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According to Bloomberg, global commodity trader Trafigura is negotiating with Tether for a pilot project to support USDT payments at its fuel distribution subsidiary Puma Energy's gas stations in El Salvador. People familiar with the matter said that the discussions are still in the early stages and need to wait for regulatory approval. Under the scheme, consumers can use USDT to pay for fuel and convenience store goods, which are then exchanged into US dollars by intermediaries to settle with Puma. This is the first known cooperation between Tether and a large commodity trader around the actual payment scenario of stablecoins. In recent years, Tether has continued to expand its business in the commodity sector, including providing commodity trade loans, participating in crude oil trading financing, and investing in gold and mining assets.

Odaily Planet Daily News Kevin Walsh will be sworn in at the White House on Friday, a ceremony presided over by Trump. （FOX ）

According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk's xAI asked employees to provide personal tax forms as Grok's training data earlier this year, and rewarded them with $420 as a reward incentive.

Odaily Planet Daily News Tempo announced the integration of DeFi lending marketplace Morpho, bringing $7.5 billion in lending markets to its network. The project's main business is to provide fintech companies and enterprises developed on the Tempo chain with the ability to lend directly on-chain and earn yields on idle stablecoins. Morpho's lending system on Tempo will be provided by a custom marketplace by venture firms Gauntlet and Sentora, with pricing using RedStone oracles. (coindesk)

According to Coinworld.com, Aster announced the launch of a listing voting mechanism, allowing validators who meet the conditions to initiate on-chain listing proposals. Officials stated that any Aster Chain validator who stakes 20 million Aster can submit a proposal to launch a new trading pair, and the final result will be determined by the weight of the on-chain staking Aster. The first batch of proposals are BTC/U and ETH/U perpetual contracts submitted by Utech, and voting will last until 06:00 UTC on May 22.

According to ChainCatcher news, Bitwise tweeted that it will use 10% of its Hyperliquid ETF ($BHYP) management fees to hold HYPE on the company's balance sheet to support the development of the Hyperliquid ecosystem with practical actions. Bitwise emphasized that Hyperliquid operates on a community-first model, with 99% of the blockchain's revenue going to buybacks and burning HYPE, and that "if the protocol succeeds, the community should succeed." Bitwise chose to hold HYPE based on this philosophy.

According to ChainCatcher news, financial analyst Abdelaziz Fathi posted that Nobitex, Iran's largest crypto trading platform, has processed a total of about $2.3 billion in capital flows through Tron and BNB Chain since 2023, most of which occur in stablecoin and cross-chain transfer scenarios. The report notes that related traffic has exceeded $2 billion on the Tron network alone, with BNB Chain at around $317 million, and continues to experience small-scale transfers against the backdrop of recent conflicts. Some of these capital flows involve sanctioned entities, raising concerns about the potential role of public chains in cross-border payments and sanctions avoidance. The analysis also mentioned that the ecology behind the relevant infrastructure is indirectly related to multiple crypto companies, making it part of politically sensitive issues. Although both Tron and BNB Chain emphasize that it is a "decentralized or infrastructure network" and does not directly control transactions, on-chain transparency allows it to passively carry compliance and reputational risks. This incident further strengthened the market discussion about the tension between "public chain neutrality" and "realistic compliance boundaries", especially in the context of stablecoins and public ledgers becoming the core path of cross-border value transfer.

Odaily Planet Daily News learned on the 18th local time that U.S. health officials reported on the 16th that an adult resident of Douglas County, Colorado, died of hantavirus infection. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said it was currently investigating the incident and said the case was unrelated to the hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship "Hondius". In addition, preliminary findings indicate that the patient contracted the virus locally due to contact with rodents. In Colorado, rodents are the most common source of hantavirus infection. At present, the identity information and date of death of the case have not been disclosed. (CCTV)

ChainCatcher news, Delphi Digital pointed out in its latest post that WETH, USDT, and USDC are the three largest lending markets in the Aave Ethereum market, accounting for 89% of the total borrowing volume. Supply rates in these three markets are about 25%-35% lower than borrowing rates, resulting in an annualized deadweight loss of about $52 million, nearly half of Aave's annualized revenue in the first quarter. Even if the Reserve Factor were completely removed, there would still be a loss of about $36 million. Delphi argues that Aave's peer-to-pool model has a clear structural flaw here. The attack on the KelpDAO bridge on April 18 further exposed this issue. The attacker used $292 million in rsETH to leverage borrowing on Aave, resulting in nearly $200 million in bad debt on Aave and a 100% utilization freeze on major markets such as WETH for up to 5 days.

According to ChainCatcher news, Ondo Finance posted on social media that its total tokenized stock locked volume (TVL) has exceeded $1.5 billion and is still maintaining a growing trend. In its Ondo Global Markets, the top five most actively traded assets currently include: Circle tokenized assets, S&P 500 ETFs, Micron Technology, NVIDIA, and a tokenized version of BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). According to the data, the above five types of assets together account for about 25% of the share of the tokenized stock track, reflecting that the market is rapidly concentrating on a hybrid structure of "US stock + ETF + crypto assets", and continues to expand the scale of chain mapping of the traditional US stock market.

According to ChainCatcher news, Crypto financial services company Galaxy has obtained a BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), according to The Defiant. It is reported that BitLicense is one of the most stringent licenses in U.S. state crypto regulation, with extremely high requirements for applicants in terms of compliance, capital, and operations. With this license, Galaxy can legally provide cryptocurrency-related services, including trading, custody, and other businesses, in New York State.

According to CoinDesk, former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner has increased his disclosed investment from $5.5 billion to $13.67 billion as of March 31, 2026, and has bought shares of Bitcoin mining companies and AI infrastructure companies on a large scale. Its key holdings include mining companies such as IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, Bitfarms, Bitdeer, and Hive Digital, betting that its power resources and data center capabilities will benefit from the growth in demand for AI computing power. At the same time, it also opened about $7.46 billion in semiconductor short positions, including large put options on the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, NVIDIA, Oracle and Broadcom.

According to Coin.com, EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Dombrovskis said that due to the "stagflation shock" brought about by the Iran war, the EU will lower its economic growth forecast and raise its inflation forecast. He said the spring economic forecast released later this week will show a downward revision of economic growth data and an increase in inflation data. Dombrovskis said policymakers have "more limited room to act" and have little room for a fiscal response on a scale like during the pandemic. He also mentioned that the EU's action to release the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is underway, adding that there are concerns about supply shortages in areas such as innovative fuels. "The longer the conflict lasts, the greater the risk of certain supply bottlenecks, which further confirms our view that policy responses should not increase demand for fossil fuels," he noted.

According to ChainCatcher news, Aave has officially proposed a principal-retained charitable donation layer, allowing users to continuously donate the proceeds generated to charity while retaining control and liquidity of the principal. The proposal is currently undergoing a temp-check vote on the Aave governance forum. Its core is to solve the three major pain points of the traditional philanthropy model: donors need to permanently give up the principal, the unstable flow of funds for charitable organizations, and the lack of transparency in the use of funds. According to the proposal, users can deposit assets into yield-based infrastructure such as Aave and donate them in a targeted manner after earning income, while getting their principal back at any time.

According to Lookonchain data, the update on May 18 showed that the outflow of ETF funds was: Bitcoin (BTC) had a net outflow of 3,361 coins (about US$257 million) in a single day, a net outflow of 12,478 coins (about US$958 million) in the past 7 days, a net outflow of 26,151 coins (about US$552,300) in a single day, and a net outflow of 113 coins in the past 7 days. 035 (approximately US$2,387,300) while Solana (SOL) had a net inflow of 3,425 (approximately US$288,000) in a single day and a net inflow of 605,484 (approximately US$50.86 million) in the past 7 days.

According to ChainCatcher news, according to the latest bill signed by the Minnesota state government, local banks and credit unions can now legally provide custody services for crypto assets such as Bitcoin. The bill aims to provide a clear regulatory framework for financial institutions in the state to engage in digital asset operations and expand the coverage of traditional finance for cryptocurrency services.

Odaily Planet Daily News Goldman Sachs: The easing of geopolitical concerns has driven a sharp rise in the stock market and artificial intelligence sectors, but the downside tail risk is still underestimated. Goldman Sachs: The escalation of the situation in the Middle East is the biggest market risk. (Jin Shi)

ChainCatcher news, glassnode data shows that the current price of Bitcoin is around $76,700, and there are still more than 7.8 million BTC in a floating loss. Glassnode pointed out that the oversupply of buyers near cycle highs is still huge, and the market needs to fully absorb this part of the selling pressure to form a structurally sustainable uptrend.