Morning News | Drift receives support from Tether and others to establish a $147.5 million recovery fund; Charles Schwab launches spot crypto trading services; Morgan Stanley lists asset tokenization as a growth priority
Overview of Important Market Events on April 16整理：ChainCatcher
Important News:
- Charles Schwab announces the launch of spot crypto trading services, supporting direct trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum
- Drift: Supported by Tether and others, plans to establish a $147.5 million recovery pool
- Morgan Stanley lists asset tokenization as a key growth focus for the next phase
- Yili Hua: Has not deeply participated in market making since 2019, lacks the ability and energy to manage projects
- NVIDIA's Jensen Huang: Anthropic and OpenAI are about to go public, NVIDIA may not pursue further investments
- Fortune Magazine: Paradigm, a16z crypto and other crypto VC assets have significantly shrunk
- Arthur Hayes: His fund is in a risk-averse state, only slightly increasing holdings in Hyperliquid
What important events have occurred in the past 24 hours?
According to ChainCatcher, Yili Hua posted on platform X, acknowledging that he is very ordinary yet important. Whether in the classical industry or entering the crypto space, we have always focused on primary investments in Liquid Capital & investment bank Liquid Digital and secondary trading Trend Research (crypto) & Trend Investment (classical). Although operating projects and exchanges can be very profitable, our energy and capabilities are indeed limited, leaving us only to envy and be jealous.
We incubated a market maker in 2018, but the team kept the profits for themselves and left us with the losses, resulting in significant scars. After exiting in 2019, we have not deeply participated in market making again, at most just investing in some good trading teams. Conspiracy theories are always the most popular, but I am not a hexagonal warrior; I do not have the ability or energy to manage projects, and exchanges are very clear about this.
Fortune Magazine: Paradigm, a16z crypto and other crypto VC assets have significantly shrunk
According to ChainCatcher, Fortune Magazine reported that in the context of a sluggish crypto market in 2025 and the distribution of returns to investors, the portfolio values of crypto venture capital firms like Paradigm and a16z crypto have significantly decreased.
According to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the total assets under management (AUM) of four crypto funds under a16z crypto dropped nearly 40% from 2024 to 2025, down to $9.5 billion. Part of the reason is that the institution began returning capital to investors from early funds, and the timing of the returns coincided with the market peak in 2025, with the net DPI (distributions to paid-in capital) of its first crypto fund reaching 5.4.
The management scale of Multicoin Capital has also been halved, down to about $2.7 billion. Paradigm's holdings have also slightly decreased by about 6%. Meanwhile, the total scale of a16z crypto's parent company Andreessen Horowitz has exceeded $100 billion.
The report pointed out that the shrinkage in asset management scale partly reflects the decline in portfolio value due to the market downturn, and is also a manifestation of normal exits by VCs returning funds to limited partners (LPs). Some institutions, such as Haun Ventures, have seen their management scale grow by over 30%, reaching around $2.5 billion.
Currently, Paradigm is seeking to raise a new fund of $1.5 billion, and a16z crypto is also raising up to $2 billion for its fifth fund.
Arthur Hayes: His fund is in a risk-averse state, only slightly increasing holdings in Hyperliquid
According to ChainCatcher, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes stated in a recent article that his fund Maelstrom is currently in a "No Trade Zone," and aside from a slight increase in long positions in Hyperliquid, trading operations have basically stopped in the first quarter.
Hayes believes the current market faces two key variables: first, the widespread adoption of AI agents will destroy the flexible labor market in the West, leading to a wave of unemployment among knowledge workers and a deflationary financial collapse; second, the war against Iran led by the Trump administration has lasted seven weeks, posing a serious threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
According to ChainCatcher, Bitcoin core developer Jameson Lopp stated that compared to potential quantum computing attacks in the future, he prefers to "freeze" about 5.6 million long-dormant BTC from the network rather than allow them to be accessed by attackers. These bitcoins have not moved for over 10 years and may be permanently lost, valued at approximately $42 billion at current prices. If future breakthroughs in quantum computing lead to the decryption of old address private keys, this portion of assets could be transferred again, causing severe market volatility or even a crisis of confidence.
Although the community has recently proposed the BIP-361 proposal, it is still in the early stages and is not an officially promoted plan, but more like a contingency plan to address "extreme risks."
According to ChainCatcher, CoW Swap tweeted that it has regained control of the cow.fi domain and has been operating normally on cow.finance for a while, currently transitioning back to the original domain.
The official statement indicated that the attacker deceived the DNS registrar on April 14 by forging documents to gain control of the cow.fi domain; the attacker deployed a highly realistic phishing site, implementing the attack in two phases: first, inducing users to sign malicious transactions through wallet stealers, and then stealing mnemonic phrases and passwords through fake wallet pop-ups; this attack targeted the domain registrar, not the CoW Swap's own infrastructure or private key leaks. Affected users should use tools like Revoke.cash to revoke all authorizations and consider transferring funds to a new wallet.
Kalshi plans to launch "Parent Portal" feature to strengthen restrictions on minors' usage
According to ChainCatcher, as reported by Cointelegraph, prediction market platform Kalshi's CEO Tarek Mansour stated that the company plans to launch a "Parent Portal" feature, allowing parents to submit identity information to verify whether their children are using the platform under their identity.
In addition, Kalshi will also introduce a selfie verification mechanism to further confirm user identity through facial recognition, strengthening age restrictions and compliance management to prevent minors from using related services.
According to ChainCatcher, BitMEX Research released a new research article proposing that in response to the risk of future quantum computers potentially breaking elliptic curve signatures, the Bitcoin network could adopt a soft fork mechanism as an alternative to "direct freezing" to reduce controversy and increase flexibility.
The proposal revolves around "quantum-vulnerable fund freezing," but suggests avoiding the direct freezing of all related assets without evidence, instead gradually implementing security strategies through verifiable condition-triggered mechanisms. The core of the proposal is to establish a "signal vault," which contains special addresses generated using "no accidental numbers" to prove that no one possesses its private key. If there is passive spending from that address, it will be regarded as on-chain evidence that quantum computing capabilities genuinely exist, thus immediately triggering a comprehensive freeze of quantum-vulnerable assets.
At the same time, the fund could attract capital through a multi-signature structure as a "quantum bounty" to incentivize potential attackers to expose their capabilities. The article also mentioned that there is currently a BIP-361 proposal promoting the phased disabling of the old
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