News and analysis

IOTA (IOT) is climbing 9.5% this week to $0.1599, strongly outperforming the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) is up 5.0% to $82,870. The sharp recovery in digital assets comes amid a temporary pause in the U.S.-driven global tariff war, which has revived investor appetite for risk.

Markets are now speculating that the U.S. may soon enter trade negotiations with China, especially after signs of easing inflation. This could prompt the Federal Reserve to signal interest rate cuts—an unequivocal positive for the crypto sector.

Bitcoin is currently testing the critical resistance zone at $81,000–$83,000. A decisive breakout above this range could trigger a broader altcoin rally. For IOTA, this would mean a potential exit from its long-standing wedge formation, opening the path to key targets at $0.2000 and possibly $0.3000.

U.S. President Donald Trump was fair to market crowds, when he generously left a brief note on his Truth Social platform, which sounded like a perfect and timely trading signal. Early in the morning on Wednesday, April 9, Trump's message read: "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well”. His usual charm routine "The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!” as an enhancement slightly confused investing minds, as he actually combined the rather abstract conclusion on economic bargains for America with a much more concrete asset purchases' agenda. However, Trump's undisguised call to buy and a well-known biblical saying, "according to your faith so shall it be", have made all the rally believers rewarded sooner than most of them expected.

Several hours later, it became very clear to everyone from Trump's more official announcement, why this was supposed to become such a great moment to buy U.S. stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 3,000 points, or 7.87% in one trading session, while the S&P 500 broad barometer of Wall Street added 9.5%, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite soared 12.2% before the closing bell of the day. Needless to say that the bullish rally in equities resumed in such a powerful way to follow a 90-days pause for the so-called reciprocal tariffs between the U.S and more than 75 countries, previously considered as a mortal threat to international trade. The pause gesture included 46% for Vietnam, 20% for the EU, 24% for Japan, 32% for Taiwan etc. Before this day, both Donald Trump himself and some members of his team just commented that tariffs can be permanent, but it could still be negotiated as an option at some point. And now it has finally become evident even to market sceptics that the frightening sizes of some tariffs originally represented a starting position in order to make all others horse-trade for mutually suitable conditions.

Trump himself, and U.S .Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later, confirmed tariff pausing is needed as a relief to give enough time to negotiate thoroughly in case of each country. These formulations essentially ended the panicky negative effects of the trade war, making it clear once and for all that the whole tariff project was designed as a tool of negotiation, to make horse-trade and not a plain or self-sufficient tariff war. Trump's decision has slapped 125% tariffs on China alone, citing "the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets", a direct consequence of China's latest move to impose as much as 84% tariffs on US goods, up from the 34% previously announced.

if tariffs are low enough for all others, say, due to future agreements on changing the structure of trade turnover, but they are prohibitive for China, then such a situation will not last long, so that benefits for the entire world and a special severe law for China will also lead to nothing other than mutual concessions between Washington and Beijing in the end. The fact that China rejected this path from the very beginning did not go unnoticed by Trump, while no one else played hardball to receive proper treats already. The world has not united around China in an attempt of tough and rather futile resistance, but is calling Washington offices, looking for soft solutions. Trump is certainly not going to kill world economy. He is simply negotiating according to his own classic book on how to do it in order to achieve the result he needs. After shocking effects and panic, when the peak of a psychological influence is reached and tough arguments worked enough, he emphasizes the need for flexibility in decisions, mentioning that sometimes you have to “go under, over, or around a wall” to achieve the result.

And now we have the U-turn reversal pattern on all the three major U.S. indexes, as well as all major big techs. The stock rebound is more than convincing, because the reasoning behind it is strong. The bounce is still smaller, and the further share price dynamics is still under question only for Apple, which is more dependent than other flagship U.S. businesses on production chains in China and cannot assemble too expensive iPhones in America. For every other tech giant, the future will not be totally cloudless, of course, but the market bottom is almost certainly passed. And so, not only was it a great time to buy, believing in yesterday, but it is still a great time to buy so far, when the major stock recovery confirmed. If the rebound so far has "only" reached the 5,400 level in S&P 500 index terms, after a low near 4,800, then the minimum target can be set at 5,850, if not even above 6,000 again, when all the dust after a lasting negotiation period finally settles.

Ontology (ONT) is up by 10.3% this week to $0.1325, significantly outperforming the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) is adding 3.3% to $81,800. Despite the absence of any project-specific catalysts for ONT, the token’s price has surged in tandem with a general rebound in risk assets.

The rally was largely driven by macroeconomic relief after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause in the tariff escalation — excluding China — temporarily easing fears of a full-blown global trade war. This shift halted the broader crypto market sell-off and allowed assets like ONT to regain lost ground.

Bitcoin is currently facing stiff resistance in the $80,000–$82,000 range. A successful breakout from this level would likely fuel additional upside for altcoins, including ONT. From a technical perspective, ONT has room to climb toward $0.1500 in the short term, with $0.2000 as a more ambitious target if bullish momentum continues.

I am extremely passionate about further prospects of Bitcoin and other crypto satellites expecting massive buying to follow sooner or later after the plunge below $75,000. The nightmare of severe tariff battles will fade into the grey within a month or two, especially since those levies cannot harm virtual assets' transactions, unlike the blows to earnings of US or Chinese businesses with physical deliveries. Some minor demand may appear even higher, at current levels, but probably after Wall Street equities would be ripe for launching their bounce trip. The growing correlation looks strange when cryptocurrencies are swimming more or less in the same boat with stock indices, and this can be explained only by the proportional representation of Bitcoin ETFs in many large investors' portfolios. Well, one should take that as a given, but let's not forget that Trump's policy to reduce the national debt's burden includes not only collecting levies, but also betting on official or quasi-official crypto reserves, which include not only Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also Ripple.

It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who is feeling that discount prices below $2.00 on XRPUSD won't last forever. Experts at Standard Chartered have made an outstanding prediction, according to which Ripple (XRP) can surge as much as 550% "before Trump leaves office", apparently meaning the next 4 years, and not his hypothetical chances for a third term. The famous investment bank, the history of which dates back to the times of the proliferation of British colonies in Asia, shared its view that Ripple is going to reach, you heard it right, $12.50 by the end of 2028, vs the levels below $1.85 right at the moment, as well as the token's peak price of about $3.40 in mid-January. The estimates are reportedly found on Ripple’s potential of keeping pace with "our expected price increases for Bitcoin in real terms” and its "role in cross-border payments". It sounds dramatic, even if we remember the XRP's 6-fold success in only a couple of months after Trump’s presidential win. Ripple, indeed, showed the best gaining rally among all major digital assets.

Geoff Kendrick is the global head of the digital assets research branch at Standard Chartered Bank, and he says that the US SEC regulator would fully retreat from its old appeal "to remove a key overhang from XRP’s outlook." Kendrick expects the XRP Ledger, a decentralized public blockchain and the underlying technology to record all XRP transactions, will benefit much from structural growth in blockchain payments, being the next favourite in an area "where stablecoins have already seen transaction volumes expand rapidly", with another key catalyst to drive Mr Kendrick’s bullishness lying in Ripple’s recent push into tokenization. Real-world assets such as money-market funds and Treasury bills have begun launching on XRP Ledger, he added, forming a trend he describes as accelerating. “Given what Stellar has achieved, XRP should be successful in the tokenisation space,” Kendrick wrote.

XRP ETFs could be approved in Q3 2025 to attract between $4 billion and $8 billion in their first year, he also argued. Standard Chartered analysts forecasted XRPUSD to hit $5.50 before the end of this year to shift to $8.00 during the year or 2026, and continue climbing to $10.40 in 2027. When reading such messages to crypto markets, it seems to me that all that remains is to shrug our shoulders and humbly hold a buy on Ripple for at least a couple of years. Considering that advertising posters with images of a bright future with Ripple can be seen from every direction of the US, and internet banners about Ripple flooded the web out of each iron, it is easy to believe in that scenario.