In April, March’s euphoria faded into a downward price grind for digital assets and produced Bitcoin’s first negative return in eight months (-14%) amid an over-supply of new alt-token supply, falling on-chain activity and a regulatory assault on self-custody by U.S. authorities. Smart contract platforms, excluding Bitcoin, fell 28% on the month while trading volumes and on-chain revenues also declined sharply. Altcoins bore the brunt of the mushy price action as the average return outside of ETH/BTC was -37% on the month. Many names like Starknet and Aptos fell by almost 50%. The story of the month can best be ... (full story)