Bitcoin climbed above the $90,000 mark for the first time since early March, and this upward movement has been closely tied to strategic actions by whales, particularly on Binance.

As large-scale buyers step in, the market sees significant price boosts. Interestingly, similar positive trends are emerging on Coinbase as well.

Whale Movements

As Bitcoin continues to rise, CryptoQuant revealed that each price increase correlates with large-scale purchases from whales on Binance, further fueling the upward momentum. Interestingly, similar positive actions are observed on Coinbase, with whales on both platforms driving the market higher.

Despite a recent shift in sentiment towards a bearish outlook, the market has effectively shaken off retail investors and has left Bitcoin and altcoins in an oversold condition. This reset, according to CryptoQuant, positions the crypto market for a potential upward movement.

Looking ahead in 2025, the analysis suggests continued positive market movements, driven by the coordinated actions of large institutional players on these major exchanges.

Zooming Out

Recent on-chain metrics reveal a divergence in behavior between long-term and short-term Bitcoin holders. Long-Term Holders (LTH), those who have held Bitcoin for over 155 days, have been observed to have resumed accumulation for the first time since the local peak.

This shift indicates that experienced investors, driven by conviction and cycle awareness, are gradually rebuilding their positions after months of sustained distribution. While this activity doesn’t always involve large whale movements, it reflects strategic repositioning by seasoned market participants.

In contrast, short-term holders (STH), who have held Bitcoin for less than 155 days, are continuing to sell into market weakness, with net outflows remaining deep in the red. This behavior suggests capitulation and a lack of confidence, particularly during recent market drawdowns. Historically, such sell-offs from short-term holders often coincide with local market bottoms.

The divergence between LTH accumulation and STH capitulation is significant, as LTH behavior is typically tied to macro conviction and long-term strategy. At the same time, STH activity tends to be more emotional and reactive. When these two trends occur at the same time, it often signals the early stages of a re-accumulation phase.

If LTHs continue to increase their positions while short-term supply is flushed out, this could create a solid foundation for future price recovery, even if short-term price fluctuations persist.

[PRESS RELEASE – Dubai, UAE, April 23rd, 2025]

Funding round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and over 100 angels across industry-leading teams such as Aave, Polygon, and StarkWare.

• Proof-of-Stake has become the dominant standard for blockchains, with Symbiotic unlocking new revenue streams for stakers across multiple networks simultaneously.
• Top investors and teams are backing Symbiotic’s vision to transform staking from an isolated, single-network security mechanism into a universal coordination layer.
• Leading projects, including Hyperlane, Spark, and Avail, are among the first adopters, with 14 networks already integrated and 20+ more in the pipeline.

Symbiotic, the universal staking protocol, today announced a $29 million Series A funding round to launch the Universal Staking Framework, designed to expand blockchain security into broader economic coordination. The round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and more than 100 angel investors, including prominent contributors from Aave, Polygon, and StarkWare. The investment will be used to expand Symbiotic’s team and ecosystem, accelerate integrations with additional networks through tools such as SDKs, and support new functionality across slashing, cross-chain collateral composition, and risk modeling.

This milestone follows rapid growth since Symbiotic’s launch in June of last year, reaching over $1 billion in TVL faster than any other protocol from its initial launch. Live with 14 networks, Symbiotic is expanding to more than 35, with additional networks at various stages of integration—including Hyperlane, Spark, and Avail. The protocol also introduced the first restaking system with customizable slashing capabilities in January, establishing a new benchmark for protocol-level security.

Universal Staking builds on the capital efficiency introduced by restaking but dramatically expands its scope. Rather than focusing solely on shared security, Symbiotic enables any combination of assets to secure any class of network—modular or monolithic, L1 or L2—while supporting use cases that extend well beyond traditional staking, including insurance and other financial products.

“Restaking solved a key problem around capital efficiency in blockchain security—but it came with fixed assumptions,” said Misha Putiatin, co-founder of Symbiotic. “Universal Staking breaks that mold. We’ve created a modular framework that lets protocols evolve security models over time while efficiently coordinating risk. This empowers protocols at every stage of their lifecycle to evolve their security models seamlessly without rebuilding infrastructure.”

Major players in the interoperability and modular blockchain ecosystem are now building with Symbiotic. Hyperlane, a permissionless interoperability protocol, is working with Symbiotic to introduce native staking for its token — allowing the protocol to secure its network with a decentralized validator set backed by cryptoeconomic guarantees. This collaboration brings programmable security to Hyperlane’s modular architecture, helping ensure its cross-chain messaging routes remain trust-minimized and censorship-resistant.

In addition to improving security, insurance primitives backed by diverse collateral are currently in development, and structured risk products are being designed to layer staking positions for enhanced capital efficiency and more granular risk exposure.

“We see Universal Staking as the next step in blockchain infrastructure,” said Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner at Pantera Capital. “Symbiotic unlocks economic coordination between assets and networks that were previously impossible. As the number and variety of onchain assets continue to increase, Symbiotic allows them to easily serve as economic security while enabling entirely new use cases across DeFi.”

Symbiotic’s expansion comes amid rapid growth in the broader staking and crypto ecosystem. As of February 2025, over 33.8 million ETH are staked, representing approximately 28.36% of the total ETH supply. Meanwhile, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization surged to $3.9 trillion in 2024, marking a 127% Y-on-Y growth and reflecting renewed interest in infrastructure-level innovations like staking, restaking, and asset coordination.

For more information about Symbiotic and Universal Staking, users can visit https://symbiotic.fi/.

About Symbiotic

Symbiotic is a universal staking protocol that provides a modular coordination framework for the blockchain ecosystem. It enables protocols to evolve their security models over time and unlock entirely new economic primitives. Backed by Paradigm, Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, cyberFund, and over 100 angel investors, Symbiotic is currently live on 14 networks and expanding to a total of 35, with additional networks in various stages of integration. For more, users can visit https://symbiotic.fi.

Over two months of market correction may finally be coming to an end as Bitcoin’s on-chain metrics begin to flash positive signals again.

According to a weekly report by the on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, the contraction in bitcoin (BTC) spot demand is gradually easing, while the decline in the asset’s apparent demand is slowing down, and crypto liquidity growth is expanding.

BTC Demand Signs Are Improving

In the last 30 days, Bitcoin’s apparent demand has declined by 146,000 BTC, a significant contrast from the 311,000 BTC plunge recorded on March 27. This shows that spot demand for the leading digital asset is still declining, but at a slower rate.

Unfortunately, the negative momentum in demand for BTC has intensified. The demand momentum, which compares BTC purchases by new investors to those by older investors, has fallen to 642,000 BTC, its lowest since October 2024.

Large investors are accumulating BTC at the slowest monthly pace since February, with their holdings declining slightly in the past week. The holdings of this cohort of market participants have plummeted by roughly 30,000 BTC, with their monthly accumulation rate slowing from 2.7% at the end of March to 0.4% currently.

Also, Bitcoin demand in the United States spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) market is relatively low, although the funds recorded over $912 million in positive flows on April 22. On average, flows into these funds have been oscillating between -5,000 and +3,000 daily, compared with inflows of more than 8,000 in November-December when BTC skyrocketed to $100,000.

Moreover, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have net sold 10,000 BTC so far this year, compared to a net purchase of 208,000 BTC by this time in 2024. CryptoQuant insists that Bitcoin demand, demand momentum, and purchases from U.S. spot ETFs need to sustain positive growth for prices to surge.

Bears Are Still Dominant

Additionally, the market analytics platform noted that prices rally sustainably when the market cap of stablecoins, with Tether (USDT) as a proxy, expands by more than $5 billion, and the change hovers above its 30-day moving average. However, that is not the case now.

The market cap of USDT has grown by only $2.9 billion in the last sixty days, and this level of growth is insufficient to support the crypto market liquidity needed for a sustained rally.

Meanwhile, BTC was trading above $94,000 at the time of writing after jumping 6.5% within 24 hours. Regardless, the Bull Score Index remains below 40, indicating that bears are dominant.