Tom Lee: Oil Price Surge is Ethereum's Biggest Headwind, Structural Tailwinds to Drive ETH Outperformance in 2026

May 18: Heran Lee, founder of Liquid Capital (formerly LD Capital), stated he’s biding his time to buy the dip. He emphasized that the essence of investment and trading lies in curbing greed and controlling panic, adding the coming period could mark the most panic-driven phase yet for the crypto space—buying Bitcoin at current highs would expose investors to one final major washout. The crypto industry is currently confronting five key crises: disinterest from younger generations, traditional funds focusing heavily on AI, ongoing debunking of crypto’s popular narratives, numerous celebrities exiting after cashing out, and industry leaders lacking meaningful innovation and substantive development.

May 18: Latest data from Blur shows the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT series has staged a sharp rebound from its recent lows. The BAYC floor price has climbed from 5.6 ETH in early April to 10.31 ETH—an over 80% jump—even briefly hitting nearly 12 ETH at one point during this uptick. Over the past 30 days, BAYC’s trading volume has surged to roughly 6105 ETH.

May 18 – Nomura released a report stating that demand for AI-driven semiconductors is growing exponentially, while memory chip supplies remain constrained. This dynamic is expected to spark a revaluation of memory chip stocks. The Japanese financial services firm sharply raised its price targets for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix: Samsung’s target soared from 340,000 South Korean won (KRW) to 590,000 KRW, and SK Hynix’s rose from 2.34 million KRW to 4 million KRW. Both stocks are rated "Buy". Nomura noted that as AI semiconductor demand shifts from training to inference workloads, memory requirements are entering an exponential expansion phase. In contrast, the bank projects industry supply growth over the same period will be limited to roughly 5 to 6 times current levels (a compound annual growth rate of about 30%), raising major questions about whether the structural supply-demand imbalance can ever be fully resolved. The report added that while the sector is attempting to narrow

May 18 – According to updates from official websites and community feedback, prediction market Polymarket and several other trading platforms are facing a suspected archiving and display glitch. As of now, no active markets are appearing in the Weather section, and Polymarket’s officials have not yet released a response to the reported issue.

May 18th: According to GMGN monitoring, on the BSC blockchain, the meme coin “Hakimi” saw a sharp surge yesterday, with its market capitalization peaking at over $22 million. Following Bitcoin’s ongoing decline, the token faced selling pressure and is now trading at roughly $18.4 million. It still holds a 23% gain over the past 24 hours, with $2.9 million in trading volume during that same period—making it the meme coin on the BSC chain with the highest daily trading volume. BlockBeats reminds users that meme coins are extremely volatile, heavily driven by market sentiment and hype, have no real intrinsic value or practical use cases, and investors should be fully aware of the associated risks.

May 18th – Citrini Research, the organization behind the "AI Doomsday Report," has a new take on the future of AI: all current AI-related outcomes are highly uncertain, and their potential impact down the line could differ dramatically. A small assumption made today could steer us into a completely different world tomorrow, and this uncertainty spans not just hardware (like computing power, chips, and data centers) but even questions such as whether a severe memory shortage will hit in the next decade—there are two equally valid opposing arguments for each side of that question. Consumer AI use and the overall state of the AI market ten years from now are equally unclear. For example: Anthropic could potentially dominate the full stack, from underlying infrastructure to top-layer application software, or major AI labs could get sidelined entirely—with real profits going to cloud providers, specific application developers, or even newcomers that haven’t emerged yet. Back in early 2023,