PA Daily | Ethereum transaction costs drop to lowest in five years; Binance Launchpool will launch Initia (INIT)
Reprinted from panewslab
04/17/2025·13DToday's news tips:
Binance Launchpool launches Initia (INIT)
Base officially clarifies two Meme coins that it promoted in the early morning
Binance's second batch of voting coins ends, and FTT ranked first in the proportion of votes
Ethereum fees drop to their lowest level in five years as transaction volumes drop
BNB Chain announced 13 projects that won BNB AI Hack, including BINK AI, Botzilla, etc.
14,929 BTCs were unsolicited from Babylon 5 hours ago, worth $1.26 billion
Regulatory/Macro
According to the Financial Times, Binance CEO Richard Teng said the U.S. has taken a more friendly attitude towards cryptocurrencies under its President Trump leadership, including plans to establish a digital asset regulatory framework and national reserves, which is spurring other countries to take similar actions. Binance has approached many countries to help them develop a cryptocurrency regulatory framework. But he declined to disclose a list of countries that he worked with. Richard Teng said that Binance is currently helping some countries establish national strategic digital asset reserves. Nearly a quarter of Binance's 6,000 employees are engaged in compliance and will continue to invest heavily in the field.
According to Cailianshe Silicon Valley NEWS, foreign media reported that cryptocurrency internet celebrity Tiffany Fong received attention from Musk during the reporting of the downfall of the FTX exchange. As Fong released more content supporting Trump, Musk's interactions with her began to increase and followed her last summer. As part of the creator's earnings share plan, during the period when the two interacted most frequently in November last year, Fong earned $21,000 in traffic share in two weeks. About that time, Musk, who had never met before, sent a private message to Fong asking if she was interested in having a baby for him. Fong rejected the request and disclosed it to others. Musk then accused her of being cautious enough and removed her attention.
US SEC will hold its third roundtable for crypto policy on April 25 to focus on hosting issues
According to crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released details of its third roundtable for cryptocurrency policy, with the April 25 meeting focusing on custody issues, with two panel discussions – one on brokerage proprietors and wallet custody, and the other on investment consultants and investment firm custody. Members of the brokerage proprietor group include: Jason Allegrante of Fireblocks, Rachel Anderika of Anchorage Digital, Terrence Dempsey of Fidelity Investment, Mark Greenberg of crypto exchange Kraken, Veronica McGregor of Exodus, Brandon Russell of Etana Custody, Tammy Weinrib of Copper.co.
Panama Capital to accept cryptocurrency to pay taxes, licenses and fines through bank exchange
According to The Block, Panama City Mayor Mayer Mizrachi Matalon posted on the X platform on Wednesday that the Panama City Government has approved the use of cryptocurrency to pay taxes, fees, fines and licenses. Local media confirmed that the city will accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC and USDT. Mizrachi said the Panama capital has implemented this policy by working with a partner bank to convert cryptocurrencies into US dollars when payment is made without the need for new laws.
Viewpoint
Glassnode: BTC first-time buyers are soaring, while long-term holders stop increasing positions
Glassnode analyzed on X platform last night that on April 14, different investor groups had differentiated their operations against Bitcoin: the 30-day relative strength index (RSI) of first-time buyers rose to 97.9, indicating a large influx of new demand; the RSI of firm buyers dropped to 3.2, which meant that it had almost completely stopped increasing its holdings. Such behavioral differentiation often indicates the imminent occurrence of local tops.
Russian Ministry of Finance Official: Russia should have its own stablecoin
Russia should develop its own stablecoin pegged to other currencies after USDT, a senior Russian finance ministry official said on Wednesday after the USDT, a stablecoin held by a digital wallet linked to Russia, was frozen last month. Russian regulators have allowed the experimental use of cryptocurrencies in international payments, which have become more difficult due to Western sanctions. Before USDT was frozen, it became popular among Russian businesses as a payment tool. "The recent freeze has led us to think that we need to consider creating internal tools similar to USDT, which may be pegged to other currencies," said Osman Kabaloev, deputy director of the Ministry's Financial Policy Department. Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, opposes the use of cryptocurrencies in domestic payments, but she said Russian companies are actively testing international cryptocurrency payments as part of the experiment.
Powell: Banks and cryptocurrencies related rules may be "relaxed" in the future
According to The Block, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that banking related rules may be "relaxed" in the future. On Wednesday, Powell pointed out that there had been “a wave of failures and fraud” in the cryptocurrency space over the years, but the atmosphere itself is becoming more mainstream. During the event, Powell also talked about topics such as tariffs, immigration and inflation. "We have taken a pretty conservative approach to the guidance and rules imposed on banks, and other bank regulators are even more conservative. I think these rules will be relaxed. We will try to achieve this in a way that can be both safe and robust, while allowing and promoting appropriate innovation, without putting consumers at risk they don't understand, nor reducing the security and robustness of banks," Powell said on Wednesday. "Stablecoins are digital products that may have quite broad appeal and should include typical consumer protections and transparency, which is exactly what the Senate and the House are working to address," he said.
Analyst @ali_charts posted on the X platform that the TD Sequential indicator (TD Sequential) has just sent a buy signal on the Bitcoin weekly chart. If it continues to close above $86,000, it may open the door to $90,000 or even $95,000. It is reported that TD Sequential is a technical analysis tool invented by Thomas DeMark. It is mainly used to identify the turning points of market trends and help traders determine the timing of buying and selling. This indicator predicts the reversal points of market trends by analyzing the order and combination of price data, and is especially suitable for identifying signals at the top and bottom.
Project News
Binance Launchpool launches Initia (INIT)
Binance announced that it will launch its 68th Launchpool project - Initia (INIT) at 11:00 on April 24, 2025 (UTC). Users can lock BNB, FDUSD and USDC at 00:00 (UTC) on April 18, 2025 to obtain INIT airdrops, and the event lasts for 6 days. Binance will provide INIT/USDT, INIT/USDC, INIT/BNB, INIT/FDUSD and INIT/TRY trading pairs. The total supply of INIT is 1 billion pieces, of which 3% (30 million pieces) are used for Launchpool rewards. In addition, an additional 10 million INITs will be allocated in batches after they are on the spot, and another 20 million will be allocated 6 months after they are on the market. The initial circulation supply is 148,750,000 INITs.
Base officially clarifies two Meme coins that it promoted in the early morning
At 3:12 am today Beijing time, Base officially released the Meme coin "Base is for everyone" on the Zora platform. The market value once rose to US$15 million, and its current market value is about US$6.4 million. Then, at 4:30, the second Meme coin called "Base @ FarCon 2025" was launched, with a current market value of US$188,800. Base officials later issued a statement saying that the move aims to encourage content to be put on the chain and promote the development of on-chain culture, emphasizing that "Base has never sold these tokens, and these tokens are not official brand tokens for Base, Coinbase or any related products." Officials say this is a public experiment that will continue to explore how cultural content is expressed on a chain.
Binance's second batch of voting coins ends, and FTT ranked first in the proportion of votes
According to official news, Binance's second batch of voting coin deposit activities ended at 7:59 today. Among them, the top five votes were FTT (11.1%), ZEC (8.6%), JASMY (8.6%), GPS (8.2%) and PDA (7.6%). According to Binance, the voting results will not be the only factor in deciding to finalize the removal decision. Monitoring of the project is still under evaluation and the final decision will be made by Binance in accordance with our official review process and standards. In addition, the timetable for removal will depend on Binance's procedures.
BNB Chain announced 13 projects that won BNB AI Hack, including BINK AI, Botzilla, etc.
BNB Chain announced 13 projects that won the BNB AI Hack program in the first quarter of 2025, including BINK AI, Botzilla, Tutorial Agent, Tokrio, Polycruz, WORLD3 Protocol, Sentism AI, iDos Games, Boomie, VitaminAI, Stitch AI, Tearline and Kudo. The winning team received $50,000 in startup capital, BNB Chain support and marketing resources. As 2025 advances, more projects will be supported and announced. Among them, Tutorial Agent has been listed on more than 30 centralized exchanges including Binance, Bitget, KuCoin, Gate.io. Previous news, BNB Chain launched AI Hackathon to promote the integration of AI and blockchain.
According to official news, Layer1 blockchain Shardeum announced that it will conduct TGE (token generation activity) on May 5, and will soon have more detailed information on airdrops, sales allocations and listing of SHM tokens.
Ethereum fees drop to their lowest level in five years as transaction volumes drop
According to Cointelegraph, on-chain analytics platform Santiment, transaction costs on the Ethereum network have fallen to their lowest level in five years as activity on the blockchain is at a low point. Brian Quinlivan, director of marketing at Santiment, said the Ethereum network fee is currently about $0.168 per transaction, and while the fees are reduced, the number of people sending ETH and interacting with smart contracts has also decreased. When many people use Ethereum, users bid for higher fees to make their transactions confirmed faster, which drives up the average cost, and when the number of traders decreases, users don’t need to bid for too high fees. Therefore, the average cost will drop. This is essentially a supply and demand system. Quinlivan analyzed that from a trading perspective, low fees may hinder the price rebound; however, traders seem to be patiently waiting for the global economic uncertainty to pass before increasing the frequency of Ethereum and altcoins trading.
Ai16z founder Shaw explained to his "buy tokens called FUN on pump.fun": "The official auto.fun token has not been launched yet, nor has there been any related plans. The tokens purchased are just for the purpose of building momentum. I will send my supply to the DAO, and I think we will keep it, you can do CTO or anything else for it." Shaw then deleted the tweet and posted it: "All destroyed."
Important data
14,929 BTCs were unsolicited from Babylon 5 hours ago, worth $1.26 billion
According to Lookonchain monitoring, about 5 hours ago, 14,929 BTC (worth $1.26 billion) were unsolicited from Babylon.
GSR may be a $WCT market maker, depositing 4 million WCTs into Binance 6 hours ago
According to The Data Nerd monitors, GSR may be a market maker for $WCT. Six hours ago, GSR deposited $4 million in Binance, which is approximately $1.61 million. Today, a total of 7 million $WCT, or approximately $3.46 million, has been deposited into Binance. Previous news, GSR Markets and Flow Traders are two major market makers, WCT, and market maker tokens account for 8% of the initial circulation.
According to Deribit official news, more than US$2.25 billion of crypto options will expire tomorrow at 16:00 Beijing time. Among them, the nominal value of Bitcoin options is US$1.98 billion, the Put/Call ratio is 0.92, and the maximum pain point price is US$82,000. The nominal value of Ethereum options is US$271 million, the Put/Call ratio is 0.88, and the maximum pain point price is US$1,600.
According to BeInCrypto, according to CoinGecko's quarterly report, the total market value of cryptocurrencies fell sharply by 18.6% in the first quarter of 2025, with losses as high as $633.5 billion. As the token price declines, investor activity has decreased significantly, and daily trading volume has dropped by 27.3% month-on-month compared with the end of 2024. Among them, the spot trading volume of centralized exchanges fell by 16.3%. CoinGecko analyzed that this is at least partly related to the hacking of Bybit exchanges. In the first quarter of 2025, Bitcoin's market dominance increased, accounting for 59.1% of the total market value of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has never reached such a high market share since 2021, showing its stability relative to other cryptocurrencies. However, Bitcoin price also fell 11.8%, underperforming gold and U.S. Treasury bonds. The report also shows that other cryptocurrencies are losing more severely. All the gains accumulated by Ethereum in 2024 disappeared in the first quarter of 2025, and the total lock-in value (TVL) of multi-chain DeFi also fell by 27.5%.
According to SoSoValue data, yesterday (April 16 Eastern Time) Bitcoin spot ETFs had a total net outflow of US$170 million. Yesterday, the Bitcoin spot ETF with the largest single-day net inflow was BlackRock Bitcoin ETF IBIT, with a single-day net inflow of US$30.5803 million. Currently, the total historical net inflow of IBIT has reached US$39.673 billion. The second is Bitwise ETF BITB, with a single-day net inflow of US$12.8131 million. Currently, the total historical net inflow of BITB has reached US$1.976 billion. Yesterday, the Bitcoin spot ETF with the largest net outflows in a single day was Fidelity Bitcoin ETF FBTC, with a net outflow of US$114 million in a single day. Currently, the total net inflow of FBTC in history reached US$11.256 billion. As of press time, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETF was US$93.65 billion, the net asset ratio of ETF (market value compared to the total market value of Bitcoin) reached 5.6%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached US$35.267 billion.
Family offices have almost five times the allocation share of spot Ethereum ETP than Bitcoin
According to Cryptoslate, there are differences between family offices and professional investors in allocating spot Ethereum and Bitcoin ETP, and family offices prefer Ethereum. According to Bitwise as of December 31, 2024, the AUM of family offices and trusts allocated spot Ethereum ETP is 0.62%, and the spot Bitcoin ETP is only 0.13%, and the Ethereum allocation share is almost five times that of Bitcoin (non-absolute value). In terms of institutional allocation, hedge funds account for 36.97% of Bitcoin ETP, investment consultants account for 33.11%, brokerage companies account for 14.91%. The total allocation of the three plus small contributors such as banks exceeds 85%. The ownership distribution of Ethereum ETP is more balanced, with brokerage firms, investment consultants, and hedge funds accounting for 25.25%, 29.79%, and 24.74%, respectively, and the "other" category accounting for 16.96%. Banks and pension funds have moderate allocations to Bitcoin and Ethereum products. The AUM ratios of the two in Bitcoin ETP are 1.27% and 1.02% respectively, while those in Ethereum ETP are 0.62% and 0.90% respectively. Private equity firms have limited participation, with the ratio of Bitcoin and Ethereum allocations to 2.90% and 1.11% respectively. The largest holders of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETP are also different. Millennium Management ranked first with $4.42 billion in Bitcoin ETP holdings, followed by Brevan Howard, Jane Street and Goldman Sachs. In the Ethereum field, Goldman Sachs leads with $477 million, Jane Street is $450 million, and Millennium Management is $182 million. Institutions such as Jane Street, DE Shaw and Brevan Howard appeared on both lists, showing their extensive participation in cryptocurrency ETP.
Financing
Hana Network, which focuses on "hyper-leisure finance", announced that it has completed a total financing of US$6 million. In the recent No More CEX round, core members of the L1/L2 project and some KOLs participated. In addition, Hanafuda announced that its mainnet phases 2 and 3 are expected to be launched in the next few months. According to reports, Hana Network says it is incubated by Yzi Labs and is powered by Hyperliquid. Hana Network launched Hana Gateway in January 2024, with a trustless up and down channel for crypto assets. It is currently focusing on the development of "hyper-leisure finance" and realizes user-led distribution through social platforms, such as attention incentives, social rewards and P2P financing.
Rekord AG, a blockchain-based data verification platform, completed a seed round of financing of CHF 4.5 million (about US$5.51 million), which investors did not disclose. According to reports, Rekord AG is a Swiss-based data infrastructure company focusing on blockchain-enabled data verification and integrity solutions.
Embr Labs, an application development team with Meme as the core in Initia ecosystem, announced that it has completed a US$1.8 million Pre-seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Robot Ventures and Lattice Fund, with TempleDAO and individual investor Daryl Lau and others participating in the investment. According to reports, Embr.fun developed by Embr Labs is an application chain with Meme as the core built on Initia Interwoven Stack. It integrates gamified experience and allows users to publish, fight and grow their Meme assets in a competitive environment.
According to official news, decentralized AI platform ORO AI announced that it had completed a $6 million seed round of financing, led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX) and Delphi Ventures, and participated by Ocular VC, Orange DAO, NEAR Protocol and 0G Labs. According to reports, ORO is a decentralized AI platform designed to unlock high-quality and private data for advanced AI models. ORO leverages blockchain technology to facilitate secure and licensed data sharing, enabling AI developers to train models on quality data sets while protecting data privacy.
DeFi protocol Neutrl completes a $5 million seed round, led by STIX and Accomplice
DeFi protocol Neutrl completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by STIX and Accomplice, with Amber Group, SCB Limited, Figment Capital and Nascent. Neutrl launches the stablecoin NUSD, which purchases locked altcoins at a discount through the OTC market and conducts perpetual contract hedging to achieve hedging returns. The strategy aims to popularize hedge fund-level arbitrage to mass investors, with a target market size of US$10 billion.
Bitcoin mining machine Auradine completes US$153 million Series C financing, led by StepStone Group
US Bitcoin mining machine maker Auradine completed a US$153 million Series C financing, of which US$138 million was equity financing and US$15 million was risky debt. This round was led by StepStone Group, with Samsung, Qualcomm, Premji Invest and others participating. Auradine plans to expand its core mining machine business and establish a new AI infrastructure division, AuraLinks AI, with annual revenue of US$150 million and serving more than 40 data center customers.
Resolv Labs completes $10 million seed round, led by Cyber.Fund and Maven11
Resolv Labs, behind the DeFi protocol Resolv, announced that it has completed a $10 million seed round of financing, led by Cyber.Fund and Maven11, with investments including Coinbase Ventures, Susquehanna subsidiary SCB Limited, Arrington Capital, Gumi Cryptos, NoLimit Holdings, Robot Ventures, Animoca Ventures and others. Resolv focuses on the USR, a profit-based stablecoin, and adopts a hierarchical structure of Delta's neutral strategy, so that holders can get stable returns. Currently, the protocol TVL is US$450 million, and the new funds will be used to expand BTC-related strategies and multi-chain deployment.
Crypto investment startup Glider announced that it had completed a $4 million financing led by a16z, with investors including Coinbase Ventures, Pivot Global, Uniswap Ventures and GSR. Glider is committed to combining AI and DeFi to provide users with automated and non-custodial personalized crypto asset allocation solutions. The product is still in the testing phase and is expected to be launched in the next few months. The company will also join the a16z crypto accelerator project in San Francisco.
Bloomberg: Galaxy Ventures fund has exceeded its $150 million fundraising target
According to Bloomberg, people familiar with the matter revealed that Michael Novogratz's Galaxy Ventures Fund I LP has exceeded its $150 million fundraising target and will build a portfolio of about 30 investments. The fund focuses on investing in early-stage startups, especially in payments and stablecoins, and is expected to complete fundraising by the end of June, with a fundraising amount of between $175 million and $180 million. The limited partners of the new fund are mainly family offices and high net worth individuals. Galaxy itself also invested in the fund. Galaxy recently obtained a direct listing license on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and the transaction is expected to take place after a special shareholder meeting in May.
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