Goldman Sachs is telling clients the Chinese yuan looks materially undervalued and could gain ground over the next year, a shift that may reverberate beyond foreign-exchange markets and into payments and crypto. In a client note, the bank said the yuan is at least 20% undervalued versus the U.S. dollar. A stronger currency would be a "natural equilibrium" outcome, Goldman argues, given China's export performance. Analysts led by Kamakshya Trivedi described the case for appreciation as "more fundamental and longer-lasting," citing China's rising export competitiveness and an external surplus nearing unprecedented levels as a share of global GDP. The yuan traded around 6.80 per dollar on Friday. Goldman's forecasts call for 6.70 in six months and 6.50 within a year, which would put the currency near its strongest level against the dollar since early 2023. Goldman said broader use of the yuan for payment settlement across Asia and the Global South adds support. Policy and trade mechanics also bolster the outlook: the People's Bank of China has been raising exporter conversion ratios, a move the bank says makes a "gradual but sustained" appreciation the most likely base case. With the DXY dollar index weakening since 2025 and struggling to hold above 100, Goldman sees a more favorable backdrop for yuan upside. For crypto markets, a firmer and more widely used yuan could lift demand for RMB-linked payment rails and stablecoins, and in some corridors redirect cross-border settlement flows away from the dollar. Traders and crypto firms operating across Asia and the Global South may want to monitor yuan moves closely. Goldman's bottom line: the yuan is structurally undervalued with clear upside over the next year, a narrative that matters not only to FX desks but also to payments and crypto players tracking global settlement shifts.

Trump Media & Technology Group transferred 2,650 Bitcoin—about $205 million—to Crypto.com, according to on-chain data tracked by market observers. The move coincides with the company's decision to withdraw registration filings for multiple Truth Social-branded cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds. The deposit has drawn scrutiny because exchange inflows are often watched as a potential signal of selling. Trump Media has not said whether the transfer reflects an intended sale, a custody change, or another treasury-management action. The company previously sold 2,000 Bitcoin earlier in 2026 when BTC was trading near $87,000. Trump Media disclosed it originally purchased 11,542 BTC at an average cost of roughly $119,000 per coin and reported holding 9,542 BTC at the end of the first quarter. After the latest transfer, its wallet is estimated to hold about 6,889 BTC, valued near $534 million based on the prices cited in the source material. If the deposited Bitcoin is ultimately sold, the company would drop in the corporate Bitcoin-holder rankings and could fall behind Galaxy Digital. The firm built most of its Bitcoin treasury between July and August 2025, when prices were near record highs, positioning itself among public companies using Bitcoin as a reserve asset. Observers have compared the approach to Strategy's corporate Bitcoin playbook under chairman Michael Saylor, though Strategy accumulated its holdings at far lower prices than Trump Media's near six-figure entry levels. Separately, Trump Media withdrew filings for three Truth Social-branded crypto ETFs: the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF, the Truth Social Bitcoin & Ethereum ETF, and the Truth Social Crypto Blue Chip ETF. The Crypto Blue Chip ETF was structured to hold a basket including Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and XRP. The filings were sponsored alongside Yorkville America Digital. SEC documents said the company chose not to proceed with the public offerings at this time; the registration statements never became effective and no securities were sold under the proposed funds. Yorkville America characterized the pullback as a strategic reset, saying it may pursue an Investment Company Act of 1940 structure instead of the Securities Act of 1933 framework commonly used for spot commodity-style products. Financial pressure has also been building. Trump Media reported a first-quarter net loss of about $406 million, according to the SEC disclosure cited in the source material, including roughly $244 million in unrealized losses largely tied to Bitcoin holdings. The company also recorded around $108 million in losses from equity securities and investment positions. Its equity securities portfolio fell from $722 million at the end of 2025 to $554 million by the end of the first quarter of 2026. The losses were partly offset by $37 million in options gains and $17 million in realized derivative profits. Trump Media also disclosed it owns 756 million Cronos tokens acquired through a prior agreement with Crypto.com, valued at about $53 million. The ETF withdrawals arrive as competition in U.S. Bitcoin funds intensifies. Morgan Stanley recently launched a Bitcoin ETF with a 0.14% annual expense ratio, increasing fee pressure on issuers seeking inflows. Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart said the withdrawal may reflect the tougher landscape for spot Bitcoin ETFs, which have attracted more than $57.7 billion in cumulative inflows since SEC approval in January 2024. Trump Media's crypto activity continues to face heightened scrutiny given its ties to President Donald Trump and the broader political debate over digital assets. The CLARITY Act has added attention by proposing limits on crypto activity involving senior public officials and their families while in office.

CNBC reports that a growing fight over U.S. regulatory jurisdiction is putting prediction-market platforms under pressure, with 17 states challenging related offerings. Several states contend that sports event contracts amount to gambling and should be overseen at the state level. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) argues the contracts are derivatives subject to federal supervision. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer has asked Kalshi and Polymarket to provide documentation detailing their safeguards against insider trading. Despite the uncertainty, Kalshi's valuation has doubled to $22 billion after its latest funding round, up from $11 billion in December last year. Polymarket's valuation has climbed to $15 billion. Executives at Flutter Entertainment, DraftKings and Robinhood say they plan to keep investing in prediction markets.

XRP held around $1.37 by midday Thursday in Hong Kong, as steady buying into XRP-linked exchange-traded funds offered support even while the broader crypto complex struggled to find direction. CoinGlass data shows XRP ETF products took in $8.88 million in the latest session, extending a week-long run of net inflows. The prior sessions included $18.52 million on May 14 and $10.87 million on May 15. Total inflows over the past week are roughly $42 million. The picture looked very different for the largest listed crypto funds. Bitcoin ETFs recorded another $100.9 million of outflows in the latest session, adding to earlier withdrawals of $648.6 million, $331.1 million, and $290.4 million. Ether funds also saw redemptions, with $32.6 million leaving the market. Analysts have highlighted the divergence. XRP ETF flows remain small relative to the scale of Bitcoin products, but the consistency stands out as capital has been exiting the biggest crypto vehicles. On-chain data added a second signal. Santiment reported XRP logged the fourth-largest daily jump in wallet creation this year, with 4,300 new wallets added over 24 hours. New wallet growth can align with rising interest in XRP ETF products when fund flows and network activity move in tandem. Even so, network growth is still below late-2025 levels, keeping optimism in check. Traders are watching whether the XRP ETF inflows mark the start of a broader rotation into XRP or a short-lived speculative burst while Bitcoin and Ether remain under pressure.

Polymarket said more than $520,000 was drained from wallets tied to its Polygon operations after an internal private key was compromised. The prediction market platform stressed it was not a smart contract exploit or a protocol-level vulnerability. Blockchain investigator ZachXBT flagged the activity on May 22, pointing to suspicious outflows involving two addresses connected to Polymarket's UMA Conditional Token Framework (CTF) Adapter contracts. Polymarket later confirmed the impacted wallet was an internal operations wallet used for rewards payouts and said customer funds were not affected. The company said roughly 5,000 POL tokens and an undisclosed amount of USDC were taken. Polymarket added that market resolutions, platform operations, and its smart contract infrastructure continued to function normally throughout the incident. Polymarket said it has started key-rotation procedures and that its investigation remains ongoing. The incident initially appeared more serious because the transactions flowed through infrastructure linked to market settlement. The breach highlights a different kind of security risk for crypto platforms: operational security. Unlike smart contract bugs that can often be addressed through code fixes and additional audits, a private key compromise typically raises questions about access controls, device security, and internal processes. Polymarket has not publicly disclosed how the key was obtained, leaving open possibilities such as phishing, a compromised device, or insider access. Polymarket has become one of crypto's most visible prediction markets, drawing attention during major political and global events and processing meaningful trading volume. As a result, its operational security practices carry broader market relevance. Industry best practices for key management commonly include hardware security modules, multisignature setups, and tiered permissions. Whether those safeguards were in place for the compromised wallet, and how they may have been bypassed, are expected to be central issues in the review. For traders and investors, the immediate takeaway is Polymarket's assertion that user funds and open positions were unaffected. The more consequential signal for long-term trust will be what follows, including whether the platform releases a detailed post-incident report, commissions an independent review of operational security beyond smart contract audits, and whether the stolen assets can be traced or recovered. While the reported loss is small compared with major DeFi exploits, the nature of the incident underscores an ongoing industry challenge: private key compromises remain among the most common and avoidable attack vectors, and operational security often receives less scrutiny than smart contract security.

Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Truth Social and majority-held by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, has transferred 2,650 Bitcoin—worth roughly $205 million—to a Crypto.com wallet, according to on-chain trackers. Blockchain monitoring services Lookonchain and Arkham flagged the movement from addresses tied to Trump Media into a Crypto.com deposit address. Arkham data indicates the BTC remains on the exchange for now, a setup consistent with a potential sale, though it does not confirm one. The transfer follows an earlier move this year, when Trump Media sent 2,000 BTC (about $175 million) to exchanges while Bitcoin traded near $87,378. At the time of the latest deposit, BTC was around $77,700. Trump Media originally accumulated 11,542 BTC at an average cost of about $118,522 per coin, implying roughly $1.37 billion in total spend. After the earlier 2,000 BTC transfer, the company's disclosed holdings were 9,542 BTC. With the latest 2,650 BTC transfer, the visible on-chain balance falls to about 6,889 BTC. In its Q1 2026 filing, Trump Media reported a Bitcoin cost basis of about $1.13 billion and a fair value of roughly $647 million as of March. The gap contributed to a reported net loss of $405.9 million for the quarter, including $368.7 million tied to unrealized markdowns on digital assets, pledged crypto assets, and equity securities. The company also holds about 756 million Cronos tokens through its partnership with Crypto.com. Large exchange inflows often draw trader attention because they can indicate potential selling pressure. Still, $205 million is small relative to Bitcoin's daily spot and derivatives turnover, which runs into the billions. Market impact would depend on execution: selling directly on exchanges can move prices more than off-exchange disposal through over-the-counter desks. More broadly, companies that bought Bitcoin at higher prices face mounting pressure, even as on-chain data points to resilient long-term holding. Recent analytics suggest more than 70% of circulating BTC has not moved in over a year, a dynamic that can cushion markets against episodic large-holder selling. The deposit puts Trump Media's crypto-treasury strategy back under scrutiny and keeps the possibility of further sales on the table. Without a sizable exchange-side liquidation, the transfer alone is unlikely to materially shift Bitcoin's wider market given the scale of daily trading and strong long-term holder behavior.

XRP is seeing one of its sharpest bursts of network expansion this year, a development on-chain analysts say can precede a bullish turn. Santiment reported that roughly 4,300 new XRP wallets were created in a single 24-hour period, the fourth-largest daily wallet-growth spike of 2026. Santiment said the jump stands out because network growth is "among the top leading signals to identify reversals," and grouped the move with other indicators suggesting XRP may be offering a comparatively lower-risk entry. In a recent livestream, Santiment analyst Brian Quinlivan pointed to three data points: new wallet inflows, weak holder profitability, and subdued social sentiment. In his view, the combination supports an "undervalued" setup. Key on-chain metrics cited by Santiment: - 365-day MVRV (average holder unrealized profit/loss): about 35.12% - 30-day MVRV: around 3% Quinlivan said readings below zero imply both recent and longer-term holders are not sitting on substantial unrealized gains, a condition that has historically aligned with cooler market positioning and lower risk. He also emphasized the long-term measure, saying: "Anything below 30, no matter what asset you're looking at, that's something that should provide confidence in your investment because you have something that quantifies how much blood in the streets there is." He argued that deeper drawdowns among existing holders can make entries less fraught. Sentiment data also leaned toward a contrarian interpretation. Santiment measured XRP's social tone as more negative than normal, with about 1.7 bullish comments for every bearish one, below XRP's typical roughly 2:1 bullish baseline. Excluding a May 14 outlier, sentiment had stayed under its average for around 10 days, a pattern Santiment often views as constructive because extreme optimism tends to cluster near local highs while apathy or frustration can precede more attractive entry points. Quinlivan framed the setup against a softer altcoin environment, where many tokens have lagged Bitcoin's gains and narrative-driven excitement can fade quickly without price confirmation. He cited a recent Rakuten partnership narrative tied to XRP as an example of attention dissipating when the market fails to respond. At the time of reporting, XRP was trading around $1.36.

The attacker behind the Verus Ethereum bridge exploit has returned most of the stolen funds under a negotiated settlement, while keeping a substantial payout. On May 21, the exploiter transferred 4,052.4 ETH (about $8.5 million at onchain prices) to a Verus team address, according to PeckShield and Etherscan. The amount represents roughly 75% of the total funds taken. The attacker retained 1,350 ETH (approximately $2.8–2.9 million) as an agreed bounty. Etherscan records show the transaction originated from a wallet labeled "Verus Exploiter 2" and went to address 0xF9AB…C1A74. Shortly after returning the larger portion, the exploiter moved the 1,350 ETH bounty to a newly created address. PeckShield highlighted both the repayment and the subsequent split. Verus said in a public post on X that community members and developers negotiated the terms, including the bounty size, the exploiter's obligations, and the return process. The breach took place on May 18 and initially drained more than $11.5 million from the Verus Ethereum bridge. PeckShield said the stolen assets included 103.6 tBTC, 1,625 ETH, and nearly 147,000 USDC. The attacker later consolidated the proceeds into around 5,402 ETH (about $11.4 million at the time of the swaps). Security firm Blockaid attributed the exploit to a missing sourceamount validation check in the bridge logic, allowing a forged crosschain transfer message to be accepted. Blockaid added that the incident was not an ECDSA bypass, not a notarykey compromise, and not tied to a parser or hashbinding bug. Reactions have been mixed. Supporters of negotiated recoveries argued that reclaiming 75% is preferable to losing everything to mixers. Critics said the episode highlights structural bridge risks, including centralized custody and weak validation, and pointed to alternatives such as atomic swaps to reduce similar failure modes. The Verus case stands out from many recent bridge incidents because most of the drained ETH was returned to a team address following a bounty agreement. In other attacks, funds are often routed through mixers or remain under attacker control. The development also comes amid continued crosschain security failures, including the Butter Network exploit that sent MAPO token price lower and the Echo Protocol/Monad incident in which an attacker minted about $76.7 million in unauthorized eBTC and moved funds through Tornado Cash. Bridges remain a key DeFi attack surface because they custody assets across networks. Weak validation can enable unauthorized transfers, reserve manipulation, and rapid fund extraction before teams respond. The Verus repayment underscores both the usefulness of negotiated recoveries and the need for stronger validation and custody models across the ecosystem. Onchain data and security-firm reports remain the primary sources for updates as the situation develops.

Morgan Stanley has filed an amended prospectus for a proposed spot Solana exchange-traded fund, a step that coincided with a fresh uptick in inflows to Solana ETF products this week. Spot Solana ETFs drew $3.78 million of net inflows on Tuesday after taking in $2.06 million on Monday, according to SoSoValue. SOL changed hands around $85 on Wednesday, still trading below key near-term resistance levels. Morgan Stanley’s revised filing covers the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust, an ETF expected to list on NYSE Arca under the ticker MSOL. The trust is designed to hold SOL directly and track the token’s U.S. dollar performance after fees and liabilities. The amended prospectus also introduces staking. Morgan Stanley said the trust may stake a portion of its SOL through third-party providers, with staking rewards reflected in net asset value. Provider selection would be evaluated using criteria including performance, reliability, reputation, uptime, and slashing history. The filing adds that staking rewards may be distributed at least quarterly when required under current IRS guidance. The prospectus frames the vehicle as passive. It states the fund will not employ leverage, derivatives, or similar structures to pursue its objective, aiming instead to give investors direct SOL exposure through a traditional brokerage account without requiring wallet management, private keys, or on-chain transfers. Flows improved even as price action stayed cautious. On the charts, SOL was near $84 on Wednesday, below the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level around $86.67 and the 50-day exponential moving average at $87.64—an initial resistance zone. A broader rebound would require a move above the 100-day EMA near $92.96, with analysts also watching the $97.89 to $98.53 area as the next major resistance band. Until those levels are reclaimed, rallies may continue to face selling pressure. Derivatives indicators showed modest signs of stabilization. Funding rates for Solana turned positive on Tuesday and rose to 0.0063% on Wednesday, based on Coinglass data referenced in the update, indicating longs are paying shorts. The long-to-short ratio recovered to 0.99 on Wednesday after dropping to its lowest level in more than a month on Sunday; a move above 1 would imply more traders positioned for gains than declines. CryptoQuant summary data pointed to neutral to mildly positive conditions across spot and futures markets, suggesting the market has cooled after the recent bout of selling without yet confirming a full reversal. From a technical perspective, SOL remains in a corrective phase while it trades below short- and medium-term moving averages. The token rebounded to about $85.65 after holding above the $84 support area. The RSI climbed to 47.58 and the MACD histogram turned positive at 0.283, signaling improving momentum, with the MACD line approaching a potential bullish crossover that could support a move toward $90 if volume strengthens. Support was cited near $77.71, with deeper downside support around $67.50. If SOL fails to reclaim the $86.67 and $87.64 resistance levels, sellers may retain control of the near-term structure. Morgan Stanley’s updated MSOL filing adds a renewed institutional angle to the Solana narrative, but the market still needs stronger follow-through in spot demand to validate a breakout above resistance.