Following a few consecutive days of charting gains and multi-week peaks, bitcoin’s price movements have finally reversed, and the asset has corrected by around two grand.

Most altcoins have followed suit, aside from TRUMP, which exploded after it became known that the top 220 holders will have a special dinner with the US president.

BTC Rally Halts

The past week was quite sluggish for BTC, as the asset spent most of the time in a tight range between $83,000 and $86,000. All attempts for a breakout in either direction were halted in their tracks.

The weekend was similar, with little to no actual price moves. The situation started to change on Monday morning when BTC finally broke above the upper boundary and jumped above $87,000. After a brief correction, it went on the offensive once again on Tuesday by surging past $90,000 for the first time since early March.

The gains continued on Wednesday when bitcoin added another four grand and exceeded $94,000 to mark a new multi-week peak. However, after jumping by almost ten grand within a few days and $20,000 since the low on April 7 and 9, BTC, perhaps expectedly, started to lose some ground.

As of now, the asset trades around $92,000 after losing just over two grand since the local peak. Its market cap has retraced to $1.825 trillion on CG, but its dominance over the alts is well above 61% on CG.

TRUMP Shoots Up

The biggest news in the cryptocurrency space yesterday came from the US president’s team as the Official Trump (TRUMP) website stated that the top 220 holders of the meme coin will attend a special dinner with the POTUS. Naturally, the asset’s price skyrocketed as investors rushed to buy it. On a daily scale, TRUMP is up by nearly 30% but it went even higher yesterday.

In contrast, most other altcoins have turned red today. XRP, DOGE, HBAR, and PEPE lead the pack from the larger-cap alts, while IMX has lost the most value from the mid-caps.

The total crypto market cap has lost around $80 billion since yesterday’s peak to under $2.970 trillion.

Bitcoin’s recent surge past $94,000 has reignited debate over whether the bull market is still alive, or if this is merely a dead cat bounce before another leg down.

CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, who previously suggested the cycle had peaked, now admits he may have been premature in his assessment.

Cycle Theory in Peril?

In an April 23 post on X, Ju explained that after BTC dropped 10% following his call, it has since rebounded, trading 10% higher than when he made the prediction.

However, the analyst remains cautious, stressing that the number one cryptocurrency is still range-bound. He nonetheless acknowledged that a decisive break above $100,000 would force him to reconsider his stance. At the same time, a new all-time high (ATH) before the last quarter of the year could potentially see him discard the cyclical theory altogether.

“If Bitcoin hits new ATH before Q4, I’m ready to throw out the cycle theory,” Ju tweeted. “A market without clear cycles could look very different from what we’ve experienced. In that case, the permabulls were right. Up only.”

Bitcoin’s climb above $90,000, a level not seen since early March, has been partly attributed to strategic whale accumulation on major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase. According to CryptoQuant, each upward price movement has been accompanied by large-scale purchases from deep-pocketed investors, suggesting that institutional players are stepping in to drive momentum.

On-chain data supports this school of thought, as it shows long-term holders who have held BTC for more than five months resuming accumulation after a period of distribution. Analysts suggest this renewed interest is a sign of confidence in Bitcoin’s long-term prospects, even as short-term holders continue selling into weakness.

Last week, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas also linked BTC’s price resilience to a shift in ownership as institutional investors and corporate giants like Strategy scooped up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin from the market to absorb the supply that previously shook retail-dominated markets.

A Strong Week, But Still Below All-Time High

This recent price behavior is at the heart of the renewed optimism around BTC’s trajectory. After shedding some of its value in late March amid fears of a topped-out cycle, the asset recovered, gaining 10.2% in the past week alone, edging out the broader crypto market, which went up 9.0% in that period.

At the time of writing, it was changing hands at $92,701, marking a slight intraday dip of 0.8% but still sitting firmly within a 24-hour range between $92,078 and $94,320, reflecting typical consolidation after a strong upward move.

While the cryptocurrency maintains a commanding 61.4% market dominance, it’s still trading 14.7% below its ATH of $108,786. But compared to historical levels, this is rarified air, nearly 137,000% higher than its 2013 low of $67.81.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is questioning Ethereum’s long-term future.

During a Wednesday ask-me-anything (AMA) session, he said the blockchain might not survive the next 10 to 15 years despite boasting the largest total volume locked (TVL) of any network.

Hoskinson’s Critique

Hoskinson identified three major flaws in Ethereum’s structure:

“They have the wrong accounting model, they have the wrong virtual machine, and they have the wrong consensus model.”

The developer, who also co-founded Ethereum, criticized its failing economics and use of Layer 2 (L2) solutions. According to him, L2s have become “parasitic.” He claims that these networks are not solving Ethereum’s core scalability problems and are instead pulling value away from the main chain.

To get back on track, the platform needs to solve the three problems. However, Hoskinson believes the process would end in a “very hostile divorce” given the blockchain’s governance and tokenomics.

He likened its situation to that of former technology giants Myspace and Blackberry, which he referenced as examples of early innovators that eventually collapsed due to competition and mismanagement.

“I don’t think Ethereum will survive more than 10 years to 15 years. The layer 2s will continue to suckle out all of the alpha,“ stated Hoskinson. “People will start fighting and it’ll get harder and harder for Vitalik to be able to hold it together through sheer force of will.”

Further, he believes users will gradually migrate to other platforms and Ethereum will be “eclipsed,” especially by Bitcoin’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, whose TVL Hoskinson expects will become much larger.

ETH’s Struggles in 2025

ETH’s performance in 2025 has been a major topic of discussion in the crypto space. The second-largest cryptocurrency has had one of its worst starts to a year, with analysts citing several reasons for this decline. Some experts have echoed Hoskinson, saying its economic model is weakening because L2 networks like Arbitrum and Optimism are diverting value away from Ethereum itself.

They have also mentioned high gas fees and regulatory uncertainty as possible causes of ETH’s poor showing. Additionally, institutional interest in the blockchain also remains lower than Bitcoin, affecting its market performance.

Nonetheless, Ethereum’s Pectra and Fusaka upgrades, scheduled for later this year, are expected to deliver core improvements that could ease these challenges. The changes are expected to address the network’s long-standing congestion issues, making transactions faster and more efficient.

According to Binance Research, the enhancements will boost the network’s scalability and usability, potentially making it more practical for high-volume crypto payment use cases.

With ETH recently shaking off its languor to move from the $1,500 level to $1,815, analysts think it could finally break free from bearish patterns towards a new momentum. The asset has since dipped slightly to $1,743, which is still a 9.3% improvement over the last seven days, meaning ETH has just outperformed the broader crypto market, which gained 8.10% in that period.