Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🏦 Trump directed the Fed to review whether crypto firms and other fintechs should get direct access to the central bank's payment rails

• 📉 Spot Bitcoin ETFs have bled nearly $2 billion over seven trading days as institutional risk-off deepens

• 🔮 Polymarket partnered with Nasdaq Private Market to launch prediction markets on the valuations and IPO timing of private unicorns

• ⚖️ The CFTC sued Minnesota hours after the state became the first to make operating a prediction market a felony

• 🔄 The Ethereum Foundation's departure count has reached at least eight in 2026 as the community asks what's happening inside

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

Trump Orders Fed to Review Giving Crypto Firms Access to Master Accounts

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the Federal Reserve to review whether crypto firms and other fintechs should get direct access to master accounts and payment rails.

The order, titled "Integrating Financial Technology Innovation Into Regulatory Frameworks," also directs the SEC, CFTC, and OCC to review rules that may be "overly burdensome" to fintech innovation. Agencies have three months to identify restrictive rules and six months to act on findings. The Fed is asked to report to the president within 120 days.

Kraken Financial won a Fed master account in March, the first crypto firm to do so. Ripple, Anchorage Digital, and Wise are among those pursuing similar access.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs Bleed Nearly $1 Billion This Week as Seven-Day Outflows Hit $2 Billion

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have now shed nearly $2 billion over seven trading days, according to SoSoValue data, with this week's $979 million in outflows deepening the worst institutional pullback since January.

Monday's $648.6 million net outflow was the largest single session since January 29, led by BlackRock's IBIT at $448.3 million. Tuesday added another $331 million, extending the bleeding across all major funds, including Ark/21Shares' ARKB and Fidelity's FBTC.

Bitcoin traded below $77,000 as 10-year Treasury yields remain near 4.63%, inflation nears 4%, and rate-cut odds for 2026 sit near zero. "Institutions remain active but more tactical, using ETFs as liquidity tools to manage exposure," said Dominick John, analyst at Zeus Research.

Polymarket Partners With Nasdaq Private Market to Launch Private-Company Prediction Markets

Polymarket launched prediction markets tied to the valuations, IPO timing, and secondary activity of major private companies Tuesday under an exclusive data partnership with Nasdaq Private Market.

The first markets cover OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, Stripe, Kraken, Anduril, and Databricks. Traders can bet on outcomes like whether OpenAI will top a $1 trillion IPO valuation before 2027 or whether Anthropic reaches $500 billion in 2026. Nasdaq Private Market serves as the sole resolution data provider.

Polymarket has recorded nearly $39 billion in U.S. volume so far in 2026. CEO Shayne Coplan called the product the most powerful tool available for "democratizing access to financial information."

CFTC Sues Minnesota Hours After State Becomes First to Make Prediction Markets a Felony

The CFTC sued Minnesota Tuesday, hours after Governor Tim Walz signed the nation's first law explicitly banning prediction markets, calling the statute a "flagrant and unprecedented incursion" into federal regulatory authority.

Minnesota's law, set to take effect August 1, makes it a felony to create, operate, or advertise a prediction market covering sports, elections, assassinations, weather, and other events. "This Minnesota law turns lawful operators and participants in prediction markets into felons overnight," CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said.

The CFTC has now sued six states on similar grounds: Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Wisconsin, and now Minnesota. The core legal question may end up at the Supreme Court.

Ethereum Foundation Exodus Deepens as Departures Hit at Least Eight in 2026

The Ethereum Foundation lost two more researchers Monday, with Carl Beek and Julian Ma both announcing their exits on X, bringing the total count of senior departures in 2026 to at least eight, with five in May alone.

Beek spent seven years at the EF, contributing to the early design of the Beacon Chain and the KZG ceremony. His last day is May 29. Ma spent roughly four years, co-authoring FOCIL (EIP-7805) for censorship resistance and leading the rollout of the Fast Confirmation Rule that dropped L1-to-L2 bridging time to 13 seconds.

The departures have fueled an increasingly public debate about what is happening inside the foundation. Since co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak stepped down in February, the roster includes Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Alex Stokes (sabbatical).

🩸 Uneasy Money: bridges, perps, and Grok. 

Kain, Taylor, and Luca dig into the week DeFi tried to swallow Wall Street and choked on its own bridges.

They debate whether Hyperliquid's SpaceX perp at a $2.5T implied valuation is ICO mania 2.0 or a structurally better way to price private equity, why Polymarket signing Nasdaq Private Market as oracle might still not solve resolution risk, and how Grok got prompt-injected by Morse code into draining $204K.

Streams Today at 4pm ET.

Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

Two things to do before Bits + Bips migrates:

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• 🚨 Echo Protocol was exploited for roughly $76 million after an attacker used a compromised admin key to mint 1,000 unauthorized eBTC on the Monad blockchain, then borrowed 11.29 WBTC ($867,700) against 45 eBTC on Curvance before laundering 384 ETH (~$822,000) through Tornado Cash. Echo said it regained control of the admin keys and burned the remaining 955 eBTC, with actual extracted losses estimated at roughly $816,000 despite the $76 million notional mint.

• ⚖️ Senator Elizabeth Warren accused OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould of improperly granting national trust charters to at least nine crypto firms — including Ripple, Coinbase, Circle, Paxos, Fidelity, and BitGo — that she says are "effectively crypto banks" evading full banking safeguards. Warren set a June 1 deadline for the OCC to produce all charter applications and any communications between the agency and President Trump or his family.

• 🏛️ WLFI treasury firm AI Financial posted a $271.5 million Q1 net loss driven by a $348.3 million unrealized markdown on its 7.28 billion WLFI tokens, now carried at $706 million versus a $1.46 billion cost basis. The Nasdaq-listed firm flagged "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue as a going concern within one year, with a $5.5 million working capital deficit and just $10.5 million in cash.

• 📋 Trump's Truth Social withdrew its bitcoin ETF and Bitcoin & Ethereum ETF registration statements from the SEC on Monday, ending the review process before regulators could rule. Sponsor Yorkville America Digital said it plans to pursue a different fund structure under the Investment Company Act of 1940, which offers broader operational flexibility.

• 💰 Strive bought 382 BTC for roughly $30.3 million at an average price of $79,348 between May 13 and 18, lifting total holdings to 15,391 BTC worth nearly $1.2 billion. The Vivek Ramaswamy-backed firm holds its spot as the ninth-largest corporate bitcoin treasury, roughly 300 BTC behind Hut 8, with an 18.4% BTC yield year-to-date.

• ⛏️ Canaan posted an $88.7 million Q1 net loss as revenue fell 68% quarter-over-quarter to $62.7 million, dragged down by a $25 million inventory write-down and compressed hashprice conditions. CEO Nangeng Zhang said Middle East conflict is clouding the outlook for bitcoin miners through elevated energy costs, while shares fell 13% toward their Nasdaq delisting threshold of $1.

• 🔗 The XRP Alliance debuted as Flare and D'CENT linked hardware wallets to XRP yield vaults, building a new ecosystem layer connecting cold storage security with DeFi-style yield generation on the XRP Ledger.

• 🔐 The Zcash Foundation ended Q1 with $36.69 million in liquid assets and just $817,000 in operating expenses, reflecting one of the leanest operating profiles among major crypto nonprofit foundations.

• 🏢 Deloitte absorbed the Blocknative team as the crypto infrastructure firm winds down its public APIs and Gas Network, marking a Big Four firm's direct hire of a blockchain-native engineering team.

• 🦓 Zerohash is pursuing a new funding round at a valuation above $1.5 billion after Mastercard abandoned investment plans following its $1.8 billion BVNK acquisition. The crypto infrastructure firm, valued at $1 billion in its September 2025 Series D-2, counts Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Interactive Brokers, and BlackRock's BUIDL fund among its clients.

• 🛡️ Eisen raised $18.5 million to build the compliance operations infrastructure that financial services firms have been missing, targeting the growing intersection of crypto regulation and institutional adoption.

• 🪙 Checker raised $8 million from Galaxy Ventures and others to build stablecoin infrastructure for compliance verification and reserve transparency.

• 📱 Tether and Gnosis co-led a $4.4 million seed round for Sorted Wallet, a lightweight mobile-friendly wallet targeting emerging market users with simplified onboarding.

• 🎨 Tomoland raised $2 million to bring its AI-powered user-generated content platform to Web3, selling out its Blueprint Founder Pass in two hours.

1. Crypto Carl: Tokenizing Trillions

2. William Mougayar: Peak EF: Why the Unmaking of the Ethereum Foundation Is Inevitable

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🇮🇷 Iran launched a Bitcoin-settled insurance platform for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz

• 🟧 Strategy bought another $2 billion in bitcoin, and STRC funded almost all of it

• 📊 The SEC is about to open the door for tokenized stock trading on crypto platforms

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

Iran Launches Bitcoin-Settled Insurance Platform for Strait of Hormuz Shipping

Iran launched Hormuz Safe, a state-backed maritime insurance platform that settles premiums in bitcoin, targeting ships and cargo transiting the Strait of Hormuz, IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency reported Saturday.

The platform, developed by Iran's Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, issues coverage immediately upon blockchain confirmation and delivers a signed digital receipt to the cargo owner. Iran claims the program could generate more than $10 billion in revenue, though the official website currently shows a "Coming Soon" page and no independent source has verified that the platform is processing policies.

The move formalizes months of escalating monetization. The IRGC has been charging crypto-denominated tolls for passage since mid-March, with fees reaching up to $2 million per tanker. Iran's parliament passed the Strait of Hormuz Management Plan in March, codifying the transit toll system.

Strategy Buys 24,869 Bitcoin for $2 Billion, Tops 843,000 BTC

Strategy bought 24,869 bitcoin for approximately $2.01 billion at an average price of $80,985 per coin during the week of May 11-15, the company said in an 8-K filed Monday.

Total holdings now stand at 843,738 BTC acquired for roughly $63.87 billion at an average cost of $75,700 per coin. BTC Yield, Strategy's proprietary metric tracking bitcoin-per-share growth, has reached 12.6% year to date.

The purchase was funded almost entirely through the sale of 19.5 million STRC preferred shares for $1.949 billion in net proceeds, plus 430,000 MSTR common shares for $83.7 million. The filing did not disclose any bitcoin sales.

SEC Readies Tokenized Stock "Innovation Exemption" as Wall Street Push Deepens

The SEC is preparing to release an "innovation exemption" for tokenized stocks as early as this week, Bloomberg Law reported Monday, the clearest signal yet that the agency is opening the door for blockchain-based equity trading at scale.

The framework would let crypto-native platforms offer digital versions of publicly traded securities under lighter regulatory requirements during an experimental period. SEC Chair Paul Atkins signaled in early May that new rulemaking was coming as part of the agency's "Project Crypto" initiative.

The move follows Nasdaq and NYSE winning SEC approval for tokenized equity trading in March and April, respectively, under the Depository Trust Company's three-year blockchain pilot.

📢 DEX in the City Alert 🚨

Crypto's biggest market structure bill just cleared Senate Banking 15-9, and the industry capped the same month by throwing its flagship conference's afterparty at a Miami strip club.

On DEX in the City, Katherine, Jessi, and Vy take on both: what still has to happen before the Clarity Act reaches Trump's desk, why Kraken and Ledger just pulled their IPOs while WallStreetBets is picking a fight with the SEC, and whether crypto culture is actually maturing or just better at pretending.

Streams today at 12pm ET

Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

• 🌷 Tom Lee's BitMine added 71,672 ETH worth $151 million last week as ETH slipped below $2,200, reversing the prior week's slowdown and lifting total holdings to nearly 5.28 million ETH — roughly 4.4% of circulating supply. Lee called the pullback an "attractive opportunity" and blamed rising oil prices as the biggest headwind, while reaffirming the firm's target of reaching the "alchemy of 5%" in 2026.

• 📊 Kraken parent Payward posted Q1 adjusted revenue of $507 million, up 3% year-over-year despite bitcoin falling 22% and industry spot volumes plunging 38%. Futures daily average revenue trades surged 51%, spot market share climbed to 5.2% from 3.5%, and funded accounts grew 47% to 6.1 million, though adjusted EBITDA fell to $18 million as spending on acquisitions, including Backed, Magna, Bitnomial, and Reap continued ahead of a delayed IPO.

• 🗽 Galaxy Digital received a New York BitLicense and money transmitter license from NYDFS, allowing its GalaxyOne Prime NY subsidiary to offer regulated trading and custody to hedge funds, RIAs, and family offices in the state. Galaxy, which manages roughly $9 billion in client assets, becomes the second firm to secure a BitLicense in 2026 after Strike's March approval.

• ⛏️ HIVE Digital stock rallied as much as 45% after unveiling a CAD $3.5 billion ($2.55 billion) AI "gigafactory" in the Greater Toronto Area through its BUZZ HPC subsidiary. The planned 320-megawatt campus will host over 100,000 GPUs at full build on 25 acres acquired for CAD $58 million ($42 million), with a target launch in the second half of 2027.

• ⚖️ Swan Bitcoin was hit with a $970 million clawback lawsuit by the Prime Trust bankruptcy estate, which alleges Swan withdrew roughly 11,992 BTC, $22.4 million in cash, $5 million in stablecoins, and 91,144 XRP in the 90 days before Prime's August 2023 bankruptcy filing. The complaint claims a senior Prime Trust executive tipped off Swan CEO Cory Klippsten via encrypted message on June 22, 2023; Swan disputes the claims, arguing customer assets held in trust accounts are not estate property.

• 🇬🇧 The Bank of England and FCA launched a joint consultation on tokenized wholesale markets, committing to a live synchronization service by 2028 and extending RTGS and CHAPS settlement hours toward near-24/7 operation. Feedback closes July 3, with 16 firms already testing live issuance in the Digital Securities Sandbox and a cross-authority roadmap due later this year.

• 🟣 Bitwise will devote 10% of the management fee from its newly launched BHYP Hyperliquid ETF to holding HYPE on its balance sheet, mirroring Hyperliquid's model where 99% of protocol revenue buys back and burns HYPE tokens. The ETF began trading on NYSE on May 15 with a 0.34% sponsor fee and is the first U.S. product to offer in-house staking through Bitwise Onchain Solutions.

• 📈 Ostium's onchain perpetuals exchange will be powered by Nasdaq data, bringing institutional-grade price feeds to a decentralized derivatives platform.

• 🏦 Standard Chartered will acquire the remainder of crypto custodian subsidiary Zodia Custody, integrating the regulated custody business into its Financing and Securities Services division. The infrastructure platform will be spun off as Zodia Solutions, a standalone SaaS company under SC Ventures, while the deal opens new custody markets, including the UK and Australia.

• 💳 Stripe-backed Tempo tapped Morpho's $7.5 billion DeFi lending marketplace to expand beyond payments into borrowing and yield products, bringing onchain lending to the stablecoin-focused chain.

• 💳 Revolut unveiled its first physical crypto card, letting users spend Dogecoin and other crypto assets at retail merchants as industry-wide crypto card usage grows.

• 🇪🇺 Zerohash received an EMI license from the Dutch Central Bank, becoming the first stablecoin brokerage to secure MiCA-compliant electronic money institution status across the European Economic Area.

• 🏦 Minnesota banks and credit unions will be able to provide crypto custody starting August 1 under a new state law requiring asset segregation, cybersecurity reviews, and risk management plans — the first such framework in the Midwest.

• 💵 Tether invested in LemFi to power stablecoin-driven remittances across emerging markets, expanding USDT settlement into cross-border payments for diaspora communities.

• 🤖 AEON raised $8 million in a pre-seed round led by YZi Labs, with participation from IDG Capital, HashKey Capital, and the Stanford Blockchain Builders Fund, to build a settlement layer for AI agent-to-agent payments connecting to over 50 million real-world merchants.

• 🇯🇵 AnotherBall raised ¥2.5 billion ($16.7 million) from Japan's four major banks — Shoko Chukin, MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho — bringing total capital to ¥4.7 billion as it builds blockchain-based financial infrastructure with rare backing from all four pillars of Japanese banking.

Twitter tweet

1. a16z crypto: What builders need to know about the CLARITY Act, what it is and why it matters

2. That1618guy: BTC vs Gold: The Cross Is Coming

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 📉 Bitcoin slid below $77,000 as $670 million in crypto longs were liquidated over 24 hours in a cascade triggered by a global bond rout, with U.S. 10-year Treasury yields hitting 4.63% Sunday night, the highest since February 2025, and rate-cut odds collapsing to 2% for 2026

• 🚀 Trade.xyz launched the first SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual contract on Hyperliquid Sunday under the ticker SPCX, with a $150 reference price implying a $1.78 trillion valuation. SPCX spiked to $216 within hours as HYPE rallied 7% against a broadly falling market

• ✂️ Kraken parent Payward cut roughly 150 workers Thursday after deploying AI tools that improved efficiency, per Bloomberg. The exchange's IPO may slip to 2027 as digital-asset prices weigh on timing

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

Bitcoin Slides Below $77,000 as Bond Market Rout Wipes $670 Million in Crypto Longs

Bitcoin slid below $77,000 Monday, extending a four-day decline as a global bond sell-off triggered $670 million in leveraged long liquidations over 24 hours, with the vast majority of the wipeout hitting bullish bets.

The catalysts include rates, U.S. 10-year Treasury yields, which hit 4.63% Sunday night, the highest since February 2025, and above the level that prompted Trump's 90-day tariff pause in April 2025. Rate-cut odds for 2026 have collapsed to 2%, with traders now pricing roughly 50% odds of at least one hike this year. U.S. inflation is nearing 4%, and mortgage rates are approaching 7%.

Solana and XRP each dropped roughly 5%. Spot Bitcoin ETFs shed roughly $1 billion in net outflows over the past week, snapping a six-week inflow streak. The 200-day moving average near $82,000 has rejected bitcoin four times in two weeks.

SpaceX Pre-IPO Price Discovery Goes Live on Hyperliquid

Price discovery for the largest IPO in history is now happening onchain, on Hyperliquid. Trade.xyz, built on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 infrastructure, launched the first SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual contract on Hyperliquid Sunday under the ticker SPCX, a cash-settled derivative that lets traders bet on where the stock will open.

The contract launched with a $150 reference price, implying a roughly $1.78 trillion valuation, based on SpaceX's reported 11.87 billion fully diluted shares. SPCX spiked to $216 within hours, pushing the implied valuation above $2.5 trillion.

HYPE rallied 7% on the listing, outperforming a broadly falling market. SpaceX filed its S-1 confidentially on April 1 and is reportedly targeting June 11 for IPO pricing on Nasdaq.

Kraken Cuts 150 Workers After Deploying AI as IPO May Slip to 2027

Kraken parent Payward eliminated roughly 150 workers Thursday after deploying AI technology that improved efficiency across the company, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The layoffs represent roughly 5% of Kraken's ~3,000-person workforce and are being framed internally as pre-IPO optimization. Bloomberg added that Kraken may not go public as soon as initially expected due to the sharp decline in digital-asset prices, with the IPO possibly slipping to 2027.

The cuts follow an aggressive expansion that has included the acquisitions of NinjaTrader ($1.5B), Reap Technologies ($600M), and Bitnomial ($550M). Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said at Consensus Miami that the exchange is "80% ready" to list.

🚨DON’T MISS BITS + BIPS TODAY 🚨

Eight months ago, Hyperliquid validators voted to ditch USDC. Today, Circle Chief Economist Gordon Liao comes on Bits + Bips to explain why USDC is back, and getting the keys to the kingdom.

The panel unpacks the deal, the HYPE price spike, and what the CLARITY Act's advance out of Senate Banking means for who actually controls the stablecoin stack going forward.

Livestreaming today at 4:30pm ET. 

Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

Q: Where can I find Bits + Bips after it migrates?

A: Everywhere it already lives. But you'll want to be subscribed before the move so the episodes land in your feed automatically.

🔥 Apple Podcasts 🔥 YouTube 🔥 Spotify 🔥 X 🔥 LinkedIn 🔥 Unchained

• 💼 Strategy agreed to repurchase $1.5 billion of its 0% convertible notes due 2029 for roughly $1.38 billion, retiring the debt at about 92 cents on the dollar through privately negotiated transactions. The company said it may fund the buyback through cash, at-the-market equity sales, or bitcoin sales, with settlement expected around May 19 and approximately $1.5 billion of the 2029 notes remaining outstanding afterward.

• 🔗 Lombard Finance will migrate over $1 billion in bitcoin-backed assets from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP after an internal security review, becoming the fifth major protocol to leave LayerZero since the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit. The migration pushes total assets moving to Chainlink CCIP past $4 billion, following Kelp DAO, Solv Protocol, Re, and Kraken.

• 🏛️ House Agriculture leaders urged President Trump to nominate four CFTC commissioners, warning that Chair Michael Selig's status as the sole commissioner since December risks producing rules vulnerable to legal challenge. The bipartisan letter from Chair Glenn Thompson and Ranking Member Angie Craig dropped a day after the Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act in a 15–9 vote.

• 📋 VanEck and Grayscale filed fresh BNB ETF amendments with the SEC on Friday — VanEck's fifth and Grayscale's second — as the race for the next altcoin spot ETF accelerates. Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart said the parallel filings suggest active SEC engagement, with both products set to list on Nasdaq under tickers VBNB and GBNB.

• 🎓 Harvard fully exited its $86.8 million ether ETF position and cut its IBIT bitcoin ETF stake by 43% to $117 million in Q1, per 13F filings. Abu Dhabi's Mubadala moved the other way, lifting its IBIT position 16% to roughly $566 million, while Dartmouth disclosed a new position in Bitwise's Solana Staking ETF.

• 🚨 The Verus-Ethereum bridge appears to have been exploited for approximately $11.5 million on Sunday, with the attacker draining 103.6 tBTC, 1,625 ETH, and 147,000 USDC before swapping everything into 5,402 ETH. PeckShield said the attacker's wallet was funded via Tornado Cash roughly 14 hours before the exploit.

• 🔓 Aave restored wETH borrowing limits to pre-incident levels across all affected networks after a governance proposal passed Saturday, completing Phase II of the rsETH recovery plan following the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit. TVL on Aave sits at roughly $14.8 billion, down from $23.5 billion in March, with ETH borrowing rates falling to 1.9% as utilization drops below 90%.

• 🚀 Jito Labs is launching JTX, a consumer trading terminal for spot, futures, and predictions on Solana, starting in July with perps via a Phoenix partnership to follow. CEO Lucas Bruder said a new class of users coming onchain no longer think of themselves as "crypto traders" — they're just traders.

• 📜 Hyperliquid's new Policy Center argued that onchain perps offer superior efficiency and transparency as ICE and CME reportedly press the CFTC for regulatory oversight of decentralized derivatives platforms.

• 🔍 The Wall Street Journal profiled the anonymous UMA judges who settle Polymarket disputes, examining how the prediction market's decentralized resolution system handles contested outcomes.

• ⚙️ Jump Crypto's Firedancer is taking a slow approach to its long-awaited Solana validator client rollout, prioritizing stability over speed as the independent client aims to improve network resilience.

• 🚔 Alleged Forsage co-founder was extradited from Thailand and pleaded not guilty in the $340 million Ponzi case, marking a significant step in the long-running DOJ prosecution of the Ethereum-based pyramid scheme.

• 🏛️ Justin Sun's Liberland awarded Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin its top honor, in a ceremony for the self-declared micronation on the Danube.

• 🎵 Drake called for Sam Bankman-Fried's release in his new, critically panned album, adding a pop culture footnote to the FTX saga.

• 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia is tokenizing its multi-trillion dollar economy to protect its wealth from global shocks, deploying blockchain infrastructure across oil revenue management, sovereign investments, and public-sector settlements.

• 🇯🇵 Japan's SBI Securities and Rakuten Securities plan to offer crypto investment trusts, developing the products in-house as Japan's two largest online brokerages race to bring regulated crypto exposure to retail investors.

• 🤖 SUI Group co-led a $15 million funding round for AI trading lab Nof1 and made a separate strategic investment in Recursive Superintelligence, expanding Sui's footprint in AI-driven onchain trading infrastructure.

Twitter tweet

1. Septiembre.eth: Vitalik Said What Data Was Already Showing

2. Alex McFarlane: DeFi Lending has 3 bps Crime Drag on EVM and Solana

Good Sunday!

Two stories this week point to the same bigger question: what actually drives the next crypto bull market?

Arthur Hayes thinks the answer may start with a crash.

In his latest conversation with Laura, Hayes argues that the AI bubble bursting could trigger a 2008-style panic, forcing governments and central banks back into money-printing mode. Add war spending, pressure on the petrodollar system, and oil-market stress, and Hayes says the path ultimately points to Bitcoin much higher.

Why Arthur Hayes Thinks the AI Bubble Bursting Could Spark a Crypto Bull Market - Unchained

Arthur Hayes sees one force driving markets right now: governments printing money to finance AI and war. He explains why that ends with Bitcoin much higher — and what could derail it.

Unchained

Hayes explains why he’s buying into “maximum disillusionment,” why Bitcoin could benefit from an AI bust, and why his highest-conviction bets now include Hyperliquid, Zcash, and NEAR.

And speaking of Hyperliquid, Coinbase may have just handed the platform a major revenue unlock.

Coinbase is now the official USDC treasury deployer on Hyperliquid, a deal Artemis’ Alex Weseley says could boost Hyperliquid’s annual revenue by 25%. He joins Laura to break down the $150 million opportunity, the HYPE price move, and why Coinbase’s stablecoin ambitions may be much bigger than most people realize.

How Hyperliquid Benefits From Its New Deal With Coinbase Over USDC - Unchained

Coinbase just became the official USDC treasury deployer on Hyperliquid. Alex Weseley of Artemis explains how this boosts Hyperliquid’s annual revenue by 25%.

Unchained

Weseley explains how the deal works, why it matters for Hyperliquid, and whether the Circle-Coinbase relationship is heading toward a breakup.

Here’s more on what we unpacked this week on Unchained:

• 🏦 The $16 Trillion Repo Market Is Finally Coming Onchain
  Repo is the hidden market plumbing that keeps global finance moving, but DeFi has had no real equivalent until now. FalconX’s Craig Burchell and Pareto’s Matteo Pandolfi explain why onchain repo could unlock deeper RWA liquidity, improve stablecoin market structure, and potentially grow into a trillion-dollar market.

• ⚖️ OpenAI, Anthropic & the Secondary Market Crackdown
  Anthropic and OpenAI are trying to void private secondary trades as fraud spreads through pre-IPO markets. On Uneasy Money, Kain, Tay and Luca breaks down synthetic perpetual markets for private equity, AI-powered malware attacks, Circle’s Arc token strategy, and the latest twists in the Aave/Kelp recovery battle.

• 🏛️ Will the CLARITY Act Finally Become Law?
  DEX in the City unpacks the newest CLARITY Act draft, the developer protection language that matters most, and why the SEC appears increasingly aligned with Congress on crypto and onchain financial infrastructure.

• 🤖 Circle’s Arc, Coinbase’s Struggles & the Exploding AI Trade
  Circle raised $222 million through its Arc token presale while Coinbase posted losses, layoffs, and outages. The Bits + Bips crew debates whether AI enthusiasm is creating a real economic shift or inflating the next major bubble.

All these episodes are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

In Case You Missed It 👀

Bitcoin’s Price Has Been Outperforming the S&P 500 in Times of War. Here’s Why

Bitcoin has outperformed stocks and gold 75 days into the U.S.-Iran war, which can be explained by this theory.

If You Like Unchained:

🎧 Subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🏛️ The Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act after a last-minute deal flipped key opposition votes. Now, the bill heads to a high-stakes floor test with critical provisions still hanging in the balance.

• 💵 Coinbase is taking over as the official treasury deployer for Hyperliquid as the network's native stablecoin winds down, consolidating its grip on the ecosystem's expanding liquidity.

• 📊 JPMorgan analysts warn that the massive performance gap between Bitcoin and altcoins is structural, even as the market flashes green following Washington's regulatory breakthrough.

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

CLARITY Act Clears Senate Banking Committee in Bipartisan 15-9 Vote

The Senate Banking Committee advanced the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act Thursday in a 15-9 bipartisan vote, the most significant milestone yet for crypto market structure legislation in the U.S.

Democrats Ruben Gallego (AZ) and Angela Alsobrooks (MD) joined all 13 Republicans to advance the bill after Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) reinstated several previously blocked amendments, including a DeFi compromise from Senator Cynthia Lummis that passed 18-6. A separate AI sandbox amendment from Senator Mike Rounds passed 15-9 with bipartisan support.

Senator Elizabeth Warren led the opposition, calling it "a bill written by the crypto industry for the crypto industry." The bill now heads to a merger with the Agriculture Committee's version and a 60-vote Senate floor test, with ethics provisions still unresolved.

Coinbase Becomes Hyperliquid's Official USDC Deployer as USDH Sunsets

Coinbase became Hyperliquid's official treasury deployer for USDC on Thursday, taking control of stablecoin liquidity on one of crypto's fastest-growing trading networks.

As part of the deal, Native Markets, the developer of Hyperliquid's native stablecoin USDH, agreed to grant Coinbase the right to purchase the USDH brand assets. USDH will remain redeemable for USDC or fiat with no fees during the transition period before it sunsets.

The economics tell the story: USDC supply on Hyperliquid has doubled year over year to roughly $5 billion, while USDH supply stalled at around $100 million. Under the upgraded AQAv2 framework, Coinbase will share the vast majority of USDC reserve yields with the protocol.

Bitcoin Reclaims $81,000 After CLARITY Vote as JPMorgan Says It's Winning the Institutional Race

Bitcoin reclaimed $81,000 Friday morning after the CLARITY Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee, with XRP and DOGE each surging roughly 5%. The move reversed Wednesday's drop below $80,000.

The headwind remains interest rates, which could remain unchanged this year. U.S. two-year and 10-year Treasury yields hit 12-month highs Thursday on hotter-than-expected inflation data, and the 200-day moving average near $82,000 has rejected bitcoin four times in two weeks.

Separately, JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said bitcoin continues to outperform ether and altcoins across nearly every institutional metric and called the divergence "unlikely to change" without meaningful improvement in DeFi and real-world applications.

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• 🏛️ President Trump's latest financial disclosure revealed purchases of Coinbase, Strategy, and MARA shares during Q1, alongside Block, Robinhood, and SoFi in a 113-page filing covering 3,642 securities transactions. The largest crypto-related buy was a Feb. 10 Coinbase purchase valued between $100,001 and $250,000, while Strategy saw eight buy-and-sell transactions across the quarter.

• 🔗 Kraken will replace LayerZero with Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive cross-chain infrastructure for kBTC and all future Kraken Wrapped Assets, becoming the fourth major protocol to migrate after the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit. The move pushes total Chainlink CCIP migration inflows past $3 billion in TVL, following Kelp DAO, Solv Protocol, and Re's earlier departures from LayerZero.

• 📈 Gemini shares surged as much as 30% after-hours after reporting 42% YoY revenue growth to $50.3 million and disclosing its first prediction market metrics — 100 million contracts traded across 20,000 users since the December launch. The Winklevoss twins also announced a $100 million strategic investment at $14/share paid in bitcoin, while credit card revenue jumped 300% to $14.7 million.

• ⚖️ Attorney Charles Gerstein is now targeting Tether for $344 million in frozen USDT tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, asking a Manhattan federal judge to order Tether to reissue the tokens to terrorism judgment creditors. The case extends the same legal strategy Gerstein used in the Arbitrum ETH seizure fight, arguing that because Tether already froze the OFAC-designated Tron wallets, it can redirect the funds.

• 🔓 Upshift rolled out a new vault platform providing bridging capital for instant RWA redemptions, complementing the growing infrastructure for tokenized fund liquidity.

• 🏦 Grove launched Basin, a $1 billion daily liquidity facility providing instant stablecoin redemptions for BlackRock's $2.2 billion BUIDL and Janus Henderson's $1.1 billion JTRSY tokenized Treasury funds. Partners include Securitize, Centrifuge, Anchorage Digital, Galaxy Digital, and FalconX, addressing a key bottleneck in the $15 billion tokenized Treasury market.

• 📊 CME Group will launch Nasdaq-backed crypto index futures on June 8 covering seven digital assets in its first market-cap-weighted contract, pending regulatory approval. The product targets the $85 trillion digital asset market and marks CME's deepest push into diversified crypto derivatives.

• 🇰🇷 Hana Bank acquired a 6.55% stake in Upbit parent Dunamu for ₩1.033 trillion ($670 million) from Kakao Investment, marking the largest single investment by a South Korean bank in a digital asset firm. The deal makes Hana the fourth-largest Dunamu shareholder and includes plans to jointly develop stablecoin and blockchain-based remittance services.

• 🎯 Interactive Brokers launched a unified prediction markets platform combining access to Kalshi, CME Group, and ForecastEx in a single interface for its brokerage clients.

• 🌍 Fasset raised $51 million in a Series B backed by Japan's SBI Group, Investcorp, and Turkey's Arz Portföy to scale its stablecoin-powered neobank across emerging markets. The LA-based platform processes over $32 billion in annualized volume across 50+ payment corridors serving 1,000+ SMEs in 125 countries.

• 🧵 Stitch raised $25 million in a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz to build infrastructure connecting traditional finance and onchain systems.

• 🔑 Onramp raised a Series A at a $135 million valuation led by Early Riders to expand its financial platform built on multi-institution custody infrastructure.

• 🔐 Turnkey raised $12.5 million in a strategic round backed by Circle Ventures and Sequoia Capital to develop its Verifiable Cloud secure computing product for digital assets, bringing total funding past $65 million.

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Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🏛️ The Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair Wednesday in a 54-45 vote, the closest margin in the central bank's modern history

• ⚖️ The CLARITY Act faces a Senate Banking Committee markup today with more than 130 amendments on the table

• 🚨 The T3 Financial Crime Unit, the Tether-TRON-TRM Labs partnership, has frozen more than $450 million in illicit crypto globally

• 📉 Bitcoin slipped below $80,000 as investors yanked $635 million from spot ETFs in a single day

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

Senate Confirms Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair in Closest Vote Ever

The U.S. Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday in a 54-45 vote, the slimmest confirmation margin ever for the role. Only Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) crossed party lines.

Warsh, 56, takes over from Jerome Powell, whose term as chair expires Friday. The transition makes Warsh the 11th Fed chair of the modern banking era and the first to take office with direct equity exposure to digital assets, including stakes in Bitcoin payments startup Flashnet, crypto index manager Bitwise, and stablecoin project Basis.

Powell will stay on the board as a governor, the first time in nearly 80 years. Warsh's first FOMC meeting is scheduled for June 16-17.

CLARITY Act Hits Senate Banking Today With Over 130 Amendments on the Table

The Senate Banking Committee opens its long-delayed markup of the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act at 10:30 a.m. ET Thursday with more than 130 amendments filed, 44 of them from Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The proposals range from substantive (Senator Jack Reed's push to tighten stablecoin yield rules, Catherine Cortez Masto's legal protections for software developers) to symbolic, including a Warren amendment referencing Jeffrey Epstein's bank supervisory records. Most are expected to fail on simple-majority votes.

The 309-page bill text includes the Tillis-Alsobrooks stablecoin yield compromise. Polymarket put the bill's 2026 passage odds at 62% heading in.

T3 Financial Crime Unit Has Now Frozen More Than $450 Million in Illicit Crypto

The T3 Financial Crime Unit, the joint initiative by Tether, TRON, and TRM Labs, said Thursday it has now frozen more than $450 million in illicit assets globally.

The unit said it intercepted 43.9% more illicit proceeds in 2025 than the year before, working with law enforcement in the U.S., Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Bulgaria. It now operates across 23 jurisdictions and five continents.

The headline action of the past year was Operation Lusocoin, a Brazilian Federal Police investigation that froze more than R$3 billion in crypto assets, including 4.3 million USDT tied to the criminal network.

Bitcoin Slips Below $80,000 as Spot ETFs Bleed $635 Million in a Day

Bitcoin slipped to roughly $79,400 Thursday morning after investors pulled $635 million from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs on Wednesday, the largest single-day outflow since January 29.

The five-day total reached $1.26 billion, dragging cumulative net inflows since launch down to $58.5 billion from $59.76 billion a week earlier. BlackRock's IBIT alone shed $284.69 million. Bitcoin's rally has stalled at the 200-day moving average near $82,000.

The structural story runs the other direction. Long-term holders now control a record 4 million BTC, worth roughly $320 billion, a 300% increase since the end of 2025, per BitGo data.

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• 🏅 Fidelity International's first tokenized fund received a top-tier AAA-mf rating from Moody's on Wednesday, matching a same-day AAA rating for BlackRock's BUIDL fund. The Ethereum-based USD Digital Liquidity Fund (FILQ) mirrors Fidelity's $7 billion LVNAV fund, uses Sygnum's tokenization platform, and taps Chainlink for daily NAV data sourced from JPMorgan.

• 📊 Strategy's STRC may be fueling recurring mid-month bitcoin rallies, K33 Research said, as the perpetual preferred stock's ex-dividend date on the 15th creates predictable buying pressure. STRC-driven BTC purchases surged from 4,467 BTC in January to 46,872 BTC in April, though the instrument has added just 1 BTC so far this month, suggesting demand may be plateauing.

• 🇯🇵 Metaplanet posted a ¥114.5 billion ($725.6 million) Q1 net loss driven by ¥116.4 billion in bitcoin valuation markdowns, even as revenue surged 251% to $19.5 million and operating profit rose 283%. The third-largest corporate BTC holder added 5,075 BTC in Q1 to reach 40,177 BTC, with $302 million drawn from a $500 million bitcoin-backed credit facility.

• 🔐 BitGo doubled Q1 revenue to $3.8 billion (+113% YoY) in its first earnings report since going public in January, driven by digital asset sales and stablecoin-as-a-service growth. The net loss widened to $60.7 million from $25.7 million a year earlier, largely from non-cash bitcoin treasury markdowns and IPO-related stock compensation, while clients grew 42% to 5,569.

• 🪐 Jupiter tapped Bitwise to curate the first institutional-grade Solana-based USDe lending market on Jupiter Lend, marking the first time a TradFi asset manager has curated a market on the platform. The isolated Ethena USDe market is powered by Fluid's infrastructure and designed to scale into billions in institutional capital.

• 🚫 Ledger put its U.S. IPO plans on hold due to unfavorable market conditions, without filing a draft S-1 with the SEC. The French crypto wallet maker had hired Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays earlier this year for a potential listing at a roughly $4 billion valuation.

• 🛑 Consensys delayed its potential U.S. IPO until fall at the earliest, after the MetaMask wallet builder had aimed to file a draft S-1 by late February with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs as lead bankers. The company, last valued at $7 billion in a 2022 Series D, joins Ledger and Kraken in shelving 2026 listing plans as crypto IPO appetite cools.

• ☀️ DeFi Development Corp reported 108% yearly growth in SOL per share to 0.0670 as of May 13, with total Solana and equivalents reaching 2,294,576 SOL. The Nasdaq-listed treasury firm also repurchased $4.4 million in convertible notes at a 41% discount and reaffirmed its long-term target of 1.0 SOL per share by December 2028.

• 🏦 Charles Schwab launched spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading for a select wave of eligible retail clients, expanding direct crypto access beyond ETF offerings at the brokerage managing roughly $12 trillion in client assets.

• 🇯🇵 Japan's enterprise-led blockchain will issue a yen stablecoin called eJPY for B2B settlements, targeting domestic corporate payment flows through a consortium of Japanese financial institutions.

• 🤝 Anchorage Digital and Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas' Grupo Salinas inked a cross-border payments partnership to power settlement with federally issued stablecoins between the U.S. and Mexico.

• 🇰🇷 Korean won stablecoin KRWQ expanded to Solana following its March EDX Markets listing, adding a major Layer 1 deployment for the regulated KRW-pegged token.

• 🌍 AWARP secured a strategic investment from Animoca Brands to accelerate RWA tokenization across minerals, renewables, and AI data centers in emerging markets. The sovereign-grade financial infrastructure project operates a closed-loop model through its Lao entity LADT, with 1.3 million+ users covered by NewPay and $180 million+ in Q4 2025 transaction volume.

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2. TN | PendleBoros: The Pendle Effect: $STRC Onchain

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🏦 JPMorgan filed Tuesday for JLTXX, a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum sized for stablecoin issuers needing GENIUS-compliant reserves

• 📈 21Shares launched THYP and TXXH on Nasdaq Tuesday, the first U.S. ETFs tracking Hyperliquid's HYPE token, with THYP posting roughly $1.8 million in day-one volume

• 🔐 Starknet went live Tuesday with strkBTC, a shielded bitcoin wrapper backed 1:1 by BTC, with optional ZK privacy and viewing-key compliance for regulators

• 🛡️ The Ethereum Foundation rolled out Clear Signing, an open standard built on ERC-7730 designed to end blind signing, with Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, WalletConnect, and Fireblocks among the supporters

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

JPMorgan Files for Its Second Tokenized Money Market Fund on Ethereum

JPMorgan Asset Management filed Tuesday for a second tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, dubbed the JPMorgan OnChain Liquidity-Token Money Market Fund (ticker: JLTXX).

The fund will hold U.S. Treasuries, cash, and overnight repos backed by Treasuries, and is engineered to meet reserve requirements for stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act. Unlike the firm's December 2025 launch, MONY, which was a 506(c) private placement, JLTXX was filed via a 485BPOS, the amendment form for registered investment companies, suggesting broader distribution.

The world's largest GSIB, managing $4 trillion, is doubling down on Ethereum just as Wall Street's tokenization race accelerates. The product is powered by Kinexys, JPMorgan's blockchain unit.

21Shares Launches the First U.S. Hyperliquid ETFs on Nasdaq

21Shares launched the first two U.S. ETFs tracking Hyperliquid's HYPE token Tuesday, listing THYP for spot exposure with staking and TXXH for 2x leveraged exposure on Nasdaq.

THYP, a 33-Act ETP with a 0.30% management fee, posted roughly $1.8 million in day-one volume and $1.2 million in net inflows. The trust can stake 30% to 70% of its HYPE holdings through Figment, with rewards split roughly 70/30 between the trust and the provider.

Hyperliquid commands more than 50% of DEX perpetual open interest and processes roughly $8 billion in daily trading volume. Bitwise and Grayscale have filed competing applications.

Starknet Ships strkBTC, Bitcoin With Optional Privacy on a ZK Rollup

Starknet went live Tuesday with strkBTC, a bitcoin-backed asset on the Ethereum Layer 2 that lets holders toggle between public and shielded states. It is the first asset built on STRK20, the new privacy framework that shipped with Starknet's Shinobi upgrade in April.

The token is backed 1:1 by BTC locked on Bitcoin. In shielded mode, balances and transfers are hidden using zero-knowledge proofs. Viewing keys allow independent auditors to disclose activity to regulators on lawful request.

StarkWare CEO and Zcash co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson called it "private digital cash, the way it should be."

Ethereum Foundation Rolls Out Clear Signing to End Blind Signing

The Ethereum Foundation launched Clear Signing Tuesday, an open standard designed to replace the unreadable hex data users currently approve when signing transactions with structured, human-readable descriptions.

The standard is built on ERC-7730 (a JSON format for transaction descriptors, originally proposed by Ledger) and ERC-8176 (an attestation framework). The Ethereum Foundation's Trillion Dollar Security Initiative will steward the registry. Wallets choose which descriptor sources to trust.

Backers include Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, WalletConnect, Fireblocks, Cyfrin, Sourcify, ZKnox, and Zama. The push is a direct response to billions lost to blind-signing exploits, including the $1.5 billion Bybit hack.

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Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Luca Netz break down a brutal week onchain.

Anthropic and OpenAI just voided tokenized share transfers, wiping $638B off Solana's PreStocks in 24 hours.Google catches the first AI-generated zero-day, a Morse-coded tweet drains an AI agent for $200K, and npm packages are hunting seed phrases. Circle drops a $222M presale token at $3B FDV. A SDNY judge lets $71M of Lazarus ETH flow to Aave, with strings. And Consensus 2026's strip club afterparty proves crypto still hasn't learned.

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• 📈 Coinbase added Solana-backed loans through Morpho, letting eligible users borrow up to $100,000 using SOL as collateral. The product extends Coinbase's lending lineup, which already includes Bitcoin-backed borrowing. 

• ⚖️ The CFTC filed an amicus brief in the Sixth Circuit asserting its exclusive federal jurisdiction over prediction markets, backing Kalshi in its legal fight against Ohio's state-level betting laws. The agency has now filed suits or briefs against six states pushing back on CFTC-regulated prediction markets. 

• 🔒 Kelp DAO and Aave are resuming rsETH operations as recovery from a $292 million exploit progresses, with 117,132 rsETH to be refilled over the next two weeks and withdrawals expected to unpause within 24 hours of the first tranche. Security hardening measures include increasing independent attestors from 1 to 4 and raising block confirmations from 42 to 64. 

• 🏦 Galaxy Digital will manage Sharplink's new $125 million onchain yield fund, which will deploy $100 million from Sharplink's staked Ethereum treasury alongside $25 million from Galaxy itself. The fund will allocate to DeFi liquidity protocols and other yield-generating onchain strategies. 

• 🟡 Ark Invest bought $5.5 million worth of Circle shares as the stock jumped 16% on strong Q1 earnings, and Bernstein maintained a $190 price target on the stablecoin issuer, citing the $222 million ARC presale as a cushion against rate pressure. 

• 📊 Exodus sold roughly 1,000 bitcoin worth approximately $87 million in Q1, cutting its BTC holdings from 1,704 to 628, as it pivots toward a full payments stack via its Exodus Pay platform and a new dollar-backed stablecoin called XO Cash. The wallet firm reported a wider Q1 loss with revenue down 37%, while shares finished Tuesday down 9.6%. 

• 📉 eToro's Q1 crypto revenue fell to $2.15 billion from $3.5 billion the same period last year, as crypto trading slowed on the multi-asset platform. Overall net income still rose 37% year-over-year to $82 million, driven by a surge in commodities trading. 

• 💹 CleanSpark stock slid 9% after the bitcoin miner reported a $378.3 million quarterly loss, driven by unrealized losses on its bitcoin holdings. The results missed analyst estimates. 

• ⚖️ The upcoming Bitcoin Fog appeal will test the DOJ's legal theory that global cryptocurrency mixing services fall under Washington D.C. jurisdiction, a precedent with wide implications for how the U.S. government prosecutes crypto businesses operating across borders. 

• 🇵🇱 Poland's Sejm is simultaneously debating four competing crypto bills, with a second reading vote expected Thursday, after the opposition PiS party submitted a separate proposal to ban crypto-asset activity outright. The ban draft is the only such proposal among major EU member states, where MiCA is already in force. 

• 🇧🇹 Bhutan moved another 100 BTC worth $8.1 million out of holding wallets, extending a sovereign sell-off that has surpassed $230 million in 2026. Arkham Intelligence noted that at the current pace, Bhutan will exhaust its remaining holdings before the end of September.

• 🏢 DTCC integrated Chainlink into its Collateral AppChain to enable 24/7, near real-time collateral management across global markets and blockchains, targeting a Q4 2026 launch. The clearinghouse, which processed $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions in 2025, will use Chainlink's Runtime Environment for pricing, margining, and settlement automation. 

• 🏦 Franklin Templeton will partner with Kraken's parent company to develop new onchain investment products, deepening the asset manager's push into blockchain-native finance alongside one of crypto's largest exchange operators. 

• 🤖 Matrixdock expanded its tokenized silver product XAGm to Sui, giving institutional users another blockchain option to hold and trade onchain precious metals. 

• 🌐 Coincheck Group announced a partnership with KDDI Corporation, Japan's major telecom operator, to expand retail access to digital assets, pairing Coincheck's crypto exchange with KDDI's roughly 30 million mobile subscribers.

• 🔮 Privacy protocols Arc, Canton, and Tempo collectively topped $1 billion in funding, with Bernstein analysts framing privacy as crypto's next emerging killer application. The ARC presale alone raised $222 million. 

• 💰 Elliptic closed a $120 million Series D led by One Peak, with Nasdaq Ventures, Deutsche Bank, and the British Business Bank participating, valuing the blockchain analytics firm at $670 million. The round will fund expansion of Elliptic's AI-native compliance platform, which currently screens over 1 billion transactions per week. 

• 💸 MEXC committed to expanding its Guardian Fund to $500 million and said it is actively acquiring 1,000 BTC to bolster user protection and exchange reserves. 

• 💲 Sky Ecosystem led a $13.5 million round for Osero, a Stablewatch-incubated stablecoin yield infrastructure startup. The funding will support Osero's goal of building composable yield primitives for stablecoin holders. 

• 🤑 Movement acquired vault infrastructure company Canopy, bringing its vault management capabilities in-house as it continues to build out its layer-2 ecosystem. 

• 💸 Web3 startup Charms raised a $1.5 million pre-seed to build infrastructure for putting the AI character economy fully onchain, targeting a market where AI agents and digital personas transact autonomously.

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2. Ramil Amirov: Why crypto perps overcharge longs?

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🏛️ The Senate Banking Committee dropped the latest CLARITY Act text just after midnight, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong saying parties got "the must-haves" while Senator Warren signaled ethics provisions remain a priority

• 💰 Payward, the parent company of Kraken, is raising fresh capital at a $20 billion valuation as co-CEO Arjun Sethi says the exchange is "80% ready" for an IPO

• ⚡ Alpenglow, the biggest consensus overhaul in Solana's history, is now live on a community test cluster, with mainnet activation possible as soon as next quarter

• 🔄 The Ethereum Foundation names Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik as new Protocol cluster co-leads as Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko depart and Alex Stokes goes on sabbatical

• 🛡️ Binance says its AI defenses prevented $10.53 billion in user losses from scams and phishing over the past 15 months, blocking 22.9 million attempts in Q1 2026 alone

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

Senate Banking Releases CLARITY Act Text 48 Hours Before Markup

The Senate Banking Committee released the latest text of the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act just after midnight Tuesday, the manager's amendment that will serve as the basis for Thursday's markup.

Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC), Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) put out the bill alongside a section-by-section summary. The text includes the Tillis-Alsobrooks stablecoin yield compromise as Section 404, plus a new Section 109 on insider trading and a new Section 904 dubbed the "Build Now Act," per Galaxy's Alex Thorne.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on X: "Not everyone got everything they wanted, but they got the must-haves." Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren released a critical comment signaling ethics remains a priority. The bank lobby is still pushing for tighter stablecoin language.

Kraken Parent Payward Raises Fresh Capital at $20 Billion Valuation

Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, is raising new capital at a $20 billion valuation as it accelerates toward a possible IPO, CoinDesk reported.

The round comes on the heels of two big acquisitions: Reap Technologies at $600 million and derivatives venue Bitnomial at $550 million, both struck at the same $20 billion mark. At Consensus Miami, co-CEO Arjun Sethi said Kraken is "80% ready" to go public.

Not everyone agrees on price. In April, Deutsche Börse bought a 1.5% stake at a valuation implying just $13.3 billion, signaling a steep gap between private-round pricing and secondary-market sentiment.

Solana's Alpenglow Hits Community Testing With Mainnet Possible Next Quarter

The biggest consensus overhaul in Solana's history is officially live for testing. Anza, the core development team behind Solana's Agave validator client, said Monday that Alpenglow is running on a community test cluster.

The upgrade replaces TowerBFT and Proof-of-History with a new architecture intended to collapse finality from roughly 12.8 seconds to around 150 milliseconds. Validators overwhelmingly approved it last September, with 98% voting in favor under SIMD-0326.

Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said at Consensus Miami last week that mainnet activation could come next quarter if testing goes smoothly. SOL traded around $97 on the news.

Ethereum Foundation Names Three New Co-Leads to Its Protocol Cluster

The Ethereum Foundation is reshuffling the team responsible for Ethereum's base layer. Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik Svantes will co-lead the Protocol cluster as longtime developers Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko depart the foundation. Researcher Alex Stokes is going on sabbatical.

The transition lands as the EF works to ship Glamsterdam, the next major network upgrade, in the first half of 2026, followed by Hegotá later in the year. Svantes leads the foundation's Trillion Dollar Security initiative.

The cluster's outgoing leadership oversaw the December 2025 Fusa upgrade, which introduced PeerDAS and raised Ethereum's gas limit on the path to 200M.

Binance Says AI Defenses Blocked $10.5 Billion in User Losses

Binance said Monday its AI-powered security systems prevented roughly $10.53 billion in user losses between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, protecting more than 5.4 million users.

In Q1 2026 alone, the exchange said it intercepted 22.9 million scam and phishing attempts and safeguarded about $1.98 billion in user funds. Binance has deployed more than 24 AI initiatives and 100+ models, with AI now powering 57% of its fraud controls.

The disclosure lands amid a brutal threat backdrop: crypto fraud reached $17 billion in 2025, up 30% year over year, with AI-enabled scams 4.5x more profitable than traditional ones.

🎧 TODAY on UNCHAINED ON AIR 🚨

DEX in the City, 12pm ET: Three acquisitions in one week (MoonPay/DFlow, Bullish/Equiniti, Kraken/Reap) and mega raises at Circle, Canton, and Haun/a16z. Is crypto winter over? Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Vy Le, and GSR's Josh Riezman dig into the M&A frenzy, Atkins' SEC speech, the Clarity Act, and public companies launching tokens.

Then, Arthur Hayes joins Laura: Why the AI race plus money printing is the perfect setup for crypto. His Tehran Toll Booth scenario is now playing out in the data, and he's still long HYPE.

Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

• 🎮 Ronin will hard fork on May 12 to migrate from an independent sidechain to an Ethereum Layer 2 built on the OP Stack, four years after its $625 million Lazarus-linked bridge exploit. The transition introduces a Proof of Distribution model that cuts RON token inflation from over 20% to below 1%, with EigenDA handling data availability.

• 💰 Michael Saylor's Strategy bought 535 bitcoin for $43 million after a brief pause, bringing total holdings to 818,869 BTC worth roughly $66.5 billion. Saylor walked back his earlier signal about potential dividend-related bitcoin sales, saying the company would buy 10 to 20 BTC for every one sold and remain a "net accumulator."

• 🌷 Tom Lee's BitMine slowed its weekly accumulation to 26,659 ETH worth roughly $62 million, its smallest weekly buy since the firm became an Ethereum treasury, as it nears its 5% supply target. Lee declared "crypto spring has commenced," noting a May close above $2,100 would mark ETH's third consecutive monthly gain — a pattern never seen in a crypto bear market.

• ⚖️ Anchorage Digital is stepping back from a leading role in the Global Dollar USDG stablecoin consortium that includes Robinhood and Kraken, citing the need for "increased neutrality." CEO Nathan McCauley said roughly 20 banks and tech giants are now exploring stablecoin issuance through Anchorage's white-label platform.

• ⛏️ MARA Holdings reported Q1 revenue of $174.6 million, down 18% year-over-year, with net losses widening to $1.3 billion driven by unrealized losses on its 35,303 bitcoin holdings. MARA said it does not expect to pursue large-scale ASIC purchases going forward but emphasized bitcoin mining remains its "operational foundation" amid an AI infrastructure pivot anchored by its $1.5 billion Long Ridge acquisition.

• 📉 Bakkt reported $243.6 million in Q1 revenue, down 77% from $1.07 billion a year ago, swinging to an $11.7 million net loss as the firm pivots to stablecoin infrastructure. BKKT shares fell 11% after-hours as CEO Akshay Naheta outlined a three-pillar strategy around regulated digital asset markets, programmable payments, and international investments.

• 🏛️ Augustus received conditional OCC approval to charter Augustus Bank, N.A. as the world's first clearing bank for the AI era, built on a stablecoin and AI-native core. The company, which has raised $40 million from Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, Creandum, and the founders of Ramp, Deel, and Circle, counts Kraken among its clients, with 25-year-old co-founder Ferdinand Dabitz set to become the youngest CEO of a federally chartered US bank in over 100 years.

• 💳 S&P 500 payments firm Corpay partnered with BVNK to add embedded stablecoin wallets and settlement capabilities across its global network, serving over 800,000 clients. Corpay processes more than $12 billion in monthly corporate payments and $26 billion in monthly FX volume across 145 currencies.

• 🏦 Ripple Prime secured a $200 million debt facility from Neuberger Berman's specialty-finance group to expand institutional margin lending across equities, fixed income, and digital assets. The prime brokerage arm has tripled its revenue year-over-year since Ripple acquired Hidden Road in 2025.

• 🇫🇷 French BTC treasury firm Capital B raised €15.2 million ($17.8 million) in a private placement backed by Blockstream CEO Adam Back and French asset manager TOBAM. The proceeds will fund the purchase of 182 additional BTC, bringing Capital B's total holdings to roughly 3,125 BTC.

• 🏦 Galaxy-backed Boundary Labs raised $2 million in pre-seed funding to launch USBD, an institutional stablecoin with continuous onchain verification of reserves and net asset value. The Ethereum-based stablecoin targets asset managers, hedge funds, and family offices through a separate yield-bearing sUSBD token, with launch slated for early summer.

• 🤖 MoonPay acquired Dawn Labs and launched Dawn CLI, an AI-native trading product that lets users build and execute strategies for prediction markets using plain-English prompts. The platform starts with Polymarket support before expanding to additional venues, with non-custodial wallets and reviewable strategy code addressing autonomous trading risks.

• 🔮 AurumX completed its strategic acquisition of Manadia, integrating the prediction market infrastructure into AurumX's on-chain financial system as a core module for information finance. Built on the Veritas oracle layer, Manadia will soon launch its decentralized prediction market as a flagship product within the AurumX ecosystem.

Twitter tweet

1. Ali Yahya: Investing in ARC

2. BaiBai: PropAMMs are coming to Base

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🏛️ The CLARITY Act faces its biggest Senate test Thursday as banks try to torch the stablecoin compromise

• 🏦 Kraken's parent goes for a federal bank charter, joining Coinbase, Circle, and Ripple

• 🟧 Saylor reframes Strategy's bitcoin sell talk: 10 to 20 BTC bought for every 1 sold

• 📊 BlackRock files for two more tokenized funds, eyeing idle stablecoin capital

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

CLARITY Act Heads to Senate Banking Thursday as Bank Lobby Goes Scorched Earth

The Senate Banking Committee will mark up the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act on Thursday, May 14, at 10:30 a.m. ET, the long-awaited next step for the bill that would split crypto oversight between the SEC and CFTC.

The fight is already nasty. On Friday, the three largest U.S. banking trade groups, the ABA, BPI, and ICBA, formally rejected the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise that bans passive stablecoin yield but allows activity-based rewards. Banks worry the carve-out lets stablecoins siphon checking-account deposits.

Chairman Tim Scott has not budged. Polymarket recently pegged passage in 2026 at roughly 75%, and the White House is pushing for a July 4 signing.

Kraken Parent Payward Goes for a Federal Bank Charter

Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, filed Friday for a national trust company charter with the OCC, joining a growing list of crypto firms gunning for federal banking status.

The proposed Payward National Trust Company would offer federally regulated custody for institutional clients. It complements Kraken Financial, the firm's Wyoming SPDI that already has a Federal Reserve master account.

The timing matters. Kraken has been on an acquisition tear, agreeing to buy stablecoin firm Reap Technologies for $600 million this week and derivatives venue Bitnomial for $550 million last month. The firm is also chasing an IPO at a $20 billion valuation.

Saylor Reframes Bitcoin-Sell Talk: 10 to 20 Bought for Every 1 Sold

Michael Saylor offered more clarity after last week's earnings call comment rattled bitcoin maximalists.

In weekend interviews, the Strategy chairman said any bitcoin sales to fund the firm's STRC preferred stock dividends would be tactical. "Even if we were to sell one bitcoin, we'd be buying 10 to 20 more bitcoin," he said. CEO Phong Le added on CNBC that the company believes in "math over ideology."

Strategy currently holds 818,334 BTC worth roughly $66.2 billion at an average cost of $75,537 per coin. JPMorgan projects buying could hit $30 billion this year at the current pace. Saylor posted "Back to work. BTC" Sunday, his usual pre-buy signal.

BlackRock Files for Two More Tokenized Funds Aimed at Stablecoin Money

BlackRock, which manages $14 trillion in assets, filed two SEC applications Friday to expand its onchain product line.

The first is a brand-new fund, the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle, which would hold cash, short-term Treasuries, and overnight repo, and issue "OnChain Shares" across multiple blockchains. Minimum investment: $3 million.

The second tokenizes the firm's existing $6.1 billion BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund as a new share class on Ethereum, with BNY Mellon maintaining shareholder records using the ERC-20 standard. The target is clear: idle stablecoin capital. Tokenized Treasury products now top $14 billion, with Ethereum holding more than $8 billion.

📢 DON’T MISS BITS + BIPS TODAY 🎧️ 

On today's Bits + Bips, Austin, Ram, and Chris dig into why Bitcoin keeps grinding higher even as Iran tensions re-escalate and broader markets wobble, and whether the catchup trade still has legs.

They also unpack Coinbase's earnings against the backdrop of fresh layoffs and an AI push, the Arbitrum order clearing the way for funds to be returned, the E11even controversy, and chatter that MSTR could actually trim its Bitcoin stack.

Streams at 3:40pm ET. 

Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

• 🏛️ SEC Chair Paul Atkins signaled new rulemaking for onchain trading systems, blockchain settlement, broker-dealer definitions, and crypto vaults at the AI+ Expo in Washington. The Friday speech marked the clearest signal yet that the SEC's Gensler-era enforcement playbook is being replaced with a notice-and-comment rulebook for DeFi and AI-driven finance.

• 🔥 Tether burned 2 billion USDT on the Ethereum network this weekend after minting $5 billion USDT since April 18, reflecting aggressive supply rebalancing by the stablecoin giant. The burn permanently removes the tokens from circulation and follows Tether's $515 million blacklisting action last week.

• 📺 Trump Media reported a $405.9 million Q1 net loss on just $871,200 in revenue, driven by $244 million in unrealized losses on its bitcoin holdings and a $108.2 million investment loss. The Truth Social parent holds 9,542 BTC at a $1.13 billion cost basis and 756 million CRO tokens currently worth $53 million.

• ⚖️ Judge Margaret Garnett cleared the path for Aave to move $71 million in ETH linked to the Kelp DAO exploit, modifying a restraining notice to permit an Arbitrum DAO governance vote transferring 30,766 ETH to Aave's recovery wallet. The terrorism judgment creditors' $877 million claims against North Korea remain attached to the funds after the transfer.

• 🤖 TeraWulf reported $21 million in HPC leasing revenue in Q1, surpassing its $13 million in bitcoin mining revenue for the first time and confirming a strategic shift toward AI infrastructure. The miner's $427.6 million net loss came largely from non-cash warrant revaluations, with the AI business now generating 62% of total revenue.

• ⛏️ Seven major bitcoin mining pools representing 75% of global hashrate joined the Stratum V2 working group, marking the biggest decentralization shift in mining in years. Foundry, AntPool, F2Pool, SpiderPool, MARA Pool, Block Inc, and DMND will adopt the open standard, letting individual miners build their own block templates rather than pool operators.

• 🇰🇷 South Korea's National Tax Service launched a pilot program to entrust seized virtual asset management to private custody institutions like KODA and KDAC after recent security lapses. The shift follows a February incident where the NTS published a press release containing an unredacted recovery phrase, leading to $4.8 million in stolen tokens.

• 💸 Circle raised $222 million in a presale of its ARC token at a $3 billion fully diluted network valuation, from a consortium including BlackRock, Apollo, a16z crypto, ARK Invest, ICE, and Standard Chartered Ventures. The raise landed alongside Circle's Q1 2026 results, which showed USDC in circulation up 28% to $77 billion and onchain transaction volume up 263% to $21.5 trillion.

• 🏦 Digital Asset Holdings is raising $300 million at a $2 billion valuation, with a16z crypto expected to lead the financing for the Canton Network developer, per Bloomberg. The round comes as Canton has attracted institutional participants including Visa, Goldman Sachs, and DTCC, with over $6 trillion in tokenized assets processed on the network.

• 📊 Hyperion DeFi closed a $10 million public offering at $3.60 per share, with the HYPD Nasdaq-listed firm planning to deploy the capital strictly toward its HYPE treasury strategy. The company is the first U.S. publicly listed firm building a long-term strategic treasury of Hyperliquid's native token.

• ⚽ Sportix raised $3.2 million in a seed round led by Animoca Brands to power its AI sports intelligence infrastructure ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The platform combines real-time match data processing, predictive analytics, and blockchain-based verification, with participation from Coininvestor Ventures, Becker Ventures, X21 Digital, and Alpha Capital.

Twitter tweet

1. Josh Swihart 🛡: Why now? Update on Zcash.

2. 0xKira: A Guide To Crypto Crime (2026)

Good Sunday!

This week, crypto faced a question it still can’t answer: who actually controls the money after a hack?

After Arbitrum froze $71 million tied to the KelpDAO exploit, the decision sparked a legal fight that could redefine what decentralization really means.

At the same time, an AI agent got hacked through a hidden prompt injection, exposing a new layer of risk most people aren’t ready for.

Who Owns Stolen Crypto? The $71M Legal Fight After the KelpDAO Hack: Uneasy Money - Unchained

A legal battle over frozen KelpDAO hack funds is forcing DeFi to answer questions…

Unchained

Meanwhile, crypto regulation just entered a critical phase.

The banks tried to stop stablecoin rewards. They failed. Now the Clarity Act is racing toward a deadline that could redefine crypto in the US.

Coinbase's Chief Policy Officer on Why He Believes the Clarity Act Will Pass - Unchained

Coinbase's chief policy officer explains why the bank lobby failed to kill stablecoin rewards…

Unchained

Here’s more on what we unpacked this week on Unchained:

•  🤖 A16z Just Raised $2.2B Betting on AI Agents and Privacy Chains
  Ali Yahya explains why crypto’s next era may belong to AI powered economies, privacy dominant blockchains, and a world preparing for future quantum threats.

• 🚨 The OpenAI Shooter Lawsuit Could Become DeFi’s Biggest Nightmare
  A landmark case accusing ChatGPT of helping plan a mass shooting is testing whether software developers can be liable for how users misuse their tools and crypto may be next.

• 🌍 Missiles Hit the Middle East. Bitcoin Pumped Anyway.
  Bits + Bips breaks down why crypto markets stayed bullish through geopolitical chaos, why Bitcoin is increasingly viewed as the ultimate inflation hedge, and what the latest legal fight over frozen North Korean funds means for DAOs.

All these episodes are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

In Case You Missed It 👀

Bitcoin Rose 12% in April. But Could These 2 Catalysts Push It Up Again Soon?

Bitcoin rallied in April on no spot demand and record short positioning. But two catalysts looked poised to release the spring.

If You Like Unchained:

🎧 Subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🇮🇷 The Treasury Department privately demanded Binance comply with its 2023 monitoring program after reports that more than $1 billion flowed through the exchange to Iran-linked entities

• 📉 Coinbase posted a $394 million net loss in Q1, its second straight quarterly loss, as revenue fell 31% to $1.4 billion and transaction revenue plunged 40%

• 🛡️ Aave is rewriting how DeFi lists collateral, adding cybersecurity and technical reviews to its risk framework after the $293 million KelpDAO exploit nearly broke the protocol

• 🟣 BitMine may ease off its weekly ETH purchases after Tom Lee disclosed the firm holds nearly $12 billion in ether and could hit its 5% supply target in six weeks

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

Treasury Demands Binance Comply With Monitoring Program After $1B Iran Flow: Report

The U.S. Treasury Department has privately demanded that Binance comply with the monitoring program tied to its 2023 guilty plea, according to a Thursday report from The Information. The directive followed allegations that more than $1 billion flowed through the exchange to Iran-linked entities between March 2024 and August 2025.

Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Gene Lange reminded Binance in a recent letter to share "critical data records and documents" with the independent monitor. Binance pleaded guilty in November 2023 to sanctions and AML violations, paid $4.3 billion in penalties, and accepted independent monitors reporting to the DOJ and FinCEN.

The pressure follows "Operation Economic Fury," the U.S. campaign launched in April to disrupt Iran's financial infrastructure. Binance's BNB token fell to about $641 on the news.

Coinbase Posts $394 Million Q1 Loss as Trading Revenue Tumbles 40%

Coinbase reported a $394 million net loss in the first quarter, its second consecutive quarterly miss, sending shares down more than 5% in after-hours trading. Revenue fell 31% year over year to $1.4 billion, missing analyst expectations of around $1.49 billion.

Transaction revenue, the core of Coinbase's business, dropped 40% to $756 million, with retail customer activity bearing the brunt of the decline. CFO Alesia Haas said total crypto market cap and trading volumes were both down more than 20% quarter over quarter, calling macro conditions "genuinely tough."

A $482 million unrealized loss on Coinbase's corporate crypto holdings drove most of the GAAP figure. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $303 million, a 67% year-over-year decline but the company's 13th consecutive positive quarter on that metric. The earnings followed Tuesday's announcement of a 14% workforce reduction.

Aave to Overhaul Collateral Standards After $293M KelpDAO Exploit

Aave Labs plans to fundamentally reform how it lists collateral following last month's near-catastrophic KelpDAO exploit. Chief Legal and Policy Officer Linda Jeng announced the changes Thursday at Consensus Miami 2026.

Going forward, every asset proposed as collateral will face reviews of cybersecurity, interoperability, and technical architecture, alongside the traditional volatility and liquidity assessments. Aave will also publish minimum standards for asset listings, with the goal of setting a new bar across DeFi.

The catalyst was the April 18 exploit of KelpDAO's LayerZero-powered bridge, which let an attacker mint 116,500 unbacked rsETH and deposit roughly 89,000 of them into Aave as collateral to borrow nearly $200 million in ETH and wstETH. Aave's TVL fell by roughly $10 billion in the days that followed.

BitMine May Slow Ethereum Buying as $12 Billion Stash Nears 5% Supply Goal

BitMine Immersion Technologies may slow the pace of its Ethereum purchases, Chairman Tom Lee said Thursday at Consensus Miami 2026. The Ethereum treasury firm now holds 5.18 million ETH, worth roughly $11.9 billion, equal to about 4.29% of the circulating supply.

Lee said BitMine could hit its stated 5% target, the firm's "alchemy of 5%" goal, in roughly six weeks at its current pace of more than 100,000 ETH per week. "I'm not sure we want to get to 5% too quickly," he said, adding that "there's other things to be doing in crypto right now."

Those other things include a recently announced $4 billion share repurchase program and the firm's MAVAN institutional staking platform, which currently stakes about $14 billion across ETH, SOL, and Canton. Shares of BMNR fell roughly 4% on the news.

🎙️ Unchained Goes Live at 11:30 AM ET today!

Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad takes us inside the negotiations over the Clarity Act's stablecoin yield compromise, what made it into the bill, why the banks are still unhappy, and where they're likely to push next, including staking rewards, points, and loyalty programs.

Live Today, 11:30am ET.

Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

• 🔄 Binance founder CZ floated reviving Binance.US to give American traders access to global crypto liquidity, citing improved U.S. policy as the CLARITY Act advances. Speaking at Consensus Miami, CZ said many developers who left for Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Singapore are now returning, and pitched BNB Chain as a payment rail for AI agent transactions.

• 🐂 JPMorgan said Strategy's bitcoin buying could reach $30 billion this year at the current pace, well above the roughly $22 billion the company bought in each of 2024 and 2025. Strategy has added 145,834 bitcoin worth roughly $11 billion year-to-date, with much of the buying happening below its average cost basis of $75,000.

• 📈 U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs posted a 5-week buying streak with $3.8 billion in cumulative inflows, pushing total net assets to a record $108.76 billion. The 25-delta skew is compressing toward neutral as traders unwind downside protection, signaling broader institutional appetite returning amid Iran peace talks and AI-driven equity gains.

• 🔒 Solv Protocol migrated $700 million in tokenized bitcoin infrastructure from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP following a security review and recent cross-chain hacks. Combined with Kelp DAO's earlier shift after a $292 million exploit, the migrations bring nearly $1 billion in assets to Chainlink's bridge infrastructure.

• 📉 Hyperliquid Strategies posted a $165.4 million net loss for the nine months ended March 31. The Nasdaq-listed firm has spent $216 million accumulating HYPE since its inception in December 2025, bringing its total holdings to 20 million tokens with $103 million in cash remaining.

• 🏛️ Donald Trump Jr. denied rumors that he and his brothers had abandoned World Liberty Financial, calling speculation about the Trump-linked crypto firm "news to me." The denial came at Consensus Miami amid WLFI's escalating legal battle with Tron founder Justin Sun.

• 🚔 Marlon Ferro was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison for his role in a $250 million crypto theft ring, where he served as the "instrument of last resort," breaking into homes to steal hardware wallets. The 20-year-old, known online as "GothFerrari," was also ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution.

• 🪙 Bitwise will take over management of Superstate's $267 million tokenized Crypto Carry Fund on June 1, marking the asset manager's first move into tokenized funds. The fund will be renamed the Bitwise Crypto Carry Fund while continuing to run on Superstate's blockchain infrastructure.

• 🤖 Amazon Web Services launched Bedrock AgentCore Payments with Coinbase and Stripe, enabling AI agents to autonomously make stablecoin payments for APIs, data feeds, and paywalled content. Built on Coinbase's x402 protocol and Stripe's Privy wallet, the system processes USDC payments on Base and Solana in roughly 200 milliseconds.

• 🎯 Kalshi raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation in a Series F round led by Coatue, with participation from Sequoia, a16z, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley, and ARK Invest. The prediction market platform's institutional trading volume jumped 800% over six months as annualized volume tripled to $178 billion.

• 🐙 Kraken parent Payward agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based stablecoin payments firm Reap for $600 million in cash and stock, valuing Payward at $20 billion. The deal marks Kraken's first infrastructure acquisition in Asia and adds card issuance and cross-border payments to its B2B platform.

• 🪐 Saturn raised $2 million in seed funding led by The Spartan Group, with participation from Anchorage Digital and Susquehanna Crypto, to build the application layer on Bitcoin powered by Strategy's STRC. The protocol packages STRC distributions into USDat, a Treasury-backed stablecoin, and sUSDat, its staked version that captures STRC reward exposure for eligible global users.

Twitter tweet

1. Hyperliquid Research Collection: 2026 Hyperliquid Q1 Report

2. Shaunda Devens: HIP-4: Outcome Markets

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 📈 Bitcoin topped $82,000 for the first time since January as Iran peace talks lifted risk assets and a record 67-day negative funding streak set the stage for a short squeeze

• 🏛️ The White House wants the CLARITY Act signed by July 4, but Senator Gillibrand says no votes without an ethics clause targeting officials' crypto ties

• 🏦 Ondo, JPMorgan, Mastercard and Ripple settled tokenized Treasuries across borders in under five seconds, the clearest signal yet that legacy rails have a real challenger

• 🟠 After 14 months of executive orders, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is finally getting an update, with the White House promising a "big announcement" within weeks

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

Bitcoin Tops $82K as Record Short Positioning Meets Iran Peace Hopes

Bitcoin surged above $82,000 on Wednesday, its highest price since late January, as reports of a U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding lifted risk assets globally. WTI crude fell more than 10% to $93 per barrel, easing one of the persistent inflation pressures that had weighed on rate-cut expectations.

The rally lands on top of a historically extreme derivatives setup. Bitcoin's 30-day average funding rate has been negative for 67 consecutive days, the longest streak this decade, according to research firm K33.

Head of Research Vetle Lunde noted that buying bitcoin during past negative funding regimes produced win rates of 83% to 96% across 30-to-360-day horizons, with returns beating random entry by multiples up to 6.27x. With open interest rising and shorts paying longs to hold, the conditions for a squeeze are building.

White House Targets July 4 for CLARITY Act as Ethics Fight Looms

White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt told the Consensus Miami 2026 audience on Wednesday that the administration is targeting July 4 for passage of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. The plan calls for a Senate Banking Committee markup this month and a House vote before Independence Day.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said the bill cannot advance without an ethics provision banning senior government officials from personal crypto interests, a clause widely understood as targeting President Trump's business ties to the industry.

A bipartisan compromise on the stablecoin yield dispute between Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) appears settled, but Gillibrand said three open issues, ethics, consumer protection, and illicit finance, must be resolved within days.

JPMorgan, Ondo, Mastercard and Ripple Settle Tokenized Treasuries in Under Five Seconds

Ondo Finance, JPMorgan's Kinexys, Mastercard, and Ripple completed what they described as the first cross-border, cross-bank redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund. The transaction settled in under five seconds on the XRP Ledger, outside traditional banking hours.

The pilot used OUSG, Ondo's tokenized short-term Treasury product. Ripple redeemed a portion of its holdings on XRPL, with Mastercard's Multi-Token Network routing the fiat instruction to Kinexys, which delivered U.S. dollars to Ripple's bank account in Singapore through JPMorgan's correspondent banking network.

Ondo's total value locked recently crossed $3 billion, with OUSG holding roughly $770 million across four chains. The broader tokenized Treasury market has surged to approximately $12.88 billion, up 225% over 15 months.

White House Teases Bitcoin Reserve Announcement ‘in the Next Few Weeks’

White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt said on Wednesday that an announcement on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is coming within weeks, the most concrete timeline since President Trump signed the reserve's executive order more than 14 months ago.

Speaking at Consensus Miami 2026, Witt cited a recent $46 million exploit involving digital assets held by the U.S. Marshals Service as one reason the administration is prioritizing custody infrastructure. He said his team has made a "breakthrough" on the legal framework and believes the executive branch can move forward without waiting for Congress.

The reserve, created by executive order in March 2025, currently holds approximately 328,372 BTC (roughly $25 billion) from criminal and civil asset forfeitures. Legislation to codify it permanently, including Senator Cynthia Lummis's BITCOIN Act and Rep. Nick Begich's renamed American Reserves Modernization Act, remains in progress.

• 🏦 Morgan Stanley launched a crypto trading pilot on ETrade with a 50-basis-point fee, undercutting Coinbase, Robinhood, and Charles Schwab. The bank plans to extend access to all 8.6 million ETrade clients later in 2026, with Zerohash providing liquidity, custody, and settlement for BTC, ETH, and SOL.

• 🪙 SoFi will issue its SoFiUSD stablecoin on Solana, citing the network's cost, settlement speed, and throughput for payment use cases. The fully reserved stablecoin, originally deployed on Ethereum, recently expanded its reach via a Mastercard settlement partnership.

• ⚛️ Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden said Bitcoin's post-quantum migration will be substantially harder than Taproot since every user, wallet, and exchange must participate to stay secure. Speaking at Consensus Miami, Pruden valued the assets at risk at roughly $2.3 trillion and urged the community to move from research into production now.

• 🇨🇴 Colombian President Gustavo Petro proposed turning the Caribbean coast into a bitcoin mining hub powered by surplus renewable energy, citing Paraguay and Venezuela as templates. Petro suggested co-ownership with the Wayúu Indigenous community, though his term ends in August before the May 31 presidential election.

• 🇪🇺 Crypto custodian Taurus secured a MiFID II license in Cyprus, allowing it to offer regulated investment services for tokenized bonds, fund shares, equities, and structured products across all 27 EU member states. The Swiss firm already holds a FINMA license and has a MiCA application in the pipeline.

• ⛏️ American Bitcoin posted an $81.8 million Q1 net loss as bitcoin's 22% quarterly decline triggered $117 million in non-cash mark-to-market losses, while revenue fell to $62.1 million. The Trump brothers-backed miner cut its cost per bitcoin to $36,200, far below the industry's $80,000 average, and grew holdings to 7,021 BTC without selling a single coin.

• 🇦🇪 BNY expanded its digital asset custody business to Abu Dhabi through partnerships with Finstreet and ADI Foundation, starting with bitcoin and ether. The world's largest custodian, with $59 trillion in client assets, plans to later expand into stablecoins and tokenized assets within ADGM.

• 🇧🇲 Bermuda plans a second USDC airdrop this year as it expands its onchain economy initiative with Circle and Coinbase. Premier David Burt said the program aims to onboard merchants and bypass traditional card networks ahead of next week's Bermuda Digital Finance Forum.

• 🚀 Y Combinator will host crypto startup interviews in New York on May 21, marking the first time YC has taken its interview process for a specific sector on the road. Selected startups join the Summer 2026 batch with a $500,000 deal and the option to take funding in USDC.

• 🏗️ Core Scientific acquired bitcoin miner Polaris for $421 million, securing 440 megawatts of contracted power to expand its Oklahoma AI data center campus. The deal lets Core scale its Muskogee site to 1.5 gigawatts of gross power without waiting for grid interconnection delays.

• 🤖 Stockcoin.ai raised a seed round led by Amber Group to build an AI-native trading OS that pipes onchain signals into stock and crypto futures flows. The platform plans to add Hong Kong IPO subscription and US pre-IPO access from a single interface.

• 💼 OpenTrade raised $17 million in a strategic round led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, AlbionVC, and CMCC Global. The raise brings OpenTrade's total capital raised to over $30 million.

Twitter tweet

1. Pantera Capital: Beyond the Digital Copy: What's Next for Tokenization? 

2. Castle Labs 🏰: Onchain Derivatives are Challenging Finance

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 📉 The man who said he'd never sell just opened the door; Saylor floats bitcoin sales to cover Strategy's $1.5 billion dividend tab after a record $12.54 billion Q1 loss 

• 🔴 Coinbase cuts roughly 700 jobs and restructures around "AI-native pods" as CEO Armstrong pushes to flatten the company ahead of Thursday's earnings 

• 🤝 Kraken partners with MoneyGram for crypto-to-cash withdrawals across 500,000 locations in 100+ countries; co-CEO says exchange is "80% ready" for an IPO

• ⚔️ Kelp DAO publishes evidence that LayerZero approved the single-verifier bridge setup behind the $292 million exploit, then dumps LayerZero for Chainlink

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

Strategy Posts $12.54 Billion Q1 Loss as Saylor Floats Selling Bitcoin to Fund Dividends

Strategy reported a $12.54 billion net loss for Q1 2026 on Tuesday, driven by $14.46 billion in unrealized losses on its bitcoin holdings as the price fell from roughly $87,000 to $68,000 during the quarter. The company now holds 818,334 BTC at an average cost of $75,537 per coin, with a market value of approximately $64.14 billion as of May 3.

The bigger headline came after the numbers, with Executive Chairman Michael Saylor suggesting for the first time that Strategy could sell bitcoin to meet its $1.5 billion in annual dividend obligations across preferred stock classes. 

MSTR dropped 4% in after-hours trading, and bitcoin slipped below $81,000 on the remarks.

Despite the loss, Strategy raised $11.68 billion year to date through equity issuances, the largest U.S. equity raise of 2026. The company paused its weekly bitcoin purchases ahead of earnings, marking only the second such pause this year.

Coinbase Cuts 14% of Staff, Citing Crypto Downturn and AI Reshaping Operations

Coinbase laid off roughly 700 employees, or 14% of its 4,700-person workforce, CEO Brian Armstrong announced Tuesday in a memo posted to X. The cuts come two days before the exchange reports Q1 2026 earnings.

Armstrong blamed two forces: a crypto market downturn that has compressed revenue, and AI tools that are allowing engineers to "ship in days what used to take a team weeks." The company is restructuring around what Armstrong called "AI-native pods," some consisting of a single person handling engineering, design, and product responsibilities. Management will be capped at five layers below the CEO and COO.

The layoffs join a broader 2026 wave across the crypto and tech industries. Block cut "nearly half" its workforce earlier this year, Crypto.com trimmed 12%, and Algorand cut 25%. Coinbase expects $50 million to $60 million in restructuring charges, mostly in Q2.

Kraken Partners With MoneyGram for Crypto-to-Cash in 100+ Countries as IPO Inches Closer

Kraken and MoneyGram announced a global partnership that will let Kraken customers withdraw crypto as cash in hundreds of fiat currencies across more than 100 countries, using MoneyGram's network of nearly 500,000 retail locations. The service will roll out in phases across the U.S., Europe, Latin America, Africa, and parts of the Asia Pacific.

Separately, Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the exchange is "80% ready" to go public. The company filed confidentially with the SEC in November but paused plans in March when market conditions deteriorated. CoinDesk reported that Kraken may revisit a listing when the environment improves.

The MoneyGram deal is structured as the first phase of a broader partnership that will expand to include local bank deposits and cross-border remittance flows through Kraken's Krak global money app.

Kelp DAO Drops LayerZero for Chainlink, Says Bridge Config Behind $292 Million Hack Was Approved

Kelp DAO published a memo on Wednesday claiming that LayerZero personnel approved the single-verifier bridge configuration that LayerZero later blamed for the $292 million rsETH exploit. The accusation contradicts LayerZero's April 19 postmortem, which said Kelp's setup "directly contradicts" its recommended security model.

Kelp said the 1-of-1 DVN (decentralized verifier network) setup was reviewed across eight integration meetings over roughly two and a half years without any warnings that it posed a serious security risk. Data from Dune Analytics shows 47% of active LayerZero OApp contracts used a similar configuration within the past 90 days, putting an estimated $4.5 billion at risk.

Kelp announced it is migrating rsETH from LayerZero's OFT standard to Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). Chainlink CBO Johann Eid confirmed the company is supporting the migration.

Unchained on Air live at 3 PM ET today!

Catch DEX in the City at 3 PM ET, where the crew tackles a big AI lawsuit that raises questions about AI (and DeFi) liability, the Musk/Altman drama, and yet more hacks including compromised wallets you thought were ancient history.

Then stay tuned for Uneasy Money at 4 PM ET, as Kain, Taylor, Luca, and special guest Kelsie Nabben dig into Aave's $71M courtroom crisis over recovered North Korean hack funds, an AI agent that got prompt-injected via Morse code and lost $175K, Coinbase's AI-driven 14% layoff, and MegaETH's messy token launch.

Don't miss it. Tune in live on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

• 🏋️ Solana exchange Drift plans to repay users after $295 million hack by issuing recovery tokens representing proportional claims on the recovery pool, with Tether committing up to $127.5 million and partners pledging $20 million more. The April hack was attributed to North Korean hackers, with most stolen funds still traceable across monitored wallets.

• ⚡ Solana's Alpenglow upgrade could arrive next quarter, co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said at Consensus Miami, describing it as an "exciting step" in protocol evolution. The upgrade aims to bring transaction confirmation closer to the "speed of light" and strengthen Solana's positioning as infrastructure for high-performance applications.

• ⚖️ CFTC looks to cement non-custodial software developer protections into formal rulemaking following its Phantom no-action letter, Chairman Selig said at Consensus. The March letter confirmed wallet developers meeting certain conditions don't need to register as brokers when connecting users to regulated derivatives.

• 🏛️ Crypto whale sues Coinbase for allegedly refusing to return stolen DAI traced to a frozen account, after losing $55 million in an August 2024 phishing attack. Coinbase confirmed holding the funds but requires a court order before releasing them, despite the victim providing sworn proof of ownership.

• 🌐 Hedera launched CLPR (Cross-Ledger Protocol) at HederaCon 2026, bridging assets between private HashSphere instances and the public Hedera network without centralized custodians. The protocol aims to connect enterprise blockchain deployments with public infrastructure.

• 🔗 Ledger integrated Hyperliquid perps trading in its hardware wallets via Yield.xyz, bringing DeFi derivatives directly to cold storage users. The integration maintains security while enabling advanced trading from Ledger devices.

• 🏭 French chipmaker Sequans sold half its bitcoin holdings as "treasury hype meets reality," reflecting a shift in corporate sentiment for non-crypto native firms. The move signals cooling enthusiasm among traditional companies that adopted BTC as a treasury asset during the previous bull market.

• 🗳️ Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says clarity is better than chaos as the Senate approaches a key moment for crypto legislation, warning the next two weeks are critical for industry progress. The comments come as lawmakers debate comprehensive digital asset regulatory frameworks.

• 👩‍🎤 Iggy Azalea faces a lawsuit over Solana meme coin MOTHER, with investors claiming deceptive marketing and failure to deliver promised real-world utility like MOTHERLAND casino integrations. The class-action suit is based on consumer protection laws rather than securities violations.

  

• 📈 CME will launch cash-settled bitcoin volatility futures on June 1, pending regulatory approval, allowing institutions to trade volatility directly without directional price bets. The BVI contracts settle to the CME CF Bitcoin Volatility Index derived from bitcoin options order books.

• 🤝 RockawayX and Forward Industries co-led a $5 million Series A funding round in OnRe, targeting insurance and risk management infrastructure for digital assets.

• 🏢 Bullish will acquire UK transfer agent Equiniti for $4.2 billion, creating what CEO Tom Farley calls "the global transfer agent for tokenized securities." The deal signals crypto exchange expansion into traditional financial services infrastructure.

• 💳 MoonPay acquired Solana execution layer firm DFlow in a $100 million all-stock deal, adding high-performance trading infrastructure that processes $50 billion in cumulative volume. DFlow powers major platforms, including Coinbase, Phantom, and became the first aggregator to surpass Jupiter in daily Solana volume.

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1. Charles Edwards: Institutions are Guzzling Bitcoin

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Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🎮 GameStop bids $55.5 billion for eBay in cash and stock, raising questions about whether its $368 million bitcoin treasury will be sold to fund the deal

• 🛑 SEC delays 24 prediction-market ETFs from Bitwise, Roundhill, and GraniteShares, requesting more detail on product mechanics and disclosures

• 💰 a16z crypto closes $2.2 billion Fund 5, bringing total committed capital across five dedicated crypto funds to $9.8 billion

• 📱 Telegram replaces the TON Foundation as the driving force behind TON and becomes its largest validator; token surges 23%

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

GameStop Bids $55.5 Billion for eBay, Putting Its Bitcoin Treasury in Play

GameStop submitted a non-binding offer Sunday to acquire eBay for $55.5 billion, or $125 per share in cash and stock. The bid would be funded with $9.4 billion from the company's balance sheet, which includes a $368 million bitcoin position, plus up to $20 billion in debt financing backed by a commitment from TD Bank.

CEO Ryan Cohen told CNBC the deal is "way more compelling than bitcoin," raising the question of whether the company will liquidate some or all of its 4,709 BTC. GameStop recently moved the coins to Coinbase Prime as part of a covered-call options strategy that generates income while maintaining exposure.

GameStop said it now holds a 5% economic interest in eBay through derivatives and direct ownership. If completed, the deal would be one of the largest M&A transactions involving a company with a bitcoin treasury on its balance sheet.

SEC Delays Launch of 24 Prediction-Market ETFs

The SEC has delayed the launch of more than two dozen prediction-market ETFs that were scheduled to begin trading this week, Reuters reported Monday. The regulator requested additional information about product mechanics and disclosures from issuers Roundhill Investments, GraniteShares, and Bitwise, who filed in February.

Under standard rules, ETF filings automatically become effective after 75 days unless the commission intervenes. The SEC stopped the clock just before the deadline expired. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas called the delay "likely temporary."

The proposed funds would give retail investors exposure to binary event contracts, including the 2028 presidential election, recession probability, and tech-sector layoffs, without trading directly on platforms like Kalshi or Polymarket. Combined volume on those platforms reached $85 billion in the first four months of 2026.

a16z Crypto Closes $2.2 Billion Fund 5, Bringing Total Committed Capital to $9.8 Billion

Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm closed its fifth dedicated fund at $2.2 billion, bringing total committed capital across the unit's five funds to $9.8 billion. The announcement, authored by managing partner Chris Dixon and three colleagues, framed the raise as a bet on crypto's "quieter moment" between speculative cycles.

The fund is roughly half the size of the firm's $4.5 billion Fund 4 raised in 2022, but a16z said it deliberately shortened the fundraising cycle to respond faster to market shifts. The firm first disclosed its fundraising plans in March, initially targeting around $2 billion.

Dixon cited stablecoins, perpetual futures, prediction markets, and onchain lending as evidence that crypto infrastructure is producing lasting financial utility. Previous a16z crypto portfolio winners include Coinbase, Uniswap, and Kalshi.

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Streams Today at 12 pm ET

Join us on X, YouTube or PumpFun.

Telegram Takes Direct Control of TON, Becomes Network's Largest Validator

Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced Monday that the messaging platform will replace the TON Foundation as the primary driving force behind The Open Network and become its largest validator. Toncoin surged more than 23% to a four-month high on $309 million in daily volume, a 324% jump in trading activity.

Durov said TON transaction fees have already dropped sixfold to near zero, and that the next phase will focus on technical performance. A new ton.org website, updated developer tools, and infrastructure upgrades are expected within two to three weeks. Telegram has staked approximately 2.2 million TON to operate as a leading validator.

The structural shift marks the most significant change to TON's governance since Telegram handed the project to the open-source community in 2020 after settling with the SEC over its original $1.7 billion token sale.

• 🏛️ FINRA officially approved Securitize for tokenized IPO underwriting and custody, making it the first broker-dealer authorized to custody tokenized securities and facilitate atomic settlement with stablecoins. The milestone enables full-stack onchain IPO infrastructure within a regulated framework ahead of Securitize's planned SPAC listing.

• ⚡ Base officially adopted Succinct's SP1 zero-knowledge virtual machine to enhance security and achieve 1-day finality, moving the $12 billion Layer 2 toward ZK-based validation. The integration positions Base as the largest Ethereum operator adopting ZK proofs, supporting Vitalik Buterin's "endgame" vision for blockchain scaling.

• ⚖️ Kraken parent Payward filed a lawsuit alleging that fiat custodian Etana misappropriated $25 million in funds through a "Ponzi-like" scheme, commingling customer assets with company money for risky investments. Etana entered court-supervised liquidation in November 2025 after Colorado regulators issued cease-and-desist orders.

• 🛡️ DeFi lender Aave asked a federal court to block a $71 million crypto seizure tied to North Korea claims, arguing the frozen ETH belongs to innocent users victimized in April's rsETH exploit. The restraining notice is disrupting DeFi United's effort to return recovered funds to affected protocol users.

• ₿ Bitcoin scaling layer Citrea launched its CTR token alongside a dual treasury model, allocating 60% of the 10 billion token supply to the community. Users stake CTR for non-transferable xCTR to govern liquidity incentives and network decisions through a gauge-based voting system.

• 🔒 Ripple will share North Korean threat intelligence with crypto firms through the Crypto ISAC program, helping companies defend against Lazarus Group attacks. The initiative comes as North Korean hackers have stolen over $3 billion from crypto firms since 2017.

• 🇰🇵 North Korea issued a statement blaming "reptile media" for reports tying the nation to recent crypto thefts, calling cyber theft accusations "absurd slander." The denial comes amid increased attribution of major DeFi exploits to state-sponsored hacking groups.

• 🏦 DTCC will begin its tokenized asset rollout in July ahead of full launch, receiving feedback from BlackRock, Circle, and other major financial firms. The pilot program will test blockchain-based settlement for traditional securities within existing regulatory frameworks.

• 💳 Stablecoin startup Rain is worth $1.95 billion and plans to issue cards with Mastercard in a push to woo institutional customers. The company is positioning itself as a bridge between traditional finance and digital assets for enterprise adoption.

• 🏦 StanChart's VC arm backed crypto firm GSR at a $1 billion valuation, marking SC Ventures' first external investment in a market maker. The strategic partnership expands Standard Chartered's digital asset capabilities through GSR's institutional trading infrastructure.

• 💰 Katie Haun raised $1 billion for new venture funds, focusing on AI agents, fintech, and crypto infrastructure. The former Coinbase board member's Haun Ventures continues betting on the convergence of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.

• 🇵🇹 Ekiden raised €1.7 million for its blockchain-based trading platform out of Portugal, targeting institutional DeFi adoption. The startup aims to bridge traditional finance with decentralized trading infrastructure for European markets.

• 🔄 Anonymous cross-chain swap aggregator HoudiniSwap was acquired by Sol Strategies for $18 million, expanding the firm's privacy-focused Solana ecosystem. The acquisition adds diversified revenue streams from cross-chain swapping technology to Sol's portfolio.

1. Fidelity: Getting Off Zero: Evaluating Bitcoin in 2026

2. Pink Brains: HIP-4 Is Not a Prediction Market - It's the Options Layer: A Full Guide

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Hi! In today’s edition:

• 📈 Bitcoin reclaims $80,000 for the first time since January as the Iran trade unwinds and a short squeeze kicks in

• 🏛️ Senators release CLARITY Act stablecoin yield compromise text; White House adviser calls it “go time” 

• ⚖️ U.S. court freezes $71 million in Kelp DAO ETH after North Korea terrorism creditors file claim 

• 🏦 Trump's crypto project raised $550 million, but early investors can't sell and the token just hit an all-time low

Before you scroll, a quick note from today’s sponsor:

Most people who've been in crypto long enough have a story. A lost phrase. A frozen account. An exchange that went dark overnight. The assets were real. The access wasn't.

Bron is a self-custody wallet built on the same MPC architecture that institutions use to protect eight-figure portfolios, except it's designed for individuals. No seed phrase. Two trusted contacts replace it. If you lose access, you're back in 48 hours.

This is what serious storage looks like.

Bitcoin Breaks $80,000 for First Time in Three Months as Iran Fears Ease

Bitcoin surged past $80,000 late Sunday for the first time since January 31, climbing 2.6% to $80,150 as falling oil prices and easing geopolitical tensions lifted risk appetite across markets. The rally triggered more than $114 million in short liquidations in 24 hours, with analysts at LVRG Research and Zeus Research calling it a technical short squeeze through a "major" psychological resistance zone.

The move followed President Trump's announcement of "Project Freedom," a U.S. military operation to guide stranded neutral cargo ships out of the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday. Brent crude fell as much as 2.4% at the open to around $108, while WTI dipped near $102. Trump also said his representatives were having "very positive discussions" with Iran.

Spot bitcoin ETFs posted a fifth straight week of inflows, totaling $153.87 million last week. Ether gained 3.6% to $2,382, and XRP added 2% to $1.41.

White House Signals ‘Go Time’ on CLARITY Act After Stablecoin Yield Compromise Drops

Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks released compromise text Friday on the last major sticking point in the CLARITY Act: stablecoin yield. The language bars crypto firms from paying yield on stablecoin balances that is "functionally or economically equivalent" to a bank deposit but allows reward programs tied to actual usage, a distinction the industry had been pushing for since January.

White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt called it "go time." Senator Cynthia Lummis has committed to a May markup in the Senate Banking Committee, and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted simply: "Mark it up." The Digital Chamber, Circle, and the Crypto Council for Innovation all backed the deal within hours.

The bill still faces a tight calendar. Polymarket traders give it roughly 48% odds of becoming law in 2026, and the Senate has fewer than 10 working weeks before midterm campaigning takes over.

North Korea Terrorism Creditors Move to Seize $71 Million in Arbitrum-Frozen Kelp DAO ETH

A U.S. federal court has frozen $71 million in ETH held by the Arbitrum DAO, blocking the funds from flowing into the DeFi United recovery effort that was assembling to compensate victims of the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit. The Southern District of New York issued the order on May 1.

The plaintiffs are not hack victims. They are families holding unpaid terrorism judgments against North Korea totaling more than $877 million. Their lawyers argue the frozen 30,766 ETH constitutes North Korean state property because LayerZero attributed the April 18 hack to Pyongyang's Lazarus Group. The claim rests on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.

The freeze stalls a coalition led by Aave, Lido, Mantle, and EtherFi that had pooled resources to restore rsETH backing. A Snapshot vote showing 99% support for the release now runs headlong into a federal restraining order.

Bloomberg: Trump Family Crypto Project Quietly Sold Billions in Tokens While Holders Stayed Locked

World Liberty Financial raised more than $550 million from investors, then quietly sold an additional 5.9 billion WLFI tokens to private buyers in deals worth hundreds of millions, according to a Bloomberg report. Under the project's disclosures, DT Marks DEFI LLC, an entity affiliated with Donald Trump and his family, is entitled to 75% of token sale proceeds after deductions.

Early investors who bought at $0.05 remain locked out of 80% of their holdings with no published unlock schedule. WLFI traded below $0.06 this week, hitting all-time lows. Justin Sun, the project's highest-profile backer, sued WLFI in April in federal court, alleging his $45 million stake was frozen and his governance rights stripped.

The project has also deposited 5 billion WLFI into lending protocol Dolomite, whose co-founder is a WLFI advisor, and borrowed roughly $75 million in stablecoins against them.

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• 📈 Strategy paused bitcoin buys ahead of Tuesday earnings, only the second pause this year for the company that holds 818,334 bitcoin worth roughly $64 billion. CEO Michael Saylor said the buying resumes next week, with the pause landing as analysts expect an $18.98 per share loss for Q1 2026.

• ⚖️ New York Attorney General secured $5 million from Uphold in the first enforcement action against a crypto yield product promoter, targeting the platform's marketing of CredEarn, which collapsed in 2020. The settlement requires Uphold to register as a broker and strengthen due diligence policies for third-party investment products.

• 🏦 BlackRock urged the OCC to drop the proposed 20% cap on tokenized reserve assets in GENIUS Act rules, arguing risk should be based on credit quality and liquidity, not distributed ledger usage. The world's largest asset manager's $2.6 billion BUIDL fund backs over 90% of Ethena's USDtb and Jupiter's JupUSD.

• 🔒 Paradigm proposed PACTs (Provable Address-Control Timestamps) to let dormant bitcoin holders privately prove key control before quantum computers threaten legacy addresses. The proposal would protect Satoshi Nakamoto's estimated 1.1 million bitcoin, worth $84 billion, without requiring public movement of funds.

• 📊 Ethereum Foundation sold 10,000 ETH worth $23 million to BitMine for the second straight week, while Ethereum ETFs shed $184 million over a four-day negative streak despite ETH price gains. BitMine now holds over 5 million ETH worth $11.7 billion.

• 📉 Kraken parent Payward completed its acquisition of Bitnomial, gaining a fully CFTC-regulated derivatives stack including exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage licenses. The deal enables US-regulated crypto derivatives across the Kraken and NinjaTrader platforms, starting with spot margin.

• 🟡 Dogecoin hit a 2-month high near $0.11 as Shuttle Pharmaceutical Holdings agreed to acquire United Dogecoin in an $11 million PIPE-backed merger. The combined company plans to deploy 3,000 mining rigs targeting 1.5% of global DOGE mining capacity.

• 🤖 ClawBank's AI agent Manfred formed its own corporation autonomously, obtaining an IRS EIN, an FDIC-insured bank account, and a crypto wallet. The AI agent can already transact in over 30 cryptocurrencies and plans to begin active trading by the month's end.

• 🇧🇷 Brazil's central bank banned stablecoin and crypto settlement in cross-border payments through its regulated eFX system, effective October 1. The move targets the back-end infrastructure used by fintechs, while individual crypto ownership remains legal.

• 💸 Global payments company Fun raised $72 million in Series A funding co-led by Multicoin Capital and SignalFire. The company processes over $18 billion annually, powering deposits and withdrawals for Polymarket, Lighter, and Aave with 99.999% success rate.

• 💰 SBI Holdings filed a letter of intent to acquire a stake in crypto exchange Bitbank, aiming to make it a consolidated subsidiary. The move would create Japan's largest crypto platform group ahead of potential regulatory changes reclassifying cryptocurrencies as financial instruments.

• 💰 Tether posted $1.04 billion in Q1 profit as its reserve buffer reached a record $8.2 billion. The stablecoin issuer holds approximately $141 billion in US Treasuries, making it the 17th largest holder of American government debt globally.

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1. Grayscale: Investing in the Tokenization Megatrend

2. Ark Invest: BIG IDEAS 2026