Fintechs and Funds Stack Sats While Bitcoin Takes a Breather—Wall Street Still Doesn’t Get It

Bitcoin’s price action might be cooling off, but institutional players aren’t hitting pause. Fintech firms and hedge funds keep accumulating BTC like it’s a Black Friday sale—even as retail traders nervously check charts.

Meanwhile, traditional finance scrambles to justify its 2% bond yields. Some things never change.

What to Watch

• Crypto:
  • May 16, 9:30 a.m.: Galaxy Digital Class A shares begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol GLXY.
  • May 19: CME Group is expected to launch its cash-settled XRP futures.
  • May 19: Coinbase Global (COIN) will replace Discover Financial Services (DFS) in the S&P 500, effective before the opening of trading.
  • May 22: Bitcoin Pizza Day.
  • May 22: Top 220 TRUMP token holders will attend a gala dinner hosted by the U.S. president at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington.
  • May 30: The second round of FTX repayments starts.
• Macro
  • May 16, 10 a.m.: The University of Michigan releases (preliminary) May U.S. consumer sentiment data.
    • Michigan Consumer Sentiment Est. 53 vs. Prev. 52.2
  • May 20, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases April consumer price inflation data.
    • Core Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.1%
    • Core Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.2%
    • Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.3%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.3%
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • May 20: Canaan (CAN), pre-market
  • May 28: NVIDIA (NVDA), post-market, $0.88

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Uniswap DAO is voting on a proposal to fund the integration of Uniswap V4 on Ethereum in Oku and add Unichain on Oku in a bid to enhance Uniswap’s reach and liquidity migration to V4. Voting ends May 18.
  • Arbitrum DAO is voting on launching “The Watchdog,” a 400,000-ARB bounty program to reward community sleuths for uncovering misuse of the hundreds of millions in grants, incentives and service budgets the DAO has deployed. Voting ends May 23.
  • May 20, 12 p.m.: Lido to host its 28th Node Operator Community Call.
  • May 21: Maple Finance teased an announcement on the future of asset management.
  • May 21, 6 p.m.: Theta Network to host an Ask Me Anything session in a livestream
  • May 22: Official Trump to announce its “next Era” at the day of the dinner for its largest holders.
• Unlocks
  • May 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 1.95% of its circulating supply worth $38.1 million.
  • May 17: Avalanche (AVAX) to unlock 0.4% of its circulating supply worth $39.44 million.
  • May 18: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.66% of its circulating supply worth $87.8 million.
  • May 19: Polyhedra Network (ZKJ) to unlock 5.3% of its circulating supply worth $31.24 million.
  • May 19: Pyth Network (PYTH) to unlock 58.62% of its circulating supply worth $354.45 million.
• Token Launches
  • May 16: Galxe (GAL), Litentry (LIT), Mines of Dalarnia (DAR), Orion Protocol (ORN), and PARSIQ (PRQ) to be delisted from Coinbase.

Conferences

CoinDesk’s Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

• Day 3 of 3: CoinDesk’s Consensus 2025 (Toronto)
• May 19-25: Dutch Blockchain Week (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
• May 20-22: Avalanche Summit London
• May 20-22: Seamless Middle East Fintech 2025 (Dubai)
• May 21-22: Crypto Expo Dubai
• May 21-22: Cryptoverse Conference (Warsaw, Poland)
• May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025 (Las Vegas)
• May 27-30: Web Summit Vancouver (Vancouver, British Columbia)
• May 29: Stablecon (New York)
• May 29-30: Litecoin Summit 2025 (Las Vegas)
• May 29-June 1: Balkans Crypto 2025 (Tirana, Albania)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• Berachain’s native token, BERA, has dropped 9% in the past week despite a jump in the broader market, with majors like xrp (XRP) and ether (ETH) and memecoins dogecoin (DOGE), mog (MOG) and others adding more than 15%.
• At $3.55, the BERA price is now more than 80% below its peak of $14.83. The slide follows a substantial $2.7 billion token unlock on May 6, which introduced increased selling pressure into the market.
• The grim price action illustrates how hype and short-term incentives aren’t enough to buoy prices of even fundamentally strong and utility-focused projects in the current market environment.
• The total value locked in Berachain’s DeFi protocols has dropped from a peak of $3.5 billion to around $1.2 billion as of Friday. Before the token issuance, it had been one of the most viral and hyped blockchains in recent years.
• Meanwhile, inflows to Solana and Ethereum have increased, suggesting a potential shift in investor sentiment or a redistribution of assets within DeFi.
• Berachain’s stablecoin market capitalization has seen a significant reduction, with a 36% drop in just seven days to $250 million. This decline could influence liquidity among ecosystem applications.
• Berachain application revenue has hovered around $10,000 per day since late April, a stark drop from the above $100,000 level in January and February, DefiLlama data shows.

Derivatives Positioning

• Funding rates in perpetual futures tied to major coins remain below an annualized 10%. It shows positioning remains bullish, but not overcrowded.
• ETH, UNI, HYPE, BNB, XRM and AAVE have all seen an increase in open interest in perpetual futures in the past 24 hours.
• In options market, front-end skews have flipped bearish for BTC and ETH. Major flows featured buying BTC puts financed by selling calls, according to OTC desk Paradigm.

Market Movements

• BTC is up 0.28% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $103,688.48 (24hrs: +1.82%)
• ETH is up 2.62% at $2,610.41 (24hrs: +3.06%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 0.92% at 3,241.45 (24hrs: +1.44%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 7 bps at 3.03%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0066% (7.2544% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is down 0.12% at 100.76
• Gold is down 0.47% at $3,209.33/oz
• Silver is down 0.66% at $32.30/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 37,753.72
• Hang Seng closed -0.46% at 23,345.05
• FTSE is up 0.61% at 8,686.08
• Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.57% at 5,443.14
• DJIA closed on Thursday +0.65% at 42,322.75
• S&P 500 closed +0.41% at 5,916.93
• Nasdaq closed -0.18% at 19,112.32
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.8% at 25,897.48
• S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.53% at 2,631.31
• U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 3 bps at 4.405%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.21% at 5,946.00
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.22% at 21,446.50
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.32% at 42,519.00

Bitcoin Stats

• BTC Dominance: 62.89 (-0.65%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02528 (2.93%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 848 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $55.41
• Total Fees: 5.42 BTC / $562,026.90
• CME Futures Open Interest: 149,515 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 32.2 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 9.12%

Technical Analysis

• The chart shows the ratio between solana and ether’s dollar-denominated prices (SOL/ETH) has dropped to a trendline characterizing the uptrend from September 2023 lows.
• A break below the line, if confirmed, would signal a prolonged switch to ether outperformance relative to SOL.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $397.03 (-4.73%), up 1.28% at $402.10 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $244.44 (-7.2%), up 1.44% at $247.95
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at $30.57 (-4.35%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $15.68 (-1.2%), up 1.15% at $15.86
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $8.7 (-2.36%), up 1.26% at $8.81
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $10.51 (+1.84%), up 1.81% at $10.70
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.36 (-2.6%), up 1.28% at $9.48
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $16.57 (-2.24%), up 2.11% at $16.92
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $31.79 (-2.3%), up 1.67% at $32.32
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $35.76 (+2.52%), up 2.07% at $36.50

ETF Flows

• Daily net flow: $114.9 million
• Cumulative net flows: $41.49 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1.17 million

• Daily net flow: -$39.8 million
• Cumulative net flows: $2.50 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.46 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows net inflows into the U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs have slowed.
• The drop has probably played a role in keeping the BTC price range bound.

While You Were Sleeping

• Gold Set for Worst Week in Six Months as Trade Calm Dents Appeal (Reuters): Gold faced pressure from easing U.S.-China tensions, though the price dips are attracting buyers amid lingering uncertainty over global growth and inflation.
• Japan’s Economy Shrinks for First Time in a Year (Wall Street Journal): Japan’s GDP shrank 0.2% in the first quarter, worse than the expected 0.1% drop, raising recession fears as concerns mount that U.S. tariffs could curb exports and hinder investment.
• XRP Slides 4% as Bitcoin Traders Cautious of $105K Price Resistance (CoinDesk): XRP led declines among the biggest cryptocurrencies and, after a week of steady trading, bitcoin appears to be signaling a correction amid equity weakness and gold profit-taking, according to FxPro’s Alex Kuptsikevich.
• Bitcoin Bulls Face $120M Challenge in Extending ’Stair-Step’ Uptrend (CoinDesk): Bitcoin’s climb from $75,000 to $104,000 has slowed near heavy sell walls, though analysts expect bullish momentum to eventually absorb the resistance and push prices higher.
• FTX to Pay Over $5B to Creditors as Bankrupt Estate Gears Up for Distribution (CoinDesk): Disbursements beginning May 30 will return between 54% and 120% of claims based on November 2022 valuations, with BitGo and Kraken handling transfers in one to three business days.
• Qatari Cybertrucks, Elite Camels and Trillion-Dollar Vows: Why Gulf Countries Are Going All Out for Trump’s Visit (CNBC): The Gulf’s record investment pledges were less about competing with one another and more about strengthening U.S. ties and securing advanced technologies, said economist Ahmed Rashad.

In the Ether