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Hi! Eric here.

The northern hemisphere may be enjoying the first signs of spring, but Coinbase warns that the chill of a crypto winter may already be upon us.

In a research note this week, David Duong, the crypto exchange’s global head of research, laid out a stark warning that a bear market has its claws firmly around crypto — and will keep its grip firm for the foreseeable future.

Most metrics point in that direction. Bitcoin has fallen about 20% since its January record, and its average price of the past 200 days has dropped.

While venture capital investments picked up in the first quarter of 2025, the trend is still about 50% below the levels in the 2021 to 2022 cycle, Duong said.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Back in the olden days of November, Donald Trump was elected to be the 47th US president. He ran on a pro-crypto platform and his campaign was fuelled by almost $200 million in donations from the crypto lobby to influence the vote.

As his January inauguration approached, the crypto lobby expected to cash in on the promises Trump had made on the campaign trail, setting the stage for a new bull run.

True, Trump has delivered on some of those promises.

He has freed Ross Ulbricht, the convicted Silk Road proprietor, moved to launch a strategic Bitcoin reserve, and ended the Biden administration’s crypto crackdown with a smattering of executive orders and key appointments.

Yet, the White House has also upended global financial markets with an aggressive tariff regime and increased the chances of a recession, say analysts.

Risk-on assets such as tech stocks and cryptocurrencies have felt the brunt of those tariffs.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index is down about 16% since its January high, and the crypto market has lost almost 28%, or $1 trillion, of its total value in the same period.

Things are looking grim.

For Duong’s part, he cautions traders to take “a defensive stance” over the next few months.

The silver lining? He also expects things to improve by the third quarter.

Maybe.

We’ll see.

Andrew Flanagan and Edward Robinson dig into Galaxy Digital’s IPO filing to find out why a seven year-old crypto company with 520 employees said it has a bigger revenue than Netflix, Visa and Starbucks. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. Not really.

The world’s biggest altcoin is in a bit of a funk despite having fixed some of its key problems. Liam Kelly finds out why.

Investors are banking on the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates before the end of June, and that could be a boon for Bitcoin, Kyle Baird reports.

Post of the Week

Investment giant BlackRock has vacuumed up over $48 billion in Bitcoin since launching its spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund last year, making it one of the biggest holders of the digital asset in the world.