Last month, British police uncovered the world's largest Bitcoin money laundering case, seizing more than 61,000 Bitcoins. The funds were obtained by a British Chinese woman, Jian Wen, who is suspected of assisting Zhimin Qian, the leader of a fraud group wanted by China. She will be sentenced on May 10.

On April 24, local time, Qian Zhimin appeared in the Westminster Magistrates' Court for the first time as Yadi Zhang. She was accused of obtaining, using or possessing cryptocurrency as criminal property in London and other places in the UK from October 1, 2017 to Tuesday this week. It is not yet clear when and where the British police arrested Qian Zhimin.

Since the halving, Bitcoin has entered a sideways trend, fluctuating in the price range of $60,000 to $65,000. On April 24, the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission’s official website officially announced the list of approved virtual asset spot ETFs, including related products of China Asset Management (Hong Kong), Harvest Global, and Bosera International, and plans to list them on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on April 30, injecting a shot of adrenaline into the dull market.

By approving the issuance of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, Hong Kong has sent a clear signal to the global market that it is committed to becoming an important player and innovation leader in the field of virtual assets. Market participants believe that this move is expected to promote Hong Kong to become the world's second largest Bitcoin spot ETF market, and will also enhance Hong Kong's openness and competitiveness in the Web3 industry.

The crypto market rose on Monday after the successful completion of Bitcoin halving. Bitcoin rebounded from a low of $64,237 and successfully broke through $67,000 at 7:00 today. Ethereum broke through $3,200, and the vast majority of the top 200 tokens by market capitalization achieved positive returns, with only a dozen tokens falling by more than 2%.

It is worth mentioning that there is good news for the US Bitcoin spot ETF. Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, posted a chart on Twitter showing that if BlackRock's fund IBIT successfully achieves its 70th consecutive day of net inflows, the ETF will be among the most successful funds in history.

On Friday (April 19), Bitcoin experienced a shocking moment. An explosion was reported in Isfahan, the central city where Iran's nuclear facilities are located. Explosions were also reported in Syria and Iraq. The threat of a full-scale war in the Middle East and a nuclear attack triggered panic in the crypto market. Bitcoin once dropped to $59,600. But then Iran emphasized that its nuclear facilities were not damaged, and the United States claimed that Israel's military attack was limited.
When people realized that this seemed to be just an elaborate soap opera of the Middle East war, the market began to rebound. The crypto market emerged from the panic, and the price of Bitcoin quickly rebounded to $65,169. At the same time, people's demand for safe-haven assets seemed to be fading. Gold soared above $2,400 and then fell back, and all the gains of silver were given up.

On Monday (April 15), Bitcoin rebounded in the short term, with the price rising above $66,000. China Asset Management, Bosera International and Harvest Investment, three leading Chinese funds, announced that their virtual asset spot ETFs were approved for issuance in Hong Kong.

It is understood that China Asset Management (Hong Kong) now plans to issue ETF products that can invest in spot Bitcoin and spot Ethereum. The company will work with OSL Digital Securities Co., Ltd. and leading custodian BOCI Prudential Trust Co., Ltd. to actively research and deploy this. In addition, OSL is the exclusive trading and custody partner of China Asset Management's Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs launched in Hong Kong.

Tensions in the Middle East escalated as Iran confirmed early on the 14th that it had launched a large number of drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation for the deadly attack on its consulate in Damascus on April 1.
The Israeli military also confirmed that Iran had launched more than 200 drone attack aircraft at Israel. US President Biden then pledged "indestructible" support for Israel, adding that the United States would "do everything it can to protect Israel's security."

As the news came out, the scenario that cryptocurrency investors were most worried about happened: starting at 4 a.m., the price of Bitcoin plummeted by $5,000 in 15 minutes, causing many investors holding long contracts to be forced to liquidate their positions during transactions, and their mobile phones received a series of liquidation text messages.

This week, the changing expectations of the Federal Reserve's policy and the outbreak of geopolitical risks have disrupted global financial markets. On Friday (April 12), gold prices fell sharply after breaking through $2,400, and both Bitcoin and Ethereum fell.
The US CPI showed that the overall inflation rate rose to 3.5% year-on-year in March, higher than 3.2% in February and higher than the expected 3.4%. The number of weekly initial jobless claims improved to 211,000, lower than the expected 215,000 and lower than the previous 222,000. With inflation overheating, the possibility of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates has been greatly reduced, supporting the strength of the US dollar.

On April 10, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission updated the list of fund companies that manage virtual assets on its official website in the early morning, adding Harvest Global and China Asset Management (Hong Kong). These two public funds have added virtual asset management business to their original traditional asset management business. This is also the first time that the Hong Kong subsidiary of a leading Chinese fund company has been approved for virtual asset asset management services.
Earlier, there were reports that several leading public funds were planning to engage in Bitcoin-related businesses, specifically by using Hong Kong subsidiaries to "save the country in a roundabout way" and obtain Bitcoin-related licenses through Hong Kong. Several large public funds are very interested, including Harvest Fund Hong Kong subsidiaries, Southern Fund Hong Kong subsidiaries, and China Asset Management Hong Kong subsidiaries.

The U.S. Department of Labor released the latest CPI (Consumer Price Index) data last night (10), showing that the U.S. CPI year-on-year growth rate in March was 3.5%, not only higher than the previous month's year-on-year growth of 3.2%, but also higher than the market forecast of 3.4%, indicating that inflation is still stubborn.
After the release of higher-than-expected CPI data, according to the CME FedWatch tool, market expectations for a US interest rate cut in June have dropped sharply from 56.1% to 20.6%, and the probability that the Fed will remain on hold in June has also risen to 79% from 42.6%.
At the FOMC meeting that ended on March 21, the Federal Reserve (Fed) maintained the federal benchmark interest rate unchanged at 5.25% to 5.5% for the fifth consecutive time. At that time, most officials expected that by the end of 2024, the Fed would implement three interest rate cuts at a pace of 1 point (0.25%) each time, which greatly enhanced market confidence.

Recently, Beijing police and the Beijing Branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange successfully cracked a series of virtual currency cases involving more than 2 billion yuan, involving 15 provinces and cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, which attracted widespread attention.
The case was caused by the Beijing police receiving a tip that someone was using the "dark web" to trade virtual currency, especially illegally selling all kinds of private information of Chinese citizens. The police then disguised themselves as buyers and contacted the sellers, and learned that they had formed multiple groups on overseas chat software and openly sold citizens' personal information in the groups, including ID numbers, mobile phone numbers, home addresses, etc. The number of group members was as high as hundreds of people, and the cumulative sales of citizens' personal information reached hundreds of millions.

After nearly 20 days of correction and consolidation, Bitcoin started the week strongly again, reaching a high of $72,797 at 20:00 last night (8), only 1.3% away from its historical high of $73,777 on March 14. Although it fell slightly after a night of volatility, it still managed to stay above $70,000.

Facing the future trend of Bitcoin, Markus Thielen, founder of the analysis agency 10xResearch, predicted in an analysis report yesterday that after Bitcoin broke through the $72,000 mark on Monday, it broke through the triangle consolidation pattern formed by the resistance line connecting the highs of March 15 and 27 and the support line connecting the lows of March 20 and April 3. Therefore, he predicted that Bitcoin is likely to continue to climb in the next few weeks and surge above $80,000.

In March, the US CPI rebounded slightly from 3.1% to 3.2% month-on-month, the US manufacturing PMI rebounded to 50.3%, showing a trend of entering an expansion period, and Japan ended the eight-year era of negative interest rates and raised interest rates for the first time. This has led to a significant decline in the probability of a US interest rate cut in April, and the probability of a rate cut in May has also fallen below 50%.
Despite this, the global financial market remained calm. The Nasdaq and Dow Jones indexes both hit new highs without any suspense. The Nasdaq has risen for five consecutive months, indicating that long positions are increasingly tolerant of the delay in the US interest rate cut.

In the crypto market, BTC remained in the rising channel in March. March 13 was the turning point of the mid-term trend. On that day, BTC hit a high point since this round of bull market, and then the overall volume showed a downward trend. After hitting the 30-day moving average and rebounding on March 20, the volume failed to activate again, indicating that the long and short sides were in a stalemate.

Over the past week, Bitcoin prices have experienced a period of decline and have subsequently shown some signs of recovery. At the same time, on-chain data shows that whales are hoarding stablecoins, indicating "strong bullish sentiment." On the Ethereum side, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has opened a window for comment on three Ethereum spot ETF proposals, but industry analysts are now less optimistic about whether they can pass smoothly.

Data shows that Bitcoin prices have recently shown signs of recovery, and the "high efficiency" of bulls in correcting the trend after the recent decline has impressed market observers, with traders and analysts noting that these rebounds mainly come from buying in the spot market, rather than the derivatives market. Although this momentum needs to continue for some time to achieve lasting changes, those who short Bitcoin may face problems as prices rise.

U.S. stocks rose in early trading on Thursday as the latest increase in initial jobless claims helped support expectations of rate cuts. Subsequently, hawkish statements from Federal Reserve officials dampened investor confidence, and the three major stock indexes took a sharp turn for the worse in late trading, falling more than 2% from their intraday highs, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average fluctuating more than 860 points during the session.
Data released by the U.S. Department of Labor today showed that the number of initial unemployment claims increased by 9,000 in the week ending March 30 to 221,000 after seasonal adjustment, higher than market expectations and reaching the highest level since late January.
The U.S. non-farm payrolls data due on Friday will provide more clues about the labor market and inflation. The market expects non-farm payrolls to fall to 214,000 in March from 275,000 in February, while the unemployment rate is likely to stabilize around 3.9%.

In recent years, the abuse of virtual currencies has attracted great attention from the government and regulatory agencies in China. The anonymity and convenience of virtual currency make it an ideal tool for criminals to launder funds, transfer and conduct cross-border operations. It is intertwined with criminal activities such as telecommunications fraud, online gambling, and drug trading, bringing serious consequences to financial order and social security. a serious threat.
On April 2, China's Supreme People's Procuratorate published an article titled "Virtual Currency Becomes a Tool for Money Laundering," describing a case successfully handled by the Xingshan County Procuratorate of Hubei Province in which virtual currency was used to conceal criminal proceeds.

On Tuesday (April 2), Bitcoin fell sharply, falling below $65,000, and Ethereum fell below the $3,300 mark. Strong data from the United States at the beginning of the week and the return of the Federal Reserve's hawkish pricing stimulated dollar buying and suppressed the cryptocurrency market. However, analysts believe that there are some supporting factors in the market and Bitcoin prices may soon bottom out and rebound.
U.S. business activity picked up in March, according to the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) and S&P Global. The former beat expectations and crushed February data, while the latter cooled but stayed in expansion territory,

Recently, the British police announced a major international money laundering case and seized more than 61,000 Bitcoins. These funds were obtained by a Chinese-British woman, Jian Wen, who was suspected of assisting Zhimin Qian, the leader of a fraud group wanted by China. Obtained, it is reported that she will be sentenced on May 10.

Wen was targeted by police because she tried to use Bitcoin to buy luxury goods and real estate in London, including a seven-bedroom mansion in Hampstead with an attached swimming pool that was valued at $30 million. , but because Wen Jian could not explain the source of his Bitcoin, the transaction could not be completed.

Not long ago, the prices of gold and Bitcoin were both approaching historical highs, once again attracting the attention of many financial market participants. Although there are reasons behind the surge in these two types of assets, such as the approaching Bitcoin halving and risk aversion triggered by the geopolitical situation, some industry insiders have mentioned unavoidable backgrounds such as the surge in U.S. government debt.

For half a century, the US dollar has been the cornerstone of the global financial order. The core assets of global central banks that maintain the stability of the total amount and ratio of foreign reserves are not gold, but US bonds. However, new changes have now occurred.

On Friday (March 29), Bitcoin fell back below $70,000, and retail investors were biased towards the short side. On-chain tracking found that there seems to be sentiment analysis among Bitcoin whales. "Old whales" such as BlackRock and Fidelity are selling, while new whales are actively buying. Bitcoin has a futures gap on CME, which means Bitcoin may pull back to fill the gap. The United States “raids” large crypto exchanges, but the good news is that there may be new developments in Hong Kong’s crypto space.

The trading sentiments of old and new whales diverge
The $70,000 mark is an important dividing line for bull and short psychology. Bitcoin holders have their sights set on a peak of $73,777, which if recovered could revive the uptrend. However, there appears to be a divergence of sentiment among the whales, with older whales selling Bitcoin and newer whales actively buying.

Today, Bitcoin and other large digital currencies have soared to dizzying heights. The fear of missing out (FOMO) has certainly attracted hesitant investors and outright speculators to the market, but many still don't know how cryptocurrencies work.
Research confirms that although China drives nearly 80% of the world's Bitcoin trading volume and investors control 1/7 of the world's Bitcoin reserves, many citizens excessively pursue short-term gains, and some people regard it as illegal currency and look forward to using Bitcoin To achieve "get rich overnight"; others regard it as an investment product and focus on predicting its future value-added ability.