Today's top news highlights:
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee released the latest text of the CLARITY bill.
Upbit will list its VVV token on the Korean Won, BTC, and USDT markets.
The Bitcoin Ordinals browser Ord.io will shut down on June 1st.
Circle announced its Q1 2026 results: revenue of $694 million, and USDC circulation of $77 billion.
Regulation & Macro
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee released the latest text of the CLARITY bill.
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee has released the latest version of the CLARITY Act, aimed at bringing the crypto industry under a regulated financial system. The 309-page document includes provisions limiting stablecoin yields and retains legal protections for DeFi developers. The committee will hold hearings and vote on the bill this Thursday. Committee Chairman Tim Scott stated that the bill prioritizes consumers and combats illicit finance. Ethics provisions are currently missing; Democrats are demanding content limiting officials' profits from the crypto industry, while the White House opposes provisions targeting the president. The bill is expected to be finalized by July 4th or the first week of August.
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee will hold a closed-door bipartisan briefing this Thursday on cryptocurrency taxation.
Market news: Musk will participate in Trump's trip to China as a member of the US delegation.
Project Updates
SlowMist monitoring has detected a highly sophisticated npm worm called "Mini Shai-Hulud," spreading through trusted developer projects such as TanStack, UiPath, and DraftLab. Attackers hijack GitHub credentials, release seemingly legitimate malicious package updates, inject a stealthy `router_init.js` script, and run silently within the CI/CD environment. This script specifically targets and steals sensitive data such as CI/CD keys, cloud infrastructure keys, and cryptocurrency wallets, and then uses the GitHub infrastructure to leak this data. Users are advised to audit their CI/CD pipelines for the presence of `router_init.js` files, rotate all exposed credentials, and closely monitor their development environments.
Upbit will list its VVV token on the Korean Won, BTC, and USDT markets.
South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit will list the VVV token on the Korean Won, BTC, and USDT markets. Trading will begin at 16:00 local time on May 12.
Binance will remove several spot trading pairs, including ATOM/FDUSD and AXS/BTC.
Binance will remove and cease trading the following spot trading pairs on May 15, 2026 at 11:00 AM (UTC+8): ATOM/FDUSD, AXS/BTC, CELO/BTC, GAS/BTC, MANTA/FDUSD, PYTH/BTC, SANTOS/BTC, SIGN/FDUSD, SOPH/FDUSD, XVS/BNB, and XVS/BTC.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the launch of Acton, a unified smart contract toolchain from TON, which improves development efficiency by 10 times, making smart contract creation, testing, and deployment easier, and is fully AI-ready. Acton is an all-in-one command-line tool built around the Tolk language, covering the entire process of project creation, testing, debugging, dApp integration, deployment, and verification.
Aptos will launch a native encrypted memory pool, pending governance approval.
Aptos has announced the launch of a native cryptographic mempool, which, pending governance approval, will make it the first Layer 1 blockchain to offer this feature, achieving full confidentiality of transaction intent without affecting transaction speed, and with trust assumptions consistent with the network itself.
BAYC launches a P2P marketplace, supporting transactions using APE tokens.
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has launched a P2P marketplace for trading BAYC apparel, collectibles, artwork, and various limited-edition club items. Users can directly buy and sell these items using APE tokens on ApeChain.
Anthropic has declared all unauthorized secondary market stock transactions invalid, including direct sales, beneficial interests, forward contracts, special purpose vehicles, and tokenized securities. Secondary trading platforms such as Forge Global and Hiive have been identified as unauthorized channels. Previously, secondary platforms valued Anthropic at approximately $1 trillion, exceeding its $380 billion valuation in its most recent major funding round.
Circle launches Agent Stack toolkit, enabling AI agents to autonomously use USDC funds.
USDC issuer Circle has launched the Agent Stack toolkit, enabling AI agents to autonomously hold funds, pay fees, and trade with USDC without human intervention. Core products include an agent wallet, command-line interface, agent marketplace, and a nanopayment protocol supporting microtransfers as small as $0.000001, with no gas fees. Circle co-founder Jeremy Allaire stated that Agent Stack is the first financial services suite to integrate AI agents themselves as clients.
The Bitcoin Ordinals browser Ord.io will shut down on June 1st.
Ord.io, the Bitcoin ordinals browser, has announced it will shut down on June 1st. The platform has served over one million users, and the team plans to upload its complete history of likes, replies, and public addresses to GitHub so that future ordinals browsing tools can be built based on this data.
The 21Shares Hyperliquid ETF will launch on May 12th, with the ticker symbol THYP.
21Shares US announced that the 21Shares Hyperliquid ETF will launch on May 12, 2026, under the ticker symbol THYP. Unlike most ETFs or mutual funds, this fund is not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and is not regulated by it. Investing in THYP involves significant risks and high volatility and is not suitable for investors who cannot afford to lose their entire investment. THYP does not directly invest in HYPE.
A US court has allowed Arbitrum DAO to transfer ETH related to rsETH to Aave LLC.
Aave disclosed in a statement that on May 1st, the plaintiff in another case ruled that the creditor had issued a restraining order against the Arbitrum DAO, attempting to freeze ETH locked after the rsETH incident. Aave LLC subsequently filed an emergency motion to have it revoked. On May 8th, the US court amended the restraining order, allowing the frozen ETH to be transferred to Aave LLC through an on-chain vote on Arbitrum. The restraining order will apply to Aave LLC after the asset transfer. The revised proposal retains the recovery intent approved by the Arbitrum DAO, and the ETH will still be used for the recovery of the rsETH incident. Aave LLC will comply with all court obligations during the litigation.
Investment and financing news
USDC issuer Circle raised $222 million in its pre-sale of native tokens for its new public blockchain, Arc, valuing the network at approximately $3 billion in a fully diluted manner. The round was led by a16z crypto, with participation from about ten institutions including BlackRock, Apollo Funds, ICE (the parent company of the NYSE), SBI Group, Janus Henderson, Standard Chartered Ventures, and ARK Invest. Arc is positioned as a public blockchain targeting institutional finance. Circle holds 25% of the initial 10 billion token supply and plans to generate revenue through validator operations, including transaction fees and staking income. 60% of the tokens will be distributed to participants building and using the Arc network, with 15% held as a long-term reserve. Circle will also launch tools and services around Arc to support AI agents using USDC for transactions and payments.
Augustus obtains a rare banking license from the U.S. OCC and raises $40 million.
Augustus, a new bank, has obtained a national banking license from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and completed a $40 million funding round. Founded in 2022, the bank already holds a European license to clear cross-border euro transactions. Its clients include the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, and it processes billions of euros annually, with a tenfold year-on-year growth. The OCC has previously issued such licenses to only a limited number of institutions. Augustus plans to restructure its cross-border clearing system using AI and stablecoins, bypassing the traditional correspondent banking model that relies on manual approvals. Its management team includes former OCC executives and former JPMorgan executives.
OpenAI has established its own OpenAI Deployment Company (DeployCo) to help enterprises deploy AI systems in their mission-critical operations. It has also agreed to acquire Tomoro, an applied AI consulting and engineering firm, bringing in approximately 150 forward-deployed engineers and deployment specialists. DeployCo has partnered with 19 global investment institutions and consulting firms, including TPG, Advent, Bain Capital, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and SoftBank Corp., raising over $4 billion in its initial funding round to expand operations and acquire related companies. DeployCo will deploy engineers within enterprises to diagnose, refactor, and integrate key processes, connecting OpenAI models with enterprise data, tools, and business processes to drive the large-scale application and transformation of AI across various industries.
Sources familiar with the matter revealed that Kraken's parent company, Payward, is raising a new round of funding at a valuation of $20 billion. The company has recently accelerated its acquisition pace, including the $600 million acquisition of stablecoin payment company Reap, the $550 million acquisition of digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial, and the $1.5 billion acquisition of retail futures platform NinjaTrader in 2025. Payward secretly filed a draft S-1 registration statement with the SEC last November, preparing for an IPO. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi stated last week that the company is "80% ready" to go public.
a16z invests $75 million in Circle's Arc Network.
a16z crypto announced a $75 million investment in ARC tokens for Circle's Arc blockchain network. a16z stated that stablecoins are becoming a core global financial infrastructure, with annual stablecoin trading volume reaching $9 trillion by 2025 and the supply of USD-denominated stablecoins exceeding $270 billion. Arc is positioned as an "economic operating system" for institutions, supporting EVM compatibility, sub-second settlement, configurable privacy and compliance auditing, and enabling cross-chain transfers through Circle CCTP. Arc has already secured support from over 200 partners, including Goldman Sachs, Visa, and Mastercard.
Sharplink and Galaxy plan to establish a $125 million on-chain revenue fund.
Sharplink and Galaxy Digital have signed a non-binding agreement to establish the $125 million Galaxy Sharplink Onchain Yield Fund. The fund will deploy ecosystem liquidity for high-quality DeFi protocols and generate risk-managed on-chain yields to increase Sharplink's ETH holdings per share. Sharplink plans to contribute $100 million of its own long-term capital, while Galaxy Digital will contribute $25 million and act as the investment manager. The fund will focus on on-chain liquidity strategies and early-stage protocol support.
Opinions & Analysis
CryptoQuant analyst MorenoDV analyzed that the Bitcoin Bull/Bear Cycle Indicator has turned into an "early bull market" signal for the first time since March 2023. Historically, this signal, appearing in 2019 and early 2023, indicated that the worst of the correction had passed and the market structure was beginning to recover. An exception occurred in March 2022, when the indicator also entered early bull market territory, but the price subsequently rejected it, confirming a local top rather than a new bull market. Regarding the current signal in May 2026, the analyst believes Bitcoin is no longer behaving as a deep bear market asset, and the recovery of the 30-day moving average indicates improving market momentum. However, several other market indicators have shown signs of fatigue, making this signal less clear than a classic early cycle confirmation. The analyst tends to believe this is more likely a local top than the start of a new bull market unless the price subsequently strongly confirms this move.
South Korean trader Definalist disclosed on-chain evidence suggesting that a wallet suspected to be an internal Upbit entity precisely purchased WIF and VVV before their launch announcements. In the WIF case, wallet 2dTe purchased WIF at 11:11:49 KST on May 6th, and Upbit listed it at 14:00:01 that same day. The wallet then sold WIF at 14:10:14, subsequently transferring the funds across chains to Arbitrum and going long on VVV on Hyperliquid. In the VVV case, address 0x4a purchased VVV at 00:04:45 on May 12th, and Upbit listed it at 14:00:13 that same day. The wallet then sold VVV at 14:05:21. Upbit previously denied insider trading, but this on-chain activity has raised market suspicions.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes stated that the Bitcoin bull market began on February 28th with the outbreak of the US-Iran war. AI capital expenditures, war spending, and investments in physical infrastructure by various countries to ensure supply chain security will drive unbridled expansion of fiat currency credit, from which Bitcoin will continue to benefit. Bitcoin has rebounded from its low of $60,000, and breaking the previous high of $126,000 is inevitable. He predicts that the upward trend will accelerate after Bitcoin breaks $90,000 and has raised Maelstrom's portfolio risk exposure to the maximum. Besides Hyperliquid and Zcash, his most favored altcoin is NEAR. He acknowledges that while it is currently a bull market, there will eventually be a time to sell, but not now.
Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee stated that the Ethereum supply has been in a state of "deflation" over the past year, and the purchases and staking by Ethereum crypto treasury companies have further amplified this trend.
Important data
Bhutan has transferred another 100 BTC ($8.1 million), bringing its total BTC sales since the beginning of the year to $230.39 million, leaving it with a remaining BTC value of $252 million, representing monthly sales of approximately $50 million. At the current rate of sale, its BTC will be exhausted by the end of September. If all of it were sold at current BTC prices, the on-chain profit would reach $767 million.
Roaring Kitty's posting and subsequent deletion of a tweet related to RKC caused the price of RKC to plummet by 90%. The RKC developer cashed out 6,260 SOL (approximately $611,000), having purchased 395.18 million RKC (39.52% of the total supply) using 20 SOL across 10 wallets, then sold all of it for 5,071 SOL (approximately $495,000), and received 1,209 SOL (approximately $118,000) through creator fees.
The Ondo project team transferred 150 million ONDO tokens (US$63.88 million) from its multisignature address, of which 21.338 million ONDO tokens (US$9.15 million) were transferred to Coinbase and Bybit.
Circle announced its Q1 2026 results: revenue of $694 million, and USDC circulation of $77 billion.
Circle announced its Q1 2026 results: Total revenue and reserve income reached $694 million, a 20% year-over-year increase; USDC circulation reached $77 billion, a 28% year-over-year increase; USDC on-chain transaction volume reached $21.5 trillion, a 263% year-over-year increase. Circle Payments Network's annualized transaction volume reached $8.3 billion, a 17% quarter-over-quarter increase; the Arc platform has accumulated 244.1 million transactions since its testnet launch in October 2025. Circle is building programmable internet financial infrastructure around the digital dollar, global payments, and the Agentic Economy.
Bitmine purchased 26,659 ETH last week, bringing its total ETH holdings to 5.2068 million.
Bitmine purchased 26,659 ETH last week, worth approximately $62.18 million. The company now holds a total of 5,206,790 ETH, worth approximately $12.15 billion, of which approximately 4,712,917 ETH are staked, worth approximately $11 billion. The company's total holdings of crypto assets and cash have reached $13.4 billion.
Tether issues 1 billion USDT on the Tron blockchain.
Tether Treasury minted 1 billion new USDT on the Tron chain, equivalent to approximately $999.6 million.
Strategy added 535 BTC last week, costing approximately $43 million.
Between May 5th and May 10th, 2026, Strategy purchased 535 BTC for approximately $43 million, at an average purchase price of approximately $80,340 per BTC. As of May 10th, 2026, the company held a total of 818,869 BTC, with a total purchase cost of approximately $61.86 billion and an average holding cost of approximately $75,540 per BTC. The year-to-date BTC return for 2026 is 9.4%.
The Matrixport-affiliated address sold another 103,678 HYPE tokens, bringing the total number of HYPE tokens sold to date to 303,678, earning approximately $12.79 million USDC, with an average transaction price of approximately $42.15. The address currently holds 99,612 HYPE tokens, equivalent to approximately $4.14 million at market value.
