Ripple CEO: Bitcoin Expected to Reach $180,000 by End of 2026

April 2nd: Per OnchainLens data, the whale wallet "pension-usdt.eth" has opened a new 20,000 ETH short position (3x leverage) and boosted its Bitcoin short position to 750 BTC (3x leverage), with a total position value of $92.4 million. Currently, its unrealized profit exceeds $1.6 million, while cumulative profit has topped $32 million.

April 2 (Tuesday) — U.S. President Trump declared in a national address Tuesday that military action against Iran has achieved a “rapid and decisive victory,” with core objectives nearly complete. He explicitly warned more “heavy blows” will hit Iran in the next 2-3 weeks but did not mention a ceasefire or clear exit strategy—triggering sharp market volatility. In energy markets: Trump threatened to target Iran’s energy infrastructure if no agreement is reached, while reiterating other countries should secure the Strait of Hormuz to ensure navigation. That lifted supply disruption fears sharply. WTI crude surged above $103/bbl, Brent topped $102/bbl—both up over 4% intraday—pushing energy risk premiums higher quickly. Financial markets faced concurrent pressure: U.S. stock futures slipped, with S&P 500 futures down ~0.5%; Asia-Pacific equities reversed earlier gains. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield climbed to ~4.35%, and Japanese 30-year yield rose—reflecting market repricing of

April 2 – Trump said the U.S. will continue pressuring Iran, sending spot gold prices tumbling more than $100 intraday to $4,656.50 an ounce (a 2.11% decline).

As of April 2nd, monitoring by @EmberCN shows the $285 million in assets stolen from the Drift protocol has been converted to 129,000 ETH (valued at $278 million). Over the past few hours, the hacker sold the assets through multiple methods and cross-chain transferred them to the Ethereum network, where they were swapped for ETH. Wallet holding the stolen assets: HkGz4KmoZ7Zmk7HN6ndJ31UJ1qZ2qgwQxgVqQwovpZES The converted ETH is currently held in these 4 wallets: 0xAa843eD65C1f061F111B5289169731351c5e57C1 0x0FE3b6908318B1F630daa5B31B49a15fC5F6B674 0xbDdAE987FEe930910fCC5aa403D5688fB440561B 0xD3FEEd5DA83D8e8c449d6CB96ff1eb06ED1cF6C7

On April 2nd, a major system failure hit HyperEVM, with numerous users and monitoring tools detecting network anomalies that prevented proper interaction with the platform. Hyperliquid’s official status page currently lists “All Systems Operational,” but this typically only covers its core L1 and API—it does not necessarily reflect real-time issues at the HyperEVM layer. HyperEVM is an EVM-compatible smart contract environment built atop Hyperliquid, with its mainnet launching in early March 2026. Discussions about the platform on X are surging, with some users reporting problems including transaction failures, contract interaction issues, and browser-related glitches.

On April 2, per Bitget market data, spot gold fell below $4,700 per ounce, posting an intraday loss of 1.22%. Spot silver dropped to $73 per ounce, down 2.73% on the day.