Crypto Vesting

The Lomond School in Scotland will accept Bitcoin (BTC) tuition payments beginning in the Autumn semester of 2025, making it the first school in the United Kingdom to do so.

Accepting Bitcoin is part of the school’s plan to integrate “sound money principles” from the Austrian School of Economics into the curriculum to “prepare students for the uncertain future,” the announcement reads, adding:

“Bitcoin is available to anyone willing to learn — making it more democratic and inclusive, particularly for people in developing nations who lack access to traditional banking. Lomond sees Bitcoin as a perfect real-world case study in economics, computing, ethics, and innovation.”

The school has no plans to accept other cryptocurrencies, and will convert the BTC to fiat currency immediately, according to the announcement. It might establish a BTC treasury in the future, pending input from the Lomond community.

Lomond’s announcement

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Ripple made headlines this week when it became the first crypto-native company to acquire a multi-asset prime broker, potentially setting the stage for wider adoption of its XRP Ledger technology. 

The acquisition of Hidden Road didn’t come cheap, either, as Ripple doled out $1.25 billion for the brokerage. It was a price Ripple CEO Brad Garlinhouse was happy to pay as the company set its sights on global expansion. 

Elsewhere, crypto exchange Binance listened to its community and moved to delist 14 tokens that no longer met its quality thresholds. Meanwhile, Binance’s former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, was appointed adviser for Pakistan’s newly formed crypto counsel. 

All this happened against a backdrop of negative headlines and plunging crypto prices stemming from the US-led trade war, which culminated in President Donald Trump’s executive order establishing a 104% tariff on Chinese imports. 

Despite the chaos, a panel

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The US Federal Reserve is prepared to use its vast arsenal of monetary policy tools to prevent financial and economic conditions from deteriorating rapidly but will do so only if liquidity dries up or markets become disorderly, a top central banker said.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Boston Fed President Susan Collins said the central bank “would absolutely be prepared” to backstop markets if needed.

Source: Walter Bloomberg

While it is generally understood that the Fed is always prepared to act quickly to stave off market chaos, Collins’ remarks come on the heels of asset selloffs across stocks and bonds, which have raised concerns about the health of the US financial system.

Overall, however, the Fed is “not seeing liquidity concerns,” said Collins. If that were to change, policymakers would have “tools to address concerns about

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Bitcoin (BTC) is entering what former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes calls “up only mode,” as a deepening crisis in the US bond market potentially drives investors away from traditional haven assets and toward alternative stores of value.

Loss of confidence in US policy boosts Bitcoin’s upside prospects

On April 11, the benchmark US 10-year Treasury yield surged above 4.59%—its highest level in two months.

US 10-year Treasury note yields daily performance chart. Source: TradingView

The $29 trillion US Treasury market has dropped more than 2% this week — its steepest decline since September 2019, when a liquidity crunch in the repo market forced the Federal Reserve to intervene.

US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable tariff announcements and reversals have fueled the chaos. After threatening sweeping levies on global trading partners, Trump walked back many of the measures within days

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Betting against Ether has been the best performing exchange traded fund (ETF) strategy so far in 2025, according to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas.

Two ETFs designed to take two-times leveraged short positions in Ether claimed (ETH) first and second place in a Bloomberg Intelligence ranking of the year’s top-performing funds, Balchunas said in a post on the X platform.  

In the year-to-date, ProShares UltraShort Ether ETF (ETHD) and T Rex 2X Inverse Ether Daily Target ETF (ETQ) are up approximately 247% and 219%, respectively, Bloomberg Intelligence data showed. 

The implications for Ether are “brutal,” Balchunas said. Ether itself is down approximately 54% year-to-date on April 11, according to Cointelegraph’s market data.

Both ETFs use financial derivatives to inversely track Ether’s performance with twice as much volatility as the underlying cryptocurrency. Leveraged ETFs do not always perfectly track their underlying assets. 

Source:

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A key Bitcoin (BTC) metric signaled a potential shift in its positioning after BTC’s long-term holder realized cap (LTH Realized Cap) surpassed $18 billion for the first time since September 2024. Data from CryptoQuant indicated that this cohort has exhibited aggressive accumulation, which previously marked the BTC bottom in Q3 2024. 

The LTH realized cap measures the BTC cost basis of investors, holding their allocation for 155 days or more. A sharp increase hints that these long-term holders are in an accumulation phase, parallel with bullish behavior. 

Bitcoin LTH net position realized cap. Source: CryptoQuant

As illustrated in the chart, a spike in this metric has preceded bullish rallies in the past. Most recently, the LTH realized cap reached $18 billion on Sept. 8, 2024, after which Bitcoin registered 100% returns over the next few months. 

Another key confluence that matches the current bottom

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Trump kills DeFi broker rule in major crypto win: Finance Redefined, April 4–11

In a significant win for decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, US President Donald Trump overturned the Internal Revenue Service’s DeFi broker rule, which would have expanded existing reporting requirements to include DeFi platforms.

Increasing US crypto regulatory clarity will attract more tech giants to the space, requiring existing crypto projects to focus on more collaborative tokenomics to survive, according to Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson.

Trump signs resolution killing IRS DeFi broker rule

Trump signed a joint congressional resolution overturning a Biden administration-era rule that would have required DeFi protocols to report transactions to the Internal Revenue Service.

Set to take effect in 2027, the IRS DeFi broker rule would have expanded the tax authority’s existing reporting requirements to include DeFi platforms, requiring them to disclose gross proceeds from crypto sales, including information regarding

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Regulators in Pakistan have proposed a regulatory framework for digital assets that is compliance-focused, in accordance with rules laid out by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the supranational organization that polices finance for money laundering, The Express Tribune reported.

According to the report, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) introduced the regulatory framework to address terrorism financing, money laundering provisions, and Know Your Customer (KYC) controls enforced by the supranational organization. The report cited FIA Director Sumera Azam as saying:

“This is a paradigm shift in how Pakistan views digital finance. The policy proposal seeks to strike a historic balance between technological advancement and national security imperatives.”

The proposed framework is subject to legislative approval and input from digital asset firms operating in the country, with an expected multi-phased rollout beginning in 2026.

Regulators in Pakistan recently spearheaded a regulatory pivot embracing cryptocurrencies after being explicitly anti-crypto for years.

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