Your Weekly Deep Dive into The World of Crypto

May 13, 2026 · 6 Min Read

GM, Readers!

This was the week TradFi stopped flirting with crypto rails and started wiring them in. Circle pulled $222M from BlackRock, Apollo, and a16z for its Arc blockchain. Western Union turned on USDPT, its Solana stablecoin. Bitcoin opened Monday at $82,164, the strongest print since January 31, then settled near $81K as Trump's "TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE" response to Iran's counteroffer kept oil bid. ETF flows pulled in $622.8M for the week (six straight positive weeks, though down sharply from the prior week's $999.6M). 

Strategy walked back "never sell" on its Q1 call, then bought 535 more BTC anyway. Ronin migrates back to Ethereum today.

Let's get into it…

Alongside Q1 earnings on Monday, Circle disclosed a $222M token presale for Arc, its new institutional Layer 1 blockchain, at a $3B fully diluted valuation. The a16z crypto led with $75M.

The cap table reads like a TradFi conference attendance sheet: BlackRock, Apollo Funds, NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange, Standard Chartered Ventures, ARK Invest, Janus Henderson, SBI Group, and CoinDesk parent Bullish. Circle keeps 25% of the 10B supply, and 60% is earmarked for builders.

Arc targets stablecoin settlement, on-chain FX, and tokenized institutional finance, not memecoins. Mainnet beta lands later this year. CRCL closed up 16% (now +68% YTD). It's the first time a publicly traded company has run a token presale tied to its own L1 blockchain since the ICO era.

Western Union (NYSE: WU) officially launched USDPT, its USD-backed stablecoin, on May 4. Anchorage Digital Bank (the first federally chartered crypto bank in the US) issued the token, runs on Solana, and uses Fireblocks for wallet and treasury infrastructure.

The opening use case is the boring (and valuable) one: 24/7 settlement between Western Union and its agents, replacing SWIFT rails that take 2-3 business days. Phase two ships later this year as "Stable by Western Union," a consumer spending product in 40+ countries.

With Visa already settling USDC on Solana, the GENIUS Act framework is delivering exactly what it promised: regulated US firms launching their own dollar tokens.

Today at 15:16 UTC, Ronin hard-forks at block 55,577,490 and migrates from an independent sidechain to OP Stack Ethereum Layer 2. Roughly, 10 hours of downtime. Axie Infinity, Pixels, and every Ronin game are paused.

Four years after the $625M Lazarus bridge exploit, Ronin is reconnecting to "the mothership." The new Proof of Distribution model cuts RON inflation from over 20% to below 1%, redirects 90M RON from staking into the treasury, and bumps marketplace fees from 0.5% to 1.25%. RON is up 30% over the past month at around $0.11.

👉 Click to learn more about the milestone here.

Coinbase reported Q1 on May 7. Revenue $1.41B (down 21% Q/Q, 31% YoY) missed the $1.48B consensus. GAAP net loss $394M (with $482M from unrealized crypto losses). EPS came in at -$1.49 vs analyst expectations of roughly $0.04. Stock fell 4% after hours.

Bright spots: Spot market share hit an all-time high 8.6%, derivatives volume jumped 169% YoY to $4.2B, and Kalshi-powered prediction markets are on track for $100M annualized by year-end.

The hard call? A 14% headcount cut (700 employees) was announced on May 5, framed as a shift toward AI-skilled roles. Q2 will book $50M-$60M in restructuring charges.

In our new white paper, The Architecture Behind AI-Native Revenue Automation, Tabs CTO Deepak Bapat breaks down what it actually takes to apply AI to revenue workflows without breaking the books.

You’ll learn why probabilistic reasoning isn’t enough for finance, how Tabs pairs LLMs with deterministic logic, and why a unified Commercial Graph is the foundation for scalable, audit-ready automation. From contract interpretation to cash application, this paper goes deep on where AI belongs—and where it absolutely doesn’t.

If you’re evaluating AI for billing, collections, or revenue operations, this is the architecture perspective most vendors won’t show you.

Get the whitepaper

Spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in $622.8M for the week ending May 8, the sixth straight positive week but a sharp cooldown from the prior week's $999.6M. The six-week streak total now sits at $3.4B, the longest run since August 2025. BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC dominated as usual. The catch: May 7 saw a -$268.5M single-day outflow, breaking a five-session inflow run, with May 8 also closing red into the CPI print. Total BTC ETF AUM remains north of $108B. Cumulative inflows since launch: $58.72B.

Ethereum ETFs added $70.5M for the same week, flipping positive after $82M of outflows the prior week. The takeaway: institutional buyers are still net long, but momentum cooled into hotter-than-expected April CPI (3.8% YoY) and renewed Iran headlines.

Deloitte ran the numbers. They project UHNW art and collectibles wealth -- already at $2.5 trillion -- to hit $3.47 trillion by 2030.

The institutional world has been quietly preparing for this. Back in 2011, 25% of wealth managers surveyed offered art-related services. In 2024, 51%. Family offices now average a 13.4% allocation to art and collectibles. And it’s not just because they love art. It’s because they like the math.

These positions were built over decades through private dealer relationships most investors never had. The access just wasn't there.

Masterworks is changing that:

Skip the waitlist to join Masterworks.

^{Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.}

December 4, 2024: Hailey Welch, the viral "Hawk Tuah girl," launched $HAWK on Solana via OverHere launchpad, pitching it as a fan reward.

It took 15 minutes for $HAWK to hit a $490M market cap. It took 20 more for it to crash 93%.

Bubblemaps confirmed the playbook. 97% of the supply sat in 10 insider wallets, and only 3% was public. Snipers and pre-sale buyers dumped on retail, walking off with $3M in profits (Fortune).

Welch was paid a $125K flat fee plus a 10% allocation with a one-year lockup, denied wrongdoing, and was not named in the class action filed on December 19.

Defendants: Tuah The Moon Foundation, OverHere Ltd, exec Clinton So, and promoter Alex Larson Schultz. 

Red flags ignored:

The HAWK chart was a one-day candle…

On May 7, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., sentenced 20-year-old Marlon Ferro of Santa Ana ("GothFerrari" online) to 78 months in prison for his role in a $250M crypto theft conspiracy. Three years supervised release. $2.5M restitution.

Ferro was the muscle for a 13-person social engineering crew allegedly led by Singaporean Malone Lam. The org chart had database hackers, voice phishers, money launderers, and target spotters. When phishing failed, Ferro got on a plane.

February 2024 (Winnsboro, TX): Hardware wallet holding 100 BTC walked off ($5M at the time).

July 2024 (NM): Days of surveillance, dropped an iPhone outside to monitor via iCloud, smashed a window with a brick. Security cam caught it. The crew stole over $250M between late 2023 and early 2025.

The lifestyle: $500K nightclub tabs, exotic cars up to $3.8M, Hermès Birkins as party favors.

The lesson: Per CertiK, physical-threat crypto thefts jumped 75% in 2025. Cold storage doesn't help when someone is inside your house.

Up from 46% at the start of May after the stablecoin yield compromise unlocked the bill. Senate Banking markup is Thursday, May 14. White House wants it on the President's desk by July 4. Even Kalshi has it at 72%.

Powell's last day. Tillis dropped his hold on April 26 after the DOJ ended its criminal probe of Powell. The Senate cleared a procedural cloture vote 49-44 on Monday. The remaining 4% is just nominal floor-vote risk.

Polymarket cratered this from 39% at the start of the year. BTC needs to rally 55% from $81K. The 200-day MA at $82,228 is the line bulls actually need to clear first.

CLARITY Act markup on Thursday is the headline. Powell exits Friday, Warsh takes over. April CPI prints Tuesday. Ronin's L2 migration completes today, watch RON post-downtime. If BTC closes daily above the 200-day MA at $82,228, the breakout is finally real.