Bitcoin traded slightly above $80,000 as $2.6 billion in crypto options were set to expire on Deribit, with traders bracing for near-term volatility. BTC again failed to retake $82,000 while ETH struggled around $2,300; at press time on May 15 BTC was $80,347.48, up 0.9% in 24 hours. The setup came after the U.S. Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act in a 15-9 vote on May 14.

Grove has introduced Basin, a blockchain-based liquidity facility supported by firms including BlackRock and Janus Henderson, aimed at speeding up redemptions for tokenized Treasury funds. The system is designed to offer investors access to as much as $1 billion in stablecoin liquidity per day while traditional settlement continues in the background. BlackRock's $2.2 billion BUIDL and the $1.1 billion Janus Henderson Anemoy Treasury Fund (JTRSY) are the first connected products.

Bitcoin (BTC) rose sharply after a quiet weekend, jumping from about $67,000 to nearly $69,600 within hours as broader risk sentiment shifted. The move followed reports of potential U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks, while a separate debate over Bitcoin’s long-term returns resurfaced alongside Strategy’s latest 4,871 BTC purchase for roughly $330 million.

CaixaBank has obtained authorization under the EU's MiCA framework to operate as a crypto-asset service provider. The approval enables the Spanish bank to offer customers crypto custody, trading-related order execution, and transfers, with a rollout planned in the coming months through its digital banking platform.

Drift Protocol suspended deposits and withdrawals after an exploit drained about $280 million via admin-level access. The Solana-based DEX said the attacker took over Security Council permissions using pre-approved transactions, then removed withdrawal limits and added a malicious asset. The incident underscores how governance, multisig approvals, and signing workflows can become key DeFi attack surfaces.

SWIFT says it is building a working version of a shared-ledger system that lets banks coordinate cross-border payments around the clock using tokenized deposits. The organization expects an MVP to process real transactions later this year while keeping existing banking rules and compliance frameworks in place.

U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy and Cynthia Lummis introduced the “Mined in America Act” to expand domestic Bitcoin mining and increase U.S.-made mining hardware. The proposal would add a voluntary certification program, limit equipment linked to foreign adversaries, and place a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve under Treasury policy. The U.S. currently accounts for about 38% of global mining power while roughly 97% of mining hardware comes from China.

Bitcoin security researcher Justin Drake said on March 31 that two new quantum-computing papers increased his estimate of a "Q-day" to a 10% chance by 2032, a point when widely used cryptography could be broken. He argued the work reduces the resources needed for attacks based on Shor's algorithm and could, in best cases, shrink key-cracking time to minutes, though the threat remains theoretical for now.

On March 27 in Miami, U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States should become the world’s "undisputed crypto capital" and a "Bitcoin superpower," casting digital assets as part of U.S. competitiveness. He also said he signed the GENIUS Act into law to create a "clear and simple" framework for dollar-backed stablecoins, while arguing against what he described as unnecessary restrictions.