Decentral Block Post

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin rallies to $101,707 against a backdrop of strong fundamentals in the regulatory and traditional finance space.

Traders are confident that $100,000 will hold as support.

Bitcoin (BTC) price rallied above $100,000 on the heels of US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a “trade deal” with the UK, which could possibly include the removal of the blanket 10% tariff on all imports. 

Frequent social posts from President Trump and public comments from White House cabinet members have hinted at a handful of trade deals in negotiation with various countries, and markets have responded positively to the messaging. In addition to the UK trade deal, the US is set to meet with Chinese officials in Switzerland on May 10.

The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins of 2025 Act, known as the GENIUS Act, failed to pass cloture in the United States Senate on May 8, dealing a slight blow to cryptocurrency regulation in the country.

The bill, sponsored by Senator Bill Hagerty and co-sponsored by Senators Tim Scott, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cynthia Lummis and Angela Alsobrooks, received last-minute pushback from Democrats, who took aim at the bill and raised concerns about US President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures.

To address the concerns of Senate Democrats, the bill had already been amended to include stricter requirements for stablecoin issuers for further provisions for Anti-Money Laundering.

The GENIUS Act was seen as a bipartisan effort to increase regulatory clarity for digital assets in the United States. The focus of the bill, stablecoins used for payments, was looked at as extending dollar dominance internationally and straying away from more controversial crypto topics.

After the procedure failed, Senate Majority Leader John Thune criticized Democrats, saying, “Democrats have been accommodated every step of the way […] frankly, I just don’t get it.”

US President Donald Trump was reportedly manipulated by a lobbyist tied to Ripple Labs into announcing the XRP token would be part of his plans for a national cryptocurrency reserve.

According to a May 8 Politico report, an employee of pro-Trump lobbyist Brian Ballard gave the president the text to a social media post she recommended he write announcing a US strategic crypto reserve that would include XRP, Solana (SOL), and Cardano (ADA). After he posted the message to his social media platform on March 2, Trump learned Ripple was one of Ballard’s clients, infuriating the president, who felt like he’d been used, Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the incident.

“He is not welcome in anything anymore,” said Trump, referencing Ballard, according to the report.

March 2 Truth Social post announcing US crypto reserve. Source: Donald Trump

Trump had connections to Ripple long before the announcement of XRP in the proposed crypto reserve. The blockchain firm’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, donated more than $300,000 to fundraising and political action committees supporting Trump in the 2024 election, and both he and CEO Brad Garlinghouse met with the then-president-elect in January and attended inauguration events.

Related: Democrats aim at Trump’s crypto profits with a 3-prong pincer move

Updated to correct that the SEC sent a Wells notice to Uniswap but did not bring charges.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering rule changes to let companies more freely issue tokenized securities, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said in a speech published on May 8.

The regulator is “considering a potential exemptive order” for firms using blockchain technology to “issue, trade, and settle securities” that would release them from certain registration requirements, Peirce said in the speech.

For example, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) may no longer need to register “as a broker-dealer, clearing agency, or an exchange,” Peirce said. The SEC has previously sent numerous Wells notices to DEXs such as Uniswap for allegedly failing to register as securities exchanges.

Firms should “not have to comply with inapt regulations, which, in many cases, were developed well before the technologies being tested existed and may be obviated by attributes of that technology,” Peirce said. 

Layer 2s have been a great blockchain success story. They’ve reduced congestion on the Ethereum mainnet, driving down gas fees while preserving security.

But maybe they’ve become too successful, drawing chain activity and fee income from the parent that spawned them? At least that’s what some are suggesting lately, most recently at Cornell Tech’s blockchain conference in late April.

Indeed, some think Ethereum should be a little greedier, or at least fight harder for a bigger part of the revenue pie, particularly sequencing fees. 

“People in the Ethereum Foundation [the nonprofit that supports the Ethereum ecosystem] will tell you that, ‘Yes, we effed up by being too ivory tower.’ I have heard that multiple times,” said David Hoffman, an owner at Bankless, during a panel discussion at the Cornell Tech event in New York City on April 25. 

Hoffman, left, at Cornell Tech’s blockchain conference. Source: Andrew Singer

Elsewhere, Hoffman has urged Ethereum to make a “strategic pivot,” noting that the crypto environment has changed in the last few years. Ethereum no longer has the “luxury of being a peace-time research project…. exploited by its competition.”

Missouri House Bill 594, a bill that would eliminate capital gains tax in the US state, has passed a vote in the state House of Representatives and now heads to Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe's desk for signature.

According to attorney Aaron Brogan, the bill stipulates a 100% income tax deduction for any capital gains income because the Missouri tax code does not explicitly distinguish between capital gains and income tax.

Missouri House Bill 594 proposes exempting capital gains from income taxes. Source: Missouri House of Representatives

Brogan told Cointelegraph that the specific mechanism to exempt capital gains taxes outlined in HB 594 is unique and compared it to a similar income tax deduction in the federal tax code. The attorney explained:

"The most natural comparison is the state and local tax (SALT) deduction that the federal government offers — where the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) permits individuals to deduct a certain amount of tax paid in state and local taxes. This is the inverse, which I have never seen before."

The bill's timing is significant in that it follows proposals from US President Donald Trump to overhaul the country’s income tax system through comprehensive reform.

Related: US lawmaker targets crypto investors using Puerto Rico as a tax haven

Bitcoin has reclaimed the $100,000 price level for the first time since January, reflecting renewed bullish sentiment among investors.

Bitcoin (BTC) reclaimed the $100,000 mark on May 8 at 3:22 pm UTC, surging 4.2% from the intraday low of $95,967, according to data from CoinGecko.

It marked the third time that BTC has broken through the six-figure level since first achieving it on Dec. 5, 2024. A second all-time high followed on Jan. 20 ahead of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Bitcoin price chart in the past year. Source: CoinGecko

Unlike the previous $100,000 hits, the new price spike came as Bitcoin market dominance surged above 60%, reflecting potential bearish sentiment for altcoins.

Bitcoin dominance below 60% in past $100,000 breakthroughs

Bitcoin dominance — the asset’s share of the total cryptocurrency market — has been steadily rising over the past year. During its first run to $100,000 in December 2024, BTC dominance stood at 52%. By January 2025, that figure had increased to 54%.

Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky will probably be allowed to travel for his daughter’s wedding regardless of the outcome of his May 8 sentencing hearing.

In a May 8 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge John Koeltl approved an application for Mashinsky to travel from New York to Memphis, Tennessee, between May 26 and May 29 for his daughter’s wedding. The approval was available on the public docket as of May 8, but appeared to have been removed at the time of publication.

Alex Mashinsky’s request to travel for his daughter’s wedding. Source: PACER

Judge Koeltl will determine in a May 8 hearing whether Mashinsky serves prison time following a plea deal with prosecutors.

The former Celsius CEO appeared ready to go to trial in 2024 until his lawyers lost a motion to have his charges dismissed. In December, He pleaded guilty to commodities fraud and a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the price of the platform’s native token, CEL.

Related: Celsius’ Mashinsky lashes out at ‘death-in-prison sentence’

Opinion by Jonathan Farnell, CEO of Freedx

It’s 2025, and over 560 million people worldwide are already using cryptocurrency — roughly 17 times the population of Tokyo. That’s a vibrant community, yet for every user who’s embraced it, billions more stand on the sidelines, put off by the complicated interactions and clunky interfaces of protocols, platforms, decentralized apps (DApps), and mobile applications. Why? Blockchain technology offers game-changing potential — decentralized ownership, secure trades — but let’s face it: Most people still find it intimidating, risky, and confusing. User experience (UX) might just be the deciding factor in whether cryptocurrency achieves mass adoption or remains a niche segment.

Take complexity. A 2024 Chainalysis report pointed out that 43% of would-be crypto users shy away from the technical tangle of private keys and gas fees. Have you ever lost a seed phrase? You’re not alone. More than $200 billion in crypto has been lost forever because of it. That’s not just a statistic — it’s a gut punch for someone who thought they’d unlocked the future of finance. Streamlining this chaos could fling open the doors to 5 billion internet users, pushing crypto’s $2.91 trillion market cap, as reported by Cointelegraph, into the stratosphere — potentially reaching $4 trillion in the second quarter of 2025.

From headaches to high fives

Many decentralized finance (DeFi) apps currently feel like a hacker’s playground — all data and API integrations, but nothing intuitive that speaks to an ordinary person. Simply swapping cryptic jargon for plain English would be a solid start. Consider swapping “gas fees” to “transaction costs.” Those 12-word seed phrases send users into panic mode, but a familiar gear icon for settings could put users’ minds at ease. Suddenly, managing a wallet isn’t a high-stakes game anymore. It’s just another tool.

This isn’t about dazzling users with blockchain’s inner workings. Most people don’t care about the tech under the hood, just like they don’t ask whether their favorite app runs on AWS or Google Cloud. Blockchain isn’t a shiny new internet. It’s infrastructure — powerful, but invisible, when done right. Users want solutions — quick payments, secure savings, and easy access. Streamlined experiences could draw in everyday folks — retirees sending cash to grandkids, small business owners managing cash flow — expanding cryptocurrency’s reach. It’s about turning a daunting process into something approachable, paving the way for broader economic effect. 

Cryptocurrency mining firm Hut 8 increased its hashrate by 79% during the first quarter of the year.

According to Hut8’s latest quarterly report released on May 8, the firm saw a net loss of $134.3 million despite revenue of $21.8 million. The firm’s CEO, Asher Genoot, explained that this was a result of large-scale investments.

“As reflected in our results, the first quarter was a deliberate and necessary phase of investment,” Genoot said. “We believe the returns on this work will become increasingly visible in the quarters ahead.”

Hut 8 operations reached a total energy capacity of 1,020 megawatts as of March 31, enough to power well over 800,000 average homes in the United States. The company also has the right to scale up its operation by another 2,600 MW.

Related: Bitcoin mining — Institutions boost investments amid favorable US climate

Bitcoin (BTC) has long been branded as “digital gold,” a store of value for believers in scarcity, decentralization and self-sovereignty. As institutional interest grows, geopolitics shift, and new layers emerge on Bitcoin’s stack, is it time for the narrative to evolve? 

In this episode of The Clear Crypto Podcast, hosts Nathan Jeffay and Gareth Jenkinson speak with longtime Bitcoiner and entrepreneur Dan Held, who argues that Bitcoin’s next chapter may unlock broader functionality, from programmable use cases to more nuanced messaging that reaches far beyond crypto-native circles.

Political shifts

With US President Donald Trump openly backing Bitcoin — and reportedly owning it himself — Held said he sees a regulatory and reputational change. 

“We have the most open administration toward Bitcoin in the United States,” he said. 

“It kind of feels weird... Normally in the press, Bitcoin mining is destroying the environment. It’s being used by money launderers… And instead, you've got the president encouraging Bitcoin.”

Held traced Bitcoin’s unlikely rise through moments of adversity, from China’s mining crackdowns to the Biden administration’s strict approach to crypto banking. Yet despite those challenges, roughly 25% of Americans now own Bitcoin, he said.

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US by trading volume, has agreed to acquire Deribit, one of the world’s biggest crypto derivatives trading platforms.

Coinbase Global will acquire Deribit for about $2.9 billion, the exchange announced on May 8.

The acquisition will allow Coinbase to expand into the profitable crypto derivatives market and continue scaling the platform’s global growth, Greg Tusar, Coinbase’s vice president of institutional product, said in the announcement.

“With Deribit’s strong presence and professional client base, Coinbase is making its most substantial move yet to accelerate our international growth strategy,” he said.

Source: Coinbase

Deribit founders to step away

Following the deal’s success, expected later in 2025, Deribit founders John and Marius Jansen will step away from the firm. Their exit would mark the end of the joint venture that began in 2014, Deribit said in a statement on Thursday.

Smart contract platform Rootstock, the home of decentralized finance (DeFi) on Bitcoin, saw a sharp increase in network security and mining engagement in the first quarter of 2025, even as activity cooled.

Merged mining participation surged to an all-time high of 81%, up from 56.4% in Q4 2024, driven by the integration of major mining pools Foundry and SpiderPool, according to Messari’s first “State of Rootstock” report for 2025, shared with Cointelegraph.

The heightened miner interest boosted Rootstock’s hash power to over 740 exahashes per second, surpassing the total Bitcoin network hashrate recorded in October 2024. As a result, the network is now considered to be in a “mature phase” of merged mining growth.

The increased security coincided with a 60% reduction in transaction fees, improving user experience and positioning Rootstock more competitively within the Bitcoin layer-2 ecosystem.

“As BTCFi continues to grow, Rootstock is well-positioned for broader adoption through core upgrades like a 60% reduction in transaction fees, alongside sustained investment in builder education and incentive programs,” Messari analyst Andrew Yang said.

Sweat, a move-to-earn platform that rewards users for physical activity, has launched a personalized AI agent and expanded its multichain infrastructure. The update is designed to improve user onboarding by offering interactive guidance and simplifying asset management across blockchains.

The AI agent, named Mia (short for Movement in Action), is powered by Near.AI — an open-source AI model platform with crosschain capabilities. Integrated into the Sweat wallet, Mia helps users to bridge, swap and manage their crypto rewards without needing deep crypto knowledge..

Sweat is rolling out support for Base, Ethereum, Arbitrum and BNB Chain. Within the app, users can now bridge assets and swap native tokens across networks, with the option to pay gas fees in Sweat (SWEAT) tokens.

Sweat co-founder Oleg Fomenko told Cointelegraph: “We’ve shifted to championing the Movement Economy — an expansive, multichain ecosystem where movement is not only rewarded but also unlocks access to financial tools, health experiences and self-sovereign identity.”

Mia in Sweat wallet Source: swe.at

Related: Near’s crosschain AI Assistant will soon book flights and order takeout for you

Key takeaways:

Ether breaks multimonth downtrend as traders target $3,000 ETH price.

Ethereum TVL surges 41% to $52.8 billion in 30 days, with a 22% rise in daily transactions to 1.34 million, signaling strong network recovery.

Technicals show ETH price faces major resistance at $2,100-$2,800.

Ether is setting up for a recovery toward the $3,000 psychological level, backed by recovering network activity, increasing TVL, and strong technicals. 

Space and Time, a blockchain project supported by Microsoft, has launched its public, permissionless mainnet to bring zero-knowledge (ZK)-proven data infrastructure to crypto applications.

Built by MakeInfinite Labs, Space and Time offers a decentralized, verifiable database for smart contracts to query historical, crosschain and offchain data, according to a news release shared with Cointelegraph.

The platform indexes data from major networks like Ethereum and makes it accessible through a decentralized network of validators. Developers can query this data using Space and Time’s Proof of SQL — a sub-second ZK coprocessor that delivers cryptographic proofs with every query.

“Prior to Space and Time, onchain applications had no way to query basic user data from a database of blockchain activity without introducing security risks and tampering,” said Scott Dykstra, co-founder at Space and Time.

He added that developers can now build onchain apps with built-in security, using cryptographic proofs to connect cloud databases to smart contracts.

Doodles’ non-fungible token (NFTs) sales surged by 97% in the last 24 hours as digital collectible traders anticipate the project’s token generation event and airdrop. 

On May 8, data from CryptoSlam showed Doodles NFT sales topping $1.1 million, nearly doubling the previous day’s total. The spike placed Doodles in the third spot for daily NFT sales, following DMarket and Courtyard NFTs.

Over the past week, Doodles recorded $2.6 million in total sales volume, up 368% from the week prior and ranking fifth among all NFT collections, according to CryptoSlam.

The surge comes ahead of the launch of Doodles’ long-awaited DOOD token. The project announced on May 7 that the token generation event will take place on May 9.

Source: Doodles

Doodles to launch DOOD token and airdrop 

Doodles announced its memecoin launch on Feb. 13, saying it would mint 10 billion DOOD tokens on Solana. The project also said that it would bridge to the Base blockchain in the future. 

The Ethereum Pectra upgrade introduced a significant upgrade in account abstraction accessibility, with multiple wallets already implementing the change.

Pectra introduced Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7702, a change that Ivo Georgiev, founder and CEO of self-custodial smart wallet Ambire, described as “the single greatest UX upgrade to Ethereum so far.” Ambire is among the wallet providers that have already rolled out support for the new features since Pectra went live yesterday.

Ambire’s announcement shared with Cointelegraph explains that EIP-7702 brings smart account functionality to existing user accounts, letting them temporarily act as smart contracts. This results in the advantages of account abstraction being accessible without creating new dedicated onchain addresses, rendering the transition of existing addresses possible.

Another wallet that launched new features was Trust Wallet, allowing users to pay gas (transaction fees) in tokens such as stablecoins instead of Ether (ETH). The new wallets are also programmable and still ensure self-custody.

Source: Trust Wallet

Related: AI and account abstraction keys to mass Web3 adoption: X Spaces recap with Plena Finance

Key points:

Bitcoin’s realized cap is beating records and has almost reached the $900 billion mark.

The market is laying the foundations for a “potentially significant price breakout,” new analysis says.

Profit-taking is not hindering the overall bull market rebound.

Bitcoin (BTC) is setting new all-time highs in network value as BTC price action eyes a return to six figures.