U.S. CFTC Acting Chairman: Enforcement Division Restructured, Refocused on Combating Fraud

On April 29th, some observers framed Morgan Stanley’s entry into the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF earlier this month as a catalyst to end the current crypto bear market—citing the massive distribution reach of the Wall Street giant’s $8 trillion wealth advisor network. But Adam Back, Blockstream CEO and a founding Bitcoin community contributor, pushed back: “Not so fast.” Back, who was recently speculated by The New York Times to be Bitcoin’s anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, has denied that claim. From a bullish signal standpoint, Back said the Bitcoin ETF is the most significant recent development—even more impactful than a crypto-friendly U.S. administration—but the process is slower than most realize. “One thing people may miscalculate is how slow institutional adoption is,” he noted. “The ETF has been approved, but while BlackRock has suggested allocating 2% to 4% of general stock portfolios to Bitcoin, fund managers haven’t acted on that yet. They will—but slower than people exp

On April 29th, Farside Investors reported that U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs registered a net outflow of $89.7 million yesterday, while U.S. Ethereum spot ETFs saw a net outflow of $21.8 million.

On April 29, Onchain Lens monitoring shows a whale deposited 211,694 SOL (≈$17.77 million) to Binance yesterday after 11 months of dormancy, incurring a loss of roughly $17.62 million. The whale initially withdrew 200,010 SOL (≈$35.39 million) from Kraken.

Bitcoin surpassed $77,000 on April 29, per HTX market data, with a 0.23% gain over the past 24 hours.

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said Wednesday (April 29) that Bitcoin Treasury Company Strategy—along with its perpetual preferred stock STRC—has been the **single biggest factor** in Bitcoin’s recent rebound, which has seen the crypto rise 20% from its February low. Over the past eight weeks, Strategy has added $7.2 billion worth of Bitcoin to its holdings, Hougan noted. While he cited other drivers—including $3.8 billion in strong ETF inflows since March 1 and returning hodlers—he emphasized Strategy’s outsized impact: *“Strategy has been the single biggest factor all along.”* Strategy is the largest publicly traded corporate holder of Bitcoin. Between April 20 and 26, it purchased 3,273 BTC for $255 million, pushing total holdings to 818,334 BTC—surpassing global asset manager BlackRock’s ~812,300 BTC held on behalf of clients. Hougan expects Strategy’s buying to *“continue for quite some time”* fueled by STRC issuance. The perpetual preferred stock pays a fix

April 29: Bithumb will list the BLEND/KRW trading pair, per an official announcement.