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BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) capped off the trading week with another day of inflows, pulling in $356.2 million on May 9. The fund has now extended its inflow streak to 19 consecutive days — its longest run of inflows so far this year.

IBIT’s inflow streak has been ongoing since April 14, and has coincided with a volatile Bitcoin (BTC) market, with the asset trading between $83,152 and $103,000 over the period.

However, market sentiment has been increasing after the asset reclaimed and held above the $90,000 price on April 23 before reclaiming the $100,000 price on May 8 for the first time since Feb. 1.

Bitcoin ETFs ticking along as Bitcoin price spikes

Over the past trading week alone, IBIT posted $1.03 billion in inflows, according to Farside data.

Prior to the current 19-day streak, IBIT’s longest inflow streak in 2025 was a nine-day stretch surrounding US President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, spanning from Jan. 15 to Jan. 28.

A group of Democratic senators has reportedly sent a letter to leadership at the US Department of Justice and the Treasury Department expressing concerns about US President Donald Trump’s ties to cryptocurrency exchange Binance and potential conflicts of interest in regulating the industry.

According to a May 9 Bloomberg report, Democratic senators asked Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to report on the steps Binance had taken as part of its November 2023 plea agreement with US authorities, amid reports that Trump and his family had deepened connections with the exchange.

That settlement saw Binance pay more than $4 billion as part of a deal with the Justice Department, Treasury, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and had then-CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao step down.

However, since Trump won the presidency in 2024, many lawmakers have accused the president of corruption from profiting off crypto while being in a position to influence laws and regulations over the industry.

Trump has launched his own memecoin — which earns the project millions of dollars in transaction fees — and offered the top tokenholders the opportunity to attend an exclusive dinner in Washington, DC.

Sovereign Wealth Funds are already gaining exposure to Bitcoin, but significant allocations won’t happen until the United States establishes clearer regulations for the digital assets industry, says SkyBridge founder Anthony Scaramucci.

“I think they are buying it, I think they are buying it on the margin,” Scaramucci, former White House director of communications during US President Donald Trump’s first term, said on Anthony Pompliano’s podcast on May 8.

Legislation will lead to “large blocks of buying”

“I don’t think it is going to be a gigantic groundswell of buying until we greenlight legislation in the United States,” he added. Scaramucci previously said in a February interview with the Financial Times that he expects the US government to propose crypto legislation in November.

SWFs are government-owned investment funds that manage national savings, often built from surplus revenues like oil profits or trade gains. Norway has the largest SWF in the world, with approximately $1.73 trillion in assets under management, followed by China with $1.33 trillion, according to data from Visual Capitalist.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) market cap is approximately $2.05 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Strategy founder Michael Saylor says Bitcoin hasn’t reached $150,000 yet because holders without a long-term outlook have been selling off while a new cohort of investors are beginning to enter the market.

“I think we’re going through a rotation right now,” Saylor said on the Coin Stories podcast with Natalie Brunell on May 9.

The lack of “10-year investor mindset” led to Bitcoin sell-off

Saylor said “lots of non-economically interested parties are rotating out of the asset.” However, at the same time, “a new cohort of investors are entering.”

“A lot of Bitcoin, for whatever reason, was left in the hands of the governments and the hands of lawyers, and in the hands of bankruptcy trustees,” he added.

Saylor said that many of these trustees do not have a “10-year investors mindset,” and as Bitcoin’s (BTC) price began to rally, they took advantage and “thought this is a good exit point to get liquidity.”

Key takeaways:

ETH price rallied by 22% on May 8, but demand for spot ETH ETFs and derivatives remains muted. 

President Trump’s reversal on certain altcoins aligns with ETH’s renewed outlook. 

Ether (ETH) posted an impressive 29% gain between May 8 and May 9, likely marking the end of a 10-week bear market that bottomed out at $1,385 on April 9. This sharp move triggered the liquidation of over $400 million in short (sell) ETH futures positions, suggesting that whales and market makers were caught off guard.

Despite the surge, traders have maintained a neutral stance in ETH derivatives. Whether this apparent lack of conviction reflects a genuine trend reversal or merely precedes another test of the $2,000 level remains to be seen.

The newly launched DOOD token from Ethereum-based NFT project Doodles has seen a steep drop in market capitalization following its May 9 airdrop on the Solana network.

According to data from DEX Screener, DOOD’s market cap fell from over $100 million shortly after launch to around $60 million at the time of writing.

Overall, the much-anticipated airdrop was “[d]efinitely underwhelming,” a crypto commentator said in a May 9 X post. 

Related: Doodles NFT sales surge 97% ahead of DOOD token airdrop

Falling NFT values

Joining the trend, NFTs in Doodle’s flagship collection sharply dropped in value on May 9.

Key Takeaways:

Solana's 15% surge and potential close above the 50-week EMA signal strong bullish momentum, which previously led to a 515% rally in 2024.

The $120 million in liquidity bridged to Solana reflects growing network confidence.

Solana (SOL) price gained 18% this week, signaling rising bullish momentum. The altcoin is approaching a pivotal point, with a potential close above the 50-week exponential moving average (EMA), a level that has historically catalyzed significant rallies.

In March, SOL dipped below the 50-week EMA and briefly dropped under $100 on April 7. Since then, Solana has staged a strong recovery, reclaiming key EMA levels (100W and 200W), with the 50-week EMA (blue line) now in focus.

Wall Street giant BlackRock met with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Crypto Task Force to discuss staking within crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) and tokenization of securities. The discussion could advance institutional interest in the crypto industry.

According to a May 9 memo published by the task force, BlackRock sought to “[d]iscuss perspectives on treatment of staking, including considerations for facilitating ETPs with staking capabilities.” The company has previously said that Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds, while successful, are less perfect without staking.

Other crypto ETF issuers share that view. On Feb. 15, the New York Stock Exchange proposed a rule change to introduce staking services for Grayscale’s spot Ether ETFs. In April, the SEC delayed a decision on whether to approve or disapprove the rule change. BlackRock and Grayscale are behind the largest Ether ETFs by market capitalization, according to Sosovalue.

Many blockchains rely on proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms that allow users to lock their native coins for yield. A potential SEC approval of staking for Ether ETFs could lead to future requests among altcoins, including Solana (SOL) ETFs.

Tokenization on the agenda

BlackRock also discussed “tokenization of securities under federal securities regulatory framework.” Securities are traditional financial instruments where the investor expects monetary gain, such as bonds and stocks. Tokenizing securities has many benefits, including faster settlement times, lower costs than with traditional finance infrastructure, and 24-hour markets.

US Vice President JD Vance will speak at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, roughly a year after then-presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke at the same event.

According to a May 9 notice from the event’s organizers, Vance will address conference attendees in person on May 28, making him the first sitting US vice president to speak at a digital asset conference.

Trump provided a pre-recorded video of himself from the White House to the organizers of the Digital Asset Summit in March — his first appearance at a crypto event since taking office in January — and spoke in person at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville while campaigning.

Though Vance is a Bitcoin (BTC) holder — he holds $250,000 to $500,001 worth of the cryptocurrency, according to a financial disclosure filed in August 2024 — it’s unclear whether the vice president intends to make a substantive policy statement at the event. Cointelegraph reached out to Vance’s office for comment but had not received a response at time of publication.

Related: Resurfaced clip shows Trump’s VP pick slamming Gensler’s approach to crypto

Key points:

Bitcoin holding $100,000 as a level of support would confirm the current trend change.

Ether leads among altcoins, and DeFi tokens could follow.

Bitcoin (BTC) broke above the psychologically critical $100,000 level on May 8, and the bulls are trying to hold on to the level on May 9. In an X post, CoinGlass said that Bitcoin’s rally resulted in $837.80 million in short liquidations in a 24-hour period, the largest since 2021.

Bitcoin’s rally also lifted several major altcoins, which soared above their respective overhead resistance levels. The altcoin rally was led by Ether (ETH), which surged roughly 22% on May 8, triggering a $328 million liquidation of Ether short positions.

Mining firm TeraWulf reported a net loss of approximately $61.4 million in its earnings for the first quarter of 2025, further deteriorating from the same period last year.

Revenue fell to $34.4 million from $42.4 million in the same period of 2024, according to the company's earnings report, published May 9. Cost of revenue rose sharply to $24.5 million, up from $14.4 million a year earlier.

As a result, TeraWulf's cost of revenue accounted for 71.4% of total income from operations in Q1 2025, more than double the 34% recorded in the prior-year quarter. In Q1 2024, the company posted a net loss of $9.6 million.

TeraWulf attributed the decreased revenue to Bitcoin's (BTC) post-halving economics that reduced the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC per block mined to 3.125 BTC per block mined, rising network difficulty, and severe weather in the upstate New York area that is home to a TeraWulf mining facility.

The company is not alone in posting losses for the quarter, as the already competitive mining industry faces reduced block rewards and the macroeconomic uncertainty of geopolitical trade tensions that have created turmoil for financial markets and businesses alike.

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade doesn’t pose a threat to decentralization, according to Mallesh Pai, senior research director at blockchain software firm Consensys, describing the update as a cleanup of the behind-the-scenes “busy work” currently handled by validators.

During a May 9 Cointelegraph X Space, Pai said a validator’s chances of proposing a block or earning rewards remain tied to how much ETH they hold, adding that larger validators don’t gain any new advantages under the upgrade:

Pectra is Ethereum’s most extensive network upgrade since the Merge took place in September 2022. Pectra allows validators to stake as much as 2,048 ETH, up from the previous limit of 32 ETH. The new standard has raised community concerns about the risks of centralization on the network.

According to Pai, the Pectra upgrade has taken “a bunch of busy work that the network was doing behind the scenes and removed it.”

Pai noted that while there are about a million technical validators on Ethereum, many aren’t truly distinct — large validators often operate numerous virtual keys from a single physical machine. With the Pectra upgrade, those keys can now be consolidated — something he says they are already seeing.

A group of Democratic senators has reportedly sent a letter to leadership at the US Department of Justice and the Treasury Department expressing concerns about US President Donald Trump’s ties to cryptocurrency exchange Binance and potential conflicts of interest in regulating the industry.

According to a May 9 Bloomberg report, Democratic senators asked Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to report on the steps Binance had taken as part of its November 2023 plea agreement with US authorities, amid reports that Trump and his family had deepened connections with the exchange.

That settlement saw Binance pay more than $4 billion as part of a deal with the Justice Department, Treasury, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and had then-CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao step down.

However, since Trump won the presidency in 2024, many lawmakers have accused the president of corruption from profiting off crypto while being in a position to influence laws and regulations over the industry.

Trump has launched his own memecoin — which earns the project millions of dollars in transaction fees — and offered the top tokenholders the opportunity to attend an exclusive dinner in Washington, DC. His family-backed crypto venture World Liberty Financial also recently announced that an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm, MGX, would settle a $2 billion investment in Binance using the platform’s USD1 stablecoin.

Law enforcement detained the wrong person for a 2022 scam that pilfered more than $1 million worth of Bored Ape non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cybersecurity researcher ZachXBT said. 

In a May 9 X post, ZachXBT said he identified the wallet behind the scam and linked it to an X account that has since been deleted. 

But in 2023, law enforcement detained Sam Curry, a former Yuga Labs security researcher, at an airport as a suspect in the incident, ZachXBT said. Yuga Labs is the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. 

“It’s unfortunate to see how a security researcher was detained when stronger leads on a threat actor potentially responsible exist,” ZachXBT said.

Related: Crypto sleuth ZachXBT says he unmasked 50x Hyperliquid whale

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin’s price closely tracks global liquidity growth, with liquidity explaining up to 90% of its price movements, according to Raoul Pal.

In the long term, global liquidity continues to expand, driven by the increasing debt levels in many countries.

On a shorter timeframe, global liquidity follows a cyclical pattern, with Michael Howell projecting the current cycle to peak by mid-2026.

Bitcoin (BTC) price is notoriously sensitive to global liquidity. Some analysts go as far as calling their correlation near-perfect, with a lag of about three months. This relationship is fueling the current bullish narrative as BTC price soars back above $100,000, but how long can this trend last?

The cryptocurrency market continued to surge this past week as the overall digital asset market capitalization exceeded $3.27 trillion, an 8.6% increase over the previous week.

Bitcoin (BTC) reached a high of $103,600 on May 8 after reclaiming $100,000 for the first time since January. Its market dominance also surged above 60%, reflecting more bullish BTC sentiment. This marked the third time BTC has broken through six figures since it reached the milestone on Dec. 5, 2024, and again on Jan. 20, ahead of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

The BTC rise coincided with Trump announcing a trade deal with the United Kingdom, which may include removing a 10% blanket tariff on all imports.

In the wider crypto space, Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade implemented much-needed improvements for the crypto ecosystem. The upgrade was followed by a 26% price surge for Ether (ETH), rising from $1,800 on May 7 to over $2,300 on May 9.

Bitcoin DeFi sees surge in mining participation despite drop in TVL

Messari's “State of Rootstock” report for 2025 showed that merged mining participation surged to an all-time high of 81% in Q1 2025, up from 56.4% in the previous quarter. The surge was attributed to onboarding major mining pools SpiderPool and Foundry. 

Galaxy Digital has been approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to redomicile in the United States, setting the stage for the crypto investment company’s listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Galaxy anticipates listing on the Nasdaq, a tech-focused US stock exchange, by the middle of May, pending approval from the Toronto Stock Exchange, on which the company is already listed, and shareholder approval at a special shareholders meeting on May 9.

Shareholders at the meeting must approve redomiciling Galaxy Digital in the US state of Delaware, known for its business-friendly regulations, before the process can move forward, according to an announcement from the company.

Galaxy obtained SEC approval for a Nasdaq listing in April this year, and once the company obtains the other necessary approvals, it will trade on the Nasdaq under the GLXY ticker symbol.

The company is the latest crypto firm to announce an imminent stock market listing, as institutional interest in digital assets grows and crypto matures as an asset class that increasingly interacts with traditional financial markets.

Key Takeaways:

Bitcoin is driven by its ability to perform well in risk-on and risk-off environments, according to Bitcoin Suisse.

Bitcoin’s Sharpe ratio of 1.72, second only to gold, underscores its maturity as an asset, offering superior risk-adjusted returns.

A buyer-dominant market signals strong institutional and retail interest that could drive a supply squeeze and break new highs in May.

Bitcoin (BTC) price breached the $100,000 mark for the first time since January, fueling speculation of a new all-time high above $110,000 in May. According to Bitcoin Suisse, a crypto custody service provider, BTC’s bullish momentum stems from its ability to thrive in risk-on and risk-off environments since the US presidential elections. 

Opinion by: Naman Kabra, co-founder and CEO of NodeOps Network

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have become the default hardware for many AI workloads, especially when training large models. That thinking is everywhere. While it makes sense in some contexts, it's also created a blind spot that's holding us back.

GPUs have earned their reputation. They're incredible at crunching massive numbers in parallel, which makes them perfect for training large language models or running high-speed AI inference. That's why companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta spend a lot of money building GPU clusters.

While GPUs may be preferred for running AI, we cannot forget about Central Processing Units (CPUs), which are still very capable. Forgetting this could be costing us time, money, and opportunity.

CPUs aren't outdated. More people need to realize they can be used for AI tasks. They're sitting idle in millions of machines worldwide, capable of running a wide range of AI tasks efficiently and affordably, if only we'd give them a chance.

Key points:

Bitcoin continues to attack a key resistance zone below all-time highs.

“Parabolic” BTC price talk begins to resurface as bulls hold six figures after the Wall Street open.

Signs of profit-taking are increasing amid the highest prices since January.

Bitcoin (BTC) is attracting “parabolic” price targets as bulls continue to hold six figures on May 9.