10 #Bitcoin ETFs outflows 4,964 $BTC(-$458.3M) and 9 #Ethereum ETFs outflows 4,701 $ETH(-$15.21M) yesterday.

On May 18, Strategy—formerly known as MicroStrategy—announced it has acquired approximately $2.01 billion worth of Bitcoin, totaling 24,869 BTC at an average purchase price of roughly $80,985 per BTC. As of May 17, 2026, the company’s total Bitcoin holdings stand at 843,738 BTC, with a cumulative acquisition cost of around $63.87 billion and an average holding cost of approximately $75,700 per BTC. Strategy added that its Bitcoin return on investment (ROI) has reached 12.6% as of 2026.

On May 18, the Verus Foundation announced that its Verus-Ethereum cross-chain bridge was exploited in an attack earlier that day. The attacker stole assets including ETH, USDC, and tBTC from the Ethereum-side smart contract; no other assets on the bridge remain impacted. In response to the breach, the Verus network has been fully paused, and most mining nodes went offline automatically as part of the protocol’s built-in safety features. The development team is currently investigating the attack’s root cause, assessing the full scope of losses, and developing a recovery plan. Verus is appealing directly to the attacker to return all stolen funds voluntarily. If the full amount is returned, the team will provide a bug bounty and will not pursue any further legal action. If not, the foundation will cooperate with law enforcement agencies to take formal legal measures. The team is also cautioning users against scams impersonating Verus officials who may offer fake "compensation plans."

On May 18, settlement layer project AEON—focused on the "Agentic Economy"—announced it has closed an $8 million pre-seed funding round. The round was led by YZi Labs, with participation from IDG Capital, HashKey Capital, Stanford Blockchain Builders Fund, Oak Grove Ventures, and other investors. AEON said the new capital will be used to build settlement infrastructure for value exchanges between AI Agents, positioning the project as a "financial backbone for the AI Economy era." The company also noted its first AI payment product launched in May, enabling AI Agents to connect with more than 50 million merchants worldwide. Additionally, AEON has partnered with BNB Chain to launch the x402 Facilitator, a BNB Chain-built product that gives ecosystem service providers verifiable transactions, on-chain settlements, and tamper-proof receipts.

May 18 — Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered Bank, projected that total on-chain tokenized assets will reach $40 trillion by the end of 2028, with stablecoins and Real World Assets (RWA) each accounting for $20 trillion of that sum. Standard Chartered identifies DeFi protocols with robust risk management frameworks and scalability as the primary beneficiaries of this growth, noting that progress on the U.S. “Clarity Act” could act as a key catalyst to speed up the integration of on-chain solutions in traditional finance (TradFi). Kendrick emphasized DeFi’s core advantage is its composability. In on-chain ecosystems, a single asset can generate yield, serve as collateral, and supply liquidity all at once — a level of efficiency legacy financial systems can’t match. He summed up this structural edge with the phrase: “1+1=3.” Citing BlackRock’s tokenized U.S. Treasury bond fund BUIDL as an example, Standard Chartered explained that the produc

May 18th – Cryptocurrency technology firm Quantography Labs has unveiled the early access version of its encrypted wallet, Lock.com. The product utilizes "Isolated Signing" and an air-gapped architecture, enabling offline private key management without requiring a dedicated hardware wallet device. In an official statement, the company explained Lock.com separates the signing environment from the internet-connected transaction broadcast layer: the private key remains fully stored on an offline device, while transactions are created and broadcast from an online-connected device—this setup eliminates any risk of the private key being exposed to the internet. The platform emphasizes that users can leverage their existing devices for the wallet, removing the need to rely on third-party hardware manufacturers or their supply chains. Additionally, Lock.com integrates a post-quantum cryptography framework, including ML-DSA digital signatures and ML-KEM key encapsulation mechanisms, to bolste

May 18: The United States has agreed to lift sanctions on Iran’s oil in a new draft text, a reversal from its earlier position, according to a source close to Iran’s negotiating team speaking to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency. The U.S. will temporarily waive those oil sanctions during ongoing negotiations, a step equivalent to a provisional lifting of restrictions, the source added. Iran insists any agreement must include clear U.S. commitments to lift all sanctions on the country. For its part, the U.S. has proposed suspending relevant sanctions administered by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) until a final, formal understanding is reached.