Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs have committed $50 million to Aptos development, with a particular focus on AI agent infrastructure and research, including support for two products it shipped last year to meet rising demand for onchain AI agent activity. 

Those products include Decibel, an AI-powered onchain order book and perpetuals exchange that launched on the Aptos mainnet in February, and Shelby, a decentralized storage protocol that seeks to support the workloads of AI agents, the Aptos Foundation said on Thursday.

“Autonomous agents are already transacting onchain at frequencies no human can match, routing to whatever venue is fastest, most consistent, and least gameable,” it said.

Aptos joins a growing number of crypto protocols seeking opportunities in supporting the agentic AI economy. Aptos said there is a need to build infrastructure that offers sub-second finality and systems that “run 24/7 with no human to escalate to.”

AI agents can act as personal assistants for people, both at home and in the workplace, completing everyday tasks on their behalf, whether it be booking a flight, making a shopping purchase or executing a high-level trade onchain.

The Aptos ecosystem’s “full stack” plan for markets and machines. Aptos Network

Last month, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong predicted there will be “more AI agents transacting online than humans very soon,” echoing comments from Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire in January that “literally billions of AI agents” will be transacting onchain in three to five years.

The World Economic Forum is expecting a boom too, having predicted in January that AI agents could become a $236 billion market by 2034, a 43-fold rise from its $5.4 billion market size in 2024.

AI agents use blue-chip stablecoins to transact

On Wednesday, Amazon Web Services said it integrated Coinbase’s x402 payments protocol into Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to allow AI agents to make USDC (USDC) payments and access services through AWS-managed payment controls. 

A week earlier, crypto wallet startup Oobit launched a Visa-supported virtual card for AI agents to make online purchases in USDt (USDT) on behalf of businesses. 

The foundation said the Aptos (APT) token would play a central role in the ecosystem’s AI agent economy by being burned in transactions, required to access advanced AI agent features, and staked to improve performance. 

Related: How AI agents can reshape arbitrage in prediction markets 

The foundation said the $50 million would also be used to develop other aspects of the “Aptos stack,” which also includes integrations with neobanks, institutional platforms and wallet providers.

Aptos said it also plans to work on building encrypted mempools and offer confidential perps trading, among other things.

Aptos rolled out privacy-focused coin last month

Meanwhile, Aptos launched a privacy-focused coin — Confidential APT — on Aptos mainnet on April 24 as part of an effort to fix a long-standing trade-off between protecting user privacy and preserving transparency for compliance. 

Aptos Labs founding engineer Sherry Xiao, told Cointelegraph that Confidential APT could help businesses hide the salaries of employees who are paid onchain, as well as conceal treasury movements, settlement flows and trading strategies that competitors could otherwise see. 

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026 

US prosecutors said they have secured eight sentences in the last five months against people acting as US-based proxies for North Korea-based IT workers, shedding new light on how they have been able to infiltrate US companies. 

Two men have been sentenced this month alone. The Justice Department said Wednesday that separate courts sentenced Nashville resident Matthew Issac Knoot and New York resident Erick Ntekereze Prince for helping North Koreans work remotely for US companies.

The US perpetrators, known as “laptop farmers,” acted as recipients for laptops that US companies would send to new employees. They installed remote desktop software on the devices, allowing North Korean IT workers to use them remotely while appearing to work from the US.

North Korea’s remote worker scheme, which generates revenue for the government, has aggressively targeted technical roles at crypto companies in an effort to gain access to company assets or understand their infrastructure to steal or exploit them.

Source: FBI Cyber Division

Prosecutors said Knoot, who was sentenced on May 1, and Prince, sentenced on Wednesday, each received 18 months in prison. 

Prince was ordered to forfeit $89,000, the amount the North Korean workers paid him for the scheme, while Knoot was ordered to pay $15,100 in restitution to the companies and to forfeit an additional $15,100, the amount he earned from the scheme.

Together, the Justice Department said the pair generated $1.2 million in revenue for North Korea, and the scheme affected nearly 70 US companies.

Related: North Korea tied to heists worth $578M in April after Kelp DAO exploit

Last month, New Jersey residents Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang were given nine years in prison and seven years, eight months in prison, respectively, for hosting laptop farms for North Korea.

Prosecutors in that case said the scheme lasted multiple years, used the stolen identities of 80 people in the US and made over $5 million for the North Korean government.

According to a report by CrowdStrike in August, the number of companies that hired North Korean workers over the previous 12 months jumped 220%, with workers infiltrating more than 320 companies over that period.

The report noted that North Korean workers were heavily using artificial intelligence to automate and optimize the process of applying for and working in remote jobs.

The US charged four North Koreans in June last year, accusing them of stealing more than $900,000 in crypto after using fake identities to gain remote employment at an Atlanta-based blockchain research and development company and a Serbian crypto company.

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) has spiked by more than 70% over the past week as crypto traders have been paying closer attention to privacy-focused projects.

Zcash traded at about $346 on Friday, May 1, before hitting a seven-day peak of $593.86 on Wednesday. It has since settled at around $570 as of Friday, according to CoinGecko.

Pav Hundal, lead market analyst at crypto exchange Swyftx, told Cointelegraph that traders have begun paying closer attention to privacy projects “amid broader concerns about the impact of AI, quantum computing and financial surveillance on crypto.”

He added that ZEC was also boosted after Tushar Jain, the co-founder of the investment firm Multicoin Capital, said on Wednesday that it had “built a significant position” in ZEC since February.

Zcash is one of the more prominent privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, trailed by its significant rival Monero (XMR), and Jain said it is an attractive investment as “institutions will increasingly seek private assets to protect themselves” from what he claimed was a “political trend to seize private wealth.”

Several crypto firms have also recently released new privacy features. The Ethereum scaling solution Polygon launched private stablecoin payments on Sunday, while Aptos Labs’ privacy feature Confidential APT, which conceals token balances and transfer amounts, went live on the mainnet in April.

The market intelligence platform Santiment said in an X post on Wednesday that Zcash was “emphatically rebounding,” as fear of missing out and social media mentions of Zcash spiked along with its price.

Santiment pointed to a lack of government trust as a possible catalyst for the surge in interest from retail traders. 

Source: Santiment

“The crowd is increasingly viewing privacy-focused assets as a hedge against growing surveillance concerns, tighter exchange regulations and expanding AI-driven data tracking across financial platforms,” Santiment said.

Related: Dash Evolution chain integrates Zcash Orchard privacy pool

“At the same time, lower market caps across many privacy coins have traders eyeing them as high-upside momentum plays during this mild altcoin rally crypto has seen so far in May,” it added.

Zcash rally could be short-lived

Privacy was a significant investment theme for crypto in 2025, with privacy-focused tokens surging last year despite a broader downturn in the rest of the market.  

Zcash nearly crossed $700 in November, its highest price since 2018, while fellow privacy coin Monero reached a new all-time high of $797.73 in January.

However, neither held on to the gains, and Swyftx’s Hundal said that the recent rally could also be short-lived.

“Zcash’s move has some hallmarks of a narrative rotation into privacy coins,” Hundal said. “I’d be careful calling it a clean fundamental repricing just yet. We need more time to see how durable investor interest is.” 

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026 

Nearly half of US voters are willing to cross party lines to get clear crypto regulation off the ground, while public support for the CLARITY Act could bring an electoral benefit for politicians, according to a new survey from HarrisX.

The poll included responses from 2,008 registered voters from May 1-4. It found that 52% of respondents support the CLARITY Act, with just 11% opposed. 

About half, or 47%, said they would consider voting for a candidate outside their preferred party if that candidate backed the bill and their own party did not. Among crypto users, that number jumped to 72%.

“Passing the CLARITY Act is a bipartisan, winning issue,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on X on Thursday. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev added: “There’s real momentum now to finally get CLARITY across the finish line. One more small push and we establish the legislative foundation to ensure American dominance in digital finance.”

Source: HarrisX

The crypto industry has been waiting for the CLARITY Act to move through the US legislative process. It is expected to provide long-awaited regulatory clarity for crypto and could help the country become a major hub for crypto and digital finance.

The HarrisX poll also highlighted strong bipartisan support for the bill, with 55% of Democrats, 58% of Republicans and 42% of independents supporting it. Public support for the bill could also give senators a 20-point electoral advantage, it said

Related: Bitmine’s Tom Lee says ‘crypto spring’ has already begun

Some predict the CLARITY Act will receive additional markups as soon as next week.

Speaking at the Consensus 2026 crypto industry conference in Miami on Wednesday, Coinbase’s vice president of US policy, Kara Calvert, said her “prediction is that we have a markup next week” from the Senate Banking Committee.

Calvert stressed that bipartisan support will get the bill across the line, saying it needs at least 60 votes to pass the Senate, but she is unsure how things will unfold in the coming days.

“That means you need Democrats. You need a bipartisan bill, and we have all been working really hard to make sure that bipartisanship holds. I think the big question is, how do these votes shape up over the next few days?”

The timeline for a vote may still be months away, however. US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand recently suggested additional markups are required before the bill can progress, predicting a Senate vote in August.

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026 

PI is among the poorest performers today.

Despite the ongoing protocol updates and major high-profile appearances from the project’s co-founders at one of the most influential cryptocurrency conferences for the year, the native token experienced another painful rejection in the past 24 hours.

This behavior continues to raise questions about its overall state, as this is yet another classic sell-the-news moment.

PI’s Decline

Recall that the Pi Network protocol updates began in late February with the introduction of version 19.6. Since then, the new versions have been deployed almost like clockwork, and the latest was announced at the start of the month – v22. Moreover, the team set a deadline for the implementation of the next one in its roadmap – v23, which should be completed by May 15.

In addition, they continue to publish different posts about other aspects of the overall ecosystem, such as the completion of more than 520 million tasks from a million verified users by combining human input with AI.

Perhaps even more notable was the feature of the two project co-founders, Dr. Chengdiao Fan and Nicolas Kokkalis, at the 2026 Consensus conference in Miami. As reported yesterday, Dr. Fan took the Convergence Stage to talk about how users can align web3, AI, and blockchain for utility. She also distinguished Pi Network from other cryptocurrency projects mainly in the token usage regard.

Yet, none of those developments has managed to produce a long-lasting positive impact on the native token. PI is deep in the red today, slumping to $0.166 minutes ago. This means that the asset has plunged by over 11% since its local peak at $0.188 marked on May 6.

Not the First Time

PI’s latest breakout attempt came ahead of the Miami conference, and the asset plunged immediately after both co-founders had completed their appearances. This appears to be a classic sell-the-news event for the asset, and is far from the first such occasion.

In March, massive hype built ahead of the so-called PiDay (March 14) and the major listing on Kraken. The token exploded as most of the market stagnated, going from $0.17 to $0.30 within just a few days. Once PI actually went live for trading on the veteran US exchange and PiDay passed, it plummeted instantly to its starting point, wiping out roughly $1 billion from its market cap.

Ethereum continues to trade within a broader consolidation structure as the market struggles to establish sustained bullish momentum. Nevertheless, weakening momentum indicators and growing signs of seller activity suggest that the market could be preparing for another corrective move in the short term.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, ETH is showing a notable bearish divergence between the RSI indicator and price action. While the asset recently attempted to stabilize near the $2.3K-$2.4K region, the RSI has been forming lower highs, signaling weakening bullish momentum beneath the surface. At the same time, the recent price action has become increasingly choppy and indecisive, further highlighting the presence of sellers around the current levels.

This combination of bearish divergence, weakening momentum, and unstable price behavior increases the probability of a downward move toward lower support zones in the coming days. If such a decline unfolds, the 100-day moving average around the $2.2K region will likely become the next important defensive line for buyers. A loss of this level could expose Ethereum to deeper corrections toward the broader $2K support range.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

On the 4-hour chart, ETH is currently facing a significant hurdle at the upper boundary of the recent short-term range near the $2.4K region. Despite several attempts, buyers have repeatedly failed to secure a breakout above this resistance area, signaling a lack of strong bullish momentum and continued seller presence at higher prices.

As a result, the market appears vulnerable to another corrective move toward the lower boundary of the range around the $2.2K support zone. This level is particularly important because price behavior there will likely determine the next directional move. If the $2.2K region fails to hold, Ethereum could quickly extend its decline toward the major $2K support area, which remains one of the most critical demand zones on the higher timeframes.

Sentiment Analysis

From an on-chain perspective, the Exchange Reserve metric is beginning to show signs of increasing sell-side pressure. This indicator tracks the amount of ETH held on centralized exchanges, and rising exchange reserves are typically interpreted as a signal that more coins are becoming available for potential selling activity.

Recently, the chart has displayed a noticeable surge in exchange reserves, suggesting that market participants may be preparing to distribute holdings or reduce exposure. If this increase continues in the coming days, it could add further selling pressure to the market and support the bearish scenario currently reflected in the technical structure as well.

Overall, Ethereum remains trapped within a fragile consolidation phase beneath key resistance levels. The weakening momentum, bearish RSI divergence, and rising exchange reserves collectively suggest that the market could face renewed downside pressure unless buyers manage to reclaim the $2.4K region with stronger momentum.

Shiba Inu’s total holder base is inching toward 1.6 million.

The team behind Shiba Inu unveiled certain ecosystem updates that may favor the bulls.

Despite the progress, the token has underperformed lately and is no longer the second-largest meme coin.

The New Record

Earlier this week, Shibarium’s X account revealed that the total number of SHIB holders has surged by 1,100 in a single day, reaching a new all-time high of 1,585,022.

This jump is generally seen as positive for the meme coin because a growing holder base often reflects rising interest and confidence in the project. More investors may also stabilize demand, which could support the price during future market swings.

Additionally, the team disclosed that the burn rate ratio has soared by triple digits, daily active addresses have climbed past 150,000, and trading volume spiked to almost $130 million.

The burning mechanism is specifically important for a potential price appreciation. The mechanism, adopted in 2022, aims to reduce SHIB’s overall supply, making the coin scarcer and more valuable over time. The past 24 hours brought another rise in the burn rate, though not nearly as large as the one mentioned above. Just under 3.3 million SHIB have been removed from circulation for the day, marking a modest 7% increase.

The total amount of coins destroyed over the years inches toward 411 trillion, worth roughly $7.35 billion. It is worth noting that a significant share of that figure stems from Vitalik Buterin’s historic burn in 2021, when he scorched around 410 trillion SHIB in one move.

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The Price Keeps Sliding

Besides the aforementioned updates, the Shibarium team noted that more than 133 billion SHIB moved off exchanges earlier this week. Nonetheless, this hasn’t been enough to shift the broader trend, as investors continue sending more tokens from self-custody back to centralized platforms, thereby increasing immediate selling pressure. According to CryptoQuant, the total SHIB exchange reserves recently soared to approximately 82.2 trillion, the highest level since January.

Another factor that may hamper a decisive revival of the token is the stalled progress on Shibarium. Daily transactions processed on the protocol have diminished to mere thousands, signaling a shrinking number of active ecosystem participants.

As of press time, SHIB trades at around $0.00000637, a 50% plunge over the past year. Its market cap has slipped to $3.7 billion, pushing it down to the third-biggest meme coin as MemeCore (M) has taken its spot at nearly $5 billion.

A company that publicly commits to only ever accumulating BTC will give short sellers and arbitrageurs more angles to exploit.

Bitcoin advocate Samson Mow has pushed back against criticism that Strategy has betrayed its principles by saying it would sell BTC at some point in the future to pay dividends.

In a post published on X on May 7, Mow argued that public companies holding BTC need flexibility to protect shareholders, even if that means selling part of their stash at certain points.

Treasury Firms Need Optionality

According to the JAN3 CEO, the “never sell” rule was guidance for individual holders, not a binding corporate oath.

“As an individual HODLer you shouldn’t sell your Bitcoin for no reason. Avoid selling if you can. That is the message. It is not literally ‘never sell and take it to the grave,’” he wrote.

However, in his opinion, the calculus is entirely different for a publicly traded treasury company. His core point is about optionality. A company that publicly vows to only ever accumulate Bitcoin has, in his words, “handed a map to short sellers and arbitrageurs.” Therefore, the more tools Strategy holds, the fewer angles its opponents can exploit.

“A company with real optionality is hard to game: it might sell, might hedge, might issue, might buy,” he wrote.

Mow insisted that Strategy’s goal shouldn’t be to never sell Bitcoin but to benefit and protect shareholders.

He pointed to his own work, where he has designed Bitcoin bonds for nation-states that have scheduled Bitcoin sales built directly into their structure, allowing the issuer to sell BTC after a lockup period so as to return capital to bondholders. Without that mechanism, he said, “the instrument could not function.”

The BTC enthusiast drew a direct parallel to Strategy’s STRC preferred stock, describing it as an instrument designed to strip out Bitcoin’s volatility and share upside with investors who want asymmetric exposure without the drawdowns.

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Mow also flagged a post from Saylor himself, in which the executive chairman wrote that Strategy’s Bitcoin breakeven annual return rate is approximately 2.05%, implying that if the OG crypto grows faster than that, then the company can cover its dividends by selling it without diluting shareholders.

When one X user argued that Saylor should face scrutiny regardless, since he was the one who built his reputation on “never sell,” Mow gave a blunt reply:

“Corp strategy can’t be driven based on cool soundbites from a pod.”

Dividend Pressure and STRC Scrutiny Grow

The debate has grown alongside Strategy’s expanding use of preferred stock offerings, especially STRC. In its financial report for Q1 2026, where it revealed a $12.5 billion loss, Strategy said that STRC issuance has reached $8.5 billion, while the firm has raised nearly $12 billion this year.

Nevertheless, critics have questioned whether the model depends too heavily on issuing new securities, with Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff recently describing STRC as an “obvious Ponzi scheme” and claiming that the company lacks enough operating income outside its software business to sustain payouts.