Bitcoin Price Surpasses $94,000
On April 23, Bitcoin broke through the $94,000 level, which was facilitated by the statements of former US President Donald Trump about tariff policy and the attitude towards the head of the Federal Reserve. Trump promised to show "special courtesy" in negotiations with China and is ready to reduce tariffs if an agreement is reached. In addition, he assured that he is not going to dismiss Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, despite previous criticism of him for the slow pace of rate cuts.
These statements fueled optimism in traditional financial markets and became a trigger for further strengthening of Bitcoin, which confidently held its positions above $90,000 the day before. The growth of the rate was also fueled by mass liquidations of short positions. According to Coinglass, from April 22 to 23, crypto positions worth $632.6 million were forcibly closed.
Solana Briefly Overtakes Ethereum in Staking Market Cap
The total value of assets locked in the Solana network stake is almost equal to that of Ethereum — $55.47 billion against $56.15 billion, respectively. Over the past few days, Solana has at times outpaced Ethereum in terms of "staking capitalization," which was facilitated by the growth of the SOL to ETH exchange rate.
The current yield of staking on the Solana network is 8.31% per annum, while for Ethereum this figure is 2.98%. According to DeFi Llama, the total market value of liquid staking tokens in the Ethereum ecosystem reaches $21.9 billion, and in the Solana network — $7.22 billion.
TON Foundation Appoints MoonPay Co-Founder as New CEO
The TON Foundation, an organization developing the Open Network (TON) blockchain, has announced the appointment of MoonPay co-founder Maximilian Kraun as its new CEO. The foundation noted that the entrepreneur has made a significant contribution to the development of financial strategies and operational processes, and his expertise will help the TON Foundation strengthen its position in the crypto market.
The change in leadership coincided with a slowdown in the growth rate of the ecosystem - the indicators of daily transactions and commissions have decreased, according to TonStat data. The strategic goal of the TON Foundation is to involve 30% of the active Telegram audience in the blockchain by 2028. Particular attention is planned to be paid to the launch of multiplayer games, the development of DeFi tools with a simple user experience, and the integration of crypto payments into the real economy.
Ethereum to Quadruple Gas Limit
Ethereum developers are discussing the possibility of more than quadrupling the network's gas limit, a move seen as one of the key innovations of the upcoming Fusaka hard fork. At a recent ACDE meeting, EIP-9678 was presented, which envisages testing a new limit with a maximum of 150 million units. Earlier, in February, validators supported increasing the gas limit from 30 million to the current 35.95 million, which is ~20% higher than the previous level, according to Ycharts. Implementing the initiative will require changes to other Fusaka-related EIPs, but the overall structure of the update will remain the same.
Commenting on the need to increase the gas limit, the development team led by Sophia Gold noted the high interest in scaling execution at the L1 level. At the same time, the lack of accompanying innovations requires additional efforts from client teams to identify and fix possible failures. That is why it was decided to formalize the proposal as an EIP and include it in the planned hard fork. The Pectra upgrade is scheduled for May 7, and Fusaka activation is expected in late 2025.
Hacker Attacks XRP Owners
An attacker has introduced a backdoor into the official JavaScript SDK for XRP Ledger to steal cryptocurrency. The vulnerability was identified by Aikido Security specialists. On April 21, researcher Charlie Eriksen discovered that someone under the nickname mukulljangid released five new versions of the xrpl.js library via NPM, which were not in the official GitHub repository. The check showed that the packages contain malicious code that allows stealing private keys and gaining access to wallets.
The XRP Ledger Foundation clarified that the network and the main GitHub repository were not affected. The developers strongly recommended updating to the safe version of xrpl.js 4.2.5, and the infected releases (4.2.1–4.2.4 and v2.14.2) were blocked in NPM. A detailed report on the incident is planned to be published later. Major projects including Xaman Wallet, XRPScan, and First Ledger have confirmed that they were not attacked. Over the past 24 hours, the XRP rate has risen by more than 8%, reaching $2.25, according to CoinGecko.
Tether Increases Its Stake in Juventus by Over 10%
Tether's investment arm has increased its stake in Italian football club Juventus to 10.12%, gaining 6.18% of the voting shares. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino emphasized that this is not just a financial investment — the company intends to participate in further investments to strengthen the financial stability of the club and support its position. Earlier, in February, Tether already acquired a minority stake in Juventus.
