Today's news tips:
1. Next week's macro outlook: The United States bids farewell to the top credit rating club, and the rebound of US stocks may end
2. The UK plans to require crypto companies to report user and transaction data from 2026
3. Hong Kong police smashed a money laundering group using virtual asset exchange shops, involving a total amount of 118 million yuan
4. Galaxy CEO: Bitcoin's market value is still far behind gold, and the price may be between $130,000 and $150,000 in the next stage
5. Some Trump dinner invitees profited from token trading, but their identities remained anonymous
6. Binance: An additional 3,860 REX tokens have been issued to users who successfully received the REX airdrop
7. Solana Q1 app revenue reached $1.2 billion, the best quarter in a year, with Pump.fun leading with $257 million
8. Venture capital firm A100x launches $50 million second fund to support early-stage companies in AI, digital assets and blockchain
Regulatory/Macro
As China and the United States reached an important consensus on the trade agreement at the beginning of this week, market risk appetite began to recover, and Wall Street's major stock indexes ended the week on a positive note. The S&P 500 is expected to rise for the fifth consecutive trading day. The three major U.S. stock indexes all closed higher on a weekly basis. The S&P 500 recovered all its losses this year and is only about 4% lower than its historical high. Looking ahead to next week, U.S. data is relatively bleak, but many Federal Reserve officials will speak. In addition, Moody's downgrade of the U.S. rating may set off a "bloodbath" when the market opens next Monday. The following are the key points that the market will focus on in the new week:
- At 05:20 on Monday, New York Fed President Williams delivered a commencement speech at the Hofstra University graduate graduation ceremony in Hempstead, New York.
- At 20:30 on Monday, Atlanta Fed President Bostic attended the Atlanta Fed 2025 Financial Markets Conference and delivered an opening speech
- At 20:45 on Monday, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Jefferson and New York Fed President Williams delivered speeches
- Dallas Fed President Logan moderates a panel at the Atlanta Summit at 01:15 on Tuesday
- Atlanta Fed President Bostic delivers opening remarks at an event at 21:00 on Tuesday
- At 21:00 on Tuesday, Richmond Fed President Barkin delivered the opening remarks at the 2025 Investing in Rural America conference
- At 01:00 on Wednesday, 2025 FOMC voting member and St. Louis Fed President Moussalem will speak on the economic outlook and monetary policy
- At 07:00 on Wednesday, Atlanta Fed President Bostic chaired the meeting, and Cleveland Fed President Hammack and San Francisco Fed President Daly delivered keynote speeches.
- At 00:00 on Thursday, Richmond Fed President Barkin will attend an event called "Fed Listens"
- At 20:30 on Thursday, the number of initial jobless claims in the United States for the week ending May 17
- At 21:45 on Thursday, the preliminary values of the US S&P global manufacturing and service PMI for May
- At 02:00 on Friday, New York Fed President Williams delivered a keynote speech at the Monetary Policy Implementation Seminar
Traders will be watching the initial U.S. PMI for May, but they may also be watching speeches by several Fed officials as they may wonder whether the Fed continues to worry about economic growth or is more concerned about the inflation outlook after finding some common ground in the U.S. A rise in the PMI could indicate improved business sentiment following the U.S.-China deal, but investors may want to hear some clarity on how the Fed plans its next move.
UK plans to require crypto firms to report user and transaction data from 2026
According to DL News, according to a new regulation introduced by the UK tax authorities, crypto asset companies operating in the UK will be required to collect and report detailed user and transaction data from January 1, 2026. Crypto platforms must identify each user and record their legal identity information, address and taxpayer identification number. In addition, the platform must record every transaction involving UK users or users in other CARF participating countries, including details such as transaction amount, asset type, quantity and nature of transfer. These requirements also apply to overseas companies that provide services to UK customers. If the reported information is incorrect or incomplete, each user may be fined up to £300.
The Hong Kong police launched a codenamed night raid operation to smash a money laundering border criminal group active in the Mainland and Hong Kong. The money laundering group recruited mainlanders to come to Hong Kong bank accounts to profit from fraud cases, and then arranged to withdraw money from banks and take the cash to virtual asset exchange shops to exchange for cryptocurrencies to launder money. During the operation, 12 men and women were arrested, involving criminal proceeds of 118 million yuan.
Chief Inspector of the Fraud Investigation Division of the Hong Kong Commercial Crime Bureau, Ms. Cha Yuen-shan, said that from July 2024 to May 2025, criminal groups recruited mainlanders to come to Hong Kong as puppet account holders, and the accounts were mainly used to receive criminal proceeds from various types of fraud cases. During this period, more than 500 bank accounts were used to launder 118 million yuan. Among them, 10 million yuan has been confirmed to be part of the criminal proceeds from 58 reported fraud cases, and the victims lost about 43.2 million yuan in these 58 fraud cases.
Texas Bitcoin Reserve Bill Heads to Second Reading, Before Final Vote
Dennis Porter, co-founder of Satoshi Action Fund (SAF), tweeted that the second reading of Texas' strategic bitcoin reserve bill will be held on May 20, and the second reading is a "necessary step" before the final vote. If it is not passed before the recess on June 2, the SB 21 bill will be invalid and need to be re-proposed at the next meeting. If it is passed by the House of Representatives before June 2, it will be submitted to Governor Greg Abbott for signature.
Earlier news , the Texas House of Representatives Committee passed the Bitcoin Reserve Act and will submit it to the plenary session for a vote.
Related reading: Progress of Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Bills in U.S. States | Continuous Update
Ukrainian court orders transfer of assets in Binance account to the Asset Management Bureau
The Pechersk District Court of Kyiv, Ukraine, ruled to transfer virtual assets seized in an investigation into major fraud and illegal gambling to the National Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA). The assets involved came from a digital wallet registered on the crypto exchange Binance and belonged to a Ukrainian national (ОСОБА_6), who was suspected of money laundering through unlicensed platforms such as rollbit.com. The total amount of seized assets exceeded 500 million hryvnia, far exceeding the regulatory threshold.
The assets include a variety of cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Solana and Tether (USDT), distributed in multiple sub-accounts associated with the Binance main user ID. The total amount of various cryptocurrencies seized exceeds UAH 500 million, far exceeding the state regulatory threshold required by Ukrainian law. The court's decision also requires Binance, registered as Nest Services Limited in the Seychelles, to execute the transfer of assets and cooperate with Ukrainian authorities. ARMA expects to sell the assets through the official electronic auction platform in order to fulfill its responsibility to manage the seized property and return its value to the state budget.
Viewpoint
Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz said in an interview with CNBC that given that the market value of gold assets is about 22 trillion US dollars, while the market value of Bitcoin is only 2 trillion US dollars, the price of Bitcoin in the next stage may be in the range of 130,000 to 150,000 US dollars, and it is still in the price discovery stage.
Cryptocurrency analyst Scott Melker said it is "entirely possible" for Bitcoin to rise to $250,000 in 2025. He pointed out that the continued influx of institutional investors and the decline in market volatility are key factors driving price increases. Scott Melker emphasized that with the participation of traditional financial institutions such as pension funds and ETF issuers, the Bitcoin market is becoming more mature and stable, and Bitcoin's volatility has dropped from three times that of the S&P 500 index in the past to less than two times. In addition, Scott Melker also mentioned that Coinbase was included in the top 50 of the S&P 500 index, companies such as Galaxy Digital and eToro have promoted their listing plans, and the improvement of the US regulatory environment have provided strong support for the crypto market. Melker believes that considering that Bitcoin rose from $3,000 to $69,000 in 2020, it is not impossible for the current price to rise by another 2.5 times, and Ethereum's recent increase has exceeded Bitcoin, driving small-cap tokens to rise, indicating that "new funds" are flowing into the market, rather than just rotating between existing assets.
Rich Dad Poor Dad author predicts Bitcoin will rise to $250,000 this year
Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, tweeted that the value of Bitcoin, gold and silver will continue to rise. He is buying more Bitcoin and expects Bitcoin to rise to $250,000 this year, and recommends "buy more, don't sell."
Project News
MetaMask plans to support native SOL this month
According to the co-founder of MetaMask, native SOL support is planned to be launched this month.
Synthetix launches sUSD buyback program with a daily maximum limit of $1 million
Synthetix officially announced the launch of a sUSD market repurchase plan with a maximum daily limit of $1 million to cope with the recent drop in sUSD prices to $0.93. The plan will be carried out through open market operations to support market forces and restore the peg between sUSD and the US dollar. Previously, Synthetix has launched a number of measures, including the Infinex reward event and the 420 Pool's sUSD staking plan, the latter of which currently has an annualized yield of 72% and requires participants to maintain a 10% sUSD staking ratio. These measures have initially stabilized the sUSD price.
Some Trump dinner invitees profited from token trading, but their identities remain anonymous
According to the FT report, the Financial Times disclosed that among the token holders who participated in the TRUMP dinner, some of the TRUMP dinner invitees realized millions of dollars in profits during the rise in token prices (the price of TRUMP tokens once rose from $9.26 to $15.33 due to the news of the TRUMP dinner). The owners of these accounts are unknown, but everyone has given their wallets a nickname on the token website. Analysis shows that 22 of the top 25 ranked people started buying tokens after the event was announced, and 16 emptied their wallets after confirming their rankings. Among them, the account nicknamed "Woo" may have made a profit of about $2.6 million, and the "NACH" account may have made a profit of about $52,000.
According to official news, Binance has distributed an additional 3,860 REX tokens to users who successfully received the REX airdrop.
157th Ethereum ACDC Meeting: Pectra upgrade completed, ACD meeting structure to be reorganized
According to @ralexstokes’ summary of the 157th Ethereum Consensus Core Developers Meeting (ACDC), the meeting mainly discussed:
- The Pectra upgrade has been successfully completed, summarizing technical feedback from different teams, and "Pectra Pages" is still open to collect more community views; Pari is working on the analysis report after the increase in blob data.
- Fusaka: peerdas-devnet-7 is running stably, and the client team is focusing on developing BPO support, with the goal of launching fusaka-devnet-0 on May 26. The relevant specifications for validator hosting are being discussed asynchronously on Discord.
- The ACD meeting structure is planned to be reorganized: Tim proposed that ACDT focus on the current fork (N), and ACDE/C focus on the next fork (N+1), hoping that the structural adjustment will allow a wider community to participate in the proposal formulation process earlier, and at the same time establish a tracking mechanism for the entire process from EIP proposals to the main network. Marchill proposed the need to establish a new ACD forum to increase community participation.
Important data
Binance Alpha Token Drives BNB Chain Activity, with Weekly Volume Up 114.6%
Data shows that Binance Alpha has increased the on-chain activity of BNB Chain, with weekly transaction volume of BNB Chain increasing by 114.6% and more than 1 million new addresses added daily. Among the first batch of Alpha tokens launched, 71% chose to be deployed on BNB Chain, 60% were released through the Initial DEX Offering (IDO) module of Binance Wallet, and the rest were launched through Launchpad and Launchpool. Among the top 20 Alpha tokens in terms of current trading volume, 9 are native to BNB Chain. In addition, more than 50% of the liquidity of some projects such as Haedal Protocol and Polyhedra Network has been deployed on BNB Chain, driving the growth of the total locked volume (TVL) of the chain.
CryptoSlam data shows that market participation rebounded strongly in the past week, with trading volume jumping 17.16% to $130.7 million. The number of NFT buyers increased by 138.96% to 259,264. The number of NFT sellers increased by 98.69% to 137,347. The number of NFT transactions fell slightly by 1.14% to 1,498,668.
Ethereum remains the leading blockchain for NFTs, with $41.3 million in transactions, up 21.47% from the previous week. Bitcoin soared to second place with $22.6 million in transactions, up 53.53%. Polygon traded $14.5 million, down 22.85%. Mythos Chain ranked fourth with $13.3 million in transactions, and Solana ranked fifth with $8.9 million in transactions, up 17.31%.
This week's high-value transactions include:
- Known Origin #30101 sold for 410,532.5625 USDC (410,532 USD)
- CryptoPunks #3281 sold for 148 ETH ($384,286)
- CryptoPunks #1507 sold for 80 ETH ($204,711)
- CryptoPunks #9460 sold for 81 ETH ($202,324)
- Mutant Ape Yacht Club #30001 sold for 194,815.0469 USDC (194,815 USD)
Messari's "Solana Status Report Q1 2025" shows that in the first quarter of this year, the Solana blockchain achieved its strongest performance in 12 months, with Solana's total revenue increasing by about 20% from $970.5 million in the previous quarter to $1.2 billion. January was particularly eye-catching, accounting for nearly 60% of the total revenue for the quarter.
The popular memecoin issuance platform Pump.fun topped all apps with $257 million in revenue, followed by Phantom with $164 million. Photon ranked third with $122 million (up 13%), Bullx ranked fourth with $87 million (up 19%), and Jupiter ranked fifth with $80 million (up 79%).
Meanwhile, the report data shows that the total locked value (TVL) of DeFi on Solana (in US dollars) fell 64% to $6.6 billion. At the same time, the market value of stablecoins on Solana increased significantly by 145% to $12.5 billion, mainly due to the launch of Trump memecoin on January 17. The market value of the USDC stablecoin increased by 148% month-on-month to $9.7 billion. Its market value is four times that of its main competitor USDT, which increased by 154% to $2.3 billion. During this period, the average transaction fee fell 24% month-on-month to 0.000189 SOL ($0.04), while the median transaction fee fell 7% to 0.000008 SOL ($0.0015).
Financing
Venture capital firm A100x announced that it has launched its second fund with a size of US$50 million. The strategic goal of the fund is to support and cultivate early-stage startups in the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI), digital assets and blockchain. It is reported that A100x's current investment portfolio in the fields of blockchain and artificial intelligence includes: Web3 solution Blockdaemon, mining cloud service Coreweave, on-chain analysis platform Nansen, blockchain game developer Mythical Games, tokenization company Securitize, etc.
