Israel will accept a "limited agreement" with Lebanon

On April 29, South Korea’s National Tax Service (NTS) launched preparations for virtual asset taxation, targeting official implementation in January 2027 and full income tax filing readiness by May 2028. Under current tax law, income from virtual asset transfers and leasing will be categorized as “other income,” with a 22% tax applied to amounts exceeding 2.5 million KRW annually—affecting an estimated 13.26 million people. The NTS plans to begin collecting data from exchanges like Upbit, Bithumb, and Coinone next year to strengthen tax infrastructure, aiming to roll out a comprehensive virtual asset analysis system this year. Controversies over taxation standards and capital outflow risks, however, persist.

On April 29, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas suggested it may be time to fully retire the "Sell in May" adage. The strategy traces back to 19th-century London’s wealthy class abandoning markets in summer—but it no longer holds in today’s 24/7 algorithm-driven markets. Data shows the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) has posted gains in 25 of the past 33 May-to-October periods, with only 2022 posting a decline over the last decade.

April 29th: Blockworks Research analyst Shaunda Devens shared Q1 2026 data on social media showing a clear cyclical downturn in crypto trading. Robinhood’s crypto revenue fell to $134 million (39.4% drop), while Hyperliquid’s crypto trading revenue declined to $179.7 million (31.0% decrease). Yet Hyperliquid’s crypto revenue still outpaced Robinhood’s crypto segment. Its Real World Asset (RWA) revenue surged 454.8% quarter-over-quarter, and its user base grew 29.6% to 1.19 million—compared to just 1.5% growth for Robinhood’s customer base. HYPE currently trades at a discount to traditional financial peers, largely tied to the cyclical volatility of its crypto cash flows. But with RWA now accounting for over 30% of trading volume and HIP-4 launching a binary outcome prediction market, revenue volatility in this slowdown has roughly matched Robinhood’s—making the discount increasingly irrational. Hyperliquid’s Q1 protocol revenue hit $192.3 million, while Robinhood reported net

April 29th — According to monitoring data from HyperInsight (via their Telegram channel: https://t.me/HyperInsight), after HYPE rebounded from its bottom to around $40, a whale with the address **0x66f463866512fc337c89bad2032acbe38ee38836** has launched large-scale HYPE spot purchases on the Hyperliquid platform. The whale has placed two buy orders using a Time-Weighted Average Price (TWAP) strategy, totaling approximately 250,000 HYPE tokens — worth roughly $10.1 million at current market prices. As of press time, one order is nearly complete, with an additional ~$4 million in HYPE spot buy orders scheduled to be filled over the next 7 hours. **Whale Address**: 0x66f463866512fc337c89bad2032acbe38ee38836

April 29th — Madison Investments fixed income strategist Mike Sanders noted in a report that markets will be closely watching how Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell frames the committee’s consensus on the recent inflation surge and future policy path, particularly as his term nears its end. Against a backdrop of rising oil prices that could keep inflation persistently elevated, investors are looking to glean as much as possible about the committee’s take on risk balance, he added. The labor market is “okay, but not great,” Sanders said. In an environment of high inflation, a rate cut would meaningfully impact the yield curve and broader economy — though a near-term rate hike is not anticipated, per the report. (FXStreet)

April 29th — On-chain data from HyperInsight Monitoring shows the largest ETH long whale, dubbed the "BIT Whale," opened a 15x leveraged ETH long position via sub-address 0xa5b last night. The position has an average entry price of ~$2,269 and totals $81 million. From this morning to noon, ETH prices continued climbing, realizing the bullish expectations set overnight. As of press time, the address holds $2 million in unrealized profit (a 36% return). Meanwhile, the whale’s two other linked addresses saw a sharp profit rebound, pushing the total daily gain across all three addresses to $3.1 million. The address is owned by digital financial services group BIT, having repeatedly received fund transfers from the firm. Previously, the whale took ETH long positions in the hundreds of millions of dollars, with cumulative profits exceeding $50 million. Address: 0xa5b0edf6b55128e0ddae8e51ac538c3188401d41