BTC Taps 10-Week High, Crypto Has a New Rockstar, and Iran Reopens the Strait: Weekly Recap

Although the initial peace talks between Iran and the US failed last weekend, there’s renewed hope for a more permanent deal in the making, which made it yet another eventful week.

Recall that BTC had jumped last week as well after the ceasefire announcement from the two sides, and the expected peace talks that took place on Saturday. Their failure resulted in an immediate correction to $70,500 by the end of the weekend, but new reports at the start of the current business week about more positive developments on that front ignited another rally.

In fact, it took BTC just over 36 hours to surge back toward $75,000, where it faced some resistance at first but broke above it and rocketed to just over $76,000 late on Tuesday.

The bears stepped up after this impressive move, and drove the cryptocurrency south to under $73,600 yesterday in a sudden decline. However, that was short-lived as well, as BTC jumped back up to $75,600 just a few hours later after Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. The asset kept climbing earlier today and broke to almost $77,000 to mark its highest price tag in approximately ten weeks.

The latest major came just minutes after US President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Iran had reopened the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, bitcoin’s market cap has increased to over $1.540 trillion. Its dominance over the alts is also on the rise, increasing to over 57% as of press time.

Many larger-cap alts are also in the green on a weekly scale, including ETH (6%), XRP (8%), and DOGE (6.5%). However, RaveDAO’s RAVE token has stolen the show, surging by 1,500% since last Friday. Moreover, it’s up by 7,000% monthly.

In contrast, ZEC has dropped by more than 12% in a week, followed by TAO, RAIN, and CC.

Cryptocurrency Market Overview Weekly April 17. Source: QuantifyCrypto
Cryptocurrency Market Overview Weekly April 17. Source: QuantifyCrypto

Market Cap: $2.680T | 24H Vol: $126B | BTC Dominance: 57.3%

BTC: $76,800 (+4.8%) | ETH: $2,415 (+6.2%) | XRP: $1.47 (+7.8%)

Arthur Hayes Breaks Down Bitcoin’s Fate in Four Iran War Outcomes. The war with Iran seems to be closer to a resolution now than it was 10 days ago, but it continues to impact crypto prices. Arthur Hayes laid out four scenarios for bitcoin and how it would perform depending on the conflict’s permanent outcomes.

Strategy Splashes $1 Billion to Accumulate Almost 14,000 BTC. Strategy returned to the multi-billion-dollar purchases by accumulating another 13,927 BTC. The largest corporate holder of bitcoin now owns close to 781,000 BTC.

BitMine Owns Over 4% of ETH’s Total Supply After Latest Purchase: Details. The second-largest corporate holder of cryptocurrencies, BitMine Immersion Technologies, also increased its ETH holdings to 4.875 million tokens. It now owns over 4% of Ethereum’s total supply.

Deutsche Börse Acquires $200 Million Stake in Kraken. The legacy giant bought a $200 million stake in one of the oldest crypto exchanges, Kraken. According to Bloomberg, this puts the valuation of Kraken’s parent company, Payward Inc, at $13.3 billion.

Bitcoin Developers Propose BIP-361 to Freeze Quantum-Vulnerable Legacy Addresses. Bitcoin developers continue to look for a solution for a problem that might take years to come, by proposing a new BIP-361 update to freeze legacy addresses that might be vulnerable to the quantum threat.

Bitcoin Lags 40% Below ATH as S&P 500 Sets New Record. Although this report came a few days ago when BTC’s price was slightly lower, it’s still true now as the S&P 500 continues to mark new all-time highs, while bitcoin struggles at over 40% below its own from October last year.

This week, we have a chart analysis of Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin, and Hyperliquid – click here for the complete price analysis.

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