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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.

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 Ru Haiyang, CEO of HashKey Exchange Group, delivered a keynote speech at the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, focusing on three key themes: RWA, payments, and Asian connectivity. He announced that HashKey Exchange officially launched Hong Kong's first physical gold ETF that day, fully compliant with trading and custody regulations in Hong Kong. He also revealed that HashKey has received approval from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to jointly issue Asia's first true co-branded credit card with Shanghai Commercial Bank.Regarding industry trends, he pointed out that DTCC has received a no-action letter from the U.S. SEC to intervene in the custody and settlement of tokenized assets, Kraken has become the first cryptocurrency institution to connect to the Federal Reserve's FedWire, and Mastercard has acquired the UK blockchain payment company BVNK at an $1.8 billion valuation, indicating that traditional payment institutions have recognized the irreversible trend.In terms of expansion in Asia, he announced that HashKey officially announced its investment in the Vietnamese market on April 10, planning to jointly invest in VPBank, one of Vietnam's largest commercial banks, to help it become one of the first licensed exchanges. HashKey has also signed memorandums of understanding with leading Asian institutions such as Coins.ph in the Philippines, Indodex in Indonesia, Hata in Malaysia, and Bitazza in Thailand to explore cooperation in liquidity integration, cross-border payments, stablecoins, and asset tokenization distribution.

ChainCatcher live report, Wanxiang Group Chairman and CEO Lu Weiding delivered the opening speech at the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival. He pointed out that four years ago, the SAR government released a virtual asset policy declaration, establishing Hong Kong's position as a global digital asset center, and in the future, it should contribute a "Hong Kong solution" in areas such as stablecoins and asset tokenization.He emphasized that we are currently at an irreversible starting point, where Web3 establishes trust and ownership of value, AI unleashes data-driven productivity, and the deep integration of both with embodied intelligence will jointly build the core driving force of the smart economy infrastructure, which will become the core explosive power of Hong Kong's Web3 ecosystem. He stated that the past three carnivals have become a global hub connecting the East and West, bridging the digital and the real, "not just observing trends, but shaping trends."

Fu Peng, the former chief economist of Northeast Securities, has officially joined the Hong Kong-listed company New Fire Group as the chief economist. New Fire Group has confirmed this news.

The major European stock exchange operator SIX Group announced that its Swiss SIX Swiss Exchange and Spain's BME Exchange will use Chainlink nodes to bring stock market data on-chain.This collaboration allows the market data from both exchanges to be directly read by smart contracts, facilitating the development of blockchain use cases including tokenized stock indices, structured products, decentralized finance applications, and prediction markets. The total market capitalization of the two exchanges under SIX Group reaches 2 trillion euros, providing a reliable data source for the global financial ecosystem. Previously, well-known financial institutions such as Deutsche Börse, FTSE Russell, S&P Global, and cryptocurrency companies like Coinbase have also engaged in similar collaborations with Chainlink. Since its launch last year, Chainlink's DataLink service has been integrated into thousands of decentralized applications and dozens of blockchains.

According to Bloomberg, Carlyle Group raised $1.5 billion in the first round of fundraising for its newly established asset-backed investment fund, as the private equity giant continues to expand its credit business.Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and other institutional investors participated in the fund—Carlyle Asset-Backed Income Fund. Unlike most fixed-term credit funds, this fund will adopt a "perpetual" structure with no set expiration date. The individual requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the information.

According to Gate market data, U.S. stocks opened with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.07%, the S&P 500 index up 0.31%, and the Nasdaq Composite up 0.73%. Lucid Group opened up 8% due to receiving an additional investment of $750 million from Uber and PIF; JPMorgan opened down 1.2%, while Citibank rose 1.4%.

According to Jinshi reports, Citigroup's strategists have upgraded the rating of the U.S. stock market from "neutral" to "overweight," stating that the increasing uncertainty of the war situation makes investors more inclined to choose companies with higher quality and stronger defenses. At the same time, they downgraded the rating of emerging market stocks from "overweight" to "neutral," citing that these markets are vulnerable to energy shocks and the strengthening of the dollar.

According to the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report, losses related to cryptocurrency fraud reached a record $11.366 billion, an increase of 22% compared to 2024. Among the 181,565 related complaints received, the elderly population aged 60 and above reported losses of $4.4 billion, accounting for nearly 40% of the total loss amount.Cryptocurrency investment fraud remains the primary source of losses, involving amounts of $7.2 billion. Losses from cryptocurrency ATM and kiosk scams amounted to $389 million, a year-on-year increase of 58%. Additionally, complaints involving AI reached 22,364, with losses totaling $893 million, of which approximately $658.7 million was related to cryptocurrency. In regional statistics, California topped the list with cryptocurrency-related losses of $2.099 billion.

According to The Block, Nasdaq-listed company Currenc Group Inc. has commissioned Securitize to tokenize its common stock, a move that will enable features such as around-the-clock trading, fractional ownership, and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications for the stock.Securitize is currently a leading institution in the tokenization space and has recently been entrusted to participate in the construction of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) around-the-clock tokenized securities platform.It is worth noting that in the field of on-chain compliant stock issuance, SuperState has previously accumulated a significant amount of business, with institutions such as Galaxy, Forward, and SharpLink choosing to complete on-chain stock issuance through its platform.