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BITCOIN ETFs REPORTED OUTFLOW OF $263 MILLION, ENDING A 9-DAY INVESTMENT FLOW The spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. reported a net outflow of $263 million, ending a 9-day investment flow that had attracted over $1.1 billion in new capital. @Fidelity's $FBTC led the outflow with approximately $150 million withdrawn, while @Grayscale and @ARKInvest's ARKB also recorded significant redemption amounts. The decline extended to Ethereum products, where the spot $ETH ETFs lost $50.48 million, with @BlackRock's ETHB being the only fund to record a net investment inflow. This reversal occurred despite strong trading volumes continuing across the board, indicating that institutions are taking profits after the strongest price surge for $BTC in April since 2020 rather than capitulating. Next week will test whether this is a rotation or the beginning of something deeper, with Hormuz tensions, FOMC statements, and Q1 earnings reports from major large-cap players all being ongoing catalysts.

BITWISE INVESTMENT DIRECTOR SAYS STRC'S STRATEGY IS THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND BITCOIN'S 20% RISE The approximately 20% increase in Bitcoin from its February lows to around 76,000 USD has been led by @Strategy, a company that has added 7.2 billion USD bitcoin:native in the past eight weeks. Bitwise's investment director Matt Hougan (@Matt_Hougan) calls this the single largest driver of the price surge in today's weekly memo, surpassing 3.8 billion USD in net inflows into ETFs since March 1 and the recovery of purchases from long-term investors. The funding mechanism is STRC, a perpetual preferred equity instrument designed to trade close to 100 USD per share with a high dividend yield. Strategy has raised the yield from 9% at launch to the current 11.5% to keep this instrument anchored near its target. Dividends are primarily paid from new STRC fundraising rather than operating cash flow. Hougan dismisses the Ponzi framework. STRC sits above common shareholders in the capital structure and is backed by Strategy's 63 billion USD bitcoin position, compared to 8 billion USD in debt and 14 billion USD in preferred equity. Total obligations currently account for 33% of the bitcoin holdings. The remaining room to run depends on that ratio. Hougan marks 50% as the level at which investors start asking tough questions, leaving room for an additional 10 to 15 billion USD of STRC issuance at the current bitcoin price. With junk bonds yielding below 7% and investors fleeing private credit, he expects the 11.5% STRC backed by a bitcoin cushion of over 40 billion USD will continue to find buyers.#DailyOrbit

CFTC SUES THE STATE OF WISCONSIN OVER MARKET PREDICTION CRACKDOWN, FIFTH STATE LAWSUIT @CFTC has sued the state of Wisconsin and its top officials today, arguing that the state has violated federal exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets. The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District Court of Wisconsin, aims to prevent Wisconsin from enforcing gambling laws against platforms regulated by the CFTC. Wisconsin becomes the fifth state to face a lawsuit from the CFTC, following Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois on April 2, and New York last Friday. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed his own lawsuit against Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood, Coinbase, and Cryptocom on April 23, accusing these platforms of operating illegal sports betting under the guise of "event contracts." CFTC Chairman Michael Selig stated that states cannot circumvent the clear directive of Congress, emphasizing that the CFTC's authority over swap contracts is exclusive under the Commodity Exchange Act. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the CFTC on the same issue against New Jersey earlier this month.#DailyOrbit

STRATEGY LAUNCHES SHAREHOLDER VOTE ON SEMI-MONTHLY DIVIDEND CONVERSION @Strategy has launched a shareholder vote today regarding the amendment of the perpetual preferred stock STRC to pay dividends semi-monthly instead of monthly, according to a post on X by @saylor. The annual interest rate remains at 11.5%, with each payment being cut by about half and distributed every two weeks. The vote will end on June 8 at the company's annual meeting. If approved, the record date for the first semi-monthly dividend is June 30, with the first payment on July 15. Strategy describes this change as a way to stabilize the $100 par value of STRC, reduce cyclicality, and shorten the reinvestment lag for holding shareholders. The unpaid par value of STRC stands at $6.4 billion according to the proxy statement dated April 17. Strategy uses the proceeds from STRC to buy bitcoin and currently holds over 762,000 native bitcoins. If shareholders approve, $STRC will become the only semi-monthly dividend-paying preferred stock in the U.S. market, compared to 921 quarterly payments and 32 monthly payments according to Strategy's investor presentation. This schedule aligns with the typical U.S. bi-monthly payroll cycle.#DailyOrbit

OPENAI EXPANDS RELATIONSHIP WITH AWS ON AI AGENTS PLATFORM AS MICROSOFT'S EXCLUSIVITY WEAKENS AWS (@awscloud) announced what they are calling a major expansion of their partnership with OpenAI today at the What's Next with AWS event in San Francisco. The companies will jointly develop a new platform for AI agents that can perform computer-based tasks on behalf of people. Sam Altman (@sama) spoke at the AWS event via a pre-recorded video while he appeared in federal court in Oakland, across the bay, for the civil trial initiated by Elon Musk. OpenAI's Chief Revenue Officer, Denise Dresser, spoke live on stage alongside AWS CEO Matt Garman, AWS CMO Julia White, and AWS distinguished engineer Anthony Ligouri. OpenAI will continue to pay Microsoft a percentage of revenue capped until 2030 under restructured terms. Microsoft remains OpenAI's primary cloud partner, and OpenAI products will be released first on Azure unless Microsoft cannot or chooses not to support the necessary capabilities. Altman suggested that AWS now has those capabilities. Altman stated that systems need to run reliably and robustly, need to scale, and need to fit into the environments that customers have trusted for their most critical workloads. This partnership reflects OpenAI's broader cloud diversification strategy alongside AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle as the company moves towards an IPO with a valuation of $852 billion.#DailyOrbit

JUDGE KAPLAN REJECTS BANKMAN-FRIED'S REQUEST FOR A RETRIAL, CALLING WITNESS COMPLAINTS BASELESS U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan today denied Sam Bankman-Fried's (@SBF_FTX) request for a retrial, rejecting his argument that newly discovered witnesses would provide exculpatory testimony. The former FTX CEO, 34, is serving a 25-year sentence at FCI Lompoc. Kaplan ruled that none of the proposed witnesses qualified as newly discovered, noting that Bankman-Fried had known all three prior to the trial and could have requested their testimony but did not do so. The judge stated that there was no evidence to suggest the witnesses would support Bankman-Fried's claims that FTX was not bankrupt or that victims had been fully compensated in the bankruptcy proceedings. Kaplan further delved into the motives. He stated that this request appeared to be part of Bankman-Fried's plan to salvage his reputation, which the former FTX CEO had devised and documented after FTX declared bankruptcy but before he was charged. His direct appeal of the 2023 conviction is still under review by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, with appellate attorney Alexandra Shapiro arguing that the trial was fundamentally unfair. A separate request in February to transfer the case to another judge due to allegations of extreme bias is also still awaiting a decision. #DailyOrbit

A BAD DAY FOR ALTCOIN ETF ACTIVITY... April 27 was completely unkind to cryptocurrency spot ETFs. Not only did the spot products for $BTC and ethereum:native record a net inflow of over 300 million dollars, but no altcoin ETF recorded any inflows at all. The spot ETF products for $SOL, $LINK, $XRP, $HBAR, $AVAX, $DOT, and $LTC all recorded a net inflow of 0 dollars. Is investor interest in digital assets fading...?!#DailyOrbit

TOM LEE JUST STAKED $260 MILLION WORTH OF ETH The famous analyst @Ethereum bull @fundstrat's @BitMNR has now staked nearly $9 billion worth of $ETH. The latest batch just arrived not long ago and saw the company stake an additional 112,656 ethereum:native, worth about $260 million at that time. Importantly, this latest staking round means that Bitmine has now staked over 75% of the total ETH they hold...#DailyOrbit

THE DOGECOIN ETF INFLOW HAS RETURNED! On April 27, the @dogecoin spot ETFs recorded a net inflow of about $460,000 - the first net inflow since April 14. Interestingly, among the three $DOGE ETFs, only $GDOG from @Grayscale recorded inflows, while there was no activity on the ETFs from 21Shares and Bitwise. Dogecoin ETFs are still small compared to other cryptocurrency ETFs, currently holding only 0.08% of the market cap of $DOGE #DailyOrbit

ASTER DEX ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR TWO NEW TOKENS The leading derivatives DEX @Aster_DEX has announced listing support for two new altcoins. The first token is $SYRUP from @maplefinance, and the second token is $LUMIA from @BuildOnLumia. These tokens are available with leverage up to 50x and 10x respectively. $ASTER is currently holding nearly 2 billion dollars in open interest.#DailyOrbit