Today's top news highlights:

Regulation & Macro

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit China from May 19 to 20.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay a state visit to China from May 19 to 20.

Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives wrote to Trump, urging him to appoint the complete list of CFTC commissioners.

Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives have written to President Trump, urging the appointment of a full list of CFTC commissioners, including two new commissioners from each party. Currently, the CFTC has only one commissioner, Republican Chairman Mike Selig, and lawmakers believe a full commission would better serve the public, especially as the CFTC assumes new responsibilities for cryptocurrency regulation.

CME and the NYSE are urging U.S. regulators to regulate Hyperliquid, citing concerns about market manipulation and sanctions evasion.

The CME Group and the NYSE are pushing U.S. regulators to strengthen oversight of Hyperliquid, citing concerns about market manipulation, lack of transparency, and potential sanctions evasion risks.

Interest rate futures indicate that there is a greater than 50% probability of a Federal Reserve rate hike in January next year.

US interest rate futures indicate that there is a greater than 50% probability that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by January next year.

Iranian Foreign Minister: Iran does not seek to develop nuclear weapons

Iran's foreign minister stated that Iran is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons, and that the Strait of Hormuz is jointly managed by Iran and Oman, open to commercial vessels from friendly countries, with the exception of hostile nations; passage requires coordination with the Iranian military. Trump stated he accepts a 20-year moratorium on Iran's nuclear program, but only if it is a genuine commitment, and claimed a complete victory in the military operation against Iran.

Project Updates

After his long positions in ETH and BTC were liquidated, Maggie re-entered long positions in ETH, and his total losses are now close to $32 million.

Maggie's long positions in ETH (25x leverage) and BTC (40x leverage) were completely liquidated. The BTC position ultimately turned a profit, while the ETH position incurred a loss. After liquidation, he reopened a long position of 1275 ETH, resulting in a total loss of approximately $32 million.

Binance Futures will launch multiple USDT-margined TradFi perpetual contracts on May 18th.

Binance Futures will launch perpetual contracts for FLNCUSDT, DRAMUSDT, and RKLBUSDT on May 18, with maximum leverage of 10x, 20x, and 10x respectively.

BlackRock withdrew 1,768 bitcoins from Coinbase approximately 5 hours ago, worth over $140 million.

About five hours ago, BlackRock withdrew 1,768 bitcoins from Coinbase, worth $140.3 million.

Machi closed out most of his long positions in ETH and BTC, incurring a cumulative loss of nearly $32 million.

Machi closed out most of his long positions in ETH and BTC, with ETH positions leveraged at 25x and BTC positions at 40x. Some positions were liquidated, resulting in a total loss of nearly $32 million. The remaining positions were worth approximately $10 million.

Luo Yonghao denies participating in, promoting, or endorsing any virtual currency projects.

Luo Yonghao stated that he has never participated in, promoted, or endorsed any cryptocurrency projects, and all accounts using his name, avatar, or image are fake. Previously, Luo Yonghao had requested Binance to remove the coin with the same name, Meme, and Binance Wallet has already blocked it.

Bitmine appears to have increased its ETH holdings by nearly $200 million.

Ethereum treasury company Bitmine appears to have significantly increased its holdings after ETH fell to around $2,200. An hour ago, 89,026 ETH ($198 million) were withdrawn from Kraken and FalconX to four wallets suspected to be Bitmine's.

Strategy will repurchase $1.5 billion of its 2029 convertible bonds, with an expected cash payment of $1.38 billion.

Strategy announced a private transaction with certain holders of its 0% convertible senior notes due in 2029 to repurchase approximately $1.5 billion in principal amount of notes. The expected cash repurchase price is approximately $1.38 billion, funded by cash reserves, ATM issuance, or the sale of Bitcoin. The transaction is expected to close on May 19, leaving approximately $1.5 billion in outstanding notes.

THORChain: Asgard vault attacked, resulting in approximately $10.7 million in losses; trading functionality suspended.

THORChain suspended trading functionality due to an attack on Asgard Vault, with initial estimates of losses at approximately $10.7 million, primarily from the protocol's own funds; user funds were unaffected. The network has automatically ceased signing activities, affected nodes have had their RUNE staked reduced, the churn mechanism and new chain integrations suspended, and node operators are required to inspect their infrastructure and submit logs.

Sources say SpaceX will determine its offering price as early as June 11, with shares listing on June 12.

According to sources, SpaceX will determine its IPO price as early as June 11 and list on June 12, choosing Nasdaq with the ticker symbol "SPCX".

Multicoin Capital transferred 286,000 AAVE to Coinbase Prime, worth approximately $26.68 million.

Multicoin Capital transferred 286,000 AAVE (approximately $26.68 million) to Coinbase Prime, including 98,000 AAVE withdrawn from multiple exchanges five hours earlier and 188,000 AAVE that remained from the previous transaction.

Kelp: The rsETH protocol is fully operational again; deposits and withdrawals have resumed.

Kelp DAO has announced the full restoration of the rsETH protocol, with mainnet and L2 deposit and withdrawal functions reopened, and rsETH asset backing fully restored. Cumulative staking yields have been updated with exchange rates, and EIGEN rewards are now available for collection. Previously, Kelp DAO suffered a security incident involving nearly $300 million, raising concerns about liquidity risks on Aave.

Payward lays off 150 employees to streamline operations in preparation for Kraken's IPO.

Kraken's parent company, Payward, laid off approximately 150 employees as part of a pre-IPO business optimization plan, bringing its total workforce to around 3,000. Payward is seeking to raise approximately $20 billion at a valuation and is accelerating its acquisition expansion, having already acquired Reap, Bitnomial, and NinjaTrader. The company secretly filed for an SEC listing in November 2025, planning to relaunch its IPO once market conditions improve.

Circle minted an additional 250 million USDC on Solana.

A whale deposited $8.8 million USDC into Hyperliquid and opened a $7.6 million short position in HYPE.

A whale deposited $8.8 million USDC into Hyperliquid and shorted 175,082 HYPE tokens with 10x leverage, with a position valued at approximately $7.62 million. It is still adding to its position.

PeckShield: THORChain suffered approximately $10 million in losses due to the attack.

PeckShield monitoring indicates that THORChain suffered a loss of approximately $10 million, including 36.75 BTC (approximately $3 million) and approximately $7 million in assets from the BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Base networks. The stolen funds were primarily held in specific BTC and EVM addresses.

MSX will launch its second pre-IPO offering on May 16, opening subscriptions for Anthropic and Polymarket.

RWA trading platform MSX's second pre-IPO round will open for subscription on May 16, listing Anthropic (subscription price $855, valuation $950 billion) and Polymarket (subscription price $152, valuation $15 billion). The first round, Cerebras, has already completed the closed loop from pre-IPO to IPO, with user returns exceeding 300%.

THORChain suffered a suspected attack resulting in losses exceeding $7.4 million; trading on the protocol has been suspended.

The cross-chain protocol THORChain is suspected of being attacked on the Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Base networks, with potential losses exceeding $7.4 million. The community initiated a global emergency halt after discovering abnormal transfers by TC Router, and transaction functionality has been suspended.

Investment and financing news

AI trading lab Nof1 raises $15 million in funding, co-led by SUI Group and Karatage.

AI trading lab Nof1 has raised $15 million in funding, co-led by SUI Group and Karatage. Its Alpha Arena project tests the autonomous trading capabilities of cutting-edge models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI, and plans to launch a consumer-facing marketplace coding agent platform after the second quarter.

Opinions & Analysis

Binance Research: Approximately 11% of illicit cryptocurrency transactions were detected in 2025, a detection rate 55 times higher than that of fiat currency transactions.

A Binance Research report states that approximately 11% of illicit cryptocurrency transactions will be detected in 2025, a detection rate about 55 times that of fiat currency. The United Nations estimates the global detection rate for illicit fiat currency transactions to be less than 1%. Even excluding the Prince Group case, the detection rate for cryptocurrencies is still about 10 times that of traditional finance. The report also indicates that 8.3% to 13.2% of stolen funds will be recovered or frozen in 2025, reflecting rapid coordination among exchanges, issuers, and law enforcement. The report concludes that cryptocurrencies are not a safe haven for illicit finance.

Berkshire Hathaway significantly increased its stake in Alphabet in Q1 and liquidated its Amazon holdings.

Berkshire Hathaway increased its holdings in Alphabet by over 36 million shares in the first quarter, raising its stake to 5.93%; it liquidated its positions in Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, and UnitedHealth; reduced its holdings in Chevron and Bank of America; and established a position in Delta Air Lines with 39.8 million shares, valued at approximately $2.65 billion. Its Apple holdings remained unchanged. In the first quarter, its US stock holdings were valued at $26.3 billion, with purchases of approximately $16 billion and sales of approximately $24 billion, resulting in net sales of $8.15 billion. The number of holdings decreased from 42 to 29.

Bridgewater Associates released its latest 13F filing, announcing it increased its holdings in chip stocks and reduced its holdings in software stocks.

Bridgewater Associates established new positions in 214 stocks, increased holdings in 292, liquidated 261, and reduced holdings in 487 during the first quarter. It significantly increased its holdings in chip stocks such as Nvidia, Broadcom, and Micron Technology, while liquidating its holdings in software stocks such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, and reducing its holdings in Adobe. The total market value of its holdings was $22.4 billion, a decrease of $5 billion from the previous quarter. Nvidia's holdings rose to 3.65%, Broadcom to 2.54%, and Micron Technology to 2.23%. It also established its first position in TSMC with 1.077 million shares, representing 1.62% of its portfolio.

Bloomberg: AI hacking threat is pushing the $130 billion DeFi industry to the brink of risk.

Bloomberg reported that two DeFi attacks in April 2026, targeting Drift Protocol and Kelp DAO, resulted in nearly $600 million in losses and triggered an outflow of approximately $9 billion from protocols such as Aave. Investigators at TRM Labs stated that North Korean hacking groups may have used AI to assist attacks, with the AI reducing vulnerability discovery time from months to days. Anthropic has not fully released its AI model Mythos due to cybersecurity risks; its research indicates that by 2025, over half of blockchain attacks could theoretically be autonomously carried out by AI.

Important data

Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a net outflow of $290 million yesterday, with none of the twelve ETFs experiencing net inflows.

On May 15th, Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $290 million, with none of the twelve ETFs experiencing net inflows. BlackRock's IBIT saw a net outflow of $136 million, compared to a historical total net inflow of $65.781 billion; Ark Invest and 21Shares' ARKB saw net outflows of $52.4817 million, compared to a historical total net inflow of $1.389 billion. As of press time, Bitcoin spot ETFs had a total net asset value of $104.289 billion, a net asset value ratio of 6.58%, and a historical cumulative net inflow of $58.34 billion.

Ethereum spot ETFs saw a net outflow of $65.6497 million yesterday, marking the fifth consecutive day of net outflows.

On May 15th, the Ethereum spot ETF saw a total net outflow of $65.6497 million, marking the fifth consecutive day of net outflows. BlackRock's ETHA saw a net outflow of $50.3527 million, with a historical total net inflow of $11.812 billion; Fidelity's FETH saw a net outflow of $11.0772 million, with a historical total net inflow of $2.197 billion. The Ethereum spot ETF has a total net asset value of $12.929 billion, a net asset ratio of 4.83%, and a historical cumulative net inflow of $11.832 billion.

Four wallets withdrew over 89,000 ETH from FalconX and Kraken, worth nearly $200 million.

Four wallets withdrew 89,026 ETH from FalconX and Kraken, worth $197.85 million.

Nvidia's early losses widened to 3.7%, its biggest drop since April 30.

Nvidia's early trading losses widened to 3.7%, its biggest drop since April 30.

Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 3.12% to 136.61 T.

Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 3.12% to 136.61 T at block height 949,536, with an average hashrate of 993.81 EH/s over the past seven days.

Bitdeer maintained zero Bitcoin holdings and sold 198.3 BTC this week.

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