CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 1952.02, up 2.6% (+49.88) since 4 p.m. ET on Friday.
Eighteen of 20 assets is trading higher.
Leaders: ETH (+4.2%) and LINK (+4.1%).
Laggards: APT (-4.1%) and BCH (-1.7%).
The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.
Prospects of interest rate rises are no longer just the U.S. story. Traders are now betting the Bank of Japan (BoJ) could tighten too as the resource-scarce nation faces inflation risks from the ongoing Iran war.
Traders see a roughly 69% chance of the BoJ raising its benchmark borrowing cost at the April 28 meeting, according to data tracked by Bloomberg. Action in options tied to U.S. interest rates shows traders expect the Fed to raise borrowing costs in the coming weeks.
BoJ’s policy meeting summary released Monday showed one member calling for a bigger rate hike in response to the conflict in the Middle East and its inflationary impact on Japanese society. Comments also noted that any move would factor in incoming economic data and anecdotal signals from the market.
The Fed’s tightening is a well-known headwind for risk assets, including bitcoin. The Bank of Japan can be just as impactful. Years of ultra-low rates encouraged traders to borrow in yen and invest in higher-yielding markets (the so-called carry trade), keeping borrowing costs suppressed globally and greasing rallies in risk assets.
So, a shift toward tighter policy in Tokyo could reverse these flows, sending ripples across markets and potentially deepening the crypto bear market. The BoJ has already raised its interest rate to 0.75% from -0.1% over the past two years while simultaneously ending its massive asset purchase program. Yet, rates in Japan remain significantly lower than the 3.5% seen in the U.S.
The bank, therefore, has plenty of room to hike if the Iran crisis worsens, potentially driving higher energy prices and imported inflation in Japan and other oil-dependent countries.
Hiking rates, however, will be a challenging task given Japan’s strained fiscal situation. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio stands at a staggering 240%, meaning higher rates could sharply increase borrowing costs and strain government finances.
Economists have said that Japan is caught between a rock and a hard place. If it hikes rates and allows government bond yields to rise, it could put Japan’s debt sustainability at risk. If it keeps rates low, the yen will likely depreciate significantly, adding to inflation concerns.
Strains are already evident in the FX market. The Japanese yen continues to weaken and is currently just around 160 per U.S. dollar, its weakest level since mid-2024. The JPY has depreciated by 54% since 2021.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance continues to expand its spot market trading options. According to the latest announcement from the exchange, a number of new trading pairs will become available on the platform on March 31, 2026, at 4:00 PM.
The announcement stated that the trading pairs Aptos (APT/U), Ethena (ENA/U), Fetch.ai (FET/U), $NIGHT ($NIGHT/U), $TRUMP ($TRUMP/U and $TRUMP/USD1), and Worldcoin ($WLD/U) will be listed. This step will allow users to trade in a wider range of assets.
Binance also announced that it will simultaneously launch its spot algorithmic trading bot services for these newly listed trading pairs. This will allow users to create automated trading strategies and take advantage of market opportunities more effectively.
Experts say that adding new trading pairs can increase the trading volume of the related assets and raise price volatility in the short term. In particular, the support of popular projects like $TRUMP and $WLD with these new pairs is considered among the developments that could increase investor interest.
On the other hand, Binance’s move aims to strengthen liquidity on the platform and improve the user experience. With increasing competition in the cryptocurrency market, the variety of products and services offered by exchanges is also observed to be rapidly expanding.
*This is not investment advice.
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The bitcoin market has been stuck in a rut for over a month, and investors chasing yields may be partly to blame.
Since mid-February, $BTC has traded in a range centred on $70,000. Some observers say counteracting forces have been at play. The Iran war-led haven demand has been supporting $BTC around $65,000, while rising U.S. Treasury yields have been holding back big gains beyond $75,000.
But another factor appears to have been quietly keeping bitcoin trapped in its range, and it’s tied to investors using call options to generate additional yield on top of their spot market holdings.
“Throughout Q1, institutional participants have been systematically overwriting calls at higher strikes to harvest premium in a down/sideways market. That activity transferred significant gamma exposure to dealers, who have been hedging by buying into dips and selling into rallies to maintain delta neutrality,” James Harris, CEO at Tesseract, the MiCA-licensed, multi-strategy digital asset manager.
Options are derivative contracts that give you the right to buy or sell the underlying asset, in this case, $BTC, at a preset price at a later date. A call option gives the right to buy and represents a bullish market bet. A put option offers protection against price slides in $BTC.
Think of it like reserving a concert ticket today for a small fee. You can buy it later at the reserved price, even if the ticket goes up, or sell your reservation to someone else for a profit. The ticket seller, meanwhile, keeps the small fee.
That’s essentially what traders have been doing—they’ve become the ticket sellers. By selling call options, they collect premiums (the fee) while covering the call buyer on potential $BTC price rallies. And they do this against their existing bitcoin holdings. That’s called the covered call strategy, a way of generating additional yield on top of spot holdings.
Now you might be wondering: what does this have to do with bitcoin’s range play? The answer lies in knowing that traders have been shorting, or selling, these calls to market makers – the firms that take the other side of these option trades.
By selling these calls, traders have left market makers with a position called positive gamma, which essentially means the market makers are forced to buy $BTC as prices fall and sell $BTC as prices rise to stay hedged. The result? A range-bound price action.
In other words, yield hunting by investors has been indirectly influencing market inflows in ways that limit price swings.
This also explains the decline in the bitcoin 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, which stands in contrast to spikes in similar indices tied to equities, bonds and oil. The BVIV has declined 5% to 56% this month.
“The effect has been a mechanical suppression of realised volatility — the DVOL index has compressed by roughly six points this week despite the macro backdrop,” Harris said.
BNP Paribas, France’s second-largest bank, announced it is expanding its services for crypto assets, offering new investment products to its retail clients. The bank has made a total of six exchange-traded notes (ETNs) focused on Bitcoin and Ethereum available to retail investors.
These ETN products allow investors to be exposed to Bitcoin and Ethereum price movements through traditional financial infrastructure without directly purchasing crypto assets. This structure is seen as a significant alternative, especially for investors who want to participate in the crypto market indirectly and prefer regulated financial products.
BNP Paribas announced that the new products will initially be offered to retail customers in France, with plans to expand them to high-net-worth (VIP) clients outside of France in the future. This move is seen as part of the bank’s strategic expansion in the digital asset space.
Experts say that traditional financial institutions offering crypto-asset-based products is increasing institutional adoption in the sector and contributing to market maturity. These types of products are expected to become more widespread, particularly in Europe, as the regulatory framework becomes clearer.
BNP Paribas’s move demonstrates continued interest in crypto assets within the banking sector, while also expanding investors’ access to alternative asset classes.
*This is not investment advice.
A U.S. district court has allowed a class action lawsuit against Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang to proceed following investor claims that over $1 billion of the company’s crypto revenue was actually hidden in its gaming offering.
The tech giant also failed to prove that its statements on crypto mining revenue did not affect the firm’s stock price.
A Wednesday filing suggests that during the 2017-2018 crypto boom, Nvidia misled investors by having them believe they were buying its gaming GPUs. However, the sales were actually tied to the crypto market, and once prices began falling, the firm was left with a lot of unsold inventory that caused its stock price to plummet.
Plaintiffs first sued the company in 2018, alleging that it had not disclosed around $1.3 billion of the total revenue made from these sales and that Huang had downplayed the actual demand. At the time, the CEO appeared in several interviews claiming that the firm’s crypto-related demand was “small.” He also insisted the gaming division was its core business and that crypto simply provided “an extra bit of juice.”
Additionally, the company launched a special crypto SKU chip whose sales were reported under its mining revenue segment. Plaintiffs argue that this was done to convince investors that Nvidia’s gaming business was separate from its mining operations.
According to the filings, the company’s defense was based on the argument that these statements were not made with the intention of influencing investors and, therefore, had no price impact. However, Judge Gilliam Jr. concluded that Nvidia failed to prove this, pointing to an internal email from one of the firm’s executives as evidence.
“They expressed the view that its stock price remained high because of those earlier statements, and the court cannot conclude that there was no price impact in the face of such evidence.”
As a result, the court ruled that the class action was allowed to proceed and scheduled a hearing for April 21.
Things took a turn in 2018 when the crypto market began to weaken. In August, Nvidia announced that it had lowered its revenue and admitted to miners buying its gaming GPUs. The company also shared that its inventory had grown by 36%.
Reacting to the news, Nvidia’s stock price fell by 4.9%. The tech giant later issued another revenue cut announcement, citing a fall in crypto demand.
During this period, Colette Kress, the firm’s CFO, admitted that gaming revenues had missed expectations because of unsold inventory. This resulted in the company’s stock price plummeting by 28.5% over the next two trading sessions.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) previously issued the company a $5.5 million fine for failing to disclose how crypto mining affected its general revenue. Regulators said that it should have told investors that most of its GPU demand came from the miners.
Strategy’s STRC preferred stock shows unusually low volatility while offering a double-digit yield, drawing attention to engineered stability versus traditional market risk across bitcoin, equities, bonds, and commodities.
Market volatility disparities across major asset classes came into focus after Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor shared comparative data on X on March 29. The figures positioned STRC, a preferred equity instrument, against bitcoin, exchange-traded funds, commodities, and bonds over a 30-day period.
Saylor stated that over the past 30 days, STRC recorded lower volatility than every company in the S&P 500 and all major asset classes while delivering an 11.5% dividend yield. The dataset showed STRC at 2% volatility, compared with bitcoin at 50%; gold at 37%; QQQ, an ETF tracking the Nasdaq-100, at 19%; SPY, an S&P 500 ETF, and VNQ, a real estate ETF, both at 15%; and BND, a total bond market ETF, at 6%, with bitcoin ranking as the highest- volatility asset.
STRC, or Short Duration High Yield Credit Stretch, is a perpetual preferred stock issued by Strategy Inc. and introduced in July 2025 as part of its bitcoin-focused treasury model. The Nasdaq-listed instrument pays an 11.50% annual dividend distributed monthly in cash, with its rate adjusted each month to encourage trading around its $100 par value and reduce price volatility.
The design of the instrument centers on a variable dividend mechanism that increases payouts when the share price falls below $100 and reduces them when it rises above that level, creating incentives for price reversion. This monthly reset structure differentiates it from traditional preferred shares and is intended to suppress short-term volatility while maintaining consistent income.
The structure within Strategy Inc.’s capital stack places STRC alongside multiple securities offering different risk exposures, including MSTR common stock, which absorbs bitcoin volatility, and preferred instruments such as STRF, the 10.00% Series A “Strife” Preferred; STRK, the 8.00% Series A “Strike” Preferred; and STRD, the 10.00% Series A “Stride” Preferred, each providing fixed or convertible yields with varying seniority. STRC is the only instrument in the lineup explicitly engineered to minimize volatility through active dividend adjustments.
Criticism has centered on whether the reported stability reflects underlying market conditions or issuer-driven mechanisms, with analysts arguing the comparison spans fundamentally different asset types. Observers note STRC functions more like a short-duration credit instrument than a freely traded asset, with its stability tied to dividend incentives rather than organic price discovery, while additional concerns focus on dividend sustainability, funding sources, and issuer-specific risk, including exposure to a single corporate entity and tail risk not reflected in short-term volatility metrics.
The state of Real-World Assets (RWA) is transforming rapidly from tokenized assets to complex automated financial layers. In a major step towards helping facilitate this transformation, Quantra has announced a strategic PR partnership with REI Network. The intention of this partnership is to combine Quantra’s RWA infrastructure and REI’s high-performance blockchain capabilities to create a benchmark for how physical energy and computer assets can be integrated into the DeFi market.
Quantra is branding itself as a fundamental creator within the RWA (Real World Asset) space, as opposed to those projects that are mainly centered around just fractional ownership of real estate. They have chosen two sectors that are in high demand: those being the real-world computing power sector as well as the real-world energy asset sector. The basis for their infrastructure is a tripartite structure composed of the following three components, verification, on-chain mapping, and rule-based execution.
Financializing these physical assets with Quantra results in the creation of an on-chain instrument that can be used as verification for resource production. The transparency provided by the audit and mapping of every digital token, which gives clear backing to each physical asset, will allow institutional use of the tokens to be more readily accepted. This is because institutions can rely on and trust that the underlying physical asset exists.
Quantra has partnered with REI Network to meet the high numbers of transactions necessary for the RWA verification and execution processes. REI is an EVM-compatible blockchain designed to tackle scalability issues and eliminate high gas fees.
Rule-based execution, which refers to the automated execution of contracts based on data coming from reality, is important for many applications. A modular architecture and fast finality in REI’s blockchain will allow developers to create next-generation Web3 apps that use many microtransactions or large amounts of data. Zero fees will help make REI a good place to develop these types of applications.
A convergence of “DePINs” (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) and RWA are demonstrated in both Quantra and REI Network as well as in the increasing global needs for sustainability through energy and AI computation. The ability to trade, lease, or verify such assets using blockchain technology will represent billions of dollars in market opportunities.
Reports by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimate that tokenizing the world’s illiquid assets will create a $16 trillion market by 2030. Partnerships like this help reduce (or eliminate) technical barriers such as interoperability and high transaction fees before a significant amount of institutional capital comes into play.
The partnership between Quantra and REI Network is not just about PR, but also about strategically integrating specialized physical infrastructure with scalable technologies. This initiative is largely driven by Quantra’s emphasis on the financialization of computing and energy, which stand as the key resources in today’s geopolitical landscape. The cooperation will allow REI Network to be a key provider of high-speed, low-cost rails for seamless integration through REI Network’s high-speed networks. The two organizations will work together to develop innovative solutions for the next generation of DeFi applications that will be based on RWAs.
OKX, a fintech company known for its global crypto trading platform and its on-chain wallet and marketplace, is pleased to announce the launch of Aave on X Layer, OKX’s Ethereum-compatible Layer 2 network. Aave is a famous decentralized, non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can participate as suppliers or borrowers. The main purpose of the expansion of X Layer’s Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem is to make easy access to battle-tested, institutional-grade lending infrastructure directly on-chain.
Aave has a successful track record across more than a dozen blockchain networks, along with perfection. Aave is famous due to its world’s biggest decentralized liquidity protocol by total value locked (TVL) and net deposits. Its arrival on X Layer brings permissionless lending, borrowing, and yield-earning for users without the need to be connected to complicated interfaces.
Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave Labs, gave its expression on the integration of OKX and Aave. He said, “By expanding to X Layer, Aave connects its liquidity to a growing ecosystem of users and applications, making it easier to earn, borrow, and build applications on the network. Aave looks forward to continuing expansion across OKX’s products and extending access to its millions of users.”
Through this integration, Aave can be approached on X Layer natively via OKX Wallet today, with no distinctive wallet setup requirement. This alliance provides USDT0, $USDG, $GHO, xBTC, xETH, xSOL, xBETH, and earns a competitive yield that works automatically. Moreover, this will also expand crypto holdings through the easy accessibility of stablecoins.
The combination of Aave and OKX is much more important than you think, because it also helps to borrow USDT0, $USDG, and $GHO, etc. X Layer has 6 affirmed eModes. Users can borrow up to 88% LTV for liquid staking pairs, or up to 78% LTV for crypto-to-stablecoin eModes vs. the 70% standard LTV.
Moving forward, this partnership with the OKX ecosystem offers deposit and management of funds on Aave X Layer within OKX Wallet, independent of Aave’s interface. Trade tokenized Aave availability positions, a Tokens (aUSDC, aWETH, aUSDT) directly on OKX Decentralized Exchange (DEX) anytime and anywhere, without manually withdrawing from Aave first, with real-time market data and pricing.