Cryptopolitan

OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, wrapped up a sales pitch to Japan, offering the Japanese government and private companies its latest generative AI model specialized in cybersecurity.
The company showcased a number of its cyber defense programs to Japanese media on May 21. It’s where OpenAI board member, Paul Nakasone revealed that the visit to Japan was intended for talks with government officials.
Nakasone said they discussed cybersecurity measures across 15 critical sectors with the Japanese government. While talks are set to continue, OpenAI said it hopes to launch the service in Japan at “an early stage.”
OpenAI is offering the specialized GPT-5.5 Cyber AI model to the Japanese government. Its standard GPT-5.5 with Trusted Access for Cyber (TAC) defensive tool will be offered to Japanese firms and businesses under an application and screening process.
Protection against Mythos
During the press conference, OpenAI’s Head of National Security Policy, Sasha Baker stressed that a cyber defense ‘ecosystem’ is needed to overcome powerful models.
She pointed to Anthropic’s non-public Mythos, which can autonomously identify and exploit security flaws in software, web browsers, and operating systems.
Nakasone said powerful AI also requires stronger governance and safeguards.
“We will build robust security systems and stay ahead of malicious actors. We intend to expand these efforts broadly from finance and critical infrastructure to local governments and manufacturing supply chains.”
Nakasone, who previously led U.S. Cyber Command under the Trump administration, described Japan as central to a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” and suggested OpenAI would deepen collaboration with the country.
“We want the Japanese government and companies to use our most advanced models,” added Sasha Baker.
The real threat is AI dependence
OpenAI’s visit comes as the Japanese government intensifies its push for “sovereign AI.”
Japan’s Basic AI Plan, finalized in December 2025, revolves around the concept of “trustworthy” AI. It stems from economic security concerns that foreign tech giants could control the entire AI supply chain.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) had proposed developing a large-scale domestic foundation model akin to a Japanese version of ChatGPT using government funding.
When METI presented its proposal at an LDP Digital Society Promotion Headquarters meeting in October 2025, some lawmakers criticized the plan as reckless, arguing that Japan lacked the policy resources needed to compete with the U.S. and China.
METI has since dropped its ‘Japanese ChatGPT’ goal, but the government is still determined to foster a homegrown AI stack, which includes foundation models, data centers, AI chips, as well as physical AI infrastructure.
The government is preparing to revise its Basic AI Plan this summer. At an AI strategy meeting on May 19, lawmaker Kimi Onoda confirmed the revised draft will strengthen AI sovereignty from a national security stance.
Japan’s AI reality check
While some Japanese companies, such as Preferred Networks, Ricoh, SoftBank, NEC, Honda, and Sony Group, have begun developing foundation models, many in the industry privately acknowledge the difficulty of catching up to the U.S. and China.
Japan was ranked 30th out of 69 countries in the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Score in 2025.
There’s also a massive AI investment shortfall between Japan and its rivals.
According to Japanese government data, the U.S. government invested approx. $329 billion in local AI development from 2019 to 2023. The Chinese government invested approx. $133 billion. The Japanese government, on the other hand, invested a meager $10 billion.
The end of AI nationalism
The government’s Digital Society Promotion Headquarters is preparing a proposal against an entirely Japanese AI stack.
The proposal is urging the government to prioritize AI innovation in manufacturing, healthcare, and infrastructure sectors.
It argues Japan could combine foreign-developed foundation models with applications developed by domestic industrial data to create a competitive advantage.
On May 11, the Secretary General of the Digital Society Promotion Headquarters, Akihisa Shiozaki, said Japan is entering a post-LLM era that requires a major paradigm shift.
He stressed the goal shouldn’t be building sovereign AI but rather diversifying suppliers.
“What matters most is ensuring autonomy without becoming dependent on any single country, company, or provider. Rather than focusing solely on ‘sovereign AI,’ Japan needs to think about how to protect its AI sovereignty.”
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Solstice’s SLX token lost more than 40% of its value within hours of going live on May 25, as airdrop claimers flooded the market with sell orders during the Solana-based protocol’s token generation event (TGE).
The token opened trading on Binance Alpha at 12:00 UTC with a fully diluted valuation near $230 million, according to reports. However, within minutes, SLX shed roughly 30% from its first-trade highs. By the time CoinGecko flagged the decline later in the day, the decline had gone past 40%
Who earned the SLX airdrop?
Binance Wallet made an announcement stating that users who hold at least 215 Alpha Points could claim 250 SLX tokens on a first-come, first-served basis.
The cost of each claim is 15 Alpha Points, and uncollected tokens led to a five-point threshold reduction every five minutes. Furthermore, recipients had 24 hours to confirm or forfeit.
Another claims portal for users who had earned Flares (Solstice’s pre-TGE reward points) or participated in the public sale opened at 13:00 UTC, and this was one hour after Binance Alpha trading began, according to the protocol’s TGE documentation. The token listings on other CEXs and DEXs, including Kraken, Gate, OKX, MEXC, Bitget, and PancakeSwap, followed at 14:00 UTC.
Are airdrop sellers affecting token price?
Research from OneSafe found that about 64% of airdrop recipients sell their tokens immediately after distribution, and 88% of airdropped tokens lose value within three months, making the current turn of events quite familiar.
Linea’s September 2025 TGE saw a similar trajectory as the LINEA token fell more than 33% in its first hours as whale wallets dumped allocations on DEXs, per Cryptopolitan.
Jupiter’s JUP token is another incident that serves as a precedent, as the Solana DEX aggregator distributed 700 million tokens in January 2025. Unfortunately, JUP dropped 6% on launch day and eventually fell 59% from its all-time high.
Are protocol fundamentals clashing with market reality?
Solstice has been known for its strong on-chain metrics, and it entered its TGE with that strength. The protocol holds $397.92 million in total value locked (TVL) as of May 25, anchored by USX, one of Solana’s largest synthetic stablecoins.
Three days before the token launch, NYSE-listed exchange Bullish (NYSE: BLSH) had allocated capital to Solstice’s eUSX yield strategy, pushing TVL past $400 million and adding to an institutional base of more than 30 allocators.
Despite its strong footing, SLX still suffered from day-one price discovery. With its market cap currently at $64 million and its price set at $0.20 after the sell-off.
However, these fundamentals did not save SLX from day-one price discovery. DefiLlama places the token’s market cap at $64 million and its price at $0.20 after the selloff, against a fully diluted valuation of $198.3 million.
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President Donald Trump’s latest fintech executive order has placed crypto payment access at the center of U.S. financial policy discussions.
The order calls on the Federal Reserve to review whether crypto firms should be granted direct access to U.S. payment systems, including Federal Reserve master accounts. The move has raised concern across the digital asset market, as it could affect how firms such as Ripple connect to the traditional banking system.
For XRP, the token tied to Ripple’s payment network, the review shows a possible shift from reliance on intermediary banks toward direct participation in national payment rails.
Trump’s latest fintech executive order could be the massive catalyst $XRP has been waiting for.
By directing the Fed to review giving crypto firms direct access to US payment rails, the administration is opening the door for players like @Ripple to bypass legacy banking… pic.twitter.com/nvB3aao1vI
— 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸XRP (@BankXRP) May 25, 2026
The executive order arrives as lawmakers continue advancing legislation on the crypto market structure in Washington. Together, the regulatory and banking changes are impacting discussions around how digital asset companies may operate within the U.S. financial system.
Federal Reserve access review reshapes crypto banking debate
For years, fintech and crypto firms have depended on partner banks to access core payment infrastructure. Transactions involving digital asset firms passed through intermediaries because direct access to central banks remained restricted.
Under Trump’s order, regulators will now decide whether firms, including Coinbase, Circle Internet Group, and Ripple, can obtain direct access to Federal Reserve services.
The review follows earlier reforms highlighted by Cryptopolitan, including Kraken, whose banking division secured limited access through a specialized charter structure. That decision laid the foundation for broader discussions about crypto participation in U.S. payment systems.
The executive order stated that current financial regulations may affect innovation within the fintech and digital asset industries. Banking organizations, however, have raised concerns surrounding stability and oversight if direct access expands beyond traditional financial institutions.
Ripple’s payment model faces a possible change case
Ripple has repeatedly positioned XRP as a liquidity asset for cross-border payments and institutional settlement services. The company’s infrastructure was built to reduce delays and costs associated with international transfers.
However, if Ripple gains access to the Federal Reserve’s payment systems, the company may reduce its reliance on correspondent banking networks. That shift may eliminate other settlement layers that are linked to the institutional transfers.
The launch could influence transaction speed, liquidity transfer and enterprise payment activity costs for the XRP network. If the regulations are approved, financial institutions that use Ripple’s services may be able to complete transactions with fewer intermediaries.
Further, the review might enable quicker settlements, reduced institutional expenses, and potential access to Federal Reserve payment infrastructure. If it gains approval as reported, the use of XRP in regulated cross-border finance can grow.
CLARITY Act vote adds momentum to crypto regulation
The executive order came into effect during a period of digital asset legislation in Washington. On May 14, 2026, the Senate Banking Committee approved the CLARITY Act in a 15-9 vote, advancing the crypto market structure bill to the full Senate. Every Republican on the committee supported the legislation, alongside Democratic Senators Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks.
The legislation aims to define how digital assets are classified under U.S. law. It also seeks to clarify which assets fall under securities regulation and which qualify as digital commodities under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s oversight.
The House of Representatives previously passed its own version of the legislation in July 2025 by a 294-134 vote. Earlier this year, the Senate Agriculture Committee also advanced portions of the framework tied to spot digital commodity markets.
Debates surrounding stablecoin yield provisions delayed negotiations for months. The disagreement became big enough for the White House to organize discussions between banking groups and crypto industry participants in search of compromise terms.
Moreover, the latest Senate Banking Committee vote marked the resumption of those negotiations after months of stalled discussions surrounding crypto regulation and financial oversight.
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BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) CEO Larry Fink says America’s giant AI buildout will need trillions of dollars, and regular people’s money is part of the plan.
According to Larry, the investments in artificial intelligence, including those for data centers, power grids, chips, and cables among others will come from places such as bank savings and pensions.
This implies that funds invested in the retirees’ savings plan will go towards financing the actual backbone of artificial intelligence.
According to Larry, the United States wants to stay ahead in AI, and that costs a ridiculous amount of money. In his yearly letter to BlackRock shareholders, he said the country now treats AI leadership as a serious national goal. He wrote:
“The United States clearly understands that leadership in AI is not optional and will require sustained investment; in research, infrastructure, and talent. Capital markets capable of financing innovation at this scale are essential.”
Larry brings retirement money into the AI spending race
Larry has been clear that he does not think the United States is spending fast enough. At the Milken Institute Global Conference on May 5, he said, “I don’t believe we’re moving fast enough.” He also pushed back against the idea that AI is already overheated, saying, “There is not an AI bubble. There is the opposite.”
Blackrock is already a major shareholder in Big Tech AI-associated companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia that have connections to cloud computing, microprocessors, software development, and internet-related technology.
The firm has also put real money behind the infrastructure side of the business. In 2024, BlackRock bought Global Infrastructure Partners for $12.5 billion. That deal gave the asset manager a bigger position in hard assets, including energy and large infrastructure projects.
Then in March 2025, BlackRock and Global Infrastructure Partners teamed up with MGX, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), and xAI to invest in data centers. These are the buildings and systems that let AI models run at scale. They need land, chips, electricity, cooling, fiber, backup power, and a terrifying amount of cash.
Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said in BlackRock’s announcement, “AI infrastructure will play an increasingly critical role in driving economic growth across every industry and every region of the world.” Satya also said, “We’re thrilled to welcome these new companies to the AI Infrastructure Partnership as we invest together to build the infrastructure of the future.”
Jamie backs the $1 trillion AI bill as banks deal with data center debt
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon is also backing the scale of AI infrastructure spending. At a New York event with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Jamie said the $1 trillion going into data centers should make sense over time because of how powerful the technology is.
Jamie said the spending is not only about server buildings. It also includes huge amounts for chips, wires, and hardware. His view is that technology can pay for itself, but not in a clean or easy way. “Technology tends to pay for itself, just not in a straight line,” Jamie said.
He also said investors may struggle if they try to guess every winner and loser ahead of time. “The way I look at it is that in total it will make sense. If you want to try to pick the winners and losers, you will have a hard time,” Jamie said.
Then he added the part Wall Street really cares about. “So there will be losers in that, there will be winners, or people saying I told you so, and stuff like that. But the technology itself is so powerful, it’s worth $1tn of investment.”
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Google is now staring at yet another European Union antitrust hit, and this one could be the bloc’s biggest Digital Markets Act penalty yet.
German newspaper Handelsblatt reported Monday that Brussels is close to fining Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) a high triple-digit million euro amount over the way Google shows its own services inside search results.
The report came soon after the EU put a customs deal with the United States into force, so another fight with a major American tech company could add fresh stress to transatlantic relations.
Handelsblatt said the process against Google is almost done, but the final decision still sits with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Ursula is expected to make the call before the summer recess. If the fine lands as planned, it would be the largest penalty ever issued under the DMA.
Brussels accuses Google of pushing its own services higher in search
The European Commission opened the Google search case in March 2025, looking at whether Google uses its search engine to send more traffic to its own services instead of treating rival companies fairly.
The Commission says its main goal is to force compliance, not just collect . Thomas Regnier, a spokesperson for the Commission, said regulators are still talking with the company about possible fixes. He also made clear that Brussels is ready to act if those talks do not deliver results.
“Even with our negotiations on future solutions, we will not hesitate to move to the next steps as soon as possible,” Thomas said.
Google has rejected the idea that the DMA has improved search for users. The company says the changes it already made in Europe have weakened the product.
“The changes we’ve already made to Search under the DMA represent the biggest downgrade in the product’s history, creating a second-rate experience for Europeans to the benefit of a few self-interested complainants,” a Google spokesperson allegedly said.
Of course, this is not the first major controversy between Google and the EU’s antitrust enforcement officials. In 2010, the European Union opened a number of antitrust investigations into Google’s monopoly power. Three of these probes led to an accusation from the EU. This involved Google Search, Android, and AdSense by Google.
Google lost in all three probes. Their combined fines have exceeded €8 billion. Therefore, the case under the Digital Markets Act was expected.
EU regulators have already forced Google to change Android and adtech
For instance, the first case concerned the treatment of smartphone manufacturers by Google. According to the Commission, Google compelled manufacturers to install certain Google applications on their devices. Regulators claimed that Google made it difficult for mobile devices to use customized Android versions, which might have competed with Google’s own system.
App tying was another concern of regulators. They accused Google of making some of its apps interdependent in a manner that led to phone makers installing more Google apps in order to receive access to key apps. According to the Commission, such behavior was easy to understand, and it was likely for the owner of a powerful platform for mobile applications to protect its other products.
Eventually, in October 2018, Google modified its approach to providing services and selling applications to manufacturers. For instance, the company allowed phone and tablet makers to license the Google Play Store without being required to install all Google apps on their devices. However, if they still wanted Google apps installed on their devices, phone makers did not need to pay the license fee for the latter.
Later, in March 2019, Google promised that European Android users would receive an alternative choice during installation. Users would have several options for their browser and search engines instead of seeing Chrome and Google Search as the only available options.
In addition, the European Commission examined Google’s plan to buy Fitbit in 2020. The Commission approved the merger on December 17, 2020, provided certain conditions.
In terms of advertising, on September 4, 2025, the Commission fined Google for €2.95 billion, roughly $3.4 billion, for its anticompetitive practices in the adtech market. It should be noted that the EU antitrust authority launched its investigation in Google’s advertising business in May 2021.
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The NEAR Protocol and its token are riding on a wave powered by a mix of short liquidations, renewed interest in AI-linked tokens, and growing fee revenue from its cross-chain settlement system, which has helped it to gain roughly 50% over the past seven days, trading near $2.73.
The rally started when the token finally broke out of a month-long lull where NEAR’s price traded within a tight range between $1.20 and $1.75 for most of May.
The rally, when it finally arrived, caused liquidations of over $9.85 million in short positions and forced buybacks that drove upward pressure.
Derivatives activity rose alongside the spot move, and open interest went up above $473 million. As of May 24, NEAR futures open interest had crossed $720 million.
NEAR is currently trading around $2.75 with a market capitalization of $3.57 billion and 24-hour volume above $1 billion as seen on CoinMarketCap.
NEAR token is up more than 75% over the last week. Source: CoinMarketCap
Arthur Hayes names NEAR in ‘holy trinity’ trade
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes recently called NEAR, Hyperliquid (HYPE), and Zcash (ZEC) “the holy trinity of altcoins.”
All three tokens listed by Hayes have performed better than Bitcoin (BTC) lately, with HYPE reaching an all-time high and ZEC logging multi-month peaks, as Cryptopolitan reported.
NEAR’s co-founder Illia Polosukhin joined Hayes to discuss “how the privacy revolution runs on NEAR.” They touched on ZEC, HYPE, and NEAR itself while linking the latest rally to the thesis around confidential computation and AI agent infrastructure.
Around 78% of listed tokens reportedly lost value on the day NEAR posted one of its largest single-session gains.
Why is NEAR rallying?
Apart from the technical setup, two protocol-level developments gave traders a fundamental basis for the NEAR trade.
First, NEAR’s Intents cross-chain settlement system has generated more than $33 million in fees in under a year, according to on-chain analyst @0xNairolf and Defillama on X.
NEAR Intents have generated over $33M in fees since launch.
Track detailed usage on our comprehensive NEAR dashboard. https://t.co/KIwqZlXoaj pic.twitter.com/CmUeymJ7BT
— DefiLlama.com (@DefiLlama) May 25, 2026
The system processes swaps and bridge transactions across more than 35 blockchains, with settlement fees moving through programmatic NEAR purchases since February 2026. Analysts say it has created “a continuous demand floor.” NEAR Intents has handled over $10 billion in cumulative volume across more than 15.7 million swaps.
The second development that has turned the tide for NEAR is its leaning into AI branding with tangible product releases.
A May 20 rollout by NEAR strips passwords and personally identifiable information from prompts before they reach large language models like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. Developer Kent with the X username, @cuongdc_real, stated on X that NEAR AI updated its model picker to include Google’s Gemma 4 31B, running on NEAR’s trusted execution environment infrastructure with end-to-end encryption.
CoinMarketCap describes NEAR as “a high-performance, AI-native platform built to power the next generation of decentralized applications and intelligent agents.” Its co-founder, Polosukhin, previously co-authored a 2017 paper that introduced the transformer architecture, which is being used in today’s large language models.
Risks remain for late buyers
The daily active users on the NEAR network went down from nearly 3 million earlier in 2026 to roughly 266,000, according to Token Terminal data. Analysts see this as a potential warning sign, having observed the gap between price action and on-chain usage.
Dynamic resharding is an upcoming protocol upgrade coming soon, and it is designed to enable automatic scaling whenever there is a spike in demand. The execution may help the protocol to sustain its momentum and make its case to enterprise and AI developers beyond this week’s move.
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The Strategy trade is starting to look less like a clean Bitcoin bet and more like a financial Jenga tower with orange laser eyes. Investors bought MSTR for the BTC upside. Now they have to read the debt schedule, the STRC yield, the 8-K, and the fine print that turns “0% debt” into a 2027 cash problem.
The author of this article owns a tiny bit of Strategy. And when I received the email that the board had decided to pause its heavy Bitcoin buying and repurchased about $1.5 billion of 0% convertible notes for around $1.38 billion, I couldn’t help but sit up.
I mean, sure, the company bought back debt below face value and saved about $120 million compared with full repayment, but the funding came from STRC issuance, which has an 11.5% yield. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize something’s off here.
Strategy uses costly STRC cash to deal with debt that was not really free
So the first question that popped into my mind was this: why would Michael Saylor replace debt that showed 0% interest with capital that costs 11.5% every year?
I found my answer in the fine print of the Strategy’s old notes. You see, the 2029 convertible notes were called five-year paper, but holders had a right to demand repayment at face value in late 2027.
The MSTR stock had a value of $187, while the conversion price is about $672. This wide discrepancy shows that the notes were extremely out of the money, and there is no possibility of any reasonable shareholder taking the stocks at such a rate.
What is expected in the year 2027 would make Strategy face a debt wall of about $3 billion within 24 months. By paying off about 92 cents per dollar now, Strategy has been able to alleviate this debt wall and leverage the retail appetite for STRC during this period.
From a public perspective, Strategy will convert the $6 billion worth of convertible debts to equity over a period of three to six years. While this may partly hold water, it would seem that what Saylor is doing is solving an immediate repayment problem.
A convertible zero-coupon may cease to exist due to an increase in the price of the stock. The debt will convert into equity, assuming that the Bitcoin increases sufficiently to drive the share price above the conversion price; otherwise, the issuer has the obligation to pay back or extend the loan.
The STRC is a perpetual issue that will not vanish. The issue gives rise to a constant claim on the $10.7 billion preferred equity with increasing dividends, currently yielding 11.5%. Us common stockholders have been diluted, and it becomes feasible only when there is a dramatic increase in Bitcoin value above the cost of capital after dilution.
Strategy opens the door to Bitcoin sales while still carrying heavy leverage
More specific details emerged in the 8-K. In the strategy, selling Bitcoin is suggested as a potential capital source. This is a critical aspect since the firm has cultivated its reputation as a “net accumulator” of Bitcoin. Previously, the clear message from STRC was “we’ll never sell our BTC.”
Currently, spot Bitcoin is considered a source for retiring 0% debt, while new retail preferred stock is being issued at an interest rate of 11.5%.
This is why some of the critics describe the structure as a Ponzi-like flywheel. Again, it is not Bitcoin that is at the center of the problem. The point is that STRC token owners may finance liquidity requirements of today, while costs will appear on the balance sheet.
At the same time, it explains the approach taken by some Bitcoin enthusiasts to distinguish the asset from other securities in question. Bitcoin is bearer money.
While MicroStrategy stocks (MSTR, STRC) are corporate securities. They shouldn’t be confused with one another despite their frequent joint discussion as leveraged Bitcoin holdings.
After repurchasing, the debt balance stands at around $8.2 bln. Around 95% of its assets will remain invested in Bitcoin.
Undeniably, there are some positive elements in the financial report. For example, retiring debt below face value should result in less future liabilities. Moreover, it could decrease risks associated with diluting shares of stock due to conversion. The addition of U.S. treasuries is going to provide a safe yield for further funding costs coverage.
Yet, it is hard to deny that risks have risen too. After all, the narrative I bought into way back when was: buy, hold, never sell Bitcoin. Can’t say I don’t feel a little betrayed.

The BNB Chain released a set of six new integrations called the Agent Survival Pack earlier today, May 25. One of the integrators, Worldclaw, also offered $5 in BNB to the first 1,000 wallets on the project to allow AI agents to pay for model inference, routing, and financial services directly on the blockchain.
The pack aims to streamline digital payments by replacing manual, human-operated systems like API keys and credit cards with automated BEP-20 payments on BNB Smart Chain.
BNB Chain assembled a group that delivered different features and specialized tools. For example, Alt AI will deliver for LLM access, Bankr for multi-model gateways, WorldClaw’s 300-model router, Pieverse’s TEE-backed wallet and identity layer, B.AI’s agent financial stack, and AEON’s bridge between on-chain funds and physical-world merchants, according to a BNB Chain blog post published today as well.
Alt AI also stated via their X account that the campaign will run until June 8. According to BNB Chain’s announcement, each participating project will distribute rewards independently, with no claim form or separate sign-up required.
What does each partner in Agent Survival pack do?
On May 14, Bankr officially launched on the BNB Chain, offering an open AI-compatible endpoint that acts as a single gateway to over 30 top AI models, including GPT, Gemini, Claude, and DeepSeek. According to BNB Chain’s blog post, the endpoint allows an AI agent to use only one credential, while Bankr automatically handles selecting the best model and managing payments in stablecoins for every request.
WorldClaw works as an aggregator as well, but on a larger scale, giving users access to over 300 models and using the BNB Chain to settle all payments in stablecoins. The project said on X that it is offering a $5 discount to the first 1,000 users who purchase its $9.90 WorldAgent token plan on BSC.
B.AI and AEON are focused on giving AI agents the ability to interact with the real-world economy. B.AI functions as a full toolkit for AI agents, offering a digital wallet, a verifiable on-chain identity (using the ERC-8004 standard), and other financial features like lending and token swapping, all in one single interface.
AEON, on the other hand, enables AI agents to make payments at physical stores across Southeast Asia using QR codes, also sharing plans to eventually expand into the mainstream Visa and Mastercard payment networks.
Finally, Pieverse described its contribution on X as a gateway offering access to high-level models from OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and Meta through scoped API keys, thus allowing them to monitor their usage limits and track their spending.
Why agent payments are moving onchain
The Agent Survival pack arrives as crypto networks continue to gain popularity for machine-to-machine payments. A Keyrock report estimated that AI agents processed over $73 million across roughly 176 million blockchain transactions between May 2025 and April 2026. That figure is still tiny compared to Visa’s $14.5 trillion annual volume, but it represents a major shift in infrastructure development.
As such, the trend has now turned major players like Coinbase, Stripe, Google, and Visa into competitors trying to become the foundation of this next phase of payments.
Economic efficiency is also a key aspect of this trend. Keyrock’s report highlights that 76% of AI agent transactions are for small amounts (usually between one and 10 cents), which is significantly lower than the standard 30-cent fixed fee charged by traditional credit card networks.
As such, because transactions on blockchains like Base cost only a fraction of a cent, they offer a much more cost-effective solution for automated software agents that need to frequently pay for small services like data, computing power, or API access.
The Keyrock report also revealed that the economic potential for AI-driven commerce is massive currently. Gartner predicts AI agents could be processing up to $15 trillion in purchases by 2028, while McKinsey estimates that the retail sector alone could see agentic commerce reaching $3-5 trillion by 2030.
Looking at the big picture
Coinbase’s x402 protocol (now managed by the Linux Foundation) has become a major hub for automated transactions, processing over 178.7 million transactions (worth over $42 million since October 2025), with 99.8% of these payments settled in USDC.
Data from Artemis highlights the dominance of the Base blockchain in this space: it currently supports 250,000 daily active AI agents and accounts for 82.1% of all agent payment volume, according to data from Artemis cited in the report.
Nonetheless, the launch of the Agent Survival pack now positions the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) as a direct alternative to the Base network for processing AI agent transactions.
At the moment, Base is the dominant player in this space, supported by the widespread use of USDC for payments. However, whether developers and autonomous AI agents will eventually shift toward BNB-denominated rails ultimately depends on three factors: how competitive the transaction costs remain, the availability of liquidity for these tokens, and how effectively the six newly featured projects can drive actual usage beyond the initial promotional incentives.
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BTC supply at a loss has returned to levels typical of a bear market. As of May 2025, 7.75M coins are held at a loss, testing the patience of investors.
BTC traded just above $77,000, leaving a larger part of the supply at a loss. The coins at a loss varied between 7.64M and 7.75M, depending on the exact metrics.
BTC supply in loss remains elevated, while the average cost basis is very close to the current market price, building an overhang of spot BTC for a capitulation event. | Source: CoinGlass.
The overhang of coins held with unrealized losses is a direct danger for an eventual capitulation. If other factors do not boost the price of BTC, the overhang may be a factor for capitulation.
Only around 53% of the BTC supply is held with unrealized gains, based on BGeometrics data.
Will the new BTC holders remain steady?
In 2026, BTC switched holders, with accumulation coming from strategic whales. As Cryptopolitan reported earlier, old whales with a low cost basis were among the top sellers.
Currently, the supply in loss is still lower than February’s peak of 9.7M coins. However, in 2026, there was a rollover of ownership, with new whales buying at a new price range.
ETF holders are among the first to shed BTC, while former reliable buyers from treasury companies are almost inactive.
BTC is now trading in another tight range, with whale accumulation at lower prices and distribution above $78,000. This setup benefits strategic whales that have adapted to the new sideways trading and volatility.
BTC volatility has been down to 1% in the past month, but this tight range can still lead to liquidations and speculative trading.
Will BTC holders support or crash the market?
Almost all types of wallets moved BTC in some form. However, the panic-selling or strategic distribution affected different periods.
In total, the largest ‘humpback whale’ wallets shed 8.5% of their holdings in the past 12 months. Smaller whale wallets decreased by 3.72%.
In the past 30 days, wallets with 10-100 BTC decreased by a total of 41, while shark wallets mostly held their BTC.
BTC sharks are the most numerous and influential holders, with minimal distribution in the past year. | Source: Dune Analytics.
The biggest panic capitulation was in shrimp wallets with under 1 BTC, where over 42,000 wallets were emptied out in a mass retail capitulation.
BTC is highly dependent on the readiness of whales to hold for the long term. Despite the recent market slide, the recent market cycle has not seen a really deep capitulation of over 70%.
Since February, BTC has been accumulated even with a rising cost basis. Accumulation started at around $72,000 per BTC, recently rising to a cost basis of $78,000. As of May 25, the average cost basis is at $77,253, exposing holders to a relatively small unrealized loss on average.
The past month showed retail shrimp wallets were more likely to capitulate, while other wallet cohorts mostly retained their holdings. The spot supply overhang is thus still safe from a panic-selling capitulation, though some whales may decide on strategic distribution and prevent the BTC price from rallying in the short term.
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Security warnings issued on May 25, 2026, indicate that about $3.2 million has been siphoned from 86 Gnosis Safes in just two hours. This is via the Base and Ethereum blockchain networks. The vulnerability exploited a smart contract called “SquidRouterModule.” It caused instant confusion in the crypto community due to its similar name to the official Squid Router network.
According to reports, the stolen funds were instantly converted into approximately $3 million in DAI tokens via the attacker-controlled Uniswap V3 pools. The hacker used the wallet address 0xA447…54859, which was previously sent 2.1 ETH via TornadoCash.
86 Gnosis safes targeted in a new hack
Security firms such as PeckShield and Blockaid were the first to detect this exploit. In the report by PeckShield, the details of the SquidRouterModule exploit were provided, along with the actual flow of funds. This included not only the use of TornadoCash but also exchanging all tokens for DAI.
#PeckShieldAlert The SquidRouterModule has been exploited for ~$3M in assets.
The exploiter, who was originally funded with 2.1 $ETH from #TornadoCash, has swapped the stolen funds for ~3M $DAI. The stolen assets are currently sitting in the exploiter's wallet 0xA447…54859 pic.twitter.com/RAmpIZQhQh
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) May 25, 2026
In its report, Blockaid mentioned that 86 Gnosis Safes had been exploited in less than two hours, and all tokens exchanged using liquidity pools controlled by the attacker. Previously, users had authorized these contracts within their Gnosis Safes with elevated privileges, without requiring user signatures.
The root cause lies in the design of the third-party Gnosis Safe module itself. The contract, audited by Basescan and named SquidRouterModule, would accept an immutable string provided by the caller as proof of the message’s security.
As this string was clearly visible in the publicly available source code, it became possible to bypass all security measures. Following the provision of the string, the module allowed the execution of calldata provided within an array.
The fact that the module had already been whitelisted as a legitimate Safe Module by the victims enabled the attacker to withdraw funds from the Gnosis Safes regardless of the token type. The legitimate Squid Router contract (0xce16F69375520ab01377ce7B88f5BA8C48F8D666) uses a completely different architecture and has not been affected by this attack.
Squid Router distances itself from the hack incident
Squid Router’s official X account did not take long before setting the record straight. In its statement, the company made clear that the exploited contract was not built, deployed, or managed by Squid. It was identified as a smart wallet by another third party that decided to integrate with Squid and other projects, but never contacted the Squid team.
The team explained that there was nothing related to the core Squid protocol or its contracts regarding this incident. In addition, not all Squid users and integrators are affected. Moreover, Squid highlighted that initial public information could erroneously refer to SquidRouter based solely on the name of the exploited contract available on Basescan.
Binance’s CZ calls on devs to fix hack problems
As a clear indication of how increasingly vulnerable the crypto space has become in its supply chain, the founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao (also known as CZ), has called for developers to swap their API keys after a GitHub data breach.
As reported by Cryptopolitan, CZ urged that if users have API keys in their code, even private repos, now is the time to double-check and change them. This is due to the risk of exposed API keys in the event of a breach, as they could be used by trading bots, DeFi protocols, analytics platforms, and other related services.
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Indonesia has blocked the prediction market platform Polymarket as it views it as an illegal online gambling service.
This was made known on Friday, May 22, by the country’s communications and digital ministry, and it also comes a few days after the site opened a wager on whether Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would leave office before his term expires in 2029.
Did Indonesia ban Polymarket?
Ministry official Alexander Sabar said in a statement that Polymarket’s activities violate Indonesian law as they “contain betting and speculation over events that are inconclusive.”
Gambling is illegal in the country, and authorities have been cracking down on online betting operations.
While the country’s stance on gambling is known, the timing for the ban is not coincidental, as a Polymarket contract asking when Prabowo would be “out as president” appeared on May 21. This was one day after Prabowo unveiled a plan to centralize government control over Indonesia’s most valuable commodity exports, including coal and palm oil.
Investors have been scrutinizing Prabowo’s economic policies throughout 2025 and 2026, and the bet drew attention on Indonesian social media.
Sabar said the government was also reviewing all social media accounts affiliated with Polymarket, according to Reuters.
Which other countries have blocked Polymarket?
The ban puts Indonesia alongside more than 30 countries that have restricted or blocked Polymarket. The Netherlands imposed a penalty order in February 2026 through its gambling authority, the Ksa, threatening fines of up to 420,000 euros per week if Polymarket continued serving Dutch users.
Ksa director Ella Seijsener stated that prediction markets “offer bets that are not permitted in our market under any circumstances, not even by license holders.”
Brazil also banned 27 prediction platforms outright, including the Polymarket and rival Kalshi.
The Brazilian National Monetary Council classified event-based contracts on politics, sports, and cultural outcomes as derivatives that fall outside authorized financial activity.
In January 2026, Ukraine restricted access to Polymarket after the platform hosted bets on the Russian-Ukrainian war, including contracts on the timing of city occupations in Donbas.
Polymarket processed over $270 million in Ukraine-related wagers in December 2025 alone. Portugal, France, Belgium, Romania, Singapore, Thailand, and several U.S. states have also taken enforcement action on Polymarket and Kalshi.
On Polymarket, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Russia, and others are on the list of blocked countries in its own documentation. Some jurisdictions are limited to closing existing positions and cannot open new ones.
Are prediction markets gambling operations?
Prediction market operators, including Polymarket and its main competitor Kalshi, say their products are financial instruments, not wagers.
However, regulators in countries where they have been banned have applied their existing gambling laws to prediction markets and are treating staked money on uncertain real-world outcomes as betting without consideration for the technology behind them.
In the US, prediction markets have received support from the regulatory body, in this case, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which withdrew a 2024 proposal that would have banned contracts on elections and sports. Now the CFTC permits trading on authorized platforms under a regulated framework.
Polymarket’s scale makes it a target
Polymarket remains the second-largest prediction market by total value locked at $456 million, despite the regulatory pressures across various jurisdictions, trailing only Kalshi at $1.38 billion, according to DeFiLlama data. The platform processed $3.78 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days and generated $19.95 million in revenue over the same period.
The platform has raised $2.88 billion in total funding, including a $2 billion strategic investment from Intercontinental Exchange in October 2025 and a $600 million round in March 2026.
Polymarket is still bullish on global expansion despite the recent setbacks, as it recently appointed a representative in Japan, and it looks to get government approval in the country by 2030.
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Iran is now saying the ceasefire negotiations with the United States may be headed for a full breakdown, and for good.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry rejected claims that any draft deal includes Iranian nuclear promises or a handover of enriched uranium, calling those reports a “pure lie” and said Washington’s pressure on that point has made further talks almost useless.
The ministry’s message was Iran is “not signing any agreement with the US” under those terms and added that “no one can claim we are close to reaching an agreement.”
Iran denies uranium handover claims as officials say talks with Washington are close to failure
Meanwhile, Tasnim also reported that Tehran is close to “cancelling” the talks completely. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei had used his Monday press conference to address the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important oil routes. He said Iran is not trying to charge ships a toll for passing through the strait. He also said Tehran does not collect tolls there now.
Esmaeil said people should be careful with the words they use, because fees, service costs, and tolls do not mean the same thing.
According to him, Iran and Oman are working on a system for safer shipping, and that some services may naturally cost money. He also tied part of that cost to environmental protection.
As you likely know, the Strait of Hormuz sits between Iran and Oman, and Esmaeil said those two countries are the ones physically present there, not Britain or France.
He added that scattered steps by other governments are making the situation harder, but regardless, they’re still working; a navigation system can be put in place quickly. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi also visited Oman for talks linked to the strait.
Esmaeil said Iran knows the Strait is a global one, but Iran didn’t start this war. US and Israel did.
Trump tells regional leaders to join the Abraham Accords as he links Iran talks to a wider deal
Trump gave a very different message on Truth Social. He wrote that negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are “proceeding nicely,” but said there will either be a “Great Deal” or no deal at all. He also warned that failure could mean a return to “the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before.”
Trump said he spoke Saturday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Qatar Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Qatari official Ali al-Thawadi. He also named Pakistan’s Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah, Türkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Jordan King Abdullah II, and Bahrain King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
After naming them, Trump said the countries should, at minimum, sign the Abraham Accords at the same time. The countries he listed were Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain. The UAE and Bahrain are already part of the accords.
Trump said one or two countries may have reasons not to join right away, but he argued that most should be ready to sign. He said that would make any settlement with Iran a much bigger regional event.
He also listed current Abraham Accords members as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and Kazakhstan. Trump said those countries have not paused or left the agreement, even during conflict and war.
The most direct line came near the end of his post. Trump said he is “mandatorily requesting” that all countries sign the Abraham Accords immediately. He then said that if Iran signs its own agreement with him as US president, it would be an honor to have Tehran join the same coalition.
Trump also said Saudi Arabia and Qatar should sign first, with others following after. He argued that countries refusing to join should not be part of the deal because that would show “bad intention.” He said he has asked his representatives to begin the process of bringing those countries into the accords.
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The rush for Satoshi’s Bitcoins and long-dormant tokens from that era has taken on a new dimension as a pseudonymous plaintiff called “Noah Doe” filed a lawsuit in a New York court asking to assume ownership of the tokens in wallets that include Satoshi Nakamoto and the Mt. Gox hacker addresses.
Early estimates of the tokens in those 39,069 wallets come up to about 3.7 million BTC valued close to $290 billion at current prices.
The wallets listed by the anonymous Noah Doe in the New York lawsuit to claim Satoshi-era Bitcoins. Source: @SaniExp via X/Twitter.
Who is suing to claim Satoshi’s Bitcoins?
In what has drawn comparisons to the logic behind the childhood saying “finders keepers, losers weepers,” two Wyoming-based shell companies, listed as ABC Company and XYZ Company, filed a 901-page suit on May 1, arguing that the coins in Satoshi’s and other dormant wallets qualify as legally abandoned property under New York lost-property law.
The plaintiffs say they reported the addresses to the NYPD, posted on-chain notices, and published press alerts before filing their claim.
This is not the first time Satoshi-era coins have drawn unnecessary attention. Cryptopolitan has previously reported on the growing hacker pressure on those tokens as quantum computing researchers make progress. Those tokens were also top of mind for Bitcoin developers as they drafted protective proposals like BIP-361.
And now, add a civil lawsuit to the growing list of rationale that people have presented for why the same pool of long-idle tokens should move or be frozen.
The lawsuit is technically flawed
Sani, the founder of onchain analytics platform Timechain Index, flagged a core problem with the filing. Most Satoshi-era coins sit in Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) output formats. The plaintiffs, however, sent their legal notices to the corresponding Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) addresses, which in many cases hold no balance at all.
That mismatch means the notification effort may have reached the wrong addresses entirely.
But that’s just one hole in the obviously flawed ship’s hull. Even if Noah Doe and his proxies, ABC Company and XYZ Company, get favorable court rulings, it would be little more than academic because there’s no way to reassign funds on the Bitcoin network without holding the private keys for the wallets.
Ripple CTO David Schwartz agreed that the ruling would carry no practical weight on Bitcoin’s network.
While Schwartz’s agreement with the court’s ruling on the Bitcoins was more subtle, his jab at Bitcoin SV was not. His “BSV might honor it” comment drew a few giggles based on his running joke that the Craig Wright-linked fork has historically adopted governance positions that critics say make it more open to external legal pressure than the main Bitcoin network.
What will happen to Satoshi’s tokens when quantum arrives?
Noah Doe is the latest to stir the debate over what should happen to long-idle Bitcoin, particularly coins in older wallet formats where public keys are already exposed onchain.
BIP-361, a draft Bitcoin Improvement Proposal introduced in April 2026 by Jameson Lopp and five other contributors, would freeze quantum-vulnerable P2PK addresses and phase out legacy signature types over a multi-year timeline. The proposal targets roughly 6.7 million BTC (about 34% of total supply) held in legacy formats, including an estimated 1.1 million BTC attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, according to Cryptopolitan’s previous reporting.
Separately, Paradigm researcher Dan Robinson published a competing concept on May 1 called Provable Address-Control Timestamps, or PACTs, which would let holders prove control of a private key without moving their coins or revealing their identity, Cryptopolitan reported.
The Noah Doe lawsuit faces steep odds. Bitcoin’s decentralized architecture makes court-ordered fund transfers functionally impossible without private keys, and the notification method used by the plaintiffs may not survive judicial scrutiny.
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Cybersecurity analysts have discovered a new fileless remote access trojan (RAT), named RemotePE. It is being used by the Lazarus Group, a cybercrime group believed to be associated with North Korea, to target banks and crypto companies.
According to a recent analysis, this malware functions entirely in memory, making it nearly impossible to leave any footprints on the affected computer systems.
Lazarus Group leans on social engineering to defraud investors
The Lazarus Group begins the hack through social engineering techniques. They pose as employees of trading firms via Telegram. To do this, the actors use fake copies of Calendly and Picktime, which are widely used to schedule meetings.
After getting approval for a meeting, the chain of events proceeds until the first piece of malware is installed. This “human in the loop” method enables Lazarus operators to develop effective lures.
The malware operates through a well-coordinated three-stage chain that aims to reduce disk operations. First is DPAPILoader. This is a dynamic-link library (DLL), also known by its filename Iassvc.dll since November 2023.
The program uses the Windows Data Protection Application Programming Interface (DPAPI) to decrypt a payload stored on disk.
The decrypted payload is then passed to RemotePELoader, which creates an HTTP connection to the C2 at aes-secure[.]net. After this, it downloads and runs the last RemotePE stage in-memory.
To bypass EDR solutions, RemotePELoader uses Hell’s Gate techniques and ETW Patching to evade detection.
Lazarus Group turns into silent crypto assassins. Source. X.
Finally, the main RemotePE RAT payload never comes into contact with the filesystem, maintaining low forensic visibility throughout the entire attack chain. This malware was first discovered in September 2025.
In the reported incident, a decentralized finance (DeFi) firm had its infrastructure compromised by three different RATs—RemotePE, PondRAT, and ThemeForestRAT—that eventually replaced one another.
Advanced tech and AI turn into traders’ worst nightmare
Earlier, crypto investors turned to AI and tech to streamline trading. Now, the same tools have fallen into hackers’ hands, causing them huge financial pains.
Environmental keying by DPAPI, memory-only execution, ETW patching, and Hell’s Gate make RemotePE nearly impossible to detect with traditional methods. Analysts at Fox-IT, an affiliate of NCC Group, have noted that these characteristics suggest the malware is designed to sustain itself in the long term to conduct reconnaissance before launching a strike, unlike typical disruptive malware attacks.
The Lazarus Group has already stolen about $577 million in crypto in the first four months of 2026. This accounts for 76% of all crypto thefts worldwide, despite just two major hacking incidents, according to blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs.
The percentage of crypto hacks attributable to North Korea has risen sharply. From single-digit figures in previous years to 64% in 2025 and 76% in 2026. Their record amount stolen is now at $6 billion since 2017. These funds allegedly finance the country’s weapons and nuclear development programs amid sanctions.
Hackers turn to AI to destabilize devs behind major tech entities
Cybersecurity experts have discovered a large-scale attack in which hackers targeted over 700 sites running the Ghost Content Management System, exploiting a critical SQL injection flaw. The cyberattacks gave attackers access to admin accounts’ usernames and passwords, enabling them to inject malware via JavaScript redirects into their ClickFix distribution channels.
The targeted platforms include academic institutions, AI endeavors, blockchain services, software-as-a-service vendors, cybersecurity research sources, news agencies, and fintech firms.
Victims who run into the fake CAPTCHA are asked to enter a Base64-encoded string into the Run dialog box. In this step, they can download a ZIP file containing a batch script. This batch script then runs a PowerShell command that will fetch either a signed DLL or JavaScript files from a remote server.
Earlier versions of the malware would run a DLL using the rundll32.exe. However, recent versions install an Inno Setup installer for an open-source version of the Electron application called Grape. Upon installation, the malware becomes persistent and polls the C2 domain web-telegram[.]ug, every 30 seconds.
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Strategy skipped another week of buying BTC, instead rebalancing its reserves with bonds. The playbook change arrived just a week after a peak five-digit BTC purchase.
Strategy skipped another week of purchasing BTC, while Executive Chairman Michael Saylor warning the company will instead dedicate resources to a bond purchase. Saylor stated the ‘BitVac’, short for BTC vacuum, will be changing away from the usual weekly purchases.
@grok what bonds his taking about?
— Saman Golesorkhi (@Radiog39) May 24, 2026
The company has held up to $2.5B in cash reserves. The bonds in question refer to a repurchase of older Strategy debt, namely $1.5B in debt due in 2029. This time, Strategy did not outline the financing source of its repurchase operations.
The BTC purchase delay may also be due to the US market holiday. The biggest investor fear is that Strategy may have sold some of its BTC to finance debt repurchases, making its playbook unstable.
The company will still be liable to pay STRC dividends of 11.5%, soon to become bi-weekly. Additional dividends are owed for older issuance of preferred shares STRD and STRK, which have not been used for months as a source of BTC purchases.
Strategy sold no STRC for the past week
The market anticipated this week’s pause in BTC purchases, as there were no data on STRC trading in the suitable price range for additional sales.
After a week of $2.2M in total new sales, STRC buyers also hit a pause, on a mix of skepticism and the longer waiting period until the ex-dividend date in June. In the past two months, Strategy fell into a pattern of large purchases ahead of the dividend cut-off date, followed by smaller weekly additions financed by MSTR ATM selling.
Strategy’s STRC traded below its ATM price last week, leaving no extra funds for BTC purchases. | Source: BitcoinQuant.
This time, Strategy did not use its common stock issuance facility, instead focusing on its cash-like reserves. MSTR fell to $159.89, down from its recent hike above $170. The BTC purchasing pause coincided with a generally lowered demand for MSTR, as the common stock does not act as a multiplier for BTC gains.
Strategy changed its playbook after buying over 4% of the total BTC supply. For now, the company remains a strong holder, though it does not try to add BTC at any rate.
Is Strategy losing its credibility?
The biggest fear around Strategy is that its demand structure reflects the dwindling crypto sentiment. The market is no longer in ‘up only’ mode, even for BTC. As a result, only STRC is attractive for its high monthly payouts.
However, Strategy carries a growing dividend burden, sparking fears the company may not be sustainable, especially during a prolonged crypto bear market.
STRC will have to show stronger demand, predicted during the week ahead of June 15. Until then, skeptics have noted Strategy may gain only up to 5% in yield on more conservative bonds, while owing 11.5% for STRC.
After the week of no purchases, BTC traded at $77,216, sitting just above Strategy’s average price. Selling or stagnant demand may further undermine the trust in Strategy’s playbook, without other factors sparking a BTC bull market.
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In a fresh move, Bhutan reportedly transferred another 90 Bitcoins (approx worth $7 million) to a Segwit address. The steady series of transfers has now crossed more than $237 million since the start of the year.
On-chain data shows that Bhutan moved BTC to an address that is different from the three P2SH wallet clusters. The country has used those wallets to hold most of its Bitcoin reserves. This has added to the speculation that the Himalayan kingdom may be quietly reducing its Bitcoin exposure.
Bhutan’s Bitcoin selloff fears keep growing
Bhutan has been caught shifting smaller amounts of BTC to a wallet that is not part of its primary sovereign holdings. Arkham data shows that Druk Holdings’ stash has fallen by around 10,000 Bitcoins from their October 2024 peak of around 13,390 BTC. It now holds approximately $233 million worth of Bitcoin.
The latest transaction doesn’t come as a shocker, as the authority has been doing this throughout the year. Back on April 29, Bhutan transferred 100 BTC (worth nearly $8 million) out of its holding wallets. At that point, data suggested that the country had already moved around $206.98 million in Bitcoin since January.
IS BHUTAN SELLING BITCOIN?
Bhutan just moved 90 BTC ($7M) to a Segwit address which may indicate a transfer of BTC to a separate entity or sale.
They’ve moved $237.39M of BTC from their wallets to Segwit addresses since the start of this year, and currently hold $233.18M BTC. pic.twitter.com/cch0Dc2mqu
— Arkham (@arkham) May 25, 2026
Some analysts now believe Bhutan could fully unwind its sovereign Bitcoin position before the end of the year if the pace continues. However, it has remained one of the most unusual sovereign crypto experiments globally.
April 11 saw 319.7 BTC (worth $22 million) leave the wallet. Around 250 BTC from that transaction reportedly moved into wallets previously associated with routing funds toward Galaxy Digital and OKX.
So, the sell-off fear seems very real. Cryptopolitan reported that Bhutan had sold around 285 BTC in different batches during February.
Why Bhutan may be moving away from Bitcoin mining
Countries usually accumulate Bitcoin through seizures or treasury purchases. Meanwhile, Bhutan built its reserves through hydropower-backed mining operations. This is reportedly managed by Druk Holding and Investments. However, questions are now emerging around whether the mining operation itself is still active.
It is being argued that the model pushed by Bhutan was working well when Bitcoin was trading above $90,000, and mining difficulty remained lower. After the 2024 halving, block rewards dropped to 3.125 BTC, and mining competition got wild.
Bitcoin has been dealing with high selling pressure since the beginning of the year. BTC price is running down by almost 12% on a YTD basis. It is trading at $77,271 at press time. The recent price dip has already made it difficult for most of the Bitcoin holders to survive in the market.
It is expected that Bhutan may earn more revenue exporting hydropower electricity to neighboring countries. Mining Bitcoin under the current scenario will only lead them to a loss. However, Druk Holding and Investments has not publicly commented on either the transfers or the status of its mining infrastructure.
The global crypto market has shown small signs of stabilization amid the ongoing US-Iran dispute. Most of the biggest cryptos remained marginally up over the last day. Bitcoin managed to regain the crucial $77K mark after last week’s dip to the $75K levels.
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Georgia has partnered with Tether to launch the digital asset GEL₮. The Georgian government seeks to develop a digital Lari that runs seamlessly within the blockchain environment.
GEL₮ is set to offer users reduced transaction costs, instant payments, and programmability in payment systems.
Georgia develops a stablecoin banked on digital rails
Based on today’s official announcement, Georgia’s approach aligns with U.S. regulations on stablecoins. This included the GENIUS Act, which could ensure interoperability between its systems and those of the international financial market.
To that end, GEL₮ has been positioned for cross-border trade, fintech development, and digital transactions.
The project is in line with the current position Georgia holds on digital assets. For example, the country already implemented tax payments through instant conversion of crypto coins into the Georgian national currency.
The launch of the GEL₮ would go a step further in promoting programmable financial instruments.
Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Kobakhidze, asserts that Georgia is laying the groundwork for a more interconnected, transparent, and digitally enabled financial future.
To that end, Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, emphasized the evolving role of stablecoins. He added that the era of stablecoins is no longer a specialized tool in finance; it’s a critical piece of the finance infrastructure puzzle.
Natia Turnava, President of the National Bank of Georgia, welcomed the collaboration as part of a broader strategy. He added that the bank would like to collaborate with innovative companies globally to foster a state-of-the-art, digital financial architecture.
Georgia’s crypto ecosystem records mass adoption and regulation
Further information on the technology used for GEL₮, its reserves, launch process, and how regulation would be implemented will be announced later.
Georgia’s crypto ecosystem serves its population of around 3.7 million. In fact, according to the Chainanalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index for 2025, the country ranks 3rd globally in terms of crypto adoption adjusted for population, behind only Ukraine and Moldova.
The adoption is due to a business-friendly environment, cheap electricity for mining, progressive regulatory frameworks and practical applications such as remittances. The annual flow of remittances to Georgia is over $2 billion. Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC are faster and cheaper than traditional wire transfers, which have charges of 7-10%.
The crypto ownership figures vary, but all signals point to a high adoption rate. Triple-A statistics indicate that around 115,000 people in Georgia (2.89%) hold cryptos. According to Statista’s 2025 reports, the penetration rate was estimated at around 14.13%, with 153,000 users, $1.9 million in revenue for the digital assets market, and a revenue per user of $12.1.
The National Bank of Georgia has required VASPs to be registered and to be compliant with AML/KYC standards since the start of 2023. This has led to legitimacy while facilitating innovation. This has been a popular destination for mining operations due to its cheap hydropower, which made the nation well-known worldwide.
Tether USDT dominates the stablecoin ecosystem with record scale in 2026
USDT remains the world’s most widely used stablecoin. It holds a market cap of about $189-190 billion as of late May 2026 and a circulating supply approaching the 190 billion token mark. It continues to trade at near its $1.00 peg, with minor variations, ranging between $0.999-$1.00. USDT remains the #3 coin in market cap.
On average, daily trading volume exceeds $50–70 billion and outstrips multiple established payment networks. Recent figures confirm that there have been gains of about $5 billion within the last month for USDT supply despite losses for competitors such as USDC in the same period.
In the latest Q1 2026 attestation, the total assets of Tether stand at $191.8 billion against liabilities of $183.5 billion, resulting in an excess reserve buffer of $8.23 billion, which is the highest ever recorded.
For the quarter under review, net profits were $1.04 billion. Most of the earnings from interest on government bonds and other investments. Most of the reserves have been kept in cash and government bonds, with some investment in gold and Bitcoin.
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Token unlocks worth $653.68 million are scheduled to hit the market between May 25 and June 1, 2026, with Humanity (H) sitting at the top of the major releases at $9.91 million.
The figure equals 5.77% of the project’s circulating supply, according to data compiled by Cryptopolitan from Tokenomist and CoinGecko.
The weekly total comes in lower than the prior week’s schedule, with cliff releases making up $79.35 million of the figure. The remainder comes through linear unlocks that release tokens gradually over time across a wider set of projects.
Humanity leads weekly token unlocks at $9.91 million
Humanity (H), with an unlocked amount of $9.91 million, is the biggest event expected for the coming week. The unlock represents 5.77% of the total circulating supply of the project.
Second on this list comes Jupiter (JUP), which will see an unlock of $8.37 million, equivalent to 1.53% of its circulating supply – the lowest among the top five according to supply percentage.
Third on the list is Particle Network (PARTI), with an unlock of $8.28 million, equivalent to 38.33% of the circulating supply.
$653.68 Million in Token Unlocks This Week
Total cliff unlock, unlocked immediately after a set period, is $79.35M this week:
• $H $9.91M
• $JUP $8.37M
• $PARTI $8.28M
• $XPL $8.21M
• $SOSO $5.49M
Linear unlocks, slow release over time: $NIL, $KMNO, $BIGTIME,… pic.twitter.com/ipbqlVuW7e
— Cryptopolitan (@CPOfficialtx) May 25, 2026
Plasma (XPL) is set to release $8.21 million in tokens during the week, equal to 3.98% of its circulating supply. SoSoValue (SOSO) closes out the top five with $5.49 million in scheduled token unlocks, the equivalent of 4.27% pof its circulating supply.
Smaller major releases round out the top ten
The second part of the list includes six releases whose value ranges from $3.53 million to $4.92 million. The project Nillion (NIL) is in first place on this list with the biggest release amounting to $4.92 million, which corresponds to 36.4% of the circulating supply.
The Kamino (KMNO) project is next on the log, with a total release of $4.71 million, or 5.45% of the circulating supply. Big Time (BIGTIME) will have the third-biggest amount of tokens released, namely $4.24 million or 17.47% of the circulating supply.
Next is Monad (MON) with the planned release of $3.56 million worth of tokens, representing 1.57% of the circulating supply. Sahara AI (SAHARA) rounds out the top ten at $3.53 million, equal to 4.57% of its circulating supply.
Cliff releases account for $79.35 million of weekly token unlocks
The cliff portion of the week’s token unlocks comes to $79.35 million across the schedule. The figure means around 12.1% of the total weekly unlock value enters circulation in a single unlock.
Cliff token unlocks tend to draw more market attention than linear releases since the full amount enters supply at one point in time. The remainder of the $653.68 million weekly total comes through linear schedules.
Smaller projects on CoinMarketCap
Outside the major cliff and linear events, CoinMarketCap lists several smaller projects with scheduled releases over the coming week. These projects sit at lower market capitalizations and lower absolute dollar values for their upcoming unlocks.
REVOX (REX) has 34.38 million REX tokens scheduled for release worth $620.90, equal to 1.15% of its total locked supply. Drift (DRIFT) has 13.16 million DRIFT scheduled at $456,145.88 in value, or 1.32% of its total locked supply, with the token up 25.76% on the day.
UCBI Holding (UCBI) has 1.29 million tokens scheduled for release at $5.14 million in value, equal to 10.72% of its total locked supply, the largest percentage on the smaller-project list. Epiko (EPIKO) has 52.5 million tokens scheduled at $35,703.70, or 17.50% of total locked. LILLIUS (LLT) closes out the list with 17.2 million tokens at $969.43 in value, equal to 1.72% of its total locked supply.
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A little over a year ago, Sam Altman highlighted that Gen Z do not tend to make major life calls without consulting them over ChatGPT. He went onto say that while the older generation treat the tool as a “google replacement”, the younger populace in their 20’s and 30’s use it like a “life advisor”. That comment has aged almost like a cultural diagnosis rather than a prediction. Our newsletter poll, conducted last week as the conversation picked up again, suggests our audience is far less convinced with what was said.
The Comment That Set This Off
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a comment at Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent event last year that made the rounds across newsrooms and social media. His assertion was that different age groups and generations used ChatGPT for various purposes. This did not come as a warning but rather as what he saw in the data.
Older people, he said, use ChatGPT like a smarter version of Google. Meanwhile, people in their 20s and 30s used it more as a tool akin to a life advisor. College students, in his words, use it like an operating system, embedded into how they study, plan, write and make calls about their day.
The initial reaction to these comments were not even to say the least. Some people saw it as evidence that this tool is finding its native users. Others on the other hand read it as a subtle warning or danger that an entire cohort or generation was using a machine for judgement even though it runs the risk of sounding confident even when it’s wrong. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and our poll suggests that even among readers who follow this space closely, the jury is still out.
How Big Has This Behaviour Actually Become?
A report published by OpenAI in September 2025 showed that nearly half of ChatGPT messages now come from users below the age of 26, making younger adults the dominant demographic.
Younger users are pulling in even quicker. A Pew Research Center survey of 1,391 U.S. teens, conducted between September and October 2024, found that 26% of teens aged 13 to 17 had used ChatGPT for schoolwork, double the 13% recorded the year before. The pattern is even more pronounced among older students: 31% of 11th and 12th graders reported using it. Pew’s more recent 2026 follow-up survey shows the shift has moved beyond homework. According to that survey, 57% of teens now use chatbots for information searches, 54% for schoolwork, and 16% for casual conversation. Around 12% say they use these tools for emotional support or advice.
That last number is the one worth sitting with. It is small, but it suggests that the line between “tool” and “confidant” is already being crossed in measurable ways.
What The Poll Actually Tells Us
As mentioned in our previous poll, these are readers who track AI developments closely and many of them follow OpenAI and Anthropic releases the day they drop. The average age of our newsletter audience sits at around 30, which places this cohort squarely within the “life advisor” group Altman described in his Sequoia talk. If anyone in a general audience would be expected to lean on AI for personal decisions, it would be this group. The fact that the leading response is “Nope” is therefore the most interesting part of the result.
Note: The 30-year-old average is based on internal Cryptopolitan estimates and is provided as directional context. It has not been formally surveyed and individual respondents will fall on either side of that figure.
Nope (36.76%): Around a third of responses in the poll do not ask AI for any sort of life decisions. It provides a clear view on how this cohort views the utility of AI, perhaps for more technical and productive tasks for work, code research or even thinking out loud. That said, certainly not for the kind of decision that has personal weight behind it. The line being drawn is not anti-AI. It is anti-outsourcing.
Yes (~36%): Almost identical in size to the “Nope” cohort. Just over one in three respondents say they do consult AI before life decisions. This is the group most aligned with the behaviour Altman described back in 2025, and it is sizeable. The split between this group and the “Nope” cohort is essentially even, which is itself the story. Even in a tech-forward audience that demographically maps onto the cohort he was talking about, there is no consensus on whether AI belongs in the room when something important is being decided.
Occasionally (~27.2%): Roughly one in four respondents sit in the middle. They will use it when it helps, but they are not running every choice through the chatbot. This is probably the most honest answer for most people, and it is a group worth watching. As AI tools improve, this cohort is the one most likely to drift toward the “Yes” column.
Combine the “Yes” and “Occasionally” responses and you get just under 63% of readers using AI for personal decisions at least some of the time. That number lines up reasonably well with the broader behavioural trend Altman pointed to. What the poll adds is the texture underneath it, a clear segment of people who have looked at this technology, understood what it can do and then decided that some calls don’t require AI intervention and it’s theirs to make.
The Quieter Trend Under The Headline
The discussion about AI and decision-making usually splits into two camps. One worries about cognitive atrophy and the slow erosion of judgement. The other points to all the small, useful ways AI already helps people think more clearly. Both are right, depending on the type of decision.
What our poll suggests is that the question may already be sorting itself out at the user level. Roughly equal portions of the audience are landing in three different places, and the largest of the three is the one drawing a line. That is not what you would expect to see if AI advice was simply replacing human judgement across the board. It looks more like people are learning where it helps and where it does not, and that calibration is happening in real time.
The cohort to watch is still the one Altman described, the students who arrived on campus in 2022 with ChatGPT already in their pocket and never knew an academic environment without it. They are graduating now. The data on what happens when an entire working generation makes decisions with an AI assistant in the loop does not exist yet, because they are the first ones generating it. The next few years will tell us whether this is the smartphone moment for cognition, or something more complicated. Our poll suggests that even among people who follow this space for a living, the answer is still being worked out.
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