Hot News
Bitcoin gained 2.27% last week, with the broader cryptocurrency market largely sideways despite the announcement of a 90-day tariff suspension between the US and China. Initial optimism provided some support, but it is unclear whether it will be enough to drive a sustained rebound. However, during the weekend, Bitcoin surged to $105,951, approaching its all-time high of $109,354, and opened higher on Monday at $106,637. This continued rally came as gold prices opened strongly, likely due to Moody's downgrading the US credit rating after the close on Friday.
Macro Outlook
The US inflation rate rose to 2.3% in April, lower than the market expectation of 2.4%. The core inflation rate increased by 0.2% on a monthly basis, also lower than the market expectation of 0.3%. The US PPI data for April fell by 0.5%, far lower than the market expectation of 0.2%.
Based on the latest CPI and PPI data, the market predicts that the PCE monthly growth rate in April will be 0.2% and the annual growth rate will be 2.6%.
U.S. retail sales rose 0.1% month-on-month in April, slightly higher than market expectations of a flat trend.
The University of Michigan's consumer confidence index fell to 50.8 in May, falling for the fifth consecutive month and far below market expectations of 53.4.
The Fed is conducting a review of its monetary policy framework, which could revise it to give greater weight to changes in the global supply chain. The review is expected to be completed in August or September 2025.
Moody's downgraded the US credit rating from AAA to AA1 and expressed concerns about US fiscal policy. After the news was announced, the US 10-year Treasury bond rate rose by about 8 basis points.
President Trump is expected to hold talks with President Putin at 10pm (Singapore time) on Monday.
Cryptocurrency Market Overview
Paul Atkin, Chairman of the U.S. SEC, expressed support forasset tokenization , stating: “ I support and allow registered institutions to trade a wider range of products on their platforms based on market demand, including activities that have been restricted by previous commissions in the past. ”
Dubai Finance Department and Crypto.com signed an MOU to allow users to pay for Dubai government services using cryptocurrencies.
Coinbase will be officially included in the S&P 500 index on May 19, becoming the first cryptocurrency exchange to be included in the index.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed the Bitcoin reserve bill, SB1373, arguing that the volatility of the crypto market makes it unsuitable as an investment vehicle for general funds.
Robinhood announced that it would acquire crypto service platform WonderFi for $250 million Canadian dollars.
Crypto and stock trading platform eToro has been listed on the Nasdaq with a valuation of approximately $4.2 billion.
Coinbase announced an investment in Canadian stablecoin issuer Stablecorp to advance the development of its QCAD stablecoin.
The U.S. SEC has delayed the review of Grayscale's spot Solana ETF and spot LTC ETF applications, and has also delayed the review of BlackRock's physical subscription and redemption proposal for its spot Bitcoin ETF.
Nakamoto, founded by the CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, successfully raised $710 million and plans to merge with KindlyMD to promote Bitcoin financial strategies. Twenty One Capital announced that it had increased its holdings of Bitcoin by $458 million on May 5; at the same time, GD Culture Group announced that it would raise $300 million through stock sales to invest in Bitcoin and TRUMP tokens. Strategy and Metaplanet increased their holdings by 13,390 and 1,241 Bitcoins respectively last week.
DeFi Development Corp once again added $23.6 million worth of SOL, bringing its total holdings to $102.7 million.
Coinbase disclosed that less than 1% of user data was stolen by an unknown person through bribery, including name, email, part of ID number, ID image, etc. The company estimates that it will spend 180 million to 400 million US dollars as compensation and repair costs for this incident.
Franklin Templeton has received approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore ( MAS ) to launch a tokenized USD money market fund on-chain.
Mastercard and MoonPay have partnered to allow users to make and receive payments in stablecoins through the Mastercard payment network.
Layer 1 and Layer 2 Public Chains
Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) has partnered with Fireblocks, Avalanche , and TIS to launch an experimental project using Japanese yen stablecoins and RWA settlement.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson revealed that the team is working on a private stablecoin that aims to provide an anonymous payment experience similar to cash.
Sonic has completed a $10 million round led by Galaxy to strengthen Sonic’s position in the U.S. market and support the development of its DeFi ecosystem.
Chintai announced the launch of a $100 million tokenized structured real estate fund issued by Patel Real Estate Holdings (PREH) on its RWA layer 1 network.
Nansen joins the Mantra network as a validator to promote network transparency.
Omni Network used the remaining funds from the seed round and Series A to repurchase 6.77% of tokens to optimize token economics.
Celo has established a partnership with Forta Firewall to implement a real-time screening mechanism for on-chain transactions to enhance blockchain security.
Starknet announced that it has achieved Stage 1 of the ZK layer 2 network.
Astar Network launches token economic model 3.0 . ASTR tokens will switch to a fixed supply model, 50% of transaction fees will be destroyed, and protocol-owned liquidity will be established to create additional income and be used to purchase Polkadot core timeslots.
Plume Network announced the launch of the Plume Alpha phase to assist cooperative projects and partners to enter the mainnet and ensure a smooth user experience when it is officially launched. No incentive measures will be introduced at this stage, and general users do not need to take any action.
Dapps
Believe, a token issuance platform that uses the "tweet to issue tokens" model, has launched the concept of "Internet Capital Market" ( ICM ). Developers can post their application ideas on the X platform for fundraising, and 50% of the fees will be allocated to token creators; graduated projects will be migrated to Meteora, and high-quality applications can be displayed on the Believe App.
Pump.fun has launched a creator income sharing mechanism, where token creators can receive 5 basis points of SOL for their created token transaction volume as a commission.
Ondo and JPMorgan’s Kinexys have partnered with Chainlink to establish a cross-chain payment-versus-payment ( DvP ) mechanism on the Ondo Chain testnet. Chainlink is responsible for coordinating cross-chain operations between OUSG delivery and Kinexys digital payments.
Securitize launched the sBUIDL vault on Avalanche through Euler , allowing users to borrow USDC or AUSD using BUIDL as collateral.
Virtuals updates the token economic model. Holders can stake VIRTUAL to obtain veVIRTUAL . Holders of veVIRTUAL can enjoy 20% of Virgen points, Genesis airdrops and governance rights. AI native hedge fund Axelrod has airdropped its AXR tokens to veVIRTUAL holders, becoming the first Genesis airdrop project.
MapleStory officially launched Maple Story N , the first on-chain game in its ecosystem, using the Nexpace protocol to support on-chain tokenization of IP assets such as in-game items and mechanics.
Tether announced plans to launch QuantumVerse Automatic Computer ( QVAC ), a development platform that allows AI agents to run on local devices and conduct BTC and USDT transactions through the WDK framework.
Backpack officially entered the Sui ecosystem and launched a user incentive campaign worth US$200,000.
Uniswap has launched a one-click redemption function for smart wallet users in its web application, which greatly optimizes the user's trading experience through EIP-5792 launched after the Pectra upgrade.
Brevis has partnered with PancakeSwap to launch a dynamic fee feature supported by the ZK verification mechanism on the PancakeSwap platform. Brevis will verify whether users have reached a certain transaction volume or hold a certain token to determine whether they are eligible for fee discounts.
0x Protocol announced the acquisition of Flood.bid to optimize its transaction routing execution efficiency on Solana and Ethereum.
Hivemapper announced that Lyft, the US ride-hailing giant, will integrate Hivemapper's Bee Maps into its own OpenStreetMap to provide high-resolution street view data.
Rumpel Labs, a tokenized points platform, has launched the Auto-Seller feature, allowing users to automatically convert points from projects such as Ethena, Symbiotic, Karak, and Zircuit into USDC.
Obol launches Obol Stack , providing a modular framework for more efficient development and deployment of dApps and infrastructure.
Governance/Project Updates
Liquity V2 will be back online on May 19th.
Avalanche will hold the Avalanche Summit in London on May 20th.
CoWSwap is upgrading its "single batch auction" mechanism to a "fair combinatorial auction" ( FCA ), allowing solvers to submit multiple solutions, allowing CoWSwap to evaluate more execution paths to obtain better prices, lower slippage, and better execution results. The upgrade will start on May 20 and is expected to be completed on June 3.
Maple Finance proposed to open a 48-hour exchange window for MPL and SYRUP (May 19-21), and the price of MPL has rebounded from $0.87 to over $30. Maple also expects to release an announcement on future asset management on May 21.
Stacks has postponed the launch of sBTC Cap-3 to May 22 and will announcea roadmap for the subsequent development of its project on May 20.
Jupiter is expected to make an announcement about Jupiter Mobile on May 22.
FTX expects to launch the second round of asset distribution to creditors on May 30, totaling US$5 billion.
Alchemy Pay has launched its own stablecoin payment chain, Alchemy Chain , which features a fixed gas fee model (to improve predictability), a first-in, first-out (FIFO) mechanism, larger block capacity to support high-frequency transactions, a built-in exchange rate oracle, and a hybrid data storage architecture.
Huma Finance proposed an exclusive pre-sale of 1% of the token supply to JUP stakers, and proposed a token swap of $250,000 worth of Huma tokens for JUP at a $75 million valuation.
Synthetix proposed to acquire the decentralized options trading platform Derive with $27 million in newly issued SNX tokens. However, since Derive's recent revenue is higher than Synthetix, the community has debated the rationality of this acquisition.
Token Unlock
MELANIA will be unlocked on May 20th, accounting for 5.67% of the total token supply.
PYTH will be unlocked on May 20th, accounting for 58.4% of the total supply of the token.
PLUME will be unlocked on May 21st, accounting for 5.43% of the total supply of the token.
INIT will be unlocked on May 24, accounting for 1.68% of the total supply of the token.
GRASS will be unlocked on May 31st, accounting for 1.34% of the total token supply.
KMNO will be unlocked on May 31, accounting for 22% of the total supply of the token.
OP will be unlocked on May 31st, accounting for 1.94% of the total supply of tokens.
SUI will be unlocked on June 1st, accounting for 1.75% of the total supply of tokens.
DYDX will be unlocked on June 1, accounting for 1.85% of the total supply of the token.
ENA will be unlocked on June 2, accounting for 1.62% of the total supply of the token.
JTP will be unlocked on June 7th, accounting for 3.43% of the total supply of tokens.
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