Norway’s sovereign wealth fund lost $40B in Q1— Will it hedge risk by increasing Bitcoin exposure?

Key takeaways:

Norges Bank lost $40 billion in Q1 2025 as US tech stocks fell, exposing the risk of concentrated positions.

The bank’s indirect Bitcoin exposure via stocks reached $356 million, raising sell pressure risk amid a global trade war and recession concerns.

Abu Dhabi’s $437 million spot Bitcoin ETF stake shows sovereign wealth funds see Bitcoin as a hedge.

Norges Bank, Norway’s $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund, reported a $40 billion loss in the first quarter of 2025, with most of the decline caused by a drop in the value of US-listed technology companies. Norges Bank also indirectly owned 3,821 BTC through its stock market investments by the end of 2024, presenting a potential sell pressure risk to Bitcoin, especially when considering the socio-political uncertainty and the risk of an economic recession caused by the global trade war.

In such times, could Norges Bank increase its investments in

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Bitcoin price chart looks set for $100K, SUI, AVAX, TRUMP and TAO expected to follow

Key points:

Bitcoin booked a 10% gain in the past week and technical indicators remain bullish going into a new week.

Analysts expect Bitcoin to gain an additional 40% by the end of the year

Select altcoins are showing a positive bias on improving crypto sentiment.

Bitcoin (BTC) rose more than 10% this week as buyers made a strong comeback, pushing the price to the overhead resistance at $95,000. Although buyers are struggling to clear the overhead hurdle, a positive sign is that they have not given up much ground to the bears.

The sharp up move is backed by solid buying in the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which witnessed inflows of $3.06 billion, according to Farside Investors data. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said in a post on X that it was really notable to see “HOW FAST the flows can go

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'Strategy is synthetically halving Bitcoin' — Author and analyst

Michael Saylor’s Strategy is “synthetically halving Bitcoin” (BTC) by purchasing half or more of the newly minted supply from miners every single month, according to Adam Livingston, a BTC analyst and author of “The Bitcoin Age and The Great Harvest.”

Livingston said miners currently produce around 450 BTC per day or approximately 13,500 BTC per month, but Strategy acquired 379,800 BTC in the last six months. This translates to the firm purchasing roughly 2,087 BTC per day — far in excess of daily miner output. The author added:

“When Bitcoin becomes this scarce, access to Bitcoin will require paying a premium. Lending against Bitcoin will cost more. Borrowing Bitcoin will become a luxury business reserved for nation-states and corporate whales, and Strategy will control the bottleneck.”

“BTC’s global cost of capital will no longer be set by ‘the

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Ethereum community members propose new fee structure for the app layer

Two Ethereum community members, Kevin Owocki and Devansh Mehta, proposed a dynamic fee structure for the Ethereum application layer to strike a balance between revenue generation for app builders and fairness in fee extraction.

The April 27 proposal outlined a simple equation that uses a square root function that proportionally lowers the percentage of fees as the funding capital allocated to a particular project grows. Owocki and Mehta explained:

“For smaller funding amounts, the fee follows a square root function (sqrt(1000 x N)), providing proportionally higher returns to make building mechanisms for smaller pools worthwhile. For example, if the funding pool is $170,000, then the root of 1000 x 170,000 equals $13,038.4 or 7% is taken as overhead.”

The authors of the proposal added that fees would be capped at 1% once a particular application’s funding pool crossed the $10 million level, ensuring that small app builders can

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Crypto price manipulation explained: How cybercriminals influence the market

What is crypto price manipulation?

When a coin moons out of nowhere and then crashes just as fast — it is rarely pure market magic.

Cryptocurrency price manipulation is the dark art of bending the market to your will. It is when insiders or coordinated groups inflate or crash a coin’s price, not through real demand, but through smoke and mirrors. They might fake volume, spread hype, trigger fear, or pull sudden sell-offs — all to trap unsuspecting traders and walk away with the profits.

In traditional finance, this kind of behavior gets you fined or jailed. But what about in the world of crypto? It often flies under the radar. With light regulations and heavy emotions in play, the digital asset market has become a playground for manipulators, especially where liquidity is low and oversight is weaker.

Here’s the classic playbook:

Manipulators create fake demand

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Federal taxes to be 'substantially reduced' once tariffs set in: Trump

United States President Donald Trump recently said that federal income taxes would be “substantially reduced” or potentially eliminated once the tariff regime fully sets in.

In an April 27 Truth Social post, Trump added that the focus of the purported tax cuts would be on individuals making less than $200,000 per year.

The US President also said that the “External Revenue Service” — a reference to funding the federal government exclusively through import tariffs instead of the current model of collecting taxes through the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — is materializing.

Eliminating the federal income tax would likely be a positive catalyst for asset prices, including cryptocurrencies, as the increase in disposable income should partially flow back into productive investments. However, this stimulative effect is not guaranteed.

Source: Donald Trump

Related: If Trump fired Powell, what would happen

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The cost of innovation — Regulations are Web3’s greatest asset

Opinion by: Hedi Navazan, chief compliance officer at 1inch

Web3 needs a clear regulatory system that addresses innovation bottlenecks and user safety in decentralized finance (DeFi). A one-size-fits-all approach cannot be achieved to regulate DeFi. The industry needs custom, risk-based approaches that balance innovation, security and compliance.

DeFi’s challenges and rules

A common critique is that regulatory scrutiny leads to the death of innovation, tracing this situation back to the Biden administration. In 2022, uncertainty for crypto businesses increased following lawsuits against Coinbase, Binance and OpenSea for alleged violations of securities laws.

Under the US administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to dismiss the lawsuit against Coinbase, as the agency reversed the crypto stance, hinting at a path toward regulation with clear boundaries.

Many would argue that the same risk is the same rule. Imposing traditional finance requirements on DeFi simply will not work from many aspects but the

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Michael Saylor hints at Bitcoin purchase as whales stack aggressively

Whales and large institutions continue their aggressive Bitcoin accumulation, with Strategy hinting at another Bitcoin investment that may be announced on Monday.

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor hinted at another imminent Bitcoin (BTC) investment on April 27, a week after the firm acquired $555 million worth of Bitcoin at an average price of $84,785 per coin.

“Stay Humble. Stack Sats,” Saylor wrote, spurring investor speculation of the size of the firm’s next Bitcoin investment.

Source: Michael Saylor

“1.4-1.6b range imo,” wrote popular blockchain analyst RunnerXBT in anticipation of Saylor’s announcement, which would make it three times as large as Strategy’s previous investment.

Related: Bitcoin treasury firms driving $200T hyperbitcoinization — Adam Back

Strategy is the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder with over 538,200 Bitcoin worth

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El Salvador adds Bitcoin, but is complying with IMF deal — Director

El Salvador, the world’s first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, is still acquiring Bitcoin despite comments from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) appearing to claim the opposite.

The treasury of El Salvador acquired 7 Bitcoin (BTC) worth over $650,000 in the seven days leading up to April 27, blockchain data from El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office shows.

When asked about the country’s Bitcoin investments, Rodrigo Valdes, director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the IMF, said that the country continues to comply with its agreement to halt government Bitcoin accumulation.

El Salvador Bitcoin holdings. Source: El Salvador Bitcoin Office

“In terms of El Salvador, let me say that I can confirm that they continue to comply with their commitment of non-accumulation of Bitcoin by the overall fiscal sector, which is the performance criteria that we have,” said Valdes

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Bitcoin treasury firms driving $200T hyperbitcoinization — Adam Back

Investment firms with Bitcoin-focused treasuries are front-running global Bitcoin adoption, which may see the world’s first cryptocurrency soar to a $200 trillion market capitalization in the coming decade.

Institutions and governments worldwide are starting to recognize the unique monetary properties of Bitcoin (BTC), according to Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream and the inventor of Hashcash.

“$MSTR and other treasury companies are an arbitrage of the dislocation between the bitcoin future and todays fiat world,” Back wrote in an April 26 X post.

“A sustainable and scalable $100-$200 trillion trade front-running hyperbitcoinization. scalable enough for most big listed companies to move to btc treasury,” he added.

Hyperbitcoinization refers to the theoretical future where Bitcoin soars to become the largest global currency, replacing fiat money due to its inflationary economics and growing distrust in the legacy financial system.

Source: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://x.com/adam3us/status/1916160776571650136" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"

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