Coinbase's chief legal officer Paul Grewal said the CLARITY Act has momentum after advancing out of the Senate Banking Committee, but added that significant work remains before it can become law. The bill cleared committee markup 15–9 and now heads toward a Senate floor vote, where it is expected to be combined with Agriculture Committee language tied to the CFTC. Analysts and lawmakers flagged ethics provisions and stablecoin-yield restrictions as potential hurdles, while Bitcoin traded below $78K after falling 5%.

VanEck and Grayscale have updated their S-1 registration filings for a proposed U.S. spot BNB ETF, a move that Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said points to active SEC engagement. After the updates, some large holders reportedly rotated out of $50M in Ethereum into BNB, while BNB traded at $660 at press time.

Jerome Powell’s second four-year term as U.S. Federal Reserve chair ended on May 15, and the Fed said he will remain in a temporary capacity until Kevin Warsh is sworn in while also staying on the Board of Governors through January 2028. Analysts said sticky inflation and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty could weigh on liquidity and limit Bitcoin and broader crypto upside into the next policy decision expected in mid-June.

CrowdStrike said North Korea-linked actors stole $2.02 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025, a 51% increase from 2024. The firm described them as the most prevalent intrusion threat to financial services with an emphasis on crypto, and warned the activity is likely to persist into 2026.

Large XRP wallets have lifted holdings to 45.8 billion tokens, valued at over $68.5 billion, while the token's price has stayed largely range-bound. XRP has struggled to break above $1.5 since Q2 started and has traded between $1.3 and $1.6 through the first half of 2026. Options markets on Deribit implied just a 2% probability of XRP clearing $2 by the end of May.

Fidelity introduced the Fidelity USD Digital Liquidity Fund (FILQ), an on-chain yield product built on Syngnum Bank's tokenization infrastructure with Chainlink handling its on-chain data. The fund carries a Moody's AAA rating and targets 24/7, instantly redeemable cash management for on-chain firms seeking interest-bearing liquidity.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI) burned 100 million tokens on May 11 as its token unlock schedule began, with six transfers valued at about $6.68 million. The project's vesting framework includes a 2-year cliff plus a 2-year linear release for presale buyers holding over 17 billion WLFI, while insiders face an immediate 10% burn on 45.2 billion WLFI. WLFI's May rally has cooled from 47% to around 30%, and the market impact of daily unlocks remains uncertain.

Bitcoin miner MARA reported Q1 revenue of $176 million, down 18%, alongside a $1.3 billion net loss, and its shares fell 3.4% on May 11 to close at $12.93 before a pre-market bounce. The company sold 20,880 BTC in Q1 at an average of $70,137 (about $1.5 billion), using $1.1 billion of proceeds to pay down debt and support an AI infrastructure shift.

The Solana Foundation introduced a two-layer security program for Solana DeFi following Drift's reported $285M loss. STRIDE will assess and track protocols above $10M TVL and support formal verification for those at $100M+ TVL, while SIRN coordinates incident response with multiple security firms. A week after the breach became public, Solana's stablecoin supply held at $14B, with DeFi liquidity cited as down 0.19%.