Category: Cryptocurrency

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has officially eliminated a long-standing rule that prevented defendants in enforcement settlements from publicly contesting the agency’s accusations. This policy, initially put in place in 1972, had been criticized for creating an appearance that the SEC was shielding itself from scrutiny, according to regulatory officials.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins announced the rescission, stating that the previous requirement forced settling parties to agree not to publicly dispute the Commission’s claims. Atkins emphasized that this change removes what he described as an unnecessary constraint on defendants’ ability to criticize the agency during settlement agreements. Under the old framework, companies or individuals could not deny the allegations or allow others to do so on their behalf, a rule originally justified to avoid the perception that sanctions were being applied for actions that did not occur.

In a related statement, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce supported the move, arguing that imposing forced silence on defendants does little to enhance market transparency or protect investors. Peirce noted that transparent enforcement of securities laws is essential for fostering free markets, and allowing both parties to speak freely after settlements contributes to that openness. She also suggested that the SEC’s enforcement staff should have confidence in their investigations without relying on speech restrictions.

Peirce has previously criticized this policy, especially during the Biden administration when the SEC, under former Chair Gary Gensler, aggressively pursued cryptocurrency firms. In early 2024, she argued that the practice undermined regulatory integrity. More recently, the SEC submitted its rescission proposal to the Office of Management and Budget before finalizing the change.

Crypto companies have increasingly challenged this rule as the SEC ramped up enforcement actions against digital asset entities. In 2023 alone, the agency initiated 46 crypto-related actions and collected $281 million in penalties through settlements. Since President Donald Trump returned to office, the SEC has dropped or settled several major crypto cases from the previous administration, including a high-profile $50 million settlement with Ripple Labs in May 2025.

The SEC also clarified that it may still require certain defendants to admit liability or wrongdoing in future settlements, and existing no-deny provisions will no longer be enforced.

The native token of Hyperliquid, HYPE, has experienced a significant price increase of nearly 24% over the past six days, bringing it within striking distance of its record peak. This rally is attributed to a confluence of factors including regulatory progress, exchange-traded fund (ETF) interest, stablecoin expansion, and the introduction of synthetic assets on the platform.

Data from Santiment reveals that HYPE climbed from approximately $38.32 on May 13 to around $47.65, marking a six-day gain of about 24%. The token is now trading within $12 of its all-time high, with social dominance spiking to 1.79% on May 14—significantly above its normal range. Technical indicators from TradingView show HYPE/USDT on KuCoin near $48, with the Relative Strength Index (RSI) at 64.91, indicating strong buying momentum without being overbought. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) remains positive, with the blue line above the signal line and rising green histogram bars.

A key catalyst has been the CLARITY Act, which cleared a crucial U.S. Senate committee on May 14. This bill aims to establish clearer market structure rules for digital assets, boosting sentiment for crypto trading platforms like Hyperliquid. Additionally, Bitwise has added demand for HYPE by announcing that it will allocate 10% of the management fee from its Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF (ticker BHYP) to hold HYPE on its balance sheet. This move aligns with Hyperliquid’s model, where roughly 99% of protocol revenue is used to buy and burn HYPE. BHYP began trading on the NYSE on May 15 with a 0.34% sponsor fee, waived for the first month on the first $500 million in assets. Bitwise noted that HYPE’s market cap has exceeded $11 billion, making it the tenth-largest crypto asset.

The rally is also supported by the deepening of USDC infrastructure on Hyperliquid. Circle has become the technical deployment partner for USDC on the platform, while Coinbase serves as the official USDC treasury deployer. USDC remains the primary collateral and quote asset across Hyperliquid’s ecosystem. According to reports, USDC supply on Hyperliquid has grown to about $5 billion, doubling year-over-year amid rising stablecoin demand on decentralized exchanges. Furthermore, the launch of SPCX, a synthetic SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual by Trade.xyz, has contributed to the bullish sentiment. The SPCX market implies a $1.78 trillion valuation for SpaceX, and HYPE added approximately 7% following its introduction.

Republican legislators in the U.S. House are working to transform a temporary prohibition on a central bank digital currency into a lasting restriction, as Congress prepares to vote on a major housing bill this week. According to Congressman Mike Flood, the revised version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act removes what he calls a “backdoor green light for a CBDC” by making the ban indefinite instead of letting it expire in 2030.

The Senate Banking Committee initially introduced the housing package in March, focusing on supply, affordability, mortgage access, and manufactured housing rules. Senators Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren led the legislation, which passed the Senate with a strong bipartisan vote of 84 to 6. Hidden within the bill was a clause that prevented the Federal Reserve or regional banks from issuing a digital dollar without congressional approval, but only until December 31, 2030.

House Republicans now aim to eliminate that sunset clause before the bill returns to the Senate. Representative Warren Davidson argues that the current deadline essentially creates a launch window for a government-issued digital currency. In a statement, he said, “The US House of Representatives could deliver a unifying win this week with bipartisan housing affordability legislation. Instead, they currently plan to deliver a go-live date for Central Bank Digital Currency, using housing as the Trojan Horse.” He also warned that the 2030 sunset works as a pre-launch development period, urging a full and permanent ban on CBDCs in the United States.

Separately, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer continues to lobby senators to pass his Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which cleared the House in July. The bill would block the Federal Reserve from creating or issuing a central bank digital currency, framing the issue around privacy and financial freedom. Emmer stated, “The Chinese Communist Party uses a central bank digital currency to surveil and control its people,” adding that his legislation “bans our government from ever creating this Orwellian tool.”

Earlier attempts to halt a digital dollar through standalone legislation have stalled. Senator Mike Lee introduced the “No CBDC Act” to prohibit both the Federal Reserve and Treasury from issuing a CBDC, but the proposal failed to advance. Outside government, criticism of CBDCs often centers on surveillance and state control, though the Human Rights Foundation notes that they could improve financial access for underserved populations while also posing privacy risks. According to the Atlantic Council, only Nigeria, Jamaica, and the Bahamas have fully launched CBDCs, with many other countries still in pilot or research phases.

Solana’s blockchain economy demonstrated robust activity in the first quarter of 2026, with the network’s Chain GDP reaching $342.2 million, according to a recent Messari report. This metric measures the total revenue generated by applications on the Solana ecosystem, providing a comprehensive view of economic output.

PumpFun, a token launchpad, remained the dominant contributor, generating $124.7 million in revenue during Q1, underscoring its central role in Solana’s application economy. Despite mixed market conditions, user engagement translated into substantial fee and app-level income.

The real-world asset (RWA) market on Solana also saw significant growth, with the market capitalization of tokenized assets rising 43% quarter-over-quarter to $2.01 billion. This surge highlights increasing adoption of Solana for tokenizing traditional financial instruments like treasuries and credit products.

Solana’s real economic value (REV) saw a slight 1% decline to $89.5 million, yet the network ranked second among all blockchains in this category, trailing only Hyperliquid. The Chain GDP figure offers a broader perspective on app revenue across the ecosystem, indicating that user activity remained strong despite broader market fluctuations.

On the technical front, Solana’s upcoming Alpenglow upgrade aims to dramatically reduce transaction finality from roughly 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds. This upgrade, currently in community validator testing, would remove Proof of History and on-chain vote transactions, simplifying consensus and improving reliability. Such speed enhancements are critical for trading, payments, and consumer applications that require near-instant confirmation.

Additionally, Firedancer, a new validator client, has begun producing blocks on Solana’s mainnet, though Jump Crypto advises caution until audits are complete. Firedancer introduces client diversity, while Alpenglow focuses on faster consensus, together representing significant infrastructure improvements. These advancements provide a business context for Solana’s Q1 performance, which already includes strong Chain GDP and a growing RWA market cap.

In a significant blow to the cryptocurrency market, U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds experienced their largest single-day capital exodus since late January, with investors pulling approximately $650 million as Bitcoin’s price dipped below $78,000. The sell-off was triggered by escalating geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Iran, which drove oil prices higher and reignited fears that inflation may persist longer than previously expected.

Data from SoSoValue reveals that the ETF sector saw net outflows totaling $648.6 million on Monday, contributing to nearly $1 billion in withdrawals over the past week, ending a six-week streak of inflows. BlackRock’s IBIT led the downturn with $448.3 million exiting the fund, followed by Ark & 21Shares’ ARKB, which lost $109.6 million, and Fidelity’s FBTC, which saw $63.4 million in redemptions. Other issuers including Bitwise, VanEck, Invesco, and Franklin Templeton also recorded negative flows.

Bitcoin’s price fell below $77,000 over the weekend, a level that Bitfinex analysts describe as critical for maintaining the market’s recovery trajectory. In a report shared with crypto.news, the analysts warn that weakening institutional appetite is leaving Bitcoin more susceptible to macroeconomic shocks. They note that two primary drivers of marginal buying—spot ETFs and yield-focused products like STRC—are simultaneously losing steam as the broader economic environment becomes more challenging.

Liquidity conditions have deteriorated to their weakest point since early February, making Bitcoin highly vulnerable to external pressures and interest rate volatility. The analysts highlight that aggressive institutional participation, which fueled earlier phases of the bull cycle, is no longer evident. On-chain data further underscores this trend: the Realized Cap 30-Day Net Position Change metric, which tracks monthly capital inflows into Bitcoin’s network, climbed to about $2.8 billion per month after Bitcoin’s rally toward $82,000 earlier this month. However, this is far below the $10 billion monthly inflows seen during strong breakout periods between 2023 and 2025.

The weaker inflow profile suggests that Bitcoin may struggle to withstand sustained macroeconomic headwinds, particularly if interest rates remain elevated. The analysts also caution that inflation concerns complicate the Federal Reserve’s policy path. They note that the new Fed chair inherits a central bank that has missed its inflation target for five consecutive years, with inflation expectations no longer anchored at 2%. Despite dovish interpretations of his prior comments, the data does not support such a stance. Political pressure for rate cuts is mounting, but market expectations for the second half of 2026 are shifting away from multiple cuts toward a scenario where the Fed maintains restrictive policy to restore inflation credibility.

BNB Chain recently conducted a trial for a post-quantum cryptography upgrade on its BSC network, and the results revealed significant performance trade-offs. The implementation of ML-DSA-44 signatures, designed to withstand quantum attacks, led to a notable increase in data load, reducing throughput by approximately 40% in testing scenarios.

The test, detailed in the BSC Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration Report released on May 14, demonstrated that transaction signatures grew from a mere 65 bytes to 2,420 bytes when switching from ECDSA to ML-DSA-44. Consequently, overall transaction size ballooned from around 110 bytes to roughly 2.5 kilobytes, causing block sizes to approach 2 MB and throughput to decline by 40% to 50% in controlled tests.

Despite these performance hits, BNB Chain emphasized that the migration remains compatible with current systems, including existing addresses, RPCs, SDKs, wallets, and transaction flows. This means users and developers wouldn’t need to alter basic account structures if the upgrade proceeds to production. However, the team acknowledged that quantum computers have not yet reached a stage where they can break existing production cryptography in real-world settings.

On a positive note, the consensus layer showed resilience thanks to pqSTARK aggregation, which achieved about 43:1 compression, helping to keep validator overhead manageable during the tests. Yet, not all cryptographic components were covered; peer-to-peer handshakes and KZG commitments were left out, as they would require broader ecosystem coordination for replacement.

The performance drop adds complexity to BNB Chain’s ambitious roadmap, which targets sub-150 millisecond finality and over 20,000 TPS for complex transactions by 2026. Balancing quantum resistance with high throughput will demand better data handling and network scaling solutions, as larger signatures pose a clear hurdle to achieving these speed goals.

The window for passing comprehensive crypto market-structure legislation in the United States is narrowing, warns NYDIG. The digital asset investment firm cautions that if Congress does not move the bill forward before the August recess, the rare bipartisan momentum could dissipate, leaving the regulatory landscape in limbo.

According to NYDIG, the current alignment of political forces offers a unique but fleeting opportunity. Should lawmakers fail to act in the coming months, the likelihood of passage plummets as midterm elections and budgetary conflicts take center stage. The firm fears a return to the status quo of enforcement-driven regulation, which has characterized US crypto policy for years.

The proposed legislation aims to resolve long-standing ambiguities by clearly defining which digital assets are classified as securities and which as commodities, thereby delineating the jurisdictions of the SEC and CFTC. It also seeks to establish uniform operational standards for exchanges, brokers, and other crypto service providers, replacing the current patchwork of state laws and agency guidance.

However, key sticking points remain, including oversight of stablecoins, regulation of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, consumer protections, and the handling of political conflicts of interest. These unresolved issues have slowed negotiations and cast doubt on whether a compromise can be reached before the deadline.

NYDIG highlights that prolonged uncertainty is driving capital and talent abroad to jurisdictions with clearer rules, such as the UAE, Singapore, and the EU under its MiCA framework. If Congress misses this legislative window, industry participants fear the US could default to rulemaking by enforcement, leaving market participants in legal ambiguity while other financial centers solidify their digital asset regimes.

Analysts at Bernstein Circle have emphasized that the recent CLARITY Act provides a structural advantage to Circle Internet Group, effectively curbing a potential stablecoin interest rate war. The legislation, which passed the Senate Banking Committee with a vote of 15-9, prohibits stablecoin issuers from offering yield equivalent to traditional bank deposits while still allowing rewards tied to transactional activities. This move, according to Bernstein, safeguards USDC’s growth model.

The total supply of dollar-backed stablecoins has surged past $300 billion, with USDC and USDT dominating nearly 97% of the market. Adjusted monthly transaction volumes have reached approximately $15 trillion, translating to annualized flows near $100 trillion. Notably, USDC’s share in adjusted transaction volumes has grown from 41% to 60% year-over-year.

Bernstein’s analysts, led by Gautam Chhugani, noted that the CLARITY Act essentially cements stablecoins as payment instruments rather than deposit substitutes. This differentiation protects Circle’s approach, as USDC does not offer passive yield directly; instead, partners like Coinbase utilize distribution deals and activity-linked rewards programs, which the legislation leaves untouched.

Circle is also advancing its agentic payments infrastructure, including gas-free USDC transfers, the x402 protocol, and the ARC blockchain. ARC uses USDC as native gas and is built on what Bernstein describes as quantum-ready architecture, further reinforcing the company’s competitive edge.

Bernstein maintains an Outperform rating for Circle with a $190 price target, implying roughly 67% upside from its $114 close last Friday. The firm also keeps an Outperform call on Coinbase with a $330 target. The CLARITY Act is now headed to a full Senate floor vote, requiring 60 votes, before potentially reaching President Trump’s desk.

The AI trading bot market has exploded past $11 billion, yet most traders still lose money. In 2026, the dream of a quick ChatGPT script or Claude-powered bot fails repeatedly due to untested strategies and zero risk controls. Markets move too fast for manual reactions or improvised LLM code.

SaintQuant emerges as the standout solution for automated crypto trading. It requires no coding or configuration, offering pre-optimized strategies with built-in risk management. New users get $99 free trial credit and a $7 cash bonus with no deposit needed.

3Commas suits active traders with multi-exchange control, but demands significant setup. Pionex provides free built-in bots on a single exchange, ideal for cost-conscious beginners. Cryptohopper offers a strategy marketplace and copy trading, though strategy quality varies widely. DIY bots using Claude or GPT remain risky—lacking live feeds, exchange APIs, and quantitative safeguards.

For reliable AI day trading, choose a platform that simplifies setup, manages risk adaptively, and runs 24/7 without user intervention. SaintQuant leads in this regard, especially for beginners and passive investors seeking hands-free execution.

A new projection from Standard Chartered estimates that by the end of 2028, around $4 trillion worth of assets will exist on blockchain networks. This figure includes both stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, each contributing about half of the total. The bank highlights that established decentralized finance platforms are poised to benefit the most from this growth.

Geoffrey Kendrick, who leads digital assets research at Standard Chartered, points out that DeFi’s composability allows the same asset to be used for earning yield, as collateral, and for liquidity without relying on traditional intermediaries. This flexibility is a key advantage over conventional finance.

The bank uses BlackRock’s BUIDL fund as a prime example of the trend. This $2.85 billion tokenized Treasury fund generates returns from government bonds, converts to sBUIDL for use in DeFi, and serves as core collateral for Ethena’s USDtb and Ondo’s OUSG. Meanwhile, Aave—the largest DeFi lending protocol—has seen daily stablecoin lending volumes between $1.5 billion and $2 billion at its peak, and Coinbase’s lending product with Morpho has reached $1.75 billion in loans.

Kendrick believes the CLARITY Act is the most important near-term catalyst for moving assets from traditional systems to DeFi. The bill passed the Senate Banking Committee by a vote of 15-9 on May 14 and now moves to a full floor vote. If enacted, it could accelerate adoption significantly.

The $4 trillion projection consolidates two earlier forecasts from Kendrick: a $2 trillion stablecoin market and a $2 trillion tokenized real-world asset market, both by 2028. The bank reaffirmed the RWA forecast in April despite recent security incidents in DeFi.

Currently, there are roughly 1,000 times more assets held off-chain than on-chain, according to the report. Kendrick argues that tokenizing institutional-grade assets is the most likely growth driver, and protocols that can scale safely will capture the most value. He writes, “TradFi operators moving assets onchain will favor established players with strong risk metrics.” Aave, Compound, and Morpho are seen as leaders, with Ethereum remaining the dominant settlement layer.