Catena Labs, co-founded by Circle co-founder Sean Neville, raised $30 million in a Series A to build regulated banking infrastructure for AI agents. The company also filed for a national trust bank charter with the OCC, aiming to pair agent identity, spending controls, and compliance with multi-rail payments.

Bitfinex analysts said bitcoin saw $584 million in long liquidations on Monday as geopolitical headlines and higher U.S. Treasury yields pressured risk assets. BTC opened the week at $77,385, dipped below $77,000, and hit an intraday low of $76,031, with key support flagged around the May Monthly Open at $76,318 and the 30-day accumulator cost basis near $76,500. They added that $85,900 is a major resistance level, while stablecoin market cap rose to $322 billion, up $2 billion over the week.

CME Group said its XRP futures suite has reached nearly $63 billion in notional volume over its first year. The exchange’s data through May 15 shows $62.87 billion in notional volume, more than 1.3 million contracts traded, and an average daily volume of $238 million.

Aletheia said in a report released Wednesday that it reviewed the first six trading days of Hyperliquid spot ETFs launched by 21Shares and Bitwise. On a market-cap-adjusted basis, the products beat Bitcoin flows on three of six days and exceeded Ethereum inflows on five of six days. The report also noted HYPE near prior highs, with CoinGecko data showing $51.88 at the time of writing and a weekly gain of 33%.

Bitcoin traded in a choppy range around $77,000, briefly jumping from just under $76,700 to $77,200 after midnight and later printing an intraday high of $77,604 before hovering near $77,500. The move left BTC up about 0.5% with a market cap near $1.55 trillion, while the broader crypto market cap rose by more than $20 billion to $2.66 trillion. Leveraged liquidations were limited to no more than $38 million in BTC and $184.5 million across crypto, with shorts making up 61% of BTC liquidations.

Wintermute has unveiled Armitage, a DeFi vault-curation platform built to apply institutional-style trading, liquidity, and risk controls to onchain lending. Two USDC-denominated vaults are already live on Morpho, with plans to expand to more chains and lending venues. Wintermute says it processes over $10 billion in average daily trading volume across 70+ venues and 10 blockchain networks.

XRP exchange-traded funds have attracted more cumulative capital than Solana ETFs, despite SOL showing stronger price performance for much of the year. Since launching in November 2025, XRP ETFs have taken in $1.39 billion versus $1.12 billion for Solana ETFs launched in October. The analysis argues the gap is tied more to regulatory and institutional factors than to network upgrades or price action.

On May 20, 2026, Strategy President and CEO Phong Le shared 13F-based figures indicating that 13 of MSTR’s top 15 institutional shareholders increased positions in Q1 2026, with combined share quantity up 27% when valued at the fixed May 15, 2026 price. The breakdown notes Defiance ETFs as a new entrant with $511M, while Capital International added $1,921M and UBS added $35M; Morgan Stanley trimmed by $7M and Norges Bank Investment Management stayed flat at $626M.