Bitcoin Surges Above $78,000, 24-hour Gain of 2.89%

April 22 — On-chain analyst Ai (@ai_9684xtpa) reports a new address (0x97b...178aa) withdrew 635k RAVE from Gate Exchange 4 hours ago, with the holding valued at $908k.

On April 22, prominent trader Killa (@KillaXBT) announced he has lifted the stop-loss level for his Bitcoin short position to $83,000. Back in mid-April, Killa noted he shorted Bitcoin at $74,688 with an initial stop-loss of $80,000—valid only if the weekly closing price stays below that threshold. A BTC-focused quantitative trader, Killa previously predicted this bull market’s peak will hit in May 2025 and boasts over 180,000 followers on X.

On April 22nd, privacy protocol Umbra took its front-end website offline to make it harder for hackers to move stolen funds. Umbra noted that roughly $800,000 in stolen assets had flowed through its protocol, adding that the front-end shutdown is a "maintenance mode" measure—one that will be reversed once the team confirms it won’t disrupt recovery efforts. The move comes on the heels of a recent attack on the Kelp protocol, which resulted in losses exceeding $280 million. Suspected North Korean hackers are believed to have tried to cross-chain the stolen funds from Ethereum to Bitcoin using platforms like Umbra. But Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm warned that taking the front end offline alone may not shield Umbra from regulatory scrutiny. He pointed out that in his own case, authorities argued "changing the front end equals controlling the entire protocol" and that "if you can modify the user interface—including updating it to a new version on IPFS—you have full control over th

**April 22 Update** As Bitcoin (BTC) surged above $78,000 on April 22, HyperInsight monitoring (via its Telegram channel: https://t.me/HyperInsight) reported that a crypto whale with an address starting with 0x2fca had its short position liquidated in two consecutive rounds—totaling 40 BTC, or roughly $3.11 million. This marks the eighth liquidation for the address in the past week. Following the liquidation, the account’s remaining ~$30,000 was used to open a new BTC short position with 40x leverage. The current position size is just $310,000, with a liquidation price set at $79,085. Full address: 0x2fca7140502e6e78bb0ef747354fb19774351cc4

April 22 — Iran is ready to negotiate once the U.S. lifts its naval blockade, an Iranian envoy told Tasnim News Agency. Iran’s state media released a video quoting Amir Seyyed Eslami-Iravan, Iran’s UN ambassador, saying Tehran will negotiate immediately after Washington ends the blockade, stressing the U.S. must first stop its “violation of the ceasefire agreement.” Markets reacted quickly to the report: gold and silver prices rose short-term, while the U.S. dollar and oil prices fell. Earlier, outlets including the Associated Press and TASS had reported the ambassador’s comments — marking the first time an Iranian state media outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has covered the news.