Last week, spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US experienced a net outflow, a rare event seen only three times since these funds launched in January. The category, which includes 11 funds, lost approximately $83 million in assets between April 8 and April 12, according to BitMEX Research data.

This marks a significant decrease from the previous week’s net inflow of $485 million. Despite this negativity, spot Bitcoin ETFs have garnered net positive inflows of $12.5 billion since their launch.

Notably, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) fund experienced $767 million in outflows last week alone, continuing its downward trend. In comparison, other leading funds such as BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) brought in inflows of $487 million and $90 million, respectively, but these gains were not enough to offset significant outflows from GBTC.

The demand created by spot Bitcoin ETFs is cited as the reason for the recent Bitcoin price increase, and this is considered the main differentiator that separates the upcoming Bitcoin halving from previous halvings. Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap announced that it received a warning letter from the SEC last week. This situation points to upcoming sanctions.

The price of Uniswap’s native token UNI, which was above $11 before this news, dropped sharply below $8 upon hearing the news. Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams stated that he was disappointed and that they were ready to fight against the accusations. Warning letters provide advance warning of potential regulatory charges and often precede formal enforcement actions.

According to CoinDesk, Uniswap executives Mary-Catherine Lader and Marvin Ammori explained in a press conference that the SEC’s concerns center on allegations that Uniswap operates as both an unregistered securities broker and an exchange. There was no clear information from the warning letter that UNI itself could be classified as a security. Ammori referenced the recent court decision for Coinbase, which he saw as a positive indicator for Uniswap’s defense against similar charges.

Monad Labs has raised $225 million in an investment round led by Paradigm to expand its team and advance development of its blockchain designed to compete with Ethereum.

This financial support aims to enable the transition of the test version of Monad’s blockchain to full production. The company’s Layer 1 blockchain maintains compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). According to Monad’s announcement on Substack, EVM processes more than 96% of investments in decentralized finance (DeFi).

While Ethereum is currently limited to processing less than 20 transactions per second, Monad’s new operational testnet launched in March shows that it is capable of processing around 10,000 transactions per second. This significant transaction volume increase is part of a broader trend in the crypto community seeking to improve the efficiency of DeFi, including both Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions. Monad’s approach incorporates parallel execution to significantly improve performance across the protocol.

This investment round also demonstrates broad industry support for Monad’s technology, with the participation of important companies such as Electric Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Animoca Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and CoinFund.

All eyes are on Bitcoin’s fourth halving event, which is expected to take place by the end of this week. The reduction in planned cryptocurrency issuance occurs after block 210,000, or approximately every four years.

Halving halves the amount of new Bitcoin produced and reduces miner incentives. While halvings have led to bullish trends for Bitcoin in the past, this time around there are multiple industry reports indicating that the spot Bitcoin ETF market may have a greater impact on the cryptocurrency’s supply-demand dynamics.

Despite the impending decline in miners’ Bitcoin-based revenues, it is possible that miners will see an increase in their dollar-based revenues with a possible increase in the price of Bitcoin and the developments of Ordinals and various Layer 2 networks.