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Two US senators are calling on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “exercise [the department’s] authority” and change a provision affecting taxes on corporate holdings of digital assets.

In a May 12 letter, Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno suggested Bessent had the authority to change the definition of “adjusted financial statement income” under existing US law in a way that could reduce what digital asset companies pay in taxes. The proposed adjustment was suggested as a way to modify a provision of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022.

“Our edge in digital finance is at risk if US companies are taxed more than foreign competitors,” said Lummis in a May 13 X post.

According to the two senators, the proposed modification would provide “relief to corporations that invest in digital assets.” Lummis has been one of the most outspoken digital asset advocates in Congress, while Moreno took office in January after crypto-backed political action committees spent roughly $40 million to support his 2024 Senate race.

Related: Arizona governor kills two crypto bills, cracks down on Bitcoin ATMs

CoinShares, a digital asset investment firm with offices in the United States and Europe, said its net profit fell to $24 million in the first quarter of 2025, a 42.2% decrease from the same period a year ago.

Although CoinShares’s profits and EBITDA remained positive in Q1 2025, the margins declined compared to the same period in 2024. Last year, CoinShares posted a net profit of $41.5 million and an EBITDA of $35.5 million in the first three months. Year-over-year, CoinShares’s net profit dropped 42.2% and its EBITDA fell 15.5%.

The firm’s ETPs contributed to the quarter's performance. For Q1 2025, CoinShares’s ETPs saw net inflows of $268 million, with $202 million coming from its Physical Bitcoin (BITC) ETP. Revenue related to assets under management increased from $24.5 million to $29.6 million, a rise of 20.8%.

Year-to-date, CoinShares’s stock is down 9.4%, according to Google Finance.

In a letter to shareholders, the company's CEO, Jean-Marie Mognetti, said macroeconomic headwinds during the quarter exceeded market movements. “What we are witnessing is not mere market volatility — it is a wholesale transformation of the global economic order.”

Coinbase has partnered with Canadian stablecoin issuer Stablecorp in a bid to expand access to tokenized Canadian dollars, a company executive told Cointelegraph during the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto.

According to Coinbase Canada's CEO, Lucas Matheson, the exchange is investing an undisclosed amount in Stablecorp and will help market its fiat-collateralized stablecoin, QCAD.

“It’s really important that we have a stablecoin for Canadians,” Matheson told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview on May 13, adding that stablecoins are especially urgent because the country has “no peer-to-peer [payment] rail” and “wire transfers cost $45 and take 45 minutes of paperwork.”

“With stablecoins, 24/7, instant, borderless payments become possible — this is already feasible with existing tech,” he said. 

Related: What Canada’s new Liberal PM Mark Carney means for crypto

Key takeaways:

Solana's $10.9 billion TVL surpassed the entire Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem.

Solana’s 30-day fee revenue ($43.4 million) rose 109% compared to the previous month.

SOL’s 8% funding rate shows healthy leverage demand from bulls.

Solana’s native token SOL (SOL) surged 24.8% between May 6 and May 10, following the broader altcoin market rally after Bitcoin broke above $100,000. Since then, SOL has struggled to stay above $180, but derivatives and onchain data still suggest further gains are in store.

Proponents of a bill to regulate stablecoins in the US Congress will likely take up another vote on the legislation in a matter of days without responding to concerns about President Donald Trump’s financial ties to the cryptocurrency industry.

The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, failed to get enough votes to pass in the US Senate on May 8 amid calls from some Democratic lawmakers to halt any legislation related to digital assets until Republicans could address Trump’s potential conflicts of interest.

Immediately following the vote, some lawmakers from both parties suggested they could reconsider the bill as early as this week, but without agreeing on a bipartisan path forward.

After the GENIUS Act failed to proceed in a 48 to 49 vote in the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune made a motion to reconsider, setting up a possible vote on the matter within days. A source familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph Republicans who backed the bill were unlikely to modify it to block Trump or any member of his administration from investing in digital assets, claiming it was beyond Congress’s authority under the Constitution.

“[...] this delay is not inherently detrimental,“ said Liat Shetret, vice president of global policy and regulation at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. “We can expect the bill to return to the floor, with this pause giving both parties time to clarify provisions and address lawmakers’ concerns.”

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin price maintains its bullish momentum, but a sentiment indicator suggests the market could be overheating. 

Data highlights Bitcoin traders taking profits and a lopsided market angled toward longs.

Analysts warn of a potential short-term correction, especially if gold weakens or seasonal trends play out.

Optimism has returned to the crypto markets, and many traders believe Bitcoin (BTC) price is on the path to new all-time highs. In just one month, Bitcoin surged 39%, briefly crossing the $105,000 mark. According to Glassnode analysts, “there are signs of renewed market strength, and the market is trading within a profit-dominated regime.”

Key Takeaways:

Declining Bitcoin dominance and rising strength in altcoins and memecoins could be a sign that it’s altseason.

USDT dominance could drop to 2022 lows, indicating an accelerating capital rotation into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

The cryptocurrency market shows signs that an altseason, a period where altcoins significantly outperform Bitcoin (BTC), could be on the horizon. Technical charts and market sentiment align to suggest that May 2025 might start a broader altcoin rally, driven by key indicators and shifting capital flows.

The TOTAL2 chart, representing the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, excluding Bitcoin, has broken above a downtrend line in place since January 2025. This breakout is accompanied by a bullish break of structure (BOS) on the daily chart, forming higher-low patterns.

Investment firm VanEck is launching a tokenized real-world asset (RWA) fund that offers exposure to US Treasury bills, developed in partnership with tokenization platform Securitize. The initiative places VanEck among a growing number of traditional finance firms entering the RWA tokenization space.

The fund, called VBILL, will be initially available on Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum and Solana blockchains, VanEck said in a May 13 statement. The fund's minimum subscriptions start at $100,000 for investments running on Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Solana, while the minimum subscription on Ethereum is $1 million.

VanEck joins a burgeoning field of traditional financial firms that have launched RWA tokenized funds, with competitors including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton. In January, Apollo, an investment firm with $751 billion in assets under management, also launched a private credit tokenized fund.

With a market capitalization of $6.9 billion, US Treasurys are among the largest asset classes in tokenized funds, second only to private credit, according to data from RWA.xyz.

VanEck’s partner, Securitize, has tokenized over $3.9 billion in assets. In May 2024, it raised $47 million in a strategic funding round led by BlackRock.

Key points:

Bitcoin fails to capitalize on lower-than-expected US CPI data, seeing a Wall Street sell-off for a second day.

Traders see BTC/USD buying time before its next move, and a trip below $100,000 is on the cards.

Bitcoin is showing “undeniable” momentum against gold and stocks, Binance’s Richard Teng says.

Bitcoin (BTC) saw a repeat sell-off at the May 13 Wall Street open as bears ignored positive US inflation data.

Infinite Node Foundation (NODE), a nonprofit focused on digital art, has acquired the intellectual property of the CryptoPunks non-fungible token (NFT) collection from Yuga Labs, NODE said in a May 13 announcement. 

The acquisition of CryptoPunks, plus its additional $25 million endowment, establishes NODE as “the most well-capitalized nonprofit dedicated solely to digital art in the United States,” the foundation said in an X post. 

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

The nonprofit said it has assembled an advisory board to oversee the CryptoPunks collection. It comprises Matt Hall and John Watkinson — the artists behind the NFT collection — and a representative of Yuga Labs, among others. 

“Our role is to build a networked architecture that allows digital art like CryptoPunks to thrive within both digital and art-historical canons,” NODE said. 

Defense lawyers have asked a judge to sentence the person responsible for helping post a fake message announcing regulatory approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds to roughly a year in prison, countering prosecutors’ request for a two-year sentence.

In a May 13 filing in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Eric Council Jr.’s legal team asked that he be sentenced to no more than one year and one day in prison following his guilty plea.

Council was part of a group that took control of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) X account in 2024 through a SIM swap attack, posting a message that suggested the regulator had approved spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund listings for the first time.

“A sentence of twelve months and one day serves the ends of justice,” said the May 13 filing. “It sufficiently punishes the defendant for his role in this case. It also promotes respect for the law and deters future criminal conduct.”

Council initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, but changed his plea to guilty in February on one count of conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud. The judge overseeing the case, Amy Berman Jackson, also ordered prosecutors to “identify the felony and point to where that information can be found in the record” by May 13.

Looking for a way to earn passive income on your crypto without riding the rollercoaster of volatile coins? TsUSDe (the staked version) on The Open Network (TON) might be the answer. It’s a dollar-pegged stablecoin that earns yield by design, and you can boost those earnings even more by putting it to work on platforms like STON.fi and DeDust.

Here’s how it works and how to get started in just a few steps.

What is tsUSDe, and why use it?

TsUSDe is a US dollar-backed stablecoin on the TON blockchain. It’s designed to earn a base yield of around 10% APY, paid out in Toncoin (TON). That means just holding it in your wallet earns you rewards — no extra steps needed.

But if you want to go a step further, you can use tsUSDe in liquidity pools or farms on TON-based platforms to unlock even more yield. It’s like putting your dollars to work while still staying in stable territory.

Where to earn yield with tsUSDe

Right now, two of the most active platforms for tsUSDe yield farming on TON are:

Opinion by: Jupiter Zheng, Partner Liquid Fund at HashKey Capital

Whenever Bitcoin falls in value, the narrative is always the same: It’s failing as a hedge against inflation. In the eyes of critics, Bitcoin is not the “digital gold” that so many others claim it to be.

With gold hitting all-time highs, these critics have grown louder. If Bitcoin is an inflation hedge, they ask, why isn’t it also rallying as investors seek safety?

Even in today’s bearish, high-inflation environment, the cardinal truth holds: Bitcoin is an inflation hedge — arguably the most important one for long-term capital preservation the world has seen. 

Strength in scarcity

Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins, with full circulation expected by 2140. This built-in scarcity mirrors gold, which has historically served as an inflation hedge. Bitcoin has outperformed gold during multiple periods, such as the COVID-19 era, when global markets were flooded with liquidity.

Institutional demand for Bitcoin is growing, as Coinbase, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange, recorded its highest daily outflows of Bitcoin in 2025 on May 9.

On May 9, Coinbase saw 9,739 Bitcoin (BTC), worth more than $1 billion, withdrawn from the exchange — the highest net outflow recorded in 2025, according to Bitwise head of European research André Dragosch.

“Institutional appetite for bitcoin is accelerating,” Dragosch added in a May 13 X post.

Related: Nasdaq-listed GDC plans to buy Bitcoin and TRUMP memecoin for $300M

The outflow occurred as Bitcoin traded above $103,600 and just days after the White House announced a 90-day reduction in reciprocal tariffs between the US and China, easing market concerns and lifting broader investor sentiment.

Venture capital firms are critical to infrastructure development in the Bitcoin ecosystem, despite pushback from some in the community, according to builders speaking at the Token2049 conference in Dubai.

Charlie Yechuan Hu, CEO of Bitcoin layer-2 protocol Bitlayer, shared his insights on venture capital (VC) firms in the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem.

Hu told Cointelegraph that he views many VC firms in the space positively, as they offer support to early ventures that need capital to build infrastructure.

“You need developers, you need to open up the whole ecosystem foundation, everything,” Hu said. “You need to pay for the cloud, like AWS or RPCs, all that, servers […] So, we have to have VC on that.“

Hu challenged the usual Bitcoiner ethos that argues against outsider capital.

“It’s difficult to say, okay, let’s do a fair mint, and then have a very successful, healthy treasury, and you have to pay all this stuff,” he said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

The largest political party in South Korea, the Democratic Party, has launched a Digital Asset Committee focused on developing cryptocurrency policies and promoting industry growth.

The committee held its inaugural meeting at the National Assembly Members’ Hall in Seoul on May 13, the local news agency News1 reported.

During its first meeting, the committee highlighted the importance of resolving regulatory uncertainty and addressing burning issues like stablecoin regulation amid the push for US-dollar stablecoins by the US government.

The new committee joins similar organizations in South Korea, including the Virtual Asset Committee launched in late 2024 and another public-private crypto task force introduced in 2022, both initiated by the Financial Services Commission (FSC).

Exchanges like Upbit and Bithumb involved

The leadership of the Digital Asset Committee includes South Korean officials and politicians, such as National Assembly Chairman Min Byeong-deok, who joined the committee as chairman.

Brokerage fintech Robinhood is set to acquire WonderFi, a Canadian crypto firm, for about 250 million Canadian dollars ($179 million) in an all-cash deal to expand its global presence.

The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2025, Robinhood said in a May 13 news release.

WonderFi operates two of Canada’s longest-standing regulated crypto trading platforms, Bitbuy and Coinsquare, managing over 2.1 billion Canadian dollars in assets under custody. These platforms offer crypto trading, staking and custody services.

“WonderFi has built a formidable family of brands serving beginner and advanced crypto users alike, making them an ideal partner to accelerate Robinhood’s mission in Canada,” said Johann Kerbrat, senior vice president and general manager of Robinhood Crypto.

Under the terms of the deal, Robinhood will acquire all outstanding WonderFi shares at 0.36 Canadian dollars per share — a 41% premium over WonderFi’s last closing price on the Toronto Stock Exchange and a 71% premium over its 30-day volume-weighted average price.

Key takeaways:

XRP price has risen 55% since April and is now flashing bullish continuation signals.

Whale flows have flipped positive for the first time since November 2024, historically signaling trend reversals.

A falling wedge breakout projects 40% gains ahead, but $2.80 may act as interim resistance.

XRP (XRP) has bounced by more than 55% since forming a local bottom at around $1.61 in April. It now signals a further price surge owing to bullish technical patterns and onchain data.

Update (May 13, 1:00 pm UTC): This article has been updated to add third-party commentary from Robert Roose.

Web3 and privacy-focused web browser Brave Browser has integrated the Cardano blockchain into its native and standalone wallets.

According to a May 12 announcement, the integration stems from a partnership between Brave Browser and Cardano development firm Input Output. Together, the two firms “will integrate Cardano into the Brave Wallet, enabling Cardano blockchain access and token management.” Brendan Eich, co-founder and CEO of Brave and the Basic Attention Token (BAT), said:

Eich said that Brave focuses on maximizing user choice while providing tools to engage with decentralized ecosystems. With this integration, users of the Web3 browser and standalone wallet will gain direct access to Cardano’s blockchain without leaving the interfaces.

Brave had not responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment by publication.

Bitcoin defied expectations in April, delivering double-digit gains while posting lower volatility than major traditional assets.

According to analysts at Galaxy Digital, Bitcoin’s (BTC) realized volatility over the past 10 trading sessions dropped to 43.86, lower than the S&P 500’s 47.29 and the Nasdaq 100’s 51.26 — an unusual “positioning for a digital asset traditionally known for its outsized volatility.”

The data point comes against a backdrop of renewed financial turbulence. Since US President Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariff announcement on April 2, traditional markets have wobbled.

The Nasdaq Composite is flat, the Bloomberg Dollar Index fell nearly 4%, and even gold (typically a safe haven) briefly hit $3,500 per ounce before pulling back to a 5.75% gain, Galaxy Digital analysts wrote in a May 12 note.

However, they noted that Bitcoin surged 11% over the same period, reinforcing its evolving role as a macro hedge amid geopolitical and fiscal uncertainty.