tl;dr
BTC price action is getting interesting. We move ever closer to fully autonomous agentic A.I. doing much of the heavy lifting in life for all of us.
Market Snap
Market Wrap
Well, well, well, a spike this morning to $80.5k suggests that the wall at $79k is not as strong as I had suspected, and that recent buyers are more likely investors rather than short-term speculators. That certainly ties in with the recent strong inflows we have seen into the spot BTC ETFs. If that continues, May is going to be a very interesting month for holders of BTC.
There has also been a noticeable increase in open interest alongside a negative funding rate, which is exactly the sort of setup that can fuel a short squeeze.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – But don’t get too excited …
… at least not yet, according to CryptoQuant:
This pay-walled research (*) likens the current demand structure to that seen at the onset of the bear market we endured in 2022:
“Bitcoin rose 20% in April 2026, from $66K to $79K, driven entirely by growth in perpetual futures demand while spot demand, as measured by CryptoQuant’s apparent demand metric, remained in contraction territory throughout the rally, signaling (sic) the absence of overall organic buying during the rally.”
Or how about this to dampen your spirits:
“The divergence between rising price and contracting spot demand is one of the clearest on-chain signals that price gains are speculative rather than structural. Apparent demand stayed negative across the full April price surge, confirming the absence of fundamental demand support.”
I don’t necessarily agree with CryptoQuant’s conclusion. The funding rate has stayed close to or below zero for a while now, which sits awkwardly with the idea that an aggressive wave of long perpetual futures is driving this move, however it is always important to hear both sides of the story.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Autonomous agentic A.I.
Truly autonomous agentic A.I. will need fast and efficient ways to pay for services. We have already looked at a website that provides services for agents (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/27th-march-2026-the-most-important-ccc-ever). Here is another that has transacted a total of nearly $50mm to over 100,000 agents:
Though it has thousands of services, it is not as seamless a process as it needs to be – my A.I. started setting itself up to use Agentic Market and is seemingly stuck. If it can’t figure out the setup process, most human users will struggle too. Still, new technology always has teething problems.
One of which is the thorny issue of how your agent can pay for services. Well, MoonPay has the answer:
Ivan Soto-Wright, CEO and Founder of MoonPay, identifies the problem:
"Agents are already managing wallets, executing trades, and moving value onchain. The one thing they couldn't do was spend at a merchant. Now they can.”
JP Richardson, CEO and Co-founder of Exodus, explains how this problem has been solved:
"AI agents are going to transact constantly, at machine speed, across millions of merchants. Exodus has spent a decade building self-custodial wallets for people. MoonAgents (sic) Card extends that infrastructure to agents, letting them spend directly from an onchain wallet. The wallets and cards that work for that future look nothing like what exists today—and we're building for that future."
It is an elegant solution. You simply set up a new self-custodial wallet, fund it, and give your agent the authority to spend those funds in the form of stablecoins, which are converted into fiat at the point of purchase. In principle, this allows agents to buy from almost any online or real-world merchant that accepts Mastercard, which is most of them.
The truly autonomous agentic A.I. revolution how now begun – and it is only possible due to the crypto revolution.
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(*) The quotes I have lifted from the research are publicly available.