Morning Report | Grayscale submits its first application for a spot ETF for privacy coins; Elliptic completes $120 million financing at a valuation of $670 million; Bitmine plans to hold 5% of the Ethereum supply by the end of 2026
Overview of Important Market Events on May 12整理：ChainCatcher
Important News:
- Anchorage Digital exits the leading role in USDG stablecoin, stablecoin alliance shifts to multi-party decentralization
- Grayscale submits first privacy coin spot ETF application, Multicoin Capital reveals it has built a position in ZEC
- Kraken's parent company Payward is raising new funds at a $20 billion valuation to accelerate M&A expansion and advance IPO preparations
- Bitmine plans to hold 5% of Ethereum supply by the end of 2026
- Elliptic completes $120 million financing at a $670 million valuation, led by One Peak Partners
- BlackRock submits new tokenized fund application to the SEC, partnering with Securitize again
- Ethereum Foundation releases Glamsterdam upgrade progress: development network is online, Hegotá expansion roadmap is advancing simultaneously
What important events have occurred in the past 24 hours?
BlackRock submits new tokenized fund application to the SEC, partnering with Securitize again
According to ChainCatcher, BlackRock has submitted a new tokenized fund filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and has chosen Securitize again for infrastructure support. Previously, the first tokenized fund BUIDL launched in 2024 in collaboration with Securitize, and its asset size has reached approximately $2.3 billion.
Elliptic completes $120 million financing at a $670 million valuation, led by One Peak Partners
ChainCatcher reports that blockchain analytics company Elliptic has completed a new round of financing of $120 million at a $670 million valuation, led by One Peak Partners, with participation from Deutsche Bank, Nasdaq's venture capital arm, and British Business Bank, while existing shareholders like JPMorgan Chase continue to invest.
Founded in 2013, Elliptic provides cryptocurrency transaction monitoring and anti-money laundering, sanctions compliance tools for financial institutions and law enforcement agencies. Currently, the company screens over 1 billion transactions weekly for more than 700 clients to support compliance operations needed by large banks, asset management firms, and fintech companies to conduct digital asset business.
Bitmine plans to hold 5% of Ethereum supply by the end of 2026
ChainCatcher reports that Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee stated that Bitmine purchased 26,659 ETH last week, slowing down from previous purchases of over 100,000 ETH per week, but still plans to hold 5% of the circulating supply of Ethereum by the end of 2026. Currently, the company's total Ethereum staking amount exceeds 4.7 million ETH, with annual rewards expected to be around $352 million after full staking.
Tom Lee believes that if Ethereum's closing price is above $2,100 at the end of May, it will validate that "crypto spring" has arrived.
ChainCatcher reports that BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes stated in his latest blog post that the Bitcoin bull market truly started on February 28 when the U.S. and Iran went to war. AI capital expenditures, war spending, and countries investing in physical infrastructure to ensure supply chain security will drive the reckless expansion of fiat credit, benefiting Bitcoin continuously.
Hayes pointed out that Bitcoin has rebounded from a low of $60,000 earlier this year and reiterated that breaking the previous high of $126,000 is "inevitable." He believes that the scale of this round of AI capital expenditure is unprecedented, with central banks like the Federal Reserve printing more money. The declining trust in dollar assets will lead to investments in physical infrastructure and commodity reserves, further driving fiat expansion.
He expects that once Bitcoin breaks $90,000, the momentum will accelerate, and he will raise the risk exposure of Maelstrom's portfolio to the maximum. Besides Hyperliquid and Zcash, Hayes's next favorite altcoin is NEAR, which he will explain in subsequent articles regarding how its privacy narrative and Intent architecture create positive cash flow for the protocol. He concluded that it is currently a bull market, but there will eventually be a selling opportunity, which is not now.
Circle launches Agent Stack toolkit, allowing AI agents to autonomously use USDC funds
ChainCatcher reports that USDC issuer Circle has launched the Agent Stack toolkit, enabling AI agents to autonomously hold funds, pay fees, and conduct transactions using USDC without human intervention. Core products include agent wallets, command line interfaces, agent markets, and a nano payment protocol supporting micro-transfers of $0.000001 without gas fees.
Circle stated that the traditional financial system is designed for humans, and AI agents cannot operate autonomously, thus requiring a rebuild of the infrastructure. Circle co-founder Jeremy Allaire noted that Agent Stack is the first financial services suite that treats AI agents themselves as clients.
ChainCatcher reports that Stream Finance has announced on the X platform that the Stream trading protocol is looking for ways to maximize the asset value of clients and creditors, aiming to integrate, liquidate, and distribute assets as soon as possible and prudently. The team is currently considering several strategic alternatives that require participation from clients and creditors, with more details expected in the coming weeks. Relevant inquiries can be directed to Jeremiah Ledgwidge at Cooley LLP.
Last November, Stream Finance disclosed a $93 million asset loss and suspended withdrawals, after which XUSD significantly de-pegged.
Arbitrum DAO proposal update, court modifies injunction, agrees to transfer frozen ETH to Aave LLC
ChainCatcher reports that according to official news, an update on the Arbitrum DAO proposal indicates that a plaintiff in an unrelated case has issued an injunction against creditors to deliver it to the Arbitrum DAO concerning ETH frozen after the rsETH incident. A few days later, Aave LLC filed an emergency motion to lift the injunction. The court modified the injunction, allowing on-chain Arbitrum voting and transferring the frozen ETH to Aave LLC.
After the transfer, the injunction will be attached to Aave LLC. The revised constitutional AIP retains the asset recovery intent already approved by the Arbitrum DAO, and ETH will still be used for the recovery of the rsETH incident. Aave LLC will comply with all court obligations during the litigation process.
ChainCatcher reports that, according to insiders, Kraken's parent company Payward is raising a new round of capital financing at a $20 billion valuation, and Kraken declined to comment on this.
The company has recently significantly increased its M&A spending—acquiring the stablecoin-focused payment company Reap for $600 million and the digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial for $550 million, both transactions conducted at a $20 billion valuation.
Its largest transaction is the $1.5 billion acquisition of the U.S. retail futures platform and CFTC-registered futures commission merchant NinjaTrader in 2025, which gives Kraken a significant foothold in the U.S. derivatives market.
Regarding IPO progress, Payward submitted a confidential S-1 registration statement draft to the U.S. SEC on November 19, 2025. Although reports in March 2026 indicated that the company paused its IPO plans due to unfavorable market conditions, insiders stated that the company still intends to go public, but may wait for market improvements.
At last week's Miami Consensus conference, Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi stated that the trading platform is "80% ready" for the IPO.
Additionally, Deutsche Börse (DB1) purchased approximately 1.5% of Payward's shares for $200 million through a secondary offering in April 2026, valuing Payward at $13.3 billion (lower than the previous financing round's valuation of about $20 billion).
In November 2025, Kraken completed an $800 million financing in two tranches to push traditional financial products on-chain, with investors including Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, Tribe Capital, and subsequently Citadel Securities also making a strategic investment of $200 million at a $20 billion valuation.
Arkham announces removal of TON chain support, effective May 13
ChainCatcher reports that on the X platform, on-chain analytics platform Arkham announced that after regular evaluations by the team, it will remove support for the TON blockchain from the Arkham Intel platform on May 13 (Wednesday) at 10 AM Eastern Time.
Arkham stated that they regularly evaluate chain integrations based on user demand, the importance of the chain in the crypto ecosystem, and other factors. The removal of TON is based on the latest review results.
ChainCatcher reports that Grayscale has submitted a spot ETF application for Zcash, converting its existing Zcash trust into a spot product, becoming the first privacy coin ETF seeking to list in the U.S. Meanwhile, Multicoin Capital revealed that it has been building a position in ZEC since February, with co-founder Tushar Jain linking the investment logic to the proposed wealth tax legislation in the U.S., believing that the government's expanded monitoring of private financial holdings will drive structural demand for assets that shield regulation at the mathematical level.
However, this application has also raised institutional custody challenges: approximately 30% of Zcash's supply is located in shielded address pools, the highest in history, but ETF custody must almost exclusively use transparent address pools to meet audit and balance proof requirements. Previously, the SEC concluded its long-term review of Zcash in January 2026 without taking enforcement action, significantly reducing regulatory uncertainty.
ChainCatcher reports that Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the U.S., has stated that it will reduce its participation in the Global Dollar (USDG) stablecoin alliance and will no longer play a more prominent role as it did before. Alliance members include institutions such as Robinhood, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, OKX, and Visa Inc.
Anchorage co-founder and CEO Nathan McCauley stated that the company will adopt a "higher degree of neutrality" in the stablecoin issuance space in the future, avoiding targeted support for any single stablecoin to adapt to its business expansion as a white-label issuance and custody platform. He noted that as more institutions seek to issue stablecoins through Anchorage (currently about 20 potential partners), the company needs to reassess incentive structures and alignment of interests.
Currently, USDG is issued by Paxos Digital Singapore and regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, with a circulation size of approximately $3 billion. Market participants generally believe that stablecoin issuance is entering a new phase of parallel development among multiple institutions and networks.
Ethereum Foundation releases Glamsterdam upgrade progress: development network is online, Hegotá expansion roadmap is advancing simultaneously
ChainCatcher reports that the Ethereum Foundation has disclosed the results of core developers' recent interop meeting held in the Svalbard archipelago of Norway and updated the key technical progress of the next phase upgrade Glamsterdam. During the meeting, multiple client teams collaborated on network scalability and execution layer optimization, achieving progress in several directions. Developers confirmed that based on the comprehensive results of ePBS, BAL optimization, and EIP-8037 repricing mechanism, a consensus has been reached on the "trusted path" after Glamsterdam.
In terms of the execution layer, ePBS (external proposer separation architecture) has been stably running in the multi-client Glamsterdam-devnet, and the external block builder process has completed end-to-end testing, covering almost all client implementations. Meanwhile, EIP-8037 has completed its final draft, establishing the fixed costperstate_byte model, and has completed the full repricing parameter output in bal-devnet-6. The expansion direction Hegotá has also made progress. Prototypes related to FOCIL have a runnable implementation, and the scope of account abstraction (AA) requirements has been defined, with the next phase entering the multi-client development network verification stage.
Current development focus remains on the final implementation of Glamsterdam while advancing the design of Hegotá expansion and subsequent Strawmap roadmap evolution. The development network is online, and functionalities like FOCIL are expected to continue to deepen in the next phase of testing. At the organizational level, this interop meeting also marks the formal initiation of leadership structure adjustments in the Protocol Cluster. New leaders include Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik. Will Corcoran is responsible for zkVM proof and post-quantum consensus coordination, Kev Wedderburn leads zkEVM development, and Fredrik is responsible for protocol security and the Trillion Dollar Security project.
Former Protocol Cluster leadership team members Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko will gradually exit management roles, and Alex Stokes will enter a leave period. The foundation stated that during its tenure, the Protocol has completed modular advancement and promoted the Fusaka upgrade launch (December 2025), introducing PeerDAS and enhancing mainnet gas capacity.
ChainCatcher reports that CoW DAO has announced that its domain registrar was subjected to a social engineering attack on April 14, during which the attacker briefly controlled the official domain for about 4.5 hours and directed users to a phishing site, inducing them to sign malicious transactions. The project team emphasized that the CoW Protocol itself was not compromised, but some user assets were affected during that time window.
In response to this incident, the CoW DAO community governance proposal CIP-86 has been approved, establishing a discretionary compensation fund to compensate affected users for their losses. The official reminder states that eligible users must submit declarations by May 14, including affected wallet addresses, asset information, transaction hashes, and names, and apply via email at help@cow.fi, with the email subject marked "Discretionary Grant Claim for."
Exodus Q1 revenue declines 37%, net loss expands to $32.1 million
ChainCatcher reports that according to The Block, non-custodial crypto wallet Exodus (NYSE: EXOD) has announced its Q1 2026 performance, with revenue of $22.7 million, a 37% year-on-year decline, mainly due to a 40.8% drop in exchange aggregation revenue; the net loss for the quarter expanded to $32.1 million, compared to $12.9 million in the same period last year; transaction volume was $1.18 billion, a 26% quarter-on-quarter decline.
Additionally, Exodus completed the acquisition of Monavate and Baanx on May 1. In after-hours trading on Monday, Exodus's stock price fell 4.9%, although the stock has risen 20.5% over the past month, it is still down 47.9% year-to-date.
ChainCatcher reports that on-chain detective ZachXBT has exposed American threat actor Dritan Kapllani Jr, claiming he is suspected of participating in social engineering theft activities totaling approximately $19 million targeting crypto users. ZachXBT stated that Dritan has long boasted about luxury cars, high-end watches, private jets, and nightlife on social media. On April 23, 2026, during a "Band 4 Band (B4B)" voice chat on Discord, he publicly displayed an Exodus wallet containing $3.68 million in assets to prove he was wealthier than another hacker.
The relevant ETH address is: 0x4487db847db2fc99372a985743a26f46e0b2bba6. ZachXBT tracked and found that this address is linked to a social engineering theft case involving 185 BTC (approximately $13 million) on March 14, 2026. The next day, Dritan's Exodus wallet received approximately $5.3 million from that amount. As of six weeks later during the B4B call, about $1.6 million had been spent or laundered.
On May 11, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed a criminal indictment against Trenton Johnson, who is accused of participating in the aforementioned 185 BTC theft case, potentially facing up to 40 years in prison. "Co-conspirator 1" in the indictment is alleged to be Dritan, who has not yet been formally charged. ZachXBT also pointed out that Dritan is linked to hacker John Daghita (Lick), who was arrested for stealing $46 million from the U.S. government, and John previously exposed Dritan's old wallet address on Telegram.
On-chain analysis shows that this address is related to multiple high-confidence social engineering theft cases in 2025, totaling over $5.85 million. ZachXBT stated that Dritan has long been active in "The Com" hacker circle and had previously not faced formal charges due to his minor status. He is now over 18, and "the borrowed time may finally be over."
Coincheck receives $65 million strategic investment from Japanese telecom giant KDDI
ChainCatcher reports that Nasdaq-listed Coincheck Group has announced a strategic investment and business cooperation agreement with Japanese telecom giant KDDI Corporation, with KDDI purchasing 28,536,516 newly issued common shares of Coincheck Group at a price of $2.28 per share, totaling approximately $65 million. JPMorgan acted as the financial advisor, and De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP served as legal advisors. It is reported that both parties will collaborate on expanding the digital asset market, including revenue sharing and referral reward mechanisms.
Meme Popularity Rankings
According to the meme token tracking and analysis platform GMGN, as of May 13, 09:00,
The top five popular tokens on ETH in the past 24 hours are: HEX, SHIB, LINK, PEPE, mUSD
The top five popular tokens on Solana in the past 24 hours are: TROLL, swarms, PENGUIN, UFO, SIGMA
The top five popular tokens on Base in the past 24 hours are: PEPE, B3, BASED, SKYA, NATO
What are some noteworthy articles to read in the past 24 hours?
When the first stablecoin stock Circle decides to shed its label
Circle announced its Q1 2026 financial report before the market opened yesterday, delivering a report card with double-digit revenue growth year-on-year, and simultaneously disclosed that its new public chain Arc's native token completed a $222 million pre-sale at a $3 billion valuation. Although net profit declined by 15% year-on-year due to stock compensation and operational investments, market focus remains on the long-term narrative of Arc and AI agent payments, with CRCL's stock price surging nearly 16% that day, closing at $131.76, a new high since mid-March.
The next market observation focus will be the launch timeline of the Arc mainnet, the market acceptance of the ARC token after public circulation, and the impact of the subsequent implementation of the U.S. GENIUS Act and Clarity Act on the overall stablecoin competitive landscape.
Can Hyperliquid win in the prediction market?
In May 2026, Hyperliquid officially launched HIP-4 event contracts on the mainnet, introducing prediction market functionality Outcomes (result contracts). On the first day of launch, the nominal trading volume reached 6.05 million contracts, accounting for about 0.7% of the total prediction market volume that day. In comparison, Kalshi had about 546 million contracts, and Polymarket had about 190 million contracts, showing a significant volume gap.
However, according to DL News, its first binary contract on BTC price direction had a daily trading volume approximately three times that of the combined markets of Polymarket and Kalshi.
Coinglass data shows that the HYPE token has risen nearly 60% year-to-date, with an increase of about 42% over the past 90 days.
A platform that has already captured over 70% of the on-chain perpetual contract market share is now officially entering the prediction market, which operates on a completely different logic. Hyperliquid previously successfully opened the commodity tokenization battlefield with HIP-3; can it replicate the myth again this time?
Risk warning
