BTC Price Action, Gas Prices, & SpaceX IPO

View from the Arch #126

April 03, 2026

For our Texas readers, we’ll be in Forth Worth for the BitBlockBoom conference! We would love to grab dinner with any of you who are around! We also have a few extra tickets if anyone would like to attend. The conference is at Forth Worth Stockyard Events Center - you can find more information here.

We’ll be in town from April 9-12. Feel free to reply to this email to get in contact with us!

This Week in Crypto

Price action this week was shaped almost entirely by forces outside crypto’s control.

  • Bitcoin opened Friday around $66,780, roughly 1.7% lower than Thursday’s open.

  • BTC’s market cap sits around $1.33T.

  • ETH opened the week at $2,138 and was trading closer to $2,060 by Friday morning. 

  • The Fear & Greed Index sat at 12, with BTC logging green days in only 14 of the past 30 sessions. Volume ran roughly 35% below the 30-day average, and futures markets tilted bearish.

The FTX Recovery Trust distributed roughly $2.2B to creditors on March 31 - its fourth payout under the Chapter 11 plan.

  • With this distribution, total creditor recoveries now stand at around $10B since the bankruptcy began.

  • Markets had braced for a liquidation overhang as creditors rushed to convert their windfall, but the disbursement in USD instead of crypto, combined with macro headwinds, meant the payout created some volatility without generating meaningful buying pressure. 

Coinbase received conditional approval from the OCC for a national trust company charter, a step toward operating as a federally regulated crypto custodian.

  • The preliminary approval requires Coinbase to build out compliance systems, hire key staff, pass regulatory reviews, and demonstrate strong AML controls before a full charter is issued.

  • Coinbase is not alone in this push: Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets, and several others each filed or received conditional OCC approvals in an 83-day window earlier this year. 

This Week in TradFi

Markets kept doing what they’ve been doing: watching the Middle East, watching oil prices, and selling things.

  • The S&P 500 now sits roughly 9% below its late-January record high of 6,978, the Dow has slipped into correction territory and is down almost 6% YTD, and global equities just logged their fifth consecutive weekly losing streak, their longest since 2022. 

  • By Thursday’s close, the S&P managed to post its first weekly gain since the conflict began, with the index rising 3.4%, the Dow up nearly 3%, and the Nasdaq up 4.4%. 

The Iran war’s most tangible domestic effect continues to be at the pump.

  • U.S. gas prices surpassed $4/gallon for the first time in over three years, hitting a nationwide average of $4.018, the highest since August 2022. 

March nonfarm payrolls came in at 178,000, nearly three times the consensus expectation of 60,000 - while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3% and wage growth eased slightly to 3.5% annually. 

  • The Fed now cannot cut rates to help the slowing logistics and consumer sectors without risking a surge in headline inflation driven by $4-per-gallon gas. It also cannot hike into a war. 

This Week in Tech

SpaceX files for the biggest IPO in history (on April Fools’ Day)…

  • The timing was either deeply on-brand or deeply unfortunate.

  • SpaceX submitted its confidential draft registration statement with the SEC on April 1, targeting a June listing on the Nasdaq at a $1.75T valuation and a $75B raise. 

  • At $1.75 trillion, SpaceX would debut as the sixth most valuable public company on Earth - which is impressive for a company that officially still has “colonize Mars” as a line item.

  • The public S-1, which will finally reveal actual financials, is expected in late April or May. 

More Elon news for you - Tesla reported Q1 2026 deliveries of 358,023 vehicles, a 6.3% YoY increase from Q1 2025 but below Wall Street’s consensus estimate of around 365,000. 

  • Shares dropped roughly 5.5% on the news.

  • Meanwhile, Musk announced the end of Model S and X production.

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.