The cryptocurrency market continued its recovery in the past week as the total crypto market capitalization breached the $3 trillion mark for the first time since the beginning of March.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose to an over two-month high of $97,300 last seen at the end of February, before the “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement in the US, bolstering analyst predictions for a rally driven by “structural” institutional and exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows into the world’s first cryptocurrency.
Risk appetite continued rising among crypto investors, as Chinese state-linked news outlets indicated that the Trump administration has quietly contacted Beijing to discuss tariff reductions.
In the wider crypto space, Ethereum developers proposed a new token standard to improve the interoperability of the world’s second-largest blockchain network.
Bitcoin to $1 million by 2029 fueled by ETF and gov’t demand — Bitwise exec
Bitcoin’s expanding institutional adoption may provide the “structural” inflows necessary to surpass gold’s market capitalization and push its price beyond $1 million by 2029, according to Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch.
“Our in-house prediction is $1 million by 2029. So that Bitcoin will match gold’s market cap and total addressable market by 2029,” he told Cointelegraph during the Chain Reaction daily X spaces show on April 30.
Gold is currently the world’s largest asset, valued at over $21.7 trillion. In comparison, Bitcoin’s market capitalization sits at $1.9 trillion, making it the seventh-largest asset globally, according to CompaniesMarketCap data.
For the 2025 market cycle, Bitcoin may surpass $200,000 in the “base case” and $500,000 with more governmental adoption, Dragosch said.
Eric Trump: USD1 will be used for $2 billion MGX investment in Binance
Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX will use a stablecoin linked to US President Donald Trump’s family to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
The World Liberty Financial USD (USD1) US dollar-pegged stablecoin was launched by the Trump-associated crypto platform World Liberty Financial (WLFI) in March 2025.
MGX will use the USD1 stablecoin for its $2 billion investment in the Binance exchange, according to an announcement by Eric Trump during a panel discussion at Token2049 in Dubai. Trump, the son of the president, serves as executive vice president of the Trump Organization.
MGX announced its investment in Binance on March 12, marking the first institutional investment in the exchange and one of the biggest funding deals in the entire Web3 industry.
At the time, Binance declined Cointelegraph’s request to disclose what stablecoin was used in the transaction.
This marks the Abu Dhabi-based investment firm’s first venture into the cryptocurrency space.
Ethereum to simplify crosschain transactions with new token standards
Ethereum developers are working to improve blockchain interoperability with two new token standards: ERC-7930 and ERC-7828.
“There’s no standard way for wallets, apps, or protocols to interpret or display this information,” decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem development organization Wonderland wrote in a May 1 X post. Wallets, decentralized applications (DApps), block explorers and smart contracts follow different rules.
“The result? A messy, inconsistent experience that breaks crosschain UX,“ Wonderland stated.
Wonderland is a group of developers, researchers and data scientists focused on improving the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. The organization partnered with multiple DeFi protocols, including Optimism, Aztec, Connext and Yearn.
In the post, the organization shared what was discussed at a recent Ethereum Foundation interoperability working group call. Teddy from Wonderland explained that the current goal is to finalize both token standards within the next two weeks. He added:
“We badly need feedback on the ETH-Magicians forum.”
Crypto hackers hit DeFi for $92 million in April as attacks double from March
Cryptocurrency hackers stole more than $90 million in April, dealing another blow to the industry’s mainstream reputation despite ongoing efforts to improve cybersecurity.
Hackers made off with $92 million of digital assets across 15 incidents in April, according to an April 30 research report by blockchain cybersecurity firm Immunefi.
The total marks a 124% month-over-month increase from March, when hackers stole $41 million.
The month’s largest hack on open-source platform UPCX accounted for most of the damage in April, with over $70 million in losses, while KiloEx lost $7.5 million as April’s second-largest hack.
The KiloEx exploiter returned the stolen funds just days after the attack occurred.
All of April’s reported attacks targeted decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. Centralized exchanges reported no incidents during the month, the report noted.
Immunefi, which says it helps protect $190 billion in user funds, has paid more than $116 million in bounties to white hat hackers.
Crypto group asks Trump to end prosecution of crypto devs, Roman Storm
The crypto lobby group, the DeFi Education Fund, has petitioned the Trump administration to end what it claimed was the “lawless prosecution” of open-source software developers, including Roman Storm, a creator of the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash.
In an April 28 letter to White House crypto czar David Sacks, the group urged President Donald Trump “to take immediate action to discontinue the Biden-era Department of Justice’s lawless campaign to criminalize open-source software development.”
The letter specifically mentioned the prosecution of Storm, who was charged in August 2023 with helping launder over $1 billion in crypto through Tornado Cash. His trial is still set for July, and his fellow charged co-founder, Roman Semenov, is at large and believed to be in Russia.
The DeFi Education Fund said that in Storm’s case, the Department of Justice is attempting to hold software developers criminally liable for how others use their code, which is “not only absurd in principle, but it sets a precedent that potentially chills all crypto development in the United States.”
The group also called for the recognition that the prosecution contradicts the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) guidance from Trump’s first term, which established that developers of self-custodial, peer-to-peer protocols are not money transmitters.
“This kind of legal environment does not just chill innovation — it freezes it,” they argued. The letter added that it also “empowers politically-motivated enforcement and puts every open-source developer at risk, regardless of industry.”
In January, a federal court in Texas ruled that the Treasury overstepped its authority by sanctioning Tornado Cash.
DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.
The Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) token rose over 103% as the week’s biggest gainer, followed by the Solayer (LAYER) token, up over 29% during the past week.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.
Swift Current Energy’s 800-megawatt (MW) Double Black Diamond Solar is up and running about 30 miles west of Springfield. It’s now the largest operating solar farm east of the Mississippi, and it’s set to make a serious dent in emissions while delivering clean energy to major customers, including the City of Chicago.
Chicago is sourcing around 70% of the power for its municipal operations from Double Black Diamond. That includes big energy users like O’Hare and Midway airports. Other customers buying power from the solar farm include CVS Health, Loyola University Chicago, PPG, State Farm, TransUnion, and Cook County, all through the energy company Constellation NewEnergy.
This project has been a long time coming – Swift Current started development in 2018 and leaned into a growing US supply chain. The company sourced most of its 1.6 million solar panels from First Solar’s Ohio factories, and the racking came from Nextracker, which used US-made steel and did some of the manufacturing in Chicago. Construction created around 500 jobs.
Double Black Diamond also met Illinois’ Clean and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) standards for labor and hiring, creating job opportunities for a broader group of workers. Over its lifetime, the solar farm is expected to generate $100 million in local tax revenue for Sangamon and Morgan counties. About 60% of that will go toward public schools, with the rest helping fund public safety, infrastructure, and community programs. Swift Current is also putting $10 million into community benefit programs, including school districts and local governments.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson called the project “a powerful example of why we believe in the green economy.” He said the solar farm helps Chicago cut emissions, supports good union jobs, and lowers energy costs for city operations.
Read more: Home solar prices just hit record lows – and storage is even cheaper
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Range Energy, a company which builds large-battery electric trailers to help fleets electrify at the drop of a hat, has announced partnerships with Thermo King and ESL Power Systems to bring its technology to refrigerated trailer units.
The idea behind Range’s product is that it adds a battery and an electric motor e-axle to a semi truck trailer, instead of to the tractor itself, which means that a fleet can add electric capabilities without having to buy new tractors. This means the fleet can effectively hybridize its operation without having to buy new tractors.
While this isn’t a fully electric solution, it can still reduce fuel usage by a large amount (independent tests say 36%), and adds new capabilities to a truck – like better control over the trailer and regenerative braking to avoid brake fade.
We met Range at ACT Expo in Anaheim two years ago, where they gave us one of the coolest demos we’ve seen. Just by attaching to a tractor’s kingpin, the system can decide how much power to apply and offers extremely natural feeling movement, making a heavy trailer feel light as a feather:
Range isn’t quite up to production yet, but they have done some trials. In addition to the independent testing above, Range trialed its technology with Petaluma Egg Farm, up in Northern California, where it says the company saw a 50-70% improvement in MPG for the trucks using Range’s electric trailer.
But the company is still working to find novel applications for its technology, and when we caught up with them at ACT Expo this week, they wanted to focus on how Range trailers could be used for refrigerated freight in order to cut emissions and reduce the need for a separate engine to run the reefer unit.
In service of this, it has partnered with two companies in the refrigeration space – Thermo King, the biggest name in electrified trucks, and ESL Power Systems, a company that manufactures shore power solutions for heavy industry.
Range said Thermo King came to them because they’re the only company with enough energy storage to be able to run a refrigerated unit for an extended period of time. While there are other companies doing electrified refrigerated trailers, Range’s trailer has a much larger 288kWh battery (since it also works as a traction battery for the trailer’s electric motor).
This means it has a lot more energy on board to run a refrigeration unit, which can draw ~5-20kW depending on several factors. Range told us that fleets have told them this would be enough energy to keep the trailer box cold for a full day while unplugged from shore power, even in hot temperatures.
And that’s a big deal, because heretofore, refrigerated units have mostly run with an additional small diesel engine. Removing that engine means less pollution, less diesel usage, more noise, less maintenance, and it also means the refrigerated unit could operate in more environments (for example, you don’t want a running engine indoors if you can avoid it – but an electric unit doesn’t have to deal with that).
Speaking of shore power, that’s what Range is working with ESL to implement. ESL creates small, modular shore power systems which are easier to install, helping fleets save on infrastructure upgrade costs. Their boxes can deliver high-powered 480V 3-phase AC charging.
Plugging into one of these would allow the Range Energy trailer to charge at up to 50kW or so, meaning a 5-6 hour charge time for the 288kWh battery.
Range has already trialed its partnership with Thermo King, in the Petaluma Egg Farm example given above. Although the ESL partnership is newer, and those will be trialed soon.
Range is targeting the end of this year, or possibly the start of next year, for its first customer deliveries.
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