The core divergence in the current market is whether this round of impact is the beginning of a bear market or a deep cleansing during a bull market.
The chain of events is very clear.
After $BTC hit an all-time high of $126k on October 5-6,
market sentiment was extremely exuberant, and leverage levels had accumulated to historical highs.
At this time, the U.S. policy upgrade on tariffs and software export restrictions against China constituted a typical exogenous shock, instantly reversing the pricing logic of global risk assets.
The macroeconomic headwinds from President Trump directly pierced through the leverage bubble within the crypto market. According to multiple data sources cross-validated, the liquidation scale of long positions reached nearly $19 billion, marking one of the most extreme single-day deleveraging events on record.
The market narrative switched from a celebration of new highs to a liquidity crunch in a matter of hours, causing the price of $BTC to retract nearly 18% from its peak within days, making this the second high-level cliff pattern we have experienced this year.
Will we enter a deep bear market?
I believe the market is likely to enter a high-level oscillation digestion period lasting 4 to 8 weeks, and during this time, there is a small probability of evolving into a deep bear market.
The main reason is that this policy shock has not yet escalated into direct financial sanctions; rather, it has triggered a repricing of risk premiums, and with the backdrop of ETF capital inflows not being completely destroyed, the market has sufficient time to repair the damaged risk appetite. $BTC is likely to oscillate repeatedly within the $100k–$120k range, consuming time to cleanse high leverage and uncertain holders.
These two months are also a critical stage for whether the market will turn into a structural bear market. The primary task is definitely survival. In the current crypto market context driven by ETF spot, traders can completely exchange time for certainty, waiting for clear right-side signals to appear before reconsidering active buying and increasing positions.
The Kelp DAO's rsETH cross-chain bridge was attacked, resulting in a loss of 116,500 rsETH.
First, let's list the affected tokens.
$KERNEL is temporarily placed first as Kelp DAO's token.
- Bad debts mainly affect $AAVE , $EUL, $COMP, with the largest impact on $AAVE .
- LayerZero's security model may have systemic issues, $ZRO and $KERNEL are listed as problematic protocols.
- $EIGEN, which also belongs to the LSDfi track.
- $LDO and $FLUID are still under observation.
The attacker stole $290 million worth of rsETH, deposited it into lending protocols, and borrowed $236 million WETH, of which Aave V3 may face nearly $177 million in bad debt.
Here’s a detailed explanation:
One of the advantages of rsETH is its full-chain circulation, deployed across a dozen networks. To achieve this, Kelp adopted a unified cross-chain accounting system. On April 19, 2026, at midnight Beijing time, the hacker launched the first attack on Kelp's accounting system verification process, stealing about 116,500 rsETH, which accounted for 18% of the total circulation.
Kelp then urgently paused the contract, and rsETH on all networks instantly lost the underlying asset support.
After the hacker obtained these rsETH, which had no actual value, they deposited them into mainstream lending protocols like Aave and Compound, borrowing over $236 million in $ETH, successfully cashing out the counterfeit.
After cashing out, nearly $177 million in bad debt remained in Aave's account, while Kelp's own security risks were successfully transferred to the entire lending market.
But that's not all; there is a bad debt coverage mechanism called Umbrella in Aave.
Users can stake their assets (like $WETH) into Umbrella to earn extra interest, but the cost is that when bad debts occur in the protocol, the staked funds will be automatically deducted by the system to fill the gap.
This means that the ones actually footing the bill for the hacker are the innocent stakers who provided funds in Aave to earn meager interest, theoretically allowing AAVE to smoothly transfer tail risk onto retail investors seeking returns.
The most ironic thing is that the annualized return on Kelp only stays between 2% and 3%, and users bear extremely disproportionate cost risks for this tiny bit of profit for a multitude of project parties (from EigenLayer to Kelp to AAVE).
The US-Iran conflict welcomes a critical turning point
On the 50th day of the conflict, Iran finally announced full access for all merchant ships.
At the same time, the United States is considering unfreezing $20 billion in cash from Iran in exchange for enriched uranium.
BTC also quickly surged above 77,000, and oil prices rapidly fell to 80.
Since last night, today has been the fastest time for official news changes since the US-Iran conflict began.
Civil officials are letting go, military officials are being hawkish, but market sentiment has already unilaterally declared victory in the war.
In theory, the capital market can indeed indicate some future trends. On April 17, about 20 merchant ships tried to pass through, but most of them chose to stop and observe or turn back as they approached the strait. However, if today most merchant ships pass through smoothly, it at least confirms the results of the negotiations for a safe navigation zone.
At that time, there were many high-leverage short squeeze projects like $RAVE ,
as well as a large number of projects with highly concentrated chips driving the market.
From past cycle experiences, the success rate of blindly rushing into emotional trading casinos is not very high,
and without some psychological resilience, there is a high probability of being washed out after chasing high prices, either getting stuck at high positions or losing back profits.
At least from my perspective, the current strategy is not much different from 2023, and the certainty is stronger.
The first principle is still to increase holdings of Bitcoin, because institutional funds are buying Bitcoin, which is the only certain card in the current situation; the last round still had uncertainties regarding BTC ETF approvals.
Before Bitcoin's market share approaches 60% and we see a turning point, try not to go all-in on altcoins.
Additionally, since the macro environment is in a pause period for interest rate cuts, the risk-free interest rate still has its attractiveness.
Retain some stablecoins to provide emotional stability, and it can also help pick up some bloodied chips during sudden security events (such as the Drift hacker attack leading to a series of liquidations).
The lessons from the last round of the altcoin market are also emotional; before the market breadth spreads, do not ambush so-called value coins or fundamentally strong old coins against the trend on the left side, otherwise it will just lead to mutual liquidation within the market.
Reduce trading frequency, strictly manage attention, and wait for BTC to lead the way to break new highs; the difficulty of making money through speculation will be higher in each cycle, and if you didn't make money in the last round of trading, executing a stable strategy this round is always correct.
Let's talk about the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz.
After the US and Iran announced a ceasefire on the 8th,
only 8 vessels crossed on April 9, 2 on April 10, and only 4 on April 11,
in the latest 24-hour observation window, only a pitiful 4 vessels crossed,
during historically normal periods, the average daily traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is around 138 vessels. The so-called two-week ceasefire has not brought any substantial recovery in navigation, and theoretically, the market is left with a sword of Damocles hanging over its head.
The first merchant ship that is forcibly intercepted and violently detained, or mistakenly sunk, will trigger an irrevocable chain reaction of retaliation.
If Iran or its proxies spill their anger and expand retaliation actions to the Red Sea or the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, global shipping issues will face more paralysis points.
Of course, this is the worst-case scenario; currently, most traders tend to view the movements in the Strait as a means of resetting negotiation chips.
The US is using precise maritime blockades to cut off or threaten Iran's oil export cash flow, thereby forcing those still reliant on Iranian energy to pressure Tehran to return to the negotiating table.
As a result, crude oil prices, as the most direct transmission medium, have skyrocketed, but global stock markets, bonds, and foreign exchange markets remain relatively stable in terms of risk aversion sentiment.
Macro hedge funds and asset management institutions are currently focused on the second round of inflation shocks. Asset management mogul El Toro mentioned in the latest in-depth weekly report that safe-haven buying has increased again, similar to conclusions drawn by most analysts: oil prices above 100 dollars for too long have rapidly strengthened long-term inflation expectations,
leading to a forced rewriting of the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut path, thereby completely compelling global central banks and markets to desperately reprice inflation, terminal rates, and household consumption — likely causing the cryptocurrency market to experience its first macro gray rhino.
Starting from April 1st, the cryptocurrency market has entered the performance time of meme coins. Initially, people generally thought this was an April Fool's joke and looked down upon it, always ready to welcome a new low in Bitcoin for bottom fishing. However, in just 10 days, the market has seen no less than ten high-multiplying chosen tokens.
To summarize the recent secondary market catalysts,
The most intense time of the war has likely passed,
Below is the timeline for market recovery.
$MORPHO, Morpho has launched the Morpho Agents beta version, allowing AI agents to read, simulate, and interact with the Morpho protocol.
$AAVE, Aave has terminated its collaboration with Chaos Labs on risk assessment services. Aave stated that the reason for the split was unreasonable demands from the other party, such as exclusivity and vendor binding.
$PENDLE, Pendle has launched a limit order incentive program across all its liquidity pools, with orders within the effective range potentially earning up to 100% annualized yield.
$SUSHI, the perpetual contract platform Sushi Perps has officially launched, supported by HyperLiquid, and early traders will receive accelerated rewards with doubled Sushi points.
$SOL, the Solana Foundation has released Solana Agent Skills.
$ENA , Ethena has published a statement regarding the composition of the underlying assets of USDe. Its asset support model has shifted from primarily relying on perpetual contracts for short selling basis trading to a more diversified hybrid strategy.
$ADA, Cardano's Treasury Proposal Vote will close on April 14, involving a proposal for a first tranche allocation of 50 million ADA from treasury funds to the Draper Dragon Orion fund.
$STRK, Starknet's v0.14.2 upgrade vote will be completed around April 16, with proposals including SNIP-36, SNIP-37, SNIP-13, and preparing for the subsequent decentralized verification phase of SNIP-33.
$XLM , Stellar will release the stable version of Yardstick (Protocol 26) on the testnet on April 16, introducing new protocol configuration items.
$KAIA, Kaia's GP-21 governance vote will last until April 17, focusing on transitioning to Contribution Rewards and opening community voting on tokenomics.
$ETH / $LDO / $OP / $NEAR / $KAIA / $ALEO, ETHCapital will hold a conference in Seoul on April 15, officially targeted at institutional fund deployment and corporate adoption of Ethereum.