Southeast Asia Blockchain Week 2026 returned to Bangkok on May 20 and 21, organized by ShardLab. Stablecoins, real-world asset tokenization, and AI-agent commerce led the agenda as industry leaders mapped Asia's shift from speculation to settlement and institutional adoption.
The Trezor Safe 7 just won a 2026 Red Dot Award for Product Design. Head of Hardware Adam Budínský talks to CIM about the device's open, auditable, secure element, the push to end blind signing on Ethereum, the touchscreen threat model, and why self-custody adoption still lags in India.
OKX has made the Pi (PI) token available to compliant US users for the first time, the Pi Core Team said on May 21. The move follows Kraken's March listing and adds a second US access point, even as token unlocks and weak demand keep PI pinned near $0.15.
WebX 2026 returns to Tokyo as Japan enters a new phase of regulated digital asset growth and institutional participation. The conference is expected to draw more than 15000 attendees and feature speakers from leading global organizations across finance, technology, and government.
KuCoin is framing its Australian push as an 'evolution,' pairing its November 2025 AUSTRAC registration with the launch of KuCard, a Mastercard-linked debit card built with Immersve that lets users spend USDC at any Mastercard merchant, including via Apple Pay and Google Pay.
The first two weeks of May delivered a $1 billion Kalshi Series F, Circle's $222 million Arc presale, a $600 million Kraken-Reap deal, Elliptic's $120 million Series D, a fresh OCC bank charter for Augustus, and GVFL's first institutional check into Indian blockchain firm Antier Solutions.
LayerZero issued a public apology on Friday for the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit, admitting its single-verifier setup should never have secured high-value cross-chain transactions. The reversal follows three weeks of blame-shifting and comes as Kelp migrates rsETH to Chainlink's CCIP.
OxPay Financial's subsidiary Oxygen7 received a full Financial Services Licence from Bhutan's Gelephu Financial Services Office on April 29, 2026, clearing the way for a regulated crypto payments and stablecoin remittance platform targeting GMC's tourism and B2B sectors.
Bitcoin trades near $80,000. Ethereum ETFs printed 10 straight inflow days. CME lists AVAX and SUI futures on May 4. The CLARITY Act markup is expected mid-month. Here are 10 crypto to watch in May 2026, ranked by market cap, with the upgrades, regulatory moves, and on-chain shifts driving each.
PI is up 11% this week as co-founders Dr. Chengdiao Fan and Nicolas Kokkalis are confirmed speakers at Consensus 2026 in Miami (May 5–7). Protocol 23, introducing smart contracts, has been moved forward to May 11. Here is what the pi price prediction landscape looks like heading in.
CNB Governor Aleš Michl became the first sitting central bank governor to keynote The Bitcoin Conference, arguing that a 1% Bitcoin allocation could lift portfolio returns without raising risk. The CNB previously bought a $1 million digital asset test portfolio in November 2025.
At Money20/20 Asia 2026 in Bangkok, the lines between traditional finance and DeFi continued to blur. From J.P. Morgan’s blockchain scale to EMURGO’s self custody push, the event revealed a clear shift toward interoperable, user controlled financial systems.
KelpDAO's 1-of-1 bridge verifier was exploited for $292M on April 18. Aave lost $9B in 48 hours. $5B in USDT/USDC locked. $13B DeFi TVL gone. Justin Sun-linked wallet exited $274M in 21 minutes.
Drift Protocol was drained for $285M by North Korean hackers on April 1. Circle didn't freeze $230M in stolen USDC. Now Tether is backing a $148M recovery and Drift relaunches on USDT.
Hong Kong just handed its first stablecoin licences to the same banks that print its banknotes. The HKMA chose HSBC and Standard Chartered's Anchorpoint venture from 36 applicants — a deliberate bet that trusted institutions make the safest foundation for digital money.
Running just 230 TH/s against a 1 ZH/s network, one solo miner found Bitcoin block 943,411 and pocketed 3.139 BTC, $210K, via CKPool. It's the 312th solo win in CKPool's history.
Loughborough University physicists have built a neuromorphic chip that processes AI tasks directly in hardware using brain-like connections — achieving 2,000x lower energy use. Here's what it means for DePIN, on-chain AI agents, and decentralised compute.
Google Quantum AI researchers showed in March 2026 that breaking Bitcoin and Ethereum's ECC encryption requires roughly 20 times fewer computing resources than earlier estimates, potentially exposing 6.9 million BTC in wallets with visible public keys.
The crypto industry is not ignorant of its darker dimensions. Money laundering, terrorism financing, cybercrime, the limits of sovereign regulation,…
Larry Fink says tokenization could do for finance what the internet did to mail — and BlackRock isn't waiting around. With $150B already in digital markets, the world's largest asset manager is building the future it's describing.
The Kingdom of Bhutan has transferred $72.3 million in Bitcoin, continuing to reduce its national crypto reserves. With holdings dropping from a peak of 13,295 BTC down to roughly 4,400 BTC, market watchers are questioning the future of the nation's sovereign digital asset strategy.
Morgan Stanley is advancing its digital asset strategy, revealing "MSBT" as the ticker for its proposed spot Bitcoin ETF. In a recent SEC filing, the bank disclosed a $1 million seed investment for initial liquidity, with BNY Mellon and Coinbase tapped to support the fund's operations.
The acquisition, disclosed by the company last week, represents Bitmine’s largest ether purchase of the year in token terms. Based on current market prices, the transaction was valued at approximately $140 million.
India has launched a Virtual Asset Lab under the Financial Intelligence Unit to track offshore crypto exchanges targeting Indian users without regulatory approval. The initiative uses AI monitoring and blockchain analytics to detect non compliant platforms and strengthen enforcement of crypto regulations.
