The popular AI framework Virtuals Protocol will host an in-person meet-up in Hong Kong on Friday, January 17.

April 16: On-chain lending platform Votre has closed a $3.75 million seed round, led by a16z CSX with participation from MaC Venture Capital and angel investors. Proceeds will be allocated to scaling Votre’s technical infrastructure and enhancing its lending platform’s functionality. (Via Vctavern)

April 16: Per Farside Investors, Bitcoin ETFs saw net inflows of $186.1M yesterday, with IBIT posting $291.9M in net inflows, FBTC recording $47.3M in net outflows, and ARKB seeing $42.2M in net outflows. Ethereum ETFs had net inflows of $67.9M, with ETHA posting $31.5M in net inflows and Grayscale ETH adding $24.8M in net inflows.

April 16: The market’s key driver has shifted from “whether conflict would escalate” to “whether risks have been fully priced in.” U.S.-Iran negotiation signals have strengthened sharply—including talks on extending the ceasefire, gradual timeline clarity, and Iran’s note that maritime shipping hasn’t been fully disrupted—driving a pullback in earlier extreme supply shock expectations. That said, the U.S. has also ramped up sanctions on Iran’s energy and financial systems, meaning risks haven’t been eliminated, just shifted to a “controlled containment” state. This dynamic shows up directly in energy market pricing: The abnormal WTI-Brent premium has started to weaken, signaling a slight cooling of the market’s extreme “physical deliverability premium” bets—but spot market tightness hasn’t eased. More critically, OPEC’s big production cuts and lingering shipping risks have kept oil prices sticky on the upside. That explains the gap between Fed and Treasury statements: One stresse

**April 16: CoW Swap announced it has regained control of the cow.fi domain name.** The platform has been operating on cow.finance for a while and is now gradually transitioning back to its original domain. In an official statement, the team noted that on April 14, an attacker used a fake document to trick the DNS registrar into handing over control of the cow.fi domain. The attacker then launched a two-stage, highly realistic phishing site: first, tricking users into signing a malicious transaction via a wallet clone, then stealing mnemonic phrases and passwords through a fake wallet popup. This attack targeted the domain registrar—not a compromise of CoW Swap’s own infrastructure or private keys. Affected users are advised to immediately use tools like Revoke.cash to revoke all wallet authorizations and consider moving funds to a new wallet.

On April 16, renowned Bitcoin trader Killa (@KillaXBT) noted BTC has a CME exhaustion gap near $84,000—just ahead of a potential waterfall drop. The gap mirrors two 2022 gaps that took 290 days and over 500 days, respectively, to fill. Killa argues the current BTC trend closely resembles 2022’s pattern, meaning the $84k gap may be hard to fill short-term. A local top could thus be nearer than the $80,000 target most market participants expect. He warns chasing highs now risks downside pressure, not a quick rebound. In a prior update, Killa disclosed shorting BTC at $74,688 with a stop-loss at $80,000. A BTC-focused quantitative trader, Killa has forecast this bull market’s peak in May 2025 and has over 180,000 followers on X.

April 16 — Bitget has launched stock contracts for six popular U.S.-listed AI-related assets, per an official announcement, to meet market demand for trading in the sector. The targets include: - AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) - AMAT (Applied Materials) - SNDK (SanDisk) - STX (Seagate Technology) - LITE (Lumentum) - FLY (Firefly Aerospace) These contracts span chips, semiconductor equipment and storage, and offer up to 20x leverage.