hodler

25 May 2026, 21:10

BlackRock Unloads $1 Billion BTC — Retail Panic Loading

Blockchain reporting firm Arkham shows that BlackRock’s IBIT Bitcoin ETF has offloaded a whopping $1 billion in Bitcoin over the past week.

25 May 2026, 21:02

Aave DAO Faces Vote on Native BTC Collateral as Babylon Labs Files Temp Check

The blockchain research and development firm Babylon Labs submitted a Temperature Check to Aave DAO on Monday, seeking approval to integrate Trustless Bitcoin Vaults with Aave V4 and onboard native BTC as collateral without bridges, wrappers, or custodians. BTC Holders Could Borrow on Aave V4 Without Bridges if Babylon Labs Vote Passes The proposal calls

25 May 2026, 20:50

NEAR rallies 75% in one week as short squeeze and AI rotation converge

The NEAR Protocol and its token are riding on a wave powered by a mix of short liquidations, renewed interest in AI-linked tokens, and growing fee revenue from its cross-chain settlement system, which has helped it to gain roughly 50% over the past seven days, trading near $2.73. The rally started when the token finally broke out of a month-long lull where NEAR’s price traded within a tight range between $1.20 and $1.75 for most of May. The rally, when it finally arrived, caused liquidations of over $9.85 million in short positions and forced buybacks that drove upward pressure. Derivatives activity rose alongside the spot move, and open interest went up above $473 million. As of May 24, NEAR futures open interest had crossed $720 million. NEAR is currently trading around $2.75 with a market capitalization of $3.57 billion and 24-hour volume above $1 billion as seen on CoinMarketCap . NEAR token is up more than 75% over the last week. Source: CoinMarketCap Arthur Hayes names NEAR in ‘holy trinity’ trade BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes recently called NEAR, Hyperliquid (HYPE), and Zcash (ZEC) “the holy trinity of altcoins.” All three tokens listed by Hayes have performed better than Bitcoin (BTC) lately, with HYPE reaching an all-time high and ZEC logging multi-month peaks , as Cryptopolitan reported . NEAR’s co-founder Illia Polosukhin joined Hayes to discuss “how the privacy revolution runs on NEAR.” They touched on ZEC, HYPE, and NEAR itself while linking the latest rally to the thesis around confidential computation and AI agent infrastructure. Around 78% of listed tokens reportedly lost value on the day NEAR posted one of its largest single-session gains. Why is NEAR rallying? Apart from the technical setup, two protocol-level developments gave traders a fundamental basis for the NEAR trade. First, NEAR’s Intents cross-chain settlement system has generated more than $33 million in fees in under a year, according to on-chain analyst @0xNairolf and Defillama on X. NEAR Intents have generated over $33M in fees since launch. Track detailed usage on our comprehensive NEAR dashboard. https://t.co/KIwqZlXoaj pic.twitter.com/CmUeymJ7BT — DefiLlama.com (@DefiLlama) May 25, 2026 The system processes swaps and bridge transactions across more than 35 blockchains, with settlement fees moving through programmatic NEAR purchases since February 2026. Analysts say it has created “a continuous demand floor.” NEAR Intents has handled over $10 billion in cumulative volume across more than 15.7 million swaps. The second development that has turned the tide for NEAR is its leaning into AI branding with tangible product releases. A May 20 rollout by NEAR strips passwords and personally identifiable information from prompts before they reach large language models like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. Developer Kent with the X username, @cuongdc_real, stated on X that NEAR AI updated its model picker to include Google’s Gemma 4 31B, running on NEAR’s trusted execution environment infrastructure with end-to-end encryption. CoinMarketCap describes NEAR as “a high-performance, AI-native platform built to power the next generation of decentralized applications and intelligent agents.” Its co-founder, Polosukhin, previously co-authored a 2017 paper that introduced the transformer architecture, which is being used in today’s large language models. Risks remain for late buyers The daily active users on the NEAR network went down from nearly 3 million earlier in 2026 to roughly 266,000, according to Token Terminal data. Analysts see this as a potential warning sign, having observed the gap between price action and on-chain usage. Dynamic resharding is an upcoming protocol upgrade coming soon, and it is designed to enable automatic scaling whenever there is a spike in demand. The execution may help the protocol to sustain its momentum and make its case to enterprise and AI developers beyond this week’s move. Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free .

25 May 2026, 19:55

BNB Chain launches Agent Survival pack to fund onchain AI payments

The BNB Chain released a set of six new integrations called the Agent Survival Pack earlier today, May 25. One of the integrators, Worldclaw, also offered $5 in BNB to the first 1,000 wallets on the project to allow AI agents to pay for model inference, routing, and financial services directly on the blockchain. The pack aims to streamline digital payments by replacing manual, human-operated systems like API keys and credit cards with automated BEP-20 payments on BNB Smart Chain. BNB Chain assembled a group that delivered different features and specialized tools. For example, Alt AI will deliver for LLM access, Bankr for multi-model gateways, WorldClaw’s 300-model router, Pieverse’s TEE-backed wallet and identity layer, B.AI’s agent financial stack, and AEON’s bridge between on-chain funds and physical-world merchants, according to a BNB Chain blog post published today as well. Alt AI also stated via their X account that the campaign will run until June 8. According to BNB Chain’s announcement, each participating project will distribute rewards independently, with no claim form or separate sign-up required. What does each partner in Agent Survival pack do? On May 14, Bankr officially launched on the BNB Chain , offering an open AI-compatible endpoint that acts as a single gateway to over 30 top AI models, including GPT, Gemini, Claude, and DeepSeek. According to BNB Chain’s blog post, the endpoint allows an AI agent to use only one credential, while Bankr automatically handles selecting the best model and managing payments in stablecoins for every request. WorldClaw works as an aggregator as well, but on a larger scale, giving users access to over 300 models and using the BNB Chain to settle all payments in stablecoins. The project said on X that it is offering a $5 discount to the first 1,000 users who purchase its $9.90 WorldAgent token plan on BSC. B.AI and AEON are focused on giving AI agents the ability to interact with the real-world economy. B.AI functions as a full toolkit for AI agents, offering a digital wallet, a verifiable on-chain identity (using the ERC-8004 standard), and other financial features like lending and token swapping, all in one single interface. AEON, on the other hand, enables AI agents to make payments at physical stores across Southeast Asia using QR codes, also sharing plans to eventually expand into the mainstream Visa and Mastercard payment networks. Finally, Pieverse described its contribution on X as a gateway offering access to high-level models from OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and Meta through scoped API keys, thus allowing them to monitor their usage limits and track their spending. Why agent payments are moving onchain The Agent Survival pack arrives as crypto networks continue to gain popularity for machine-to-machine payments. A Keyrock report estimated that AI agents processed over $73 million across roughly 176 million blockchain transactions between May 2025 and April 2026. That figure is still tiny compared to Visa’s $14.5 trillion annual volume, but it represents a major shift in infrastructure development. As such, the trend has now turned major players like Coinbase, Stripe, Google, and Visa into competitors trying to become the foundation of this next phase of payments. Economic efficiency is also a key aspect of this trend. Keyrock’s report highlights that 76% of AI agent transactions are for small amounts (usually between one and 10 cents), which is significantly lower than the standard 30-cent fixed fee charged by traditional credit card networks. As such, because transactions on blockchains like Base cost only a fraction of a cent, they offer a much more cost-effective solution for automated software agents that need to frequently pay for small services like data, computing power, or API access. The Keyrock report also revealed that the economic potential for AI-driven commerce is massive currently. Gartner predicts AI agents could be processing up to $15 trillion in purchases by 2028, while McKinsey estimates that the retail sector alone could see agentic commerce reaching $3-5 trillion by 2030. Looking at the big picture Coinbase’s x402 protocol (now managed by the Linux Foundation) has become a major hub for automated transactions, processing over 178.7 million transactions (worth over $42 million since October 2025), with 99.8% of these payments settled in USDC. Data from Artemis highlights the dominance of the Base blockchain in this space: it currently supports 250,000 daily active AI agents and accounts for 82.1% of all agent payment volume, according to data from Artemis cited in the report. Nonetheless, the launch of the Agent Survival pack now positions the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) as a direct alternative to the Base network for processing AI agent transactions. At the moment, Base is the dominant player in this space, supported by the widespread use of USDC for payments. However, whether developers and autonomous AI agents will eventually shift toward BNB-denominated rails ultimately depends on three factors: how competitive the transaction costs remain, the availability of liquidity for these tokens, and how effectively the six newly featured projects can drive actual usage beyond the initial promotional incentives. Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free .

25 May 2026, 19:35

Huawei just rewrote the rules of chipmaking. Can U.S really stop China’s AI takeover?

Huawei has achieved a breakthrough in building advanced chips in half a decade. The company announced a new technology called LogicFolding, which will allow them to stack computer circuits on top of each other. This technology will save them from the need to buy machines to make the chips smaller. He Tingbo, who leads Huawei’s chip division, said at a tech conference in Shanghai on Monday that the new 3D design will make their chip reach the performance levels of the best chips in the world. Washington and Beijing are fighting for control over artificial intelligence. American sanctions have stopped Huawei from getting the tiny chips that power phones, cars, and computers. The U.S. has also blocked China from buying the software and equipment needed to make these chips. Beijing has spent billions building its own supply chain. Huawei says its chips will match 1.4-nanometer technology by 2031. Right now, China can only make 7-nanometer chips. TSMC in Taiwan makes chips for Nvidia. It already uses 2-nanometer technology and expects to start making 1.4-nanometer chips in 2028. China breaks from Moore’s Law with new chip design The company is also replacing Moore’s Law with Tau Scaling Law. Moore’s law has been employed in the industry by making the transistors smaller. The Tau Scaling Law focuses on the speed of data transfer of the stacked chips. “The industry will face these problems sooner or later,” He told reporters after her speech. “We have confidence in this path because we have practice as proof.” People in the Chinese tech industry call her the “chip queen.” However, the company still has some hurdles. The big challenge is to keep stacked chips from overheating, which current tools can’t protect against. Costs, power use, heat, and putting everything together are already major hurdles for Chinese technology, according to Brady Wang from Counterpoint Research. Still on Weibo, Huawei’s breakthrough is being hyped as what DeepSeek offered. Lower costs for the American standard technology. Some are even saying that U.S sanctions have pushed China into “survival mode,” which needed faster innovation. Huawei also bounced back in 2023 with new phones that had surprisingly good Chinese-made 5G chips. American restrictions are an actual hurdle. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang went to China this month with President Donald Trump for talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He told CNBC his company has “largely conceded” the Chinese chip market to Huawei. But he also said China is part of a $200 billion market for Nvidia’s new processors, as reported by Cryptopolitan previously. American chipmakers bet big on new markets AMD is putting $10 billion into building infrastructure. Nvidia is changing its business strategy to focus on enterprise customers instead of just big cloud companies. Both moves show American chipmakers are shifting away from China. A new analysis from Anthropic warns that the next two years will decide whether democratic countries or authoritarian governments control the future of artificial intelligence. Anthropic is an AI company. The report says democracies now lead in “compute,” which means the advanced chips needed to build the best AI systems. This lead exists because of American innovation and export controls. But Chinese labs are staying close by, exploiting gaps in U.S. rules. They smuggle chips into China. They use American chips in data centers outside China. They run what Anthropic calls “distillation attacks.” These attacks involve creating fake accounts to copy American AI models. This steals decades of research and billions in investment. Anthropic describes two possible futures for 2028. In the first, democracies close these loopholes and build a lead of 12 to 24 months in AI capabilities. In the second, China keeps finding ways around the rules and catches up. It then uses AI to expand surveillance and control. The report says Firefox fixed more security problems last month using Anthropic’s new AI model than it did in all of 2025. A Chinese cybersecurity expert wrote that while China is “still sharpening our swords,” America has “suddenly mounted a fully automatic Gatling gun.” Chinese state media said after Huawei’s announcement that competition should be “moderate and healthy.” It should help both sides advance. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Trump and Xi agreed to start government talks on AI during their recent meeting in Beijing. Anthropic says the decisions policymakers make this year will determine who controls transformative AI technology. It will also determine whether it serves democratic values or enables authoritarianism worldwide. If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter .

25 May 2026, 18:10

NEAR Protocol Rallies as Cross-Chain Feature NEAR Intents Surpasses $19 Billion in Volume

BitcoinWorld NEAR Protocol Rallies as Cross-Chain Feature NEAR Intents Surpasses $19 Billion in Volume NEAR Protocol’s native token, NEAR, has seen a notable price rally as the network’s cross-chain trading system, NEAR Intents, continues to gain traction. According to a report by CoinDesk, NEAR Intents — which enables users to swap Ethereum-based assets for tokens on other blockchains — has processed a cumulative trading volume of $19 billion and generated $32 million in fees since its launch. What Is NEAR Intents and Why It Matters NEAR Intents is designed to solve one of the most persistent friction points in decentralized finance: interoperability. Instead of requiring users to bridge assets manually or rely on centralized exchanges, NEAR Intents allows direct cross-chain swaps through a unified interface. This approach reduces complexity and transaction costs, making it easier for traders to move value between Ethereum and other networks. The $19 billion volume milestone signals strong product-market fit and suggests that NEAR is carving out a meaningful role in the cross-chain liquidity landscape. For context, many Layer-1 blockchains struggle to maintain consistent usage beyond their native ecosystems. NEAR Intents appears to be attracting both retail and institutional users by offering a seamless experience. Institutional Demand on the Rise Beyond retail trading activity, institutional interest in NEAR is also growing. The Bitwise NEAR Staking ETP, listed on European exchanges, has seen its assets under management climb to approximately $40 million. This product allows institutional investors to gain exposure to NEAR while earning staking rewards, a structure that has become increasingly popular among regulated fund managers seeking crypto yields without direct custody complexities. The increase in AUM reflects a broader trend of institutional capital flowing into infrastructure-focused crypto assets that offer real utility rather than speculative narratives. Upcoming Dynamic Resharding Upgrade Investors and developers are also closely watching the upcoming dynamic resharding upgrade, scheduled for June. This protocol update is expected to improve NEAR’s scalability by allowing the network to adjust the number of shards based on demand. If successful, dynamic resharding could reduce transaction costs and increase throughput, making NEAR more competitive with other high-performance blockchains like Solana and Sui. Scalability improvements are critical for NEAR’s long-term value proposition, especially as decentralized applications increasingly require high transaction volumes at low fees. Conclusion NEAR Protocol’s recent price rally is supported by tangible on-chain activity and growing institutional adoption. The success of NEAR Intents demonstrates that cross-chain functionality remains a high-demand use case, while the upcoming dynamic resharding upgrade could further strengthen the network’s technical foundation. For now, NEAR appears to be executing on its roadmap in a way that is attracting both users and capital. FAQs Q1: What is NEAR Intents? NEAR Intents is a cross-chain trading system that allows users to swap Ethereum-based tokens for assets on other blockchains directly, without needing manual bridging or centralized exchanges. Q2: How much volume has NEAR Intents generated? As of the latest data, NEAR Intents has processed a cumulative trading volume of $19 billion and generated $32 million in fees. Q3: What is dynamic resharding and when is it coming? Dynamic resharding is an upgrade scheduled for June that will allow the NEAR network to adjust the number of shards based on demand, improving scalability and potentially lowering transaction costs. This post NEAR Protocol Rallies as Cross-Chain Feature NEAR Intents Surpasses $19 Billion in Volume first appeared on BitcoinWorld .