Solana staking protocol Fragmetric completes $7 million seed round

April 5 — Al Jazeera reports a U.S. official has stated the second crew member aboard the downed F-15E fighter jet was rescued after "intense fighting."

April 5 (Axios) — Over the past 10 days, the U.S. and Iran have held indirect talks via Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey aimed at a ceasefire deal tied to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but no substantive progress has been made to date. Lead negotiators include U.S. Vice President Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Kalibaf, with Pakistani Army Chief General Asim Munir serving as mediator. White House envoy Witkoff and the foreign ministers of Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt have also joined the discussions. Two sources briefed on the talks said mediators are still pushing to arrange a direct U.S.-Iran meeting, but progress has been minimal. One source noted Iran has rejected all temporary ceasefire proposals so far, demanding a permanent end to the conflict and explicit U.S. assurances against future attacks. Mediators are now weighing confidence-building measures to clear the path for direct talks, though it’s unclear if progress will be made ahead of Monday’s deadline.

On April 5th, data from Farside monitoring shows U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs posted a cumulative net inflow of $22.2 million this week, while Ethereum spot ETFs recorded a net outflow of $42.1 million.

April 5th — Market sources report that a preliminary probe into the Drift hacking incident has found team members were previously approached in person by a North Korean intermediary at a conference.

On April 5th, data from Coinglass shows that if Bitcoin drops below $65,000, the cumulative intensity of long liquidations across mainstream centralized exchanges (CEXs) will hit $600 million. Conversely, if Bitcoin climbs above $69,000, the cumulative intensity of short liquidations on these CEXs will reach $570 million. **Note from BlockBeats**: The liquidation chart does not display the exact number of contracts or their total value being liquidated. Instead, the bars on the chart represent how important each liquidation cluster is relative to nearby clusters—i.e., "intensity." In short, the chart shows how much impact reaching a specific price level will have. A taller liquidation bar means that price hitting that level will trigger a more intense response due to a liquidity cascade.

On April 5, Crowdfund Insider reported Western Union has completed its acquisition of Dash, a Singapore-based digital wallet company formerly owned by Singtel. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. This marks the U.S. payment firm’s first digital wallet in the Asia-Pacific region and signals its push beyond traditional remittance services into digital financial offerings.