Hi! In today’s edition:
💼 A single trade that should have rattled bitcoin barely registered, and one analyst thinks it tells us something important about where the market is heading
🏛️ Trump went after state regulators by name in a Truth Social post that escalates a federal-state fight already playing out in six lawsuits
📈 The newest spot crypto ETF is breaking records that even bitcoin and ether didn't hit, and a Bitwise executive said almost every dollar of Tuesday's trading was a buy
🌍 The list of countries shutting Polymarket and Kalshi out keeps growing, and Spain's reasoning was the same one that's blocked them in three other places
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$1.3 Billion IBIT Trade Crosses Without Moving Bitcoin's Price
A 29 million share trade of BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) crossed the tape Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. ET at $43.16 per share, totaling roughly $1.3 billion, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas confirmed. IBIT closed unchanged on the day, with bitcoin holding above $75,000.
The trade dwarfed average daily volume. IBIT's total trading volume Tuesday reached approximately $3.6 billion, with $192 million in net outflows on the day and $334 million across all U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs.
"Mkt absorbed it well," Balchunas wrote. Joe Burnett of 10X Capital argued the move signals bitcoin is trading at roughly half its power-law-model fair value of $163,500. BlackRock's IBIT still controls roughly 4% of bitcoin's circulating supply.
Trump Publicly Backs CFTC's Exclusive Authority Over Prediction Markets
President Trump posted late Tuesday on Truth Social that it is "critically important" that the CFTC's exclusive authority over prediction markets is maintained, naming and attacking four state-level officials by name.
"We cannot have SCUM like Chris Christie, Letitia James, Tim Walz, and JB Pritzker setting the rules," Trump wrote, referring to the former New Jersey governor, the New York AG, and the Minnesota and Illinois governors. The CFTC, led by sole commissioner Michael Selig, has filed suits or amicus briefs against six states defending federal jurisdiction over event contracts.
The post lands days after a New York Times investigation reporting that career CFTC officials who raised concerns about Polymarket and Crypto.com were pushed out. Senator Richard Blumenthal called the agency "a craven tool of prediction markets."
HYPE ETFs Absorb 1.04% of Market Cap in 10 Days, Beating Every Major Crypto ETF Debut
Spot HYPE ETFs have absorbed 1.04% of HYPE's total market capitalization in their first 10 trading days, the strongest debut of any spot crypto ETF on record, according to Kairos Research. For comparison, bitcoin at the same stage hit 0.59%, ether 0.41%, and Solana 0.31%.
The acceleration is sharpening. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said BHYP posted roughly $19 million in net inflows Tuesday, the fund's largest single-day haul. Trading volume that day was approximately $22 million, meaning "almost all of it was buys." BHYP is now the largest Hyperliquid ETF in the world, overtaking 21Shares' THYP.
HYPE hit an all-time high of $64.44 Tuesday before settling near $62, up roughly 26% in the past seven days.
Spain Joins Global Crackdown, Blocks Polymarket and Kalshi Over Missing Gambling Licenses
Spain's Consumer Rights Ministry temporarily banned Polymarket and Kalshi Tuesday for operating without a gambling license, ordering internet service providers to block access for an estimated three to four months while the investigation concludes.
Spain's gambling regulator, the DGOJ (Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego), cited the absence of safeguards for minors and self-excluded gamblers as aggravating factors. The notice was published in the country's official state gazette, the Boletín Oficial del Estado.
Spain is the third European country to act, following the Netherlands in February and Belgium in March. Indonesia and India also blocked Polymarket access this month. Kalshi processed roughly $5.9 billion in volume over the past 30 days; Polymarket processed $3.8 billion.
🚨 Today on Uneasy Money 🚨
The co-author of the transformer paper is now building the privacy layer he thinks AI agents need to run onchain.
Today, Kain, Taylor, and Luca sit down with Illia Polosukhin of NEAR to cover Confidential Intents, the $840M DeFi hack crisis, Vitalik's smaller-EF post, and whether Polymarket is actually DeFi at all.
Live today at 4pm ET.
🗺 Where to find Bits + Bips:
→ Listening: Apple Podcasts, Spotify → Watching: YouTube → Scrolling: X, LinkedIn → Reading: Unchained
The show migrates to its own channels in a few weeks — get subscribed now, wherever you live.
🇬🇧 The UK sanctioned HTX and 17 other entities on Tuesday for helping Russia evade restrictions, applying banking-style sanctions to crypto exchanges for the first time. The package targets the A7 payments network — which officials say moved over $90 billion for military support — alongside Huobi Global S.A., ruble stablecoin A7A5, and previously sanctioned Garantex affiliate Garantex Europe OU, with Justin Sun's HTX recording roughly $3.3 trillion in trading volume last year.
🌷 Tom Lee's BitMine reversed course and bought 111,942 ETH worth roughly $237 million last week — its largest Ethereum purchase since December — despite Lee's earlier suggestion the firm would slow accumulation. Total holdings reached nearly 5.4 million ETH (4.47% of supply), with the firm 88% of the way to its 5% target and generating $276 million in annualized staking revenue across 4.7 million staked ETH.
⚖️ The Digital Chamber urged the OCC to defend its national trust bank charter approvals for Coinbase, Ripple, Circle, Paxos, BitGo, Fidelity, Crypto.com, Stripe, and Protego, pushing back against Senator Warren's claim that the approvals are illegal. CEO Cody Carbone argued it would be "deeply incongruous" for Congress to pass the GENIUS Act establishing federally regulated stablecoin issuers while the OCC declined to use its chartering authority.
🔥 An anonymous sender destroyed $8.2 million in bitcoin Monday by sending 107.13 BTC to the unspendable burn address 1111111111111111111114oLvT2 across five transactions confirmed in the same block. Some of the funds came from wallets created before 2015 that had previously interacted with Poloniex, Bitfinex, and Kraken, with the synchronized timing suggesting a deliberate act rather than an error.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong advanced rulemaking for virtual asset advisory and management services, moving forward with a licensing framework that would bring crypto investment advice and portfolio management firms under SFC oversight as the city competes with Dubai and Singapore for institutional capital.
⛏️ TeraWulf stock jumped over 12% after announcing the acquisition of a Kentucky data center site to expand its AI infrastructure footprint, continuing the bitcoin miner's pivot toward high-performance computing that saw HPC revenue surpass mining revenue last quarter.
🔗 The XRP Ledger could close its biggest DeFi gap if a new AMM amendment passes validator voting, introducing concentrated liquidity and improved pricing mechanics that bring the network closer to feature parity with Ethereum-based DEXs.
🕵️ Solana privacy layer Umbra launched confidential vesting with Streamflow, targeting the $97 billion token unlock market by shielding distribution schedules from public view to prevent front-running by traders tracking large unlocks.
💵 Tether-focused chain Stable launched a USDT institutional yield product, giving institutional holders a regulated path to earn yield on stablecoin reserves through the network purpose-built around USDT settlement.
💎 Strive bought another 1,109 BTC for $85.4 million between May 19 and 22 at an average price of $76,988, lifting holdings to 16,500 BTC worth $1.27 billion and leapfrogging Coinbase (16,492 BTC) and Riot Platforms (15,680 BTC) to become the seventh-largest corporate bitcoin treasury. The Vivek Ramaswamy-founded firm reported a 23.4% YTD BTC yield and is evaluating a near-term refresh of its ATM offerings tied to ASST and SATA.
🤖 Luffa secured a strategic investment from GoFintech Quantum at a $220 million valuation to advance its AI fintech infrastructure combining quantum computing concepts with blockchain payment rails.
🪙 BNB Plus Corp secured initial commitments for $4.1 million in strategic financing, with the Nasdaq-listed BNBX firm planning to deploy capital toward a BNB treasury accumulation strategy.
🧠 Improbable invested $2 million in Otomato to scale what it calls the first portfolio-aware intelligence layer for DeFi, using AI agents to optimize positions across lending, staking, and yield strategies based on individual user portfolios.
etherfi Ventures: The RWA Stack
David Marquart ⬡: This Time is Different
