If Bitcoin breaks through $86,000, the mainstream CEX aggregate short liquidation intensity will reach 9.12 billion

**BlockBeats News (May 8)** — Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, issued a pessimistic warning about the U.S.’s future economic and social outlook during an interview on *The New York Times*’ podcast *The Ezra Klein Show*. He flagged multiple structural challenges facing the country: widening fiscal deficits, worsening wealth inequality, and deepening partisan political polarization. These, he said, could push the U.S. into an “era of disorder” in coming years, marked by financial crises, stagflation, and escalating social conflict. Dalio noted the U.S. government has long relied on borrowing and money printing to cover fiscal gaps—a practice risking currency devaluation and rising inflation, ultimately creating a “high inflation + low growth” stagflation environment (one of the worst scenarios for financial markets). Data shows U.S. fiscal spending hit $7 trillion in the last fiscal year, while revenue totaled just $5.2 trillion. “Over the next five years, with all the

On May 8, the Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs announced an investment of over $50 million, covering first-party products, research, protocol infrastructure, and a strategic fund for transactional and AI partners. Aptos noted that Decibel has launched on its mainnet, with total trading volume exceeding $1 billion. The network’s stablecoin market capitalization has reached $1.93 billion, while its real-world asset (RWA) scale stands at $1.2 billion. Asset management firms including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo Global have deployed on the Aptos network. Going forward, Aptos will roll out features such as an encrypted memory pool, FIX/CCXT integrations, multi-leader consensus, and confidential perpetual swaps.

On May 8th, on-chain analyst Ai Auntie (@ai_9684xtpa) reported that the address 0xf09...2Bd0b received 3.66 million LAB tokens—valued at $14.07 million—from the multi-sig address 0x36F...0C291 nine hours prior. The funds trace back to LAB’s token deployment address. Subsequently, 2.125 million LAB tokens were transferred to two contract addresses, with their purpose currently unclear. Meanwhile, LAB has nearly recovered from its plummet following ZachXBT’s reward investigation tweet, rebounding to $4.54.

On May 8, per Coinbob Popular Address Monitoring, Hyperliquid’s well-known trader “Loracle” fully closed out all long positions in WTI and Brent crude oil near recent lows overnight. The total position size was roughly $20 million, with a realized profit of around $3.1 million. WTI crude settled at ~$90/barrel and Brent at ~$98/barrel at closing—both in the low end of their recent ranges. Minutes after locking in profits, tensions flared again in the Strait of Hormuz overnight, triggering a quick rebound in oil prices. Trader address: 0x8def9f50456c6c4e37fa5d3d57f108ed23992dae

**Bitcoin Bulls Pin Hopes on $6B Dec 25 Options; Extreme Bets Both Sides Noted** May 8 — Bitcoin bulls are pinning high hopes on the Dec 25 year-end options, which involve roughly $6 billion in capital. Since hitting a Feb 6 year-to-date low of $60,130, BTC has rallied 33%, fueling a return of bullish market sentiment. But a surge in bullish (call) options with strikes at $115,000 and above has sparked questions about whether longs are overly optimistic. Deribit holds 92% of December Bitcoin options open interest (OI), totaling $5.5 billion. On the platform, bearish (put) OI is 56% lower than call OI — a skew in the put-call ratio driven by crypto traders’ historic preference for long positions. Still, $1.85 billion in calls at $115k+ is a significant sum, while $1 billion in puts at $55k and below is also notable. This means extreme bets on both sides (seen as unlikely to hit) are similarly sized, each accounting for ~50% of their respective OI segments. If bulls look overly opt

On May 8, American Bitcoin announced it has secured a mining machine purchase agreement with Bitmain featuring an implicit 44% discount via BTC collateral. Per its latest quarterly filing, the company bought 11,298 Bitmain S21 XP ASIC miners in February for roughly $49.4 million, totaling 3.05 exahashes per second (EH/s) of hash rate. Eighty percent of the payment was covered by pledging 314 BTC and a two-year redemption arrangement. At the time, the pledged BTC was valued at ~$125,900 per coin under the agreement, while BTC’s market price was under $70,000. Under the deal terms: - Bitmain may not sell the pledged BTC during the ~24-month redemption period unless American Bitcoin waives redemption. - If BTC’s price exceeds the agreed valuation, American Bitcoin can redeem the BTC with cash and retain the appreciation. - If BTC falls below the agreed valuation, the company can choose to forgo redemption, letting Bitmain hold the devalued BTC. As of March 31, American Bitc