PA Daily | Zhao Changpeng calls BNB a Meme currency; Trump hinted that US-China tariff hikes may end
Reprinted from panewslab
04/18/2025·10DToday's news tips:
Trump hinted that U.S.-China tariff hikes may end: no one will buy it if the tariffs rise again
Global retail chain SPAR is testing cryptocurrency payments in Switzerland
US Senator: If Powell is fired by the US president, the US market will collapse
Binance Alpha and Binance Contracts to Become Balance (EPT)
Zhao Changpeng calls BNB a Meme coin
sUSD deanstation intensified to $0.6825, a 24-hour decline of 16.5%
Regulatory/Macro
Trump hinted that U.S.-China tariff hikes may end: no one will buy it if the tariffs rise again
According to Reuters, U.S. President Trump said on Thursday that tariff mutual imposition between the United States and China may be about to end, and hinted that a deal on TikTok's fate may have to wait. "I don't want tariffs to continue to rise because when it reaches a certain level, people don't buy it," he told reporters at the White House. He added, "So I may not raise taxes further, maybe I may not even want to reach the current tax level. Maybe I'll go for a lower tax rate because you want people to continue to consume, and at some tipping point, people will stop buying."
Global retail chain SPAR is testing cryptocurrency payments in Switzerland
Global retail chain SPAR is testing cryptocurrency payments in Switzerland, according to Bitcoin.com. The retail group, which has more than 13,900 stores in 48 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, was recently revealed that its store in Zug, Switzerland has accepted Bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network. The test marks one of the largest attempts to pay cryptocurrency by large retail chains. SPAR's move shows its interest in serving a growing community of cryptocurrency holders and its willingness to explore digital payment methods. Industry insiders expect the trial will provide an important reference for evaluating the feasibility and customer needs of cryptocurrency payments in mainstream retail environments.
US Senator: If Powell is fired by the US president, the US market will collapse
According to Cointelegraph, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said: "If Federal Reserve Chairman Powell is fired by the U.S. president, the U.S. market will collapse."
Arizona Cryptocurrency Reserves Act passed on House Committee to enter third reading stage
A cryptocurrency reserve bill in Arizona has been passed in the House of Representatives and is only one successful vote away from submitting it to the governor’s desk for formal approval, Cointelegraph reported. On April 17, Arizona's Strategic Digital Asset Reserves Act (SB 1373) was approved on the House All Committee. The bill needs to be considered by 60 House members before the third and last readout and a full vote. SB 1373 aims to establish a digital asset strategic reserve fund, which consists of digital assets confiscated through criminal proceedings and is managed by the state’s finance minister.
Slovenia plans to impose a 25% tax on personal cryptocurrency profits from 2026
According to Fxstreet, Slovenia plans to impose a 25% tax on personal cryptocurrency profits from 2026, which will begin on January 1, 2026, and will be subject to public feedback and parliamentary approval. The country's finance ministry proposed on Thursday to align crypto assets with other investment vehicles, such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Currently, Slovenian law taxes cryptocurrency income obtained by businesses, but individual investors are in a legal gray area and can make huge profits without tax. The proposed change aims to end this difference and create a more balanced framework for capital gains for all types of assets. According to the Ministry of Finance, the new rules will apply to the profits earned from converting cryptocurrencies into fiat currencies such as the euro or for purchasing goods and services. However, exchanges between cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin exchange for Ethereum, will remain tax-free, taking into account the technical complexity and impracticality of taxing such transactions. It is worth noting that Slovenia's cryptocurrency regulatory proposal excludes securities tokens, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), electronic currency tokens and NFTs from the scope of taxable assets. The government estimates that the tax reform could add between 2.5 million and 25 million euros to the national budget each year.
Viewpoint
Zhao Changpeng calls BNB a Meme coin
Zhao Changpeng quoted BNB's upcoming Kraken news that it said: "BNB is a Meme coin." Previous news, BNB will launch Kraken on April 22 and has now opened deposits.
Swiss bank Sygnum said that with the improvement of digital asset regulation and the increase in user participation, altcoins are expected to rebound in the second quarter of 2025. Although Bitcoin’s market dominance reached its highest level in four years in April, Sygnum believes that U.S. regulatory progress, such as President Trump’s establishment of digital asset reserves and the advancement of stablecoin regulation, could drive wider cryptocurrency adoption. Sygnum expects protocols that successfully acquire user participation will outperform the market, while Bitcoin’s dominance may decline. The market's focus on economic value increases competition and drives better product development, which will ultimately benefit consumers. The report notes that while high-performance blockchain solves the limitations of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, it still faces challenges in achieving widespread adoption and revenue.
Matrixport pointed out that despite the craze of altcoins, Bitcoin remains solid. Ethereum's market dominance has dropped by nearly 50% since the launch of the Ethereum spot ETF last year. Many altcoins have experienced rapid rises and then fell rapidly, forming a pyramid-like price structure. For Bitcoin to continue to rise, liquidity catalysts are needed, such as the Federal Reserve's release of dovish signals or rate cuts, stablecoin growth, and increased futures leverage. However, the current crypto market lacks a significant influx of liquidity, and the probability of altcoins rising largely in the short term is not high. The Fed may not adjust interest rates during the summer to assess the impact of tariffs on inflation. Although markets expect a four-time rate cut in 2025, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell said he would make a cautious assessment. Recently, the volume of stablecoin minting has declined, supporting Bitcoin may remain in the range of $80,000 to $90,000 in the short term. Despite the sluggish trading volumes, a weaker dollar could increase global money supply, thus supporting Bitcoin prices. In addition, the reduction in regulatory risks has also made Bitcoin better in current market adjustments.
Project News
Dolomite will conduct TGE on April 24, airdropping 20% DOLO
Lending and lending protocol Dolomite announced that its DOLO token generation event (TGE) will be officially launched on April 24, and users can start receiving DOLO tokens on April 24. The total number of DOLO tokens is 1 billion, of which about 361 million will be circulated during TGE, including locked veDOLO. 20% of DOLO tokens will be distributed to platform users as airdrops, with the airdrop snapshot date being January 6, 2025, only the activities in Dolomite before the snapshot are considered. In addition to airdrops, Boyco depositors will receive a 3% DOLO token allocation. Previous news, Dolomite will launch DOLO tokens on Berachain, with 20% of the total supply airdropped to community members.
Binance Alpha and Binance Contracts to Become Balance (EPT)
Binance announced that it will open Balance (EPT) trading on the Binance Alpha platform at 20:00 on April 21, 2025 Beijing time, and launch the EPTUSDT perpetual contract at 21:00, up to 20 times the leverage. To celebrate the launch, all eligible Binance users will receive 3500 EPT token airdrops in their Alpha accounts, which will be completed by 20:10 on April 21, 2025. The empty investment space is limited to users who have made purchases through Binance Alpha using spot or fund accounts from 00:00 on April 11, 2025 to 23:59 on April 17, 2025.
Chainlink's LINK token market value exceeds the New York Times
According to Cointelegraph, Chainlink's LINK token market value has surpassed the New York Times. Currently, LINK's market value is US$8.25 billion, while the New York Times company's market value is US$8.04 billion.
Binance Wallet will host Lorenzo Protocol (BANK) token generation event
According to official news, Binance Wallet announced that it will cooperate with Lorenzo Protocol (BANK) to hold the 10th exclusive token generation event (TGE) through PancakeSwap from 17:00 to 19:00 Beijing time on April 18. Participants must complete valid Binance Alpha token purchases via Binance Wallet (keyless version) or Binance Exchange within 30 days before the TGE date. An additional 84 million BANK tokens will be used for future marketing activities.
Galaxy proposes new consensus approach to resolve Solana inflation debate
According to Cryptoslate, Galaxy Research has submitted a new proposal to the Solana community to reform the network's inflation governance discussions through an approach called Multiple Election Staking Weight Aggregation (MESA). The mechanism attempts to introduce a market-driven process that optimizes the SOL emission curve without relying on a single result voting. The proposed approach will not change Solana's ultimate goal of achieving the 1.5% final inflation rate, but based on the results of the community vote, the timeline for achieving that goal could be significantly shortened. According to Galaxy's forecast, if the current deflation rate of 15% is maintained, the network will reach its final inflation rate at epoch 2,135. Increasing the deflation rate will advance this time point. In the current Solana system, inflation follows a fixed, time-dependent curve with the goal of achieving a final inflation rate of 1.5%. However, Galaxy noted that previous votes showed that despite the widespread belief that inflation is higher than necessary, consensus on adjusting parameters faces challenges. Galaxy's new proposal provides an alternative to let validators choose from multiple pre-determined deflation rates, and the results are determined by the weighted average of these votes. MESA votes will not dynamically adjust inflation based on real-time indicators, but will enforce a fixed anti-inflation trajectory, and once approved, the deflation rate will be adjusted based on the collective opinion of the validator.
Alon Cohen, co-founder of Pump.fun, said on X, “Pump.fun will continue to experiment in the cross-section of social media and tokenization. Some of these attempts (like live streaming, by the way, have been fully resumed). No matter what we do, we will do our best to ensure that we are aligned with our core user base. That being said: Don’t expect me, pump.fun or any employee to issue tokens (there will be “secret releases”).
According to the Coinbase International Exchange announcement, the platform will launch perpetual contract (PERP) transactions of four tokens: WCT, KERNEL, BABY and PROMPT from 17:30 on April 24, Beijing time, and are suitable for international websites and Coinbase Advanced.
Important data
According to The Data Nerd monitoring, six hours ago, a wallet that may belong to Sonic Labs deposited $11.78 million in Binance, worth about $5.55 million.
According to SoSoValue data, the total net inflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs was US$108 million yesterday (April 17 Eastern Time). 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$80.9588 million. Currently, the total historical net inflow of IBIT has reached US$39.754 billion. The second is Fidelity Bitcoin ETF FBTC, with a single-day net inflow of US$25.9049 million. Currently, the total historical net inflow of FBTC has reached US$11.282 billion. As of press time, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETF was US$94.507 billion, the net asset ratio of ETF (market value compared to the total market value of Bitcoin) reached 5.59%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached US$35.375 billion.
Galaxy Digital deposited 12,500 ETH into Binance in the early morning, worth $20 million
According to Lookonchain monitoring, Galaxy Digital once again deposited 12,500 ETH (worth $20 million) into Binance 8 hours ago. Galaxy Digital has deposited 62,181 ETH (worth $99.46 million) into the exchange over the past 6 days.
sUSD deanstation intensified to $0.6825, a 24-hour decline of 16.5%
The market shows that the degree of deaning of the Synthetix ecological stablecoin sUSD has intensified, and is now at $0.6825, a 24-hour decline of 16.5%, and its market value has fallen to $21.98 million.
Financing
Wintermute announces investment in lending agreement Euler Finance
Market maker Wintermute issued an announcement on the X platform that its investment institution Wintermute Ventures has invested in the DeFi lending agreement Euler Finance, and the specific amount has not been disclosed yet.
a16z announced another $55 million investment in LayerZero
a16z general partner Ali Yahya announced on the X platform: "The company has invested an additional $55 million in purchasing ZRO tokens from the cross-chain messaging protocol LayerZero, and has a three-year lock-up period." a16z has previously invested in LayerZero, including its first investment in March 2022 and subsequent investments during the LayerZero Series B financing in April 2023. The two companies did not disclose the valuation of the round of financing.
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