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OpenAI's recent internal growth targets have not met expectations. CFO Sarah Friar warned that if revenue growth does not keep pace, the company may struggle to fulfill its commitment of approximately $600 billion in computing power procurement, and the board has begun to review the data center investment expansion plans.Reports indicate that ChatGPT user growth, revenue targets, and subscription retention are all under pressure. Despite OpenAI recently completing a $122 billion financing round, the company's management is still discussing long-term capital expenditures and the pace of an IPO. OpenAI has denied that there are significant internal disagreements.

According to monitoring by Omar Faridi, the net demand from institutional investors for Bitcoin has regained strong momentum, reaching the highest growth rate since the end of 2025.Data from Bloomberg, Glassnode, and Bitwise Europe shows that the buying power of professional institutions such as funds and asset management companies significantly exceeds selling pressure. Industry analysis points out that institutional funds typically feature large transactions and long-term holdings, and the renewed acceleration of their net demand indicates an increased confidence among large players in Bitcoin as a store of value. Currently, the rise in institutional participation is driving improvements in market liquidity and is seen as a signal of Bitcoin's further solidification in the global financial system.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's monitoring, Binance's DOGE open interest has increased by nearly 100 million dollars in five days.Since the afternoon of April 23, Binance's contract open interest has risen from 2.31 billion to a peak of 3.23 billion (an increase of 920 million DOGE, nearly 100 million dollars), a growth of 39.8%; meanwhile, the price of DOGE only increased by a maximum of 5% during the same period, which is not matching the growth.

The newly appointed chief economist of New Fire Group, Fu Peng, stated on Twitter that the underlying business model of Bitcoin perpetual contracts is essentially the same as the "rollover fee/overnight fee" in traditional finance's gold and industrial commodity spot exchanges.Fu Peng pointed out that back in the day, gold exchanges settled through daily forced liquidation, with longs and shorts paying each other rollover fees. When retail investors held a large number of high-leverage long positions, the rollover fee became the most stable and hidden source of income for the platform. Nowadays, Bitcoin spot platforms mainly rely on perpetual contracts, with both sides settling the funding rate every 8 hours. When longs dominate, retail investors holding long positions continuously pay funding rates to shorts.Although the platform does not directly collect this fee, it significantly enhances trading activity, open interest, and liquidity, indirectly generating a large amount of fee income and forming a stable and substantial cash flow. Essentially, it is a business model where large players/institutions "collect rent" from long-term holdings, retail investors pay for leverage to go long, and the platform indirectly takes a cut.

Chen Boliang, a former senior manager of Huobi Group, is suspected of registering a personal account on the company's platform under the name "Chen Feng," bypassing the dark pool trading permissions that are limited to corporate clients, conducting over-the-counter bulk transactions without restrictions on price and quantity, and transferring approximately 4.999 million USDT (equivalent to about 39.18 million HKD) in 5 transactions to his personal accounts at OKX and Binance.Chen Boliang was charged with 6 counts of unauthorized computer access and 1 count of money laundering. On April 24, 2026, the jury of the Hong Kong High Court found all charges not established, and the court also approved the defendant's application for legal costs.

The DeFi Education Fund, along with several other crypto advocacy organizations, has officially sent a joint letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), requesting the initiation of a formal DeFi rule-making process based on recent statements.Previously, the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets had clearly stated that certain software user interfaces used for trading cryptocurrencies do not need to register as broker-dealers, giving a green light to such activities. The joint letter calls on the SEC to solidify the above principles into an objective and clear framework through announcements or comment-based rule-making, clarifying which activities fall under the definition of "broker," while excluding infrastructure service providers such as validators, API and RPC providers, oracles, and cloud services. This would provide developers with long-term legal certainty and avoid reliance on temporary guidance. Under the leadership of current Chairman Paul Atkins, the SEC has taken a positive and open attitude towards digital asset innovation, contrasting sharply with the repressive stance of the previous administration, and the industry has also played an important role in the rule-making process.

Gate Research Institute released a market forecast report titled "Polymarket Growth Accelerates, Gate's Layout for New Entry into Prediction Markets," which dissects trading volume, fee mechanisms, and market structure. The report points out that Polymarket's trading volume and active users continue to grow, and the platform has evolved from early on-chain experiments into an event trading market with real liquidity and revenue capabilities. Overall growth is driven by political, sports, and geopolitical events, and user retention may decline during the phase when hot topics fade.Fees and revenues are rising rapidly, driven on one hand by expanding trading demand and on the other by the expansion of the fee scope and changes in the fee structure. Revenue growth is directly related to rule adjustments. Platform trading is highly concentrated in a few high-interest sectors, and the long-tail market contributes limited overall liquidity.Gate has integrated a Polymarket entry in the app, providing two interaction modes: prediction mode and trading mode. Users can participate using USDT through their exchange accounts or use USDC on Polygon via a Web3 wallet. The report believes that prediction markets are evolving along two parallel paths: the integration of on-chain open infrastructure and centralized products. Its long-term potential depends on the continuous stability of event supply, regulatory environment, and user behavior.

According to a research report by cybersecurity company Expel, it is tracking a highly assessed APT organization supported by North Korea (DPRK) called "HexagonalRodent," which primarily targets Web3 developers and specializes in stealing high-value digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs.The organization mainly conducts attacks by forging job postings—posting high-paying positions on LinkedIn and Web3 recruitment platforms to lure job seekers into completing "skills tests" embedded with malicious code, using the tasks.json feature of VSCode to automatically execute malicious programs when victims open project folders. The malware used includes BeaverTail, OtterCookie, and InvisibleFerret, which have capabilities for password theft, remote control, and reverse shell.It is noteworthy that the organization heavily utilizes generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Cursor to develop malware, build fake company websites, and create AI-generated executive teams, even registering shell companies in Mexico to enhance the credibility of their attacks

CryptoQuant analyst MorenoDV_ tweeted that if Bitcoin can rise above and hold the $80,000 mark, this position will turn from resistance to support; conversely, if it encounters rejection and falls back, it will confirm $80,000 as a significant selling pressure area, potentially extending the adjustment period into the second quarter.Currently, the realized price for BTC ETF investors is about $76,400, which is close to the spot price (around $76,300), marking the first time since January 30 that it has approached the breakeven point; short-term holder whales have a realized price around $79,600 and are currently facing an unrealized loss of about $9.4 billion.MorenoDV_ pointed out that historically, when these trapped funds are finally released, it often triggers significant selling pressure. Bitcoin is currently fluctuating in the $76,000-$80,000 range, where $80,000 is not only an important psychological level but also a common breakeven and release threshold for these two major groups.

Trump Media Technology Group is shifting its business focus from social media to the cryptocurrency and financial services sector. Data shows that since Trump was re-elected in 2024, the company's stock price has fallen by more than 60%, with shareholders losing about $6 billion in wealth. Recently, the company applied to launch a cryptocurrency blue-chip ETF and plans to establish a Bitcoin reserve.

New Fire Technology (1611.HK) announced that it will acquire the investment team and trading system of the Li Lin family office Avenir Group for $1.6 million.After the acquisition is completed, New Fire Technology plans to launch a Bitcoin-denominated asset management service called Alpha BTC, aiming to attract investments of over 10,000 Bitcoins within a year, valued at approximately $760 million. This strategy will generate returns through trading derivatives such as options, with Bitcoin or IBIT ETF as the underlying assets, targeting clients including crypto-native investors and local businesses in Hong Kong. Avenir Group holds 18.3 million shares of BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust, valued at $908 million, as of the end of 2025.

X product lead and Solana advisor Nikita Bier posted to announce two product changes for organizing communities on X, including:XChat now supports a joinable link feature for group chats. Users can create a public link to share directly on their timeline. Each group chat supports 350 members (and is still increasing).Due to declining usage, the X platform will officially deprecate X Communities on May 6.

According to CoinDesk, monitoring by CertiK reveals that the Lazarus Group is conducting an attack operation named Mach-O Man targeting executives in the fintech and cryptocurrency industries. This operation utilizes ClickFix social engineering techniques, sending fake online meeting invitations to lure victims into pasting repair commands on their Mac terminals, thereby gaining access to company and financial systems.CertiK researcher Natalie Newson stated that the Lazarus Group has stolen over $500 million through attacks on Drift and KelpDAO in the past two weeks. Mach-O Man is a modular macOS malware toolkit developed by the Chollima division of the Lazarus Group, capable of automatically deleting itself after use to evade detection.Additionally, attackers have implemented this attack by hijacking DeFi project domain names and replacing them with fake Cloudflare messages.

According to Bloomberg, political groups associated with the cryptocurrency industry have accumulated nearly $180 million in funding reserves ahead of this year's U.S. midterm elections, surpassing the funding levels of some major Republican super PACs.The report states that most of this funding has been carried over from last year, with the vast majority held by Fairshake. Fairshake's main backers include Coinbase, Ripple Labs, and Andreessen Horowitz.

ChainCatcher reported live that Franklin Bi, partner at Pantera Capital, Mykolas Majauskas, senior policy director at Bybit, and Zeng Yuchao, managing director at Futu Group, jointly attended the HK Web3 Feastival roundtable to share "From the Ground Up to the Entry Point: The Path of Crypto Assets to Mainstream Finance."Zeng Yuchao introduced that Futu is the largest retail brokerage in Hong Kong, with a market share of over 50%. In January this year, it obtained the VATP license, and last month removed all additional conditions to achieve full integration of securities brokerage and crypto trading. Last year, Futu collaborated with Huaxia Fund to issue a tokenized money market fund, allowing T+0 same-day subscriptions and redemptions. In terms of AI, Futu has launched the Agent skill feature, enabling users to set strategies through natural language and execute trades automatically. He believes that in the future, there will be a transformation from graphical interfaces to AI interfaces.Mykolas Majauskas pointed out that companies currently complaining about regulation will miss this honeymoon period in the future, as larger-scale regulation is on the way. He analyzed global regulatory differences: Europe leads with MiCA, the U.S. supports private issuance, China supports government digital currency, and Hong Kong serves as a tokenization gateway. He warned that many native crypto companies claim to disrupt traditional finance but are actually being acquired by traditional institutions. He believes the fundamental change in AI is at the front end: users only need to express their intentions, and AI autonomously decides to execute strategies. Bybit is building a one-stop financial platform that integrates IBAN, cards, payments, and investments. He believes many traditional wealth management companies will be eliminated because they have historically made you feel wealthy rather than truly helping you accumulate wealth.Franklin Bi stated that blockchain is the perfect technology for building financial systems for AI Agents. When Agents choose between traditional accounts and stablecoins, they are opting for stablecoins, marking the beginning of an exponential trend.

The Bitcoin options market will see a concentrated expiration of about $7.9 billion this Friday, with approximately $395 million in call options concentrated around the $75,000 strike price.The current funding rate has turned negative, reflecting an overall bearish sentiment in the market; if the price continues to hold above this key level, the risk of potential short squeezes may intensify.