Despite recent major developments in the crypto industry, the market has just posted its weakest Q1 performance in years — but a crypto analyst is pointing to several catalysts that could make Q2 more promising.

“Frustrating. That’s the best word to describe the past quarter,” Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan said in a recent market report, calling Q1 the “best worst quarter in crypto’s history.”

Bitcoin and Ether took an unusual hit in Q1

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, saw price declines of 11.82% and 45.41%, respectively, over Q1 2025 — a quarter that has historically seen strong results for both assets. Since 2013, Q1 has been Bitcoin’s second-strongest quarter on average (51.2%) and historically the best for Ether (77.4%), according to CoinGlass data.

Historically, Q1 2025 is the second-best performing quarter for Bitcoin on average, but it’s the best for Ether. Source: CoinGlass

Hougan pointed to a few key catalysts that could help crypto deliver more upside to Q2. 

He noted the rise in global money supply, which “after years of tightening, central banks across the globe are signaling a shift toward monetary easing and M2 expansion.”

“Historically, these conditions have been favorable for risk assets, particularly for digital assets,” Hougan said. Echoing a similar sentiment, Pav Hundal, the lead analyst at Australian crypto exchange Swyftx, told Cointelegraph in February that “in normal times, global loosening measures are a pretty reliable lead indicator for crypto.”

More recently, on April 14, analyst Colin Talks Crypto said, “Global M2 has remained at an ATH for 3 days in a row.” Bitcoin moves in the direction of global M2 83% of the time, economist Lyn Alden wrote in a September research report.

BTC/USD vs global M2 supply. Source: Colin Talks Crypto

Hougan also said the “clean sweep of pro-regulations” in the US may be another bullish factor for the crypto market. “This is the long tail of regulatory clarity that no one is talking about, and it’s just getting started,” Hougan said.

The rise in stablecoin assets under management may also be a positive indicator that more upside is to come this year in the crypto market. Hougan said during the first quarter, stablecoin assets under management surged to “an all-time high of over $218 million.”

“Growing stablecoin adoption will benefit adjacent sectors, including DeFi and other crypto applications,” he said. 

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The firm also said that the “geopolitical chaos” seen in the global economy during Q1 2025, mainly after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration through his tariffs, “are pushing global investors to reassess their portfolios.”

It comes only days after Hougan recently reiterated his prediction that Bitcoin may surge approximately 138% from its current price of $84,080 by the end of the year.

“In December, Bitwise predicted that Bitcoin would end the year at $200,000. I still think that’s in play,” Hougan said.

Meanwhile, crypto exchange Coinbase recently said, “When the sentiment finally resets, it’s likely to happen rather quickly, and we remain constructive for the second half of 2025.”

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This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Crypto exchange Coinbase has distanced its blockchain network Base from a memecoin it shared that saw massive backlash after the token rapidly gained, then dropped in value by millions of dollars.

Base posted to X on April 16 with an image promoting the network with its marketing tagline, “Base is for everyone,” it also shared a link to a token of the same name on Zora, a social network where users can make posts into tokens for others to speculate on.

In just over an hour after it was created, the Base is for everyone token hit a peak market capitalization of $17.1 million — then dropped by nearly 90% over the next 20 minutes to a market value of $1.9 million, DEX Screener data shows.

The Base is for everyone token’s market cap saw a slight recovery after a rapid, nearly 90% fall in value soon after its launch. Source: DEX Screener

The token has since made a slight recovery and was trading around $7.7 million at time of publication.

A Coinbase spokeswoman distanced Base from the token, telling Cointelegraph that “Base did not launch a token.”

“This is not an official Base token, and Base did not sell this token. Base posted on Zora, which automatically tokenizes content,” the spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman pointed to a legal disclaimer on the token’s Zora page that states Base’s posts on the token-making platform “are similar to those already shared on X — do not expect profits or returns and no ongoing development or efforts will be made to increase their value.”

The post adds that Base will receive 10 million tokens out of a total supply of 1 billion that it pledged never to sell, and money made from fees will support grants for the network’s developers.

Base’s X post linking to the post on Zora. Source: Base

Zora shows Base has earned over $61,000 from the token, which has seen its total trading volume surpass $26 million.

Hundreds of X posts have criticized Base over the token, with one X user saying that “any credibility this chain had is now gone.”

Former Riot Platforms researcher Pierre Rochard called the token “terrible for the industry, very short-term transactional extraction.” 

AP Collective founder Abhishek Pawa said on X that Base “tried redefining memecoins as ‘contentcoins’ and completely botched the execution.”

“The core innovation actually has potential,” he added. “But base utterly fumbled execution, optics, and trader expectations, resulting in justified backlash.”

Meanwhile, Base creator Jesse Pollack, who has posted to Zora to create dozens of tokens in the past two months, defended Base creating the token, saying on X that “someone has to normalize putting all of our content onchain. I’m not afraid for it to be us.”

He added that creating a token for internet content is “the end game for how we can build a new economy where creators earn from their creativity,” which he said would “require overhauling our mental models and product experiences.”

Token “horrifically sniped” and second launch fizzles

Harrison Leggio, the co-founder of crypto startup g8keep, said that the Base is for everyone token “was HORRIFICALLY sniped.”

Leggio, who goes by “Pop Punk” on X, said he found two addresses that bought 21% of the token’s supply for 2 Ether (ETH), currently worth about $3,200, before both wallets transferred the tokens to other addresses and sold them for a toal profit of around $300,000.

Source: Harrison Leggio

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Just over 75 minutes after the creation of the Base is for everyone token, Base again posted to Zora to promote its presence at an event in New York next month — which also generated a related token.

DEX Screener shows that token, called “Base @ FarCon 2025,” reached a peak value of only $987,570 in the minute after its launch before quickly dropping nearly 77% to settle to a value of around $230,000.

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The founder and lead developer of Ethereum Name Service has warned his X followers of an “extremely sophisticated” phishing attack that can impersonate Google and trick users into giving out login credentials. 

The phishing attack exploits Google’s infrastructure to send a fake alert to users informing them that their Google data is being shared with law enforcement due to a subpoena, ENS’ Nick Johnson said in an April 16 post to X. 

“It passes the DKIM signature check, and GMail displays it without any warnings – it even puts it in the same conversation as other, legitimate security alerts,” he said. 

The fake subpoena appears to be from a Google no-reply domain. Source: Nick Johnson

As part of the attack, users are offered the chance to view the case materials or protest by clicking a support page link, which uses Google Sites, a tool that can be used to build a website on a Google subdomain, according to Johnson. 

“From there, presumably, they harvest your login credentials and use them to compromise your account; I haven’t gone further to check,” he said.

The Google domain name gives the impression it’s legit, but Johnson says there are still telltale signs it’s a phishing scam, such as the email being forwarded by a private email address. 

Scammers exploit Google systems 

In an April 11 report, software firm EasyDMARC explained that the phishing scam works by weaponizing Google Sites.

Anyone with a Google account can create a site that looks legitimate and is hosted under a trusted Google-owned domain.

They also use the Google OAuth app, where the “key trick is that you can put anything you want in the App Name field in Google,” and use a domain via Namecheap that allows them to “put no-reply@google account as From address and the reply address can be anything.”

Source: Nick Johnson

“Finally, they forward the message to their victims. Because DKIM only verifies the message and its headers and not the envelope, the message passes signature validation and shows up as a legitimate message in the user’s inbox — even in the same thread as legit security alerts,” Johnson said. 

Google deploying countermeasures soon 

Speaking to Cointelegraph, a Google spokesperson said they are aware of the issue and are shutting down the mechanism that attackers are using to insert the “arbitrary length text,” which will prevent the method of attack from working in the future. 

Related: Hackers hide crypto address-swapping malware in Microsoft Office add-in bundles

“We’re aware of this class of targeted attack from the threat actor, Rockfoils, and have been rolling out protections for the past week. These protections will soon be fully deployed, which will shut down this avenue for abuse,” the spokesperson said. 

“In the meantime, we encourage users to adopt two-factor authentication and passkeys, which provide strong protection against these kinds of phishing campaigns.” 

The spokesperson added that Google will never ask for any private account credentials — including passwords, one-time passwords or push notifications, nor call users.  

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