a16z crypto Promotes Guy Wuollet to General Partner

April 1st: Per Coinbob Popular Address Monitoring (via their Telegram channel: https://t.me/Coinbob_track_CN), the Band Protocol whale at address "pension-usdt.eth" (0x0ddf...) opened a 3x leveraged BTC short this morning. In the past hour, the whale added ~250 BTC to its short position, pushing the total to ~$17.28 million and the overall position size to $51.8 million. Its average entry price has risen from $68,121 to $68,389, with an unrealized loss of ~$570,000 (-3.3%) currently. The address still holds $19.55 million in remaining collateral, providing ample cushion. Based on the whale’s historical trading patterns, it typically builds its BTC short position up to ~1,000 BTC to complete its setup.

On-chain analyst Ai Auntie (@ai_9684xtpa) reported on April 1 that address 0x65d…8fC62 has allegedly liquidated 4,012 ETH, worth $8.572 million. Over the past 40 minutes, the address transferred the 4,012 ETH it redeemed from Lido a week ago to Binance, leaving only 0.709 ETH on-chain.

April 1: Trump’s troop withdrawal statement sparked a sudden shift in market sentiment, pushing WTI and Brent crude prices below $100 per barrel, per HyperInsight monitoring (https://t.me/HyperInsight). Two short positions held by Abraxas Capital — the largest holder of on-chain crude positions — quickly flipped from loss to profit, with a total floating profit of $4 million and an overall position size of $144 million. Key positions breakdown: - Brent Crude Short (5x leverage): $92 million size, average price ~$103/barrel; - WTI Crude Short (5x leverage): $51 million size, average price ~$98.3/barrel.

April 1st — Bitcoin notched a 23.8% drop in the first quarter of 2026, marking its worst Q1 performance since 2018 (when it plunged 50% in the same period), per The Block. Adding to the downturn: a 23% decline in Q4 2025 means the crypto has fallen roughly 41.6% over the past six months. Analysts point to multiple drivers for the slump. Andri Fauzan Adziima, Research Director at Bitrue, noted the Q1 drop was primarily fueled by outflows from Bitcoin spot ETFs, plus persistent high inflation, a cautious Federal Reserve, and broad market risk aversion. Bitcoin spot ETFs saw net outflows of $4.965 billion in Q1: $18 billion left in the first two months, partially offset by $13.2 billion in inflows in March. Still, analysts say Bitcoin’s long-term conviction remains unshaken. Min Jung, a researcher at Presto Research, stated: “There’s little evidence of a structural shift in long-term Bitcoin belief. Institutional participation and adoption trends are intact, meaning this decline is

April 1 – WTI crude oil fell below $98 per barrel (intraday drop: 3.78%) while Brent crude was down 3.3% Wednesday, after former President Trump said the U.S. would withdraw from Iran within two to three weeks regardless of an agreement. Kaiyuan Macro’s Thomas Mathews noted: “Hopes of easing tensions have lifted markets, but we believe the war’s impact will linger even if it ends quickly. Both sides have issued positive signals in earlier stages, yet many turned out to be empty promises.” (FX678)

On April 1st, Bitget data shows U.S. stock index futures continued to climb: Nasdaq futures extended gains to 1.08%, Dow futures are now up nearly 0.68%, and S&P 500 futures have risen 0.76%.