Weekly Options Newsletter: 26.04.2026 – 02.05.2026

Powell Bows Out, Tether Builds an Empire, and Europe Quietly Becomes a Stablecoin Powerhouse

Bitcoin touched $79,000 on Tuesday before Powell’s final FOMC press conference sent it sliding back to $74,937 on a hawkish note that the market had not fully priced. The Fed’s most divided vote since 1992 — eight-to-four — confirmed the rate-cut window for 2026 is closing fast. At the same time, Tether proposed merging Twenty One Capital, Strike, and Elektron Energy into what it calls “the premier listed Bitcoin company in the world,” Strategy made another $1 billion BTC purchase, and Germany’s AllUnity quietly expanded its MiCA-regulated euro stablecoin to Solana. The week ended with BTC holding $75,000 — bruised but structurally intact — and a new Fed Chair set to take the podium in June.

WEEK AT A GLANCE

  • Bitcoin (BTC): ~$75,963 (weekly high $79,388 Tuesday; FOMC selloff to low of $74,937)
  • Ethereum (ETH): ~$2,257 (below $2,270; testing $2,220 support post-FOMC)
  • Total Crypto Market Cap: ~$2.62–$2.63T
  • BTC Dominance: 58.0%
  • Fear & Greed Index: 26–33 (Fear zone; declining through the week)
  • FOMC Vote (April 29): 8–4 hold at 3.50%–3.75% — most divided since October 1992
  • FOMC Dissents: Miran (cut); Bowman, Kashkari, Logan (remove easing bias language)
  • Polymarket — Zero Rate Cuts 2026: 59% (record high probability)
  • BTC Post-FOMC Low: $74,937 (intraday; tested 20-day SMA at $75,664)
  • BTC Spot Volume: Lowest since October 2023 (Glassnode)
  • BTC ETF Outflows (April 29): −$137.77M — 3rd consecutive negative session; zero positive issuer prints
  • ETH ETF Outflows (April 29): −$87.73M — proportionally heavier than BTC relative to AUM
  • BTC ETF Total Net Assets: $99.27B (6.55% of BTC market cap)
  • Strategy Purchase (April 21–27): 13,927 BTC for ~$1B at avg. $71,808
  • Tether BTC Holdings Disclosed: 140,000+ BTC confirmed by CEO Paolo Ardoino at Bitcoin 2026
  • Tether Merger Proposal: Twenty One Capital (XXI) + Strike + Elektron Energy; XXI +8% after-hours
  • AllUnity EURAU → Solana: MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin expanded; euro stablecoin market doubled since early 2025
  • MARA Holdings: $1.5B deal to acquire Long Ridge Energy (505 MW gas plant, 1,600 acres Ohio) for AI data center buildout
  • North Korea Crypto Hacks 2026: 76% of all crypto hack losses; $6B stolen since 2017
  • Kevin Warsh: Cleared Senate Banking Committee; first FOMC as Chair in June
  • Brent Crude: ~$104/barrel; Strait remains closed; Polymarket pricing further upside toward $120

PRICE ACTION: $79K in the Rearview Mirror

Bitcoin had its best shot at $80,000 this week and came within $612 of it. BTC reached $79,388 on Tuesday as macro optimism briefly returned to markets, before Powell’s final press conference as Fed Chair reversed the move in real time. Bitcoin hit an intraday low of $74,937 — just below the 20-day simple moving average of $75,664, which traders viewed as critical for confirming the support-resistance flip from the prior week’s breakout above $76,016.

The week’s price action can be read in three acts. Monday and Tuesday saw BTC consolidate the prior week’s breakout, with Bitcoin holding above $78,000 and traders tentatively adding long exposure heading into the FOMC. The Fed delivered its verdict Wednesday and BTC dropped progressively through Thursday and Friday, with opening prices falling each morning as risk appetite contracted. By Thursday, BTC had opened at $75,752 — the lowest opening in over a week — before stabilizing.

The technical read is mixed but not broken. The $75,000–$76,000 zone — the former two-month ceiling — is now the critical floor. A daily close below $73,500 resets the structure and opens a path toward $70,000. On the upside, $80,000 remains the line that separates the current recovery from a genuine bull re-engagement. Bollinger Bands remain narrow, statistical probability favoring an expansion move, and the direction of that move remains contingent on the macro backdrop.

ETH underperformed sharply. Ethereum tested $2,220 support after the Fed decision, with $149.7 million in liquidations across the ecosystem on April 30 alone. The ETH/BTC ratio declined through the week and ETH weakness continues to signal risk-off positioning within crypto — a pattern where capital consolidates in BTC during uncertainty before rotating to alts on breakouts.

Key Levels:

  • BTC: $80,000 as the breakout trigger; $75,000–$76,000 as the new support floor; $73,500 as the line that cannot close below without structural consequence
  • ETH: $2,220 as near-term support; $2,193 (50-day EMA) as the floor; $2,400 as the resistance that needs to break for ETH to lead

OPTIONS MARKET: Leverage Flushed, Conviction Still Absent

The derivatives tape heading into FOMC told a clean story. According to Glassnode data, BTC traders were adding leverage with a bearish tilt just before Powell’s press conference — open interest rising since Tuesday’s $79,000 retest, funding predominantly below neutral, and spot and futures cumulative volume differential diverging, with futures driving selling pressure. When the Fed delivered its hawkish tone, the structure unwound exactly as positioned.

Bitcoin spot volumes across major exchanges have fallen to their lowest levels since October 2023. Low-volume environments often coincide with reduced market depth and heightened sensitivity to flow shifts — meaning the next directional move, whichever way it goes, is likely to be larger than the underlying catalyst would otherwise justify.

Earlier in the week, a $541 million short squeeze had cleared the market as BTC broke through $75,000 resistance, with short sellers absorbing $440 million or 81% of total liquidations across 169,525 traders. BTC shorts led at $236 million, followed by ETH at $143 million. For context, when BTC broke $60,000 in March 2024, the resulting squeeze cleared roughly $400 million — making the April 2026 event approximately 35% larger by notional value.

By week’s end, funding rates had normalized to near-neutral at +0.0036% with BTC open interest at $7.2 billion on Binance alone, and a 51.5% / 48.5% long-short split — a healthy, unlevered configuration that supports the case for another directional move once a macro catalyst resolves. The missing ingredient remains conviction: expanding open interest alongside rising price, the signal that new directional money is entering rather than just shorts covering.

INSTITUTIONAL ACTIVITY: Tether Builds a Bitcoin Conglomerate, Strategy Keeps Buying

The most structurally significant institutional development of the week arrived Wednesday evening at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino publicly confirmed the firm holds more than 140,000 Bitcoin, making Tether one of the five largest corporate Bitcoin holders globally. Within hours, Tether Investments proposed a three-way merger combining Twenty One Capital (NYSE: XXI), Strike, and Bitcoin miner Elektron Energy into what it described as “the premier listed Bitcoin company in the world.”

The proposed entity would unite bitcoin treasury, mining, financial services, lending, and capital markets under a single public company — a vertical integration strategy that mirrors how Strategy transformed from a software firm into a Bitcoin holding vehicle, but goes several steps further by adding operational revenue streams. Strike, founded by XXI CEO Jack Mallers, operates in more than 100 countries as a global Bitcoin financial services platform. Mallers disclosed this week that Strike has secured a $2.1 billion credit facility to meet lending demand. Elektron Energy adds industrial mining infrastructure — a 505 MW capacity that provides recurring, production-driven Bitcoin accumulation rather than pure capital market purchases.

XXI shares climbed nearly 8% in after-hours trading on the announcement. The deal’s architecture — blending a regulated distribution business, industrial production, and a corporate treasury — represents a new template for publicly listed Bitcoin exposure, one that offers more predictable revenue streams than pure treasury vehicles.

Strategy added another 13,927 BTC for approximately $1 billion between April 21–27 at an average price of $71,808 — bringing total holdings to approximately 828,988 BTC. Michael Saylor declared the Bitcoin winter over on April 24, with the purchase coinciding with what CoinDesk described as Bitcoin’s best monthly performance in a year. The average cost basis for Strategy’s entire position stands at approximately $75,527, meaning the firm is currently near breakeven at prevailing prices.

MARA Holdings announced a $1.5 billion deal to acquire Long Ridge Energy — a 505 MW gas plant with 1,600 acres in Ohio offering over 1 gigawatt in potential power capacity — as part of an accelerating pivot from Bitcoin mining toward AI data center infrastructure. The deal marks one of the largest miner-to-AI infrastructure transitions in the sector, underscoring the structural reallocation of hashrate-operator capital away from pure Bitcoin exposure and toward diversified compute revenue.

MARKET STRUCTURE: ETF Outflows Deepen, But the Cumulative Foundation Holds

The ETF picture deteriorated meaningfully into the FOMC. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs bled $137.77 million on April 29 — the third straight day of outflows — led by BlackRock IBIT (−$54.73M) and Fidelity FBTC (−$36.13M). Crucially, April 29 saw zero positive issuer prints — every active flow was negative, a breadth reading not seen since March’s capitulation days. Where April 28 had seen Bitwise’s BITB act as a counterweight with $41.2M in inflows, April 29 offered no offset.

Ethereum ETFs posted $87.73 million in outflows on the same day, with FETH (−$48.37M) and BlackRock’s ETHA (−$37.06M) the hardest hit. Relative to a much smaller asset base ($13.10B versus BTC’s $99.27B), this is proportionally heavier than the Bitcoin print — ETH funds shed roughly 0.67% of net assets in a single session.

The cumulative picture remains structurally sound despite the near-term outflows. Total net inflows across all Bitcoin ETFs stand at $58.07 billion, with IBIT alone holding $61.11 billion in net assets representing 4.03% of all BTC supply. Four consecutive weeks of positive weekly flows through April 21 demonstrated that institutional demand is durable across multi-week periods even when short-term sessions go negative. The FOMC-driven pause is consistent with the historical pattern of 48–72 hour digestion following macro events, after which the prior trend tends to reassert.

XRP spot ETFs were the only bright spot on the week, posting $3.59 million in net inflows — led by Bitwise XRP and Franklin XRPZ — as the token benefited from its regulatory clarity following the March 17 SEC-CFTC joint interpretation. SOL ETFs printed flat.

REGULATORY DEVELOPMENTS: Banks Fight the Stablecoin Clock, Warsh Heads to the Fed

Kevin Warsh cleared the Senate Banking Committee on April 29, with Powell publicly congratulating him during his final press conference. Warsh’s first FOMC meeting as Chair will be in June — and it will be accompanied by the Summary of Economic Projections and dot plots, giving the market its first comprehensive read on the policy direction under new leadership. Analysts at ClearBridge noted that because Warsh replaces Miran’s voting seat (not Powell’s Board seat, as Powell intends to stay on the Board), the hawkish-to-dovish balance on the committee does not automatically shift. The June meeting becomes the most important macro event for crypto for the remainder of Q2.

U.S. banking groups are pushing to slow stablecoin legislation, arguing that multiple federal agencies are moving quickly on stablecoin regulations in ways that make it difficult to understand how rules will interact. The pushback extends the CLARITY Act’s already delayed timeline. Separately, crypto firm Agora is racing to secure a stablecoin charter ahead of the regulatory framework — signaling that the competition for regulated stablecoin infrastructure is intensifying regardless of the legislative calendar.

North Korea’s crypto hacking program received fresh documentation this week. Security intelligence research confirmed that North Korean state-backed hackers now account for 76% of all crypto scam and hack losses in 2026 and have stolen $6 billion since 2017. The Lazarus Group’s methodology has evolved significantly — a detailed CoinDesk investigation revealed that North Korean spies spent months in-person embedding within crypto companies before executing the Drift exploit, using social engineering and sustained infiltration rather than purely technical attacks. The implications for institutional security review are significant: the threat model is no longer purely technical, and standard cybersecurity frameworks are insufficient.

GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS: Europe Builds Its Own Stablecoin Stack, Saylor Calls the Bottom

Germany’s AllUnity expanded its MiCA-regulated EURAU stablecoin to the Solana blockchain this week, bringing a fully-reserved, euro-backed digital asset to one of the world’s highest-throughput settlement networks. AllUnity — a joint venture backed by DWS, Flow Traders, and Galaxy Digital — debuted EURAU on Ethereum last July and is now extending reach to Solana for cross-border payments, trading, lending, and treasury management.

The expansion lands at a telling moment. Euro stablecoins have doubled in market cap since early 2025 to nearly $1 billion, and S&P Global projects the market could reach 570 billion euros ($672 billion) by 2030. French Finance Minister Roland Lescure publicly called for more euro-denominated stablecoins this week and urged EU banks to explore tokenized deposits. The political and regulatory tailwind behind European stablecoins is now explicit — and AllUnity’s MiCA-compliant architecture positions it as the institutional vehicle of choice as European banks build out their digital asset infrastructure.

Strike operates in more than 100 countries — including across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa — and CEO Jack Mallers’ proposed merger with Twenty One Capital and Elektron represents a potential consolidation of global Bitcoin financial services infrastructure under a single public entity. The cross-border dimensions of Strike’s business make the proposed merger’s implications extend well beyond U.S. markets, particularly for emerging economies where Bitcoin adoption has outpaced traditional banking infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the narrative around North Korean state crypto theft is reshaping how global enforcement agencies think about digital asset security. FATF’s concurrent warnings about stablecoin illicit flows and the confirmed $6 billion in DPRK crypto theft since 2017 are accelerating international coordination on crypto-specific financial crime — a regulatory dynamic with long-term structural implications for how cross-border DeFi protocols are designed and audited.

MACRO CONTEXT: Powell’s Last Stand and What Warsh Inherits

Jerome Powell ended his tenure as Fed Chair with the most divided FOMC decision since October 1992 — an 8-4 split that revealed genuine disagreement about both the direction and the communication of policy. Three dissenters wanted to remove easing bias language entirely, signaling they are not prepared to cut rates under any near-term scenario. One dissenter voted for an immediate 25-basis-point cut. The divergence is unusual and tells the market that Warsh inherits a committee with real internal tension rather than a consensus-driven body.

Powell confirmed he will remain on the Federal Reserve Board indefinitely — stating he is waiting until an investigation into Fed building renovations is resolved with “transparency and finality” — meaning Warsh replaces Miran’s committee seat, not Powell’s Board seat. This has a direct implication for the rate path: the hawkish-to-dovish ratio on the voting committee does not shift automatically with the leadership change, and Warsh’s June SEP will be closely watched to understand whether he allows the dot plots to move the dial toward or away from cuts.

The Polymarket probability of zero rate cuts in 2026 has risen to a record 59%. Brent crude returned above $104 per barrel as oil markets remained tight. The Fed’s statement explicitly acknowledged rising energy prices as a key inflation variable. For Bitcoin, the mechanical chain remains intact: rate cuts would expand liquidity, reduce the opportunity cost of non-yielding assets, and provide the macro tailwind the ETF bid has been waiting for. The June meeting is the first opportunity to learn whether Warsh represents a meaningful policy shift or continuity under a new name.

FORWARD LOOK: What to Watch This Week

→ $75,000–$76,000 holding as support: The breakout level from last week is now the floor. Every session that closes above this zone incrementally validates the structural shift from ceiling to floor. A clean daily close below $73,500 reopens the $70,000 path.

→ Kevin Warsh’s first public comments as incoming Chair: Any remarks before his June debut will be parsed for signals on the rate path, the dot plot, and whether he plans to reintroduce easing bias language that the three April dissenters wanted removed. This is the highest-asymmetry macro catalyst visible from here.

→ ETF flow reversal: The three-day outflow streak heading into the weekend needs to reverse in the first two sessions of the week to confirm the FOMC event was a digestion pause rather than a structural shift in institutional demand. Watch for the breadth of positive issuers — zero positive prints on April 29 was the warning signal.

→ Tether-Twenty One Capital merger due diligence: The proposed combination of XXI, Strike, and Elektron is now in the market’s hands. Watch for any formal due diligence timeline, regulatory filing, or valuation disclosure — each of which will move XXI and provide a pricing signal for the broader Bitcoin treasury equity complex.

→ AllUnity EURAU adoption metrics: The first full week of EURAU on Solana provides early adoption data from institutional partners including Bullish, Privy, Hercle, and Transak. Watch for volume metrics and whether the European cross-border payments use case generates measurable on-chain activity.

→ Stablecoin legislation: The banking industry’s pushback on stablecoin regulations adds complexity to an already delayed timeline. Watch for any Senate response to the banking groups’ concerns — and whether it further pushes the CLARITY Act toward summer or triggers a compromise that unlocks the bill.

Crypto Options Weekly is an independent market intelligence newsletter. Nothing herein constitutes financial advice. Data sourced from Deribit, CoinDesk, Bloomberg, Glassnode, CryptoQuant, SoSoValue, Farside Investors, CME FedWatch, Robertson Stephens, CNBC, and public filings. All figures approximate as of Friday, April 30, 2026. Past performance is not indicative of future results.