Hong Kong finalizes crypto advisor and asset manager licensing Hong Kong's SFC and Treasury Bureau published consultation conclusions Tuesday, finalizing the licensing framework for virtual asset advisors and asset managers. Advisory activities map to Type 4 (securities advice), management to Type 9 (asset management) under the existing securities ordinance. Both regimes sit under the same AML umbrella that already covers virtual asset dealing and custody. Legislative proposals head to the Legislative Council later this year. This completes the four-pillar architecture: exchanges, custody, dealers, and now advisors and managers. SFC CEO Julia Leung framed it as solidifying Hong Kong's hub status.

Vitalik Redraws Ethereum Foundation’s Role Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) says the Ethereum Foundation is not the center of Ethereum $ETH, but a smaller node with a focused mission. He said the Foundation will become leaner, more opinionated, and more focused on long term priorities. Those priorities include censorship resistance, openness, privacy, security, and reducing capture risks across the network.

Ethereum's brain drain just turned into a manifesto Former EF researcher Dankrad Feist (@dankrad), the cryptographer behind Danksharding and now at Stripe and Paradigm's Tempo, says the only way to save Ethereum is to build a new organization "economically aligned with Ethereum and accountable to it." His ask: $1 billion to start, a leader who wants to fight, an accountable board, and permanent staking-revenue funding. His critique cuts: the Ethereum Foundation now holds less than 0.1% of all ethereum:native and gets no flow of staking or fee revenues. The new EF mandate centers on censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security. Not growth. Eight senior EF researchers have left in 2026, five in May alone. ethereum:native trades near $2,100 with a $257B market cap, badly trailing bitcoin:native and solana:So11111111111111111111111111111111111111112. Laura Shin and others echo the same complaint: ideology over competitiveness. Is Ethereum's institutional layer up for the fight, or does the community build its own?

Vitalik Buterin Pushes Native Privacy For Ethereum Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) outlined three near term Ethereum $ETH upgrades aimed at making privacy a built in network feature. The proposals include account abstraction, FOCIL, keyed nonces, and new access layer privacy tools. The upgrades are designed to make private transactions harder to censor and reduce user tracking across the network.

Number of Wallets Holding $PEPE Memecoin is Growing... Slowly According to data from Etherscan, @pepecoineth has added roughly 1,500 holder addresses over the past two weeks, reflecting meaningful but steady adoption for the meme. The total now stands at 553,446, as of May 16, and $PEPE itself still holds a market cap of $1.54 billion, despite limited media and community attention of late.

Time to be Bearish on Ether?! ETFs Lose -$255 Million Spot @Ethereum ETFs have recorded a weekly outflow of more than -$0.25 billion. This marks the products' single biggest week of outflows since late January. Despite the capital bleed, the 10 products still hold nearly 5% of $ETH's current supply with an AUM of nearly $13 billion.

Kraken's Parent Company Has Cut Some 150 Employees... According to a report from CoinDesk, the parent company of the industry-leading @krakenfx exchange has laid off some 150 employees in an "optimization effort". The exchange joins a long list of major crypto firms to have cut large numbers of team members - a list which includes @cryptocom, @Gemini and, more recently @Dune.

Whales Buy Up $200 Million Worth of $ETH. Is it Bitmine?! Cited by @Arkham, four distinct whale accounts collectively withdrew $198.3 million worth of @Ethereum from both @krakenfx and FalconX. Arkham says their buying patterns match those of @fundstrat @BitMNR... Is the Michael Saylor of Ethereum buying more ETH?!

Ok so, a Spot $BNB ETF in the US is Closer Than We Thought... According to ETF legend and analyst @JSeyff, there is: "Definitely movement at the SEC with regards to a potential $BNB ETF launch" He points to new amendments from both @vaneck_us and @Grayscale - Two would-be issuers of spot @BNBChain ETF products. Is BNB Chain season on the horizon?

Canton Strategic Holdings Owns 3.68 Billion $CC Coins. After posting its Q1 results, we now know that @CantonStrategic owns a staggering 3.68 billion $CC, worth nearly $550 million at time of writing. Canton Strategic Holdings is a publicly traded company focused on institutional blockchain adoption and the digitization of financial markets, specifically through Canton.

Chainlink's Reach and Impact is Frankly Ridiculous... A glance at @chainlink's official metrics dashboard shows that its oracles have now enabled an insane $30.01 trillion worth of transactions. At the same time, it currently secures some $46.88 billion through oracle powered smart contracts. With a market cap of just $7 billion, is the $LINK token crypto's most undervalued asset?!

Another Filing for a Tron Network Staking ETF Has Arrived. Reported by ETF analyst @JSeyff, @CanaryFunds has just filed for a staked $TRX ETF. The launch of such a product could allow @trondao to tap directly into Western capital markets, its community typically thought to be centred around APAC. At time of writing, $TRX has a market of some $33.33 billion, per CMC data.

Polygon's Network Has Somehow Become EVEN FASTER! According to data from @chainspect_app, @0xPolygon has set a new record for TPS at some 2,197. The milestone comes just two days after $POL set its previous TPS record. Indexing heavily into stablecoins and payments, Polygon is fast-becoming a household name in the crypto sector. What more does the team have planned for 2026...?!

Shiba Inu SHIB Now Has 1.585 Million Unique Holders! According to data from Etherscan, some 1.585 million different wallet addresses now have non-zero $SHIB balances. Growth however, has been slow and steady, the figure standing at 1.583 million some two weeks ago. At time of writing, @Shibtoken has a market cap of nearly $3.5 billion and remains the world's second largest memecoin.

Bitcoin to $78K wipes out $552M in leveraged longs overnight $BTC fell 3.2% to near $78,000 in Asian hours Saturday, erasing the past week's rally. CoinGlass shows $581M in 24-hour liquidations, 95% long-skewed. $SOL down 5%, $XRP down 4.3%, $ETH down 3.3%.

Pi Network's final Protocol 23 upgrade lands Monday with smart contracts in tow @PiCoreTeam confirmed Protocol 23 activates May 18, flipping Pi from a basic mainnet into a programmable L1 with native smart contracts and dApps. The node deadline was pushed from May 15 to May 19 to keep validators synced, while Pi App Studio now converts AI-generated apps from Claude Code and Codex into Pi-native apps in minutes. Editor's take: This is potentially the biggest update of the year for crypto.

GM Trade Has Just Overtaken Aster for 24-Hour Volume...?! According to data from DefiLlama, @gmtrade_xyz is currently the #2# perp DEX for 24-hour volume, at some $4.7 billion. It pushes @Aster_DEX into the #3# spot with around $1.9 billion in daily volume. The data seems strange, however, with $ASTER's open interest of around $2.1 billion far eclipsing GM Trade's mere $44.4 million. What is going on?!

Bitcoin Horror Story as Spot ETFs Bleed $1 Billion. The thirteen spot $BTC ETFs in the US have collectively recorded net outflows of a staggering $1 billion this week, per SoSo data. The biggest day of outflows came on May 13, when a shocking -$635 million left the products. Despite the fallout, the products still hold a whopping 6.58% of $BTC's current supply, with an overall AUM of $104.3 billion.

What is Going on With The $BOBO Memecoin?! For reasons unknown, the @bobocouncil memecoin is up an outrageous +2,673% over the past week, now with a market cap of around $33.2 million per CMC data. The $BOBO meme launched as far back as May 2023 and reached an ATH market cap of nearly $110 million back in November 2024. Since then, its value has diminished until May 9, 2026, when this resurgence began. Anyone know what's behind it?!

Blackrock Just Withdrew $140 Million from Coinbase... According to data from @OnchainLens, financial giant @BlackRock withdrew some 1,768 $BTC worth more than $140 million from the @Coinbase exchange. The exact reasoning behind the withdrawal is not yet clear - could it be related to Blackrock's spot Bitcoin ETF, which currently boasts an AUM of around $64.6 billion?