Together with

Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Coinbase announces the largest acquisition in crypto history and might be taking on Zuck’s facebook, BTC blasts through $100k price point, Ripple finally reaches a settlement with SEC, crypto and stock gains may have no state income tax, and so much more.

Happy Friday – feeling extra bullish heading into this weekend 🤑 Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• Institutional inflows, easing geopolitical risks, and Chinese monetary stimulus are credited with fueling Bitcoin’s strong recovery, while other cryptocurrencies lag slightly behind

  • Bitcoin broke well above $100,000 for the first time since February, at one point rising signaling a potential easing of Trump’s global trade war following a U.S.-UK trade agreement – $109K all time highs now in sight

• Ethereum surged over +14% to $2,050, its highest since March, though it remains far below its late 2024 highs

Headline Roundup
^{_{The major headlines driving crypto markets}}

• Stocks and crypto jump after Trump says ’buy stocks now’ after signing UK trade deal – see video here

• Stablecoin legislation suffers severe blow as GENIUS Act fails to pass key senate vote (DC)

• Crypto fraud leads to 12 year prison sentence for Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky (WG)

• Coinbase teases an onchain media platform with a video trailor – see the video here

• Man who funded ISIS with crypto sentenced to over 30 years in prison (CT)

• Tom Brady and Larry David mostly cleared in FTX investor lawsuit (DE)

• An investigation reveals traders profited $99.6M with MELANIA token through insider trading (CN)

• Unicorn fintech Ramp to launch payments in Latin America via partnership with Stripe’s stablecoin-backed cards (TR)

• Ripple and SEC finalize a $50M settlement, with a $75M going back to the firm (BiC)

• Bitcoin touches $104,000 as crypto markets show optimism (RT)

• Coinbase misses revenue and earnings projections with $2B in revenue – see the full Q1 earings breakdown here

• Riot Games solidifies Coinbase as main partner for League of Legends and Valorant esports events (RG)

• Ripple’s recently acquired prime broker Hidden Road announces opening of an Abu Dhabi office (CD)

• Crypto miner Mara Holdings posts $533M Q1 loss despite record Bitcoin reserves (DE)

• Ethereum posts largest 4-year gain after Pectra upgrade goes live (TB)

• Steak ‘n Shake will accept Bitcoin nationwide starting May 16 (DC)

• Bitcoin surpasses Amazon With $2.015T market cap to become fifth largest asset globally (TD)

A Message from BOXABL

Could This Company Do for Housing What Tesla Did for Cars?

Ford reportedly builds one car per minute. Isn’t it time we do that for houses?

BOXABL believes they have the potential to disrupt a massive and outdated trillion dollar building construction market by bringing assembly line automation to the home industry.

Since securing their initial prototype order from SpaceX and a subsequent project order of 156 homes from the DoD, BOXABL has made substantial strides in streamlining their manufacturing and order process. BOXABL is now delivering to developers and consumers. They also just reserved the ticker symbol BXBL on Nasdaq*

BOXABL has raised over $170M from over 40,000 investors since 2020. They recently achieved a significant milestone: raising over 50% of their Reg A+ funding limit!

BOXABL is now only accepting investment on their website until the Reg A+ is full.

Disclosure: This is a paid advertisement for BOXABL’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular here. This is a message from BOXABL. *Reserving a Nasdaq ticker does not guarantee a future listing on Nasdaq or indicate that BOXABL meets any of Nasdaq's listing criteria to do so.

---

Venture Capital

• Trump crypto advisor raises $300M for new Bitcoin investment firm Nakamoto Report (DH)

• T-Rex, a web3 consumer rewards application, raises $17M pre-seed funding from Portal Ventures, North Island Ventures, Framework Ventures, and Arbitrum Gaming Ventures (TB)

• Galaxy leads $10M strategic investment into Sonic Labs for U.S. expansion plans (BN)

• GSR leads $4M seed round for GoQuant, a high performance trading infrastructure (AI)

• XPfinance secures $200k seed financing led by Xenoverge Fund for non-custodial lending on Ripple (NB)

• Visa invests in stablecoin payments company BVNK after previous $50M Series B from industry leaders (PY)

• Jump Crypto takes strategic stake in Blackrock-backed tokenization platform Securitize (TB)

Launches

• Rumble plans to launch Bitcoin and stablecoin wallet in Q3 (CT)

• Solana Naming Service launches new token $SNS with 40% being airdropped to early adopters (SNS)

• Camp Network launches testnet for IP-focused blockchain after $30M raise (TB)

• Adidas and Sui-based Xociety partner and launch exclusive 2,600 mystery NFTs (SUI)

• Stripe launches 'Stablecoin Accounts' product utilizing AI and stablecoins for billions of transactions (PY)

Regulation

• Missouri lawmakers pass tax bill to eliminate capital state income tax for crypto and stock gains (CN)

• Stablecoin bill GENIUS Act shut down as democrats push back (CT)

• SEC Crypto Task Force meets Monday to discuss tokenization and regulation of moving assets on chain – check out the agenda and details here

Cybersecurity

• Crypto sleuth ZachXBT implies Coinbase users lose $300M+ to social engineering scams (ZX)

• Ledger VP calls for end of blind signing as Bybit $1.4B hack was a ‘wake up call’ for the entire industry (TS)

• North Korea’s crypto hacks could be a topic of discussion in next month’s G7 summit (CT)

Extra Reads

• WLFI partners with Trump-linked Binance project on new MGX stablecoin deal

  A breakdown of how the Trump family is poised to profit from a $2B Middle East crypto deal that uses their stablecoin

Chart of the Day

$235 Billion was added to the crypto market today 🚀

Upcoming Events

 🚨 Introducing the biggest US onchain builder event of the year: Permissionless IV

Builders are taking over Brooklyn.

Permissionless IV is where the next internet gets shipped. From onchain AI agents to payments, infra, social, and DeFi, the brightest minds are meeting IRL to build what’s next.

Hear from the founders of Uniswap, Infinex, LayerZero, and more. 3 days. 1 mission: ship real things.

---

---

Meme Dump

Pls send us crypto memes to be featured in the newsletter 🤝

🐦 Follow Us: Visit our X account for constant updates on all things web3, DeFi, and crypto.

💵 Litquidity Ventures: Accredited investors & qualified purchasers within the Litquidity community can gain access to alternative investments such as venture, late-stage growth, and private equity through Litquidity Ventures. Interested? Fill out this form.

☎️ Book a call with Lit: Want to pick Litquidity’s brain on business advice, insights, or just chat to say what’s up? Buy his time here.

📧 Launch your own newsletter: Have great content ideas and looking to launch your own publication? We highly recommend Beehiiv to get started.