The Friday Focus arrives early this week due to the upcoming Easter holidays. And for once, no bombshells have dropped since last Friday. Still, we give you the most important crypto news from the last five days below. 

Top stories

• P2P bitcoin exchange Paxful suspends operations - affecting millions of users in Africa

• Texas Senate committee passes vote to remove incentives for miners

• Dogecoin soars after Twitter replaces its blue bird logo

Africa-focused P2P bitcoin exchange and wallet Paxful announced the suspension of its bitcoin marketplace this week, citing key staff departures and regulatory challenges. The wallet remains operational as the 10 million user base is urged to self custody their funds by Paxful CEO Ray Youssef. 

Texas is the world's mining capital due to its high prevalence of stranded energy caused by renewable energy sources, a poorly connected grid, and miner-friendly economic incentives. The Texas Senate committee has now decided conditions were too good, as they passed a bill to remove some of the incentives for miners. 

Elon Musk has been out 'pumping' Dogecoin again. In a blast to the past, Twitter temporarily changed its iconic blue bird logo for the 'DOGE dog,' leading Dogecoin prices to rise quickly.  

Other news

- Michael Saylor just bought more bitcoin, 1,045 bitcoin, for $23.9M. According to our estimates, that leaves about $90M in his war chest. 

- OpenSea Launches Open Sea Pro, an improved offering for paying customers

- The Swiss state-owned bank PostFinance is to offer Bitcoin trading for its customers

- Euler Labs hacker returns all of the recoverable funds - close to $200M in total

- A $100M+ funding was announced this week - LayerZero raises $120M to expand cross-chain messaging efforts

From our Analysts

The April Market Outlook - by Vetle Lunde 

"At current levels, I’m neither a seller nor a buyer and intentionally neutral. Unlocked supply points toward the downside in April, whereas a more accommodative macro environment on the backdrop of bank failures could represent fruitful conditions for bitcoin." 

Read the full April Outlook here.

Easter Reading

Read about Arbitrum governance here.

And Vitalik's latest thoughts here.

Unsurprisingly, this week's Wednesday Focus means there won't be a Friday Focus in two days due to the Easter holidays. We wish you all a happy Easter and look forward to giving you the weekly market update on the upcoming Tuesday, as usual. 

Happy Easter!