As the fallout from the US tariff announcement spread, Bitcoin (BTC) showed some resilience, holding above $83,000 for much of last week and into the weekend. But that changed on Sunday when King Crypto experienced a sharp 7.75% sell-off that tested support near $77,000.
BTC/USD 1-day chart. Source: TradingView
The volatility continued into Monday, with BTC price experiencing an 8.43% intraday swing, touching a low of $74,420 and a high of $81,280 before closing the daily candle at $79,145. Bears continued to exert pressure on Tuesday, and at the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $76,405, a decrease of 9.5% on the 7-day chart.
Opinions on the outlook moving forward are mixed, with many analysts saying BTC is oversold and due for a recovery rally, while others, including Bloomberg Senior Commodity Strategist Mike McGlone, see more turmoil on the way, with McGlone warning about the potential for a $10,000 BTC.
Positive Developments for Ripple, But XRP Price Slides Lower
While crypto traders were loath to check the latest update to the value of their portfolios, there were some positive developments on the business side of things for several projects – including XRP issuer Ripple, which announced the acquisition of crypto-friendly prime broker Hidden Road in one of the largest mergers in the cryptocurrency industry to date.
Today, Ripple announced it is acquiring Hidden Road for $1.25B– becoming the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker. Together, Ripple and Hidden Road are bringing the promise of digital assets to institutional customers at scale, bridging…
— Ripple (@Ripple) April 8, 2025
The $1.25B acquisition establishes Ripple as the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker. They can now offer institutions a one-stop-shop of advanced services, including clearing, prime brokerage, and financing across foreign exchange (FX), digital assets, derivatives, swaps, and fixed income.
According to the announcement, Ripple is now the world’s largest non-bank prime broker, with Hidden Road currently clearing over $3 trillion across more than 300 institutions.
David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer, hinted at the significance of this development in a post on X.
“Ripple’s acquisition of Hidden Road is a defining moment for the XRP Ledger and XRP. The prime broker clears upwards of $10B and processes over 50M transactions a day on various traditional rails, waiting up to 24 hours for those transactions to settle,” Schwartz wrote. “Now imagine even a portion of that activity on the XRP Ledger – and that’s exactly what Hidden Road plans on doing – not to mention future use of collateral and real-world assets tokenized on the XRPL.”
Ripple also received welcome news regarding XRP after asset manager Teucrium Investment Advisors announced the launch of the first XRP-based exchange-traded fund in the US markets, a leveraged XRP ETF on the NYSE Arca.
According to the company’s website, the Teucrium 2x Long Daily XRP ETF, which began trading under the XXRP ticker on April 8, seeks to offer investors two times the daily return of the XRP token with a 1.85% management fee and annual expense ratio. At launch, XXRP held $2 million worth of net assets.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted that it’s “Very odd (maybe a first) that a new asset’s first ETF is leveraged” and suggested that the approval of a spot XRP ETF remains “pretty high.”
Despite these positive developments, XRP price could not overcome the downward pressure that Trump’s tariffs have exerted on markets and currently trades below $1.80, its lowest price since late November.
XRP/USD 1-day chart. Source: TradingView
