This week: Paul Atkins sworn in, dinner for TRUMP whales, and Zora under fire

Paul Atkins was sworn in as the new chair of the SEC, Donald Trump announced a dinner for TRUMP whales, the community criticised Zora’s airdrop, and other events rounded out the week.

“Conciliatory signals” and the return of enthusiasm

Bitcoin began the week at $86,600. During the day the price tested start-of-month levels above $87,000.

The rally in the bellwether coincided with gold hitting a new high of $3389 per troy ounce. Futures on major US stock indices continued to fall.

“The breakout of bitcoin above $87,000 was driven by rising global liquidity associated with an expanding money supply and the resumption of institutional interest, underscored by signals from [Strategy] about further increasing its holdings and a shrinking available supply,” Kronos Research analyst Dominic John told The Block.

According to CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost, as of April 21 open interest (OI) in bitcoin perpetuals soared by 17.4%.

Comparable jumps of 16% and 15% were seen during the strong bull phase in November–December 2024. At that time, derivatives activity reinforced the positive trend in spot, the specialist noted.

Later, Glassnode analysts observed that over the past day OI in bitcoin futures rose by $2.4bn to $38.6bn, the highest since March. Spot volumes in the first cryptocurrency tripled from $2.9bn to $8bn.

On April 22 the price crossed $90,000 for the first time since early March. The Fear and Greed Index moved into “neutral” for the first time in a month.

According to analyst Miles Deutscher, one driver was the largest influx of new whale investors in bitcoin’s history.

We’re currently witnessing the largest increase in new whales in $BTC history.

Whales are stacking BTC at a record pace. pic.twitter.com/XYM8bGPuFI

— Miles Deutscher (@milesdeutscher) April 21, 2025

Another notable development was the record gap between bitcoin’s market capitalisation and the combined market value of altcoins. This underscores the bellwether’s strengthening grip on the market, said WeRate co-founder Quinten François.

Biggest gap between Bitcoin and altcoins EVER ? pic.twitter.com/tDIcZlTTzT

— Quinten | 048.eth (@QuintenFrancois) April 22, 2025

On April 23, amid conciliatory remarks by US President Donald Trump about tariffs and the head of the Fed, the leading cryptocurrency cleared $94,000.

The comments sparked enthusiasm in equities and catalysed further gains in bitcoin, which had settled above $90,000 the previous day.

An additional factor was short liquidations. From April 22 to 23, forced closures across crypto totalled $632.6m, including $557.2m in shorts.

A total of 166,792 traders were liquidated. Roughly half of the liquidations fell on bitcoin ($314.9m).

Amid Trump’s shift in tone, aggregate open positions rose 10% to $17.83bn.

The pace was the fastest since March 2, when Trump mentioned XRP, ADA and SOL as potential candidates for inclusion in a crypto reserve alongside bitcoin and Ethereum.

On April 24 the price pulled back to $92,000, but by day’s end had returned to $94,000.

CryptoQuant contributor oinonen_t noted that bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 declined markedly.

“The correlation with the S&P 500, which reached 0.88 at the end of 2024, has fallen to 0.77. A similar trend is observed with the Nasdaq Composite — from 0.91 in January the metric has dropped to 0.83,” the expert stated.

The analyst also flagged a rising correlation between bitcoin and gold — since the start of the month the coefficient has increased from -0.62 to -0.31. The two assets “share the attribute of scarcity, though the former is a more limited resource”.

On April 25 the chart printed a weekly high above $95,400. Over the following days the price drifted lower, save for a local peak around $95,000 on the night of April 27.

At the time of writing bitcoin trades at $94,000, up 10.5% on the week.

Ethereum opened the week at $1600. On April 21 the price reached $1647, but slipped below $1600 by the close of the day.

On April 22 the rally continued. In a day the price rose 11.7% — from $1568 to $1751. The next day the chart stabilised around $1800.

On April 24 the price dipped to $1736, then resumed a gradual climb.

On the night of April 27 the chart hit a weekly high above $1840.

At the time of writing Ethereum changes hands at $1797, up 12.3% on the week.

Over the past seven days all assets in the top ten by market cap posted gains.

Beyond BTC and ETH, the biggest moves came from Dogecoin (+17%), ADA (+13.5%) and SOL (+9%).

Total crypto market capitalisation rose 10.5% to $3.07 trillion.

Paul Atkins takes charge at the SEC

On April 21 Paul Atkins was sworn in as the new chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

US President Donald Trump nominated him in December 2024. Many in the crypto industry deemed him a good fit, given his experience in the field.

On April 10 the Senate voted to confirm Atkins. Fifty-two senators backed him, 44 voted against and four did not take part.

The new chair named the creation of a clear and comprehensible regulatory framework for digital assets as his priority. He stressed a focus on greater market transparency and stronger investor protection.

The appointment marks a shift in the SEC’s course. His approach differs from that of former chair Gary Gensler, who often relied on “regulation by enforcement”.

Before confirmation, the incoming chair served on the board of the non-profit The Digital Chamber. The group focuses on promoting and lobbying for blockchain, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in US policy circles.

From 2002 to 2008 Atkins was an SEC commissioner, where, according to Trump, he “advocated forcefully for transparency and investor protection”.

The US president will host a dinner for TRUMP whales

US President Donald Trump announced a gala dinner for the 220 largest holders of the memecoin TRUMP. The event will take place on May 22 at his private golf club in Washington.

Participants can increase their chances of an invitation by holding coins from April 23 to May 12. The more TRUMP on the account, the higher the odds of making the dinner. A leaderboard has been posted on the project’s website.

Of the 220 invitees, the 15 largest holders will be able to attend an “exclusive reception” before dinner with Trump and receive a “VIP tour of the White House”.

Democratic US Senator from Georgia Jon Ossoff called the event “beyond any prior standards for impeachment”.

“When the sitting president of the United States sells access for what is in effect payments directly to him, there is no doubt that this rises to the level of an impeachable offense,” the senator said.

Ossoff said he fully supports the idea of impeachment, but considers it impossible given the current composition of the House of Representatives, which is responsible for such decisions.

On the announcement, TRUMP’s price rose 54% within hours, approaching $14.5.

What to talk about with friends?

• Charles Hoskinson predicted Ethereum’s demise within 10–15 years.
• An NFT project planned the purchase of a nuclear bunker for a DAO.
• Pavel Durov denied handing over personal chats on Telegram to authorities.
• Peter Schiff drew a wave of criticism for comparing gold with money.

Zora’s airdrop draws fire from the community

On April 20 the social NFT platform for content monetisation Zora announced the issuance of 10bn ZORA tokens on the Base L2 network. Launch was slated for April 23.

On the day, users began receiving ZORA without prior warning. Community members criticised the platform for the lack of official communications.

Trading began without an announcement, and access to ZORA was available only to advanced users directly from the smart contract address on Base. Newcomers struggled — the process proved more complicated than typical airdrops.

Exchanges Binance, Bitget and Bybit received ZORA “in the millions of dollars” to ensure efficient trading. Decentralised exchange Hyperliquid launched leveraged options.

According to Arkham Intelligence, turnover on and off the platform totalled around $6m.

The ability to claim tokens before the official TGE may have created an unfair advantage for early users, sparking criticism.

One X user called the launch “a masterclass in deception” due to Zora’s silence. He also pointed to promotion of the platform by Base creator Jesse Pollak.

According to BitOK, the Zora team sent almost the entire drop to its own wallets.

Some of these addresses were linked to the Bybit and KuCoin exchanges, raising suspicions of corruption in the allocation. Wallets with more than 100m ZORA were also observed.

“They definitely appropriated part of the coins and definitely sold before the announcement,” — said to ForkLog BitOK founder Dmitry Machikhin.

He stressed that Zora representatives initially owned 65% of the total token allocation. According to him, his team will conduct an independent investigation and gather evidence supporting their culpability.

According to drop-hunter Anton ProfiT, the Zora team promised automatic distribution before listing, but within the first 2.5 hours began selling tokens on an exchange “at a good price”. Only after that did representatives “quietly open a portal to claim tokens”.

Zora promoted a referral programme but banned the most active users for it, Anton ProfiT added.

He said his wallet showed an allocation of 34m ZORA. After a “30-fold cut”, the drop-hunter was due more than 1m tokens. However, he was blocked “for excessive activity”.

“Zora is not Web3. It is a centralized scam disguised as decentralization” — concluded Anton ProfiT.

At the time of writing ZORA trades at $0.0169 — 57% below its $0.04 peak.

Also on ForkLog:

• QCP experts said bitcoin’s role as a safe-haven asset is strengthening.
• Ethereum Foundation will focus on L1 scaling and improving UX.
• WazirX will resume operations after a $235m hack.
• The Fed scrapped anti-crypto guidance for banks.

Ethereum to test a higher gas limit

Ethereum developers are considering more than a fourfold increase in the network’s gas limit as a key feature of the planned Fusaka hard fork.

The proposal presented during an ACDE call, EIP-9678, provides for testing the parameter with an upper bound of 150m units. In February, Ethereum validators backed raising the gas limit from 30m. According to Ycharts, the average has risen by ~20% to 35.95m.

“To align client default settings and keep this a priority, we drafted an EIP. It’s a bit unorthodox, but not unprecedented (see EIP-7840). We plan to merge it early next week ahead of the upcoming ACDE,” core developer Tim Beiko commented.

The proposal will require changes to other EIPs for Fusaka, but the scope of the hard fork will not change, he noted.

On the need to raise the gas limit, developers led by Sofia Gold noted strong interest in L1 execution-layer scaling. But without introducing new features, work in this direction would require client teams to spend time finding and fixing bugs. Hence it made sense to formalise it as an EIP and include it in the hard fork, they added.

On May 7 an upgrade to is scheduled Pectra. Fusaka activation is tentatively expected at the end of 2025.

What else to read?

In our new piece we examined how bitcoin miners are adapting to a new era of uncertainty and shrinking margins.

We revisited the the biography of the creator of the biggest scam in crypto history, reconstructed the timeline of her escape and tried to understand what happened to her.

We spoke with Shard’s head of analytics, Fedor Ivanov, about why users are leaving centralised exchanges and whether their decentralised rivals can seize the initiative.

In our regular digest we compiled the week’s main events in cybersecurity.