This article first appeared in The Now, our free newsletter on what matters in culture, crypto, and innovation. Subscribe today to receive it straight to your inbox.

After a four-month slog that had crypto Twitter writing obituaries, the digital asset market appears to have found its pulse again.

Bitcoin reclaimed $79,000 today, a level it last saw before the February drawdown. Ethereum rose back above $2,400, up roughly 8% on the month, as traders position for the Glamsterdam hard fork. The upgrade promises a major speed boost, pushing the network toward 10,000 transactions per second.

Meanwhile, even the NFT space is showing signs of life. Bored Ape Yacht Club floors are up more than 75% over the past month, the collection’s best run since 2024. The move is being driven by the ETH floor itself, and comes on the heels of a leadership shuffle at Yuga. Michael Figge stepped in as CEO while Greg Solano (Garga) moved to Chairman, and the team has been leaning into IRL activations, including its upcoming Miami Clubhouse, a run of global meetups, and a 4/20 event with Snoop Dogg.

So what’s powering the overall turn? A few months ago, I went on Sean Kelly’s Digital Social Hour podcast to argue that crypto is now too big to fail. In prior cycles, a single blowup (e.g., Mt. Gox, FTX, the 2022 contagion chain) could take the whole asset class down because there was no institutional floor and no legal scaffolding underneath. That’s no longer true.

Flows are the headline. After the four-month outflow streak broke in March, spot Bitcoin ETFs posted roughly $1 billion in weekly inflows in the week ending April 18. BlackRock’s IBIT pulled $284 million in a single April 17 session, and Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) executed its third-largest BTC purchase on record. The free float of Bitcoin on centralized exchanges is now at a seven-year low, which tightens the math on every incremental buyer.

Policy is stacking, but it’s messy. Fed chair nominee Kevin Warsh’s confirmation is stuck over the DOJ’s Powell probe, and Trump is demanding rates as low as 1%. With inflation at 3.3% and oil bid from the Iran war, CME FedWatch prices a near-lock hold at the June FOMC and pushes any 25bp cut into the back half of the year. Legislatively, the CLARITY Act is trying to clear the Senate before the midterm window closes. Codifying the framework would unlock the next wave of institutional capital still sitting on the sidelines.

Geopolitics is the wildcard. The U.S.-Iran war that began February 28 is in a fragile ceasefire that Trump extended on April 21 at Pakistan’s request, with mediators working to get a durable framework in place and the Strait of Hormuz blockade still partially in force. That pause has let capital rotate back into beta.

The read-through. Institutional flows, regulatory tailwinds, and the technical picture are pointing in the same direction. That doesn’t mean the chart goes vertical from here. The Merge precedent saw 15% profit-taking in the days following activation, and Glamsterdam could produce a similar sell-the-news move.

Worth watching this week: the April 28 to 29 FOMC meeting (likely Powell’s last as Chair), the Warsh confirmation path, the next round of IBIT flow data, and whether the Iran ceasefire holds through the weekend.