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ECB Rejects Euro Stablecoin Push, Warning of Risks to Banks and Monetary Policy

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ECB Rejects Euro Stablecoin Push, Warning of Risks to Banks and Monetary Policy

The European Central Bank warned EU finance ministers on Friday that proposals to expand euro stablecoin issuance could weaken bank lending and complicate monetary policy, according to three sources cited by Reuters.

The pushback came in response to a policy paper prepared by Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, whose authors presented their proposals at the two-day informal meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council in Nicosia, Cyprus. The paper called for easing liquidity requirements for stablecoin issuers and potentially granting them access to ECB funding, arguing that these measures were necessary if the euro stablecoin market was to compete with dollar-backed rivals.

Europeans conduct 38% of global stablecoin transactions, yet euro-denominated tokens account for just 0.3% of total supply, per the policy paper. Circle’s EURC (EURC), the largest euro stablecoin, ranks only 12th globally, according to CoinMarketCap.

Top euro stablecoins. Source: CoinMarketCap

The question at the heart of the Nicosia meeting was whether Europe wants to close that gap badly enough to extend central bank-style support to stablecoin issuers. However, the ECB’s answer, for now, appears to be no.

Related: MiCA Made Euro Stablecoins Safe but Too Small, Report Says

Euro stablecoins could destabilize banks

ECB President Christine Lagarde led the resistance, warning that stablecoin issuance makes bank deposits less stable by transferring buyers’ funds to issuers’ accounts, according to Reuters. At scale, policymakers fear this accelerates disintermediation, raises bank funding costs and erodes the ECB’s ability to manage interest rates.

Several central bankers at the meeting also openly questioned the Bruegel proposal to position the ECB as a lender of last resort for stablecoin firms, an arrangement currently reserved for regulated banks, per the report.

In a speech at the Banco de España LatAm Economic Forum in Spain earlier this month, Lagarde argued that euro stablecoins could generate additional demand for euro-area safe assets but warned that the trade-offs, including financial stability risks, redemption pressures and weaker monetary policy transmission, outweigh the benefits.

Instead of stablecoins, Lagarde pointed to tokenized financial infrastructure anchored by central bank money as Europe’s preferred path, citing the Eurosystem’s Pontes project for wholesale settlement and the Appia roadmap for interoperable tokenized finance.

Related: European Banks Back MiCA Euro Stablecoin to Rival Dollar Tokens

EU central bankers shrug off digital dollarization fears

The Bruegel authors warned that stricter EU rules compared to the US risked accelerating digital dollarization, pushing activity outside the bloc. However, central bankers at the meeting largely dismissed that concern, with several calling instead for restrictions on European redemptions of both US and EU-issued stablecoins to guard against reserve runs, according to the Reuters report.  

The debate comes as the EU reviews its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, which requires stablecoin issuers to hold large reserves in liquid assets, in contrast to the lighter-touch US GENIUS Act.

Market Moves: Why is Ethereum Foundation selling? BTC futures warning signs

Bitcoin tanks to $74,300 as spot ETFs bleed $2.26 billion in two weeks

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Bitcoin tanks to $74,300 as spot ETFs bleed $2.26 billion in two weeks

Bitcoin BTC$74,703.02 is rapidly losing ground as investors pull out billions of dollars from U.S.-listed spot ETFs.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell to $74,305 early Saturday, its lowest level since April 20, according to CoinDesk data. As of writing, BTC was down more than 3% over the past 24 hours and approximately 10% below its recent high of over $82,500 reached on May 6.

The sell-off accompanies a notable upswing in U.S. Treasury yields and parallel increases in government bond yields across developed markets, which are reducing appetite for high-risk, zero-yielding assets like bitcoin.

Investors withdrew $1.26 billion from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs this week, the largest single-week outflow since January, following roughly $1 billion in outflows the previous week. In total, the funds have seen more than $2.26 billion in redemptions over the past two weeks.

Meanwhile, commodities such as oil, copper, and sulfur are seeing strong flows of speculative money as markets continue to price in potential supply disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz due to the Iran conflict.

One theory also points to capital being redirected toward SpaceX’s anticipated IPO, with several blockchain-based pre-market derivatives tied to the event already seeing millions in trading volume on blockchain-based platforms.

Bitcoin (BTC) left behind in the geopolitical melee: Crypto Daily

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Bitcoin (BTC) left behind in the geopolitical melee: Crypto Daily

The current state of financial markets is best described as macro-geopolitics first, crypto second.

The evidence is clear. Despite recent positive regulatory developments related to the Clarity Act, bitcoin BTC$75,328.36 has shown little excitement, trading near $77,200 – largely unchanged over the past 24 hours and for the week.

Meanwhile, oil remains elevated near $100 and speculative capital is pouring into copper amid fears of a sulfur shortage. The connection? Copper production is heavily dependent on sulfuric acid, whose supply has been disrupted through the Strait of Hormuz.

In essence, everything is revolving around Hormuz, driving commodity flows and prices higher, stoking inflation fears, lifting bond yields, which are supposedly weighing over crypto. The U.S. stocks, meanwhile, hover near record highs, driven by AI optimism.

Bitcoin is not at the center of this geo-economic and AI repricing.

It is no surprise, therefore, that U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs continue to bleed, recording $1.15 billion in outflows this week after $1 billion last week, according to SoSoValue. The Coinbase premium, a key gauge of U.S. demand relative to the rest of the world, has hit monthly lows.

Analysts have repeatedly emphasized that these indicators need marked improvement before a sustained rally can take hold. The question is whether that will happen while markets remain fixated on geopolitics and AI.

In the meantime, certain corners of the crypto market, particularly on-chain perpetuals and quantum-resistant tokens, continue to show strength, driven by specific news and narratives, as we discussed Thursday. Layer-1 blockchain Near Protocol’s token (NEAR) is the latest addition to that group, surging over 25% in the past 24 hours following the announcement of a major upgrade focused on automated scaling and quantum resilience.

In traditional markets, Nasdaq futures have surrendered early gains and are trading largely flat. Analysts remain broadly bullish on stocks following the latest earnings season. Stay alert.

Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today . For a comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”

What’s trending

Today’s signal

HYPE’s RSI is flashing overbought conditions. (TradingView)

HYPE’s 14-day Relative Strength Index (RSI) has surged above 70. While readings above 70 are widely labeled as “overbought,” this interpretation is often misleading.

The RSI is a momentum oscillator that measures the speed and magnitude of recent price changes. A reading above 70 simply signals strong bullish momentum and suggests that the uptrend may still have room to run. It does not automatically mean the asset is overvalued or due for an imminent reversal, as the popular narrative often implies.

In strong trending markets, RSI can remain elevated for extended periods without triggering a meaningful pullback.

Hyperliquid ETFs Surpass $69 Million in Net Inflows

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Hyperliquid ETFs Surpass $69 Million in Net Inflows

Spot ETFs tracking Hyperliquid ($THYP and $BHYP) attracted over $16 million in flows yesterday, bringing cumulative net inflows to $69 million.

Hyperliquid’s spot exchange-traded funds have accumulated over $69 million in total net inflows, with $16 million entering the funds yesterday alone. The two ETFs—$THYP and $BHYP—continue to attract significant capital from institutional and retail investors seeking exposure to the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

The sustained inflow trajectory reflects growing institutional adoption of Hyperliquid-related financial products. The $16 million daily inflow demonstrates persistent market demand for tokenized exposure to the platform’s native assets.

Sources: JSeyff

Wall Street and crypto are merging again as OKX rolls out traditional oil benchmarks

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Wall Street and crypto are merging again as OKX rolls out traditional oil benchmarks

Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE), owner of the New York Stock Exchange, and OKX announced Friday that they are joining forces to roll out perpetual oil futures.

In a joint statement, the firms’ said ICE’s futures prices for Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) will bolster the new perpetual contracts on OKX.

The new perpetual contracts based on ICE’s data will open energy benchmark product access to OKX’s 120 million retail traders, said Trabue Bland, senior vice president of futures exchanges at ICE.

The new contracts will be available on OKX, in which ICE holds a stake, across territories where the crypto company is already licensed to offer perpetual futures.

“Oil markets are critical to the world economy,” Haider Rafique, global managing partner at OKX, said in the statement. Bringing ICE’s benchmarks “into regulated perpetual futures is exactly the kind of bridge between traditional and digital markets that market participants have been asking for.”

The ICE and OKX foray into oil perps comes as Hyperliquid’s oil futures contracts that never expire have proven to be a tremendous success, consistently generating roughly $1.6 billion in daily trading volume and more than $1.3 billion in open interest.

Perpetual futures, also known as “perps,” are a type of derivative contract that give traders the ability to bet on prices of assets such as oil or bitcoin. But unlike traditional futures, perps never expire, so traders don’t have to take possession of physical barrels of oil or roll over those contracts.

Most perpetual products are offered on offshore exchanges and are not regulated the same way traditional commodity exchanges such as ICE and CME Group Inc. are in the U.S., but Michael Selig, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), recently said he will bring them under his agency’s oversight soon.

In a sign of the increasing confluence of crypto and traditional financial (TradFi) firms, ICE and OKX signed a deal in March to build technology, including blockchain networks, that would give ICE’s customers access to crypto-based futures and OKX customers the ability to trade tokenized securities on NYSE’s platform. ICE also made a strategic investment valuing the San Jose, California-based company at $25 billion.

Tom Lee says SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs could reshape markets

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Tom Lee says SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs could reshape markets

Tom Lee, chairman of Bitmine Immersion Technologies and co-founder of Fundstrat, does not expect the coming wave of mega IPOs to derail markets even if they could eclipse the entire dot-com boom in scale.

Lee recently discussed the potential effect of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI listing which could unleash trillions of dollars in new equity supply into public markets.

In inflation adjusted terms, Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone could become the second largest IPO ever, seeking a market valuation above $1.5 trillion, behind only Saudi Aramco.

Lee acknowledged concerns about the amount of supply these listings could introduce into public markets, especially after the standard 90-day lock-up periods expire. He noted that SpaceX is likely the most anticipated IPO ever, Lee estimates the three IPOs could generate trillions in supply, equivalent to roughly 5% to 6% of the S&P 500’s total market capitalization.

Despite the scale, Lee does not believe the situation is necessarily outright bearish for the markets. He argues that family offices, pensions, and high net worth investors currently hold historically low allocations to public equities after years of favoring private markets and alternative investments.

There is significant capital available to absorb the liquidity as allocations rotate back toward U.S. public stocks, in Lee’s view.

He also expects many early investors to hedge or borrow against holdings rather than immediately sell and trigger large tax events.

Lee also discussed cryptocurrency’s underperformance against expectations despite growing institutional interest, highlighting how instant settlement and transaction verification are driving Wall Street’s push towards tokenisation, a point he previously made at Consensus Miami 2026.

Furthermore, Lee believes blockchain could provide a neutral framework for identity verification in an AI driven world. Banks are increasingly circling the industry because they recognize the significant revenue opportunities emerging from the convergence of crypto, AI, and finance, he added.

NEAR surges 19.4% as index trades flat

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NEAR surges 19.4% as index trades flat

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2085.44, down 0.0% (-0.18) since 4 p.m. ET on Thursday.

Fourteen of the 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: NEAR (+19.4%) and ICP (+4.3%).

Laggards: SUI (-2.6%) and XRP (-1.0%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

AI infrastructure race heats up as IREN pitches full-stack strategy, WhiteFiber lands $160M deal

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AI infrastructure race heats up as IREN pitches full-stack strategy, WhiteFiber lands $160M deal

IREN (IREN) co-founder Daniel Roberts outlined an ambitious vision for the company as a vertically integrated AI infrastructure platform in a lengthy X post on Friday, arguing that the biggest bottleneck in artificial intelligence is no longer chips, but physical infrastructure.

“AI demand grows exponentially. Infrastructure doesn’t,” Roberts wrote, pointing to growing constraints around power, land, cooling and data center construction.
Roberts said IREN’s strategy is built around three layers: physical infrastructure such as power and data centers, compute infrastructure including NVIDIA GPUs and servers, and enterprise software and operational tooling.

“Layers 1 and 2 are where the overwhelming majority of IREN’s value is being created today,” Roberts wrote. “Layer 3 is where that advantage compounds further over time.”

The company, formerly known as Iris Energy, has expanded beyond bitcoin mining into AI infrastructure, a wider trend that has been seen in the industry, with projects spanning Texas, British Columbia, Oklahoma, Spain and Australia. Roberts said IREN has secured roughly 5 gigawatts of grid-connected capacity globally.

He argued that owning the full stack creates a long-term competitive moat as AI demand accelerates globally, particularly in underserved regions such as Europe and Asia-Pacific.

The thread also highlighted IREN’s growing relationship with NVIDIA (NVDA), including a recently announced five-year, $3.4 billion AI cloud contract tied to Blackwell GPU deployments in Texas.

Separately, WhiteFiber (WYFI) announced a five-year AI compute agreement worth more than $160 million with an investment-grade technology customer in France. The deployment will use NVIDIA GPUs and expand WhiteFiber’s European footprint.

WhiteFiber provides AI cloud and high-performance compute services using third-party data center infrastructure, while IREN focuses on owning and operating the underlying infrastructure itself.

WYFI shares rose 22% Thursday and gained another 5% in Friday premarket trading, while IREN shares gained 10% on Thursday.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Clarifies Distinction Between Tokenized Securities and Synthetic Instruments

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SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Clarifies Distinction Between Tokenized Securities and Synthetic Instruments

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce references a staff statement on tokenization to distinguish between issuer-sponsored tokenized stocks and synthetic crypto instruments offering stock exposure.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce clarified her position on synthetics in crypto markets, directing observers to an SEC staff statement on tokenization that differentiates between multiple categories of token-based securities. Peirce’s statement draws a line between tokenized versions of issuer-sponsored stocks, tokenized stocks held by SEC-registered firms for customers, and synthetic instruments that provide exposure to equities without direct ownership.

The distinction carries regulatory significance as the crypto industry continues to develop tokenization infrastructure and synthetic asset protocols. Tokenized securities backed by issuers or regulated custodians fall into one category, while synthetic instruments—which provide price exposure through smart contracts or derivatives rather than direct token claims—occupy a separate regulatory space.

Peirce’s clarification addresses ongoing debate within the SEC and broader crypto regulatory framework regarding how different token structures should be classified and overseen. The commissioner has historically advocated for regulatory clarity and frameworks that accommodate blockchain-based innovation, making this distinction a notable marker in how the agency may approach emerging tokenization use cases.

Sources: Hester Peirce Twitter/X

Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day, The 16th Anniversary Of Laszlo Hanyecz Paying 10,000 BTC For Two Papa John’s Pies

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Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day, The 16th Anniversary Of Laszlo Hanyecz Paying 10,000 BTC For Two Papa John’s Pies

Sixteen years ago today, a Florida programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two large Papa John’s pizzas. At the time, those coins were worth roughly $41. On this Pizza Day, they are worth $777.87 million — down $328 million from last year’s anniversary price. 

Bitcoin Pizza Day, observed each May 22, marks the first commercial transaction using Bitcoin — the moment a digital currency stopped being a theoretical experiment and became a medium of exchange for real goods.

On May 18, 2010, Hanyecz posted on the BitcoinTalk forum with a straightforward offer: 10,000 BTC to anyone willing to order him two pizzas. Some forum users were skeptical — one pointed out he could sell the coins for $41 in cash. 

Hanyecz’s reply was simple: “I just think it would be interesting if I could say that I paid for a pizza in Bitcoins”. Four days later, a then-19-year-old forum user named Jeremy Sturdivant accepted, ordered the pies from Papa John’s, and collected 10,000 BTC via manual transfer. Bitcoin had its first exchange rate against a consumer good.