The Week in One Sentence
The Strait of Hormuz reopened, Bitcoin broke $78,000 for the first time in ten weeks, Bhutan sold 70% of its sovereign Bitcoin stack, Wall Street's biggest banks shipped crypto products in a single week, and Bitcoin developers proposed freezing Satoshi's coins.
1. Hormuz Reopened and the Deal Is "Mostly Complete"
Iran announced Friday that the Strait of Hormuz has reopened.
The move came tied to a 10-day Israel-Lebanon ceasefire that took effect this week. Tehran says the Strait stays open for the remaining five days of that window. Trump told reporters Thursday in Las Vegas that the Iran war is "going swimmingly" and "should be ending pretty soon." Friday he went further: the deal is "mostly complete," Iran has agreed to suspend its nuclear program, and the US is considering releasing $20 billion in frozen Iranian funds. Formal face-to-face peace talks could happen next weekend.
How we got here matters. The shaky two-week ceasefire from April 8 fell apart. US and Iranian negotiators met in Islamabad on April 11-12. The talks collapsed without agreement. On April 13 at 10:00 AM Eastern, Trump imposed a full naval blockade on all Iranian maritime trade. CENTCOM halted Iran's sea trade completely within 36 hours. Eight tankers intercepted. Ten thousand US personnel and a dozen warships enforcing the operation. Iran condemned the blockade as "piracy" and threatened force. China called it dangerous.
The blockade broke the stalemate. Iranian oil exports stopped. The economy faced immediate pressure. Five days after the blockade began, Tehran was reopening the Strait and Washington was talking deals.
The situation is fluid. Reopenings have collapsed before. Peace talks have stalled before. The blockade is still active. Iran has not suspended nuclear enrichment in a verified way. Netanyahu's cabinet has not formally endorsed the framework. A single incident in the Strait, a missed deadline on hostage releases, or a breakdown in the weekend talks could unwind everything by Monday. The 10-day ceasefire window is short by design, and both sides have walked away from narrower windows before.
2. Bitcoin Broke $78,000
Bitcoin surged past $78,000 on Friday, its first time above that level in ten weeks.
The move started Monday when Bitcoin hit $76,094 on four-week-high ceasefire optimism. It pulled back mid-week to $73,298 as the Islamabad talks collapsed and the blockade took effect. Then Friday happened: Trump's nuclear deal announcement, the Hormuz reopening, and a 5% single-day surge that broke the descending trendline Bitcoin had failed to break since its $128,000 all-time high in October. That trendline had held as resistance for six straight months.
The rally is carrying structural support. Bitcoin ETF flows hit $332 million this week, making it the third consecutive week of positive inflows. The past two weeks alone have absorbed more than $800 million. Morgan Stanley's MSBT launched April 8 and reached $87.6 million in assets by April 15. Charles Schwab opened spot Bitcoin trading to its retail clients Thursday.
The short side is trapped. According to K33 Research, funding rates on Binance perpetual futures have been negative for 46 consecutive days even as open interest rises. That means traders have been actively building short positions against this rally the entire time. Above $77,000, there is $1.17 billion in short liquidation pressure. If Bitcoin holds these levels, the forced buying cascade that clears those shorts could push it meaningfully higher.
The last time Binance funding was negative this long was November-December 2022, during the FTX collapse.
3. Bhutan Quietly Sold 70% of Its Bitcoin
Bhutan has sold 70% of its sovereign Bitcoin reserve. Almost nobody has reported it outside of on-chain analysts.
The kingdom held approximately 13,000 BTC in October 2024, all of it mined by its sovereign wealth fund Druk Holding and Investments using surplus hydropower from its glacial rivers. Bhutan was the proof-of-concept for sovereign Bitcoin mining: small, landlocked, energy-rich, patient. At the 2024 peak, the stack was worth roughly $1.4 billion.
As of this week, Bhutan holds approximately 3,500 BTC worth $260 million. That is a 70% reduction in 18 months.
How we know it is Bhutan. Arkham Intelligence maintains a public entity page for the Royal Government of Bhutan that tracks every wallet linked to Druk Holding and Investments. The transfers are not rumor. They are verified on-chain. In 2026 alone, DHI has moved more than $215 million worth of Bitcoin out of its wallets. The destinations include QCP Capital, a Singapore-based trading firm used for over-the-counter deals, and Binance hot wallets. A recurring bc1q counterparty address shows up across multiple transfers, suggesting a consistent OTC partner.
Why they are selling. Three reasons, in order of weight:
First, funding. In December 2024, Bhutan pledged up to 10,000 BTC to Gelephu Mindfulness City, a special economic zone the government is building as a long-term development project. The 2026 outflows pattern matches a treasury drawing down reserves to finance construction.
Second, the economics. Post-halving, the Bitcoin block reward is 3.125 BTC. Network difficulty is at all-time highs. Bhutan's hydropower mining operation was economically viable when Bitcoin traded above $90,000 and difficulty was lower. It may not be now. Arkham notes that Bhutan "appears to have ceased mining as of ~November 2024." No mining inflows exceeding $100,000 have been recorded from Bhutan's wallets in over a year. The sovereign stack is spending down with no new supply coming in.
Third, execution. Bhutan is not panic-selling. Sales are controlled, spaced, and routed through OTC desks in $5-20 million chunks. The method is designed to avoid market impact. At current pace, Arkham projects Bhutan could be fully out by September 2026.
Druk Holding and Investments has not responded to repeated press requests. No public comment. No explanation.
The contrast with this week's other story is sharp. Wall Street is buying. A sovereign miner is exiting. Bhutan is the only nation-state currently visible as a seller.
4. Wall Street Shipped Crypto Products in a Single Week
Three of America's largest financial institutions launched or filed Bitcoin products this week. They did it in five days.
Monday, April 13. Goldman Sachs filed with the SEC for a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF. The fund uses options strategies to generate yield on Bitcoin exposure rather than simple price tracking. It is Goldman's first direct Bitcoin ETF filing.
Wednesday, April 15. Morgan Stanley's MSBT, which launched April 8, crossed $87.6 million in assets. Day-one inflows were $30.6 million. At 0.14%, MSBT is now the cheapest Bitcoin ETF on the market. Morgan Stanley, a bank whose former CEO James Gorman once dismissed Bitcoin as worthless, is now running the lowest-fee Bitcoin ETF available to US investors.
Thursday, April 16. Charles Schwab announced "Schwab Crypto" and began rolling out spot Bitcoin trading to its retail clients. Schwab reported $12.22 trillion in client assets as of February. Trades are priced at 75 basis points and executed through Charles Schwab Premier Bank with Paxos as custody partner. The service launched in most US states, excluding New York and Louisiana for now. Schwab CEO Rick Wurster explained the move: "What we hear from many of our clients is that they have 98% of their wealth here at Schwab and they might hold a percent or 2% at some digital native firm to hold their crypto. They really want to bring it back to Schwab."
DL News captured the shift in one headline: "Wall Street has literally arrived."
The distribution implications matter more than any single product. Morgan Stanley Wealth Management has around $5 trillion in client assets. Schwab has $12 trillion. Goldman manages $3.6 trillion. Those are the gatekeepers for a generation of American wealth. A week ago, every one of them required clients to leave the building to buy Bitcoin. Today, they do not.
5. Developers Proposed Freezing Satoshi's Coins
Last week, two developers shipped quantum-defense prototypes that almost nobody noticed. This week, a different group of developers filed the proposal that will.
BIP-361, authored by Jameson Lopp and other Bitcoin developers, would freeze Bitcoin in wallets that are vulnerable to future quantum attacks. The proposal targets approximately 1.7 million Bitcoin held in pre-2013 address formats, the ones most exposed if quantum computing ever matures enough to break elliptic curve cryptography. That 1.7 million includes Satoshi Nakamoto's estimated 1.1 million coins, currently worth roughly $74 billion.
The argument for BIP-361 is defensive. If quantum computers eventually threaten older address formats, those coins become free money for whoever builds the first capable quantum computer. An attacker draining Satoshi's wallets would flood the market with Bitcoin, destroy faith in the protocol, and enrich a single entity with the network's founding supply. Freezing the coins before that happens protects the network.
The argument against BIP-361 is philosophical. Bitcoin's founding principle is that nobody can touch your coins except you. Freezing dormant wallets, even to protect the network from theoretical future attackers, is a protocol-level intervention that overrides the owner's control. If the owners are alive and silent, the protocol is confiscating their property. If the owners are dead, the protocol is canceling whatever inheritance arrangement they made. Either way, it is the first time the Bitcoin community would vote to seize coins.
Charles Hoskinson pushed back publicly, arguing BIP-361 is mislabeled as a soft fork and that the proposed zero-knowledge recovery mechanism cannot actually rescue the pre-2013 coins it claims to protect.
This is not a decision Bitcoin will make quickly. BIP proposals take years. But the fact that credible developers are proposing protocol-level coin seizure, even for defensive reasons, is a genuine inflection point. It forces the community to answer a question it has never had to answer: when network survival conflicts with individual property rights, which one wins?
There is no clean answer. That is why this matters.
The Numbers
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| BTC Price (Fri PM) | ~$78,100 |
| Weekly High | $78,000+ |
| Weekly Low | $73,298 |
| Fear & Greed Index | 54 (Neutral) |
| ETF 7D Flows | +$332M |
What to Watch Next Week
The Iran peace talks. Trump said formal face-to-face negotiations could happen next weekend. A deal that holds unlocks the rally. A collapse gives it all back.
Hormuz tanker traffic. The Strait reopened Friday. Watch whether actual ship transits resume or whether the reopening is diplomatic theater. Ship insurance premiums below 2% would confirm the market believes it.
The short squeeze setup. 46 days of negative funding at Binance. $1.17 billion in short liquidation pressure above $77,000. If Bitcoin holds these levels, the cascade can start at any time. Watch funding rates and liquidation data.
Schwab flow data. The first week of Schwab Crypto will tell us whether traditional brokerage clients actually want to buy Bitcoin when it is offered inside their existing account. If the numbers are large, the distribution thesis accelerates. If they are small, it is slower than the headlines suggest.
BIP-361 response. Developer and community reaction will shape whether this proposal dies quietly or becomes a multi-year debate.
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Bitcoin Weekly is published every Saturday by 21VOX. Written by Karl. No financial advice. Just signal.