Monthly Market Roundup: April 2024
Disclaimer: Author holds ETH, SOL, TIA & PYTH and may have intra-day/week positions and/or airdrop allocations in other coins mentioned in the article. Views and opinions are that of the author alone and do not represent the views or opinions of Etherscan. None of this is financial advice. Always do your own research before aping.
Note: This is the fourth ever Monthly Market Roundup so we’re keen to get feedback. We’d really appreciate you answering a few questions in this form.
Halvening Chopsolidation
After an incredible 7 months of up-only since September last year, BTC closed April red at $60,622 — about $500 lower than March open — painting a bearish engulfing pattern. One could also argue for a Swing Failure Pattern (SFP), with price having swept the previous cycle high of $69,000, only to close back below the following month. Unfortunately for us, these are both reversal patterns, suggesting a potential local top.
A close in May above March open at $61,179 would form a bullish hammer above a key level, providing some confidence for a retest of highs in the coming months. On the downside, we see confluence of support in the 0.5–0.618 retracement pocket of the previous cycle high to current cycle low. 1M key support lies around the mid of this $42,230 — $48,537 range, with the 10 and 20 EMA’s lying at the range extremes.
The 1W chart shows us a closer confluence of support ~$50–52k where a consolidation orderblock (green box), 30 EMA and 0.382 retracement of current cycle low to high overlap.
Taking a daily view, we see that BTC continued to trade within the range established in March, with the midpoint continuing to act as a key directional pivot throughout the period.
As the primary narrative driver of this cycle, it’s no surprise to see a correlation between periods of Spot ETF net outflows (days with red vertical lines) and downtrends, while periods of net inflows (days with green vertical lines) are seen in conjunction with uptrends.
It was the first month since inception that there were more net outflow days (13) than inflow days (9), and also the first month of net outflows at -$345mn. More notably, the first day of May — which finally caused the definitive breakdown from this 2-month range — was the highest single day net outflow since inception at -$563.7mn with all 10 ETF’s reporting net outflows for the first time. For a bit of perspective though, March net inflows were +$4.64bn.
In related news, on the last day of April, 6 Bitcoin and Ether Spot ETF’s launched in Hong Kong, with an aggregate volume of $11mn, far below the expected $100mn as well as the $845.5m of US Spot BTC ETF’s on the January 11th launch day.
Bitcoin Halving and Runes
On April 20th, at block 840,000, Bitcoin’s fourth halving smoothly took place with block rewards reduced from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC. At the same time, the developer behind BTC Ordinals launched Runes, a new fungible token standard on Bitcoin.
Despite high levels of hype at launch with Runes accounting for 73.5% of all transactions and 70.1% of all fees on the Bitcoin network, we’ve seen a steady downtrend since, with the numbers dropping to 22.8% and 14.1% respectively by the end of the month.
Ethereum Lagging
Once again, ETH underperformed BTC, with the ratio breaking and closing convincingly below the key weekly support level that had been held since October last year. The underperformance is also visible in the ETHUSD chart, as the bearish engulfing candle is significantly more pronounced than BTC’s. Like with BTC, we’d be looking for a March open reclaim to be confident of testing highs — until then this level likely caps upside.
Airdrop Stimmis
April showed us that while airdrop season is still in full swing, we’re perhaps reaching some degree of saturation with many tokens displaying bearish price action post-listing. On Solana, we saw the launch of tokens from Kamino, Tensor and Wormhole — all of which traded down 60–80% from Aevo or Whales pre-launch prices within a week, with none showing significant recovery to date. Drift, the leading perpetual futures DEX on Solana, also launched their airdrop eligibility checker, with the Token Generation Event (TGE) expected sometime in May. Interestingly, Drift has incorporated a new design whereby users will get double their allocation if they wait 6hrs to claim once the claim function goes live.
In Ethereum land, we saw mainnet launches of Eigenlayer and EigenDA, as well as the announcement of arguably the most anticipated token this cycle — $EIGEN. The announcement was met with criticism for reasons related to a) low allocations to smaller users, b) the multi-month non-transferable period, c) exclusion of certain jurisdictions and VPN users despite having allowed deposits, d) team and early investor allocations exceeding half of the token supply with only a 1 year cliff and 2 year vesting period, and finally e) poor communication regarding distribution to users who deployed LRTs into DeFi applications such as Pendle and Gearbox. However, Eigenlayer was quick to provide clarifications and updates incorporating community feedback. They also confirmed that there is a second season which has been running since the first season snapshot on March 15th, although it’s unclear when season 2 will conclude.
Renzo — the second largest liquid restaking protocol — announced their token airdrop, which was also met with criticism due to misleading token allocation pie chart and prioritisation of Binance Launchpool participants ahead of onchain stakers, which in turn caused a temporary depeg of it’s LRT ezETH and subsequently liquidations on leveraged protocols including Gearbox and Morpho where ezETH was deployed in leveraged strategies.
Other notable airdrop announcements include Omni Network, Ethena Season 2 and the Aethir/Ionet cross-project airdrop.
Notable Industry Headlines
- Tether reports $4.52bn in profits for Q1 ’24, ~$400m more than Goldman Sachs.
- After 6 years, Stripe will accept crypto payments again, starting with USDC initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon.
- Sui Network announce handheld gaming device in collaboration with Playtron.
Notable Raises and Sales
- Monad announces $225mn funding round led by Paradigm.
- Berachain announces $100m Series B led by Brevan Howard and Framework.
- Zeus Network announces $8m raise led by Mechanism.
- MilkyWay announces $5m seed round including Polychain and Binance Labs.
Regulatory Highlights
- CZ sentenced to 4-months in prison for money-laundering violations
- Roger Ver arrested for tax evasion.
- SEC Lawyers resign after court sanction for abuse of power.
- Uniswap receives wells notice from SEC.
- Consensys sues the SEC for regulatory overreach.
- Samourai Wallet founders charged with money laundering.
Bid you good fortune and may your candles be evergreen.
