Leading Crypto Industry Research and Analysis

Most CeFi yields rest on a single lending spread. Coinhold runs on four revenue streams, including fee income from a top-seven Bitcoin mining pool, and the difference shows up in both the rate and the risk profile.

As prediction markets gain broader market attention, Hyperliquid is preparing to integrate outcome-based trading directly into HyperCore. HIP-4 could turn event contracts into a native part of the platform’s trading stack, creating a more capital-efficient model for binary outcomes, hedging, and new derivatives-like products.

Institutional capital, tokenized assets, and new licensing regimes are pulling crypto exchanges into territory long held by brokers and banks. The result is a generation of multi-asset platforms competing directly with the traditional financial system they once sat alongside.

Amid institutional adoption, the growth of spot ETFs, and declining trust in fiat currencies, major investors and macro analysts continue raising their BTC price targets.

Prediction markets are increasingly emerging as a standalone category within digital financial markets.

The Perps DEX market structure continues to consolidate around a small number of highly liquid venues.

April 2026 continued the broader cooldown across crypto trading volumes, with Spot CEX, Futures, and Perp DEX activity all remaining below previous peak levels. In this recap, we break down how trading volumes evolved across centralized spot exchanges, futures markets, and onchain perpetual DEXs throughout the month, while also comparing current activity with previous cycle highs and longer-term market structure trends.

April 2026 saw CEX spot trading volume fall to a new 25-month low of $951.8B, extending the market’s prolonged low-volatility phase. Binance kept its clear lead, while Coinbase climbed into the top four and Gate.io continued to outperform within the mid-tier exchange group.

April 2026 marked the weakest month in 12 months: capital plunged 74% to 662m, and deal count dropped to 64. mega-rounds disappeared entirely, while the number of unique investors hit a 25-month low. m&a deals accounted for nearly half of disclosed capital, while the exchanges sector attracted 231m in vc funding. the market is consolidating, and primary fundraising is shrinking.