Weekly Recap: Trump Tariffs Roil Global Markets

Happy weekend Defiers!

Global markets were rattled by President Trump’s wide-ranging ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, with U.S. stock markets suffering their worst week since the COVID crash in 2020.

Surprisingly, Bitcoin remains resilient, trading flat over the past week as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq cratered by 9% and 10%, respectively.

Altcoin weakness persists, however, as BTC dominance creeps towards 63%. The SOL/BTC ratio now sits at its lowest level since 2023, while ETH/BTC languishes at a 5-year low.

Plus, Sonic TVL crosses $1B, the zkLend hacker gets scammed, Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin continues to grow, and Cosmos outperforms ahead its IBC Eureka upgrade.

Also, don’t forget to check out our podcasts with Jason Zhao, cofounder and Chief Protocol Officer at Story Protocol, and Brandon Goh, the cofounder and CEO of Treehouse.

Enjoy!

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PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Bringing Intellectual Property Onchain with Story Protocol | Jason Zhao

Explore the future of intellectual property on the blockchain in this insightful interview with Jason Zhao. Discover how Story Protocol is revolutionizing the way creators protect, share, and license their work. By bringing IP and copyright onchain, the protocol streamlines the process, ensures compliance with state and national laws, and secures rights in an innovative, transparent manner.

Treehouse Protocol: Building DeFi’s Fixed Income Layer | Brandon Goh, Co-Founder & CEO

Brandon Goh is the Co-Founder and CEO of Treehouse, an infrastructure dedicated to establishing the fixed income layer in DeFi. In this interview, Brandon explains how Treehouse is establishing decentralized benchmark rates to bring transparency, efficiency, and standardization to onchain finance.

Friday

• Bitcoin Shows Unexpected Strength as Stocks and Gold Tumble on Trump Tariffs BTC, ETH and SOL post modest gains following strong payrolls data, but recession fears linger.
• SOL/BTC Ratio Suffers in the Wake of $200 Million in Token Unlocks The metric is at its lowest level since 2023, driven by multiple token unlock events and a fading memecoin sector.
• Tokenized Commodities Market Soars Past $1.3B as Investors Flock to RWAs Crypto traders are turning to tokenized commodities to speculate and hedge against volatility.
• EigenLayer to Enable Mainnet Slashing on April 17 EigenLayer is gradually rolling out slashing, giving operators time to prepare.
• Cosmos Rallies 11% Fueled by IBC Eureka Upgrade The upgrade aims to increase Cosmos’ scalability and interoperability across different virtual machines.
• Aave Founder's SocialFi Protocol Lens Launches Mainnet with 650K Users Moving from Polygon required migrating 12 million posts and 28 million social connections to Lens Chain.
• DeFAI, AI Agents, and DeSci Have Been Obliterated in 2025 The DeFAI, AI Agents, and DeSci sectors are down 91%, 81%, and 75% year to date (YTD), respectively.
• Treasure DAO Restructures and Cuts Costs in Attempt to Survive The MAGIC token dropped over 20% after Treasure DAO's co-founder and chief contributor John Patten revealed the scope of the project’s financial crisis.

Thursday

• Bitcoin Plunges 6% as Trump’s Tariffs Spark $500 Million of Liquidations Altcoins have been battered, with ETH, SOL and XRP down between 6% and 12%.
• Hyperlane Sets $HYPER Airdrop Date on April 20 The interchain messaging protocol is preparing for its upcoming token generation event.
• TRUMP Memecoin Plummets as Tariffs Roil Markets The U.S. President’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcements sent global markets tumbling.
• Synthetix’s Stablecoin sUSD Depegs to Below $0.92 Twice This Week Yesterday’s incident marks the second time sUSD has slipped below its dollar peg this week alone.
• RLUSD Market Capitalization Surges 21% After Ripple Payments Integration The market cap of Ripple’s stablecoin has hit $294 million just three months after launching.
• Weekly Ethereum Blob Fees Plummet 73% to Lowest Levels Since Start of 2025 Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade last year reportedly reduced the network's overall fee revenue.
• 55 Million Americans Use Crypto — And Construction Workers Are Big Fans: Report Many U.S. crypto holders are tech and construction workers, according to a recent survey.
• Government Efficiency Can Be Vastly Improved by Crypto and Blockchain: Coinbase As the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seeks to cut waste and improve systems, Coinbase says crypto can help.

Wednesday

• Exclusive: Top Vault Protocol Veda is Expanding to Solana With the goal of making DeFi accessible to the masses, Ethereum-first Veda is preparing to move onto Solana.
• Crypto Market Holds Firm as Trump Readies "Liberation Day" Tariffs Bitcoin climbs 2.6% while overall market cap dips 0.8% amid tariff uncertainty.
• Uniswap DAO Advances $111 Million Program to Boost Governance Participation The proposal would delegate 18 million UNI tokens from Uniswap’s treasury to underrepresented delegates.
• U.S. Asset Managers with $38 Trillion in AUM Are Yet to Embrace Bitcoin Tephra Digital research found that the majority of the largest U.S. brokerage firms restrict their advisors from buying crypto for clients.
• FDUSD Depegs After Justin Sun Alleges Insolvency The Tron founder claims First Digital Trust is “effectively insolvent,” while the company accuses him of running a smear campaign.
• Top DeFi Protocol Kamino Integrates Oracle Pyth to Close DeFi-CeFi Gap on Solana The new tool promises fast, competitive pricing and aims to eliminate slippage when executing token swaps.
• zkLend Hacker ‘Devastated’ After Losing $5.5 Million to Phishing Scam The hacker who drained $10 million from zkLend in February lost 2,930 ETH after sending funds to a fake Tornado Cash.
• Ethereum DEX Volume Flips Solana, But ETH-BTC Ratio Hovers at Five-Year Low Ending a five-month losing streak, Ethereum hosted more decentralized exchange volume than Solana in March.
• Sonic TVL Crosses $1 Billion The Layer 1 blockchain’s TVL has been grinding up consistently since its mainnet launch.

Tuesday

• Crypto Market Posts Modest Gains as Trump’s Tariffs Loom Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana rise, but investor caution persists amid macroeconomic uncertainty.
• Privacy Pools Go Live on Ethereum, With Vitalik Buterin As One of the First Users Privacy Pools can be seen as a more legally compliant version of the Tornado Cash mixing service.
• NFT Marketplaces Shut Down Amid Declining Volumes In the past two days, both X2Y2 and Bybit have separately announced that they will sunset their NFT platforms.
• California Bill Would Require Custodial Wallet Providers to Turn Over Unclaimed Assets After Three Years Such ‘escheated’ assets would be held in trust by the state.
• Crypto Tokens Worth Over $600 Million Set to Unlock This Week Popular cryptocurrencies like Sui, Wormhole, and Solana will have significant amounts of tokens released.
• Maple Finance Hits All-Time High in Active Loans The private credit-focused lending protocol has eclipsed fresh highs in total value locked and active loans.

Monday

• Most Crypto Projects Earn Under $1,000 Per Month, Study Finds Most crypto projects struggle to bring in revenue, despite sky-high valuations.
• Taproot Wizards Crash 50% Below Dutch Auction Price The hyped Bitcoin Ordinals collection has left a majority of its minters with an immediate loss..
• Gunzilla Games Launches GUN token for ‘Off the Grid’ Battle Royale Game The GUNZ blockchain launched its mainnet on an Avalanche subnet.
• Crypto Market Records Mild Losses Ahead of Trump’s Tariff Rollout BTC and ETH manage to post gains despite the overall market decline.

TRENDING

• SOL/BTC Ratio Suffers in the Wake of $200 Million in Token Unlocks
• Hyperlane Sets $HYPER Airdrop Date on April 20
• TRUMP Memecoin Plummets as Tariffs Roil Markets
• RLUSD Market Capitalization Surges 21% After Ripple Payments Integration
• Bitcoin Plunges 6% as Trump’s Tariffs Spark $500 Million of Liquidations
• Weekly Ethereum Blob Fees Plummet 73% to Lowest Levels Since Start of 2025