Hello friends! Here’s your crypto update for the 20th of April, 2026.
Big Crypto Update: Strategic Bitcoin Win for Strategy
Let’s begin with the big news item of today’s crypto update.
Michael Saylor’s strategy has once again shown its commitment to stacking Bitcoin. The firm bought a whopping 34,164 Bitcoin for around $2.54 billion between April 13 and April 19. This is its largest weekly purchase since November 2024 at an average price of around $74,395 per coin.
According to the latest SEC filing, this fresh addition pushes Strategy’s total Bitcoin holdings to 815,061 BTC. That impressive hoard is worth about $61.2 billion at current prices, while the all-in cost, including fees and expenses, is about $61.56 billion, which works out to an average purchase price of $75,527 per Bitcoin.
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In the broader crypto update, this move is significant because it represents more than 3.8% of Bitcoin’s entire 21 million coin supply. It’s a bold statement in a market where corporate adoption continues to gain traction.
Michael Saylor, Strategy’s executive chairman and co-founder, confirmed the purchase and emphasized the company’s ongoing aggressive bitcoin accumulation plan. At the moment, the position sits roughly $400 million underwater compared to what the company paid, but long-term believers see the investment as part of a larger vision that treats Bitcoin as a primary treasury asset.
Strategy’s activities are an example of how public companies are increasingly viewing Bitcoin as a core balance sheet strategy.
To fund these buys, Strategy leaned on equity markets in a smart way. Over the past week, the company sold more than 2.1 million shares of its Class A common stock (MSTR), raising around $366 million. Even more notably, it issued nearly 21.8 million shares of its STRC preferred stock, bringing in approximately $2.18 billion.
The STRC offering has quickly become a go-to funding mechanism for the firm’s bitcoin strategy. These variable-rate preferred shares currently offer monthly dividends with an annualized yield hovering near 11.5%. Strategy has even proposed shifting dividend payments to twice per month to boost liquidity and market efficiency, with a shareholder vote on that change expected to wrap up by June 8.
This financing method allows the bitcoin buying machine to run smoothly without relying on traditional debt alone. In the wider crypto update, it shows how innovative capital-raising tools are helping companies double down on digital assets amid fluctuating prices.
The U.S. Shows Meaningful Progress under Paul Atkins
Shifting gears in this crypto update, the regulatory landscape in the United States continues to show meaningful progress. Paul Atkins was sworn in as chair of the SEC exactly a year ago.
Under his leadership, the agency has moved away from the more enforcement-heavy approach seen during Gary Gensler’s tenure in the prior administration.
During his 2024 campaign, President Trump promised to remove Gensler, build a national Bitcoin stockpile, and oppose a U.S. central bank digital currency. Following the election, Gensler stepped down in January 2025, paving the way for Atkins’ confirmation.
The SEC has been very vocal about policy changes in the last year that have generally been well-received by the industry as being crypto-friendly regulations. The cryptocurrency update is indicative of the regulatory environment that now seems to be far more stable than before.
It is important to note that SEC Chair Atkins’ comments to CNBC further prove that the regulator will not act abruptly. It can be assumed that the average participant will experience fewer obstacles along the way.
Aave’s Total Value Locked (TVL) Drops by nearly $8 Billion
On the decentralized finance side, our crypto update wouldn’t be complete without noting a sharp move in one of DeFi’s biggest players. Aave‘s total value locked (TVL) dropped by nearly $8 billion over the weekend following the $293 million exploit at Kelp DAO. Hackers used stolen rsETH tokens as collateral on Aave to borrow wrapped Ether, resulting in around $195 million in “bad debt” on the protocol.
It resulted in a chain reaction of withdrawals as the risk began spreading through the networked lending infrastructure.
The total value locked in Aave decreased from around $26.4 billion to $18.6 billion, thereby losing its title as the biggest DeFi platform temporarily. Even though the platform was not hacked, it is an example of the kind of system risks that propagate rapidly whenever the collateral of one platform impacts the other.
Ethereum Security Update
Another notable item in today’s crypto update involves a brief but concerning security incident on the Ethereum side. Eth.limo, the popular gateway that helps users access roughly two million .eth domains through simple HTTPS links, fell victim to a social engineering attack on its domain registrar, EasyDNS.
The takeover occurred through the period of the night of April 17 and the early morning of April 18. The culprit managed to impersonate one of the members of the eth.limo team and carried out an account recovery operation successfully. As a result, the nameservers of the domain were switched to Cloudflare, and subsequently, Namecheap. Alarms rang soon after, and the control was regained by EasyDNS at about 7:49 a.m. EDT.
What kept this situation from turning out to be a disaster is the fact that DNSSEC (a cryptography security extension for the Domain Name System) validated the DNS records.
Since the hacker did not manage to gain access to the signing keys, all of the unauthorized changes made were refused validation by resolving servers. For this reason, users experienced connectivity issues instead of being taken to fake phishing websites. No harm has been done according to the eth.limo representatives.
Decentralized platforms may have centralizing factors too, like domain registrars, for example. Nevertheless, as proven in this case, strong cryptographic security solutions such as DNSSEC may be very helpful.
Reflecting further on this particular crypto update, it appears that the industry is maturing. The corporates continue their Bitcoin purchases aggressively by applying innovative funding solutions. The regulatory changes made by the SEC under its new leadership also seem to imply that the industry will have more room for innovations.
Nonetheless, recent events in the realms of DeFi and blockchain infrastructure serve as a reminder that the issues of cybersecurity are of utmost importance.
The price of Bitcoin currently remains within the range of $75,000-$76,000. As for the ecosystem itself, it demonstrates remarkable resilience despite the current state of affairs. It’s wise to be aware of what is going on so you can see through the haze.
What is most interesting in this crypto update is the combination of institutional belief, changing rules, and constant need for better security practices.
