BTC funds rake it in

Ahead of a Trump-issued Tuesday ultimatum potentially leading to an escalation in the war in Iran, investors on Monday poured a net $471 million into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs. BlackRock’s IBIT led the way with a net inflow of $182M. IBIT was followed by Fidelity’s FBTC which netted $147M. Ark’s ARKB took in $119M. For the entire category of BTC funds, Monday marked the biggest daily ingestion in six weeks.

Meanwhile, checking among larger-cap coins, the Canton Network’s native CC token notched one of the largest 24-hour gains. CC jumped by 6%. It’s not exactly clear why, although the past few months have been eventful for Canton as it angles to serve the on-chain needs (security, privacy) of regulated financial giants. In March, Canton on-boarded a phalanx of institutional "Super Validators," including Visa and Circle. It's market cap is now $5.6B making it the 20th-largest digital asset.

“Canton is quietly building a fortress of institutional trust,” CoinMarketCap said.

And finally, in these heavy times, the Orion spacecraft breaking humanity’s record for flyer miles last night sure seemed to bring the people of Earth together, if only for a couple of hours.

Around the same time, in a strangely fitting turn of events, a little-known yield infrastructure protocol saw its native token soar 30% to surpass twenty cents to eventually, per CoinGecko, reach an all-time high of $0.23. The name of the coin? Unitas. Its symbol is UP.

With ceasefire hopes fading and oil prices rising, risk assets, including stocks and cryptos, came under pressure last night. The trend continued as of 9:20 a.m. (EST) with Dow futures signaling a 150 point drop to start today’s trading session.

After surpassing $70K for a short time during the early morning yesterday, Bitcoin spent most of the past 24 hours steadily descending but then mildly rebounding. The low point of this unremarkable loop came a few hours ago as BTC struck $68,157, per CoinGecko. The king of digital assets had fallen about 2% while two other heavies, ETH and XRP, each declined 3%.

A downward traveler of distinction: Algorand. The smart contract platform's native ALGO saw its streak of headstrong performance — under heavily hyped-up proclamations of it being relatively resistant to quantum computing risks — come to a screeching halt. ALGO fell 10% in the past one day to 11 cents. It’s still up by some 35% in the past month, according to CoinGecko. 

In February, Aave crossed the $1 trillion mark for cumulative lending going back to 2020, a massive milestone for the DeFi industry. 

Along the way, the Aave community has been tussling over whether Aave Labs should control the project's purse strings versus Aave’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

Now the question of how risk should be managed has boiled over into a parting of the ways between the lending protocol and one its main risk services providers, Chaos Labs. 

Chaos’ founder Omer Goldberg said in a post on X yesterday that “we are leaving because the engagement no longer reflects how we believe risk should be managed.”

But Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov, per Cointelegraph, is singing a completely different tune. Kulechov said Chaos pitched Aave a proposal seeking to become its sole risk provider, forcing out other partners, which Aave wasn’t willing to do.

In the past 24 hours, Aave’s native AAVE token has lost 11% of its value, falling to $86.85, CoinGecko said. That’s AAVE’s lowest level in about a week.

In mid-March, the topic of risk turned into a major talking point within the Aave community after a user lost $50M in a risky swap that took place via the Aave interface except it wound up getting steamrolled by a robot trained in the ways of front running. After that incident, Aave said it would introduce an “Aave Shield” protection feature to deter users from going ahead with trades deemed overly risky.

Now Aave’s planned migration to Aave V4 introduces new risks, ones that Chaos says it wasn’t willing to take on, according to Goldberg. “While Aave Labs is optimistic about a swift migration to V4,” he said, “history suggests these transitions take months and even years. 

Until V4 fully absorbs V3's markets and liquidity, both systems need to be operated and managed simultaneously, Goldberg explained. 

“The workload doubles,” he pointed out, further arguing that Aave V4’s expanded functionality introduced additional operational and legal risks that fell on Chaos.

Aave Labs’ Kulechov said the biggest issue here was that Chaos wanted to be the sole risk manager and use its price oracles instead of Chainlink’s. Following that request would have forced Aave to push out its other main risk manager, LlamaRisk.

“Aave’s risk management has never rested on a single point of responsibility,” LlamaRisk chimed in via a post on X. “We are fully prepared to fill all operational gaps and will ensure full continuity of risk services.”