 conference in Dubai on May 1, Chow said institutional interest in Bitcoin yield products has grown exponentially over the past few years. Initially, generating Bitcoin yield was nearly impossible. However, recent innovations like staking via proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols and delta-neutral trading strategies have made this possible. Layer-1 and layer-2 advancements, such as Babylon, have made these strategies more viable. Babylon allows BTC holders to earn yield on their assets, which are used to provide security and liquidity for PoS networks. “Bitcoin as the largest asset class here, you can stake your Bitcoin to secure the network […] that makes us feel like if it is the answer to really bring utility and also use case,” he said. Lending emerges dominant BTC financial use case Chow noted that institutions mainly focus on Bitcoin when entering crypto due to its dominance in portfolios. Once they purchase Bitcoin, they lend it out to gain liquidity without selling. Companies like Coinbase now offer up to $1 million in borrowing against Bitcoin. Platforms like Aave and Compound also enable instant borrowing. Chow also praised public firms like Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) for helping normalize BTC as a treasury asset. “MSTR is a very successful derivatives kind of use case based on Bitcoin […] That’s also Bitcoin finance.” In an April report, crypto fund issuer Bitwise revealed that the amount of Bitcoin held on the books of publicly traded companies rose by 16.1% in the first quarter of 2025. The company detailed that Bitcoin holdings rose to around 688,000 BTC by the end of Q1, with firms adding 95,431 BTC over the quarter. The value of the combined Bitcoin stacks rose around 2.2%, reaching a total combined value of $56.7 billion with a price per BTC of $82,445, the firm added. Looking ahead, Chow said he expects over 100,000 BTC to enter ecosystems like Solana. “There should be more and more use cases come out,” he said. Solv launches Sharia-compliant yield products Chow also mentioned the firm’s recently launched Sharia-compliant Bitcoin yield product called SolvBTC.core, which generates yield by securing the Core blockchain network and engaging in onchain DeFi activities while adhering to Islamic finance principles. “Sharia compliance is something that we prepared for a long time [...] you have to pass it before you really serve them through your platform

U.S. stocks opened higher, with technology stocks performing strongly ( At the opening of the US stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.51%, the S&P 500 rose 1.02%, and the Nasdaq rose 2%, driven by the cooling of the trade situation and the better-than-expected earnings of technology stocks. Microsoft (MSFT.O) rose 10%, and Meta Platforms (META.O) rose 7.25%, and its Q1 performance both exceeded expectations. The Nasdaq China Golden Dragon Index rose 0.43%. (Jinshi)

The Bitwise Crypto Market Review for Q1 2025 revealed that stablecoin transaction volume narrowly surpassed Visa payments, as stablecoin transaction volume rose by over 30%. Meanwhile, the sector’s AUM hit an ATH of more than $218B, with a 13.5% increase quarter-over-quarter. The Bitwise Q1 report revealed that fiat-linked tokens processed over $27.6 trillion in transactions during the year, officially exceeding Visa’s total payment volume and edging out Mastercard by 7.7%. The growth was driven by USDT, USDC, and DAI, with 95% of the volume settled on the Ethereum network. These fiat-backed digital currencies have also become a top 15 holder of U.S. Treasuries, reflecting their increased integration into traditional financial markets. For context, their volumes were almost 10 times less than those of Visa in 2020, and it took just under five years to close this gap and eventually flip Visa. Bitwise reported that stablecoins had outpaced Visa in volume, with the trend clearly showing that TradeFi is getting disrupted. It is also estimated that they will settle roughly $27.6 trillion in total transaction volume in 2024, with most of it running on Ethereum. The CEO of Social Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya, also confirmed that the average weekly stablecoin transaction volume in Q4 of 2024 reached $464 billion against Visa’s $316 billion. Citigroup even projected that the market could reach $3.8 trillion by 2030. However, experts like Dan Smith (Data Expert at Blockworks Research) and Joe Coll (Advisor at Maven 11 Capital) warned that the stablecoin volume might be inflated or manipulated, arguing that it does not reflect real economic activity, and it can not be directly compared with traditional financial systems like Visa. Coll pointed out that professional traders could generate hundreds of millions in volume using very little initial capital. Smith agreed with Coll’s view that volume manipulation for these U.S. dollar-backed tokens could be achieved without requiring large capital, casting doubt on the figures cited by Palihapitiya. Rajiv Patel-O’Connor, the Principal at Framework Ventures, even referred to the metric as “useless.” Last year, Visa’s dashboard also reported that only about 10% of stablecoin transactions were genuine, sharply contrasting with Visa , where each transaction represented a real payment or purchase. Visa announced that it was partnering with Bridge to offer Visa cards linked to fiat-pegged tokens to its Latin American customers. Zach Abrams, CEO of Bridge, said that for consumers to use stablecoins on a large scale, “they will have to be interoperable with existing tools and services that customers and businesses are accustomed to.” Abrams also said interoperability “enabled folks to use and take advantage of these programmable digital currencies wherever they were in the world, but remain wholly connected with the financial tools that folks used.” “We feel like the moment is now to take some of the things that we’ve already been doing on a more experimental, pilot basis and start to expose them to the world as capabilities that we anticipate will really start to become big and meaningful and globally scalable.” – Jack Forestell , Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Visa. Visa and Bridge also made a joint statement claiming that people will be able to use the stablecoin-linked cards at any merchant that accepts Visa. The new card programs will be introduced in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Chile. The statement also revealed that the product will become available in Europe, Africa, and Asia in the coming months. Cryptopolitan Academy: Coming Soon - A New Way to Earn Passive Income with DeFi in 2025. Learn More