Crypto & ETF swings
- Bitcoin slipped below $74,000 then traded roughly $74.5–$76k amid renewed geopolitical jitters. (x.com) - XRP overtook BNB as the #3 crypto by market cap at about $87.1 billion, and XRP ETFs logged roughly $55 million inflows. (x.com) - Markets also tracked large exploits and token crashes, including a reported $290M rsETH hack and steep token losses. (x.com)
Bitcoin spent mid-April pinned near $75,000, slipping below $74,000 after a failed breakout as traders swung between exchange-traded fund buying and geopolitical risk. (coindesk.com) CoinDesk reported on April 16 that bitcoin fell back under $74,000 after another rejection in the $75,000 to $76,000 range. Other market trackers said it later stabilized in roughly the $74,500 to $75,500 area after earlier April moves toward $76,000. (coindesk.com) (cryptotimes.io) The push and pull came as U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds kept attracting money even while macro headlines turned defensive. One weekly tally showed about $996.38 million of net inflows into Bitcoin ETFs for the week ending April 17. (cryptonewsz.com) XRP moved the other way. By April 20 and April 21, several market trackers said XRP had edged past BNB in market value, putting it in the No. 3 spot among cryptocurrencies at roughly $87 billion to $92 billion. (cryptobriefing.com) (coinedition.com) Part of that move tracked fresh demand for XRP funds. Data cited across April 20-21 reports put weekly XRP ETF inflows at about $55.39 million, with April inflows around $65.89 million. (blockonomi.com) (tokenpost.com) An ETF is a stock-market fund that lets investors buy exposure through a brokerage account instead of holding tokens directly. In crypto, those flows matter because they show where regulated money is going even when coin prices are choppy. (finance.yahoo.com) (blockonomi.com) At the same time, traders were dealing with a separate shock in decentralized finance, or DeFi, the software-based lending and trading system built on blockchains. Reports on April 19 and April 20 said an attacker exploited Kelp DAO’s rsETH token through a LayerZero-linked bridge and drained about $290 million to $294 million. (business-standard.com) (ccn.com) Bridge hacks hit harder than a single token selloff because a bridge is the plumbing that moves assets between blockchains. Protos reported that the rsETH theft spilled into Aave, where the stolen collateral was used to borrow about $236 million of wrapped Ether, adding pressure across DeFi markets. (protos.com) That left crypto markets split in two by late April: Bitcoin was stuck under a stubborn ceiling, XRP was pulling in fresh ETF money and briefly outranking BNB, and DeFi was still absorbing the damage from the year’s biggest exploit. (coindesk.com) (blockonomi.com) (thestreet.com)
