Crypto Daybook Americas: Powell Rate-Cut Question Now Biggest Catalyst Amid Earnings Deluge
By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
The impact of President Donald Trump's reciprocal tariffs is starting to be felt. The U.S. economy contracted for the first time in three years last quarter and stock prices have seen their worst first 100-day performance of a presidential administration since 1974.
Results from trading platform Robinhood also showed markets cooled in the first three months of the year, even as it beat analyst forecasts for both revenue and earnings per share.
It wasn't alone, major tech companies including Microsoft and Meta beat estimates and, crucially, Robinhood's revenue from crypto doubled from the year-earlier quarter. That may foreshadow what to look for later today, when Block, Riot Platforms, Strategy and Reddit post results after the closing bell.
'The recent wave of weak macroeconomic data has pointed to both recessionary risks and rising inflation,' James Butterfill, the head of research at CoinShares, told CoinDesk. 'Despite this, bitcoin has shown remarkable resilience, outperforming the Nasdaq by 11% since 'Liberation Day'' on April 2.
Indeed, while first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) fell 0.3% and major stock indexes post posted losses in last month, bitcoin (BTC) held strong. The largest cryptocurrency rose nearly 15% against the dollar in April as investors started using it as a safe haven, along with gold and the Swiss franc.
To Butterfill, risk assets are now seemingly benefiting from expectations of an earlier-than-expected interest-rate cut.
'Equities and bitcoin appear to have recoupled, both rebounding today on renewed hopes of an imminent interest-rate cut," he said. "A disappointing payroll figure on Friday — which we see as likely — could be the final nail in the coffin for Powell, paving the way for more dovish policy from the Fed."
Yet in the cryptocurrency space, there's more to keep an eye on. Ethereum's long-awaited Pectra upgrade, which includes improvements to make the network more user-friendly and efficient, is going live on mainnet on May 7.
The upgrade is significant for Ethereum, which has been losing ground to more efficient blockchains including Solana, Base and BNB chain. DeFiLlama data shows total value locked (TVL) on Ethereum's smart contracts grew just 4% in April, compared with 21% on Solana, and 9.9% on BNB Chain. Base saw a minor contraction.
In the past year, Artemis data shows Ethereum net outflows totaled $3.3 billion, while Base and Solana saw $3.3 billion and $3.2 billion in net inflows, respectively. Still, Ethereum recorded $880 million in net inflows in April, suggesting the trend is reversing ahead of Pectra's activation.
The trend has, however, taken its toll. The ETH/BTC ratio has dropped to little over 0.19, the lowest level in five years. Stay alert!
Crypto:
May 1: Coinbase Asset Management will introduce the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund (CBYF), which is aimed at non-U.S. investors.
May 1: Hippo Protocol starts up its own layer-1 blockchain mainnet built on Cosmos SDK and completes a migration from Ethereum's ERC-20 HPO token to its native HP token, enabling staking and governance.
May 1, 9 a.m.: Constellation Network (DAG) activates the Tessellation v3 upgrade on its mainnet, introducing delegated staking, node collateral, token locking and new transaction types to enhance network security, scalability and functionality.
May 1, 11 a.m.: THORChain activates its v3.5 mainnet upgrade, adding the TCY token to convert $200 million in debt into equity. TCY holders earn 10% of network revenue, while native RUNE remains the protocol's security and governance token. TCY activates May 5.
May 5, 3 a.m.: IOTA's Rebased network upgrade starts. Rebased moves IOTA to a new network, boosting capacity to as many as 50,000 transactions per second, offering staking rewards of 10%-15% a year and adding support for MoveVM smart contracts.
May 5, 11 a.m.: The Crescendo network upgrade goes live on the Kaspa (KAS) mainnet. This upgrade boosts the network's performance by increasing the block production rate to 10 blocks per second from 1 block per second.
May 7, 6:05 a.m.: The Pectra hard fork network upgrade will get activated on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet at epoch 364032. Pectra combines two major components: the Prague execution layer hard fork and the Electra consensus layer upgrade.
Macro
May 1, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment insurance data for the week ended April 26.
Initial Jobless Claims Est. 224K vs. Prev. 222K
May 1, 9:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases Canada April purchasing managers' index (PMI) data.
Manufacturing PMI Prev. 46.3
May 1, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases (Final) U.S. April purchasing managers' index (PMI) data.
Manufacturing PMI Est. 50.7 vs. Prev. 50.2
May 1, 10:00 a.m.: Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases U.S. April economic activity data.
Manufacturing PMI Est. 48 vs. Prev. 49
May 2, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases April employment data.
Nonfarm Payrolls Est. 130K vs. Prev. 228K
Unemployment Rate Est. 4.2% vs. Prev. 4.2%
May 2, 9:00 a.m.: S&P Global releases Brazil April purchasing managers' index (PMI) data.
Manufacturing PMI Prev. 51.8
May 2, 11:00 a.m.: S&P Global releases Mexico April purchasing managers' index (PMI) data.
Manufacturing PMI Prev. 46.5
Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
May 1: Block (XYZ), post-market, $0.97
May 1: Reddit (RDDT), post-market, $0.02
May 1: Riot Platforms (RIOT), post-market, $-0.23
May 1: Strategy (MSTR), post-market, $-0.11
May 8: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $2.08
May 8: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market
May 8: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market
Governance votes & calls
Compound DAO is voting on moving 35,200 COMP (~$1.5 m) into a multisig safe to test selling covered calls on COMP for USDC, lend that USDC in Compound for extra yield, then use the returns to buy back COMP and repeat, targeting roughly 15 % annual gain. Voting ends May 2.
May 1, 1 p.m.: Wormhole to host an ecosystem call.
May 2, 3 a.m.: Ontology to host a weekly community update on X spaces.
May 5, 4 p.m.: Livepeer (LPT) to host a Treasury Talk session on Discord.
Unlocks
May 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 2.28% of its circulating supply worth $261.2 million.
May 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 5.67% of its circulating supply worth $12.31 million.
May 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.73% of its circulating supply worth $13.39 million.
May 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.56% of its circulating supply worth $13.96 million.
May 9: Movement (MOVA) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $12.61 million.
Token Launches
May 2: Binance to delist Alpaca Finance (ALPACA), PlayDapp (PDA), Viberate (VIB), and Wing Finance (WING).
May 5: Sonic (S) to be listed on Kraken.
CoinDesk's Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.
Day 2 of 2: TOKEN2049 (Dubai)
May 6-7: Financial Times Digital Assets Summit (London)
May 11-17: Canada Crypto Week (Toronto)
May 12-13: Dubai FinTech Summit
May 12-13: Filecoin (FIL) Developer Summit (Toronto)
May 12-13: Latest in DeFi Research (TLDR) Conference (New York)
May 12-14: ACI's 9th Annual Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance Forum on Fintech & Emerging Payment Systems (New York)
May 13: Blockchain Futurist Conference (Toronto)
May 13: ETHWomen (Toronto)
May 14-16: CoinDesk's Consensus 2025 (Toronto)
By Shaurya Malwa
Over 3.7 million tokens — or 53% — listed on GeckoTerminal since 2021 have failed, meaning they are no longer actively traded, per a CoinGecko report on Wednesday.
This year alone, 1.8 million have collapsed.
That's nearly half of all dead tokens in the past five years, driven by market turbulence post-Trump inauguration.
The explosion in token creation, from 428,000 in 2021 to nearly 7 million by 2025, is mainly due to tools like Pump.fun that enable rapid memecoin launches.
Most failures occurred in 2024 and 2025, as memecoin saturation and speculative hype led to short-lived, low-effort crypto projects flooding the market.
Open interest across centralized exchanges has continued its steady climb, reaching $125 billion across all assets in a clear signal of growing speculative activity and market engagement.
On Binance, the BTC-USDT perpetual order book heatmap reveals the next significant supply zone is at $96.2K, with ask orders totaling 321 BTC. Additionally, liquidation heatmaps show clusters around $96K, suggesting a potential magnet for price action, with liquidation pockets of $58M, $42.7M and $56.1M.
Notably, the largest liquidation cluster sits at the $93K support, where $76.3M in liquidations are stacked making it a key level to watch for downside volatility.
Among assets with over $100 million in open interest, the largest week-on-week increases were seen in Virtuals Protocol, MemeFi, Curve, Fartcoin, and Hyperliquid.
On the funding rate front, MemeFi, Virtuals Protocol and Alchemist AI posted the sharpest increases, signaling elevated long positioning and potential overheating in sentiment.
BTC is up 1.76% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday at $96,305.26 (24hrs: +1.49%)
ETH is up 2.37% at $1,838.40 (24hrs: +2.03%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 1.64% at 2,787.00 (24hrs: +1.22%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 29 bps at 2.67%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0078% (1.0416% annualized) on Binance
DXY is up 0.31% at 99.81
Gold is down 2.01% at $3,221.46/oz
Silver is down 1.32% at $32.14/oz
Nikkei 225 closed +1.13% at 36,452.30
Hang Seng closed +0.51% at 22,119.41
FTSE is unchanged at 8,494.81
Euro Stoxx 50 closed unchanged at 5,160.22
DJIA closed on Wednesday +0.35% at 40,669.36
S&P 500 closed +0.15% at 5,569.06
Nasdaq closed unchanged at 17,446.34
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.13% at 24,841.68
S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.73% at 2,529.66
U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is up 4 bps at 4.17%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 1.23% at 5,655.75
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 1.73% at 20,002.75
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.83% at 41,109.00
BTC Dominance: 64.57 (0.10%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01914 (0.47%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 850 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $49.24
Total Fees: 6.59 BTC / $630,313.73
CME Futures Open Interest: 133,905 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 29.6 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 8.40%
After last week's explosive rally, bitcoin is consolidating in a low-timeframe range between $93,000 and $95,600.
While yesterday's U.S. GDP release briefly triggered downside pressure, the price quickly recovered, and BTC is holding above the yearly open, signaling underlying strength.
On the longer time frame, bitcoin remains within a supply zone, yet with a recent hourly candle closing decisively above local resistance, there's a suggestion of a potential continuation of the upward grind.
If momentum persists, the next key area of interest lies between $96,000 and $98,000.
Strategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $380.11 (-0.35%), up 3.1% at $391.85 in pre-market
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $202.89 (-1.57%), up 2.89% at $208.75
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at $21.92 (+3.94%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $13.37 (-5.98%), up 3.52% at $13.87
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.24 (-2.43%), up 3.87% at $7.52
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $8.10 (-2.29%), up 5.80% at $8.57
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.17 (-3.2%), up 4.90% at $8.57
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $13.68 (-3.59%)
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $32.33 (-4.83%), up 3.93% at $33.60
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $39.04 (-4.71%), up 1.82% at $39.75
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: -$56.3 million
Cumulative net flows: $39.11 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.15 million
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: -$2.3 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.50 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.45 million
Source: Farside Investors
Over the past 12 months, the supply of stablecoins has been rapidly increasing on Tron and Ethereum, data from The Tie show.
Optimism and Avalanche, both Ethereum layer-2 networks, have seen a decline in favor of those layer 1s.
Sam Altman's World Crypto Project Launches in U.S. With Eye-Scanning Orbs in 6 Cities (CoinDesk): World plans to deploy 7,500 eye-scanning devices across the U.S. this year, and people who use them to verify their identity will receive the project's WLD token.
U.S. and Ukraine Sign Landmark Minerals Deal After Months of Fraught Negotiations (CNBC): In return for favored access to Ukraine's natural resources, Washington pledged reconstruction support, with Treasury Secretary Bessent calling the deal a signal of U.S. commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty and peace.
Bank of Japan Slashes Growth Forecast as Trade War Hits (The Wall Street Journal): Japan's central bank held rates at 0.5% and cut its growth outlook to 0.5% for fiscal 2025 and 0.7% for fiscal 2026.
Gold Shows Signs of Consolidation as Investment Eases, but Trump Looms (Reuters): Gold prices have dipped from record highs despite surging investment, as central-bank buying and investors grew hopeful Trump may ease global trade tensions.
How India and Pakistan's Military, Nuclear Arsenals Stack Up (Bloomberg): After last week's deadly Kashmir attack, India's prime minister faces pressure to respond, and while analysts see full-scale war as unlikely, limited military conflict remains a possibility.
Mesh Adds Apple Pay to Let Shoppers Spend Crypto, Settle in Stablecoins (CoinDesk): The feature aims to close the so-called last-mile gap that has stalled mass crypto adoption in payments, co-founder and CEO Bam Azizi said.
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