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The cryptocurrency market recorded another week of losses spurred by President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariff measures. However, some unconventional coins bucked the trend with healthy returns.
What happened: EOS, the native token of the open-source blockchain EOS Network, led the market with a 20% rally, extending its monthly gains to almost 30%.
The rally was spurred by the network’s decision to rebrand to Vaulta, a network focusing on Web3 banking and real-world asset tokenization.
A defendant in a New York appeals court has been slammed by a judge for using an artificial intelligence avatar to represent himself in a recent case.
A New York appeals court faced an unusual situation in late March when Jerome Dewald, representing himself in an employment dispute, submitted an AI-generated avatar to present his legal arguments via video, a livestream of the hearing shows.
It’s the latest example of artificial intelligence tools trickling their way into courtrooms.
Within seconds of the video starting, Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels called for it to stop, asking whether the avatar was counsel for the case.
“I generated that,” 74-year-old Dewald responded, adding, “That is not a real person.”
The judge appeared displeased, retorting, “It would have been nice to know that when you made your application,” stating that the defendant had previously appeared before the court and been able to testify verbally in the past.
“I don’t appreciate being misled,” the judge added.
She asked the defendant if he was suffering from an ailment that prevented him from articulating before adding, “You are not going to use this courtroom as a launch for your business,” and then yelling, “Shut that off,” pointing to the video screen.
Appellate Division, First Department Stream. Source: YouTube
Dewald later apologized, explaining he thought the AI avatar would deliver his arguments more eloquently than he could.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Dewald said he applied to the court for permission to play a prerecorded video, then used a San Francisco tech company to create the AI avatar.
He originally tried to generate a digital replica of himself but was prevented by time constraints before the hearing. “The court was really upset about it,” Dewald conceded, adding, “They chewed me up pretty good.”
Related: Meta’s Llama 4 puts US back in lead to ‘win the AI race’ — David Sacks
The incident highlights growing challenges as AI enters the legal world.
In 2023, a New York lawyer was blasted for citing fake cases generated by ChatGPT in a legal brief as part of a lawsuit against a Columbian airline.
In March, Arizona’s Supreme Court began using two AI-generated avatars, similar to the one that Dewald used in New York, to summarize court rulings for the public.
In September, the US Federal Trade Commission took action against companies it claimed misled consumers using AI, including a firm that offered an AI lawyer.
Magazine: ‘Chernobyl’ needed to wake people to AI risks, Studio Ghibli memes: AI Eye
As Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) continues its downward slide since Eric Trump recommended buying the second-largest cryptocurrency, renowned economist Peter Schiff cautioned against taking investment advice from the Trump family on Sunday.
What Happened: Schiff was reminded by an X user of the famous “It’s a great time to add ETH” remark by Eric Trump, the Executive Vice President of The Trump Organization and President Donald Trump’s second son.
“Yes, it’s best not to take any investment advice from the Trumps,” Schiff stated.
Schiff’s views were countered by another user, JB rocks, who wondered if the cryptocurrency critic would say the same if the Trumps promoted …
The Bitcoin network hashrate has topped 1 Zetahash per second (ZH/s) for the first time in Bitcoin’s 16-year history, according to several blockchain data sources.
Bitcoin’s hashrate crossed the milestone on April 5 at a peak of 1.025 ZH/s, according to mempool.space data, while BTC Frame data said it hit 1.02 ZH/s a day earlier.
Data from Coinwarz says that Bitcoin hashrate soared to as high as 1.1 ZH/s on April 4 at block height 890,915 — however, the same data indicates that Bitcoin first crossed 1 ZH/s on March 24.
Bitcoin’s hashrate has fallen back below 0.95 ZH/s on April 7 since reaching 1 ZH/s. Source: BTC Frame
The differences result from the varying approaches used to calculate hashrate — such as when block times and difficulty adjustments are measured, which Bitcoin nodes and miner pools are used to pull data from and more.
Bitcoin cypherpunk Jameson Lopp also previously pointed out that estimating Bitcoin’s hashrate with one “trailing block” as opposed to five can result in a difference of over 0.04 ZH/s.
“Viewing the raw Hashrate metric can be deceiving due to random variations in block times,” added Blockware Solutions head analyst Mitchell Askew, who pointed out that Bitcoin’s 30-day moving average hashrate is still around 0.845 ZH/s mark in a note to Cointelegraph.
Despite the discrepancies, the feat highlights the massive amount of computational power and increasing decentralization of the Bitcoin network, making it more secure than ever and significantly reducing the likelihood of a 51% attack.
The Bitcoin network’s reported rise to 1 ZH/s — equivalent to 1,000 Exahashes per second — marks a 1,000x increase since late January 2016, when Bitcoin first hit 1 EH/s for the first time.
The second-largest proof-of-work crypto network, Litecoin, currently boasts a hashrate of 2.49 Petahashes per second according to Coinwarz — making it around 40,000 times less computationally powerful than Bitcoin.
Source: Pierre Rochard
Askew noted that the huge rise in hashrate has coincided with more commercial Bitcoin mining firms competing to solve Bitcoin blocks in recent years.
“Miners are doubling down: expanding sites and plugging in more efficient machines,” Askew said, adding that less efficient miners could soon be washed out unless Bitcoin’s (BTC) price rallies again in the coming months.
MARA Holdings is the largest Bitcoin miner with more than 50 EH/s of compute power, while the largest share of hashrate is channeled to Bitcoin mining pools Foundry USA Pool and AntPool, according to the Hashrate Index.
Related: Bitcoin price drops below $80K as stocks face 1987 Black Monday rerun
At least 24 publicly listed Bitcoin companies have machines set up to mine Bitcoin, according to CompaniesMarketCap.com.
Among the other large miners contributing hashrate are Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, CleanSpark, Hut 8 Mining and TeraWulf.
The new all-time high in Bitcoin hashrate came in the middle of a sharp market downturn — with Bitcoin (BTC) falling nearly 10% over the last four days to $78,750, while US stocks saw an estimated $6.6 trillion loss on April 3 and 4 — the largest two-day loss ever.
Much of the fall has been attributed to US President Donald Trump’s tariff plans, which many industry analysts say are sparking recession fears.
Magazine: Financial nihilism in crypto is over — It’s time to dream big again
The odds of the Federal Reserve implementing an emergency rate cut soared dramatically on the prediction platform Polymarket as stocks and cryptocurrencies tumbled over tariff concerns.
What Happened: Bets in favor of the contract titled “Fed emergency rate cut in 2025?” rose from 20% to 36% over the last 24 hours on the Polygon (CRYPTO: POL)-based platform. As of this writing, the odds had fallen to 28%, but they were still significantly higher than the 16% a week before.
Over $149 million has been wagered on the outcome. The market will resolve to “Yes” if the central bank holds an emergency …
Alon Cohen, co-founder of the Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, is set to bring back live streaming on the platform — five months after suspending the feature after several incidents involving harmful content.
Posting on X on April 4, Cohen said the feature has returned with “industry standard moderation systems in place and transparent guidelines.” He said it had been rolled out to just 5% of users.
Source: Alon Cohen
Pump.fun’s website describes the purpose of its new live-streaming moderation policy as being “to cultivate a social environment on pump fun that preserves creativity and freedom of expression and encourages meaningful engagement amongst users, free of illegal, harmful, and negative interactions.”
Breaches of the moderation policy could see creators having their livestreams and Pump.fun accounts terminated.
The policy prohibits certain types of content, including violence, animal abuse, pornography and youth endangerment. However, it also creates ambiguity by claiming that “pump fun does not intend to universally define what content is ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate.’”
“There is an implicit assumption that some content — perhaps much content — generally defined as NSFW will in fact appear on pump fun,” Pump.fun’s moderation policy states.
The platform added it reserves the right to “unilaterally determine the appropriateness of content where necessary and to moderate it accordingly.”
Pump.fun removed its live-streaming feature last November after it became awash with extreme content as memecoin creators turned to increasingly shocking tactics to promote their tokens.
Some users were allegedly threatening violence or self-harm if a token didn’t reach a price goal.
The platform said its unprecedented growth had put a strain on its moderators, and that it would pause the live-streaming functionality indefinitely to ensure the safety of its users “until the moderation infrastructure is ready to deal with the heightened levels of activity.”
At the time, Mikko Ohtamaa, co-founder of algorithmic trading firm Trading Strategy, said that if Pump.fun continued to allow live-streaming without appropriate moderation, it would quickly be shut down once a mainstream audience became aware of what was going on.
“I advocate for freedom of speech, but these streams are causing practical issues where people are breaking the law in live broadcasts. This will trigger a shutdown when the mainstream media catches a wind on this,” Ohtamaa said.
Pump.fun’s decision to reintroduce its live-streaming feature comes as interest in memecoins has been down significantly following a series of high-profile rug pulls such as Libra (LIBRA) and Melania Meme (MELANIA). That’s coupled with the poor price performance of tokens like Trump (TRUMP) — which, according to CoinGecko, is now down over 90% from its January highs.
Related: Libra founder: Memecoin critics only ‘bitch’ when left out of insider deals
Data from Dune Analytics showed in March that the graduation rate for tokens launched on Pump.fun — that is, the percentage of tokens that achieve a large enough market cap to become tradable on a regular decentralized exchange — had fallen to under 1%, down from highs of around 1.67%.
Combined with a sharp drop in the number of tokens being launched on the platform, this has seen the total number of tokens graduating from highs of around 5,400 per week in January to under 1,500 in March.
The number of tokens launched on the Solana network has also fallen dramatically overall. Only 31,651 launched on April 5, according to Solscan, less than one-third of the 95,578 created at the peak of the memecoin frenzy on Jan. 26.
Magazine: New ‘MemeStrategy’ Bitcoin firm by 9GAG
Cryptocurrency prices tumbled as the US stock futures market opened sharply lower on April 6 as the Trump administration doubled down on its global tariff strategy.
The Trump administration hit all countries with a 10% tariff starting April 5, with some slapped at higher rates, including China at 34%, the European Union at 20%, and Japan at 24%.
Bitcoin (BTC) dropped over 6% in the last 24 hours and was trading around $77,883. Meanwhile, Ether (ETH) shed over 12% in the same time frame and was trading at $1,575, according to CoinGecko. The total crypto market cap dropped over 8% to $2.5 trillion.
Prices have clawed back some losses since. Bitcoin has recovered 1.4% to $78,500. Meanwhile, Ether regained $1,594.
Source: Autism Capital
At the same time, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures market sentiment for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, returned a score of 23 in its latest April 7 update, which is considered extreme fear.
In a statement, Charlie Sherry, head of finance at Australian crypto exchange BTC Markets, said the drop is unsurprising because global markets are generally more illiquid on Sundays.
“As a result, a few large sell-offs can have a disproportionate impact, pushing prices down quickly,” he said.
“There’s no mystery behind the trigger: President Trump’s recent tariff talk has rattled macro markets, with global trade relations suddenly looking uncertain.”
Some traders, however, predict a Bitcoin breakout could be around the corner. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has also speculated that while the tariffs are rattling markets, they could result in a Bitcoin rally.
The US Stock Futures market has also opened down.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 dropped nearly 4%, according to Google Finance. Meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures sank by over 8%.
Trading resource the Kobeissi Letter said in an April 6 post to X that the drop in US stock market futures puts S&P 500 futures in ”bear market territory,” adding that the US stock market has now erased an average of $400 billion per trading day for the last 32 days.
Source: Kobeissi Letter
Tom Dunleavy, a managing partner at venture capital firm MV Global, said it could be the “worst three-day move for US stocks of all time” if “tonight’s futures hold.”
Crypto-friendly billionaire investor Bill Ackman speculates that US President Donald Trump could postpone the tariffs to allow countries to make counteroffers or deals.
In an April 6 statement on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump doubled down on the tariffs, saying the US has massive financial deficits with China, the European Union and many others, which the levies will solve.
Related: ‘National emergency’ as Trump’s tariffs dent crypto prices
“The only way this problem can be cured is with TARIFFS, which are now bringing tens of billions of dollars into the USA. They are already in effect, and a beautiful thing to behold,” he said.
He also told reporters aboard Air Force One that he wasn’t intentionally trying to cause a market sell-off but added that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
At the same time, US National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said in an April 6 interview with ABC’s This Week program that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to negotiate fresh trade deals.
“They’re doing that because they understand that they bear a lot of the tariff,” he said.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged US trading partners in an April 2 interview with Bloomberg against taking retaliatory steps, arguing “this is the high end of the number” for tariffs if they don’t try to add more levies in response.
Magazine: Financial nihilism in crypto is over — It’s time to dream big again
Cryptocurrency prices tumbled as the US stock futures market opened sharply lower on April 6 as the Trump administration doubled down on its global tariff strategy.
The Trump administration hit all countries with a 10% tariff starting April 5, with some slapped at higher rates, including China at 34%, the European Union at 20%, and Japan at 24%.
Bitcoin (BTC) dropped over 6% in the last 24 hours and was trading around $77,883. Meanwhile, Ether (ETH) shed over 12% in the same time frame and was trading at $1,575, according to CoinGecko. The total crypto market cap dropped over 8% to $2.5 trillion.
Prices have clawed back some losses since. Bitcoin has recovered 1.4% to $78,500. Meanwhile, Ether regained $1,594.
Source: Autism Capital
At the same time, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures market sentiment for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, returned a score of 23 in its latest April 7 update, which is considered extreme fear.
In a statement, Charlie Sherry, head of finance at Australian crypto exchange BTC Markets, said the drop is unsurprising because global markets are generally more illiquid on Sundays.
“As a result, a few large sell-offs can have a disproportionate impact, pushing prices down quickly,” he said.
“There’s no mystery behind the trigger: President Trump’s recent tariff talk has rattled macro markets, with global trade relations suddenly looking uncertain.”
Some traders, however, predict a Bitcoin breakout could be around the corner. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has also speculated that while the tariffs are rattling markets, they could result in a Bitcoin rally.
The US Stock Futures market has also opened down.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 dropped nearly 4%, according to Google Finance. Meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures sank by over 8%.
Trading resource the Kobeissi Letter said in an April 6 post to X that the drop in US stock market futures puts S&P 500 futures in ”bear market territory,” adding that the US stock market has now erased an average of $400 billion per trading day for the last 32 days.
Source: Kobeissi Letter
Tom Dunleavy, a managing partner at venture capital firm MV Global, said it could be the “worst three-day move for US stocks of all time” if “tonight’s futures hold.”
Crypto-friendly billionaire investor Bill Ackman speculates that US President Donald Trump could postpone the tariffs to allow countries to make counteroffers or deals.
In an April 6 statement on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump doubled down on the tariffs, saying the US has massive financial deficits with China, the European Union and many others, which the levies will solve.
Related: ‘National emergency’ as Trump’s tariffs dent crypto prices
“The only way this problem can be cured is with TARIFFS, which are now bringing tens of billions of dollars into the USA. They are already in effect, and a beautiful thing to behold,” he said.
He also told reporters aboard Air Force One that he wasn’t intentionally trying to cause a market sell-off but added that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
REPORTER: “Is there pain in the market at some point you’re unwilling to tolerate?”@POTUS: “I think your question is so stupid. I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something — and we have been treated so badly by other countries.” pic.twitter.com/09QBmfqzYF
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 6, 2025
At the same time, US National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said in an April 6 interview with ABC’s This Week program that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to negotiate fresh trade deals.
“They’re doing that because they understand that they bear a lot of the tariff,” he said.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged US trading partners in an April 2 interview with Bloomberg against taking retaliatory steps, arguing “this is the high end of the number” for tariffs if they don’t try to add more levies in response.
Magazine: Financial nihilism in crypto is over — It’s time to dream big again
Leading cryptocurrencies suffered a bloodbath on Sunday as concerns over President Donald Trump’s tariff policies deepened.
| Cryptocurrency | Gains +/- | Price (Recorded at 8:30 p.m. ET) |
| Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) | -6.38% | $78,099.39 |
| Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) |
-12.90% | $1,575.63 |
| Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) | -12.50% | $0.1478 |
What Happened: Bitcoin tanked to an intraday low of $77,097.74 before clawing back to $78,000. Ethereum experienced a bigger rout, slipping below $1,600 for the first time since Oct. 2023.
The two heavyweights recorded a 179% and 272% jump in trade volume, respectively, signaling significant selling pressure.
Sunday’s dip came after cryptocurrency prices remained relatively stable on Friday during a period of intense stock market volatility.
Over $871 million was liquidated from the market in the last 24 hours, with nearly $750 million in longs erased.
Bitcoin’s Open Interest fell by 0.33% in the last 24 hours, while funds locked in Ethereum’s futures sank 8%.
Interestingly, traders appeared to be buying the dip, as the number of Bitcoin longs exceeded shorts as of this writing, according to the Long/Short Ratio.
The market sentiment went back …