News linked to both this project and an event.
According to the official announcement, HTX (formerly Huobi) has launched perpetual contracts for AAPL/USDT, META/USDT, and PIVERSE/USDT on April 20, with a maximum leverage of 20x. Additionally, HTX is hosting an “AAPL, META, PIVERSE Contract Trading Party” from 17:00 on April 20 to 17:00 on April 27 (UTC+8), with a total prize pool of $20,000. During the event, users who register and trade AAPL/USDT, META/USDT, or PIVERSE/USDT perpetual contracts—accumulating a total effective trading volume of ≥$5,000—will share the prize pool based on their trading volume ranking. New contract traders completing trades in AAPL/USDT, META/USDT, or PIVERSE/USDT perpetual contracts will also receive exclusive benefits.
According to an official announcement, Coinbase has launched its crypto-backed lending service in the UK, enabling users to borrow USDC in under one minute using BTC, ETH, and cbETH as collateral. The service is powered by Morpho, an open-source lending protocol built on Base. Coinbase stated that this product first launched in the U.S. in January 2025. As of April 14, 2026, loans facilitated via Coinbase’s integration with Morpho have exceeded $2.17 billion in USDC. Users can monitor their loan health, historical annualized interest rates, and liquidation alerts directly within the Coinbase app. Interest rates are dynamically adjusted based on market conditions.
According to South Korean media outlet DigitalToday, Korean crypto venture capital firm Hashed Ventures announced raising KRW 3 billion (USD 2.2 million). The investment was led by Hecto Innovation and Hecto Financial—both subsidiaries of Hecto Group. The new capital will be allocated to Hashed Ventures’ “Hashed Venture Investment Fund No. 3,” with a focus on supporting new business areas including digital asset wallets and stablecoin-based payment and settlement solutions.
Odaily According to a report released on the 19th by Windward, a UK-based maritime analysis company, Iran briefly reopened the Strait of Hormuz before closing it again. In the past 36 hours, 35 ships have turned around and headed back while attempting to exit the strait. The report states that after Iran announced the reopening of the strait on the 17th, ship responses that day were relatively cautious. On the 18th, traffic through the strait was initially sparse but then rapidly increased, with ships rushing to pass through before the situation deteriorated. A total of 35 ships transited the strait that day, including 8 entering (comprising 4 oil tankers, 2 bulk carriers, and 2 other cargo ships) and 27 exiting (comprising 8 oil tankers, 3 bulk carriers, 15 other cargo ships, and 1 passenger ship). (Xinhua News Agency)
Odaily News On-chain data indicates that Kelp DAO's rsETH bridge protocol based on LayerZero is suspected of being exploited by hackers, resulting in a loss of 116,500 rsETH, valued at approximately $292 million.
According to Cointelegraph, X’s newly launched Cashtags feature—introduced this Tuesday—has generated approximately $1 billion in trading volume within two days. The feature allows users to select specific assets or contract addresses when posting; clicking the tag displays real-time price charts and related posts. Currently, Cashtags is available exclusively to iPhone users in the U.S. and Canada. Canadian online brokerage Wealthsimple has already integrated the feature, enabling users to jump directly to its trading platform; however, no U.S.-based brokerages have yet connected. Additionally, X’s peer-to-peer payment system, X Money, is also under development and plans to offer features including interest-bearing accounts and cashback debit cards. X Money has already secured money transmission licenses in over 40 U.S. states. These initiatives form part of Elon Musk’s strategic vision to transform X into a “super app.”
Odaily News USDC has officially announced the launch of its cross-chain bridge, USDC Bridge. Built and operated by Circle, it supports cross-chain transfers based on a native burn-mint mechanism.According to the announcement, the bridge supports upfront fee display and real-time status tracking, eliminates the need for manual path selection, and can automatically handle destination chain gas fees.
Odaily News According to a post by X Product Lead Nikita Bier on the X platform, based on aggregated data from the trading pilot, since the launch of Cashtags on Tuesday evening, social platform X has driven approximately $10 billion in transaction volume globally. This data comes from the platform's initial pilot phase, demonstrating the significant pull effect on market liquidity and user engagement after integrating social platforms with trading functionalities.
Xie Jiayin, Bitget’s Head of Chinese-speaking Markets, revealed significant progress across multiple core business areas. In terms of liquidity, Bitget ranked first globally among centralized exchanges (CEXs) in net fund inflows over the past seven days. Its BTC reserves grew 86% year-on-year to 36,700 BTC. According to TokenInsight’s report, Bitget’s derivatives and spot liquidity both ranked among the top two globally. Strategically, the platform continues advancing its transformation into UEX, a comprehensive exchange. This quarter, Bitget completed a full app redesign, fully launched CFD trading—supporting 79 assets with up to 500x leverage—and expanded its U.S. stock token offering to 263 tickers. Per CoinGlass data, Bitget leads the industry in U.S. stock futures open interest, and its CFD daily trading volume exceeded $6 billion. On the product front, Bitget launched IPO Prime, an innovative token sale platform. Its inaugural offering is preSPAX—a digital token mirroring the listing gains of SpaceX. Additionally, Bitget completed a three-layer reconstruction of its AI trading engine and introduced GetClaw, a cloud-based AI trading assistant enabling users to execute automated live trades via natural-language commands. For its VIP ecosystem, Bitget established a $5 million Protection Fund and distributed nearly 1,000 preSPAX tokens to VIP users in two free airdrops: the first round (760 tokens) was distributed on April 16, and the second round (190 tokens) will be distributed on April 20.
According to an official announcement, crypto-financial technology company Superstate has launched FundOS—a next-generation fund operating system—opening its fund-on-chain infrastructure to asset management firms to support the tokenization of private funds, mutual funds, and ETFs. Superstate states that FundOS enables fund managers to select fund types, underlying blockchains, supported DeFi use cases, and whether to enable stablecoin-based subscriptions and redemptions. It integrates with existing fund managers, custodians, and service providers via its portal, APIs, and workflows. The system is already deployed for USTB and USCC, collectively managing over $1 billion in assets, and has also been adopted by Invesco US.
According to official announcements, Pumpcade—a live-stream prediction market and meme coin issuance platform—has secured $5 million in seed funding. Investors include Jump Crypto and Foundation Capital. Pumpcade is a Solana-based platform for instant meme coin creation and trading, integrated into the Pump.fun chat system and enabling one-click prediction market creation during live streams. Earlier, on April 2, Pump.fun led a $1 million pre-seed round for Pumpcade.
According to The Block, the Washington-based think tank Cato Institute published a critique of the U.S.’s current Bitcoin tax policy. Researcher Nick Anthony pointed out that the existing tax framework—which classifies Bitcoin as “property” rather than “currency”—requires users to calculate capital gains or losses for every single transaction, including routine, small-value purchases. This makes tax filing extremely cumbersome and effectively hinders Bitcoin’s adoption as a payment instrument. In response, the Cato Institute proposed several reform measures, including fully eliminating capital gains taxes on cryptocurrency payments and introducing a de minimis exemption threshold for small transactions. The report also referenced the existing Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act—a bill that would exempt crypto transactions under $200—but Anthony argued that this threshold is too low to reflect real-world consumer spending levels. Currently, the Trump administration has expressed support for establishing a de minimis exemption for cryptocurrency transactions and will continue evaluating related legislative options.
It is reported that Bybit Alpha has now launched trading for $UNC and $BULL. Both $UNC and $BULL are trending Solana-based meme projects. $UNC surged over 241% intraday, with its market cap briefly exceeding $21 million; it is currently trading at approximately $0.02.
Odaily News Ripple announced a partnership with South Korea's major insurance institution, Kyobo Life Insurance, to explore government bond tokenization settlement based on the Ripple Custody platform. The goal is to compress the T+2 settlement cycle for South Korean government bonds to near real-time execution. Both parties stated that they will focus on evaluating the technical and regulatory feasibility of tokenized government bond settlement. Specific transaction scale, launch timeline, and bond types involved have not been disclosed yet, and the overall initiative is still in the pilot exploration phase. Additionally, Kyobo Life will also explore stablecoin-based payment solutions, but specific currencies and implementation timelines have not been clarified. (CoinDesk)
Odaily News According to an official announcement, Binance Futures will launch the GENIUSUSDT U-based perpetual contract at 11:30 (UTC+8) on April 16, 2026. This contract supports up to 20x leverage. Copy trading for this contract will be available within 24 hours of its launch.
Odaily News As the U.S. midterm elections approach, the White House is accelerating efforts to promote a crypto market structure bill to ease the long-standing disputes between the banking industry and the crypto sector.Reports indicate that multiple parties, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt, and related policy figures, have recently publicly called for advancing this bill. The U.S. Council of Economic Advisers has also released a report addressing the banking industry's concerns about the crypto sector.Analysts suggest that, based on the timing, the current period may be a critical window for promoting relevant legislation, but uncertainty remains regarding whether the bill can be smoothly passed. (The Hill)
According to CoinDesk, UK-based asset manager Legal & General Asset Management has tokenized over £50 billion in liquid funds via Calastone’s tokenized distribution network. The firm now offers money market funds on this network in the form of tokenized shares, supporting USD, EUR, and GBP, with capabilities spanning issuance, trading, and same-day settlement. Investors can purchase, hold, and transfer these tokenized shares within a permissioned, regulated network. The relevant funds will be deployed on Ethereum and compatible blockchains, with plans to expand to additional networks in the future.
Odaily News Four.meme has announced a partnership with Predict.fun to further expand the Meme coin ecosystem into BNB Chain's prediction market layer.Through this integration, Predict.fun has launched a dedicated Meme coin section, incorporating real-time on-chain data from Four.meme. This enables users to transform on-chain activities into tradable, real-time prediction markets. Users can make judgments and participate in trading based on key metrics such as transaction fee milestones, token listings, and market capitalization changes.This collaboration aims to explore more participation methods and release more valuable market signals as the Meme ecosystem continues to evolve.
Odaily News: OpenAI plans to launch a new pricing scheme for ChatGPT ads and explore other upgrade options. An institutional executive who has communicated with OpenAI employees and collaborated with ChatGPT advertisers revealed that OpenAI intends to start pricing some ChatGPT ads based on whether users click on the ads, rather than solely on the number of ad impressions. This executive also stated that OpenAI has indicated plans to introduce ads designed to guide users to take specific actions (such as purchasing goods or downloading apps), but a specific launch timeline has not yet been provided. (The Information)
Odaily News: Digital asset trading platform Gate will list the first Pre-IPOs project SpaceX (SPCX) and simultaneously launch an airdrop incentive program targeting high-tier users and super agents.The subscription period for this SpaceX (SPCX) project is from 18:00 on April 20, 2026, to 18:00 on April 22, 2026 (UTC+8). The total subscription amount is 33,900 SPCX, valued at approximately $20.001 million. The project supports subscriptions in USDT and GUSD. Upon completion of the subscription, tokens will be 100% unlocked for pre-market trading.Concurrently, the platform has initiated a VIP-exclusive airdrop event, distributing SPCX asset vouchers to users with VIP level 5 and above and super agents. The event runs from 18:00 on April 15, 2026, to 18:00 on April 22, 2026 (UTC+8). Users must meet conditions such as registration and net deposits to participate. Rewards will be distributed in tiers based on VIP level and will be issued collectively after the subscription period ends. Additionally, eligible super agents can also receive a fixed quota of SPCX airdrops.