Foresight News takes you through this week’s hot topics and recommended content:
01 US Encryption Policy
"Washington, the 'Schrödinger's Cat' of Cryptocurrency?"
The Democratic Party is "encircling" Trump's new encryption policy
"Bitcoin breaks through $100,000 for the 7th time. Can Ethereum keep up this time?"
02 Crypto Industry Venture Capital
"After a 70% drop in venture capital, the crypto industry has entered the M&A season: Buy ready-made or build your own?"
03 Futu Securities embraces the crypto trend
"Futu Securities embraces the crypto trend, what is the meaning behind launching the top-up service?"
04 Trump Dinner
"Bloomberg: TRUMP coin is dominated by foreign buyers, and dinner promotions raise regulatory questions"
05Zerebro Lianchuang faked his death
The first "fake death Rashomon" in the history of cryptocurrencies? A complete record of the fake death of Jeffy, co-founder of Zerebro
06 Project Observation
《Issuance is imminent, everything you need to know about IKA》
"Two years after its launch, how did Sui become the strongest new public chain in this round?"
"Deribit is acquired by Coinbase, is the derivatives track open?"
01 US Encryption Policy
I am very optimistic about the outlook for cryptocurrencies this year. The current situation is extremely favorable: increasing institutional participation, improving regulatory environment, and great progress in blockchain technology. I think that most cryptocurrencies will trade at record highs this year, and Bitcoin will rise to over $200,000. But... people often ask me, what might make cryptocurrencies go off the script? My answer is simple: people; more precisely, politicians. Recommended reading:
" Washington, the 'Schrödinger's Cat' of Cryptocurrency? "
At the beginning of this year, I thought this was a sure thing. Specifically, I expected Congress to quickly pass stablecoin legislation, creating a solid regulatory path for the world's largest financial institutions to enter the stablecoin market.
But over the weekend, nine Democrats — including four of the five who voted to bring the bill out of committee, as well as Schumer himself — withdrew their support, saying the bill did not go far enough on areas such as anti-money laundering and know-your-customer protections.
This shift in attitude reflects the changing political environment in Washington. In fact, the revised version of the bill is stronger in areas such as anti-money laundering and KYC than the version that passed the Banking Committee, suggesting that the change in attitude among Democrats has more to do with Trump's declining approval ratings and increased discussion of his conflicts of interest related to cryptocurrency than any substantive concerns.
I think the stablecoin bill will eventually pass. The benefits of stablecoins are too obvious for the United States, the dollar, merchants, entrepreneurs, and others to be hindered by some petty political fighting.
On May 1, 2025, Elizabeth Warren, a senior Democratic member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, and five colleagues sent a joint letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, sternly stating that the Trump administration's plan to include crypto assets in the national strategic reserve "may pose a systemic threat to the stability of the U.S. financial system." Recommended reading:
The Democratic Party is "encircling" Trump's new encryption policy
This is not the first time that the Democrats have attacked Trump's crypto policy. As early as April 29, Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, successfully blocked the Republican-led joint hearing on the Crypto Market Structure Act on the grounds of "conflict of interest." In a letter to committee chairman Hill, she bluntly stated: "When the Trump family has made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits by issuing meme coins (TRUMP) and investing in DeFi projects, any bill that attempts to relax regulations will become a tool for money laundering."
As the core infrastructure of the crypto ecosystem, stablecoins have become the focus of recent bipartisan bargaining. The Republican-led GENIUS Act attempted to establish a federal regulatory framework for the issuance of stablecoins, but the Democrats suddenly changed sides on May 4, with nine Democratic senators jointly opposing the existing version and demanding the strengthening of anti-money laundering and foreign issuer reviews. This shift directly caused the probability of the bill passing the Senate to drop sharply to 37%.
The long-awaited rally finally took place. On the evening of May 8, BTC broke through the $100,000 mark and continued to rise, standing above $102,000, and achieved five consecutive increases on the weekly chart. However, the most eye-catching performance was Ethereum, which has been criticized for a long time. It rose by more than 20% in 24 hours, breaking through the $2,000 mark and standing above $2,200. ETH/BTC returned to above 0.02, rebounding more than 14% from the low point. The crypto market has been silent for several months since January this year. What are the factors affecting this rise? How will the subsequent market play out? Recommended reading:
" Bitcoin breaks through $100,000 for the 7th time. Can Ethereum keep up this time? "
Data shows that Strategy spent $555.8 million to increase its holdings of 6,556 BTC between April 14 and 20, with an average price of $84,785. Subsequently, it spent another $180.3 million to increase its holdings of 1,895 BTC, with an average price of $95,167 per BTC. In addition, Strategy also launched a bold "42/42 plan" to raise $84 billion in two years to buy Bitcoin. Previously, the "21/21 plan" of $42 billion was implemented last year.
Indian listed company Jetking, Nasdaq-listed company Thumzup, and US-listed medical technology company Semler Scientific are buying or planning to buy more Bitcoin.
In addition, Ethereum has completed the Pectra upgrade, which is the first upgrade of the Ethereum mainnet after the Cancun upgrade in March last year. It includes two coordinated updates: the Prague execution layer hard fork and the Electra consensus layer upgrade, and plans to include 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). Several important EIPs in this upgrade include EIP-7251 (increasing the maximum valid balance of validators), EIP-7691 (increasing Blob throughput), and EIP-7623 (increasing calldata fees).
In the early morning of May 8, after concluding a two-day interest rate meeting, the Federal Reserve announced that it would maintain the federal funds rate level at 4.25% to 4.5%. This is the third time in a row that the Federal Reserve has not cut interest rates since the meetings in January and March this year. Powell said, "The outlook for monetary policy may include lowering short-term interest rates. He said at a press conference that the outlook "may include" lowering interest rates or keeping interest rates stable, depending on economic conditions. Fluctuations in GDP data will not really change our situation. "This has further exacerbated the tension between the Federal Reserve and the White House. Trump has repeatedly criticized the Federal Reserve for being Jiangxi, and said that talking to Powell is like playing the lute to a cow, and Powell is always too late.
02 Crypto Industry Venture Capital
Coinbase acquires Deribit for $2.9 billion, the largest M&A event in the history of cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency industry is no longer a new industry. It is estimated that the number of cryptocurrency users has reached 659 million, Coinbase has more than 105 million users, and there are about 5.5 billion Internet users worldwide. So, cryptocurrency users have reached 10% of the total number of Internet users. These numbers are important because they help us determine where the next stage of growth will come from. Recommended reading:
Acquisitions solve three key problems that financing alone cannot. First, acquisitions help with talent acquisition in highly specialized fields where experienced developers are scarce. Second, acquisitions help with user acquisition in an environment where organic growth is increasingly expensive. Third, acquisitions can facilitate technology integration, allowing protocols to move beyond their original use cases. These issues will be further explored in the following article with industry examples.
We are in the midst of a new wave of M&A in crypto. Coinbase acquired Deribit for a record $2.9 billion; Kraken acquired NinjaTrader, a retail futures trading platform regulated by the CFTC, for $1.5 billion; and Ripple acquired multi-asset prime broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, having also made a bid for Circle that was rejected. These deals reflect the changing priorities in the space. Ripple wants distribution and regulatory channels, Coinbase is after options volume, and Kraken is filling a product gap. These acquisitions are all driven by strategy, survival, and competitive positioning.
Every venture-backed token that launches with a high fully diluted valuation (FDV) requires a lot of liquidity to reach a multi-billion dollar market cap. For example, EigenLayer's EIGEN token launched at $3.9 with a fully diluted valuation of $6.5 billion. The circulation at launch was ~11% with a market cap of ~$720 million. The current circulation is ~15% with a fully diluted valuation of ~$1.4 billion. After multiple unlocking rounds, 4% of the supply has entered circulation since the initial token issuance. The token price has fallen by ~80% since launch. To get back to the launch valuation, the price would need to increase by 400% with an increase in supply.
03 Futu Securities embraces the crypto trend
On the morning of May 7, Twitter user FORAB broke the news that Futu Securities is testing a token recharge function that supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT. Just a few hours later, it was officially confirmed. Hong Kong financial technology giant Futu Securities International (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Futu Securities") announced that its core trading platform Futu NiuNiu officially launched BTC, ETH and USDT recharge services. After qualified investors complete the recharge and trading of cryptocurrencies through the one-stop trading platform Futu NiuNiu to obtain funds, they can invest in more asset categories or withdraw cash. Recommended reading:
" Futu Securities embraces the crypto trend, what is the meaning behind launching the top-up service? "
As early as 2021, Futu revealed its interest in the crypto market. According to Cailianshe, Robin Li Xu, vice president of Futu Holdings, said that year that the company had applied for digital currency-related licenses in Hong Kong, the United States and Singapore, and planned to enter crypto trading, but the progress was slow. Hong Kong's supervision of crypto assets has gradually opened up in recent years. In 2023, the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission launched the VATP licensing system, allowing compliant platforms to provide cryptocurrency trading services to retail investors. It is worth noting that PantherTrade, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Futu Holdings, applied for a VATP license that year. It was not until the end of January 2025 that the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission approved the VATP license for PantherTrade.
For traditional stock traders of Futu NiuNiu, the launch of the cryptocurrency recharge service is quite attractive. First of all, it enriches the diversity of the investment portfolio. Stock traders are accustomed to investing in traditional assets such as Hong Kong stocks, US stocks, and ETFs, but cryptocurrencies, as alternative assets with high growth potential, have attracted the attention of global investors in recent years. In 2024, the price of Bitcoin once exceeded $100,000, showing strong market demand. Futu allows stock traders to recharge BTC, ETH, and USDT through the same account, directly participate in the crypto market, without the need to register an additional crypto exchage account, and reduce the learning and operation threshold.
In addition, Futu NiuNiu's one-stop platform allows cryptocurrency traders to quickly switch between crypto assets and traditional financial assets. Users can manage Bitcoin and Hong Kong and US stocks in the same account, eliminating the hassle of cross-platform transfers and making fund utilization more efficient. This seamless connection is particularly attractive to cryptocurrency traders who seek diversified investments. Some cryptocurrency traders also pay attention to US and Hong Kong stock opportunities. When the cycles of the crypto and stock markets are mismatched and rise and fall respectively, it is also convenient for investors to flexibly grasp the fluctuations and seize the dual opportunities of the crypto and stock markets.
04 Trump Dinner
Trump is a cryptocurrency that President Trump began promoting just days before his inauguration. Sales of Trump tokens have surged in the past two weeks following an unprecedented promotion: More than 200 of the largest token holders will be invited to a dinner at Trump's Virginia golf club on May 22, and more than half of the largest holders of Trump Meme Coin Trump are from foreign trading platforms that claim to ban American users, indicating that many buyers are from outside the United States. The top 25 holders will be eligible to attend an exclusive reception before the dinner and what the Trump Token website describes as a "VIP" tour. Recommended reading:
The value of tokens currently held by the 220 cryptocurrency wallets registered on the TRUMP leaderboard (by where the wallet holders are likely to be located). 76% of the value of tokens held in the top 220 wallets may belong to foreign owners because these wallets use trading platforms that are not available to US residents. Data source: Bloomberg analysis of SolScan data. (Note: Data as of 10 am EST on May 5. Usernames are listed on the TRUMP token website and are set by wallet holders when they register for the dinner promotion. One wallet that is still in the top 25 of the leaderboard website is not listed here because it sold almost all of its tokens on May 3)
It’s possible that some U.S. buyers have found ways to get around the ban by using foreign exchanges, such as using virtual private networks (VPNs) to hide U.S. IP addresses. Most exchanges said they took steps, such as collecting personal information from users, to try to prevent such circumvention. The three foreign exchanges most commonly used by big TRUMP token holders to fund their accounts or buy TRUMP coins are Binance, Bybit and OOEX, all of which have imposed restrictions on U.S. users. Bloomberg’s analysis found that six holders on the TRUMP token leaderboard made purchases on OOEX before it launched its trading platform in the U.S. on April 15. A spokesperson for OOEX said the company had not allowed U.S. residents to make purchases before then. Representatives for Binance and Bybit did not respond to requests for comment.
Bloomberg analyzed transactions for the top 220 wallets on the Dinner leaderboard as of May 5 to determine whether their holders might be from abroad. A separate analysis looked at all self-hosted wallets that held enough Trump tokens as of April 30 to qualify for the top 220. Many of the largest wallets are not listed on the Dinner leaderboard, suggesting they have not yet registered or that their time-weighted holdings may differ significantly from their current holdings. Some may be strategically waiting to register.
05Zerebro Lianchuang faked his death
This week, in the cryptocurrency world, the "fake death" incident of Jeffy Yu, the founder of the Zerebro project, has undoubtedly become the most controversial focus event. From the outbreak of "suicide" rumors to the gradual revelation of the truth of the "fake death", some people denounced his market manipulation, while others sympathized with his experience, believing that it was a "forced survival move." Is this a carefully planned scam? Or is it an extreme portrayal of the struggle of human nature in the crypto ecosystem? Recommended reading:
Before this live broadcast, Jeffy Yu published an article about "Legacoin" which also attracted attention. He proposed the concept of "legacy memecoin" Legacoin (derived from legacy memecoin), the core of which is that developers promise to only buy and not sell related assets, and lock them permanently in the blockchain after death, so as to achieve "eternal existence of digital heritage".
On May 5, the obituary platform Legacy published a message about Jeffy Yu's death and detailed his resume: he enrolled in Stanford University's computer science major at the age of 15, and later studied at Northeastern University and Arizona State University. At the age of 19, he worked as a software engineer in Santa Cruz. At the age of 21, he co-founded a company and pushed its market value to $800 million within half a year. The obituary said that Jeffy Yu was 22 years old, but did not mention the specific cause of death.
Jeffy Yu then introduced the core content of the article - "Legacoin", and called it his last artwork, codenamed LLJEFFY. He clearly pointed out that "Legacoin is not an investment product, nor a security, does not meet the definition of securities, does not involve advertising or speculation, is entirely based on voluntary behavior, and defines it as "the opposite of securities." I will use the money I earn to buy tokens and then destroy them. He also mentioned that when the death switch (DMS) is triggered, his relatives will receive relevant instructions and funds. This mechanism is designed to permanently lock the tokens on the blockchain, symbolizing an "eternal tomb in cyberspace."
Jeffy Yu’s “fake death” incident not only severely damaged the reputation of the Zerebro project, but also made the future of the LLJEFFY token full of uncertainty.
The crypto community's reaction to the incident was complex and intense. On the one hand, many people were angry at Jeffy Yu's behavior, believing that he evaded responsibility by deceiving the community and might even take the opportunity to cash out for profit. On the other hand, a small number of community users expressed sympathy for Jeffy Yu's experience and called on the community to reflect on the harm of cyber violence.
06 Project Observation
On April 28, 2025, IKA announced that it had received a strategic investment from the Sui Foundation, bringing the project's cumulative financing scale to over US$21 million. Previously, IKA had raised more than 1.4 million SUI tokens by issuing THE MF SQUID MARKET series NFTs on Sui, and received support from institutions including DCG, Big Brain Holdings, Blockchange, Node Capital, Amplify Partners, Liquid2 Ventures, and FalconX. So far, the project's highest financing valuation is US$600 million. On Sui's pre-market token OTC trading market PinataBot Market, the full circulation market value of the token IKA has reached US$1.2 billion (low trading volume). What kind of project is IKA, and how did it receive such financing and valuation? Recommended reading:
《 Issuance is imminent, everything you need to know about IKA 》
IKA, formerly known as “dWallet Network”, will launch a parallel MPC (multi-party computing) network based on Sui. Under the slogan of “We make all chains Sui chains”, IKA still solves the problem of cross-chain interoperability of assets.
IKA is the underlying interoperability protocol for B2B. The above use case is just one of the applications that can be built based on it. In fact, more than ten projects (mostly from the Sui ecosystem or have established a cooperative relationship with Sui) have been connected to IKA, covering four core scenarios:
IKA's core technologies can be summarized into two modules - dWallet (decentralized wallet) and 2PC-MPC (two-party computing - multi-party secure computing) protocol, allowing users to directly use native assets such as BTC and ETH to participate in the multi-chain ecosystem without relying on packaged tokens.
IKA adopts an original 2PC-MPC solution: first, the user and the network each generate a "share of the encryption key" (Two-Party Computation), and then hundreds to thousands of nodes execute the MPC signing process in parallel (Multi-Party Computation). With Sui's Mysticeti consensus, the number of signature nodes can be expanded horizontally to thousands, and the throughput is 10,000 times that of the existing MPC network; the signature delay is stable at the sub-second level, while maintaining a very high degree of decentralization and anti-censorship capabilities.
On May 3, 2023, Sui mainnet was officially launched, 2 years ago. Many people may remember: when Sui was first launched, the situation was not as optimistic as it is now - the investor FTX collapsed, and the foundation was forced to "buy back the tokens" by itself; the coin was issued in the bear market, and the coin price fell from $1.7 to $0.4; there was no regular token airdrop, but a lottery for token purchase quotas, which was swiped by the community "No airdrop, No community." and even called "fraud". In just two years, everything has changed. In this cycle where Bitcoin bottomed out at $16,000 and eventually broke through $100,000, Sui is undoubtedly the protagonist of the new public chain. Looking at the entire public chain landscape, the limelight is only slightly inferior to Solana, which is "reborn in Nirvana" in this round. In fact, the FDV (full circulation market value) of Sui's governance token SUI is second only to BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, and BNB among non-stable coins, and is the sixth largest crypto asset in the industry. Recommended reading:
" Two years after its launch, how did Sui become the strongest new public chain in this round? "
Since July 2023, Mysten Labs (Sui developer) has launched three Bullshark Quests in less than half a year. Users can get SUI token airdrops by completing tasks, 5 million per issue, and a total of 15 million tokens. It is worth noting that Sui's early task incentive model tends to be "sunshine", with rewards distributed based on headcount rather than capital. Although those who rank high can get a large number of tokens, ordinary retail investors who rank relatively low can also have good returns.
Sui is the first public chain in this cycle to subsidize the interest rate of DeFi protocols with tokens. In the early days, relatively niche protocols could even obtain an annualized return of over 100% through stablecoins. The author has participated in many DeFi mining activities and was tempted by high interest rates. At this stage, he increased his capital deployment on Sui.
However, SUI's high token subsidies were issued when the coin price was low. Since then, the coin price has steadily risen, whale' willingness to hold SUI tokens has increased, selling pressure has weakened, and the number of tokens required to maintain the same interest rate has also decreased, achieving a positive spiral of coin price growth and TVL growth.
Because Evan Cheng, the founder of Sui developer Mysten Labs, is from Taiwan, there are many Taiwanese teams in the Sui ecosystem. The ecosystem's lending protocol Scallop, option protocol Typus, stablecoin protocol Bucket, etc. are all backed by Taiwanese teams. The advantage of having many Chinese developers is that the development efficiency is high and the quality of the code is guaranteed. In contrast, European and American teams are very "Buddhist" in their work.
There has been a paradigm shift from the criticism of “No Airdrop, No Community.” to “No Community, No Airdrop.” Although Sui did not conduct airdrops to users when its mainnet was launched, it has made great use of airdrop marketing and community building in the future.
In recent years, compliant exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken have been rushing to enter the derivatives trading market. On May 8, Coinbase announced that it had acquired Deribit for a record-breaking $2.9 billion, which exceeded the $1.5 billion Kraken's acquisition of derivatives platform NinjaTrader on March 20, becoming the largest single acquisition in the crypto space. Recommended reading:
" Deribit was acquired by Coinbase, is the derivatives track opening? "
As a professional derivatives trading platform, Deribit's core users are more focused on professional traders and institutions, and it has a higher profile among this group compared to cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase, which have a large user base. Data shows that its trading volume in 2024 is close to 1.2 trillion US dollars, and its daily derivatives trading volume reaches 2.8 billion US dollars.
The acquisition includes $700 million in cash and 11 million shares of Coinbase common stock. Based on Deribit's estimated trading volume in 2024, its annual fee income is about $420 million (at a fee rate of 0.035%), and the acquisition price-to-sales ratio is significantly lower than its peers (such as Robinhood's 15 times). Analysts predict that after the integration of Deribit, Coinbase's average daily trading volume of derivatives will increase by 40%, and it will promote the diversification of trading revenue. The proportion of derivatives revenue may increase to more than 30% in 2026. In the long run, this deal has a real cost-effectiveness.
According to Bernstein analysts, as the industry develops towards a "one-stop" multi-asset platform, cryptocurrency exchanges and brokers are making "big M&A moves", and Coinbase is also constantly expanding the business boundaries of compliant exchanges. With the entry of derivatives from compliant exchanges such as Kraken and Coinbase, from only taking spot to long-short battles, we can expect that the encryption business lines in the European and American markets will gradually improve, and the competition has just begun.
