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According to statistics from the tokenized asset data platform RootData, the total disclosed financing amount in the crypto primary market in May 2026 is approximately $2.21 billion, with a total of 62 financing events disclosed. In terms of the distribution of financing tracks, market funds are still mainly flowing into DeFi, infrastructure, and CeFi, while institutional attention on trading, payment, compliance, and institutional-level services continues to increase.DeFi has become the most active track this month, completing 26 financing events, covering areas such as stablecoins, liquidity protocols, on-chain trading, and yield strategies; the infrastructure track ranks second with 18 financing events, as capital continues to bet on underlying technologies, AI+Crypto, middleware, and on-chain scalability; CeFi has completed 12 financing events, although the number of events is less than DeFi, it performs outstandingly in terms of financing amount, with significant increases in large strategic financing.The top three projects by financing amount are: the parent company of the South Korean exchange Dunamu ($667 million), payment infrastructure project Reap ($600 million, acquisition), and institutional-level stablecoin infrastructure Arc ($222 million). In addition, the prediction market platform Kalshi ($200 million) and on-chain compliance company Elliptic ($120 million) also received significant financing. The top five financing projects this month totaled over $1.9 billion, accounting for about 85% of the overall disclosed financing scale.In May, multiple high-value financings were concentrated in the fields of exchanges, payment infrastructure, prediction markets, and on-chain compliance analysis. In particular, projects related to trading and institutional services such as Gemini, Coincheck, SignalPlus, Variational received financing, indicating that the market is positioning itself around the next phase of incremental funds and institutional demand.In terms of investment institutions, Kraken, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly, HashKey Capital continue to remain active, with top capital preferring to bet on projects with clear business models and institutional service capabilities. Overall, the financing market in May shows a trend of gradually returning from high narrative-driven to infrastructure, financial services, and real demand scenarios.

On-chain monitoring shows that a batch of funds suspected to be related to hacking or phishing activities has recently continued to buy Monero (XMR), with a total purchase scale of approximately 23 million dollars, significantly impacting market prices.

According to Jinshi reports, Federal Reserve's Williams stated that the Middle East war is driving up inflation, and the impact of soaring energy prices should be short-term.

According to The Block, the stock prices of Bitcoin mining companies transforming into AI and hyperscale computing continue to rise. IREN rose over 13% on Wednesday, nearing an all-time high, after announcing a $3 billion convertible bond financing, collaborating with NVIDIA to build a 5 GW AI data center, and acquiring Mirantis for $625 million. On Tuesday, it also reached a $1.6 billion agreement with Dell to supply the Blackwell AI system.Cipher and Hut 8 both reached all-time highs, with Cipher rising about 9.5% to $25 and Hut 8 rising nearly 5% to $118, with HUT increasing nearly 600% over the past year. TeraWulf rose over 6% on Wednesday, with a year-over-year increase of about 800%, and its HPC business's quarterly revenue exceeded that of its Bitcoin mining business for the first time. Riot rose 3.3% to $27 on Wednesday, with first-quarter data center revenue of $33 million, primarily from its collaboration with AMD. This year, it has sold part of its Bitcoin holdings to finance AI construction and still holds nearly $1.2 billion in Bitcoin.

According to CoinDesk, Wall Street investment bank Jefferies stated that as institutional investors accelerate their shift towards blockchain financial infrastructure, the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector may see a new wave of IPOs in the next two years, potentially forming a public market worth $1 trillion within five years.Jefferies released a report indicating that the current industry focus is shifting from speculation on cryptocurrency asset prices to the comprehensive integration of blockchain infrastructure by banks, exchanges, asset management, and payment institutions. Companies like Kraken's parent company Payward and Securitize are advancing their IPO plans, and more crypto-related companies are expected to enter the public market in the future.Tokenization is seen as a key driving force behind this structural change, with money market funds, private credit, and on-chain settlement systems already entering the practical implementation stage. The gradual clarification of the regulatory environment will further accelerate institutional adoption. At this stage, the market is shifting from short-term speculation to long-term technological reassessment, and crypto IPOs may become an important gateway connecting traditional capital markets with the on-chain economy.

2U2.ai announced that it has secured a new round of strategic investment, with the specific amount not yet disclosed. The investors in this round include Castrum Istanbul and M2M Capital, which will support 2U2.ai in continuing to advance Meme infrastructure construction and ecological expansion.So far, 2U2.ai has received support from institutions such as Becker Ventures, CGV FOF, Gemhead Capital, K24 Ventures, Castrum Istanbul, and M2M Capital.2U2.ai is building a MemeLayer for Web3, driven by AI for Meme generation, dissemination, and remixing, to create a scalable and incentivized Meme content network. Currently, the platform has launched the Meme Arms Race points system, allowing users to earn points by creating, sharing, and disseminating Meme content, and participate in subsequent ecological incentives on the platform.

SoftBank Group's stock price rose to a record high on Monday, as the market bets that its holdings in OpenAI and SB Energy could bring substantial returns if they go public in the future. Since May 20, SoftBank's stock price has increased by 40%, and the company's market value has surpassed 40 trillion yen (approximately $252 billion).The stock price surge over the past two days was driven by reports that OpenAI is preparing to submit an IPO application in the coming days. The power infrastructure company SB Energy also stated that it plans to secretly file for an IPO in the U.S. As OpenAI seems to be getting closer to an IPO, concerns about competitors like Anthropic, Google, and xAI threatening OpenAI's position have eased.Takashi Nakagawa, a senior analyst at TokaiTokyo Intelligence Laboratory, stated that the market is "extremely excited about the long-awaited OpenAI IPO finally approaching reality." He noted that this move will enhance the transparency of the currently opaque valuations in the artificial intelligence sector. A significant portion of SoftBank's portfolio consists of AI-driven private startups.

According to Forbes, Hyperliquid's native token HYPE reached a historic high of over $62. The market generally attributes this to the influx of institutional funds brought by the listing of the first U.S. spot ETFs, but analysts point out that the real driver of the price is the protocol's built-in continuous buyback mechanism.

According to Jinshi, global investors are in high spirits today, pushing the S&P 500 index to potentially rise for the eighth consecutive week. Driven by the ongoing momentum in artificial intelligence, aerospace, and other emerging technology trends, U.S. stocks are climbing, which may allow the S&P 500 index to record its longest weekly winning streak since December 2023. Asian and European stock markets are also rising in tandem.

a16z crypto general partner Guy Wuollet pointed out that the financial industry is undergoing a "digital migration" similar to the era of cloud computing, with blockchain becoming the core infrastructure driving this transformation. Wall Street's adoption of blockchain is not driven by the idea of "decentralization," but rather by the practical needs for counterparty risk management, settlement efficiency, and fair ordering mechanisms.The so-called "digital assets" essentially represent the process of migrating the underlying architecture of the financial system onto the blockchain, similar to the transition of enterprise IT systems from on-premises deployment to cloud services. When financial assets operate on programmable shared infrastructure, it brings the core advantage of "composability," allowing assets to be freely combined and expanded like software, significantly reducing development costs and enhancing the overall innovation efficiency of the financial system. This trend will drive traditional finance from a "closed reconciliation system" to an "on-chain coordination network," and blockchain technology will gradually become a standard component of the financial infrastructure layer in this process.

According to a post by Santiment on social media, a large number of traders have bet on the decline of HYPE in the past few days, and significant negative spikes in funding rate data have appeared across trading platforms. However, the price of HYPE continues to rise, forming a classic short squeeze that forces bearish traders to automatically buy back their positions, further driving up the price. Currently, the total value of HYPE's open contracts remains at a very high level of over $1.92 billion.Although the market generally believes that liquidations will lead to the collapse of open contracts, HYPE remains one of the hottest assets in the crypto market, with new traders continuously entering, keeping the open contracts at a high level.The main catalyst for this round of increase is the growing enthusiasm for Hyperliquid-related ETF products. In May 2026, companies like Bitwise and 21Shares launched HYPE-linked ETFs, providing traditional investors with a channel to gain exposure to the asset without the need to directly use crypto wallets or decentralized exchanges. Market analysis suggests that the launch of these ETFs marks Hyperliquid's transition from a niche DeFi platform to an institutionally recognized crypto ecosystem.

Drift Protocol stated on platform X that after the protocol is restored online, users who have staked in the Insurance Fund will be able to withdraw their corresponding shares normally. The Insurance Fund is designed to maintain the protocol's solvency in the event of liquidation or bankruptcy. Since the protocol was paused before losses were completed through normal liquidation or bankruptcy processes, the Insurance Fund was not affected by the related vulnerabilities or attacks.Drift Protocol added that the assets of the protocol's own Insurance Fund will be used to support system restart and user recovery, and plans to publicly disclose the relevant on-chain addresses so that the community can track the use of funds and subsequent deployments.

According to Cryptonomist, Standard Chartered announced a large-scale restructuring plan on Tuesday, aiming to cut more than 7,000 jobs by 2030, which accounts for 15% of the total workforce in the company's functional departments.Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters described the layoffs as a technology-driven long-term transformation, focusing on replacing low-value-added jobs with automation and artificial intelligence, rather than merely reducing costs. The report states that the plan primarily affects back-office support departments in locations such as Chennai and Bangalore in India, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and Poland.

Research firm Bernstein released a report stating that as the demand for AI data centers explodes, Bitcoin mining companies are becoming important participants in large-scale computing infrastructure, with a positive outlook on the future performance of miners such as IREN, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific.The report points out that major cloud providers, AI cloud service providers, and chip companies have announced over $90 billion in AI infrastructure collaborations, involving approximately 3.7 GW of power capacity. Bernstein states that "Follow the Gigawatts" is becoming the core of competition in AI infrastructure, and the large-scale power resources controlled by mining companies hold strategic value.Analysts have given IREN, Riot, CleanSpark, and Core Scientific an "outperform" rating, with a target price of $100 for IREN, indicating about a 98% upside potential from the current stock price; CleanSpark has a target price of $24, corresponding to about a 78% upside potential.The report states that Bitcoin mining companies currently control over 27 GW of planned power capacity, and in some areas of the United States, the new 1 GW power connection cycle may take up to 50 months, making existing mining sites important locations for the expansion of AI data centers.Bernstein also mentioned several AI collaboration cases, including IREN planning a 5 GW AI computing park based on NVIDIA's AI Factory architecture, and Riot reaching a collaboration with AMD for an AI data center of up to 200 MW.However, analysts also warned that the industry still faces challenges such as environmental reviews, grid capacity, and regulatory approvals. Additionally, if mining companies overly shift their computing resources towards AI, they may miss out on future gains during the Bitcoin bull market cycle.

Cryptocurrency analyst Marcel Pechman stated that after Bitcoin's failure to break above $82,000, it faced selling pressure and is once again testing the $76,000 level. In four days, the scale of long position liquidations reached $400 million, with prices dropping about 7% from recent highs. Nevertheless, analysts believe that the conditions for Bitcoin to return to $80,000 are accumulating, with three potential catalysts worth noting.First, Strategy (MSTR) invested $2 billion in Bitcoin over the past week, providing effective support amid market pressure. At the same time, the company repurchased $1.5 billion of convertible bonds maturing in 2029, and repaying part of its senior debt in advance helps reduce future dilution risks for existing MSTR shareholders, creating space for subsequent new stock issuance and continued Bitcoin purchases.Second, on a macro level, the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury bond rose to 4.6%, a 16-month high, as investor confidence gradually shifts towards scarce assets. In 2026, $2 trillion in long-term debt will mature, and the Federal Reserve may need to continue purchasing bonds, which will further weaken the dollar's attractiveness. Gold saw a significant rise this January but has since given back most of its gains, while Bitcoin rebounded from $65,000 to $76,500 during the same period, indicating an increasing recognition of its safe-haven properties in the market.Third, if the situation in Iran sees a turnaround, risk appetite is expected to recover quickly. On Monday, Brent crude oil prices rose to $113, with negotiations in the Strait of Hormuz experiencing fluctuations; since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran in late February, oil prices have cumulatively risen over 50%. If an agreement is reached between the U.S. and Iran, a drop in energy prices will alleviate inflationary pressures, and Bitcoin is expected to return above $80,000. Currently, U.S. stocks are close to historical highs, while Bitcoin is still down about 39% from its peak.

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.