Decentral Block Post

Shares of AI cloud computing company CoreWeave (CRWV) surged on May 16 after chip giant Nvidia revealed a large ownership stake, signaling growing corporate and institutional interest in the newly public company.

CRWV stock climbed as much as 26.3% in New York trading, pushing its market capitalization above $38 billion. Trading volumes were more than double the daily average, according to Yahoo Finance data.

The stock was last seen trading around $81, up 23% on the day.

CRWV has climbed to $81 a share on May 16. Source: Yahoo Finance

CoreWeave’s rally was sparked by regulatory filings from Nvidia showing that the company owned $900 million of CRWV stock at the end of the first quarter. The value of the holdings has more than doubled since March 31, assuming Nvidia hasn’t sold any shares since then.

As CNBC reported, Nvidia’s ownership stake at the time of CoreWeave’s initial public offering (IPO) was 17.9 million shares.

News broke on May 15 that Coinbase was the target of a $20 million extortion attempt after cybercriminals recruited overseas support agents to leak user data for social engineering scams.

While less than 1% of Coinbase’s active monthly users were reportedly affected, the expected remediation and reimbursement expenses range from $180 million to $400 million, as the exchange pledged to repay all phishing attack victims.

Despite the attack on the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange, investor sentiment remains optimistic, with the Fear & Greed Index remaining firmly in the “Greed” zone above 69, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Fear & Greed Index, 30-day chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

Adding to investor optimism, Coinbase saw over $1 billion worth of Bitcoin withdrawn on May 9, marking the highest net outflow recorded in 2025 so far, triggering analyst predictions of a supply-shock driven Bitcoin rally.

Coinbase faces $400 million bill after insider phishing attack

Coinbase was hit by a $20 million extortion attempt after cybercriminals recruited overseas support agents to leak user data, the company said on May 15.

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, predicts Bitcoin (BTC) will reach $200,000 by the end of 2025 due to a supply shock from heightened institutional demand.

In an interview with Cointelegraph at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, the executive said that Bitwise's Bitcoin price prediction model is driven exclusively by supply and demand metrics. Hougan laid out the specific figures driving the forecast:

"We know that miners will produce 165,000 BTC this year. Already, publicly traded companies have bought more than that. ETFs are at $6 billion in inflows. We think governments are going to be buying. We see this sort of structural difference between demand and supply."

"I think eventually that will exhaust sellers at the $100,000 level where we have been stuck, and I think the next stopping point above that is $200,000," the executive said. Bitwise is one of the issuers of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US markets, with nearly $4 billion in assets under management through its Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) as of May 14.

Eleanor Terrett, Ben Gagnon, Matt Hougan and Tom Lee at Consensus 2025. Source: Cointelegraph

This institutional demand has also bolstered the market with liquidity, likely making the four-year Bitcoin halving cycle, with significant drawdowns of up to 90% in between cycles, a "vestige of the past," Hougan said.

Related: "The world is trying to hoard Bitcoin right now" — Eric Trump

The stalling of key stablecoin legislation in the United States Senate was a minor setback, and the bill will pass in the coming weeks, said Cody Carbone, CEO of Digital Chamber, a Washington, DC,-based blockchain trade association and advocacy group.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at Consensus 2025, Carbone argued it is in the best interests of the US to pass comprehensive stablecoin regulations to protect US dollar hegemony in global markets, which has bipartisan appeal and support. Carbone said:

"These things never move as quickly as we want them to move, but it's stablecoin legislation. This Congress has already moved more expeditiously than we ever could have imagined. So, yes, it's a bump in the road, but I think very, very shortly, we will have another vote."

The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation in U.S. Stablecoins of 2025, or GENIUS Act, is seen as a critical piece of legislation. Failing to pass comprehensive regulatory reform before the midterm elections in 2026 could mean a reversal in the positive regulatory environment and a downturn in the crypto markets.

"Negotiations have continued, and so I am still very optimistic,” Carbone said. “This bill is going to pass the Senate in the next few weeks.”

The GENIUS Act of 2025. Source: US Senate

Related: What are the next steps for the US stablecoin bill?

Key points:

Bitcoin refuses to budge from a narrow range as traders consider the likely breakout direction.

Price discovery is keenly awaited, but downside predictions include levels further toward $90,000.

BTC/USD has delivered highly patterned moves since its rebound began in April.

Bitcoin (BTC) kept traders guessing at the May 16 Wall Street open as consolidation sparked both bullish and bearish forecasts.

Opinion by: Megan Knab, CEO, Franklin Payroll

There are few historical examples of such a massive about-face for an industry, from banks debanking crypto businesses to now embracing stablecoins. If you talk to most crypto startup founders or companies with crypto on the balance sheet, they will all have war stories about finding, applying for and maintaining bank accounts. 

Over the past three years, over half of debanking complaints have been lodged against four American banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Citibank. Now, as the policies that discriminated against the crypto industry, like “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” and the recision of controversial accounting rule SAB 121, have been repealed, a new openness to blockchain technology from the finance sector is possible. 

It is imperative that the banking industry stop shunning crypto and start — at least understanding it — to stay competitive. How stablecoins are deployed will separate the banking winners and losers. 

From debanking to stablecoins 

Of course, stablecoins are not a new concept. For years, large institutions like JPMorgan and Santander have experimented with stablecoins and blockchains. Those experiments were around small functions like internal treasury reconciliation and interbank settlement. Much of this was also on private blockchains created by those banks. Implementing digital dollars on private chains, however, misses out on the core innovation of stablecoins.

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation — better known as MiCA — is now in its critical implementation phase. Designed to unify crypto regulation across all 27 EU member states, MiCA promises clarity, consumer protection and long-term market stability. But as implementation begins, cracks are already showing.

In this week’s episode of Byte-Sized Insight, we explore the key provisions of MiCA now in force, particularly around stablecoins, and why some of the largest players in the market are refusing to comply.

As of January 2025, crypto asset service providers (CASPs) began acquiring licenses to operate legally within the EU. A transitional or “grandfathering” period allows existing firms up to 18 months, depending on the member state, to comply. Still, with deadlines approaching, firms are being forced to act quickly.

Stablecoins at bay

One of MiCA’s earliest and most controversial provisions involves stablecoins. Under the law, no stablecoin can be offered to EU users unless the issuer is authorized in the EU and publishes a regulator-approved white paper.

Strict rules around asset reserves, governance, conflict of interest and marketing are also part of the package. Issuers are even banned from offering interest on tokens, removing a common incentive for adoption.

As cryptocurrency gains in popularity and price, some criminals are taking to violent measures to steal funds from high-profile crypto holders.

Jameson Lopp’s GitHub repository, which logs such incidents, has recorded 22 “$5 wrench” attacks on crypto holders in 2025 alone. The moniker comes from the crude and violent methods perpetrators use to compel crypto holders to hand over their bags. 

In many cases, local law enforcement can intervene before anyone is harmed and funds are lost. But there is a growing trend of increasingly violent and successful attacks, some of which have resulted in permanent harm and even death.

The most recent incident in Paris, France compelled the French Ministry of the Interior to hold a meeting to address the rising trend. Here are just seven of the most high-profile attacks this year.

Ledger founder and wife kidnapped, freed

The founder of crypto wallet Ledger, David Balland, and his wife, Amandine Balland, were kidnapped from their home on Jan. 21. The couple was put in a car, then separated and held at different locations. 

Ripple’s legal chief said a US court’s rejection of a proposed XRP settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not pose a threat to Ripple’s win.

Judge Analisa Torres of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected a joint Ripple-SEC motion seeking an indicative ruling on their proposed settlement, according to a filing on May 15.

Ripple’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, said the rejection does not reverse the company’s victory in the case. The company announced the end of the lawsuit on March 19.

Source: Stuart Alderoty

Alderoty stressed that the latest court decision does not change the fact that XRP (XRP) is not a security, adding that the rejection is related to “procedural concerns with the dismissal of Ripple’s cross-appeal.”

Why did the court refuse to grant the ruling?

According to the court document, Torres denied the motion as “procedurally improper” since the SEC and Ripple failed to file the correct procedural motion to support the proposed settlement.

Shares of luxury watchmaker Top Win surged more than 60% in premarket trading after the company said it would adopt a Bitcoin accumulation strategy and had changed its name to AsiaStrategy.

In a May 16 announcement, AsiaStrategy said it is partnering with Sora Ventures to adopt a Bitcoin (BTC) treasury strategy. Sora previously partnered with Metaplanet in 2024 to create Japan’s first corporate Bitcoin treasury.

The stock market took immediate notice of the announcement. Top Win stock closed the trading day at $7.50 on May 15, but traded at $12.12 in premarket at the time of writing — a jump of over 60%.

Top Win share price. Source: Google Finance

AsiaStrategy’s luxury watchmaking business will continue alongside its Bitcoin accumulation strategy, rather than a full pivot.

Related: Jim Chanos takes opposing bets on Bitcoin and Strategy

Why did Fantom reinvent itself as Sonic?

Fantom was one of the pioneers of the directed acyclic graph (DAG) design for distributed ledgers. It featured fast finality and transaction fees of a fraction of a cent. However, Fantom relied on the Ethereum-derived account storage model and the EVM, which led to bloated storage and slow execution times.

To address these bottlenecks and implement numerous other updates, the team behind Fantom rolled out Sonic, a fully independent new blockchain network. A new report by HTX  explores Sonic's technological background, its new tokenomics model and the innovations it brings to DeFi.  

Download a full version of the report for free here

Sonic’s technical architecture

Sonic runs on the proprietary SonicVM execution engine, which dynamically translates EVM bytecode into a faster internal format for speedier execution. It also optimizes heavy computations to prevent repeated work and pre-analyzes contract code to cache valid jump destinations. The SonicVM is fully compatible with the EVM, meaning that Fantom smart contracts can run seamlessly on the new blockchain.

To address the issue of hefty onchain data storage and slow node synchronization, Sonic uses a new database design called SonicDB. SonicDB separates the blockchain state into two databases. It uses the LiveDB for fast access to the current state and execution, and the ArchiveDB for storing full historical data. This separation allows consensus nodes to cut data storage requirements by up to 90% and thus significantly reduces hardware requirements and synchronization time.

Ethereum Merge architect Justin Drake told Cointelegraph that he believes it would be cheaper to launch a 51% attack on Bitcoin than on Ethereum.

Drake said it would be “much cheaper to 51% attack Bitcoin” and that it would cost “on the order of $10 billion.”

Drake led work on Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) implementation and was a principal architect in the Merge (the full PoS transition event). His remarks echo a May 14 X post by Grant Hummer, the co-founder of Ethereum-focused marketing and product company Etherealize.

In the post, Hummer said that Bitcoin “is completely screwed because of its security budget.”

Hummer claimed it would cost $8 billion to run a successful 51% attack, and he expects a successful attack to be “virtually certain” when the cost slips to $2 billion. A 51% attack occurs when a single entity or group controls over 50% of a blockchain network’s mining or staking power, gaining power over the network. Hummer added:

Key takeaways:

XRP price is forming a bullish V-shaped recovery pattern targeting $3.40.

A 53% surge in open interest to $5.06 billion signals bullish sentiment.

XRP (XRP) price shows positive signs as a bullish technical pattern emerges on its weekly chart, coinciding with increasing open interest.

Increasing OI backs XRP upside

XRP price is down 2% over the last 24 hours to trade above $2.40 on May 16, but has gained 13% over the past two weeks as the broader cryptocurrency market recovered and XRP open interest (OI) surged.

A fake Eric Trump-themed memecoin launched on Solana’s memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, rose more than 6,200% in the past 24 hours, raising red flags among blockchain analysts who warned of a potential rug pull.

A newly-created Eric Trump (ERICTRUMP) memecoin with the token address “jv7d” surpassed $140 million in market capitalization within a day since its launch on May 16, CoinMarketCap data shows.

ERICTRUMP/USD, all-time chart. Source: CoinMarketCap 

The memecoin’s distribution raises significant red flags that point to a rug pull “in the making,” warned blockchain data platform Bubblemaps in a May 16 X post.

Source: Bubblemaps

A rug pull typically refers to the sudden removal of liquidity or mass sell-off by token insiders, often resulting in a steep price collapse that leaves retail holders with worthless tokens.

Looking at Bubblemaps’ token clusters for the 250 largest holders, the majority of these tokens are held across 10 token clusters, founded by 10 main crypto addresses.

Key takeaways:

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway earned $250 million from its complete exit from crypto-friendly Nubank.

The decision to divest didn’t appear to be performance-based; Nu Holdings posted record profits in 2024 and Q1 2025.

Buffett’s exit aligns with Berkshire’s broader financial sector pullback and growing cash reserve strategy.

Warren Buffett, the legendary investor long known for his skepticism toward cryptocurrencies, has fully exited his position in one of Latin America’s most crypto-friendly banks, Nubank, before his departure from Berkshire Hathaway.

Mainland China, one of the world’s most restrictive countries toward cryptocurrency, may be inching closer to adoption as a locally operating brand announced a Bitcoin reserve strategy.

DDC Enterprise, also known as DayDayCook, a US consumer brand with Hong Kong roots and operations in mainland China, is adopting a Bitcoin (BTC) reserve strategy, CEO Norma Chu announced in a shareholder letter on May 15.

As part of the strategy, DDC has acquired 100 BTC for about $10.4 million and plans to accumulate 5,000 BTC in the next 36 months, with 500 BTC targeted by the end of 2025.

Chu’s Bitcoin reserve announcement came after the firm posted a 33% revenue increase in 2024, with total revenue amounting to 273.3 million Chinese yuan ($37.4 million), according to its Form 20-F filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on May 15.

DDC’s Bitcoin plans missing in SEC records

Despite the public announcement, DDC’s latest SEC filings do not explicitly mention the company’s Bitcoin holdings or a Bitcoin reserve strategy.

Update May 16, 11:24 am UTC: This article has been updated to add comments from Ran Goldi, senior vice president of payments and network at Fireblocks.

A report from enterprise-grade digital assets platform Fireblocks shows that 90% of institutional players are using or exploring the use of stablecoins in their operations.

The report, published May 15, surveyed 295 executives across traditional banks, financial institutions, fintech companies and payment gateways. Almost half of the respondents (49%) said they already use stablecoins in payments, while 23% are conducting pilot tests and another 18% are in the planning stage.

Only 10% of institutions surveyed said they were undecided about stablecoin adoption.

“The stablecoin race has become a matter of avoiding obsolescence as customer demand accelerates and use cases mature,” Fireblocks wrote.

Central banks are experimenting with smart contracts to implement monetary policy in tokenized environments, signaling a growing interest in integrating blockchain technology into traditional finance (TradFi).

According to a joint research study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Innovation Center and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub Swiss Centre, smart contracts could offer central banks flexible, rapid-response tools in a tokenized financial system.

The study, dubbed Project Pine, tested a prototype “generic customizable monetary policy tokenized toolkit” for further research by central banks, according to a BIS report published May 15.

“The smart contract toolkit was fast and flexible,” the BIS wrote. “In hypothetical scenarios, the central bank was able to add and change tools instantly.”

The report emphasized that if tokenization becomes widely adopted for money and securities, smart contracts could play a central role in how monetary policy is executed.

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin price consolidates as resistance at $105,000 prevents a rally to new all-time highs.

Traders are slightly bearish, but historical data suggests a sudden bullish move should not be ruled out.

Bitcoin (BTC) price has been consolidating within a roughly $3,500 range over the past seven days as the $105,000 level remains the overhead resistance to break.

BTC/USD weekly chart. Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin unable to crack $105,000

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and Bitstamp shows that BTC’s price has been oscillating between its resistance level at $105,000 and $101,500, where it has found support.