BTC’s April Rebound, Earn Yield On Stocks, And Get Paid To Borrow Stablecoins

Every Wednesday, I’ll show you what I’m seeing in the crypto market as well as opportunities to earn yield using various onchain strategies.  

Each Mid-Week Market Check will include 3 sections:

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From a daily perspective, BTC has largely been trading between the open and close prices of the February 5th capitulation candle, aside from the false breakout in mid-March.

As you can see in this chart, the midpoint of that range is right around $68K.

The $68K level has served as both support and resistance points over the past 4-5 weeks, and it’s where we currently sit. 

In late February, the price tested $68K but was held below. However, it did not break down below the bottom of the range.

So, what do we look for on the daily chart?

If price breaks back above $68K (which it’s attempting to do as I write this), confirms it as support, and then rallies back up towards the top of the range, that would be a very strong sign that demand is outweighing supply.

If we zoom out to BTC’s monthly chart, we can see that the price is sitting at a very important level.

Last week, I explained how I use MACD (the green/red bars at the bottom calculated using the difference between the 13 EMA and 21 EMA). 

When there’s a change in momentum during a longer MACD trend, the color shifts from dark to light. We have not seen it shift to light red yet, which happens when the shorter-term EMA (13) begins to fall at a slower rate than the longer-term EMA (21). In my own research, especially for monthly charts, this provides a valuable indication of price reversals.

So, the scenario I’m looking at here has the following characteristics:

This scenario has unfolded 3 times in BTC’s history, shown in the chart below:

A couple observations can be made from this chart:

First, aside from the Covid crash in March 2020, the yellow and green lines marked times where the bottom was close to in, followed by multi-year uptrends

Second, 2022 was the only time that the price was held below the purple MA for a sustained period

I’ll reiterate that, using this pattern as a guide, a sustained reversal is not signaled until the MACD momentum shifts. That’s what I’ll be looking for in April from a long-term perspective. It doesn’t have to happen in April, but when it does, we’ll be ready!

CFG

Far and away the top DeFi20 Index performer over the past week, CFG followed through nicely after last week’s update.

The green line shows where the reversal in MACD unfolded at the same time the price bounced off the purple MA and put in a higher low. Its uptrend remains intact and the price action remains among the strongest in the altcoin space. It also used the yellow MA as support for consecutive days last week, which is important because this MA acts most frequently as support/resistance for assets in general.

HYPE

HYPE remains in an uptrend as well, although its price has fallen since the last update. While the MAs are converging, price still sits just about in the middle of the overall MA range. It will need to show strength to keep this uptrend intact – right now, I’m watching the MACD as a flip in momentum (from dark red to light red) will be a very good sign that we see another leg up to the prior $42 high.

MORPHO and ZRO

Unfortunately, we’ve seen a breakdown in the prices of both MORPHO and ZRO on the daily chart.

MORPHO could not break above the yellow MA resistance and has fallen below the overall MA range. It will take significant strength for it to overcome its position below this range, and it looks like the recent rally will likely end up being a lower high from the Q4 top range of $2-$2.15 (shown in green).

ZRO is also in a tough spot – its price has not fallen as far out of the range as MORPHO, but it will need to bounce from here to have a shot at keep its uptrend alive

Like MORPHO, ZRO was rejected in consecutive days at the yellow MA.

Overall, ZRO must keep the current MACD reversal intact and flip the yellow MA to support. Otherwise, the recent rallies are simply putting in a lower high to its Q4 top as well.

SKY

This week, I’m adding coverage of another DeFi20 component to watch: SKY.

Specifically, SKY has quietly kapt its uptrend alive despite multiple brief breaks below the MA range.

On Saturday (which I marked with the green line), SKY showed resilience as it bounced off the purple MA while also reversing its MACD trend. 

While the MACD reversal wasn’t perfect (the short-term MA broke below 0), it was good enough to signal a price bounce. SKY is also one of the few altcoins that’s managed to stay above its 2025 low so far in 2026 – overall, it’s up nearly 30% for the year.

Tokenized stocks are becoming a dominant narrative in DeFi, and it’s been one that I’ve touched on week after week. xStocks and Ondo are making hundreds of stocks widely available onchain, and they’ve accrued a combined $800M+ in AUM.

For more information on how these projects bring 1:1-backed shares onchain, you can refer to my tokenized stocks article.

The migration of stocks onchain brings unprecedented potential to the asset class. Unlike traditional financial infrastructure, DeFi offers:

It’s no longer a debate – we’ve recently entered a new era for stocks. And over the past couple months, opportunities have begun to emerge to earn yield onchain.

Today, we’ll look at several ways you can use your stocks in ways that can’t be done in traditional brokerage accounts, including different types of LPing and using them as collateral to borrow stablecoins.

Raydium CRCLx/USDC 0.1% Fee Pool

With ~$1B in pooled assets, Raydium is currently the largest DEX on the Solana network.

Since xStocks mostly “live” on Solana, Raydium has become a popular destination to provide liquidity for traders, and earn fees in the process.

All CRCLx/USDC volume that’s routed through this pool charges traders a 0.1% fee based on their trade volume. Liquidity providers (LPers) get 84% of those fees (12% goes to RAY token buybacks, 4% goes to Raydium treasury).

So, higher volume means more fees are generated, which means LPs make more revenue.

As xStocks continue to gain mindshare and usage, it makes sense that volume would increase, which is why the APY for this pool is currently so high.

In fact, volume last week (Mon-Fri) was extremely high, reaching $20.1M on just ~$1.8M in deposits. That translates to: 

Of course, an APY this high shouldn’t be expected, as last week was an unusually high-volume week for CRCLx. However, if xStock usage continues to grow, this could be a good source of income for the foreseeable future.

Impermanent loss (IL) risk: in any 2-sided pool with uncorrelated assets, the constant rebalancing of the pool automatically lowers the weight of the outperforming asset and increases the weight of the underperforming asset. 

CLMM risk: This pool is a concentrated liquidity pool, meaning you can provide liquidity when CRCLx is trading at a set range of prices. You only earn fees while CRCLx is trading within that price range.

When CLMMs first started appearing in DeFi (a trend started by Uniswap v3), there was a subsequent wave of CLMM LP managers to minimize the “CLMM risk” outlined above. These managers would adjust liquidity ranges as the market changed, in order to capture the largest amount of fees possible.

Now, platforms like Byreal are letting anyone broadcast their own LP strategy to the world via their “Real Farmer” feature. When someone posts their LP strategy on Byreal, anyone can deposit their own tokens into the same pool and earn the same APY (and IL) as the manager. 

Note that this process doesn’t involve transferring your tokens to the manager. All positions that are managed according to any given strategy are held within a shared pool, and “copiers” can deposit and withdraw their funds independently of the manager’s actions.

Here’s a look at the top CRCLx/USDC pools that are currently live:

One thing to note here is the “Range” column, which shows the price range in which the pool earns fees. This range is decided by the pool manager and can be changed at any time. 

As I explained above, there are benefits to using both wide and narrow ranges for volatile assets. Some (like the top pool) aim to earn fees at a wide range of prices. 

However, the second pool seems to be mismanaged, as it's programmed to only accrue fees when CRCLx is trading between 500-1000 USDC. Unsurprisingly, that pool has no copiers!

Wasabi AAPLx Vault

Wasabi is a perpetual futures DEX that offers a unique way to earn yield by supplying liquidity. 

Unlike other perps DEX vaults (like Lighter and Avantis, which I covered last week), Hibachi offers individual asset vaults which earn fees paid by traders to borrow funds for leverage.

Among the many individual asset vaults available on Hibachi are those for xStocks. Right now, the most popular xStocks vault is for AAPLx’s 4x leverage market.

The following image is what a trader would see when they go to trade AAPLx:

Near the bottom of the image, you can see the borrow rate at 4x leverage, which is currently 0.0009% per hour. That’s where the AAPLx vault APY comes from.

This hourly rate compounded over a year is 8.2% APY, almost 20x AAPL’s TTM dividend rate.

Flowdesk SPYx/AUSD Credit Market

Another use case for tokenized stocks is the ability to borrow against them permissionlessly and on your terms. While this doesn’t always earn yield, being able to borrow against your stocks isn’t an option for many investors in traditional brokerage accounts. 

Earlier this week, Flowdesk launched a vault on Morpho (the #2 lending DeFi app with ~$11M in AUM) which is currently paying depositors almost 10% to borrow AUSD (Agora’s stablecoin) against SPYx.

Clearly, this type of yield is not sustainable, and it is likely due to some form of added incentives by xStocks or Agora – although neither has disclosed these specific incentives publicly. However, it makes for a rare opportunity while it lasts!