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Circle stated on the X platform that Circle Ventures is purchasing AAVE tokens because strong DeFi infrastructure does not build itself.Aave is helping to shape the future of on-chain finance, and Circle is supporting this ecosystem and the entire community built around it.

According to official news, Banking Circle has officially launched a stablecoin settlement service today.Previously, the bank had obtained a crypto asset service provider (CASP) license issued by the Luxembourg financial regulator CSSF. The new service supports instant two-way exchanges between fiat currencies and mainstream stablecoins such as USDC, USDG, and EURI, and relies on the bank's core platform to achieve round-the-clock settlement and regulatory traceability. Currently, the global market value of stablecoins is approximately 250 billion euros, with an annual payment transaction volume of about 330 billion euros and a monthly on-chain transaction volume exceeding 80 trillion euros.Banking Circle CEO Laust Bertelsen stated that stablecoins have become the core infrastructure for cross-border settlement and fund management. This launch aims to combine the efficiency of blockchain payments with banking compliance standards to serve its global client base of over 750 payment institutions.

According to official data, in the 7 days ending April 23, Circle issued approximately 5.1 billion USDC, redeemed about 5.8 billion USDC, and the circulation decreased by approximately 700 million. The total circulation of USDC is 78 billion, with reserves of about 78.2 billion USD, including overnight reverse repos of about 47.2 billion USD; Treasury bills with maturities of less than 3 months of about 19.4 billion USD; deposits from systemically important institutions of about 11 billion USD; and other bank deposits of about 600 million USD.

According to data monitoring from fees.pump.fun, Pump.fun spent 8,754.98 SOL (approximately $812,000) yesterday to repurchase 421.5 million PUMP.Since the repurchase of PUMP tokens began on July 15, 2025, the total number of PUMP tokens repurchased has reached 125,866,560,136, valued at approximately $367,323,928, reducing the total circulating supply by 35.556%.

SlowMist CISO 23pds disclosed that the password management tool Bitwarden CLI version 2026.4.0 suffered a Checkmarx supply chain attack between 17:57 and 19:30 Eastern Time. The attacker briefly distributed a malicious package via npm by abusing the GitHub Action in the Bitwarden CI/CD pipeline.The official confirmation states that Vault data was not leaked, and production systems were not affected; only users who installed this version via npm during that time window were impacted. The official recommendation for affected users is to immediately uninstall 2026.4.0, clean the npm cache, rotate sensitive credentials such as API Tokens and SSH Keys, investigate any abnormal activities on GitHub and CI, and upgrade to the fixed version 2026.4.1.

Circle Chief Economist Gordon Liao submitted a governance discussion proposal for Aave, suggesting adjustments to the USDC interest rate parameters of the Aave v3 Ethereum core market to address the high utilization and liquidity strain that persisted for several days following the KelpDAO rsETH event.The proposal suggests raising the "Slope 2" to 40% initially, with a target of 50%, while lowering the optimal utilization rate to attract more USDC deposits. Some members of the Aave community believe that higher borrowing costs may exacerbate the liquidation risk for borrowers. Data shows that Aave's current total locked value is approximately $15.3 billion.

According to Cointelegraph, the decentralized finance platform Flying Tulip, founded by Andre Cronje, has launched a withdrawal circuit breaker mechanism that can delay or queue withdrawals during abnormal capital outflows to limit potential losses and buy time for the team to investigate.The operation of this mechanism varies across different products: in the Perpetual PUT product, withdrawals may be rolled back, and users will need to try again later; in ftUSD, withdrawals will enter a queue and can be claimed after a delay. Flying Tulip stated that this mechanism employs a "fail-open" design, meaning that transactions can continue to be executed even if the safety mechanism fails.

Circle Chief Economist Gordon Liao initiated a proposal on the Aave governance forum, suggesting an emergency adjustment to the USDC interest rate parameters in the Aave V3 Ethereum main pool to address the situation where the pool's utilization rate has remained at a very high level of 99.87% for four consecutive days following the KelpDAO attack incident.Liao stated that Aave's current interest rate mechanism has failed to effectively "clear" the market. The current supply of the pool is $1.89 billion, with the borrowing amount also at $1.89 billion, and available liquidity is less than $3 million. The borrowing interest rate remains at the upper limit after the inflection point (around 14%), and over the past 24 hours, the pool size has shrunk by about $60 million—this is due to repayment funds being used one by one to meet the withdrawal demands in the queue.Therefore, the Slope 2 parameter in the USDC deposit interest rate curve should be immediately increased from about 10% to 40% through the Risk Steward mechanism, and further confirmation to raise the target to 50% should be achieved through governance voting within 5 to 7 days. Meanwhile, the optimal utilization will be adjusted down from 92% to 87% during the transition phase, and after final confirmation, it will be reduced to 85%. According to Liao's proposal, under the new parameter settings, when the utilization rate reaches 100%, the maximum USDC deposit interest rate will increase from about 12.6% to 48.2%.

According to Arkham monitoring, the multi-signature address (0x946) has distributed a total of 2,499,000 EVAA to 10 addresses in the past 10 minutes.The specific operations include transferring 250,000 EVAA to each of 5 addresses 1 minute ago, and transferring a total of 1,249,000 EVAA to another 5 addresses 9 minutes ago. According to CMC data, the current circulating supply of EVAA is 6,610,000, and this distribution accounts for approximately 37.8% of its total circulating supply. Some of the receiving addresses have previously transferred the tokens to exchanges or sold them on DEX.

Gate held the Institutional Circle event in Hong Kong, focusing on the theme "AI Reshaping Crypto Liquidity & Market Access," gathering several institutional representatives from the Asia-Pacific region to discuss the evolution of the crypto market structure and the path to liquidity reshaping. Gate's founder and CEO Dr. Han attended the event and interacted with institutional guests on-site.At the event, Gate's Global Institutional Head Addis Hu delivered the opening speech and shared insights on the platform's service capabilities and market changes in the context of deepening institutional participation. AWS Senior Regional Business Development Manager Ethan Hui shared industry insights from the perspectives of technical infrastructure and asset services.During the discussion session, attendees engaged in in-depth discussions on the evolution of liquidity, changes in market structure, and trends in multi-asset allocation against the backdrop of continuous institutional capital inflow. Overall, this event provided institutions with a reference for understanding current market structure changes and future allocation logic, further reflecting that the industry is moving towards a more mature and structured development stage.

Gate will hold the "Institutional Circle: Al Reshaping Crypto Liquidity & Market Access" institutional exchange event in Hong Kong, aimed at institutional participants, focusing on discussions related to "AI Reshaping Crypto Liquidity and Market Structure." The event will invite institutional founders and business leaders from the Asia-Pacific region to explore the direction of industry evolution from a practical perspective.On the day of the event, Addis Hu, Global Head of Institutions at Gate, will deliver the opening speech and a keynote address; Ethan Hui, Senior Regional Business Development Manager at AWS, and Chen Zhao, Executive Director of Digital Assets and CEO of FinChain, will also attend as special guests and give speeches.In addition, the event will include registration and gift distribution, free networking, and a dinner segment, providing attendees with opportunities for in-depth communication and resource connection, further promoting institutional collaboration and industry cooperation.

At the "Crypto 2026: From Cryptocurrency to Smart Economy" themed forum held in Hong Kong, Dr. Daxue Wang, CFO of Lotus Technology Inc., delivered a keynote speech titled "Crypto Links to the Physical Industry, Smart Mobility Running on the Chain."Dr. Daxue Wang stated that smart mobility is the pioneering carrier of the smart economy. Lotus, a luxury electric vehicle brand with a 78-year history, has been listed on NASDAQ and is actively exploring the deep integration of crypto technology with the physical industry. He proposed three major integration directions:First, safeguarding data value by utilizing the immutable nature of blockchain and privacy computing, allowing users to have absolute control over their personal data, achieving credible data circulation and value flow. Second, releasing asset value by exploring efficient circulation and fair trading of assets such as vehicle sales, brand value, autonomous driving technology patents, and global sales networks through RWA, while promoting credible traceability of carbon assets in green mobility. Third, co-creating ecological value by recording data on driving, charging, and maintenance through on-chain smart nodes, allowing users to upgrade from "car owners" to "participants in the brand ecosystem" through on-chain rights confirmation.Dr. Daxue Wang pointed out that the current challenges include compliance implementation, technology adaptation, and ecological co-construction, but the opportunities lie in open cooperation, promoting smart mobility as a practical landing scenario of the smart economy. Lotus hopes to work hand in hand with the crypto ecosystem to realize the vision of "from buying a Lotus car to sharing the growth value of Lotus technology."

According to Ark Invest Tracker data, Cathie Wood's ARK Invest reduced its holdings by 11,465 shares of Circle stock (approximately $1.215 million) and 31,417 shares of Bullish stock (approximately $1.367 million).

Circle announced on the X platform that the USDC Bridge service has officially launched. It is reported that this is a way to directly transfer USDC across chains, built and operated by Circle, supporting native burn-to-mint transfers, without the need to select a route, and automatically handling gas fees on the target chain.

In the past 4 days, 55% of the circulating supply of AKE (12.3 billion, worth 8.67 million USD) has been transferred to Binance Alpha via 4 wallets, and AKE has retraced 65% after a spike yesterday.After the aforementioned AKE began transferring to Binance Alpha, the daily trading volume of the token skyrocketed from 2 million USD to 34 million USD.

According to Cointelegraph, stablecoin issuer Circle is facing a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts for failing to freeze the stolen funds from the Drift Protocol during the attack incident.The plaintiffs claim that the attacker transferred approximately $230 million USDC from Solana to Ethereum within hours using Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), and Circle did not intervene. The lawsuit accuses Circle of complicity and incitement to misappropriation and negligence. Crypto analytics firm Elliptic previously suspected that the attack may be related to North Korean-backed hackers, and the related funds were subsequently exchanged for ETH and transferred via Tornado Cash.

According to Whale Alert monitoring, Circle has issued an additional 250 million USDC on the Solana chain.

According to The Block, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated in an interview with Reuters that there is a "huge opportunity" for the renminbi stablecoin. If Chinese authorities wish to enhance the global competitiveness of the renminbi, stablecoins will become an important technical means for currency internationalization, and he predicts that China may launch a renminbi stablecoin in the next 3 to 5 years.It is worth noting that the People's Bank of China and multiple departments have clearly prohibited the issuance of renminbi stablecoins abroad without regulatory approval as of February 2026. Meanwhile, the regulatory attitude in Hong Kong is completely opposite; the Hong Kong Monetary Authority issued the first batch of stablecoin licenses to HSBC and Anchorpoint Financial (a joint venture of Standard Chartered Bank, Animoca Brands, and Hong Kong Telecom) last week.