Linera Launches Babbage Testnet

May 17: Macro research firm TS Lombard says a drastic monetary tightening cycle is off the table. Facing an oil price shock, global central banks are likely to deliver only modest policy tightening at most. In Europe, the energy crunch has already dragged down economic activity. The UK’s labor market has been unstable for some time, and hiring sentiment across the region has grown increasingly subdued. TS Lombard projects the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of England (BoE) will tighten policy less this year than current market expectations— a possibility the market is drastically underappreciating. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Federal Reserve’s odds of near-term policy tightening are slim; if it does act, it’s almost certainly not happening until 2027. (Source: FXStreet)

On May 17, per LookOnChain’s monitoring, two wallets spent a combined $2.33 million to purchase 656,338 UNI tokens over the past five hours.

May 17: On-chain analyst Darkfost published an analysis piece noting that the supply of Bitcoin held by Long-Term Holders (LTH) continues to climb, hitting a new high of 15.26 million BTC—its highest level since August 2025. Over the past 30 days, LTH-held Bitcoin supply has risen by around 316,000 BTC. This marks a stark contrast to the net decrease of 650,000 BTC recorded in the 30 days leading up to the end of last November, when a large volume of Bitcoin flowed out of long-term holder wallets. Darkfost says this signals that some investors who accumulated Bitcoin roughly six months ago are still holding onto their positions.

On May 17, per HTX market data, Bitcoin fell below $78,000, recording a 0.13% decline over the last 24 hours.

Per community sources, Trade.xyz’s pre-IPO may be listed on SpaceX as of May 17. This would be the second project to land on SpaceX’s pre-IPO section, following Cerebras Systems. Earlier, Reuters reported SpaceX’s stock is expected to debut on June 12.

May 17 — Fox News reporter Charles Gasparino reports that newly installed Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Wash is facing two core challenges right out the gate: scorching inflation and intense pressure from former President Trump to cut interest rates. Consumer inflation has hit an annualized 3.8% — the highest level since May 2023 — with the Iran war named as the primary driver of spiking energy costs. Last week, wholesale prices jumped even faster than consumer prices. By Friday, futures markets had shifted to pricing in rate hikes this year, wiping out most earlier expectations of cuts. Wash is a well-known inflation hawk. After leaving the Fed in 2011 to take an academic role, he has repeatedly bashed the era of "easy money" under predecessors Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell in opinion pieces, advocating for tighter "restrained" policy to shrink the central bank’s balance sheet. He argues that years of loose Fed policy are the root cause of today’s persistent high inflation. But with inf