💥 Tensions flare in Hormuz

Iran reportedly attacked a U.S. naval vessel attempting to enter the Strait of Hormuz, though United States denies any successful hit.

📊 Market reaction:
▪️ Brent oil +4%
▪️ Bitcoin dipped below $79K

💡 Why it matters:
The ability of the U.S. Navy to secure safe passage through Hormuz is critical for global energy flows.

⚠️ Worst-case scenario: direct strikes escalate into a renewed hot conflict — a major risk-off trigger for markets.

🚀 Middle East tensions spike

Donald Trump announced an operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — but Iran responded with strikes on ships and a drone attack targeting oil infrastructure in United Arab Emirates (Fujairah).

📊 Market reaction:
▪️ Brent oil surges to ~$114
▪️ S&P 500 down ~0.5%
▪️ Bitcoin holding near $80K

⚠️ Key question:
Will this escalate into a full-scale conflict or remain contained?

📉 For now: classic risk-off in equities, oil spikes — while BTC tries to hold the line.

📈Corporate BTC demand hits record

📊 In Q1 this year, companies bought 50,351 Bitcoin — the highest quarterly total on record.

💰Institutional accumulation is accelerating, with corporates continuing to add BTC to their balance sheets.

Big players are doubling down — reinforcing the long-term bullish case.

📈 TON pumps on Telegram pivot

Toncoin surged +23% in 24h, breaking into the top-20 by market cap and overtaking Litecoin and Avalanche.

🚀 Catalyst: Pavel Durov announced that Telegram will take a leading role in the ecosystem, effectively replacing the TON Foundation.

⚡️ Key changes:

▪️ Telegram to become a major validator
▪️ Fees reduced ~6x (near zero)
▪️ Focus shifts to dev tools and tech performance
▪️ Updated ton.org coming in 2–3 weeks

✈️ TON is moving toward deeper Telegram integration — betting on scale, infrastructure, and developer adoption.

🐃 $96K BTC soon?

Charles Edwards says Bitcoin could hit ~$96K in the near term. 🤩

📊 Key signal: Large players are absorbing over 500% of daily mined BTC supply.

💡 Historically, when this metric reached similar levels, BTC rallied ~24% on average within the following week.

📈 Strong accumulation is outpacing new supply — a setup that has often preceded sharp upside moves.

🚀 BTC dominance climbs to new highs

Bitcoin dominance has reached 58.91% — the highest level since July 2025.

📈 The rise comes after more than two months of steady price growth, with BTC already up over 6% since early May.

💰 Capital continues rotating into Bitcoin, while altcoins lag behind.

😐 BTC is no longer untouchable?

Michael Saylor — long known for his “never sell Bitcoin” stance — has now admitted Strategy may sell BTC to pay dividends.

After reporting a $12.54B loss in Q1, the company signaled it could offload part of its holdings to meet ~$1.5B in annual obligations.

What changed? Strategy introduced high-yield preferred shares (STRC) with ~11% returns, raising $8.5B in just months. The playbook was simple:

🧠 Issue STRC → buy BTC → BTC rises → issue more STRC

But this created fixed liabilities. As long as demand for these instruments holds, the flywheel spins. If not — BTC shifts from a “forever asset” to a liquidity source. 🤷

The model in practice:
Borrow → buy BTC → wait → sell BTC → pay investors.

Irony? The same Saylor once pushed “never sell.” Now selling might be part of the strategy.

📊 Market sentiment rebounds, but still cautious

🚀 The Crypto Fear & Greed Index jumped 10 points in a day to 50 (neutral) — the highest level since January. Today it cooled slightly to 46, showing sentiment is improving but not yet fully bullish.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin is holding strong above $81K, signaling resilience despite recent volatility.

Altcoins are heating up: Toncoin continues its rally with +23% in 24h and an impressive +62% over the past week.

📈 The market is shifting from fear to balance — and selective altcoin momentum is already kicking in.

🤔 Bitcoin holders lock in profits

Data from CryptoQuant shows that on May 4, realized profit reached 14,600 BTC (~$1.2B) — the highest level since December 10.

This spike suggests a wave of profit-taking as prices remain elevated, with many holders choosing to secure gains after the recent rally.

👀 While not necessarily bearish on its own, such large profit realization often signals increased sell pressure in the short term — especially if momentum starts to slow.

🇰🇷 Korean won surges in crypto trading

The South Korean won now accounts for ~30% of global crypto spot trading volume — making it the second-largest fiat currency in the market after the US dollar.

This highlights the growing influence of South Korean retail and institutional traders, who continue to drive liquidity and momentum across major exchanges.

📊 With KRW volumes this high, local market sentiment in Korea is becoming a key factor for global crypto price action.

💵 Ethereum sets a new stablecoin record

Ethereum processed $18 trillion in stablecoin transfers over the past year — a new all-time high, according to Fidelity.

This milestone highlights Ethereum’s dominance as the core settlement layer for stablecoins, powering massive volumes of on-chain transactions across DeFi, exchanges, and payments. 💰

💪 Despite market cycles and competition, stablecoin activity on Ethereum continues to scale — reinforcing its role as critical infrastructure for the crypto economy.

🗓 Drift rolls out recovery plan after exploit

Drift Protocol announced a compensation mechanism for users affected by the April 1 exploit.

Each impacted wallet will receive a recovery token — representing the verified loss and the user’s proportional share in a recovery pool.

💡 Essentially, this token acts as a claim on future компенсации, aligning payouts with actual losses.

📝 A structured approach to damage control — but final recovery will depend on how effectively the protocol replenishes the pool.

⬇️ Everything is bearish… in Bitcoin terms

According to Rand Group, when major global assets are measured against Bitcoin, they’ve all been in a long-term downtrend since 2014.

This includes gold, silver, oil, and even the S&P 500.

📊 In other words: while traditional markets may look strong in fiat terms, they’ve consistently underperformed BTC for over a decade.

💡 Perspective shift — Bitcoin isn’t just another asset, but a benchmark that’s been quietly outperforming everything else.

💻 The biggest hacker of 2026 couldn’t hold the profits

The exploiter behind the massive Kelp DAO hack saw his $123M $rsETH position on Aave get liquidated after AAVE manually adjusted the oracle price for rsETH.

According to reports, another position tied to the attacker was also liquidated on Arbitrum.

But here’s the twist: the hacker likely doesn’t care. The borrowed funds backed by the stolen ETH had already been moved and laundered long before the liquidation happened.

❄️ Arbitrum freezes funds.
🔮 AAVE changes oracle prices manually.

And people still call this “decentralization.” 🤔

📊 Blockchain ranking by staked asset value

Ethereum remains the undisputed leader with $92B locked in staking — far ahead of the rest of the market. 💰

Next comes Solana with $36B, while BNB Chain and TRON are nearly tied at $16B and $15B.

Further down the list:
▪️ Sui — $7.6B
▪️ Cardano — $5.6B

Above the $1B mark are also Avalanche, Hedera, Polkadot, and Toncoin.

The gap between Ethereum and the rest remains enormous — staking liquidity is still heavily concentrated in the ETH ecosystem.

🐃 Bulls are getting aggressive on Bybit

According to CryptoQuant, the Taker Buy/Sell Ratio on Bybit has exploded, with market buy volume exceeding sell volume by nearly 11x.

📊 This metric tracks aggressive traders hitting market orders — meaning buyers are currently dominating the order flow.

Such spikes usually reflect strong short-term bullish sentiment and growing risk appetite among derivatives traders.

👀 The question now: is this the start of a breakout… or just another overcrowded long setup waiting to get flushed?

🚀 Matthew Sigel from VanEck says Bitcoin could reach $1M within the next ~5 years in the firm’s base-case scenario

Key takeaways:

▪️ The current BTC rally looks more like a massive short squeeze than an overheated bubble.
▪️ BTC correlation with the Nasdaq Composite is at a 5-year high.
▪️ VanEck sees a powerful emerging trend at the intersection of Bitcoin and AI.
▪️ Younger investors continue accumulating BTC aggressively.
▪️ At least one central bank has reportedly started adding BTC to reserves.
▪️ Bitcoin remains a long-term megatrend — but with extreme volatility along the way.

📊 The narrative around BTC is shifting from “speculative asset” to a strategic macro and technological play.

📈 Toncoin has doubled in price since May 4, briefly approaching the $3 mark for the first time since autumn 2025

TON is now ranked #16 onCoinMarketCap with a market cap of around $7B. 💰

The rally kicked off after a series of statements from Pavel Durov about Telegram taking a more active role in the TON ecosystem, followed by additional posts supporting the network.

🐃 Looks like the market still treats Durov tweets as a bullish indicator for TON.

🩸 “BTC hits a 52-week low at $0.02” — that was the lovely notification some Revolut users received today

At the same time, charts for Bitcoin, XRP, Solana and other assets started displaying obvious glitches, likely caused by a UI bug.

📉 Imagine opening your app, seeing BTC at two cents, and briefly thinking:
“Finally… mass adoption.” 🙀

Thankfully, it seems to be just a visual issue — not the fastest market crash in financial history.