Decentral Block Post

Cryptocurrency investment products continued receiving healthy inflows last week, attracting $882 million as global crypto funds approached all-time high asset levels.

Global crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) recorded $6.3 billion of inflows in the past four weeks, accounting for 93% of total inflows year-to-date (YTD), according to data from European crypto investment firm CoinShares.

Total YTD inflows now stand at $6.7 billion, closing in on the record $7.3 billion posted in early February, according to CoinShares’ head of research James Butterfill.

Weekly crypto ETP inflows since late 2024. Source: CoinShares

Amid strong investor demand, crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States reached a record $62.9 billion in cumulative net inflows since launch in January 2024, surpassing the previous high of $61.6 billion set in February, Butterfill noted in a May 12 fund flows update.

Total AUM nears historic record of $173 billion

The continued inflow streak has brought total assets under management (AUM) in global crypto funds to $169 billion, just 2.5% below the historic record of $173.3 billion seen in the last week of January, according to CoinShares data.

Bitcoin (BTC) launches into US CPI week with new multimonth highs as traders dig in for volatility.

BTC price action is giving increasingly bullish signals, joined by a key cross on the weekly MACD indicator.

The weekly close fell just short of expectations, raising doubts over whether price discovery will return in the immediate future.

CPI and PPI headline the week’s US macro data drops, but markets are all about the US-China trade deal and its implications.

Bitcoin supply in loss drops below 2% in a rare test of hodlers’ staying power.

Ether’s market capitalization surged 42% in five days following the successful launch of Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade on its mainnet. 

On May 12, the company data tracker 8marketcap showed Ether (ETH) surpassing Coca-Cola and Alibaba, ranking as the world’s 39th-largest asset by market capitalization. ETH was trading at about $2,550 at publication time, with a market cap exceeding $308 billion. 

By comparison, Coca-Cola stock trades at around $70, giving it a market cap of $303.5 billion. Alibaba stock trades at about $125, with a market capitalization of $303.7 billion. 

ETH’s recent price action comes on the heels of a network upgrade that improved the storage of layer-2 scaling data, validator user experience and smart account wallet user experience features. 

Ether surpasses Coca-Cola and Alibaba in market capitalization. Source: 8marketcap

Ethereum implements Pectra upgrade on mainnet

Originally scheduled for March 2025, Pectra faced delays after technical challenges arose during testing.

Goldman Sachs-backed cryptocurrency custody firm BitGo is the latest cryptocurrency company to secure regulatory approval to operate across the European Union.

Germany’s financial regulator, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), granted BitGo Europe a Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) license to provide digital asset services in the EU, the firm announced on May 12.

The license allows BitGo to offer services to crypto-native firms and traditional finance institutions, including banks and asset managers within the EU.

Source: BitGo

“This license underscores our commitment to the highest standards of security, transparency, and trust,” BitGo Europe managing director Harald Patt said.

BitGo set up the EU headquarters in 2023

Founded in 2013 in Palo Alto, California, BitGo is a major platform in the cryptocurrency industry specializing in crypto custodial services, holding cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) on behalf of its clients. 

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin broke above $105,700 after the US and China agreed to slash tariffs.

A confirmed bull flag breakout on the weekly chart projects $150,000.

Bitwise’s sentiment index warns of potential short-term overheating.

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls cheered a major development in the ongoing US-China tariff talks, with the cryptocurrency climbing over the $105,700 mark on May 12 for the first time in four months, further confirming a bullish continuation setup with a $150,000 price target.

US federal prosecutors have rebutted claims they suppressed evidence in their case against the co-founders of the crypto mixing service Samourai Wallet, arguing their disclosure of a conversation with Treasury Department staff was made within the required timeframes. 

In a May 9 letter to a Manhattan federal court, prosecutors opposed a request for a hearing, claiming they handed over “all known substantive communications” between them and the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) regarding Samourai “months in advance of pretrial motions and trial.”

“The defendants will have seven months to make use of the information before trial,” they wrote. “Nothing more is warranted.”

On May 5, Samourai co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill asked the court for a hearing, claiming that prosecutors were late to disclose that FinCEN representatives told them six months before they charged the pair that under the agency’s guidance, the service “would not qualify as a ‘Money Services Business’ requiring a FinCEN license.”

However, prosecutors still charged the pair in February 2024 with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and money laundering conspiracy, unsealing the charges and arresting the pair in April that year. They have both pleaded not guilty.

Decentralized exchange Uniswap has hit a whopping $3 trillion in aggregate all-time volume, the first decentralized exchange to hit the number. 

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams noted the achievement in an X post on May 12, which included a screenshot of a Dune Analytics dashboard counting down to the milestone. 

Uniswap also has a current daily volume of $3.3 billion, according to Dune. DeFillama meanwhile shows Uniswap is the leading DEX with a 23% market share in daily volumes, which it reports as slightly lower at $3 billion over the past 24 hours. 

The second-largest DEX in volume is PancakeSwap, with $2.7 billion and a 21% DEX market share. 

Uniswap has a current total value locked of just under $5 billion. However, this figure is around half of its 2021 all-time high, as overall DeFi total value locked (TVL) is about half of what it was in late 2021.

Crypto users could be looking for a more sustainable yield this cycle, as total value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) lending continues to hit new highs while decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have lagged in comparison.

DeFi lending protocols are currently the leading DeFi vertical in TVL at $53.6 billion, representing 43% of the $124.6 billion locked across all DeFi protocols. The figure also surpasses liquid staking.

Multichain lending protocol Aave currently holds $25 billion of locked value, accounting for nearly half of the DeFi lending market.

Change in crypto lending protocol TVL since 2019. Source: DeFiLlama

In stark contrast, DEXs, which once held nearly double the TVL of their closest competitor, have dropped from $85.3 billion in November 2021 to $21.5 billion today.

Explaining the rise in DeFi lending and fall in DEX TVL, the founder of crypto fund Apollo Capital, Henrik Andersson, told Cointelegraph that lending is arguably the “only sustainable way to produce yield” in DeFi, as DEX liquidity pooling has largely become unprofitable due to impermanent loss.

Three teenagers have been accused of kidnapping a man at gunpoint after he was returning from a crypto event in Las Vegas, before driving him an hour outside of the city and robbing him of $4 million in crypto and non-fungible tokens.

According to police, the incident occurred last November. The victim had finished hosting a crypto-related event in downtown Las Vegas, and when he returned home, the suspects forced him into a vehicle and drove him to a remote desert area an hour away from the city. 

There, they forced him to hand over passwords to his accounts, according to a May 10 report from Las Vegas local news outlet 8 News Now. 

The man was allegedly told to comply with the teens’ demands if he wanted to “live to see another day,” and because they also “had his dad and would kill him,” according to the report. 

It’s also alleged that a fourth person may have been communicating with the three young men through a phone call during the incident, which the victim could hear through a speakerphone.

Japanese investment firm Metaplanet has added another $129 million to its Bitcoin treasury, pushing its total holdings past the Bitcoin-stacking country of El Salvador. 

“Metaplanet now holds more Bitcoin than El Salvador. From humble beginnings to rivaling nation-states, we’re just getting started,” said CEO Simon Gerovich on X after the latest purchase announcement. 

On May 12, the Tokyo-listed firm announced that it had acquired 1,241 Bitcoin (BTC) for 14.8 million yen ($101,843) per coin.

The total buy, at its highest ever purchase price, is worth around $129 million at current market prices. 

This brings the firm’s total holdings to 6,796 Bitcoin, currently worth around $707 million, and the average purchase price is $91,000 per Bitcoin. Metaplanet started its BTC accumulation strategy in April 2024. 

Bitcoin’s potential price reaction to a trade deal between the United States and China could give insights into whether Bitcoin is being used as a safe-haven asset in the current market.

Bitcoin (BTC) outperformed stocks and held up “incredibly strong” during a sharp sell-off on stock markets in April, following Donald Trump’s announcement of tariffs on “Liberation Day,” observed crypto trader “Daan Crypto” on May 11.

Following its plunge to $75,000 on April 7, Bitcoin recovered strongly to trade 27% higher at around $95,000 by the end of the month. Meanwhile, indexes like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq declined in April. 

At the time, people wondered if Bitcoin’s relative strength came from the narrative that countries were using Bitcoin to bypass tariffs. The analyst said the opposite should theoretically occur if the trade deal is confirmed.

“Theoretically speaking, if the trade uncertainty was what was making BTC outperform, it should stop outperforming after we hit the most important deal, which includes China.”

Bitcoin performance since Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement. Source: Daan Crypto

Tinian, a small island in the US territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, could get a second chance at launching a stablecoin after the territory’s Senate voted to override the governor’s earlier veto of its stablecoin bill.

On May 9, the Northern Mariana Islands Senate voted 7-1 to override Governor Arnold Palacios' April 11 veto of the bill, which would allow the Tinian local government to issue licenses to internet casinos and includes a provision for the Tinian treasurer to issue, manage and redeem a “Tinian Stable Token.” 

The bill will now head to the 20-member Northern Mariana Islands House, which will need a two-thirds majority vote to override the veto and pass the bill into law.

If the House is quick to pass the bill, the Tinian government could be in the lead for the first US public entity to issue a stablecoin. It’s in a race against the state of Wyoming, which is aiming to issue a stablecoin by July.

Tinian is governed by the local government, the Municipality of Tinian and Aguiguan, and is one of four municipalities in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a small US territory in the Pacific north of Guam. 

Censorship-resistant “dark stablecoins” could come in increasing demand as governments tighten their oversight of the industry. 

Stablecoins have been used for various groups to store assets due to a lack of government interference; however, with regulations pending, that could soon change, Ki Young Ju, CEO of crypto analytics firm CryptoQuant, said in a May 11 X post.

“Soon, any stablecoin issued by a country could face strict govt regulation, similar to traditional banks. Transfers might automatically trigger tax collection through smart contracts, and wallets could be frozen or require paperwork based on government rules,” he said.

“People who used stablecoins for big international transfers might start looking for censorship-resistant dark stablecoins instead.”

On the heels of US President Donald Trump’s crypto-friendly administration assuming power earlier this year, lawmakers are weighing stablecoin legislation, which seeks to regulate US stablecoins, ensuring their legal use for payments. 

The European Union has already brought in its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, which, among other measures, mandates that stablecoins be regulated and transparent.

Hardware wallet provider Ledger has confirmed its Discord server is secure again after an attacker compromised a moderator’s account to post scam links on May 11 to trick users into revealing their seed phrases on a third-party website.

“One of our contracted moderators had their account compromised, which allowed a malicious bot to post scam links in one channel,” Ledger team member Quintin Boatwright wrote on the Ledger Discord server. 

“The issue was quickly contained: the compromised account was removed, the bot was deleted, the website was reported, and all relevant permissions were reviewed and secured.”

Some members in Ledger’s Discord channel claimed the attacker abused moderator privileges to ban and mute them as they tried to report the breach, possibly slowing Ledger’s reaction.

Boatwright said the security breach was an isolated incident and that Ledger has taken additional measures to strengthen its security on Discord, a chat platform many crypto projects use to share protocol developments and engage with their community. 

Using the compromised Ledger community manager account, the hacker told Ledger Discord members that there was a recently discovered vulnerability in the firm’s security systems and strongly urged all users to verify their recovery phrases with a scam link, according to several screenshots shared on X. 

The White House announced that talks between the United States and China regarding a trade deal have made "substantial progress," yet no official deal has been announced at this time, leaving investors in doubt.

According to a May 11 announcement from the White House, more details on the trade talks and the proposed "agreement" will be revealed on May 12.

“I am happy to report that we made substantial progress between the United States and China in the very important trade talks," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a joint statement with US trade representative Jamieson Greer.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells the media that the US-China trade walks were productive. Source: Fox News

"We will be giving details tomorrow, but I can tell you that the talks were productive," Bessent continued, without mentioning the word "deal" once in his statement.

Greer made mention of the deal but did not give any details on the talks, leaving investors in doubt about the substance of the announcement, as market participants continue to monitor the ongoing trade tensions for signs of relief for financial markets.

Tech company Microsoft and artificial intelligence firm OpenAI are reportedly in talks to renegotiate the investment deal between the AI firm and Microsoft, which is OpenAI's biggest financial backer.

According to a report from the Financial Times, Microsoft may give up a portion of its equity in OpenAI for continued access to the AI company's products and models beyond 2030, when some of the original terms of a deal signed between the two companies expire.

Microsoft has invested over $13 billion into OpenAI since 2019, when it first acquired an interest in the artificial intelligence firm.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman takes the podium at the White House in January 2025 to discuss AI infrastructure investment in the United States. Source: The White House

OpenAI is attempting to restructure the company to shift its focus to profit-making. However, those plans have met with pushback from co-founders like Elon Musk and early investors.

The deal between OpenAI and Microsoft is critical to OpenAI's restructuring and the future of the US-based AI startup company. Advancing artificial intelligence has also become a key policy objective for global leaders as the AI arms race heats up.

Key Takeaways:

Veteran trader Peter Brandt suggests a potential Ethereum rally to $3,800–$4,800 if ETH breaks above a rising wedge pattern.

A short-term pullback may occur as the taker buy-sell ratio drops below one, signaling caution from futures traders.

Ethereum’s native token Ether (ETH) opened its weekly candle at $1,807 on May 7, and now it is close to recording its highest 7-day returns of 38% since December 2020.

Ether also surpassed its realized price for accumulating addresses ($1,900), which is the average cost basis for holders, signaling profits for users. As illustrated in the chart, most of the buying pressure for ETH came from Binance, which is currently the most active exchange for ETH traders.

Key points:

Bitcoin holds on to its recent gains, increasing the possibility of a retest of the all-time high at $109,588.

BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF records 19 days of successive inflows, showing solid demand. 

Select altcoins are showing strength, having broken out of their large basing patterns.

Bitcoin (BTC) made a decisive move above the psychologically crucial $100,000 level during the week, signaling that the bulls are back in the game. Buyers are trying to hold on to the 10% weekly gains over the weekend.

The Lido Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), the entity that governs the Lido liquid staking protocol, has initiated an emergency vote to rotate a compromised oracle — a bridge that connects real-world data to blockchain systems.

According to members of the Lido DAO, an address belonging to the Chorus One oracle was compromised, and the Ether (ETH) balance associated with that oracle was drained in an incident still being investigated.

Lido Finance emphasized that the issue is restricted to the Chorus One oracle and is not system-wide. The team also said the problem was not due to a coding problem in any particular blockchain oracle or software.

Source: Lido Finance

Chorus One added that the exploit was likely attributable to a hot wallet private key leak but is also setting up a new machine to ensure security moving forward.

The incident highlights the need for robust cybersecurity measures in decentralized finance (DeFi) as the world's monetary, trade, and business systems move onchain in ever more complex digital systems that have large attack surfaces.

Key takeaways:

Ether has rebounded from key parabolic and triangle support levels, reviving the case for a $10,000 breakout.

Historical fractals and RSI recovery mirror past pre-rally setups seen in 2016 and 2020.

Altseason signals and strength against rivals like SOL and XRP boost Ethereum’s potential to outperform.

Ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native token, has soared over 44% in just three days to surpass $2,600 on May 11, fueling fresh speculation of a run toward $10,000 in the coming months.

Opinion by: Sean Li, co-founder of Magic Labs

Crypto markets run 24/7. Human traders don’t. As AI agents begin to manage liquidity, optimize yield, and execute trades at all hours, they’re quickly becoming essential infrastructure for decentralized finance’s (DeFi) future. While AI agents are evolving from niche tools for quant traders into mainstream financial operators, they’re rapidly outpacing the wallets meant to secure them. 

Advancements in account abstraction and smart contract wallets have emerged, but most DeFi platforms still predominately rely on externally owned account wallets that require manual approvals at every step. Early-stage programmable solutions exist but remain fragmented, costly on layer-1 networks and adopted by only a tiny fraction of users.

As AI agents increasingly operate in DeFi, this infrastructure limitation becomes critical. We need standardized infrastructure that allows for secure, cost-effective automation with verifiable guardrails across multiple blockchain ecosystems. 

Automation needs guardrails, not guesswork

The rise of autonomous agents opens new possibilities: hands-free DeFi strategies, real-time portfolio optimization and crosschain arbitrage. Without programmable permissions and onchain visibility, however, delegating control to AI can expose users to catastrophic risk. Malicious bots, hallucinating agents and poorly designed automation can drain wallets before a human notices.

Key points:

Bitcoin analysis identifies the all-important price point to hold into the weekly close as all-time highs loom.

Liquidity is tightly clustered around current spot price, with $106,000 the likely next battleground.

Some traders are expecting the bid to enter price discovery to fail.

Bitcoin (BTC) preserved giant gains into the May 11 weekly close as analysis flagged the key level to hold next.

Ethereum’s latest network upgrade, Pectra, introduced powerful new features aimed at improving scalability and smart account functionality — but it also opened a dangerous new attack vector that could allow hackers to drain funds from user wallets using only an offchain signature.

Under the Pectra upgrade, which went live on May 7 at epoch 364032, attackers can exploit a new transaction type to take control of externally owned accounts (EOAs) without requiring the user to sign an onchain transaction.

Arda Usman, a Solidity smart contract auditor, confirmed to Cointelegraph that “it becomes possible for an attacker to drain an EOA’s funds using only an offchain signed message (no direct onchain transaction signed by the user).”

At the center of the risk is EIP-7702, a core component of the Pectra upgrade. The Ethereum Improvement Proposal introduces the SetCode transaction (type 0x04), which enables users to delegate control of their wallet to another contract simply by signing a message.

If an attacker obtains this signature — say, via a phishing site — they can overwrite the wallet’s code with a small proxy that forwards calls to their malicious contract.

Crypto services platform Nexo shared its plans to reenter the United States market on Monday, marking the eighth major crypto firm to announce such plans since US President Donald Trump took office at the start of the year.

Firms like Circle, Binance and OKX are banking on favorable regulatory clarity in 2025 to herald their US expansion. Bills like the STABLE Act and the GENIUS Act are advancing in Congress, which, if implemented, will lay the groundwork for swift success.

Trump and his family are actively involved in some of these planned expansions. Nexo’s recent announcement was backed by Donald Trump Jr., who said, “We see the opportunity for the financial sector and want to ensure we bring that back to the US.”

Amid concerns of conflicts of interest and blatant token shilling by the Trump family, it remains to be seen whether these upcoming regulations will adequately protect everyday investors. Regardless, these are the eight firms that have banked on big bucks in the US this year.

Binance.US resumes USD services; CZ seeks clemency 

Binance.US officially reinstated USD deposit and withdrawal services less than a month into Trump’s presidency. 

Worldcoin’s latest hardware, the Orb Mini, aimed at enabling portable human verification, has been met with ridicule across Crypto Twitter.

Launched with the slogan “It goes where you go,” the device has instead triggered dystopian comparisons and widespread mockery for its unsettling implications and unclear use case.

“The thing about humans is they can tell when a human is in front of them,” Alicia Katz from decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Euler Finance wrote on X.

“When something is slightly off, they can experience the uncanny valley, an uncomfortable feeling similar to when your date tries to scan your eyeball,” she added.

Another user quipped, “Is this so you can register your friends?” likening the device to a sci-fi prop rather than a serious identity solution.

Hackers drained over $2.15 million from Mobius Token ($MBU) smart contracts on the BNB Chain in a targeted exploit detected early May 11, according to security firm Cyvers Alerts.

The attacker deployed the contract from address 0xb32a53... at 07:31:38 UTC and initiated the exploit at 07:33:56 UTC, draining funds from the victim wallet 0xb5252f...

Cyvers confirmed to Cointelegraph that the attacker used contract 0x631adf... to execute a series of malicious transactions. The smart contract drained 28.5 million MBU tokens and converted them into stablecoins, resulting in a net loss of $2,152,219.99 for the victim.

In total, the attacker stole 28.5 million MBU tokens and converted them to $2.15 million worth of USDT.

Cyvers labeled the exploit as “critical” and noted the attacker’s use of suspicious contract code and abnormal transaction patterns.

Altcoin markets are flashing early signs of a breakout, with several analysts calling for a potential surge over the next few months.

Crypto commentator Mister Crypto predicts the next 3 to 6 months could be “life-changing,” suggesting daily gains of up to 40% may soon become the norm.

In a May 11 post on X, he pointed to a chart from BlockchainCenter.net that shows whether the crypto market favors Bitcoin (BTC) or altcoins.

When the index is below 25, it’s considered “Bitcoin Season,” meaning Bitcoin is outperforming most altcoins. When it’s above 75, it’s “Altcoin Season,” meaning altcoins are doing better than Bitcoin.

Currently, the chart shows a breakout from a downward trend just below the 29 mark, suggesting a possible shift away from Bitcoin dominance. This breakout hints that altcoins may start gaining momentum, potentially entering a period where they outperform Bitcoin.

Coinbase reportedly considered adopting a Bitcoin investment playbook like Michael Saylor’s Strategy on multiple occasions, but decided against it each time out of fear that it would kill the firm’s crypto exchange, Bloomberg reported.

“There were definitely moments over the last 12 years where we thought, man, should we put 80% of our balance sheet into crypto — into Bitcoin specifically,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told Bloomberg in a May 9 video call.

Armstrong said the Bitcoin (BTC) strategy could have risked the company’s cash position and potentially killed the crypto exchange. “We made a conscious choice about risk,” he added.

Coinbase Chief Financial Officer Alesia Haas, who also attended the video call, added that the firm didn’t want to be seen as directly competing against its customers over which cryptocurrencies would outperform. 

“Rest assured, we are not stopping there,” Haas said, as Coinbase reported purchasing another $153 million worth of crypto assets in its first quarter results statement on May 8, which was primarily concentrated in Bitcoin.