Well, that was a fun month. Despite wild gyrations in markets and mounting concerns about tariffs, de-dollarization, Fed independence, and recession risks, stock markets closed out April…flat. In fact, the tech heavy NASDAQ was up modestly, while Bitcoin climbed 10%.
Meanwhile, earnings from Microsoft, Meta and others are boosting the mood, suggesting that tariffs are not yet impacting the market’s star performers and easing concerns that the AI trend is slowing down. To wit, both META and Microsoft projected large capex spends on datacenters, giving a jolt to Nvidia, which has been under pressure since the DeepSeek announcement in February that threw into question whether billions in chips was needed to power cutting edge AI models.
We recently wrote a
piece asking, “Will April tariff showers bring May Crypto flowers?” arguing that regulatory tailwinds and growing business adoption of crypto and the web3 toolkit could propel markets ever higher.
Well, in one corner of the market – crypto ETFs – the message is clearly “Let 100 flowers bloom!”
There are now 72 crypto-related ETF filings
awaiting SEC approval.
Bloomberg thinks the odds of several of them – such as Litecoin, Ripple and Doge- getting approved in 2025 is over 80%.
On a
recent podcast with Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart, we said issuers were throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. It appears regulators may be ready to say
“Mangiano!” (let’s eat!) and we could be in for a feast.
And why not? Crypto ETFs are a big business, and they’re growing like a weed. Crypto ETFs
had their third best week by net inflows in history last week, gathering net assets of $3.4 billion. And Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have already seen net inflows of $850 million this week in the first two trading days. Crypto investment products
have total AUM of $152 billion globally. The breakdown is 86% in BTC, 6% in ETH, 4% in multi-asset, and the rest spread across others.
And don’t expect these other ETFs to have the same kind of success as the Bitcoin ETF.
Despite Bitcoin’s ~64% market dominance, Bitcoin ETFs account for 87% of total crypto investment product AUM globally. Even with a frenzy of other crypto ETF launches , the ETF desk at Bloomberg where friend of the pod James Seyffart works,
believes Bitcoin ETFs will retain an 80-85% share of total AUM.
Meanwhile, in the Great White North, we are holding onto our lead (barely) with Solana ETFs launching April 16
th,
making Canada the first country in the world to launch SOL ETFs. After ten days, these already hold a combined $150M CAD in AUM. Unlike in the U.S. where staking is a hot button issue, all the Canadian Solana ETFs will take part in staking, with the ability to stake up to 50% of the portfolio.
What’s next for markets, particularly in crypto? As we
wrote recently, we see green shoots emerging that could set us up for a strong second half, if the tariff clouds part. At the start of April, Circle is the world’s second-largest stablecoin issuer, behind only Tether. The hope is that this IPO marks the beginning of a broader trend—a crypto IPO season that brings more private companies to public markets. Keep an eye on eToro, Bullish, Gemini, Kraken, Anchorage, Chainalysis, Figure, MoonPay, Ripple, and Consensys which are all rumored to be waiting in the wings.
They say that April is a promise that May is bound to keep. If April was promising anything, it was that volatility is our new normal, so expect more violent swings as dueling narratives – (tariff uncertainty, strong AI spending, flight to safe havens like Gold and Bitcoin, recession risks, rate cuts, IPO season, and more) - shap the direction of markets.
May 1, 2025
