Tariff suspension powers market cap by 10%, BTC dominance at 4-year high in April: Binance

Insights from Binance’s monthly market report for May 2025 indicate that the global cryptocurrency market experienced a significant rebound in April 2025, with total market capitalization rising by nearly 10%. The rebound was buoyed by macroeconomic relief efforts, chief among them being the suspension of key U.S. tariffs. 

According to the report, Bitcoin also benefited greatly from the rebound, hitting a four-year high in market dominance while signaling renewed investor appetite for crypto amid global economic uncertainty.

Market cap rallies amid tariff suspension

In the report, there was a 9.9% increase in total crypto market capitalization in April, marking a major trend reversal from the downturn experienced in March when the crypto and stock markets suffered heavy losses mainly due to President Trump’s tariffs.

Binance suggests that one of the main reasons that the crypto reversed trends was the temporary 90-day suspension of certain trade tariffs, offering short-term optimism to global markets and investors.

Despite this boost, sentiments across both traditional and crypto markets remain cautious, with variables such as inflation, geopolitical tensions, and uncertainty around the tariffs keeping the risk appetite of investors in check.

Many investors are reportedly rotating funds into perceived safer assets.

Bitcoin dominance hit its highest levels since 2021

Bitcoin emerged as the undisputed winner in April’s rebound. Its market dominance climbed to 63%, the highest level since 2021. Binance attributes this to various factors such as a resurgence of the “digital gold” narrative, increased institutional exposure via spot Bitcoin ETFs, and the perception of BTC as a hedge against fiat debasement and market instability.

Notably, capital inflows into Bitcoin ETFs significantly outpaced those of Ethereum-based funds, underlining the shift in investor preference toward BTC during uncertain times.

Global liquidity expansion contributes to crypto surge

In a macroeconomic backdrop that continues to favor liquidity expansion, the G4 nations (United States, Japan, China, and the EU) saw their M2 money supply projection reach a record $93 trillion in April.

Historically, growth in global liquidity has shown a strong correlation with increases in Bitcoin’s market capitalization.

Binance Research noted that this macro tailwind likely played a role in April’s crypto rally, as more liquidity tends to increase investor demand for high-volatility, high-upside assets like Bitcoin and altcoins.

CeFi fundraising makes a comeback as fees shift to application layer

After months of DeFi-dominated headlines, centralized finance (CeFi) projects made a notable comeback in the fundraising arena. In April, CeFi startups accounted for 41.4% of all crypto fundraising, up from just 6% between April and November 2024.

The shift is tied to favorable regulatory signals post-U.S. elections and growing investor belief that centralized platforms offer better compliance readiness amid tightening regulations globally.

The Binance report also mentioned that user-facing applications, such as stablecoin issuers, DEXs, etc., are dominating the on-chain fees category. The application layer is reportedly responsible for over 70% of the on-chain fee generation. Blockchain protocol fees, on the other hand, dropped to 28.8%.

Stablecoin issuers were the biggest fee earners, representing 47.2% of all on-chain fees in April. Excluding stablecoin fees, the application layer’s share drops to 24%.

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