ChainCatcher reports that MARA Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining firm, has launched a consent solicitation with holders of Long Ridge Energy's $600 million senior secured notes to amend the notes' covenant package, according to market sources. MARA signed an agreement on April 29 to acquire 100% of the equity in Long Ridge's parent company. The deal would trigger a "change of control" provision in the notes, which would typically require MARA to repurchase all outstanding notes at 101% of par. MARA is seeking noteholder consent to carve the transaction out of the "change of control" definition and to have MARA and its affiliates recognized as "permitted holders."

ALERT: Crypto-related security breaches exceeded $635 million across 28 separate incidents in April 2026, making it the worst month for crypto exploits so far this year.

MARA Holdings, the Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin miner, has launched a consent solicitation with holders of Long Ridge Energy's $600 million senior secured notes due 2032 to revise covenant terms, according to Globenewswire. MARA signed an agreement on April 29 to acquire 100% of the equity of Long Ridge's parent company, a transaction that would activate the notes' "change of control" provision. If triggered, MARA could be required to repurchase all outstanding notes for cash at 101% of face value. The company is asking noteholders to carve the acquisition out of the "change of control" definition and to name MARA and its affiliates as "permitted holders."

US consumers' credit card balances have climbed to a new record high of $1.33 trillion.

BBX News — TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) reported Q1 revenue of $34 million, with high-performance computing (HPC) contributing $21 million, or 62% of the total. The company posted a net loss of $427.6 million, largely driven by noncash items. TeraWulf ended the quarter with $3.1 billion in cash and access to a $250 million credit facility. It also noted the delivery of CB3 and plans to expand Hawesville by an additional 480 MW. American Bitcoin (NASDAQ: ABTC) produced 817 BTC in Q1, its highest quarterly output on record. The company said its cost to mine was $36,200 per BTC, described as a 47% discount to spot prices, and it reported a 52% gross margin. ABTC acquired 803 BTC during the quarter, lifted BTC holdings to 7,021 (up 30%), improved SPS by 20%, and did not sell any bitcoin. Exodus Movement (NYSE American: EXOD) posted Q1 revenue of $22.7 million, up 37%, on transaction volume of $1.18 billion, up 22%. Monthly active users were 1.5 million, flat from the prior period. Exodus holds 628 BTC and 1,861 ETH. The company said Exodus Pay is now available across all 50 U.S. states. Source: bbx.com

UBS Group has increased its holding in Strategy (MSTR), according to its latest quarterly 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The bank disclosed it bought 551,100 shares, a stake valued at about $980 million. UBS now reports ownership of roughly 6.31 million MSTR shares, with a total position valued at approximately $1.12 billion.

ChainCatcher reports, citing BBX data, that this week brought notable updates across crypto cashout rails and miner earnings expectations. Kraken (Payward, Inc.) and MoneyGram announced a global strategic partnership on May 5 via PR Newswire. The rollout enables Kraken clients to convert crypto to cash and withdraw it at nearly 500,000 MoneyGram locations in more than 100 countries, spanning hundreds of fiat currencies. The initial phase centers on crypto cashouts, with plans to add local bank deposits and cross-border remittance services later. Kraken will conduct customer identity verification, while MoneyGram will provide licensed money-transmission services and compliance infrastructure. In an interview with Fortune, Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the company's IPO preparations are "nearly 80% complete." Kraken has already submitted a confidential S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Bloomberg estimates Kraken's valuation at about $13.3 billion, based on Deutsche Börse's $200 million equity investment. MARA Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: $MARA) said on May 4 on its investor relations website (ir.mara.com) that it will release its Q1 2026 earnings after the market closes on May 11, followed by an earnings call at 5:00 PM ET. Wall Street consensus forecasts EPS of roughly $2.34 and revenue of about $184.2 million. By the end of 2025, MARA reported holdings of 53,822 BTC, full-year 2025 revenue of $907 million (+38% YoY), and a hash rate of 66.4 EH/s. Bitcoin prices fell from around $87,000 to roughly $68,000 during Q1 2026, raising pressure on miners' all-in costs. Investors are expected to focus on MARA's progress in shifting toward AI/HPC data centers, as well as the deployment pace tied to Starwood JV's more than 1 gigawatt of capacity. Macro data also moved into focus. The U.S. Department of Labor released April nonfarm payrolls on May 8, showing 115,000 jobs added, nearly double market expectations. Bitcoin traded in a narrow range around $79,000–$80,000 after the release, as markets interpreted the data as supportive of a "soft landing" narrative: employment growth without overheating, increasing the odds the Federal Reserve keeps rates unchanged and helping preserve steadier medium-term liquidity conditions for crypto. Bitcoin spot ETFs posted net inflows of about $2.44 billion in April, the strongest monthly total of the year. April's monthly candle ended up 16%. Fundstrat founder Tom Lee has said that if Bitcoin closes May above $76,000, it would mark three straight positive monthly closes—a setup he calls a "bear market end signal."

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on May 9 that the exchange's outage the prior day was "absolutely unacceptable." He said the disruption was triggered by an overheated equipment rack at an AWS data center, setting off multiple cooling-system failures. Armstrong noted that Coinbase builds its services with redundancy to withstand the loss of any single AWS Availability Zone (AZ), and most systems performed as designed during the incident. Some did not. He said centralized trading systems—tuned for ultra-low latency and customer colocation—were not fully redundant. He added that making trading platforms resilient to AZ failures is feasible, but would increase latency and weaken customer colocation. Coinbase plans to reassess its architecture and weigh options to materially reduce downtime during availability-zone migrations. Armstrong also thanked AWS and Coinbase teams for working overnight to mitigate the issue, and said a detailed technical postmortem will be released soon.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a post on X that the exchange suffered an outage last night after multiple cooling units failed at an AWS data center, causing the site to overheat. Armstrong noted that most systems are built with redundancy to stay online even if a single AWS Availability Zone goes down. Centralized exchanges, optimized for ultra-low latency and customer colocation, typically do not add that level of cross-zone redundancy. He added that building exchanges to withstand an Availability Zone failure is possible, but it would increase latency and weaken customer colocation. Following the incident, Coinbase will revisit these infrastructure tradeoffs, with the goal of materially reducing downtime, particularly during Availability Zone migrations. Armstrong thanked AWS and Coinbase teams for working overnight to restore service, and said a detailed technical postmortem will be released soon.