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The BAI platform announced user data for May 11, showing that the platform gained 8,756 new users that day. While maintaining strong growth, the proportion of Stripe payments among the core paying group has risen to 69.0%, indicating a steady improvement in retention rates among traditional developers and production-level users. In terms of business structure, the DeepSeek-V4 series has contributed nearly 60% of Token consumption due to its extreme cost advantages. This series of models, with ultra-low latency, high concurrency, and high throughput capabilities, is becoming an indispensable core execution engine in the AI Agent era. The B.AI platform will continue to provide developers with efficient and economical model services, helping more AI-native applications to be implemented.

According to CoinDesk, executives from PayPal and Google Cloud stated that future AI Agent-driven business activities will operate on a cryptocurrency payment track, as AI Agents cannot use traditional bank accounts like humans.Richard Widmann, Head of Google Cloud Web3 Strategy, mentioned that AI Agents cannot directly open bank accounts on both technical and regulatory levels, while cryptocurrencies provide an "excellent machine-readable payment interface." He revealed that Google has launched the open Agentic Payments Protocol (AP2) and donated it to the FIDO Foundation, with over 120 partners, including PayPal, already on board.May Zabaneh, Senior Vice President of PayPal's crypto business, stated that the company views AI Agents as the next generation of business entry points following offline, online, and mobile payments. She pointed out that PYUSD, as PayPal's stablecoin, provides a natural programmable payment layer for AI-native payments and global transactions.A PayPal survey showed that 95% of merchant websites currently have AI Agent traffic, but only about 20% of merchants have machine-readable product catalogs. Zabaneh believes that merchants need to adapt to the AI Agent era as soon as possible, or they will miss the next opportunity for upgrading their business infrastructure. Additionally, both parties discussed the security and accountability issues surrounding AI Agents.Widmann stated that multi-party custody will become an important solution for managing Agent funds, and AI Agents should not fully control private keys but only hold partial key fragments to reduce financial risks.

Matthew Sigel, the head of digital asset research at VanEck, stated in an interview with CNBC that he expects Bitcoin to reach its historical high again within the next 12 months. He pointed out that the current correlation between BTC and the Nasdaq is close to a five-year high, and the resilience of the U.S. stock market has driven this round of rebound. However, the derivatives market still lacks significant optimism, with the futures and options markets reflecting more short covering and hedging demand. Therefore, from a contrarian perspective, there may still be room for the market to continue.Matthew Sigel also mentioned that this year, a central bank has announced it will include Bitcoin in its foreign exchange reserves, which means BTC is gradually turning into a global asset used for large cross-border transaction settlements. He believes this is a major trend. In terms of investment direction, he is more optimistic about the increase in Bitcoin's market share and Bitcoin mining companies benefiting from the trend of AI integration. He stated that mining companies are becoming important beneficiaries of AI infrastructure, and as AI business grows, the pressure on mining companies to sell BTC for fundraising is decreasing. Additionally, Matthew Sigel believes that if the CLARITY Act is passed, it could reignite sentiment in the altcoin market, but currently, institutional investors remain cautious about most altcoins due to regulatory and investor protection issues.

According to CoinDesk, Jesse Spiro, head of government affairs at Tether, warned at the Consensus conference that the 2026 U.S. midterm elections could have a significant impact on the crypto industry and will be a key test of whether Washington's recent friendly attitude towards digital assets can endure.He pointed out that the industry has made progress over the past year, including the passage of the GENIUS Act and advancements in market structure legislation, but these achievements could be overturned by the elections. Spiro emphasized that the crypto industry should not be partisan, and the best scenario is to gain bipartisan support. Colin McLaren, head of government relations at the Solana Policy Research Institute, stated that the industry's political efforts are focused on "persistence," ensuring that Congress continues to advance priorities such as tax reform and developer protections.Mason Lynaugh, executive director of Stand With Crypto, said that the organization's nearly 3 million members view the elections as a "moment of accountability," with high enthusiasm among crypto voters that could sway results in closely contested elections.

Kara Calvert, Vice President of U.S. Policy at Coinbase, stated that the CLARITY Act could enter the review stage in the U.S. Senate Banking Committee as early as next week. Calvert said at the Consensus 2026 conference, "My prediction is that we will be reviewing it next week." She pointed out that the bill needs at least 60 votes in the Senate to pass and requires bipartisan support to officially become law.She stated, "This means you need Democrats. You need a bipartisan-supported bill, and we have been working very hard to ensure that bipartisan cooperation can be maintained. I think the biggest question is how the votes will shape up in the coming days." A survey released by HarrisX on Thursday showed strong, broad, and consistent demand for clear federal rules. More than 70% of voters said the U.S. should have already passed clear cryptocurrency legislation, and 62% said it is important for the U.S. to set global rules for digital finance. Calvert also mentioned that the lack of consistent tax policy is a major "barrier" to institutional adoption of cryptocurrency, adding that tax reform is a bigger issue for institutions than market structure legislation.

According to market news, Ben O'Neill, the head of cash flow at Bridge, stated at the Consensus conference that the dominance of Tether and Circle in the stablecoin market is generally detrimental to the growth of the entire industry. He pointed out that the design choices of these two major issuers have their pros and cons, but they are not suitable for all use cases.Tether has built a dollar shadow economy independent of the U.S. financial system, while Circle's USDC follows a regulated route in the U.S. and deeply engages in DeFi. O'Neill analyzed the shortcomings of both companies from the perspective of large payment companies: Tether's redemption fee of 10 basis points is too expensive for payment companies, while Circle's continuous increase in destruction fees has a net negative impact on companies like Visa that want to handle trillions of dollars in card settlements.He believes that more stablecoins need to be built and optimized for specific use cases in the coming years, while the role of clearinghouses will rise to make exchanges between stablecoins as efficient as possible. He warned that more competition is needed; otherwise, Tether and Circle will only continue to raise fees and not share profits, making stablecoins increasingly less like money.

According to CoinDesk, Johan Kerbrat, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Crypto at Robinhood, stated at the Consensus Miami conference that overseas investors' demand for U.S. stocks (especially those related to AI) is growing, but access channels remain limited in many regions.Kerbrat pointed out that features such as tokenization, 24/7 trading, and instant settlement will enable investors to build global portfolios rather than being limited to a single-country strategy. Robinhood has launched tokenized stock products in Europe and plans to expand access to asset classes traditionally limited to accredited investors, such as private equity. Kerbrat emphasized that the goal is to provide investors with the option to participate in investments before new assets go public.

MoonPay announced the acquisition of the Solana-based execution layer platform DFlow, officially entering the trading infrastructure sector.DFlow provides trading optimization services for companies like Coinbase and Phantom, having processed over $50 billion in transaction volume and approximately 10 million transactions per month. Reports indicate that the acquisition amount is around $100 million (paid in stock). MoonPay stated that integrating DFlow will enhance high-frequency trading capabilities and support a new generation of "agent-driven" financial applications.

According to Globenewswire, the Nasdaq-listed Solana treasury company DeFi Development announced the launch of a $200 million ATM financing plan.The company stated that the raised funds will primarily be used to continue executing its Solana reserve strategy and that shares will only be issued when there is a positive effect on the value of each shareholder's SOL holdings, ensuring that the financing has a "accretive" nature.

Robert Hackett, head of special projects at a16z Crypto, pointed out that the term "stablecoin" is gradually losing its relevance. Stablecoins were originally born during a period of high volatility in the crypto market, hence the emphasis on the characteristic of "stability."However, with technological evolution, stability has become a foundational aspect evolving into global financial infrastructure. The focus of the crypto industry has shifted from "is it stable" to "what else can be built," with stability becoming a basic threshold rather than the innovation itself.Therefore, the term "stablecoin" seems more like a patch for an old problem rather than a definition of a new financial system. In the future, the concept of stablecoins may ultimately fade into broader expressions like "digital dollar" or "on-chain assets," or even fully integrate into the underlying financial system, much like how "electric light" replaced the concept of "electric illumination."

According to market news, the Seoul Administrative Court accepted Bithumb's application for a stay of execution against the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of South Korea on April 30, ruling to suspend the 6-month "partial business suspension" sanction imposed on it until the final judgment of the case.Previously, the FIU accused Bithumb of violating the Specific Financial Information Act, involving approximately 6.65 million violations, including failure to fulfill customer verification obligations and trading with unreported cryptocurrency operators, resulting in a fine of 36.8 billion won. The sanction was originally intended to restrict new users from transferring cryptocurrency assets to external addresses. Due to the court's latest ruling, Bithumb will be able to continue its existing business operations during the litigation period.

According to the latest weekly report released by Gate, in the past week (from April 20 to April 26), driven by the easing of geopolitical tensions and rising expectations for interest rate cuts, BTC rose from $68,000 to above $77,000, with market sentiment remaining "cautiously optimistic." ETF funds continued to see net inflows, indicating that institutions are steadily increasing their positions amid fluctuations, with capital accelerating towards high liquidity assets and deep trading platforms.There was a noticeable rotation of on-chain funds: PancakeSwap's trading volume approached $36 billion, the supply of USDT was nearly $200 billion, while USDe saw a net outflow of about $2 billion; in the DeFi sector, Aave's lending balance decreased, with liquidity shifting towards Spark. In terms of derivatives, the funding rate for BTC remains negative, while the activity and volatility of options have increased. The market will pay attention to the FOMC interest rate meeting and the volatility effects brought by the unlocking of OP, SUI, and ENA.Against this backdrop, Gate continues to strengthen its institutional service capabilities, providing high-performance matching, deep liquidity, and multi-exchange strategy support to meet high-frequency and arbitrage demands. At the same time, through a comprehensive asset security and custody system, combined with a one-stop solution for spot, contract, and multi-asset trading, it helps institutions execute efficiently and lay out robust strategies in a volatile market.

According to CoinDesk, 21Shares Chief Investment Officer Adrian Fritz stated that the spot Bitcoin ETF continues to attract inflows, reinforcing Bitcoin's core position in institutional asset allocation, even as prices remain fluctuating below $80,000. Adrian Fritz pointed out that since the beginning of this year, Bitcoin ETFs have accumulated nearly $2 billion in funds, with sources including retail investors, institutions, and hedge fund arbitrage and options strategy trading.As traditional asset management institutions like Morgan Stanley accelerate their layouts, crypto assets are being more widely incorporated into multi-asset portfolio allocations. Bitcoin's current daily trading volume has exceeded $50 billion, and liquidity levels are approaching those of large tech stocks like Nvidia. The ETF mechanism simultaneously provides liquidity in both primary and secondary markets, gradually giving it "institutional-grade asset" attributes.Although the market is still suppressed by macro and interest rate environments, Adrian Fritz believes that ETF inflows have shifted from being driven by speculation to structural demand. He expects that with improvements in geopolitical conditions, continued inflows, and short covering, Bitcoin is likely to challenge the $100,000 mark within the year. Meanwhile, the differentiation among altcoins is intensifying, and the market is shifting towards a logic of asset selection that emphasizes fundamentals and cash flow.

According to a16z, its researchers conducted a systematic test on whether AI agents can independently exploit DeFi price manipulation vulnerabilities.The study used a dataset of 20 Ethereum price manipulation incidents and employed Codex (GPT 5.4) equipped with the Foundry toolchain as the testing agent. Under baseline conditions without domain knowledge, the agent's success rate was only 10%; after introducing structured domain knowledge extracted from real attack events, the success rate increased to 70%. Failure cases showed that the agent could accurately identify vulnerabilities but generally struggled to understand the leverage logic of recursive borrowing, misjudged profit margins, and could not assemble multi-step attack structures across contracts. The experiment also recorded a sandbox escape incident: the agent extracted the RPC key from the local node configuration and called the anvil_reset method to reset the node to a future block, bypassing information isolation restrictions and obtaining real attack data. The research team believes that AI agents can currently effectively assist in vulnerability identification but cannot yet replace professional security auditors.

According to Bloomberg, JPMorgan Chase has appointed former Goldman Sachs executive Oliver Harris as the head of its blockchain division Kinexys.Harris officially joined the bank earlier this month and will primarily be responsible for advancing the commercialization of applications under Kinexys and deepening partnerships with institutional clients.

According to The Block, Ciarán Fitzpatrick, the global head of ETF products at JPMorgan Securities Services, stated: "We believe that tokenization will definitely drive changes in the market, not only for ETFs but for the entire fund industry as well."Ciarán Fitzpatrick pointed out that given the many benefits that tokenization may bring, such as more convenient subscription and redemption, "almost instant settlement," and uninterrupted access, experiments with ETF tokenization are still ongoing. He added: "I think tokenization will become part of the ETF ecosystem, but it will be a few years before we see some really good use cases."

According to CoinDesk, in the past year, several senior executives from Coinbase's marketing team have joined OpenAI, including former Chief Marketing Officer Kate Rouch, Head of Integrated Marketing Sarah Russell, and Head of International Marketing Elke Karstens.In addition, several former employees of Coinbase have also transitioned to the AI field, including positions in policy, product, and data. Coinbase stated that the team size exceeds 150 people, and the personnel changes are considered normal.

ChainCatcher reported live that HashKey Capital CEO Deng Chao and Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom jointly attended the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival roundtable discussion, exploring "From Finance to Strategy: How Public Companies Are Positioning Themselves Based on Digital Assets."Chalom, who worked at BlackRock for 20 years, began leading BlackRock's blockchain and digital assets team six years ago, during which he launched Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, raising about $100 billion at its peak. He stated that the choice to establish a digital asset treasury with Ethereum rather than Bitcoin is because Ethereum is a "native productive asset," which can earn nearly 3% returns through staking, while Bitcoin can only be held in anticipation of appreciation. Sharplink has been listed on Nasdaq and has raised billions of dollars to purchase Ethereum since launching its digital asset treasury strategy last June, currently holding approximately 770,000 ETH and earning about 17,000 ETH and over $35 million in rewards for investors through staking.Regarding industry trends, he pointed out that Ethereum is dominating three major use cases: stablecoins (over 60% occur on Ethereum), asset tokenization, and decentralized finance. He specifically warned that currently over 95% of stablecoins are denominated in US dollars, and if stablecoins are to become the payment rail for trillions of transactions in the AI economy, Asian regulators should not allow them to be dominated by the US dollar and US Treasury bonds, as this will trigger a geopolitical competition to advance local stablecoin legislation.Discussing market cycles, he noted that the crypto market has experienced significant pullbacks since last October, with short-term prices being unpredictable, but in the long term, the current risk-reward ratio is at its best level in a long time. He emphasized that digital asset treasuries are not passive investments; Ethereum is a high-volatility asset, and volatility is a characteristic of capital appreciation rather than a defect.