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- > ETF Inflows Shift Positive for the First Time in 2026
- > Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings on track for 1M?
- > DeFi feels the pain as $290m exploit ripples across protocols
ETF Inflows Shift Positive for the First Time in 2026
A study from European banking giant Deutsche Bank unveiled sentiment in the US began to flip in March, following a dour opening to 2026 for the crypto industry. According to the report, Crypto adoption: The comeback?, adoption in the US climbed 5% throughout March (to 12% of all survey respondents).
Interestingly, this trend was not reflected in the UK’s results, where adoption peaked in February before falling a handful of percentage points into March.
Meanwhile, separate research (from Independent Reserve) found that a third of Australian residents have once, or currently own, a digital asset, a record high for the nation.
Despite the disparity in data across borders, these studies suggest Bitcoin showed signs of strength over the past four weeks. US adoption is reportedly back to July 2025 levels (when BTC was priced at $120k USD), and the cryptocurrency finished March in the green, marking the first positive month of the year.
Although the short-term shift in performance has given the market reason for optimism, retail sentiment remained somewhat downtrodden on a longer scale. Deutsche Bank’s report detailed most respondents believed BTC was headed for a price of between $20–65k USD by the end of 2026, potentially signalling an imbalance between institutional and retail sentiment.
Furthering this divide was the performance of spot Bitcoin ETFs throughout March, which ended the month with positive flows for the first time this year. The basket of BTC funds available in the US saw $1.32 USD billion worth of inflows in March, although assets under management are still nearly 50% below their all-time high.
During the trading period spanning April 8–21, US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs experienced net inflows on seven out of ten trading days, so the prospect of another green month is still on the cards.
The dichotomy between institutional and retail sentiment has been a major talking point over the past year – and this divide may linger as the market moves further into 2026.
Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings on track for 1M?
Bitcoin’s number one fan, Michael Saylor, has dipped back into his company’s pockets for another BTC purchase for its treasury – this time acquiring $2.5 billion USD worth of the cryptocurrency.
The 34,164 BTC were bought between 13 and 19 April, at an average price of $74,395 USD. The acquisition brings Strategy’s holdings to a hefty 815k BTC, with the business continuing to edge toward the 1 million BTC mark.
At the time of writing, Strategy’s BTC treasury totals nearly 4% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply, with the rate of acquisition accelerating substantially since February this year. Given Bitcoin’s philosophical, somewhat anti-corporate foundation, the high level of singular adoption has raised some centralisation concerns among the community.
Interestingly, Bitcoin’s current price (approx. $76k USD at the time of writing) sits almost bang-on Strategy’s average purchase price ($75.527k USD). The crypto market’s next major move could be a key factor in whether the company falls underwater, or sits on an unrealised profit for Q2 2026.
That said, no matter which side of the ledger Strategy ends up on in the short-term, it still looks like Saylor and co continuing their BTC buying spree.
DeFi feels the pain as $290m exploit ripples across protocols
The decentralised finance ecosystem has been thrown into turbulence, following a significant exploit linked to protocol KelpDAO. The attack, taking advantage of a vulnerability in a cross-chain bridge, reportedly drained approximately $290 million from the DeFi sector, the implications of which rippled across several L2 networks – with Aave in particular feeling the pinch.
The compromise can be traced back to a liquid restaking token known as rsETH. These cryptocurrencies act as receipts of locked-up Ethereum, which can be deployed into other yield-generating protocols (such as lending pools) while the original asset remains fixed in a smart contract.
To move these tokens across different protocols (e.g., from Ethereum to Solana), DeFi users must utilise what’s known as a bridge. The bridge basically swaps the tokens 1:1 so they are compatible with a new chain. However, in this instance, the tokens that were meant to be burned in the 1:1 swap never were – so the exploiter(s) effectively generated approximately $290 million worth of rsETH that should have been burned in the swap process.
Instead of withdrawing their compromised funds into fiat (or another asset), the attacker instead transferred the rsETH onto lending protocol Aave. They proceeded to borrow nearly $200 million USD worth of ETH using the exploited tokens.
This resulted in the Aave protocol facing a significant amount of ‘bad debt’, as the ETH loan was essentially uncollateralised.
The team quickly froze all related markets – but still appear to be staring down the barrel of significant losses and a liquidity crunch. Ethereum L2 protocol Arbitrum was also involved in attempting to stem the bleeding.
Aave’s token itself fell 20% upon hearing the news, although has recovered somewhat to post a more moderate weekly decline of 8% (at the time of writing).
The events demonstrate the potential contagion that can spread across the DeFi ecosystem in case of an exploit, even if only one protocol is initially implicated.
Ben Knight
