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CryptoWorld News: The petition to abolish cryptocurrency taxes in South Korea has received over 52,000 signatures and has been submitted to the National Assembly.

Changqiao Securities states that the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and mainland regulatory authorities have issued the latest cross-border securities regulation requirements, standardizing services aimed at mainland investors, covering all overseas financial institutions. The company will steadily promote compliance according to the new regulations, with the scope of cleanup limited to two types of accounts: investment accounts opened with suspicious/fake documents, and zero-balance inactive investment accounts. Accounts that are normally compliant, hold genuine assets and positions are not within the scope of cleanup. There will be zero tolerance for fake account openings, and strict compliance will be enforced.

Cosmos Hub governance proposal to integrate Osmosis was not approved, narrowly losing by a small margin. Osmosis expressed gratitude to the community, validators, and participants for their support; the outcome was slightly different from expectations. Osmosis will continue to operate as an independent profit-generating blockchain. In the coming weeks, the next phase of development will be promoted, prioritizing user safety and business continuity; related arrangements will be announced soon.

WSPN officially announces the launch of W Agent, a payment plugin designed for the AI agent economy. Based on W Checkout, AI agents can independently handle merchant discovery, order placement, and stablecoin settlement, covering multiple chains while balancing efficiency and compliance. Unlike most solutions that only support one-way payments, W Agent supports both payments and receipts, and in the future, it will also enable synchronized payments in fiat currency and stablecoins, aiming to make AI transactions as simple as a conversation.

Data from May 23 shows that the U.S. stock market CAPE in 2026 is approximately 39.5–41.7, reaching a 25-year high, second only to the 1999 bubble. Analysis suggests that the main driver of the rise is the AI concept, with a few tech giants dominating the S&P 500; however, unlike the many unprofitable companies at that time, AI leaders have cash flow, mature business models, and high profit margins. Investment has expanded into data centers, energy, and enterprise applications. Warning that the market is highly concentrated among a few AI giants, if interest rates rise, AI commercialization underperforms expectations, or growth slows, valuations will be pressured and volatile. History shows that after high CAPE levels, returns over the next decade are mostly in the low single digits.

ME News, April 17 (UTC+8): French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said that Europe needs more euro-denominated stablecoins and encouraged EU banks to explore tokenized deposits. Lescure also supports initiatives from, including, BBVA, ING, UniCredit, and BNP.

The Southern District of New York Federal Court has sentenced Celsius's former Chief Revenue Officer Roni Cohen-Pavon to time served and ordered him to be released under one year of supervised release. He admitted to fraud and manipulating the CEL token price, involving significant user losses after Celsius's collapse in 2022. According to the agreement, he must pay over $1 million in restitution and a $40k fine.

CryptoWorld News: Swedish Prime Minister: Ukrainians do not want their drones to fall into friendly territory; sometimes this involves GPS jamming issues.

Crypto World News reports, according to Nikkei News, Kawasaki Heavy Industries will collaborate with NVIDIA to develop physical artificial intelligence and open a robotics center in the United States. NVIDIA's simulation technology will be applied to Kawasaki Heavy Industries' Corleo. In addition to NVIDIA, Kawasaki Heavy Industries will also partner with Microsoft and Fujitsu at the U.S. center. The collaboration between Kawasaki Heavy Industries and NVIDIA will initially focus on the medical and mobility sectors.

CryptoWorld news reports that Moonpay has announced the acquisition of Decent, a YC-backed cross-chain routing and liquidity company, and has simultaneously launched an institution-focused on-chain trading API product called Moonpay Trade. Moonpay said that Moonpay Trade will integrate Decent’s cross-chain routing, bridging, and liquidity infrastructure, as well as Moonpay’s existing fiat on/off-ramp and compliance systems, supporting on-chain execution, settlement, exchange, and payments across more than 200 chains and protocols. This is Moonpay’s fourth acquisition this year; previously, it had acquired Dflow, Dawn, and Sodot.

Google I/O 2026 introduces Gemini API Managed Agents preview, cloud-based transient invocation, developers only need to configure AGENTS.md and SKILL.md to define system roles and skills. Managed agents run in isolated Linux sandboxes, supporting multi-step reasoning, tool invocation, code execution, file reading and writing, and real-time data fetching, with automatic session save and restore. Similar to Anthropic Claude Managed Agents, it is now available in Gemini API preview and Google AI Studio Playground templates, with the enterprise version Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform also in private preview.

CryptoWorld News reports, citing Hong Kong Economic Daily, that Dingtian Financial has been issued a stablecoin issuer license by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and announced that it successfully completed a transfer testing of the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin 「hkdap」 (“hkd at par”) on the Ethereum mainnet with OSL Group and “Cheetah Trading,” a licensed trading platform under Futu Holdings. The test covered the process of converting fiat Hong Kong dollar funds into reserve assets, with Standard Chartered Hong Kong ensuring full support; all test tokens were redeemed in full after the completion. The official revealed that hkdap is planned to begin phased official issuance at the end of the second quarter of this year.

CryptoWorld News, Iranian Ambassador to France Mohammad Amin-Nejad stated in an interview with the media that when discussing whether Iran will consider withdrawing from OPEC, it is very difficult to distinguish between feasible and unfeasible options in the discussion of the international order. He firmly believes that the national interests of various countries will drive them to seek membership in international or regional organizations, although sometimes national interests may also compel some countries to leave these organizations. He added that OPEC is a truly valuable achievement jointly obtained by oil-producing countries. Despite experiencing various fluctuations and changes in the global landscape, the organization still exists and safeguards the interests of its member countries and their peoples.

CryptoWorld News reports that Trump stated Venezuela's oil will be shipped to Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska in the United States.

SpaceX disclosed to the SEC that the total R&D investment in the Starship project has exceeded $15 billion, surpassing Elon Musk's 2018 estimate of $2 billion to $10 billion.
In 2025, R&D spending is approximately $3 billion, and in 2024, about $1.84 billion, indicating that expenditures are accelerating.
The manufacturing and launch of Starship are still taking place at the Starbase in southern Texas.