The crypto market moved higher on April 23, with total market capitalization reaching $2.7 trillion, up 1.9% over the past 24 hours. Total trading volume came in at $121.71 billion. Bitcoin stayed in control and helped lift sentiment, while altcoin performance remained mixed and capital continued to cluster around major assets and a few fast-moving tokens.
Bitcoin dominance stood at 58.2%, while Ethereum accounted for 10.1% of the market. BTC traded at $78,360.6, gaining 2.68% in 24 hours, with volume at $49.8 billion and market capitalization at $1.56 trillion. ETH changed hands at $2,364.19, up 1.71%, with $23.4 billion in trading volume and a market cap of $285.3 billion.
CHIP leads the movers as Spark and CORE also advance
Among the day’s standout tokens, USD.AI (CHIP) posted one of the sharpest gains. It traded at $0.1351, soaring 134.92% in 24 hours, with volume hitting $1.73 billion. Spark (SPK) rose to $0.03844, up 28.82%, on volume of $254.95 million. Core (CORE) climbed to $0.05448, a gain of 24.72%.
Other gainers ranked by 24-hour performance included SPX6900 (SPX), up 13.43%; Aerodrome Finance (AERO), up 7.73%; and Sei (SEI), up 7.05%. On the downside, siren (SIREN) fell 9.81%, DeXe (DEXE) dropped 5.48%, and Monero (XMR) slipped 3.87%. The tape was still uneven. Broad-based upside did not take hold.
Sentiment improves, though fear still remains
The Crypto Fear and Greed Index rose to 46, which still places the market in the “Fear” zone. Even so, the reading improved sharply from 32 a day earlier, 23 last week, and 11 last month. The shift points to easing panic pressure and a pickup in risk appetite, though confidence has not yet cleared the neutral 50 threshold.
Stablecoins recorded a 0.2% increase over the last 24 hours, bringing sector market capitalization to $316.3 billion and trading volume to $105.5 billion. The DeFi market added 1%, with capitalization at $54.4 billion, trading volume at $7.1 billion, and global dominance at 2.0%. Liquidity conditions looked firmer than the day before.
KelpDAO exploit funds shift to Bitcoin as GSR debuts BESO
On the news side, the KelpDAO hacker reportedly swapped 75,700 ETH into Bitcoin through THORChain over roughly 36 hours. That activity pushed protocol volume to $800 million and generated about $910,000 in fees. Separately, a wallet linked to the Worldcoin team or investors transferred 4.63 million WLD to Binance, realizing an estimated $8.53 million loss after holding the tokens for one year.
There were also several institutional and regulatory developments. Dan Finlay said he is leaving Consensys and pointed to MetaMask’s new advanced permissions feature based on ERC-7715. Sam Bankman-Fried withdrew his Rule 33 motion seeking a new trial, saying he does not expect a fair hearing at this stage and may file again later. Admiral Samuel Paparo said the US government is testing a Bitcoin node for cybersecurity research and is treating the work as experimental rather than mining-related.
Liquidity and product updates added to the day’s flow. Circle economist Gordon Liao proposed urgent changes to Aave’s USDC parameters after utilization stayed near full for four days. TD Cowen said the US ClarityAct still faces regulatory, political, and legislative hurdles, while limits on stablecoin yield remain under negotiation. GSR, for its part, launched BESO, its first ETF, an actively managed fund covering Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Mastercard also joined the Blockchain Security Standards Council as a founding member to help shape security and privacy standards for blockchain networks and tokenized assets.
Compared with April 22, the market’s April 23 readings came in stronger across the board: market capitalization rose from $2.65 trillion to $2.7 trillion, daily volume increased from $100.2 billion to $121.71 billion, and the sentiment index improved from 32 to 46. Bitcoin accelerated, Ethereum stabilized, and activity in stablecoins and DeFi also picked up.