📈 Markets Just Went Vertical

Plus, 🏦 SEC gets a crypto-friendly chair, 💥 Justin Sun hit with defamation suit, and 🗳️ Solana ramps up D.C. lobbying efforts.

Author

Juan Aranovich
April 10, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 📈 Bitcoin rallies as tariffs paused

  • ✅ Paul Atkins confirmed as new SEC chief

  • 🧨 Justin Sun sued for ‘fraud,’ ‘insolvency’ claims

  • 🏛️ Solana hires top D.C. lobbyist

The Financial Freedom Report explores the role currency and banking play in the civil liberties and human rights struggles of those living under authoritarian regimes and how Bitcoin is used to push back.

By Tikta and Veronica Irwin

Bitcoin Tops $83,000 as Tariff Pause Sends Markets Soaring

Bitcoin surged past $83,000 following U.S. President Donald Trump’s Truth Social announcement of a 90-day pause on tariffs above 10%, a move that he didn’t apply to China, which he slammed with a huge tariff increase to 125% on Wednesday.

The original digital asset rallied to an intraday high of $83,541 before settling around $81,900 at around 6:00 a.m. ET on Thursday. Most of that price action took place within an hour, leading to $92 million of short liquidations, according to data from analytics platform CryptoQuant.

Ether, XRP, and SOL were some of the top-performing altcoins, rallying 10% over a 24-hour period to 2:00 a.m. ET on Thursday as crypto market capitalization increased 7% to $2.61 trillion.

Trump’s policy shift also triggered a major relief rally in U.S. equities, with Wall Street’s three main indices seeing some of the biggest single-day gains since the second World War.

“At 9:37 AM ET today, President Trump posted that it's a ‘great time to buy.’ Then, at 1:18 PM ET, Trump posted that he is PAUSING tariffs for 90-days,” market commentary account The Kobeissi Letter wrote on X. “The Nasdaq is now up over +10% on track for its best day since October 2008. Did Trump just tell us about one of the market's largest daily gains 4 hours in advance?”

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Paul Atkins as the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission in a vote of 52-44, largely along party lines.

Atkins has been a vocal advocate of clearer and more coordinated rules for the crypto industry, and has taken an overall deregulatory stance embodied in his consistent opposition to investor protections and reforms in measures such as the Dodd-Frank Act, introduced following the global financial crisis of 2008.

“I sat down w/ Mr. Atkins to discuss digital asset legislation, empowering Wyoming’s blockchain future & implementing reforms to the regulatory rulemaking process,” Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis wrote on X after Atkins’s confirmation. “I’m confident his leadership will bring positive change.”

Atkins previously served as an SEC commissioner during the George W. Bush administration in the run-up to the financial crisis. He is also the founder of Patomak Global Partners, a consulting firm for financial institutions.

First Digital Trust has launched a defamation lawsuit against Tron founder Justin Sun following his public allegations last week that the Hong Kong-based custodian was “effectively insolvent.”

FDUSD, First Digital’s stablecoin, temporarily depegged nearly 10% from its $1 value on April 3 after Sun made that claim.

First Digital aims to block Sun from repeating his allegations and is demanding corrective statements from the controversial crypto entrepreneur. 

Sun, meanwhile, doubled down on his initial comments during a press conference in Hong Kong last week, accusing First Digital of fraud and urging regulatory reforms for trust services.

The Solana Policy Institute, a new lobbying organization dedicated to advancing the Solana ecosystem in Washington, has brought on prominent political operative Colin McLaren as its engagement director.

McLaren previously led campaigns at the Cedar Innovation Foundation, a “dark money” group with ties to Coinbase and Ripple that is known for hard-hitting political ads targeting crypto critics in Congress.

With McLaren’s deep political ties and the Solana Policy Institute’s growing roster of high-powered hires, is Solana looking to outmaneuver its rivals on Capitol Hill?

  • 🛬 Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith was released early from prison on Wednesday after serving nearly five years for violating U.S. sanctions by giving a blockchain lecture in North Korea in 2018, a trip that later sparked multiple international indictments.

  • 📈 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved options trading in several spot Ethereum ETFs, including those from BlackRock, Bitwise, and Grayscale, nearly a year after approving spot ether ETFs themselves.

  • 🎨 OpenSea urged the SEC to formally declare that NFT marketplaces are not securities brokers or exchanges, arguing that previous enforcement efforts had created uncertainty and stifled innovation in the NFT sector.

  • 🔁 Binance introduced LDUSDT, a new yield-bearing margin asset allowing futures traders to earn APR on locked USDT while maintaining trading liquidity, the exchange’s second such product after BFUSD.

  • 📉 A wallet tied to Trump-backed World Liberty Financial sold 5,471 ETH for $8 million at a $125 million loss on Wednesday, contradicting Eric Trump’s previous “great time to buy” ETH call made at nearly double the price.

  • ⚡ Pakistan’s Crypto Council is planning to use surplus electricity to power bitcoin mining and AI data centers, with site selection based on excess grid capacity and discussions already underway with mining firms.

  • 🇰🇷 South Korea’s top bank executives on Wednesday urged lawmakers to scrap the one-bank-per-exchange rule, arguing that it restricts user choice and institutional participation as crypto regulations ease and institutional onboarding ramps up.

  • 🧠 NFT marketplace Magic Eden acquired Slingshot Finance to pivot from NFTs into onchain token trading, gaining a retail-friendly app with fiat support and multi-chain capabilities as it targets dominance across both memecoins and DeFi.

  • 🤖 Wunder.Social raised $50 million from Rollman Management to launch a blockchain-verified, bot-free social platform that shares ad revenue with users, and it is planning a token offering later this month, with former TikTok executive Ryan Martin as chief marketing officer.

  1. DL News: Traders are running out of safe havens. Now should be Bitcoin’s time to shine

  2. Chris Dixon, managing partner at VC firm a16z crypto, on stablecoins

  3. Matthew Graham, managing partner at VC firm Ryze Labs, on how “crypto came into 2025 expecting a Trump tailwind and got a Category 5 storm instead”