Good afternoon,

Bitcoin is hovering around $77,500 as volatility cools and leveraged positions unwind. Meanwhile, the “DeFi United” recovery effort led by Kelp and Aave Labs has covered 73,700 ETH of the 163,200 ETH shortfall tied to the April 18 Kelp DAO exploit. Separately, U.S. authorities have charged a soldier with allegedly using classified information to trade on prediction markets after being blocked on Kalshi and shifting activity to Polymarket, while OpenAI has released GPT-5.5, a more advanced model that comes with higher costs.

Let’s unpack this and more! 👇

News Roundup

Artificial Intelligence

  • Tencent's New Hy3 AI Model Is the Most Efficient Chinese LLM No One's Talking About (Decrypt)

  • OpenAI Says Its New ChatGPT for Doctors Outperforms Humans in Clinical Tasks (Decrypt)

  • OpenAI Releases GPT-5.5: Faster, Smarter—And Pricier (Decrypt)

  • Paradigm-Backed Succinct Launches iPhone Camera App That Combats AI Fakes Using Cryptography (The Block)

  • Google Maps Lets Filmmakers Scout Movie Scenes Using AI and Street View Data (Decrypt)

  • Built-In Memory for Claude Managed Agents (Claude)

  • xAI Unveils Grok Voice Think Fast 1.0, Claims Top Ranking in Voice AI Benchmark (xAI)

  • OpenAI's GPT-5.5 is the New Leading AI Model (Artificial Analysis)

  • Meta Agrees to Deploy Millions of Amazon AI Chips in Deal Worth Billions (Decrypt)

  • Google Plans to Invest Up to $40 Billion in Anthropic (Reuters)

  • DeepSeek V4 Is Here—Its Pro Version Costs 98% Less Than GPT 5.5 Pro (Decrypt)

Decentralized, Centralized, & Traditional Finance

  • Anthropic Beats OpenAI on Secondary Markets With $1 Trillion Implied Valuation (Decrypt)

  • DeFi United Fundraising Chips Away at Kelp Exploit Shortfall (The Defiant)

  • Spark Attracts $2.4B as Capital Rotates Away from Aave After rsETH Crisis (DeFi Oasis)

  • ECB Signs Standards Deals to Cut Digital Euro Integration Costs (Cointelegraph)

  • India Pushes e-Rupee Through Welfare Pilots as BRICS Digital Currency Plan Takes Shape (CoinDesk)

  • Morgan Stanley Targets BlackRock With Money Market Fund for Stablecoin Issuers (Decrypt)

  • Lighter Unveils Multi-Asset Margin Starting With ETH (The Defiant)

Exchanges

  • Expanding USDT0 Access as Tempo's First International Exchange Partner (OKX)

  • KuCoin Debuts Mastercard-Powered USDC Payment Card in Australia (Blockonomi)

  • Zondacrypto CEO Goes Off Radar as Poland Probe Deepens (Cointelegraph)

Exchange-Traded Funds

Gaming

  • More Than 90% of Web3 Games Failed After $15 Billion Boom as Gamers Never Showed Up (CoinDesk)

Infrastructure

  • TON Slashes Transaction Fees by 6x as Push Toward Feeless Transfers Accelerates (Pavel Durov)

  • Quantum Computer Breaks 15-Bit Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Key (Cointelegraph)

  • Fluent Launches Ethereum Layer 2 Mainnet and BLEND Token With $50 Million Day-One Liquidity (The Block)

  • AWS Marketplace Adds Chainlink Data Standards, Enabling Devs to Link Traditional Computing Services and Blockchains (The Block)

Markets

  • U.S. Government Sits on $26.5 Billion Gain From Intel Stake, as Shares Surge 22% (CoinDesk)

  • Ethereum Foundation Sells 10,000 ETH to BitMine in OTC Deal for Treasury Funding (Decrypt)

  • Bitcoin Stalls Below at $77,500 as Volatility Cools, Traders Unwind Leverage (CoinDesk)

Politics & Regulation

  • DOJ Charges U.S. Soldier With Using Classified Information To Profit From Prediction Market Bets (DOJ)

  • CFTC Charges U.S. Service Member with Insider Trading in Nicolás Maduro-Related Event Contracts (CFTC)

  • Trump Vows to Review Federal Workers’ Prediction Market Bets (Bloomberg)

  • UK Regulators Rush to Assess Risks of Latest Anthropic AI Model, FT Reports (Reuters)

  • Trump to Deliver Remarks to Crypto Conference on Saturday, White House Says (Reuters)

  • Wisconsin Joins Prediction Market Fight, Suing Kalshi, Coinbase, Polymarket, Robinhood and Crypto.com (CoinDesk)

  • Scam Center Strike Force Takes Major Actions Against Southeast Asian Scam Centers Targeting Americans (DOJ)

  • China’s New Online Marketing Rules Tighten Ban on Crypto Promotions (Cointelegraph)

  • South Africa Draft Bill Would Tighten Crypto Capital Controls (Cointelelgraph)

  • Crypto PAC Fellowship Halts Ads in Texas Senate Race (Cointelegraph)

  • GOP Pressed Commerce Sec. Lutnick After Crypto PAC's Planned Texas Move Alarmed Party Leaders (The Block)

  • DeFi Education Fund and Other Crypto Leaders Press SEC to Lock in DeFi Broker Guidance (The Block)

  • DOJ Drops Probe into Jerome Powell (The Block)

  • Tennessee Bans Crypto ATMs Statewide, Joining Indiana in Fraud Crackdown (The Block)

  • US Soldier Was Blocked on Kalshi Before Taking Maduro Bets to Polymarket (Decrypt)

  • US Sanctions Iran-Linked Crypto Wallets, Including Addresses Holding $344 Million Frozen by Tether (The Block)

Treasuries

  • Metaplanet Issues $50M in Zero-Interest Bonds to Buy More Bitcoin (Bitcoin Magazine)

  • Nakamoto Taps Bitwise and Kraken for Bitcoin Options Strategy to Hedge Risk (Cointelegraph)

Venture Capital

  • 3F, Built on Morpho, Raises $4 Million to Offer Leveraged Exposure to Tokenized Assets (The Block)

Other News

  • Meta, Microsoft Plan Cuts, Buyouts That May Affect 23,000 Jobs (Bloomberg)

  • Jane Street Asks Court to Dismiss Terraform Labs' Insider Trading Lawsuit (The Block)

Check This Out!

The stablecoin market remains highly concentrated, with USDT holding roughly 62% share, followed by USDC at about 25%, while all others trail far behind.

Source: rwa.xyz, Tiger Research

Meme of the Day

Source: Crypto Tea

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