Cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index Drops to 26, Deepening Market "Fear" Sentiment

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.

April 29 — Binance announced Thursday it will suspend deposit and withdrawal services for Rootstock Infrastructure Framework (RIF) tokens on May 4, 2026, at 17:00 UTC+8 to support the network’s upcoming upgrade and hard fork. The move aims to enhance user experience, per the official statement. The RIF project team plans to roll out the upgrade and hard fork at block height 8,804,200, which is expected to occur around 18:00 UTC+8 the same day.

April 29 — Per HyperInsight monitoring, on-chain data shows the major ETH long whale "BIT Whale" opened a 15x leveraged ETH long position last night via address 0xa5b..., with an average entry price of ~$2,269. The position currently holds an unrealized gain of $570,000 (10%). The whale has dynamically spread its holdings across three addresses, boosting its ETH position from 28,000 coins (≈$63.8 million) yesterday to 63,000 coins (≈$144 million)—nearly doubling its position in one day. The address is owned by digital financial services group BIT, having repeatedly received fund transfers from its entities. Previously, it has taken multi-hundred-million-dollar ETH long positions with profits exceeding $50 million. Relevant addresses: 0xa5b0edf6b55128e0ddae8e51ac538c3188401d41 0x6c8512516ce5669d35113a11ca8b8de322fd84f6 0xA875890465dA20062bCF3b024Bf7d54E69C725a8