Fueled by the U.S.-Iran geopolitical conflict, Western banks have accelerated their exit from large-scale commodity trade finance due to compliance and sanctions risks, prompting traders to shift to stablecoins for cross-border settlement. Stablecoins have become an alternative settlement tool; their usage is rising, with market value exceeding $300 billion and on-chain transaction volume reaching $4 trillion.

Bitcoin’s short-term trading difficulty is increasing. Analyst Murphy recommends adopting a DCA (dollar-cost averaging) strategy over the next six months, with a win rate approaching 100%. He emphasizes the need to distinguish between investing and trading, avoid wishful thinking, follow the long-term trend, and strictly adhere to short-term trading discipline.

Gate News message, April 12, the second batch of Hong Kong compliant stablecoin license applications is underway. According to reliable sources, Futu Securities and OSL Group are both applicants for the second batch of licenses. Previously, in November 2025, 13 ministries including the People’s Bank of China issued a statement, reaffirming China’s crackdown on virtual currency trading and classifying stablecoins as virtual currency, which means stablecoins will be impossible to trade in mainland China.

xStocksFi launched on the Mantle network on April 10, allowing users to trade 10 of the most prominent U.S. stocks 24/7. The project is supported by BackedFi and Flowdesk, aiming to improve the distribution efficiency of real-world assets and deliver low trading fees and a fast, smooth experience. More features are planned for the future.

April 10, Hong Kong-listed AI application stocks rose strongly, with Xunce rising 11% and Dipu Technology up more than 5.5%. Both the Hang Seng Index and the Hang Seng Tech Index rose by more than 1%, and multiple stocks including Longfor Group and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation performed strongly.

From 18:00 to 18:15 on April 9, 2026 (UTC), the BTC price return recorded -0.62%, closing in the range of 71857.8 to 72375.1 USDT, with a trading range of 0.72%. Market attention was notably elevated, volatility intensified, and capital moved quickly within a short period. Overall market sentiment has become more cautious, and investors’ willingness to trade in the short term has increased. The main driving force behind this abnormal move is an increase in net inflows to BTC exchanges during the anomaly window; the 10-minute net flow reached 755.92 BTC, indicating that some investors chose to transfer funds to exchanges to seek arbitrage opportunities in the midst of the volatility issue

Iran’s regime is increasingly using cryptocurrencies for cross-border trade, especially in oil sales. In 2024, an IRGC member linked to the Houthis facilitated more than $178 million in oil transactions through crypto addresses; by 2025, the network began purchasing weapons from Russia using cryptocurrencies, with transaction volumes nearing $1 billion.

Gate News message, according to Gate’s official announcement, Gate will list One Football (OFC) spot trading on April 9, 2026 at 18:00 (UTC+8). OFC flash exchange trading will begin on the same day at 19:00 (UTC+8), and the withdrawal function is expected to be launched on April 10, 2026 at 18:00 (UTC+8). OFC has been deployed on both the BASE chain and the Ethereum ERC20 network. At the same time, Gate will launch the CandyDrop airdrop campaign. The campaign runs from April 10, 2026 12:00 to April 23, 2026 12:00 (UTC+8). A total of 2,500,000 OFC tokens will be shared out. The campaign includes four prize pools: spot first trade, spot trading, flash exchange trading, and invite friends. They will share out 400,000, 700,000, 700,000, and 700,000 OFC, respectively. The per-person maximum share for each is 2,000 tokens. One Football (OFC) is a community platform for football fans. Through a token mechanism, it provides rewards to users and builds a unique experience. The official website is https://club.onefootball.com/.

According to Hyperinsight monitoring, the whale address starting with 0xe84 opened a 40x leveraged BTC long position on April 9, with a trade size of $3.55 million. The opening average price was $70,965. Currently, it has set sell orders totaling $1.94 million to take partial stop-losses.

Short video + meme trading platform Giggles completed a $1.2 million Pre-Seed funding round in 2025, with investors including 1kx Capital, etc. The app developed by founder Justin Jin combines social features with prediction markets. It is currently in an invite-only testing phase, where users trade on trending content.