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According to Jinshi reports, the dollar index, which measures the dollar against six major currencies, fell by 0.09% on May 19, closing at 99.192 in the foreign exchange market. 1 euro exchanged for 1.1637 dollars, higher than the previous trading day's 1.163 dollars; 1 pound exchanged for 1.3411 dollars, higher than the previous trading day's 1.3332 dollars; 1 dollar exchanged for 159.01 yen, higher than the previous trading day's 158.68 yen; 1 dollar exchanged for 0.7856 Swiss francs, lower than the previous trading day's 0.7865 Swiss francs; 1 dollar exchanged for 1.3749 Canadian dollars, higher than the previous trading day's 1.3739 Canadian dollars; 1 dollar exchanged for 9.4093 Swedish kronor, lower than the previous trading day's 9.4374 Swedish kronor.

The co-founder of the crypto platform Forsage, Olena Oblamska, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud after being extradited from Thailand to the United States. Forsage launched in January 2020, marketing itself to retail investors worldwide as a smart contract-based DApp investment platform. The U.S. Department of Justice accused the platform of using smart contracts on Ethereum, Tron, and BNB Chain to automatically redirect funds from new participants to early investors, constituting a Ponzi and pyramid scheme.Blockchain analysis shows that over 80% of Forsage investors received less cryptocurrency than they deposited, and over 50% received no returns at all. The scam defrauded victims from the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America of approximately $340 million. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had previously filed a civil lawsuit against those involved in August 2022.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted on the X platform that Coinbase is proud to collaborate with law enforcement to combat crime. Its investigation team identified an ongoing criminal activity and used blockchain forensics to track down the criminals, ultimately leading to 5 convictions.

According to Coinglass data, the current 8-hour average funding rate for ETH across the network is 0.0028%. Among the current mainstream exchanges, the rate on Binance is 0.0052%, OKX is 0.0056%, Bybit is -0.0026%, and Gate is 0.0026%.

According to Coinglass data, the current 8-hour average funding rate for BTC across the network is 0.006%. Among the current mainstream exchanges, the funding rate for Binance is 0.0072%, OKX is 0.0092%, Bybit is 0.0055%, and Gate is 0.0054%.

According to The Defiant, cryptocurrency financial services company Galaxy has obtained a BitLicense issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).It is reported that the BitLicense is one of the strictest licenses for cryptocurrency regulation at the state level in the United States, with very high requirements for applicants in terms of compliance, capital, and operations. After obtaining this license, Galaxy can legally provide cryptocurrency-related services in New York State, including trading, custody, and other businesses.

According to CoinDesk, former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner has increased his disclosed investment size from $5.5 billion to $13.67 billion as of March 31, 2026, and has significantly bought shares in Bitcoin mining companies and AI infrastructure companies.His key holdings include mining companies such as IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, Bitfarms, Bitdeer, and Hive Digital, betting that their power resources and data center capabilities will benefit from the growing demand for AI computing power.At the same time, he has also established a short position of approximately $7.46 billion in semiconductors, including large put option positions on the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, NVIDIA, Oracle, and Broadcom.

According to the latest bill signed by the government of Minnesota, local banks and credit unions can now legally provide custody services for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.The bill aims to provide a clear regulatory framework for financial institutions in the state to participate in digital asset businesses and to expand the coverage of traditional finance to cryptocurrency services.

According to CoinDesk, Kraken's parent company Payward announced its Q1 2026 performance, showing adjusted revenue of $507 million, a year-on-year increase of 3%, achieving growth despite the overall downturn in the cryptocurrency market.The report indicated that Payward's futures business performed strongly during the period, with daily average revenue trades (DARTs) increasing by 51% year-on-year, primarily benefiting from the expansion of NinjaTrader, Breakout, and derivatives business.However, the company's adjusted EBITDA fell to $18 million. Payward stated that it continues to invest in mergers and acquisitions, product development, and regulatory infrastructure construction, rather than prioritizing short-term profits.Data shows that during Q1 2026, Bitcoin fell by 22%, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization shrank by 23%, and the industry's spot trading volume decreased by 38%. In contrast, Kraken's performance during the bear market remained relatively stable.Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi stated, "While other companies choose to contract, we choose to continue investing."Additionally, the company disclosed that Kraken's spot market share has increased from about 3.5% in mid-2025 to 5.2% in March 2026; the number of funded accounts on the platform grew by 47% year-on-year to 6.1 million, and the platform's asset scale rose to $40 billion.

According to FinanceFeeds, digital asset investment firm NYDIG has warned that if the U.S. Market Structure Bill does not make substantial progress in Congress before the August recess, the likelihood of its passage may significantly decrease.NYDIG stated that the current bipartisan political consensus around the cryptocurrency regulatory framework may only be a "brief window." If the bill fails to advance in the coming months, after Congress reconvenes, lawmakers' attention may shift to the midterm elections, fiscal budgets, and partisan political issues, causing the priority of cryptocurrency legislation to decline significantly.The report noted that the bill is seen as one of the most important attempts at cryptocurrency regulation in the U.S. to date, with core content including clarifying the classification of digital assets, delineating the regulatory boundaries between the SEC and CFTC, and establishing unified operational standards for exchanges and cryptocurrency businesses. However, key issues such as stablecoin regulation, DeFi regulation, consumer protection, and conflicts of political interest still have significant disagreements, leading to slow negotiation progress.NYDIG pointed out that long-term regulatory uncertainty is driving capital, talent, and innovation toward regions with clearer regulations, such as the UAE, Singapore, and the EU. The cryptocurrency industry is concerned that if this legislative window is missed again, the U.S. may repeat the regulatory stalemate of the past few years.

According to Coinglass data, the current whale holdings on the Hyperliquid platform amount to $4.039 billion, with long positions totaling $1.981 billion, accounting for 49.05% of the holdings, and short positions totaling $2.058 billion, accounting for 50.95%. The profit and loss for long positions is -$30.8386 million, and for short positions, it is -$14.5573 million.Among them, the whale address 0xa5b0..41 has taken a 15x leveraged long position on ETH at a price of $2265.48, currently showing an unrealized profit and loss of -$4.6117 million.

Bitcoin mining company and AI infrastructure company IREN announced that it has acquired the creative and media agency Awaken, which focuses on content strategy and brand building for high-growth companies.According to the announcement, some core members of Awaken will join IREN, including Awaken founder and CEO Chris Parker, who will be responsible for IREN's overall branding and marketing strategy.IREN co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Roberts stated that as the company continues to expand into new markets and customer bases, the importance of brand awareness and user engagement is increasing. The Awaken team has long been a trusted partner of IREN, and internalizing these capabilities is a natural step in the company's expansion process.

Gate, a global leading digital asset trading platform, released its transparency report for April 2026. As the on-chain infrastructure continues to improve and capital efficiency increases, the synergy between on-chain trading, financial products, and payment scenarios has further enhanced, maintaining a steady upward trend in overall ecosystem activity.In terms of on-chain network, the number of transactions on Gate Layer exceeded 36.3 million, with a month-on-month growth of over 11%. The proportion of non-API trading on Perp DEX is close to 90%, reflecting a continued recovery in retail participation. On the capital and product side, the peak TVL of Yubibao approached $1.8 billion, the scale of on-chain earning products continues to grow, GUSD's scale has increased to over $190 million, and the crypto payment scenario has further extended into daily consumption through Gate Card, with the user base continuously rising.In addition, Gate has joined the Mastercard crypto partner program and is deepening cooperation around crypto cards, stablecoin payments, and cross-border settlements, promoting the accelerated integration of digital assets into the global mainstream payment system.The platform ecosystem is also continuously evolving, with approximately 2.5577 million GT tokens burned on-chain in the first quarter of 2026, with a destruction value exceeding $20.68 million. As of now, the cumulative burn of GT has exceeded 187 million tokens, accounting for about 62.46% of the initial supply.On the basis of adhering to the stable execution of the established burn plan, the long-term supply contraction trend of GT has become clearer, providing a foundation for its scarcity and value support. Gate is continuing to strengthen the integrity and global connectivity of its multi-asset financial infrastructure through the synergy of on-chain ecosystem expansion and asset management.

Bernstein stated in its latest research report that the recently reached compromise on stablecoin yield in the U.S. CLARITY Act is structurally beneficial for Circle and the USDC ecosystem.The report indicates that the current version of the bill prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest to passive holders that is "economically equivalent" to bank deposits, but allows reward mechanisms related to real transactions, payments, and usage behaviors to continue. Bernstein believes this means that Circle's current model, which relies on partners like Coinbase to provide USDC reward programs, will gain regulatory recognition, while also limiting the industry's ability to compete for market share through high yields.Bernstein pointed out that the bill actually reinforces the positioning of stablecoins as "payment tools" rather than "deposit substitutes," which helps protect Circle's current business model that relies on reserve income. It continues to give Circle an "outperform" rating and a target price of $190.Data shows that the total supply of global dollar stablecoins has surpassed $300 billion, with USDT and USDC together accounting for about 97% of the market share. Bernstein noted that USDC's share in on-chain payments and wallet transfers is continuously increasing, with its payment share in the AI Agent payment protocol x402 exceeding 99%.Additionally, Bernstein mentioned that Circle's launched ARC chain has completed a total of 244 million testnet transactions, and its ARC token presale previously raised $222 million, with investors including a16z crypto, Apollo Funds, ARK Invest, and BlackRock among others.However, the report also pointed out that the CLARITY Act still needs to complete several legislative procedures before it can officially take effect, including a full Senate vote with 60 votes and coordination with the House version. Polymarket currently predicts a probability of about 62% for it to pass by 2026.

It is reported that Byreal has launched the SpaceX Pre-IPO perpetual contract market, with the contract code SPCX, supporting up to 5 times leverage. This market is based on a fully diluted equity of 11.87 billion, with the current price of 210 dollars corresponding to a SpaceX market value of 2.49 trillion dollars.

According to Bloomberg, Standard Chartered Bank will acquire the cryptocurrency custody business of its holding subsidiary Zodia Custody, and its non-binding acquisition offer has been accepted by other shareholders and noteholders of Zodia Custody. Margaret Harwood-Jones, Global Head of Financing and Securities Services at Standard Chartered Bank, stated that this merger will pave the way for Standard Chartered to launch cryptocurrency custody services in new markets such as the UK and Australia.After the acquisition is completed, Zodia Custody's infrastructure business will continue to operate as an independent software-as-a-service company, renamed Zodia Solutions, led by current CEO Julian Sawyer, with Standard Chartered's venture capital division holding a majority stake in Zodia Solutions. Existing shareholders of Zodia Custody include Northern Trust, Emirates NBD, National Australia Bank, and SBI Holdings, and discussions are ongoing regarding whether these parties will continue to hold shares in Zodia Solutions.

French-listed Bitcoin treasury company Capital B announced an increase of 192 BTC, worth approximately 13 million euros (about 15.2 million dollars), with an average purchase price of about 78,948 dollars. After this increase, Capital B's total Bitcoin holdings rose to 3,135 BTC.Previously, the company announced the completion of a 17.8 million dollar financing, with investors including Blockstream CEO Adam Back and Paris asset management company TOBAM. Data shows that Capital B is currently the second largest Bitcoin treasury company in Europe, second only to Germany's Bitcoin Group SE, which holds 3,605 BTC. Despite the company's continued advancement of its Bitcoin treasury strategy, its stock price fell by about 2.4% after the announcement.

Global leading digital asset trading platform Gate released its transparency report for April 2026. As AI capabilities continue to iterate and the RWA asset system expands, the platform is accelerating its evolution towards a multi-asset financial infrastructure, further enhancing its collaborative trading capabilities across spot, derivatives, and tokenized assets.Currently, Gate has served over 53 million users, with more than 4,600 assets listed, and continues to expand its product matrix with TradFi and tokenized stocks, covering over 430 CFDs and more than 70 tokenized stocks. After the AI system completed its V3 upgrade, a unified entry architecture was formed among Web, App, Bot, and independent sites, and the newly launched in-depth research and intelligent push features will significantly enhance user trading and decision-making efficiency.At the same time, the platform continues to strengthen its global brand building and ecological influence. Gate has officially become the official sleeve sponsor of the Inter Milan U23 youth team and has held several large brand events in Hong Kong to celebrate its 13th anniversary, including the "Racing the Future" cross-border exhibition at Victoria Harbour, a blue carpet ceremony, and the GATE GALA anniversary dinner, attracting hundreds of industry representatives, media, and global users.Gate founder and CEO Dr. Han released an open letter during the 13th anniversary, participated in the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, and gave speeches and exchanges at the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Han stated that infrastructure-driven development will become the core of industry competition in the next phase and proposed the concept of "Move Everything On-Chain." In the future, Gate will focus on building infrastructure capabilities, promoting deep integration of RWA, TradFi, DeFi, and AI, and accelerating the construction of a more unified and efficient global financial infrastructure system.

According to NADA NEWS, ReYuu Japan, a company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Standard Market, announced that, after mutual consultation, it has terminated the basic agreement reached with the Canadian investment company Universal Digital Inc. regarding a financing framework of up to $100 million (approximately 15 billion yen).The agreement was originally intended to promote external financing arrangements related to its cryptocurrency asset reserve (DAT) strategy, but it was not a formal loan contract, and the establishment of the financing framework or actual borrowing had not been completed. ReYuu Japan stated that the capital market environment for listed companies implementing cryptocurrency asset reserve strategies has changed, and investor attitudes have become more cautious; this termination does not mean that its cryptocurrency asset reserve strategy is halted, and it will continue to assess based on market conditions, financial stability, and shareholder value.