Today's top news highlights:

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) plans to severely punish Tiger Brokers, Futu, and Changqiao in accordance with the law.

Binance will add watch tags to several tokens, including ALCX, COOKIE, and DODO.

Eight departments, including the China Securities Regulatory Commission, have announced a complete crackdown on illegal cross-border operations by overseas securities, futures, and fund management institutions.

Binance will list Genius Terminal (GENIUS) and OpenGradient (OPG) and add seed tags to them.

Perp DEX and PopDEX have raised $30 million in funding, led by Foresight Ventures.

F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun will participate in SpaceX's first manned interplanetary mission to explore space beyond the Earth-Moon system.

Ethereum's L2 network, Zero Network, will be shut down, joining the recent wave of protocol shutdowns.

Glassnode: Nearly $500 billion worth of Bitcoin faces the risk of future quantum computing attacks.

Regulation & Macro

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) plans to severely punish Tiger Brokers, Futu, and Changqiao in accordance with the law.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has initiated an investigation into Tiger Brokers (NZ) Limited, Futu Securities International (Hong Kong) Limited, and Changqiao Securities (Hong Kong) Limited for their illegal securities business operations within China and has issued a prior notice of administrative penalties. Tiger Brokers, Futu, and Changqiao, without CSRC approval and without obtaining licenses for securities brokerage or securities margin trading, conducted securities trading marketing and promotion, processed trading orders, and other related securities business services within China, obtaining related profits. This violates Article 120 of the Securities Law and constitutes illegal securities business operations. Based on Articles 202 of the Securities Law, 136 of the Securities Investment Fund Law, and 132 of the Futures and Derivatives Law, the CSRC intends to confiscate all illegal gains of Tiger Brokers, Futu, and Changqiao and impose severe penalties according to law. The parties involved have the right to make statements, defenses, and request hearings regarding the proposed administrative penalties. The CSRC will fully consider the opinions of the parties before making an administrative penalty decision in accordance with the law.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and eight other departments jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for Comprehensive Rectification of Illegal Cross-border Securities, Futures, and Fund Management Activities." The overall requirement of the plan is to completely eliminate illegal cross-border operations by overseas securities, futures, and fund management institutions after two years of concentrated rectification, achieving the rectification goal of "resolutely eliminating illegal activities and steadily clearing existing ones." The targets of the rectification include overseas institutions illegally operating securities, futures, and fund businesses across borders; domestic affiliates or partners assisting overseas institutions in such illegal operations; illegal intermediaries soliciting domestic investors; and internet platforms and online self-media that illegally publish information. Illegal cross-border operations by overseas institutions will be shut down according to law. Violations of laws and regulations concerning foreign exchange management, anti-money laundering, cybersecurity and information management, and personal information protection by relevant entities will also be included in the rectification scope.

The White House postpones the signing ceremony of Trump's executive order on AI and cybersecurity.

The White House has postponed a ceremony scheduled for today for President Trump to sign a new executive order on AI and cybersecurity. CEOs of several major technology, AI, and cybersecurity companies were originally invited to attend the signing ceremony this afternoon. There have been internal disagreements within the White House regarding the executive order. The reasons for the postponement and the new date have not yet been announced, and the White House has not yet responded to requests for comment.

US lawmakers have introduced the "US Reserve Modernization Act," which proposes locking up Bitcoin as a long-term reserve asset for at least 20 years.

U.S. Representative Nick Begich introduced the "American Reserve Modernization Act," which already has 16 original co-sponsors. The bill would establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve, consolidating federally held digital assets and locking them up as long-term reserve assets for at least 20 years. The bill also explores budget-neutral Bitcoin acquisition strategies while protecting the reserve from future government and congressional liquidation efforts. The media commentator noted that the "American Reserve Modernization Act" would formally enact the strategic Bitcoin reserve previously established by Trump through executive orders.

Warsh will be sworn in as the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve at 11 p.m. tonight.

The swearing-in ceremony for the new Federal Reserve Chairman, Warsh, will be held at 11:00 a.m. on May 22 (23:00 Beijing time).

US SEC Commissioner: Tokenized stock "innovation exemption" applies only to currently tradable stocks on the secondary market.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner Hester Peirce wrote on the X platform that there has been an overinterpretation of the proposed "innovation exemption" for on-chain trading of stocks in a tokenized national market system. Peirce stated that she has always expected the exemption to be limited to facilitating the trading of digital representations of the same underlying equity securities that investors can currently purchase on the secondary market, rather than the trading of synthetic securities. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas commented that he was not surprised by the expectation of tokenization and maintained his view that tokenization will (at least in the short term) merely distribute stocks and ETFs to on-chain users, serving more as a distribution channel than a disruptive force for ETFs.

The German Bundestag has rejected a proposal to increase taxes on cryptocurrencies.

The German Bundestag's Finance Committee rejected a Green Party proposal to increase taxes on cryptocurrencies, which would have eliminated the tax exemption for selling cryptocurrencies held for more than a year. Currently, German law exempts proceeds from the sale of cryptocurrencies held for more than a year from capital gains tax. The Green Party argued that this provision was unreasonable and that crypto assets should be treated the same as other investments. However, critics pointed out that the proposal would place a higher tax burden on crypto investors than on traditional stock investors. The ruling coalition's CDU/CSU believes the proposal does not close loopholes but may create new ones. The SPD hopes to await its own proposal from the Finance Minister. The Green Party estimates that eliminating the tax exemption would generate approximately €11.4 billion in additional tax revenue annually.

Project Updates

Binance will add watch tags to several tokens, including ALCX, COOKIE, and DODO.

Based on a recent review, Binance will add the watchlist label to the following tokens on May 22, 2026: Alchemix (ALCX), Cookie DAO (COOKIE), DODO (DODO), Epic Chain (EPIC), Heima (HEI), Hashflow (HFT), Storj (STORJ), Synapse (SYN), and Alien Worlds (TLM). Watchlist-labeled tokens may have higher volatility and risk compared to other listed tokens, and Binance will closely monitor and continuously review them. Trading these watchlist-labeled tokens carries risk; these tokens may no longer meet listing standards and could be delisted.

Polymarket's UMA CTF adapter contract was attacked on Polygon, resulting in losses exceeding $520,000.

Chain detective ZachXBT revealed that Polymarket's UMA CTF adapter contract appears to have been attacked on Polygon, with over $520,000 stolen so far.

Binance will list Genius Terminal (GENIUS) and OpenGradient (OPG) and add seed tags to them.

Binance will list Genius Terminal (GENIUS) and OpenGradient (OPG) on May 22, 2026 at 19:00 (UTC+8) and open the following spot trading pairs: GENIUS/USDT, GENIUS/USDC, GENIUS/TRY, OPG/USDT, OPG/USDC, and OPG/TRY. GENIUS and OPG deposits are now open; withdrawals are expected to open on May 23, 2026 at 19:00 (UTC+8).

THORChain has released a recovery plan for the attack incident, and node operator voting has begun.

THORChain has released its fourth update regarding the May 15th attack. Proposal ADR028 has been published, and node operator voting has begun. According to the recovery plan, the protocol will first absorb the losses through its own liquidity, with the remaining portion shared by synthetic asset holders; the specific allocation ratio is still under evaluation. The protocol's own liquidity will be reduced to zero, and will be gradually replenished through system revenue. This plan will not issue or sell RUNE, nor will it dilute any holders. Technically, GG20 is temporarily retained and has been patched and upgraded. Trading will resume after the vulnerability is fixed and node rotation is successful. Future releases will adopt a slower, more security-conscious pace. Innocent nodes in the same vault as the attacker will be protected, while the attacker's node will be fully forfeited. Recovered RUNE will be paired with recovered assets, and any excess will be destroyed. The protocol also provides a white-hat bounty to the attacker to recover funds; if some funds are recovered, the recovery plan will be adjusted proportionally. THORChain remains neutral and permissionless; it will not censor the attacker's Swap transactions after trading resumes. Node operators are currently voting on the direction of the proposal. The numbers in the ADR are only indicative and will be adjusted later by Mimir.

Circle: Tokenized Bitcoin cirBTC, backed 1:1 by native Bitcoin, is coming soon.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire announced on the X platform that cirBTC is coming soon. Circle Wrapped Bitcoin (cirBTC) is a tokenized Bitcoin backed 1:1 by native Bitcoin, issued by Circle on the Ethereum mainnet and Arc network. Each cirBTC is backed by a 1:1 reserve of native Bitcoin, which is held in custody by a regulated entity within the Circle Group.

F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun will participate in SpaceX's first manned interplanetary mission to explore space beyond the Earth-Moon system.

SpaceX announced that Fram2 mission commander Chun Wang will participate in Starship's first crewed interplanetary mission. This two-year mission will explore space beyond the Earth-Moon system, followed by a flyby of Mars and a return to Earth. Prior to this interplanetary mission, Wang will join Dennis and Akiko Tito on Starship's first commercial crewed lunar flyby mission. The week-long lunar flyby will help advance Starship's systems for deep-space, long-duration missions, and is planned to fly within 200 kilometers of the lunar surface.

Ethereum's L2 network, Zero Network, will be shut down, joining the recent wave of protocol shutdowns.

Ethereum Layer 2 network Zero Network has announced its closure after a year and a half of operation. The network, which focused on gas-free transactions, launched in November 2024. The team stated that the vision of building a gas-free rollup remains valid, but maintaining an independent blockchain is not the right path to achieving this vision. Therefore, resources will be refocused on Zerion's API and wallet services. The team assured users that their assets are safe, but users must transfer NFTs, ETH, or other tokens across chains by the end of July; deposits are currently suspended.

Warning: Scam groups are impersonating Jupiter to airdrop fake CJUP tokens, luring users to phishing websites.

Fraud rings are impersonating Jupiter, airdropping fake CJUP tokens into wallets, and luring users to connect to fraudulent websites to steal their assets.

The Verus cross-chain bridge attacker returned 75% of the stolen funds and retained 25% as a bug bounty.

The Verus cross-chain bridge attackers have returned 4,052.4 ETH, approximately $8.5 million, to the team address, representing 75% of the total stolen amount. The remaining 25%, or approximately 1,350 ETH, is still held in the attackers' wallet as a bounty. Previously, on May 18th, it was reported that the Verus-Ethereum cross-chain bridge was attacked, resulting in a loss of approximately $11.58 million.

Coinbase will launch its first batch of perpetual stock index futures on June 8.

Coinbase announced the launch of its first batch of perpetual stock index futures on June 8th, offering four thematic contracts under the CFTC regulatory framework: AI10 Index, China10 Index, Defense10 Index, and Technology100 Index. These contracts provide targeted thematic exposure, employ a perpetual structure, and use a funding rate mechanism to closely link futures prices to the underlying index. They can be traded 24/7 on regulated U.S. futures exchanges. As futures contracts, these products enjoy a 60/40 tax treatment. The AI10 Index tracks the top ten U.S.-listed AI companies, requiring at least 50% of their revenue to come from AI infrastructure, data, and applications. It is weighted by free-float market capitalization with a 15% weight cap and is rebalanced quarterly. The China10 Index tracks the top ten U.S.-listed Chinese depositary receipts, selected based on average free-float market capitalization and trading volume, with a 15% weight cap and quarterly rebalance. The Defense10 Index tracks the top ten aerospace and defense companies, requiring at least 50% of their revenue to come from defense business. It is weighted by free-float market capitalization with a 15% weight cap and quarterly rebalance. The Tech 100 Index tracks the top 100 innovative companies on Nasdaq, covering eight major sectors including technology, communications, consumer goods, and industrials. It selects and rebalances companies based on their free float market capitalization to the top 100, with no concentration cap and quarterly rebalancing.

Cryptocurrency exchange Blockchain.com filed a confidential IPO application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Blockchain.com Group Holdings Inc., a long-established cryptocurrency exchange, has filed a confidential S-1 document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), planning to go public in the United States. The company has not yet determined the number of shares to be offered or the pricing range, and the IPO is subject to market conditions and regulatory approval progress. Sources familiar with the matter say that Blockchain.com aims to complete the listing this year. Headquartered in Dallas, the company has approximately 500 employees and has been profitable on an adjusted basis for the past three years. It currently supports over 95 million wallets and more than 43 million confirmed accounts.

Binance launches the 64th HODLer airdrop project, Gensyn (AIGENSYN).

Binance has launched the 64th HODLer Airdrops project, Gensyn (AIGENSYN), to distribute airdrop rewards to users who subscribe to Simple Earn (flexible or fixed deposit) and/or On-Chain Yields products between 00:00 on May 4, 2026 and 23:59 on May 6, 2026 (UTC). The total supply of Gensyn is 10 billion, with both Genesis and the maximum supply being 10 billion. This HODLer airdrop rewards 100 million BNB, and the circulating supply at Binance's listing will be 13.04%, or 1.304 billion BNB. AIGENSYN will deploy contracts on the Ethereum and Gensyn networks. The maximum BNB holding percentage for a single user is 4%. Rewards will be distributed to eligible users' spot accounts within 5 hours of this announcement. Participation requires completion of KYC and not being from a restricted region.

Investment and financing news

Perp DEX and PopDEX have raised $30 million in funding, led by Foresight Ventures.

PopDEX, a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform, has announced the completion of a $30 million funding round led by Foresight Ventures. The team stated that the funding will be used to inject initial liquidity into the project, improve trading depth and capital efficiency, accelerate product development, and expand the team and market reach. PopDEX is a trader-centric decentralized perpetual contract trading platform that focuses on capital efficiency, trading experience, and value distribution mechanisms, aiming to build an on-chain derivatives trading platform driven by real trading contributions. PopDEX is currently in internal testing.

AI startup Hark completes $700 million Series A funding round at a $6 billion valuation, led by Parkway Venture Capital.

AI startup Hark announced the completion of a Series A funding round exceeding $700 million, valuing the company at approximately $6 billion post-money. The round was led by Parkway Venture Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, AMD Ventures, ARK Invest, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures. The funding will be used to develop a "personal intelligence" AI assistant, combining self-developed large-scale models with customized hardware to build a universal interface for human-computer interaction. Hark has secured computing resources and plans to train its next-generation models in the newly built NVIDIA B200 data center. The company is also expanding its team from approximately 70 to 200 engineers to accelerate the development of its integrated hardware and software AI computing platform.

Following its failed acquisition attempt by Meta, Manus plans to raise $1 billion to repurchase its share buyback program and seek a Hong Kong listing.

Manus' three founders are exploring various options to meet Beijing's demand to withdraw its acquisition from Meta, including raising approximately $1 billion from external investors to repurchase the Chinese-founded agentic AI business at a valuation at least equal to or higher than Meta's initial acquisition price of $2 billion. Sources familiar with the matter say the founders may personally cover the difference and plan to establish a joint venture in China with new investors, subsequently seeking a Hong Kong listing. Negotiations are still in the early stages and several obstacles remain, including how to separate the deeply integrated Manus technology and team from Meta's systems, and the specific arrangements for the transaction structure.

Opinions & Analysis

Analysis: Coinbase premium falls to monthly low as institutional selling pressure intensifies.

The Coinbase premium, a key metric for measuring institutional participation in the crypto market, has fallen into deeper negative territory, indicating increased selling pressure from institutions. The premium has been mostly negative since the end of April, accelerating its decline over the past seven days, reaching a monthly low of -0.0983% on May 21. CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost stated that the recent intensification of institutional selling pressure suggests that institutional and professional investors trading on Coinbase Advanced are selling more aggressively than those on Binance. Since May 14, US spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen net outflows for four consecutive trading days, totaling $1.3 billion. Open interest in Bitcoin futures and perpetual contracts has decreased by approximately $1.5 billion this week. Bitcoin has fallen 4.5% over the past week, hitting a monthly low above $76,000 on Tuesday.

Mark Cuban says he has sold most of his Bitcoin due to disappointment at the failed hedging narrative.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban has said he has sold most of his Bitcoin holdings due to waning confidence in Bitcoin as a hedge against fiat currency devaluation and geopolitical instability. In a podcast, Cuban stated his disappointment stems from the sharp rise in gold prices following the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, while Bitcoin fell, and the failure of Bitcoin to rise when the dollar weakened. Cuban, who previously described Bitcoin as a better version of gold and whose crypto portfolio comprises approximately 60% Bitcoin, now expresses greater disappointment with Bitcoin than with Ethereum, referring to most other cryptocurrencies as "garbage."

Former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist has proposed raising $1 billion to form a new Ethereum advocacy organization.

Former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist published an article on the X platform proposing the formation of a new organization aligned with the Ethereum economy to "save" Ethereum. He argues that the Ethereum Foundation currently holds less than 0.1% of ETH, with no staking or fee revenue inflow. Therefore, the new organization needs to raise at least $1 billion, be managed by competent leaders, with some funding from staking revenue, and have a more responsible board to drive up the price of Ethereum. Feist left the foundation last year to join the Layer 1 network Tempo. He co-created the Danksharding sharding design to improve Layer 2 scalability within the Ethereum community, was appointed a strategic advisor on L1 scaling and user experience during the foundation's leadership reorganization, and proposed EIP-9698, which would increase gas limits by 100 times.

Important data

A whale sold off 8,424 ETH at a loss one hour ago, incurring a loss of $2.25 million.

Whale nemorino.eth sold off 8,424 ETH (worth $17.9 million) at a loss one hour ago, incurring a loss of $2.25 million. Earlier this month, when ETH rebounded, it borrowed stablecoins from Spark and leveraged them to buy ETH at a higher price, averaging $2,391 per ETH. Subsequently, ETH failed to continue its rebound and fell back. Today, it withdrew 8,424 ETH from Spark and sold them all at $2,124 per ETH. After repaying the loan, it deposited the remaining 11.71 million USDC back into Spark to earn interest.

US-listed shares of Rising Capital saw their losses widen to 45%, while Futu Holdings' decline extended to 33%.

Shares of Uplink Technology (TIGR.O) fell as much as 45% in pre-market trading, while shares of Futu Holdings (FUTU.O) fell as much as 33% in pre-market trading.

Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $101 million yesterday, marking the fifth consecutive day of net outflows.

Yesterday (May 21, Eastern Time), Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $101 million. The Bitcoin spot ETF with the largest single-day net inflow was Ark Invest and 21Shares' ETF ARKB, with a net inflow of $2.8287 million. ARKB's historical total net inflow has reached $1.282 billion. The Bitcoin spot ETF with the largest single-day net outflow was BlackRock's ETF IBIT, with a net outflow of $104 million. IBIT's historical total net inflow has reached $64.842 billion. As of press time, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs is $101.058 billion, the ETF net asset ratio (market capitalization as a percentage of total Bitcoin market capitalization) is 6.49%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached $57.189 billion.

Whale James Wynn's 50x leveraged short position in the S&P 500 has been partially liquidated.

Glassnode: Nearly $500 billion worth of Bitcoin faces the risk of future quantum computing attacks.

Research published by Glassnode shows that nearly one-third of circulating Bitcoin has exposed public keys, theoretically making it vulnerable to future quantum computer attacks. Specifically, approximately 6.04 million Bitcoins, worth over $469 billion, are at quantum risk. Of these, about 1.92 million are structurally exposed, stemming from early "pay to public key" addresses, multi-signature structures, and Taproot outputs—script formats that default to exposing public keys. About 4.12 million are operationally exposed, due to address reuse. Of the operationally exposed Bitcoins, approximately 1.66 million are linked to exchanges, representing 8.3% of the total supply and about 40% of all operationally exposed Bitcoins. Looking at holdings across major exchanges, Coinbase has only 5% of its Bitcoin exposed to quantum risk, while Binance and Bitfinex have exposure rates as high as 85% and 100%, respectively. Glassnode states that this result should not be interpreted as a risk ranking or solvency signal for any particular company.

Trump Media deposited 2,650 BTC, worth $205 million, into Crypto.com.

122 million EIGEN tokens were unlocked and redeemed from staked tokens seven hours ago, representing 16.5% of the total circulating supply.

The three wallets collectively added 1,309 BTC today, worth over $100 million.

HYPE prices briefly broke through $60, setting a new all-time high.

Harbor Funds has applied to launch a Lab ETF focusing on the ecosystem of top AI labs.

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