A crypto friendly SEC?

5. Atkins Gets The Nod

After a 52-44 Senate vote on Wednesday, Paul Atkins secured his spot to lead the SEC. Trump tapped Atkins in December to lead the SEC and is expected to take a much more friendly approach to crypto than former Chair Gary Gensler. Atkins founded the consulting firm Patomak Global Partners in 2009 and the firm has clients including banks, crypto exchanges and DeFi platforms, according to its website.

4. The WhatsApp Moment for Money

Once upon a time, everyone thought bitcoin or even XRP would revolutionize cross-border payments. Now, as a16z’s Chris Dixon explains, stablecoins are driving that transformation in real time – bypassing costly, decades-old banking rails with quick, cheap, and global transfers. For a deeper look at why stablecoins are, hands-down, the biggest trend in crypto today, give his essay a read.

3. Tariff Whipsaw

If you’re a bitcoiner who just so happened to get back from a week’s long vacation — you didn’t miss much quite honestly, outside of a bunch of near-sighted market opinions and an insanely volatile and scary week in the bond and equity markets. The silver lining? Bitcoin is down only ~4% in the last 30 days. Furthermore, the S&P 500’s volatility is basically matching Bitcoin’s right now.

2. River Posts Financial Results

Bitcoin-only exchange River made a huge commitment yesterday by publishing their entire financial statements while still being a private company. This follows the company’s publishing of 100% Proof of Reserves last Fall. The company currently holds more than $1.7 billion of bitcoin under custody and generated $2 million in net income (plus another $21 million in BTC treasury appreciation). While the company publicly says an IPO isn’t on the roadmap… we’re suspect.

1. Results of Last Week’s Poll

On April, 4th we asked you all where you thought BTC was headed in the medium term. As it turns out nearly 70% of you believe by the end of the year we will settle between $100-200k. Now, to be fair we asked it before all of the tariff whipsawing…