Today's top news highlights:
The WLFI-linked wallet sold 4,870 ETH 8 hours ago, obtaining 10.61 million USDC.
Regulation & Macro
Iran: Mechanisms for managing the Strait of Hormuz are ready; details will be released soon.
The head of the Iranian Parliament's National Security Committee announced that Iran has prepared a mechanism to manage traffic in the Strait of Hormuz along designated routes, with details to be released soon. Only commercial vessels and parties cooperating with Iran will benefit from this process. Necessary fees will be charged to cover the professional services provided under this mechanism. The passage will remain closed to operators of the "Freedom Project."
Trump: The Save America Act must be passed now.
US President Trump stated that the "Save America Act" must pass now, and he will use the Housing Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to push it forward. Maryland has just exposed 500,000 fake mail-in ballots. As a nation, we can no longer tolerate this! Voter verification and citizenship verification must now be approved, and illegitimate mail-in voting must be stopped.
Over the past week, driven by soaring energy prices following the Iran war, US inflation data surged across the board, with several key indicators hitting multi-year highs. Traders have largely ruled out the possibility of a Fed rate cut this year, and bets on a rate hike this year have intensified. The minutes of the Fed's most recent meeting will be closely watched next week for signs of a strengthening rate hike signal. Uncertainty surrounding the Middle East situation remains a shadow hanging over global markets. Key events to watch next week: Monday: G7 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting; Tuesday: Fed Governor Waller's speech, US ADP employment change; Wednesday: Philadelphia Fed President Paulson's speech; Thursday: Fed monetary policy meeting minutes, US initial jobless claims, housing starts, building permits, Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index; Friday: final reading of the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index, final reading of one-year inflation expectations, Conference Board Leading Economic Index monthly rate. With the US and Israel reportedly potentially restarting strikes against Iran as early as next week, gold bulls may be in jeopardy, and bond market expectations for a rate hike are boiling over, as the final meeting minutes of the "Powell era" are released. In addition, the AI boom and consumer spending under inflationary pressure are the two core themes influencing the direction of the US stock market. Next week, Nvidia, Walmart and others will release their financial reports one after another.
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee passed the CLARITY Act (digital asset market structure legislation) by a 15-9 vote, advancing the bill to a full Senate vote. During the vote, Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) expressed support for moving the bill beyond the committee, but emphasized that committee "agreement" did not equate to a final vote of approval. Committee Chairman Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) announced a bipartisan compromise, incorporating five amendments proposed by Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), which ultimately passed the bill. In the final committee vote, only Gallego and Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) voted in favor, with both Democratic senators emphasizing that they had not yet guaranteed a full Senate vote. Next, the Banking Committee version needs to be reconciled with the version previously passed by the Agriculture Committee. Majority Leader Senator John Thune (R-SD) has scheduled a full Senate debate, which is expected to take about a week. If the timeline proceeds as scheduled, CLARITY is expected to complete Senate-House reconciliation and be sent to President Trump for signature by August. This committee vote indicates that the CLARITY Act still has bipartisan potential. The core outstanding issue is the "ethics clause," which concerns restrictions on the digital asset holdings or profits of senior government officials and related individuals. Other areas that may be subject to further negotiation include DeFi regulation and the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA). Overall, the CLARITY Act will lay the foundation for innovation and investor protection in the US digital asset market.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security issued a document titled "Beware of Online Fraud Targeting Minors," disclosing a new type of online fraud chain characterized by "game-based user acquisition + impersonation of public security, procuratorate, and court officials + virtual currency money laundering." Criminals use advertisements on games and social media platforms to lure minors into adding them as friends, then use intimidation and other means to steal funds from parents' accounts. The stolen funds are then split and withdrawn through black market platforms and used to purchase virtual currencies. These virtual currencies are not restricted by geographical location and can silently flow back to overseas fraud dens, achieving "physical isolation" of cross-border funds. The Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security reminds the public that public security, procuratorate, and court officials will never conduct cases online, will never intimidate or deduct funds, and will never ask for passwords or verification codes.
Project Updates
A whale who bought 807 BTC ($54.59 million) at $67,646 in February opted to take profits an hour ago, transferring 500 BTC ($39.04 million) to Binance. This whale has made a profit of $8.42 million on BTC: buying at $67,646 in February and transferring it to Binance today at $78,080.
After his Bitcoin and Ethereum long positions were liquidated, "Brother Machi" opened a new Ethereum long position with 25x leverage, currently holding 1275 ETH at a liquidation price of $2152.96. It is reported that Brother Machi suffered a total loss of $31.99 million in his previous liquidated long positions.
Machi Big Brother Huang Licheng has deposited 250,000 USDC into Hyperliquid to increase his 25x leveraged Ethereum long position.
Despite the market downturn, a BIT-linked whale that previously profited approximately $59 million continues to increase its long ETH positions. Currently, the whale holds a total of 114,160 ETH long positions through four wallets, with a holding value of approximately $248.65 million, and is currently experiencing a floating loss of approximately $10.3 million.
An Ethereum OG spent 4.26 million USDC to buy 1951 ETH today.
An Ethereum OG (Original Expert) bought ETH during a market downturn. Ten years ago, this OG received 11,005 ETH from ShapeShift at $3.46 per ETH. A little over a year ago, they sold these ETH at $2,777 per ETH, receiving 30.56 million USDC, a profit of $30.5 million, representing an 803-fold return. After today's ETH price drop, they resumed buying, having already spent 4.26 million USDC to purchase 1,951 ETH at $2,182 per ETH, and may continue buying.
The WLFI-linked wallet sold 4,870 ETH 8 hours ago, obtaining 10.61 million USDC.
The wallet associated with WLFI (0x77a5) sold 4,870 ETH at an average price of $2,178 eight hours ago, earning $10.61 million in USDC.
A suspected investment fund, Gamma Fund, transferred 5,480 ETH to Binance, worth $11.93 million.
An address suspected to belong to the investment fund Gamma Fund transferred 5,480 ETH to Binance, worth $11.93 million. In just over two days, they transferred 11,035 ETH ($24.46 million) to Binance, essentially selling all of the 11,215 ETH they bought at the bottom of $1,999 in March, making a profit of $2.4 million.
VanEck and Grayscale submitted amendments to their BNB ETF proposals on the same day.
On Friday (May 15), VanEck filed its fifth amendment to its BNB ETF registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), while Grayscale filed its second amendment to its Grayscale BNB ETF prospectus on the same day. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart stated that the synchronized actions of both companies indicate that they are responding to feedback from the SEC and may be planning to launch soon. Seyffart speculates that BNB may be the next crypto asset to pass SEC review and potentially list in the U.S. Meanwhile, Canary Capital separately filed an amendment to its proposal for a staking TRX ETF, which would package Tron staking yields into a regulated framework.
Interactive Brokers launches unified prediction market trading service
Brokerage giant Interactive Brokers announced the launch of a unified prediction market trading service, integrating Kalshi, CME Group, and ForecastEx. This allows users to trade multiple prediction market contracts within a single platform and interface, and manage assets such as stocks, options, forex, futures, cryptocurrencies, and bonds in a unified manner. The platform supports real-time viewing of liquidity, prices, and fees across exchanges, and provides unified portfolio management, real-time position tracking, and centralized reporting. It is currently open to eligible clients, and related Kalshi and CME contracts will be launched in phases.
Musk says he will not sell any SpaceX shares.
Elon Musk has stated that he will not sell any SpaceX shares. Reports indicate the company may publicly file for its long-awaited IPO as early as next week. Musk wrote in response to a user's post on the SpaceX platform, "Not a single share for me." The user had advised him to sell his shares after the lock-up period ended. According to sources familiar with the matter, the company, which operates in rockets, satellites, and artificial intelligence, may publicly file for its IPO as early as Wednesday. The company had previously filed documents secretly, planning to raise up to $75 billion at a valuation exceeding $2 trillion, which would have been the largest IPO in history.
Musk: The performance gap between Grok V8 and V9 is huge.
Musk stated that the newly completed Grok V9 (1.5T parameters) training run "performed exceptionally well," and this result does not yet include the supplementary training portion using Cursor data. The current internally developed base model version is V9, which represents a significant improvement over V8 in data cleaning, training methods, and model size, and is optimized for the Blackwell architecture to enhance computational efficiency. Musk emphasized that, in contrast, the current publicly released version v4.2, built on the V8 base model with approximately 0.5T parameters, runs on the Hopper architecture and still has limitations in terms of training data quality and coverage. The performance gap between Grok V8 and V9 is substantial, representing a leap forward in overall capabilities for the new generation model.
Investment and financing news
YZi Labs led an $11 million seed funding round for AI education platform VideoTutor.
YZi Labs led an $11 million seed funding round for AI education platform VideoTutor, supporting its product launch. VideoTutor's AI products can monitor, teach, and create unique learning experiences for each student.
BlackRock discusses investing billions of dollars in SpaceX's IPO.
Sources familiar with the matter revealed that BlackRock has discussed investing $5 billion to $10 billion in SpaceX's IPO next month. This massive investment, targeting an IPO that could raise up to $75 billion, would represent a vote of confidence from the world's largest asset management firm in Musk's company. This investment also reflects market participation in what will be the largest IPO in history, despite SpaceX's pursuit of an extremely high valuation and plans to leave investors with virtually no power to challenge management decisions.
Beneficiaries of Cerebras IPO Revealed: Foundation, Benchmark, and OpenAI All Profit
The IPO process of AI chip company Cerebras Systems has once again attracted market attention, with key beneficiaries including Foundation, renowned venture capital firm Benchmark, and OpenAI. Cerebras has long been considered a potential competitor to Nvidia, focusing on developing hyperscale AI chips. However, its commercialization process has been fraught with setbacks, with the company withdrawing its IPO prospectus in 2025, bringing its listing plans to a standstill. Nevertheless, with the continued rise in the AI infrastructure boom, the market is once again focusing on its potential listing value and early investor returns. Early investors, including Benchmark, and OpenAI, which has a partnership with the company, are all likely to reap substantial benefits from Cerebras' future IPO.
Opinions & Analysis
Analysts: Bond market sell-off looms, AI stock frenzy may be impacted.
Investors are enthusiastically chasing the surge in tech and AI stocks, but the market generally acknowledges that rising bond yields could derail the stock market. Most respondents pointed out that if the 30-year US Treasury yield remains consistently above 5%, it would pose a problem for AI stocks. Alexander Drabovic, Chief Investment Officer of Société Générale Wealth Management, called it a "danger zone" for the stock market. Kevin Toze of Camignac Investment Committee stated that long-term US Treasury yields are at a critical intersection of AI capital expenditures and private credit financing costs, impacting the cost of financing government deficits and potentially having a "negative impact" on household wealth. Benoît Pelouy, Chief Investment Officer of Natixis Wealth Management, said, "While the stock market sentiment is bullish, interest rates are still climbing." He warned that if yields continue to rise, the market could face a "reality test."
Bloomberg analysts: Cerebras ETF launched in a flash, ETF issuance cycle compressed to the extreme.
Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart stated that the 2x leveraged Cerebras Systems ETF (ticker symbol: CBRG) has officially started trading, while its underlying asset, CBRS, only began trading the previous afternoon. This means that the leveraged ETF was launched within just a few hours of each other, setting an extremely fast product launch record. This "rapid follow-up" ETF issuance model is accelerating, and similar rapid issuance paths may emerge for leveraged ETFs on non-listed or highly popular assets such as SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI in the future. This reflects a significant increase in the speed of productization in the ETF market for new asset exposures.
Chainalysis disclosed the source tracing of the THORChain attack, revealing that wallets suspected of being associated with the attackers had been transferring funds through Monero, Hyperliquid, and THORChain for several weeks prior to the attack. As early as the end of April, the attacker-linked wallets deposited Hyperliquid funds into Hyperliquid positions via the privacy bridges of Hyperliquid and Monero. These funds were subsequently converted to USDC and transferred to Arbitrum, then bridged to Ethereum. Some of the ETH was then transferred to THORChain to stake RUNE on a newly added node, which is believed to be the source of the attack. Afterward, the attackers bridged some RUNE back to Ethereum and split it into four links. One link went directly to the attackers, and after being transferred through an intermediary wallet, 8 ETH was transferred to the wallet that ultimately received the stolen funds 43 minutes before the attack. The funds in the other three links flowed in the opposite direction. From May 14th to 15th, these wallets again bridged ETH back to Arbitrum, deposited it into Hyperliquid, and transferred it to Monero via the same privacy bridge. This last transaction occurred less than 5 hours before the attack began. As of Friday afternoon, the stolen funds have not yet been used, but the attackers have demonstrated their sophisticated cross-chain money laundering capabilities, and the Hyperliquid to Monero path may be the next step.
Important data
Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy's largest bank, more than doubled its cryptocurrency exposure in the first quarter of this year, increasing its holdings from approximately $100 million at the end of 2025 to approximately $235 million. The growth was primarily driven by expanded Bitcoin holdings. The bank increased its holdings in the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF and the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, and also made its first foray into the Ethereum space through the BlackRock iShares Staking Ethereum Trust, purchasing approximately $26 million worth of XRP through the Grayscale XRP Trust ETF. The bank also established a position in iShares Bitcoin Trust call options, marking its first foray into derivatives. The bank stated that its cryptocurrency positions are used for proprietary trading purposes but has not disclosed whether they are also used to hedge products offered to professional clients.
Sovereign wealth funds, universities, and banks recently released their 13F filings for the first quarter of 2026. Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, increased its holdings in the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) from 12,702,323 shares to 14,721,917 shares, adding over $90 million to its holdings, bringing its total holdings to nearly $660 million. The Abu Dhabi Investment Committee maintained its IBIT holdings at 8,218,712 shares, valued at $315.8 million. Harvard University's endowment fund held 3,044,612 IBIT shares, valued at approximately $117 million, a 43% decrease from the end of 2025, and completely liquidated its $86.8 million position in the BlackRock Ethereum Spot ETF established in the previous quarter. Dartmouth College holds 201,531 IBIT shares, valued at slightly over $9 million, unchanged from the previous quarter. It also moved its Ethereum ETF holdings from the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust to the Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF, maintaining its position at 178,148 shares. Furthermore, it disclosed for the first time its holdings of 304,803 Bitwise Solana Staking ETF shares, valued at nearly $3.67 million. Brown University maintained its IBIT holdings at 212,500 shares, while Emory University liquidated its 4,450 IBIT holdings and increased its Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust holdings to 1,354,148 shares. Royal Bank of Canada increased its IBIT holdings and added options hedging, Scotiabank increased its holdings by 214,370 IBIT shares, Barclays holds approximately 4.46 million IBIT cash shares and a large number of options, and Laure Hong Kong reduced its IBIT holdings to 6,846,279 shares.
Nasdaq-listed HYPE treasury company Hyperion DeFi released its Q1 financial report, disclosing a net profit of $8.8 million, an improvement from the $39.8 million net loss in Q4 2025. Since the end of Q1, it has increased its holdings of approximately 60,000 HYPE tokens, bringing its total HYPE holdings to over 2 million. Its validator nodes have delegated 10.2 million HYPE, ranking among the top six validator nodes, second only to the Hyperliquid Foundation. In addition, the company also holds 1.92 million KNTQ tokens and 10 million HPL tokens.
