Moody's credit rating agency downgraded the credit rating of the United States government from Aaa to Aa1, citing the rising national debt as the primary driver behind the reduction in creditworthiness. According to the May 16 announcement from the rating agency, US lawmakers have failed to stem annual deficits or reduce spending over the years, leading to a growing national debt. The rating agency wrote: "We do not believe that material multi-year reductions in mandatory spending and deficits will result from the current fiscal proposals under consideration. Over the next decade, we expect larger deficits as entitlement spending rises while government revenue remains broadly flat." The credit downgrade is only one degree out of the 21-notch rating scale used by the company to assess the credit health of an entity. An overview of the US national debt. Source: US National Debt Clock Despite the negative short to medium-term credit outlook, Moody's maintained a positive outlook on the long-term health of the United States, citing its robust economy and the status of the US dollar as the global reserve currency as strengths, reflecting "balanced" lending risks. Related: Asia’s wealthy shifting from US dollar to crypto, gold, China: UBS Investors react to Moody's US credit revision Moody's announcement drew mixed reactions from investors and market participants, leaving many unconvinced by the agency's revised outlook. Gabor Gurbacs, CEO and founder of crypto loyalty rewards company Pointsville, cited the rating agency's previous credit assessments during times of financial stress as unreliable, signaling that the outlook was too optimistic. "This is the same Moody’s that gave Aaa ratings to sub-prime mortgage-backed securities that led to the 2007-2008 financial crisis," the executive wrote in a May 17 X post. However, macroeconomic investor Jim Bianco argued that the recent Moody's credit outlook does not reflect a real downgrade in the perception of US government creditworthiness and characterized the announcement as a "nothing burger." Interest rates on the 30-year US Treasury Bond spiked to nearly 5% in May 2025, signaling reduced long-term investor confidence in US debt. Source: TradingView US government debt surpassed $36 trillion in January 2025 and shows no signs of slowing, despite recent efforts by Elon Musk and others to reduce federal spending and curtail the national debt. As the debt climbs and investors lose faith in US government securities, bond yields will spike, causing the debt service payments to go up and further inflating the national debt as the government attempts to entice investors with ever-greater yields to incentivize them to purchase government debt. Magazine: Elon Musk’s plan to run government on blockchain faces uphill battle

PANews reported on May 17 that Coinglass data showed that in the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency market had a total contract liquidation of $298 million, of which $260 million was liquidated for long orders and $37.9535 million was liquidated for short orders. The total amount of BTC liquidation was $36.5609 million, and the total amount of ETH liquidation was $88.8593 million.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to the Hong Kong Commercial Daily, the Hong Kong police launched a code-named night raid operation to smash a money laundering border criminal group active in the Mainland and Hong Kong. The money laundering group involved 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.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to Caixin.com, many people engaged in US stock trading have recently received reminders from local tax authorities, requiring them to self-check whether they have overseas income and actively declare and pay taxes. Most of the customers who are required to declare have funds exceeding one million US dollars. The local tax authorities have been collecting taxes on overseas income for a year, and the items being collected are mainly concentrated in overseas investment income, such as interest and dividends. Most of the cases are collected from 2022 to 2024, and no cases have been seen with a collection period of more than five years. It is reported that Liang Shuang (pseudonym), a client manager serving high-net-worth clients at a financial institution in Hong Kong, confirmed to Caixin that many of his clients have received self-inspection notices from the tax department, requiring them to report income and profits in overseas bank or brokerage accounts from 2022 to 2024. Most of the clients who were required to report have funds exceeding one million US dollars, and these clients are from Beijing, Shanxi and other places.

PANews reported on May 17 that the OKX market showed that BTC had just broken through $103,000 and is now trading at $103,010.00 per coin, down 1.13% on the day.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to Cointelegraph, the current price of 1 Bitcoin is around 102,900 US dollars, which is almost equivalent to the price of 1 kilogram of gold.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to Decrypt, Bitcoin's dominance in the cryptocurrency market has declined recently, and analysts pointed out that this does not mean that the "altcoin season" is coming. Zach Pandl, director of Grayscale Research, said that when the market focuses on macroeconomic instability and the risks facing the US dollar, Bitcoin's dominance may rise; when the market focuses on various applications of blockchain technology and innovations in the encryption field, Bitcoin's dominance may decline. Zach Pandl added that from a macro perspective, he is bullish on Bitcoin; and from the perspective of technological development and user adoption, he is also optimistic about altcoins.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to Cointelegraph, cryptocurrency analyst Scott Melker said that 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.

PANews reported on May 17 that Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz said in an interview with CNBC that given that the market value of gold assets is approximately US$22 trillion and the market value of Bitcoin is only US$2 trillion, the price of Bitcoin in the next stage may be in the range of US$130,000 to US$150,000, and it is still in the price discovery stage.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to OnChain Lens monitoring, the whale lxuan.eth deposited 2.04 million USDC into Hyperliquid and bought 74,893 HYPE at a price of US$27.34.

PANews reported on May 17 that 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 from 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.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to the FT, 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.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to the official announcement, EOS will be replaced with A at a ratio of 1:1. EOS supports this replacement, and the specific arrangements are as follows: At 6:00 pm (UTC+8) on May 17, the borrowing function will be stopped, and the EOS/USDT leveraged trading service will be suspended from 4:00 to 6:00 pm (UTC+8) on May 21, and the leveraged trading market orders will be cancelled. Users who borrowed or pledged the above currencies in leveraged trading and demand lending must return them before the delisting time. At 4:00 pm on May 22 (UTC+8), EOS/USDT and EOS/USD perpetual contracts will be delisted. When a contract is delisted, trading of the contract will be stopped, all user orders will be canceled, and the arithmetic average of the EOS index one hour before the delisting will be used as the delivery price of the delisted perpetual contract to deliver all user positions under the contract. On May 26th from 11:00 to 12:00 (UTC+8), all EOS pending orders will be canceled and EOS/USDT, EOS/USDC, EOS/USD, EOS/EUR spot trading pairs will be offline. Other trading-related businesses (flash exchange, copy trading, strategy, etc.) will also be suspended. From 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm on May 26 (UTC+8), EOS deposit, withdrawal and fund transfer functions will be closed. At 8:00 am on May 27 (UTC+8), a snapshot of the EOS account will be taken. The EOS exchange will be carried out from 8:00 pm (UTC+8) on May 27 to 6:00 pm (UTC+8) on May 28. Please note that EOS will try its best to complete the exchange within this time period, but since the exchange requires the cooperation of multiple parties such as the project party, the exchange period may be extended. After the currency swap is completed, a separate announcement will be made to inform you of the launch time of the new currency pair.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to the co-founder of MetaMask, it plans to support native SOL this month.

PANews reported on May 17 that Synthetix officially announced the launch of a sUSD market repurchase plan with a daily maximum 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 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.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to Cointelegraph, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake said that the cost of launching a 51% attack on Bitcoin is about $10 billion, which is much lower than the cost of attacking Ethereum. He pointed out that Ethereum's PoS mechanism not only increases the cost of attack, but also provides additional security through the community's social coordination mechanism. Justin Drake emphasized that the Ethereum community can identify and punish attackers, which is an advantage that the PoW mechanism does not have. In addition, Matan Sitbon, founder of Lightblocks, a blockchain interoperability developer, also said that the ultimate security of Ethereum depends not only on cryptography or protocol rules, but also on the community's strong social and economic coordination mechanism.

PANews reported on May 17 that 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, and the three major U.S. stock indexes all closed higher on a weekly basis. The S&P 500 recovered all its losses for the 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 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.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to Cointelegraph, data showed 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 issuance (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.

PANews reported on May 17 that according to Jinshi, in the first quarter, the total market value of the Ark Investment Fund ARK, led by "Wood Sister", was US$9.99 billion, and the top ten holdings accounted for 48.49% of the total market value. "Wood Sister"'s holding strategy in the first quarter showed an active layout in the fields of emerging technology and biotechnology, while adjusting and optimizing some holdings. In the first quarter, ARK increased its holdings in AI (Palantir, UiPath), blockchain (Coinbase, Bitcoin ETF), and biotechnology (CRISPR, Teladoc), and reduced its holdings in Tesla (intensified competition) and Zoom (slowing growth). Although Tesla is still the largest holding, accounting for 8.45% of the portfolio, the size of the holdings decreased slightly by 0.87% in the first quarter, which is the third consecutive quarter that Tesla has been reduced.

PANews reported on May 17 that there have been a number of kidnappings against crypto people in France recently, and the crypto community is worried about the safety of the Cannes ETHCC conference. The leader of the "Whale Hunting Team" KOL @Cbb0fe has made it clear that considering the recent kidnappings against cryptocurrency people in France, he will definitely give up participating in the Cannes ETHCC this year. "The risk-return is absolutely terrible. Stay home and study cryptocurrencies safely."