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Jason Guthrie, head of product at asset manager WisdomTree, says he’s optimistic despite a noticeable lack of hype that typically comes along with a crypto bull run. 

There hasn't been a “really frothy use case that has typically driven these market cycles previously,” such as initial coin offerings (ICOs), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or DeFi lending, Guthrie told Cointelegraph at Consensus.

“This time, we’ve continued to see the asset class gathering value, we’ve continued to see the companies that are built on this technology, growing revenue, growing client bases, continuing to innovate without really hanging their hat on one of these frankly less than useful use cases,” he said.

WisdomTree founder Jonathan Steinberg (left), Jason Guthrie, head of product (middle) and head of digital assets Will Peck (right). Source: Jason Guthrie

The ICO boom kicked off in 2017 with an estimated $4.9 billion raised. By 2018, this figure had jumped to $33.4 billion. By 2019, it had dropped to just over $370 million and has never returned to its previous highs.

NFTs also had their day, and saw a massive surge of popularity in 2020 and continued to grow until hitting a peak in 2022, with trading volumes reaching $57.2 billion and the market’s sales count hitting 121.7 million. The market has since cooled as well. 

Another 12 people have been charged for their involvement in a $263 million crypto crime spree that stole 4,100 Bitcoin from a Genesis creditor last August, along with a string of break-ins and money laundering. 

The 12 new names, included in a superseding indictment, add to charges originally brought against the main defendant in the case, Malone Lam, on Sept. 19, 2024, the Department of Justice noted in a May 15 statement.

Jeandiel Serrano was named a defendant in the initial indictment but was not included in the superseding one.

The DOJ said several defendants have been arrested, while two others are believed to be living in Dubai.

Many of the suspects, with aliases like “Goth Ferrrari” and “The Accountant,” come from California, mostly aged between 18 and 22. 

The group allegedly began operating in October 2023, evolving from friends while playing online games to what the DOJ describes as participating in a “cyber-enabled racketeering conspiracy.”

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm xAI has blamed an “unauthorized modification” to the Grok chatbot’s response, causing it to generate responses mentioning political and racial tensions in South Africa. 

On May 16, xAI provided an update on the Grok AI chatbot’s inflammatory responses, stating that on May 14, “an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot’s prompt on X.”

“This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI’s internal policies and core values,” it added.

The firm stated that it had conducted a thorough investigation and is implementing measures to enhance the AI chatbot’s transparency and reliability.

Grok generated responses on May 14, mentioning a “white genocide” conspiracy theory in South Africa when answering completely unrelated questions about topics like baseball, enterprise software, and construction. 

Coinbase stock dipped after news broke of a cyberattack that exposed customer data and an ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission investigation over misstated user numbers in 2021.

The double whammy of bad news rattled investors as company stock (COIN) slid 7% in a fall to $244 in after-hours trading on May 15, according to Google Finance.  

Coinbase stock 24 hours. Source: Google Finance 

Coinbase has since confirmed the report from The New York Times, which stated the SEC has been investigating whether Coinbase misstated its user numbers in past disclosures, an inquiry that began during the Biden administration and has continued under the Trump administration.

“This is a hold-over investigation from the prior administration about a metric we stopped reporting two and a half years ago, which was fully disclosed to the public,” confirmed Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal to Cointelegraph. 

“We also disclosed – and continue to disclose – the more relevant metric of ‘monthly transacting users’ – the number of people who use our platform in a given month,” he said before adding: 

Méliuz’s executive chairman says his fintech firm has become Brazil’s first publicly-traded Bitcoin treasury company following shareholder approval, with the firm also announcing it bought $28.4 million worth of Bitcoin to add to its existing stack.

“Historic day! Our shareholders have approved, by a wide majority, the transformation of Méliuz into the first Bitcoin Treasury Company listed in Brazil,” Israel Salmen posted to X on May 15.

Salmen said the firm snapped up 274.52 Bitcoin (BTC) for an average purchase price of $103,604, achieving a BTC yield of 600%. 

Méliuz now holds 320.3 Bitcoin, worth a little over $33 million, with the latest purchase adding to the Brazilian fintech firm’s first purchase of 45.73 Bitcoin on March 6.

Details of Méliuz’s latest Bitcoin purchase. Source: Israel Salmen

In a May 15 statement, Méliuz said it would accumulate Bitcoin in an “accretive way” for shareholders using a range of financial instruments.

Deepfake-assisted hackers are now targeting US federal and state officials by masquerading as senior US officials in the latest brazen phishing campaign to steal sensitive data. 

The bad actors have been operating since April, using deepfake voice messages and text messages to masquerade as senior government officials and establish rapport with victims, the FBI said in a May 15 warning. 

“If you receive a message claiming to be from a senior US official, do not assume it is authentic,” the agency said.  

If US officials’ accounts are compromised, the scam could become far worse because hackers can then “target other government officials, or their associates and contacts, by using the trusted contact information they obtain,” the FBI said. 

As part of these scams, the FBI says the hackers are trying to access victims’ accounts through malicious links and directing them to hacker-controlled platforms or websites that steal sensitive data like passwords. 

US federal prosecutors are pressing ahead with their case against Tornado Cash founder Roman Storm, but will drop a small part of their indictment after the Department of Justice rolled back its crypto enforcement last month.

Jay Clayton, the acting US Attorney for Manhattan, told federal court judge Katherine Polk Failla in a May 15 letter that the charges against Storm still stand, bar one part of a conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business charge.

“After review of this case, this Office and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General have determined that this prosecution is consistent with the letter and spirit of the April 7, 2025 Memorandum from the Deputy Attorney General,” Clayton wrote.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s April memo said the Justice Department would end the so-called “regulation by prosecution” of crypto, and added that the agency wouldn’t prosecute crypto mixers like Tornado Cash “for the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations.”

A highlighted excerpt of Blanche’s memo stating that the Department of Justice was rolling back its crypto enforcement. Source: US Department of Justice

Clayton added that the indictment against Storm will cut the accusation that he failed to comply with money transmitting business registration requirements.

The State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), which oversees the state’s retirement funds, unloaded its shares in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) during the first quarter, filings show.

The Wisconsin Investment Board reported no spot Bitcoin ETF positions in its 13F filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on May 15, liquidating all 6,060,351 IBIT shares it reported holding from the previous quarter. 

The more than 6 million IBIT shares are worth around $355.6 million at current prices.

SWIB was one of the first state investment funds to provide Bitcoin exposure to US retirees when it bought $164 million worth of Bitcoin ETFs in Q1 2024 — the same quarter the Bitcoin products launched.

Source: Julian Fahrer

The mass sell-off comes only a quarter after SWIB reported additional purchases of IBIT shares in Q4, while reallocating all 1 million shares held in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) to IBIT.

Global foreign exchange and payments platforms are lobbying hard against stablecoins, which stand to significantly disrupt their business models, investor Kevin O’Leary said during a keynote address at Consensus 2025.

Legacy forex and payments platforms often extract large fees for servicing cross-border cash transfers and stand to lose out on revenue if regulated stablecoins become accepted as a cheaper, faster alternative, O’Leary said at the Toronto conference. 

“Currency trading is a multi-trillion dollar market — and it’s old and ugly and inefficient,” O’Leary said, adding that “[ t]he biggest threat to that monopoly or oligopoly is a regulated stablecoin.” 

“Once that’s approved, the multi-trillion dollar FX market becomes efficient, transparent, and inexpensive,” he said. 

Kevin O’Leary speaking at Consensus. Source: Cointelegraph

Stablecoin legislation

US lawmakers are working on legislation that stands to accelerate global stablecoin adoption, O’Leary added. 

US Senators are aiming to pass the so-called Genius Act — a framework for regulating stablecoins — before the end of May. “As soon as the SEC approves the stablecoin act, every regulator in the US’s circle — Abu Dhabi, Switzerland, England — will follow,” O’Leary said.

Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal addressed some of the concerns raised by US lawmakers and industry leaders around President Donald Trump’s crypto ventures, and how they may affect related legislation.

Speaking at the Consensus conference in Toronto on May 15, Grewal said there had been “hiccups” in Congress since the Senate Banking Committee voted to advance the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, in March. Though Grewal said there were disputes over “substantial issues that need to be addressed” in the bill, he hinted that Trump’s involvement in the industry was a “complicating factor.” 

“The discussion around the president's support for a certain memecoin or two and other efforts does add a certain level of challenge to the effort to get Democrats and Republicans aligned on the right way to regulate the [spot market], but I have confidence that the Senate and the House are going to sort all that out,” said Grewal.

Paul Grewal (right) on stage at Consensus in Toronto on May 15. Source: Cointelegraph.

Democrats including Senator Elizabeth Warren explicitly called out the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, and its USD1 stablecoin in opposing the GENIUS Act. However, some of the bill’s supporters, like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who proposed an earlier version of the legislation, said they would remove language specifically targeting the president’s crypto ventures.

Related: Democrats seek suspicious activity reports linked to Trump crypto ventures

There is an ongoing race across the world for Bitcoin accumulation, according to Eric Trump, the second-eldest son of US President Donald Trump. Speaking at a crypto conference in Toronto on May 15, Trump said that from families to government funds, “everybody in the world is trying to hoard Bitcoin right now.”

The remarks came during a panel at Consensus 2025. Sharing the stage with Asher Genoot, the CEO of Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Hut 8, Trump said Bitcoin adoption has been incredible.

“I'm traveling. I'm on a plane. Everybody in the world is trying to hoard Bitcoin right now. Everybody. I hear it from sovereign wealth funds. I hear it from the wealthiest families. I hear from the biggest companies.”Asher Genoot and Eric Trump at Consensus 2025. Source: Cointelegraph

Trump described what he sees as “two races in Bitcoin”: the accumulation race — currently led by Michael Saylor, he says — and the mining race, which marks his own involvement in the crypto space.

President Trump's third child is co-founder of American Bitcoin, a Hut8 subsidiary. On May 12, the companies announced American Bitcoin would merge with Gryphon Digital Mining in a stock-for-stock transaction that will result with a public listing on the Nasdaq.

Related: Bitcoin bulls aim for new all-time highs by next week as capital inflows soar

Key takeaway:

Bitcoin’s struggles to overtake the $105,000 level as US macroeconomic headwinds remain a challenge.

Steady inflows from institutional investors and the strength of the $100,000 support point to growing confidence in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin (BTC) has struggled to break above $105,000 since May 10, leading traders to question whether the bullish momentum has faded. Although BTC managed to reclaim the $104,000 level, demand for leveraged long positions has dropped sharply, as indicated by the decline in the Bitcoin futures premium.

 

Asset tokenization is set to accelerate the movement of capital across traditional markets, according to Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov. Speaking with Cointelegraph at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, Nazarov said the shift will boost capital velocity in asset classes such as treasuries, equities, private credit, commercial debt, and real estate.

"I think that there are two sides to this equation. One is the asset, and the other one is the payment. So, you need more high-quality assets onchain, but you also need more frictionless payments that existing institutions can use easily," Nazarov said on May 14.

The remarks came on the same day Chainlink announced a partnership with Kinexys, a blockchain network for institutional-grade tokenized assets by JP Morgan, and digital asset firm Ondo Finance. Together, the companies will develop payment rails for institutions trading tokenized real-world assets onchain.

The partnership tested the exchange of Ondo's US Government Treasuries Fund (OUSG), a tokenized short-term US debt fund, with Kinexys, using Chainlink's Runtime Environment — a framework for connecting legacy financial systems to blockchains in a unified environment.

"What Chainlink is trying to do is kick off a virtuous cycle that triggers kind of a runaway success for the industry as a whole. We want more assets onchain, Nazarov added. "We want more payment systems onchain," he continued.

Bitdeer Technologies Group reported a 41% year-over-year drop in revenue to $70.1 million for the first quarter of 2025, the Bitcoin miner said on May 15. 

The Singaporean company clocked an operating loss of $3.2 million for the quarter, down from a $34.1 million profit during the same period last year, its earnings release said. 

However, Bitdeer reported a Q1 net income of more than $400 million, largely driven by gains on convertible notes and warrants issued to stablecoin issuer Tether in 2024.

Bitdeer’s revenue declines come as miners increasingly expand beyond Bitcoin (BTC) mining and pivot toward supplying high-performance computing (HPC) for artificial intelligence applications. 

“As we scale self-mining and execute on our ASIC [mining hardware] roadmap, we are also advancing plans for U.S.-based HPC and AI infrastructure,” Matt Kong, Bitdeer’s chief business officer, said in a statement.

More than two-and-a-half years after filing for bankruptcy, cryptocurrency exchange FTX is moving forward with repaying users who have not had access to their funds.

In a May 15 notice, the FTX Recovery Trust announced that it would begin disbursing funds to the second group of parties eligible under the exchange’s reorganization plan. Starting on May 30, FTX will send more than $5 billion to creditors “within 1 to 3 business days” through crypto firms BitGo and Kraken. 

In accordance with the reorganization plan, FTX said five groups of “convenience classes” would receive between 54% and 120% distribution of assets. The repayment schedule for the next class of creditors will be “announced in due course,” and the debtors were expected to pay up to $16 billion if all claims were filed.

Breakdown of the second round of FTX repayments. Source: Sunil Kavuri

FTX began its first round of reimbursements on Feb. 18, which was estimated to repay roughly $1.2 billion to creditors. Though former FTX users will likely be seeing their funds for the first time since the exchange collapsed in November 2022, many have criticized the reorganization plan for basing disbursement on the prices of cryptocurrencies at the time of bankruptcy.

Related: FTX EU creditors can now withdraw money from Backpack exchange

Stablecoin regulation is “the next catalyst” for the crypto industry and could lead to unprecedented “appetite from institutional investors,” according to Ash Pampati, head of ecosystem at the Aptos Foundation.

In an interview with Cointelegraph at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, Pampati said that “the whole world outside of the United States […] has already jumped onto this [stablecoins],” adding that “the US is [...] at the doorstep.”

“I really think about new use cases that can emerge because of the borderless nature of stablecoins, because of the efficiency of the dollar onchain,” he said. “If you're trying to send money to your friend in Nigeria, why do you have to go through a bunch of hoops?”

Stablecoins are often used to transfer money across borders, as they are easier and cheaper to transfer than traditional finance methods such as wire transfers. They are also used to hedge against fiat currency, which, in emerging markets, can devalue significantly in a short period of time.

Related: Pareto launches synthetic dollar backed by private credit

Key Takeaways:

Solana formed a megaphone chart pattern with a potential $210 price target.

Solana’s ecosystem growth highlights renewed investor interest with a $4 billion realized cap increase and 731 million transactions.

Solana (SOL) price tested its key resistance at $180 earlier this week, but the altcoin failed to establish a position above the level. Over the past few days, SOL has consolidated above the $170 mark, but prices have dropped 5.65% since May 14.

Including the recent minor dip, Solana has formed a megaphone pattern on the 4-hour chart, a classic technical setup indicating increasing volatility.

The slow adoption of stablecoins in Canada has some local crypto industry observers concerned that the country is falling behind.

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) classified stablecoins as “securities and/or derivatives” in December 2022 after the FTX debacle that shook markets and turned many lawmakers against the crypto industry.

Regulating stablecoins as a security has seen few local stablecoin issuers arise, but in the United States and the European Union, softening regulations have seen significant growth in the stablecoin market. This makes Canada, observers say, less competitive with other jurisdictions. 

Of particular concern is the perceived gap in peer-to-peer (P2P) payments in Canada, which stablecoins are uniquely qualified to fill. 

Stablecoins globally have grown significantly over the last five years. Source: DefiLlama

Local law constrains stablecoin growth and threatens dollar

In 2022, as the crypto market reeled from the collapse of FTX and the implosion of the Terra stablecoin system, regulators worldwide began to look more critically at the crypto space. 

Coinbase has reportedly fired a group of customer support agents following their alleged involvement in social engineering attacks on users. The contracted agents were based in India.

According to a May 15 Fortune interview, Coinbase's chief security officer, Philip Martin, said the company flagged customer support contractors who allowed scammers access to user data, suggesting they could be Indian nationals. The CSO’s comments came after some crypto users reeled from attempted phishing attacks using their Coinbase data, which the exchange estimated could cost them between $180 million and $400 million in remediation and reimbursement.

Qiao Wang, a core contributor to Alliance DAO, said in a May 15 X post that he may have been a victim of one of these attacks. He said a scammer notified him his Coinbase account had been compromised, asked him to verify his personal information, to which the criminals likely had access through the compromised agents, and requested he withdraw all his funds to a “Coinbase self-custodial wallet.”

“I called them out at the end of the call telling them they need to step up their game [...],” said Wang on X. “They told me that had made $7m that day.”

Related: $330M Bitcoin social engineering theft victim is elderly US citizen

Key takeaways:

Spot Bitcoin ETF inflows dropped over 90% from $3 billion to $228 million in four weeks.

While strong ETF inflows often drive Bitcoin rallies, recent data shows price movements can occur independently.

Despite short-term selling pressure, long-term BTC whale buying suggests a potential continuation of the BTC uptrend.

The Bitcoin (BTC) market posted a 90+% drop in spot BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows, falling from $3 billion in the last week of April to just $228 million this week.