Crypto News

Odaily Planet Daily News, IPO documents show that he can only be removed from SpaceX's board seat or executive position by voting through a stock class controlled by Musk. (Jin Shi)

Jason Karsh, the new chief marketing officer of the Stellar Development Foundation, said that for the crypto industry to achieve mainstream adoption, it must shift from short-term speculation and "hype cycles" to long-term value creation, emphasizing that "get rich slow" is the key path to building trust. Karsh pointed out that the industry's long-standing reliance on obscure terms and technical expressions has widened the cognitive gap with the average user. He argues that crypto "peaked prematurely at the public level" due to the speculative frenzy in the early days, distorting its true value potential. He emphasized that the real opportunity lies in rebuilding global financial infrastructure for more efficient flow and storage of value, and that the Stellar Development Foundation, which has been focusing on payments and cross-border financial applications since 2014, is now benefiting from the gradual regulatory recognition of stablecoins and tokenized assets. Karsh referred to stablecoins as "the first killer app" but also noted that there are still barriers to understanding among the masses, suggesting redefining them as "programmable dollars." He said that the industry's future goal is to push trillions of dollars of assets on-chain, but the key is to rebuild trust simultaneously from the product and narrative level, rather than relying on token issuance to drive growth. He concluded that the next round of crypto growth will come from the replacement of traditional financial infrastructure, not just a speculative cycle, but it is still necessary to prioritize the basic popularization stage of "attracting 100 million real users" in the short term. （CoinDesk）

White House officials said Trump met with oil company executives on Tuesday to discuss the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz if necessary. The price of U.S. Treasury bonds, which were already under pressure, fell on the news. Brent crude oil continued to climb on the impact of this news, and the intraday increase expanded to 5%, further hitting the Treasury bond market. Commodity trading advisors (CTAs) covered profitable short positions after the data was released and then resumed selling. And as the support levels of the yield curve are breached, algorithmic trading dominates. (Jin Shi)

According to official news, OKX Onchain OS has released the Agent Payments Protocol (APP), which is a set of open payment standards for AI Agent business behavior. The agreement defines the payment methods of agents in business scenarios, expanding them from a single payment to a complete business process, and will support multiple payment modes such as single payment, batch payment, pay-as-you-go payment, and guaranteed payment. It is reported that the APP adopts a multi-chain open architecture, and any chain can implement its own version, and the first batch of partners include the Ethereum Foundation, Uniswap, Aptos, Nansen, Paxos, MoonPay, Altlayer, Zerion, QuickNode, etc. OKX Onchain OS said that the launch of the APP will provide critical payment infrastructure for the agent economy, propelling AI Agents from "executing payments" to the "business era."

European financial giant BNP Paribas (BNP Paribas) issued a stern warning of the global economic outlook in its latest quarterly outlook, believing that three potential scenarios, including oil prices reaching $200 per barrel, could plunge the global economy into recession. The war in Iran has had a clear impact on the global economy, but it has not yet completely derailed it. Global GDP growth will slow and inflation will remain high compared to expectations at the beginning of the year, and central banks will maintain more hawkish monetary policy. WTI crude oil rose to 5% during the day, Brent crude oil hit $109 per barrel for the first time since March 23, as Iran threatened to make an "unprecedented" military counterattack against the U.S. naval blockade, and White House officials said Trump discussed with oil companies plans to extend the Iran blockade for months if necessary. BNP pointed out that in addition to oil prices soaring to $200, there are two major factors that could trigger a global recession. And in the case of prolonged conflicts, there is a high probability that the three will occur at the same time and reinforce each other. The first risk is the disruption of energy supply in the Middle East, exacerbating global supply chain bottlenecks. Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz has been blocked, leading to poor global transportation of energy and key components, and some supplies may be forced to be limited in supply. The second risk is high inflation, which will force central banks to tighten monetary policy. Continued monetary tightening will further dampen economic activity and amplify the risk of recession.

According to ChainCatcher news, Squads, a multi-signature protocol in the Solana ecosystem, announced the completion of a $18 million strategic financing, led by Solana Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, L1D, etc. Squads used the funding round to expand its stablecoin corporate finance platform, Altitude.

Odaily Planet Daily News The exchange rate of the Iranian currency rial against the US dollar fell to a record low, and the exchange rate has now exceeded the level of 1 US dollar to 1.81 million riyals. The report said that the exchange rate of the rial against the US dollar accelerated the downward trend that began two days ago, falling by more than 230,000 riyals. (Xinhua News Agency)

The Ethereum Foundation announced a list of funding and ecological support projects for the first quarter of 2026, focusing on cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs (ZK), protocol security, and core infrastructure construction, and continuing to strengthen Ethereum's underlying technology stack and long-term scalability. This quarter's grants cover a number of key areas. At the protocol and client level, including Geth and Erigon client optimizations, Lighthouse client upgrades, and Pectra upgraded network monitoring tools, focus on improving network performance and attack resistance. Projects such as HSM key management, Vero, a validator security tool, and DISC-NG node discovery mechanism are also supported to enhance node-layer reliability and institutional-grade compliance. In the direction of cryptography and ZK, the foundation continues to increase projects such as Poseidon hash function analysis, Gröbner-based attack research, anti-quantum and homomorphic hybrid encryption exploration, and RISC-V zkVM formal verification to further strengthen the security boundary between zero-knowledge proofs and cryptographic infrastructure. In terms of developer ecosystem, tool chains such as BuidlGuidl education system upgrades, ERC standard community construction, WalletConnect signature clearing library, and Open Creator Rails continue to advance to lower the development threshold and improve user interaction security. At the same time, L2BEAT continues to provide Layer2 transparency analysis and strengthen the data infrastructure of the scaling ecosystem. In addition, the foundation also supports privacy technologies (such as Tor integration and Privacy Pool SDK), decentralized identity (did:ethr standard upgrade), DAO governance research, and public goods experimental projects, covering the complete ecological structure from the protocol layer to the application layer. Overall, this round of funding continues Ethereum's long-term investment in the three core directions of "cryptography + ZK+ protocol engineering", emphasizing the support of future multi-layer expansion and institutional-level application implementation through infrastructure and standardization construction.

Odaily Planet Daily News The U.S. Senate Banking Committee will vote in ten minutes to advance Walsh's nomination for Fed chairman. (Jin Shi)

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, Bitcoin remained fluctuating above $77,000 on Wednesday, and the market remained cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision. This FOMC meeting is seen as a key node, and the market generally expects interest rates to remain unchanged, but the real focus is on whether Fed Chair Powell releases a "higher-for-longer" hawkish signal. In addition, this meeting may also be his last meeting as chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the market is also uncertain about pricing policy and potential transfer of power. Overall, Bitcoin is still in a "low liquidity + high event risk" structure and may maintain a range of $72,000 to $80,000 in the short term, waiting for further clarification on the Fed's policy path.

ChainCatcher news, according to Gate market data, the Dow Jones index opened down 21.95 points, or 0.04%, at 49,119.98 points on April 29 (Wednesday); The S&P 500 index opened down 11.58 points, or 0.16%, at 7,127.22; The Nasdaq Composite opened down 109 points, or 0.44%, at 24,554.8.

White House officials said Trump discussed with oil companies a plan to extend the Iran blockade for several months if necessary. (Jin Shi)

According to ChainCatcher news, the US dollar against the Japanese yen (USD/JPY) briefly touched 160, hitting a new high since April 7, according to Golden Ten.

ChainCatcher news, according to Jinshi, major investment banks have conducted a forward-looking analysis of the Fed's future interest rate path. Wells Fargo and ING both expect the Fed to cut interest rates by 25 basis points each in September and December. ANZ believes the rate cut cycle may resume in the third quarter. Goldman Sachs Group and Barclays also said that if inflation falls, the Fed will ease policy around September. Bank of America predicts a possible 50 basis point rate cut.

According to ChainCatcher news, Blockworks announced the completion of Series A expansion financing, with a post-investment valuation of $192 million. This round of financing was jointly led by ParaFi Capital and Reciprocal Ventures, and was supported by several institutions and industry participants, including Coinbase Ventures and MoonPay Ventures. The financing also attracted more than 20 founders and operators from ecological projects such as Solana, LayerZero, Arbitrum, and Kraken, with the specific financing amount not yet disclosed. The company said that the crypto market has grown to a trillion-dollar scale without traditional capital market infrastructure, but there are still problems such as data fragmentation, inconsistent disclosure, and lack of investor communication mechanisms, and Blockworks is trying to fill this gap with a "data + disclosure + investor relations" trinity structure.

According to Odaily Planet Daily News, the total trading volume of the forecast market in March 2026 will reach $25.7 billion, an increase of 10.6% month-on-month, with trading behavior highly concentrated among small retail users. Among the 1.29 million wallets tracked in the first quarter, 82.3% of users had a transaction size of less than $10,000, and the growth mainly came from micro, mild, and moderately active user groups. Crypto assets are the main entry point for prediction markets, accounting for 39.6% of micro user activity. Among them, Bitcoin-related event contracts attracted about 593,000 users in the first quarter, with a trading volume of $5.42 billion, making it the most engaged crypto prediction market. Ethereum and Solana recorded $1.19 billion and $420 million in trading volume, respectively. In terms of category structure, the sports market ranked first with a trading volume of $10.1 billion, followed by the political market ($5 billion), of which geopolitical-related accounts for $2.41 billion, and the overall trading volume of the crypto-related market reached $7.3 billion. The analysis believes that the growth of the forecast market mainly depends on "category expansion" rather than the expansion of the size of a single transaction. Micro users are active for an average of 2.5 days and participate in 1.45 categories, while medium user activity increases to 9.9 days and 2.34 categories, indicating that users are moving from single speculation to a multi-market continuous participation structure. （The Block）

ChainCatcher news, according to Gate market data, as international crude oil prices rose, the US dollar index DXY rose to an intraday high, reaching a high of 98.77.

Odaily Planet Daily News GSR launched the Crypto Core3 ETF, a crypto exchange-traded fund, focusing on the allocation of three core crypto asset portfolios: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The product adopts a weekly rebalancing strategy to dynamically adjust the position structure of each currency, while introducing staking income in Ethereum and Solana sections. Currently, GSR has submitted five ETF application materials and will continue to expand its product matrix in the future to further improve its crypto asset investment layout. (Coindesk)

Odaily Planet Daily News Andre Cronje said that most current decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols no longer comply with "DeFi in the strict sense" and are closer to business systems operated by teams, and have caused divisions in the industry over whether "circuit breakers" should be introduced to deal with attack risks. In an interview, Andre Cronje pointed out that in the early days, DeFi was centered on immutable smart contracts, but now a large number of protocols rely on upgradable contracts, multi-signature permissions, off-chain infrastructure, and manual operation and maintenance processes, essentially transforming from "immutable public goods" to "operable profitable businesses". He said that in the context of recent security incidents, including DeFi attacks of about US$280 million and US$293 million, industry risks have expanded from simple smart contract vulnerabilities to "Web2-style risks" such as infrastructure, permission control, and social engineering attacks. For risk management, Andre Cronje's Flying Tulip recently introduced a circuit breaker mechanism to delay or queue withdrawals in the event of abnormal outflows, providing an emergency response window of about 6 hours to prevent systematic runs and further losses. However, the mechanism has also caused controversy. Michael Egorov argues that circuit breakers can introduce a new centralized attack surface that, if controlled by signers or administrators, could become a new source of security breach or freeze risk. He emphasized that DeFi design should minimize human intervention rather than adding human control nodes. Industry analysts pointed out that this debate essentially reflects that DeFi is gradually shifting from the ideal model of "code is law" to the realistic architecture of "hybrid governance + operational control", and the security boundary is being redefined. （Cointelegraph）