News linked to both this project and an event.
according to the latest exchange report from CoinDesk, the total spot and derivatives trading volume on global centralized exchanges fell by 3.45% to $4.41 trillion in May 2026. Amid this overall decline in trading activity, Gate demonstrated strong resilience with a counter-trend growth. Its spot trading volume increased by 11.5% month-over-month to $43.8 billion, ranking first in spot trading volume growth among major global exchanges. Concurrently, its spot market share rose by 0.66 percentage points to 4.55%, securing a position within the top five global spot exchanges.In the derivatives market, Gate maintained its industry-leading position. Data shows that Gate's contract trading volume in May reached $327 billion, capturing a 9.47% market share, ranking it fourth among global derivatives exchanges. In terms of Open Interest, Gate held a 10.8% market share, making it the world's third-largest derivatives trading platform. Combining both spot and derivatives trading performance, Gate ranked fourth globally in total trading volume for May, highlighting the platform's sustained advantages in liquidity depth and market participation.To date, Gate's global registered users have surpassed 54 million, supporting over 4,700 trading pairs. Gate's stock trading feature allows users to trade over 10,000 US mainstream stocks and ETFs using USDT, and has already listed over 1,500 Hong Kong stock targets. Looking ahead, the platform will continue to expand its business layout into stocks, ETFs, prediction markets, and TradFi, offering global users a richer, one-stop trading and asset allocation experience.
According to CoinDesk, Aerodrome—the largest DEX in the Base ecosystem—plans to launch its Predictive Allocation mechanism in July, allocating incentives by forecasting future liquidity demand instead of relying on traditional historical-data-based models.
According to CoinDesk, Ripple is attempting to introduce XRP and its stablecoin, Ripple USD, into the AI agent payment market—currently dominated by the dollar-pegged stablecoin USD Coin—in order to penetrate the on-chain micropayment ecosystem. It has launched the “XRPL AI Starter Kit,” a toolkit for developers to build AI agent payment capabilities, enabling agents to perform payments, check balances, and conduct wallet operations on the XRP Ledger, and supporting automated payment workflows based on the x402 protocol. However, Ripple has not yet disclosed any large-scale, production-ready customers or real-world AI agent payment transaction data; the initiative remains in the early infrastructure and developer ecosystem exploration phase.
According to CoinDesk, Digital Asset, the blockchain developer behind Canton Network, has announced a $355 million funding round led by a16z crypto, with participation from global institutions including ABN Amro, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, HSBC, SBI Group, and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The round exceeded its original target of $300 million, valuing the company at $2 billion. Canton Network is designed specifically for large financial institutions and enables the issuance and trading of tokenized real-world assets—such as bonds, loans, and funds—on a shared ledger, while maintaining privacy and meeting regulatory compliance requirements. In addition to financial support, a16z crypto will provide specialized assistance in development, policy, and research.
Ondo Finance has hired John Hoffman, a former Invesco ETF executive and Grayscale managing director, aiming to expand its tokenized investment products beyond equities and treasuries.John Hoffman will serve as managing director and head of product portfolio, focusing on building and distributing tokenized portfolios, including investment portfolios co-developed with asset management firms and strategies built around Ondo's existing products. This move indicates Ondo Finance's plan to go beyond single-asset tokenization and shift towards managed investment products on the blockchain. The current market size of tokenized assets has exceeded $30 billion. (CoinDesk)
According to CoinDesk, Michael Saylor and Bitcoin advocate Matthew Kratter have engaged in a public debate over whether Strategy’s (MSTR) latest round of Bitcoin purchases has diluted shareholders. The dispute centers on Strategy’s Bitcoin yield, which declined from 13.0% on June 1 to 12.8% on June 8 following the acquisition of 1,550 additional BTC. During the same period, the company’s Bitcoin holdings increased from 843,706 BTC to 845,256 BTC, while the diluted share count rose from 382.756 million to 384.180 million shares. Matthew Kratter contends that this shift indicates dilution in terms of “BTC per share.” Michael Saylor counters that Bitcoin yield is merely a narrow metric measuring “BTC per share” and fails to capture overall shareholder value creation. He notes that this transaction also added approximately $100 million in cash reserves, raising the company’s U.S. dollar reserves to roughly $1 billion—thus delivering net value accretion when viewed through a broader balance-sheet lens. The debate over how to interpret these metrics has sparked discussion among market participants. Some argue the company is “adjusting its metrics to fit its narrative,” while short sellers characterize this as a common corporate practice of “metric switching.”
According to CoinDesk, Wall Street brokerage Bernstein released a research report stating that the primary driver behind Bitcoin’s price weakness in 2026 will be slowing capital flows—not the quantum computing threat feared by the market. The report notes that Bitcoin treasury companies and ETFs combined attracted approximately $12 billion in inflows this year, a sharp decline from $60 billion in 2025; meanwhile, Bitcoin ETFs—holding $75 billion in assets—recorded roughly $2.6 billion in net outflows, with new demand coming mainly from corporate buyers such as MicroStrategy (MSTR). Bernstein analysts attribute the slowdown in capital flows to retail investors’ massive shift into AI-related assets. This year, the strongest-performing segments of the crypto market have been tokenized equities and commodities. Nevertheless, analysts view the ETF outflows as relatively moderate. Bitcoin’s investor base has evolved from one dominated by retail participants to a more diversified group—including ETFs, corporate treasuries, wealth management platforms, pension funds, and sovereign investors—resulting in a healthier market structure. The long-term value-storage thesis for Bitcoin remains intact.
Circle has announced the launch of a wrapped Bitcoin product, cirBTC, on the Ethereum blockchain. The token is fully backed 1:1 by Bitcoin, designed to help users integrate BTC assets into DeFi scenarios such as lending, decentralized exchanges (DEXs), tokenized assets, and stablecoins.Circle stated that cirBTC is primarily aimed at institutional investors, whose target client base typically holds Bitcoin as a core crypto asset allocation and has already established trust in Circle's infrastructure through products like USDC. Currently, USDC's market capitalization exceeds $75 billion, making it the second-largest stablecoin in the market.The wrapped Bitcoin market is currently dominated by wBTC and cbBTC, launched by Coinbase. Among them, wBTC, launched in 2019, has a market cap of approximately $7.3 billion and remains the largest wrapped Bitcoin product; cbBTC, which went live in 2024, has a market cap close to $5.4 billion. With the launch of cirBTC, Circle will directly compete with Coinbase and BitGo, the primary custodian of wBTC, for institutional wrapped Bitcoin market share.Data shows that the total market capitalization of all wrapped Bitcoin tokens currently stands at approximately $12.5 billion to $13.5 billion, accounting for roughly 1% of Bitcoin's total market cap of about $1.25 trillion. (CoinDesk)
Odaily, Ethereum co-founder and Consensys CEO Joe Lubin stated that the recent layoffs, budget cuts, and leadership changes at the Ethereum Foundation are not a crisis, but a necessary evolution of the organization. In an interview, Lubin pointed out that the Ethereum Foundation should focus on safeguarding core protocol technology and values, while tasks such as adoption, ecosystem expansion, and institutional collaboration should be undertaken by other entities. Maintaining neutrality and credibility is crucial to avoid conflicts between commercial interests and developers. He noted a public misunderstanding of the Foundation's role: the EF's responsibility is to maintain the Ethereum protocol, not to lead commercialization or market competition strategies.Lubin also stated that the future of Ethereum will be shaped by multiple organizations working together to build the ecosystem, rather than relying on a single entity for leadership. He dismissed claims that Ethereum is on the decline, saying the network is still developing steadily, and pointed out that years of scaling efforts are laying the groundwork for the next wave of adoption, including on-chain transactions by autonomous AI agents and increased institutional usage. The Ethereum Foundation is narrowing its focus precisely to ensure the protocol can support a new generation of applications, while new organizations will take on the work of promotion and commercialization.Lubin noted that the next wave is the agent economy, where hybrid human-machine systems will use Ethereum's infrastructure for transactions. The restructuring of the Ethereum Foundation is a healthy institutional optimization that will help Ethereum maintain robust development under the premise of decentralization and prepare for future technological and business innovations. (CoinDesk)
as prediction market trading volume grows, institutional capital is entering this sector. Quantitative trading firms such as DRW, Wintermute, and IMC are forming dedicated prediction market trading teams, recently posting relevant job openings to focus on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. These teams aim to capture pricing deviation profits through cross-platform arbitrage, market microstructure arbitrage, and news-driven trading strategies. Industry insiders believe that as the prediction market expands and on-chain trading platforms like Hyperliquid plan to launch prediction market products, a competition centered on latency, liquidity, and cross-platform efficiency has already begun. (CoinDesk)
Digital trading platform Moomoo has announced a partnership with prediction market operator Kalshi to offer eligible users access to event contracts regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Users can trade contracts related to major events such as Federal Reserve interest rate decisions, inflation data, elections, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup directly through the Moomoo platform.Event contracts are exchange-traded derivatives that allow investors to bet on the outcome of specific events. Contract prices range from $0.01 to $1, reflecting the market's expectation of the probability of each event occurring. These products will be integrated into the platform alongside Moomoo's existing offerings of stocks, options, and ETFs. Additionally, Moomoo has recently launched cryptocurrency deposit and withdrawal functionality, as well as the moomoo API Skills service for AI-powered investment tools, continuing to expand its product ecosystem. (CoinDesk)
According to CoinDesk, Revolut plans to launch its U.S. banking services in 2026, offering FDIC-insured accounts, stablecoin services, multi-currency deposits, and cryptocurrency trading.
Global payment networks Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are close to launching a new stablecoin platform.According to sources familiar with the matter, U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is also exploring the possibility of participating in this stablecoin platform. Meanwhile, Binance, Coinbase, Stripe, and Visa have all declined to comment, and Mastercard did not respond to requests for comment before publication. Additionally, the revenue-sharing agreement between Coinbase and Circle Internet is set to expire and be renewed in August of this year, with the current market cap of USDC reaching $76 billion. (CoinDesk)
Mastercard is expanding its settlement network to support regulated stablecoins, planning to introduce stablecoin settlement, intraday settlement, as well as weekend and holiday settlement services to meet the demand for real-time fund movement.According to the introduction, the new settlement framework will operate in parallel with the existing fiat settlement system, providing financial institutions with more flexible liquidity management solutions. The first supported stablecoins include Circle-issued USDC, Paxos-issued PYUSD, USDG and USDP, Ripple-issued RLUSD, and SoFiUSD.The related services will cover blockchain networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, and XRPL. (CoinDesk)
According to CoinDesk, crypto infrastructure firm Symbiotic has launched Liquid Lane, a liquidity network enabling investors to convert tokenized funds, private credit, and other real-world assets into stablecoins nearly instantly—replacing traditional redemption periods of up to 180 days.
According to CoinDesk, Citigroup released the report “Tokenization 2030: Wall Street On-Chain,” forecasting that the global market size for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) will grow from $17 billion today to $5.5 trillion by 2030 (reaching $8.2 trillion under an optimistic scenario). The report notes that the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) plans to launch a pilot program for tokenized securities trading in July this year; Nasdaq is advancing its blockchain-based framework for stock issuance; and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), is also making related moves. The entry of these three traditional market infrastructures marks an industry inflection point.
According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approved, for the first time on May 29 local time, a regulated exchange to list and trade Bitcoin perpetual futures contracts (“Perps”), marking the first such case in U.S. regulatory history. CFTC Chair Mike Selig characterized this move as a “significant milestone,” stating that perpetual contracts serve as foundational risk-management and price-discovery tools in global crypto-asset markets, and that the CFTC will provide an actionable regulatory framework for such contracts while restricting excessive leverage and systemic risk. Previously, perpetual contract trading had long migrated to non-U.S. jurisdictions due to the absence of regulatory oversight. The CFTC has not yet disclosed the names of the first batch of approved exchanges, and this policy has not yet been elevated to the level of formal regulation—meaning it remains subject to potential reversal in the future.
According to CoinDesk, prediction market platform Kalshi has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a new Minnesota law set to take effect on August 1 that criminalizes operating, hosting, or promoting prediction market platforms. Kalshi argues the law is unconstitutional, asserting it infringes upon the Commodity Exchange Act’s grant of exclusive federal jurisdiction over derivatives markets to the CFTC and violates the First Amendment by restricting advertising. Earlier, on May 19, the CFTC filed a motion making the same constitutional challenge against the state law. U.S. President Trump has also publicly voiced support for the CFTC’s sole regulatory authority over prediction markets. Kalshi previously secured preliminary injunctions in similar enforcement actions brought by New Jersey and Arizona.
: STRC once fell to $97.11, then rebounded and closed at $98.57. Attention is being paid to Strategy's ability to continue using this preferred security as a financing tool through ATM issuance.After repurchasing $1.5 billion in convertible debt, Strategy's cash reserves dropped to approximately $871 million, only covering about six months of its estimated $1.7 billion annual preferred dividend obligations. Strive's perpetual preferred security SATA remains near its $100 par value, supported by an approximately 13% dividend yield and the company's plan to launch daily dividend payments.
According to CoinDesk, cryptocurrency platform Gemini has announced the launch of its “Command Center,” an AI-powered intelligence layer built into its prediction markets platform. This feature integrates the SpaceXAI model to deliver real-time market summaries, sentiment analysis, and personalized signals across cryptocurrency, sports, commodities, economics, and politics—tailored to users’ holdings, watchlists, and prediction activities.