Today's news tips:
The U.S. Senate passed the procedural motion for the stablecoin GENIUS Act
Justin Sun will attend Trump’s crypto dinner as the largest TRUMP holder
Binance will list TOKYO GAMES TOKEN (TGT) and launch airdrop activity
Strategy spent $764.9 million to increase its holdings of 7,390 bitcoins
JPMorgan Chase CEO: Will allow customers to buy Bitcoin, but will not provide custody services
Regulation & Macro
The U.S. Senate passed the procedural motion of the GENIUS Act with 66 votes in favor
According to CoinDesk and Fox reporter Eleanor Terrett, the U.S. Senate passed the procedural motion of the GENIUS Act that night with 66 votes in favor and 32 against, clearing the way for final legislation. The bill aims to establish a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins and issuers. The previous version was frustrated on May 8 due to disputes over consumer protection and national security clauses, and the text was revised, prompting several Democratic lawmakers to support it. Senator Bill Hagerty, who led the bill, called it a "historic opportunity" to promote the first digital asset legislation.
Earlier news, the US Senate passed a procedural motion and the GENIUS Act entered the formal review stage .
According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Coinbase's recent customer data breach. Hackers bribed Indian customer service employees to obtain user personal information and demanded a $20 million ransom. Coinbase said the incident may cost up to $400 million to repair. The company said it has proactively reported the incident to law enforcement agencies and is cooperating with regulators in the United States, Britain and other countries to conduct investigations. Coinbase itself is not currently listed as a subject of investigation.
According to Decrypt, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it would postpone the ruling on multiple Solana spot ETF applications submitted by 21Shares, Bitwise, VanEck and Canary Capital, saying that more time is needed to deal with relevant legal and policy issues. The SEC emphasized that the delay does not mean that a conclusion has been reached and encouraged the public to submit opinions. Although the crypto industry expects the Trump administration to accelerate ETF approval, analysts remind the market that the process should still be viewed with caution.
The official website of the U.S. SEC published the speech of Chairman Paul Atkins at the SEC Speaks conference. Atkins said that the SEC had previously been negative in the regulation of cryptocurrencies, first adopting an "ostrich policy" and then switching to law enforcement first and accountability later, without building trust. Atkins believes that regulators should actively interact with the market and adjust rules to adapt to new technologies. Today, Atkins has instructed the company's finance department to interact transparently with the public. At the same time, the SEC's various policy departments are drafting proposals for cryptocurrency-related rules, and Atkins also hopes that the committee will allow SEC registrants to custody and trade securities and non-securities under the same roof. In addition, Congress has been asked to approve the re-planning of funds to integrate the functions of the agency's FinHub into other departments of the agency, and its principles and priorities will be integrated into the core of the SEC, allowing innovation to be integrated into the entire SEC culture.
Later in the day, SEC Commissioner Crenshaw warned of the risks of the "regulatory building block game": excessive relaxation could trigger a new round of financial crisis .
South Korean presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung proposes issuing a won-based stablecoin
According to Cointelegraph, South Korean presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung recently proposed a plan to issue a stablecoin pegged to the won, aiming to curb capital outflows and strengthen financial sovereignty. Lee Jae-myung pointed out at a policy discussion meeting that current South Korean law prohibits the issuance of local stablecoins, causing domestic exchanges to rely on USDT, USDC and other US dollar stablecoins. In the first quarter of 2025, the country's cryptocurrency exchanges recorded an outflow of 56.8 trillion won (about 40.8 billion US dollars), of which nearly half were related to foreign stablecoins. The proposal is part of its digital asset strategy, which also includes promoting the legalization of spot cryptocurrency ETFs and allowing institutions such as the National Pension Fund to invest in cryptocurrencies after meeting price stability conditions. To facilitate implementation, he proposed the establishment of a comprehensive monitoring system for government supervision and reducing transaction fees. But Shin Bo-sung, a researcher at the Korea Capital Markets Research Institute, warned that stablecoins could expand the money supply and transfer control of monetary policy to private issuers.
Japan's long-term government bond yields surge to highest level in nearly two or three decades
Japan’s 20-year bond yield surged 15 basis points (to 2.528%), reaching its highest level since 2000. Meanwhile, Japan’s 30-year bond yield rose to its highest level since it was first introduced in 1999 (now at 3.103%).
According to CoinDesk, the Dubai Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) has updated the digital asset trading rulebook, requiring licensed digital asset companies to comply by June 19. The new rules strengthen leverage controls and collateral requirements for margin trading, and the main revisions are reflected in the Broker-Dealer and Exchange Rulebook. The update aims to align the regulatory framework with international risk standards and fill previous regulatory gaps in areas such as brokers and wallet service providers. VARA said that the revision is based on actual licensing experience and international best practices, which will help build a more mature regulatory system.
Senior Fed officials send strong signals: it is difficult to cut interest rates before September
NFT&AI
Google releases NotebookLM Android and iOS native apps
Google officially launched the Android and iOS native applications of NotebookLM, an AI note management tool, ahead of the I/O conference. The new version supports PDF, web pages, YouTube videos and text imports, and can quickly add materials through the system sharing panel. It also has built-in AI-hosted voice summary playback and offline functions. The interface supports both mobile phones and tablets, and users can switch between the "Source", "Q&A" and "Studio" modules. The native client officially replaces the previous PWA web version.
Project News
Strategy spent $764.9 million to increase its holdings of 7,390 bitcoins
According to official news, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) purchased 7,390 bitcoins between May 12 and May 18, with an average value of $103,498 (total: $764.9 million).
Later in the day, news emerged that Strategy was hit with a class action lawsuit, accusing it of making misleading statements about its Bitcoin strategy .
According to Bloomberg, the bankrupt crypto lending platform Genesis Global Capital sued its parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG) in the Southern District Bankruptcy Court of New York, seeking to recover about $1.2 billion in "preferred transfers" and fraudulent payments before bankruptcy in 2022. The lawsuit stated that DCG and its founder Barry Silbert and other related parties transferred money to each other when Genesis was insolvent, including more than $580 million in crypto assets and $120 million in cash to DCG itself, international subsidiaries and its HQ Enhanced Yield Fund, and involved $34 million in taxes. Genesis claimed that DCG knew the risks at the time and misled users. The transfers occurred during the collapse of Terra-Luna, Three Arrows Capital and FTX, with the purpose of self-protection and debt avoidance.
According to the information on the official website, CME Group has now launched XRP futures, with product types divided into trading micro contracts (2,500 XRP) and larger contracts (50,000 XRP).
JPMorgan Chase CEO: Will allow customers to buy Bitcoin, but will not provide custody services
According to Jinshi.com, JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) CEO Jamie Dimon said: "Blockchain is not as important as you think. It will allow customers to buy Bitcoin, but will not provide custody services for it."
Justin Sun will attend Trump’s crypto dinner as the largest TRUMP holder
According to the official TrumpMeme account, the "annual cryptocurrency event" - Trump Dinner will be held on May 22. Tron founder Justin Sun confirmed his invitation to attend and expressed his honor to support US President Trump. He called himself the largest holder of $TRUMP tokens and looked forward to communicating with guests about the future of cryptocurrency.
Some of the guests who applied to attend the President Trump-themed crypto dinner still need to go through the background check process. In addition to Sun Yuchen, they also include Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, consultant Vincent Deriu, and crypto user Morten Christensen who only paid about $1,200 for a seat. BitMart founder Sheldon Xia was also shortlisted in the top 25 of the Trump Meme-themed crypto dinner.
Binance requests dismissal of $1.76 billion lawsuit against FTX, calling it “legally untenable”
According to Decrypt, Binance has filed a motion with the Delaware Bankruptcy Court to dismiss the $1.76 billion recovery lawsuit filed by the FTX estate administrator. Binance said the lawsuit lacked legal basis and attempted to shift the responsibility for FTX's collapse from founder SBF to competitors. Binance emphasized that FTX's collapse was due to its huge internal fraud, not external tweets or fund transfers. Binance also claimed that the US court had no jurisdiction over its overseas entities.
According to Chainwire, Sonic SVM announced a major upgrade to its token economic model and launched a SONIC token value accumulation mechanism. The new design replaces the previous destruction model and adopts a strategic buy-and-lock system designed to create long-term value for token holders. Under the new mechanism, 50% of all transaction fees previously destroyed will be used to purchase SONIC tokens from the open market. These purchased tokens will be locked in a dedicated vault and unlocked according to a 24-month linear vesting schedule.
Berachain co-founder Smokey The era posted on the X platform: "It has been noted that some members of the APAC community are concerned about the risk of HONEY collateral. HONEY is fully managed in the vault address visible on Honey, and now the collateral is mainly BYUSD (bridge version PYUSD). If someone wants to redeem it, they can bridge ETH and exchange it on the Curve pool, or send it to exchanges such as Coinbase and OKX for redemption. We will do our best to make Berachain easier to do this in the future."
According to the official announcement, Sei Labs released the Sei Giga white paper, which depicts the path for the blockchain to become a Layer 1 Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that supports multiple proposers. The solution adopts a parallel block proposal architecture, and its main technical features include: 5 Ggas throughput, 200,000 TPS processing capacity, 400 millisecond transaction final confirmation time, and a newly developed EVM execution client. In terms of technical architecture, Sei Giga achieves performance breakthroughs through an asynchronous state submission mechanism and the Autobahn consensus protocol. While maintaining compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts, it claims to increase throughput by 50 times compared to traditional solutions.
According to Cointelegraph, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson responded to the community's allegations of misappropriation of ADA tokens worth about $600 million, promising to release an audit report. The focus of the dispute is on a transfer record of 318 million ADA (currently worth about $229 million) during the Allegra hard fork in 2021. NFT artist Masato Alexander accused Hoskinson of using the genesis key to tamper with the ledger. Hoskinson clarified in a tweet on May 6 that most of the ADA has been redeemed by the original purchaser, and the rest has been donated to the Intersect organization. In his latest statement on May 18, he said that he was "deeply hurt" by the community's distrust and said that after the audit report is released, the social media account may be handed over to a professional team for management.
PANews reported on May 20 that according to BeInCrypto, data from blockchain analysis platform Dune showed that there were a large number of trading robots manipulating the market on the Solana chain Meme coin issuance platform Pump.fun. These robots create false liquidity through high-frequency small transactions, accounting for 60%-80% of the trading volume of some tokens, forming an "agency paradox" phenomenon - false trading volume triggers retail investors' FOMO emotions, which in turn pushes up prices to facilitate robots to cash out and leave. Analysts pointed out that such operations distort market signals and invalidate indicators based on trading volume. Although it brings stress testing and temporary liquidity to the Solana network in the short term, it may damage the health of the ecosystem in the long run.
According to Bloomberg, Dominari Holdings (NASDAQ: DOMH), a small investment bank located in Trump Tower in New York, is accelerating its shift to the cryptocurrency field and continues to increase its holdings of Bitcoin. The company had a net loss of $32.5 million in the first quarter of 2025, and a cumulative loss of $70 million in the past three years, but its stock price has still risen 466% this year. The bank already holds $2 million worth of Bitcoin ETF shares and has established a joint venture company American Bitcoin (ABTC) with Bitcoin mining company Hut 8. According to SEC documents on May 12, ABTC is merging with listed company Gryphon Digital Mining. The merged entity will be 98% owned by shareholders such as Dominari, and Eric Trump will serve as ABTC's chief strategy officer. It is worth noting that former US President Trump's two sons, Eric and Donald Jr., joined Dominari as consultants in February and each received equity incentives worth potentially $8 million. Although one-third of the IPOs underwritten by Dominari in recent years have fallen by more than 75% within a year of listing, the market has responded positively to its crypto layout. The company's current business focuses include Bitcoin mining, data centers and artificial intelligence investments.
Binance will list TOKYO GAMES TOKEN (TGT) and launch airdrop activity
Binance’s official Twitter account announced that TGT (Tokyo Games Token) will be available for trading on the Binance Alpha platform on May 21. Eligible users can use Alpha points to claim the airdrop on the event page on the same day, and the specific rules will be announced at that time.
Binance Futures to Launch AGTUSDT Perpetual Contract
PROMPT is listed on Bithumb Korean Won Trading Market
Binance Alpha launches MERL (MERL) , at least 193 Alpha points are eligible to claim airdrop
Financing News
According to Fortune, although Circle, the issuer of USDC stablecoin, submitted an IPO application in April with a target valuation of $5 billion, it has recently held informal sales negotiations with Coinbase and Ripple. Sources said that if Coinbase made a move, Circle "would not hesitate to sell", but Circle officials currently stated that "the company is not for sale" and still insisted on the listing plan. Ripple once proposed a $4-5 billion acquisition offer, but Circle considered it too low. Ripple may pay with cash and XRP, while Coinbase can use cash and stock to complete the acquisition.
Important data
According to the latest weekly data from CoinShares, digital asset inflows reached $785 million last week, marking the fifth consecutive week of inflows, pushing the year-to-date total to $7.5 billion and fully recovering the outflows from February to March. Although Bitcoin maintained its lead with an inflow of $557 million, it slowed down from the previous week, and short products recorded an inflow of $5.8 million during the same period, reflecting the market's cautious sentiment towards the Fed's hawkish stance. Ethereum became a bright spot, boosted by the upgrade of Pectra and management changes, with a single-week inflow of $205 million and a year-to-date inflow of $575 million. Solana became the only ETP product with outflows, with a small net outflow of $890,000.
According to SoSoValue data, on May 19, Eastern Time, Bitcoin spot ETFs had a net inflow of $667 million, marking the fourth consecutive day of net inflow. BlackRock IBIT ranked first with a net inflow of $306 million, with a total net inflow of $45.859 billion; Fidelity FBTC had a net inflow of $188 million, with a total net inflow of $11.783 billion. Galaxy and Invesco's BTCO had a net outflow of $5.2669 million. The current total net asset value of ETFs is $124.973 billion, accounting for 5.96% of the total market value of Bitcoin.
Tether’s holdings of U.S. Treasuries surpass Germany’s at $111.4 billion
According to Cointelegraph, the size of U.S. Treasury bonds held by Tether has exceeded US$120 billion, surpassing the latest disclosed size of US$111.4 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds held by Germany. Tether has now become the world's 19th largest holder of U.S. Treasury bonds.
Many whales continue to accumulate BTC, with a single withdrawal amount exceeding $100 million
A whale continues to increase its BTC long position, with a position value of up to $570 million
A whale unstaked 207,578 SOL tokens worth $34.93 million after 3 months of dormancy
