April closed as Bitcoin's strongest month in a year, with BTC posting an 11.87% monthly gain after a five-month losing streak. But the headline figure masked a much more complex picture: a U.S.–Iran ceasefire on April 8 that triggered $427M in short liquidations within 48 hours, the launch of Morgan Stanley's first spot Bitcoin ETF, a $292M exploit of the largest restaking protocol in DeFi, and a steady drift back toward range lows in the final week. For our strategies, the difference between a profitable month and a difficult one came down less to direction than to how the price actually moved — and where it closed relative to where it opened.
Below is a breakdown of how each strategy performed, what drove the results, and the broader market context that shaped April.
Market Overview
Geopolitics drove the first half of April; institutional flows drove the second.
On April 8, after weeks of escalating pressure around the Strait of Hormuz blockade, Pakistan-mediated talks produced a conditional two-week U.S.–Iran ceasefire that included Israel. Crude oil collapsed from $112 per barrel, and the unwind in risk-off positioning was almost immediate. Roughly $427M in crypto short positions were liquidated over the following 48 hours as Bitcoin reclaimed $69,000 before most desks were open on Monday morning. The ceasefire was extended on April 21, following a separate Israel–Lebanon truce announced on April 16, though shipping through the Strait remained at roughly 5% of pre-war levels throughout the month.
Bitcoin closed April up 11.87% — its best monthly performance since April 2025.
BTC traded from roughly $68,000 at the start of the month to a peak of nearly $79,000 on April 27, before easing back toward $76,300 into month-end. The $79,000 level, untested since early February, proved a structural ceiling where institutional supply began to absorb the rally. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs took in approximately $2.44 billion in net inflows during April — nearly double March's total and the strongest institutional month since October 2025. BlackRock's IBIT captured over 70% of that total. Cumulative AUM across U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs reached roughly $102 billion by month-end.
Morgan Stanley launched MSBT on April 8 — the first spot Bitcoin ETF from a major U.S. bank, with a 0.14% expense ratio (the lowest in the category) and $34M in day-one inflows.
Charles Schwab announced Schwab Crypto on April 16, opening direct spot BTC and ETH trading to its $11.9 trillion client base in a phased rollout. Together with Bitwise's Avalanche ETF (BAVA), which began trading on NYSE on April 15 with built-in staking and a 30-day fee waiver, April saw three meaningful expansions of the regulated crypto access surface in a single month.
Ethereum's path was more uneven.
ETH opened April near $2,100, surged to a monthly high of $2,450 in mid-month on the back of the ceasefire rally, the Ethereum Foundation's largest single-day staking deposit on record, and Schwab's announcement, then shed roughly 8% to close near $2,265 on April 30 after a $500M crypto deleveraging event in the final week. The trajectory — strong directional swings rather than range-bound trading — turned out to be an important detail for several of our yield strategies, particularly Perp Vault.
Two large DeFi exploits defined the month's risk picture.
On April 1, Drift Protocol — the largest decentralized perpetual exchange on Solana — was drained of approximately $285M in a six-month social engineering operation attributed to North Korea–linked actors. Then on April 18, an attacker exploited Kelp DAO's LayerZero-powered rsETH bridge, minting 116,500 unbacked rsETH (~18% of circulating supply, ~$292M) and using it as collateral on Aave to borrow real WETH. Aave Guardian froze rsETH markets across all deployments where the asset was listed within hours. TVL on Aave fell from approximately $26.4B to $20B over the weekend, and DeFi-wide outflows reportedly reached $13B. Several major networks, including Avalanche, saw cross-chain risk-off pressure even where the exposure was indirect. Aave's contracts performed as designed throughout, and recovery work has continued into May, but the incident was a clear reminder that bridge-layer and configuration-layer risk remains the soft underbelly of the restaking stack.
The CLARITY Act made small but consequential moves.
The Senate Banking Committee returned to full session on April 13 after a two-week pro forma break. By month-end, lead negotiators Tillis and Alsobrooks had reached an agreement in principle on stablecoin yield — to ban interest "economically or functionally equivalent" to bank deposits while preserving activity-based rewards. The compromise text was released on May 1. The Senate Banking markup is now targeted for mid-May, with a narrow window remaining before the legislative calendar closes ahead of the November midterms.
The combination of all these factors — sustained ETF demand, a temporary geopolitical thaw, two of the largest DeFi exploits of the year, and a still-stalled but visibly progressing regulatory framework — made April a month of asymmetric outcomes. Spot holders of major assets generally benefited; market-making, perpetuals, and liquidity strategies experienced very different conditions depending on whether their underlying asset chopped or trended.
Liquidity Providing Strategies Snapshot
- April performance:
USDT: 4% APY, 0.33% monthly yield
USDC: 4% APY, 0.33% monthly yield
ETH: 4% APY, 0.33% monthly yield
BTC: up to 7% APY, 0.33% monthly yield
AVAX: 5% APY, 0.41% monthly yield - Risk profile: Low – Medium
April performance was consistent with the strategies' yield corridor under current market conditions.
When this strategy performs best
Liquidity Providing strategies typically perform best during periods of market expansion and elevated volatility. Higher trading activity and stronger price movements increase fee generation and improve capital efficiency.
When performance may be lower
Performance tends to be more moderate during declining or range-bound markets with reduced trading volumes. Lower activity directly impacts fee generation and limits yield potential.
Maker Core Strategies Snapshot
- April performance:
USDT: up to 10% APY, 0.79% monthly yield
BTC: up to 5% APY, 0.41% monthly yield
XRP: up to 5% APY, 0.41% monthly yield
BNB: up to 6% APY, 0.49% monthly yield
SOL: up to 7% APY, 0.56% monthly yield
TRX: up to 6% APY, 0.49% monthly yield
DOGE: up to 5% APY, 0.41% monthly yield
BCH: up to 5% APY, 0.41% monthly yield
LINK: up to 5% APY, 0.41% monthly yield
XLM: up to 5% APY, 0.41% monthly yield
DAI: up to 7% APY, 0.57% monthly yield
DOT: up to 5% APY, 0.41% monthly yield
ARB: up to 7% APY, 0.57% monthly yield
ZIL: up to 7% APY, 0.57% monthly yield - Risk profile: Low – Medium
April performance was consistent with the strategies' yield corridor under current market conditions.
When this strategy performs best
Maker Core strategies perform best in environments with strong trading volumes and meaningful price movements. Higher activity generates more spread capture and improves the strategy's ability to operate at target capacity.
When performance may be lower
Performance tends to be more moderate during quieter markets with thinner volumes and tighter ranges, when spread capture opportunities are reduced.
USDT DeFi Strategy Snapshot
- April performance: 10% APY, 0.79% monthly yield
- Risk profile: Medium
April performance was consistent with the strategy's yield corridor under current market conditions.
When this strategy performs best
The USDT DeFi strategy performs best in environments with elevated trading activity and sustained volatility.
At the end of each month, APY may be adjusted upward for the following month if market conditions support stronger yield generation.
When performance may be lower
Performance may moderate during sharp squeeze events, where forced liquidations drive rapid price dislocations.
Under such conditions, capital allocation becomes more defensive, which may reduce short-term yield.
In these environments, APY may be adjusted downward to reflect the prevailing risk-reward balance.
ETH DeFi Strategy Snapshot
- April performance: up to 5% APY, 0.39% monthly yield
- Risk profile: Medium
April performance was consistent with the strategy's yield corridor under current market conditions.
When this strategy performs best
The strategy tends to perform best during periods of volatility when GMX traders incorrectly predict market direction.
In volatile phases where traders take the wrong side of the move, the strategy generates yield from trader losses and trading fees.
Over time, these phases offset periods when traders are profitable and contribute to long-term performance.
When performance may be lower
Performance may be more moderate under the opposite conditions – when GMX traders correctly predict market direction during volatile moves.
In these periods, trader profits can outweigh fee income, which reduces overall yield until market conditions shift.
Perp Vault Strategies Snapshot
- April performance:
USDT ETH-based: up to 20% APY, 6.2% monthly yield
USDT BTC-based: up to 10% APY, 2.7% monthly yield
SOL: up to 20% APY, 1.3% monthly yield
BNB: −0.01% monthly yield
AVAX: −0.3% monthly yield
LINK: −1.0% monthly yield
ETH: −3.7% monthly yield
BTC: −5.3% monthly yield - Risk profile: High
April was a clear illustration that for perp vault strategies, the amplitude of price movement matters less than how price moves — and where it closes relative to where it opened. Volatility helps the pool when price mean-reverts within a range and traders get stopped out as positions whipsaw. It hurts the pool when price makes strong directional swings — even two-sided ones — and traders ride those moves to profit. April delivered both regimes simultaneously, and the result was the widest spread in vault performance we've seen in recent months.
Leaders: USDT BTC-based and SOL
USDT BTC-based delivered the best result of the month at +33.26% APR, fully offsetting March's −7.6% drawdown. In March, as BTC fell from $93k to $63–66k, the pool accumulated more BTC and absorbed impermanent loss alongside payouts to profitable shorts. April reversed that setup. BTC rose from approximately $68k at the start of the month to a peak of nearly $79k on April 27 — a move of more than 15% — and the BTC accumulated in March was repriced upward in dollar terms, recovering a meaningful portion of the prior drawdown on the USDT side. The April 8–9 short squeeze ($427M of crypto shorts liquidated) and the third-week ETF inflow surge ($996M into BTC ETFs in a single week) generated high spot turnover and fee income at exactly the moment the pool's exposure had flipped to the favorable side. Three conditions aligned: spot recovery of March's accumulated BTC, a one-directional rally, and negative funding. Longs were not paying funding in April, but shorts continued paying to hold positions — a residual of March's tone, only this time the USDT side of the pool was on the winning end of the balance.
SOL held its positive streak for a fourth consecutive month, at +16.76% APR, though at a more modest pace than March's +35.8%. SOL traded in a $78.98–$89.12 band — close to the ideal chop-with-mean-reversion regime for an LP. Price kept returning to the middle of the range after every attempt to break out. The reversal around the Iran ceasefire produced cascading two-sided liquidations and active directional positioning by traders — exactly the structure that maximizes fee income for the pool. Seller pressure in the last week of April capped the dollar-denominated upside, but the trading dynamics were highly favorable throughout.
Mid-range: BNB and AVAX
BNB returned −1.19% APR — a sharp compression from March (−34 percentage points) but the smallest nominal drawdown across the underperforming assets in the strategy. Price volatility was high in absolute terms ($584–$644), but the deflationary mechanism that supported BNB below $610 in the first week of April was largely neutralized by the third and fourth weeks as volatility compressed. The high price-impact problem we tracked in February and March eased materially, but in its place came a slow, one-directional drift with few liquidations. Trading commissions were not enough to offset the asset's price exposure, and the result was a smooth market with limited pool-friendly events.
AVAX returned −4.37% APR. Price reached $9.44 by April 8, then traded flat in a $9.02–$9.70 range through mid-month before drifting down toward month-end. The launch of Bitwise's Avalanche ETF (BAVA) on NYSE on April 15 — the first U.S.-listed AVAX ETF with built-in staking — should have been a strong bullish catalyst, but the catalyst was overwhelmed within days by cross-chain risk-off pressure following the April 18 Kelp DAO/rsETH exploit. Although the attack vector was specific to ETH-restaking and Avalanche was only indirectly affected, DeFi-wide deleveraging hit L1 deployments roughly equally, and Avalanche TVL fell 6.61% with AVAX testing the key $9 support by April 20. A handful of liquidations below $9 produced minimal fee income, not enough to offset the impermanent loss from the slow downward drift in the second half of the month.
Underperformers: LINK, ETH, and BTC
LINK returned −12.68% APR. The token traded in a narrow $8.62–$9.62 range throughout April — tighter even than March's $8.41–$9.92 — and has been consolidating since the end of Q1. That structure leaves no liquidation cascades and no directional upside for the pool to capture. Bitwise's LINK ETF (CLNK), launched in January 2026, and ongoing institutional partnerships with JPMorgan provide a longer-term narrative, but those fundamentals did not translate into trading activity in April: weekly LINK ETF inflows reached only $6.36M in the final week, well below the March peak of $4.6M but in a different shape — flatter, less concentrated. Correlation with BTC worked against the pool in a new way: while BTC rallied, LINK moved much more slowly, creating asymmetric IL — the pool accumulated LINK on its dips, but LINK never followed BTC up, so the early-month drawdown was never recovered.
ETH returned −44.54% APR, the most instructive case against the common assumption that "more volatility = more LP yield." At its peak, ETH delivered the strongest percentage range among the majors (up to 19% intra-month). By April 30, price had pulled back to $2,265 — still above the start of the month but well below the mid-month high. That trajectory is a textbook example of trending swings, the unfavorable case for an LP. Strong directional moves let active traders extract value from the pool. Volatility helps when price mean-reverts (traders take positions, get stopped out, and the pool collects fees on the liquidations). When ETH instead shows pronounced directional swings — first up on the ceasefire rally, then down through the second half of the month — most traders ride those moves and exit profitably. Fees offset part of that, but not all. There is also the spot-exposure component: the pool holds ETH on half of its book. When price closes the month below its mid-month average level, the dollar value of that side declines regardless of trading activity. In April, both factors converged: traders were net winners on trending moves, and spot closed below the month's mid-range average.
BTC Perp Vault returned −64.61% APR — a sharp reminder that strong directional moves can hurt an LP even when spot price closes the month higher. BTC moved from $68k at the start of April to a peak of nearly $79k and back to ~$76.3k by month-end — a positive close, but the path between those points was the costly part. April produced three pronounced directional moves: a steady rally into April 18 driven by the short squeeze, a second leg to $77k+ following the April 14–17 ceasefire extension, anda final push above $79k on April 27 with a subsequent retrace. On each of those moves, traders read the direction correctly and held to target. Compounding that was the structure of capital flows: $996M of BTC-ETF inflows in the third week supported spot turnover, but perp funding remained negative. Longs were earning on the price move without paying funding for the privilege — an asymmetry where the LP side effectively underwrote trader profits. Fees from the elevated volume covered some of that, but in a trending month with net winning traders, not enough.
Takeaways from April
April reinforced three observations that we think are useful to keep in mind for any high-yield strategy that takes the other side of leveraged trading:
- Volatility is a profitability driver for LPs, but that is only true in a mean-reversion regime, where traders open positions and get whipsawed out of them. When an asset shows strong directional swings — including two-sided ones, as BTC did in April — traders ride those moves and extract value from the pool.
- The USDT BTC-based vault showed how mirrored exposure works in the opposite direction. The pool accumulated BTC at depressed prices in March; April's price recovery rebuilt the dollar value of the LP share, and high ETF-driven volume generated the fee income to compound that.
- SOL remains the most consistent asset in the Perp Vault stack — a fourth straight positive month. April's chop-with-mean-reversion structure converted active traders into net losers via stop liquidations, which is exactly the regime in which the pool wins.
The Perp Vault does not earn from a complete absence of trading activity in the same way it loses from a sharp trending move with extended one-directional consolidation. Both extremes are unfavorable; the productive middle is volatility with reversion.
Building a Resilient Portfolio
April was not a difficult month for crypto in absolute terms — Bitcoin closed up nearly 12%, ETH closed positive, and ETF infrastructure continued to expand. But it was a month in which strategy-level outcomes diverged sharply depending on the structure of price movement, not its direction.
The Liquidity Providing, Maker Core, USDT DeFi, and ETH DeFi strategies operated within their expected yield corridors. The Perp Vault stack produced a wide spread, with USDT-side vaults compounding strongly on March's repositioning and SOL holding its multi-month run, while the directional asset vaults absorbed the cost of trending price action. We continue to think the most useful framing for users is to think of strategies in the context of one another rather than in isolation: each strategy responds to a specific market regime, and the combination is what sustains performance through different conditions.
For a deeper look at specific strategies and their mechanics, the Portfolio is the best place to start.