BitByBitBenny

On May 15th, General Tensor announced the completion of its acquisition of Backprop Finance, a subsidiary of Tensorplex Labs. Backprop is one of the largest decentralized trading platforms by trading volume within the Bittensor ecosystem. After the acquisition, General Tensor will cover approximately one-third of the trading volume on the Bittensor network. Previously, General Tensor raised a total of $5 million through Pre-Seed and Seed rounds, with investors including DCG, Lvna Capital, and Good Morning Holdings, led by Lok Lee and supported by Goldman Sachs. Backprop Finance mainly facilitates token exchange and subnet filtering for the Bittensor Dynamic TAO (dTAO) subnet Alpha token trading.

Banking界 News, according to Yahoo Finance reports, Bank of America (BofA) recently released its Q1 13F filing showing that its investment exposure in cryptocurrency ETFs has reached nearly $53 million. The largest investment is in the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF (IBIT), with a holding value of about $37 million, and it was significantly increased during the quarter. At the same time, the bank also allocated to multiple Bitcoin products including BITB, FBTC, and Grayscale's offerings. Notably, the bank reduced some of its Ethereum and Solana-related ETF exposures in the first quarter. Additionally, the bank holds approximately 3.96 million shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR), valued at nearly $660 million.

ME News Report, May 15 (UTC+8), Myanmar proposed introducing the death penalty for criminals who use violent means to coerce victims into participating in cryptocurrency scam centers. According to the draft of the country's "Anti-Cyber Scam Law," criminals who use violence, torture, illegal arrest and detention, or cruel treatment to force others to commit online scams will be sentenced to death. The bill will be submitted to the parliament for review in June. Additionally, operators of scam centers or perpetrators of crypto scams will face life imprisonment. Last month, the Myanmar president reduced all death sentences to life imprisonment. (Source: PANews)

BlockBeats News, May 21 — Bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturer Foundation announced the completion of a $6.4 million funding round, led by Fulgur Ventures with participation from Arche Capital. This funding brings Foundation's total funding to $16.5 million.
The new funds will be used to accelerate its business expansion from Bitcoin self-custody wallets to areas such as identity verification, multi-factor authentication, and AI agents (AI agents) authorization. (The Block)

BlockBeats News, May 22 — According to OnchainLens monitoring, the whale Evaded (@ICanPlug) increased its ETH long position to 18,100 coins, worth $38.5 million. It also holds ZEC and HYPE long positions, with a total unrealized profit of over $7.6 million.

Mars Finance News: According to documents from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Liu Liu Mei Co., Ltd. (formerly Liu Liu Orchard Group Co., Ltd.) has submitted an application for listing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with CITIC Securities and Guoyuan International serving as joint sponsors.

According to Bloomberg, former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo, known as "Crypto Dad" for his early support of digital assets, has joined Jefferies Financial Group as a senior advisor focused on investment banking. During his tenure, CBOE and CME Group launched Bitcoin futures contracts for the first time and promoted self-certification of Bitcoin derivatives.

ME News Report, May 15 (UTC+8), 0x Co-CEO Will Warren tweeted that he will step down but remains a major shareholder and will continue to serve on the board. "Our industry has entered a new phase. It is highly competitive with many participants. Certain aspects of our organizational structure and operational model have slowed us down in recent years, with the co-CEO structure being a major factor." (Source: Foresight News)

CryptoWorld News: A Pakistani senator stated in an interview with the media that negotiations between Iran and Pakistan, as well as between Pakistan and the United States, are still ongoing. Pakistan is making every effort to bring all parties back to the negotiating table, reduce disagreements, reach an agreement, and end the war. He also said that US-Iran negotiations are moving in the right direction, progress has been made in talks between Iran and the US, and he is optimistic about this.

BlockBeats News, May 22 — U.S. and Brent crude oil prices continued to decline, briefly falling below the $100 mark. They have now rebounded to $100.25 per barrel and $100.31 per barrel, respectively.
On the news front, according to Iran's Labor News Agency (ILNA) citing Arab Satellite TV, the final draft of the U.S.-Iran agreement has been reached through Pakistan's mediation and is expected to be announced within the next few hours.

CoinWorld News reports that market sources say AMD also plans to fully expand its data center CPU product roadmap to TSMC's 2nm process technology.

Anthropic is currently in talks with Microsoft, planning to lease computing power based on Microsoft's self-developed AI server chips, providing services through Microsoft data centers to meet the ongoing growth in their model training and inference needs. If the deal is finalized, it will represent a significant advancement in Microsoft's commercialization of AI chips.

According to financial media reports, RoboStrategy (BOT) appointed Andrew Kang as CEO. Kang is the co-founder of a robotics and embodied AI investment fund, and RoboStrategy went public on NASDAQ in 2026, focusing on related investments. The stock price is $24.21, with a market capitalization of approximately $491 million, and the portfolio includes Figure AI, Apptronik, Dyna Robotics, Dexmate, and others. Kang is also a founding partner of Mechanism Capital, which was established in 2020; RoboStrategy is its first actively managed investment firm raising external funds.

ME News Report, May 15 (UTC+8), prediction market data shows that "Cavaliers vs Pistons" had a trading volume of $2.1M in the past 24 hours, with market engagement significantly increasing.

According to Eleanor Terrett, Hester Peirce, a member of the U.S. SEC and head of the Cryptocurrency Working Group, will join Regent University School of Law in Virginia as an associate professor in November 2026, teaching courses on securities regulation, financial markets, digital assets, and public policy, indicating that her SEC term is nearing its end. She is known in the industry as the "Crypto Mom" for her long-standing support of the crypto industry and advocacy for transparent regulation.

Mercury announces the completion of a $200 million new funding round, led by TCV, with participation from Sequoia, a16z, and Coatue. The company provides banking services for startups, with over 300k customers and an annual revenue of approximately $650 million. The AI startup boom has driven demand for new company accounts, becoming the main growth driver. Mercury received conditional approval from the OCC and plans to apply for a federal banking license to expand loan and payment network access (such as Zelle), reducing reliance on partner banks. The founders stated that their future goal is to go public independently, rather than being acquired.

ME News report: On May 20 (UTC+8), LayerZero Labs released its latest incident report stating that on April 18, 2026, the KelpDAO rsETH cross-chain bridge built on its cross-chain communication protocol was attacked, and approximately 116,500 rsETH (about $292 million) was stolen. Multiple security agencies, including Mandiant and CrowdStrike, as well as independent researchers, attributed the attack to the North Korea-linked hacker group TraderTraitor (UNC4899). The report shows that the attack began on March 6, 2026, when the attackers used social engineering to compromise the LayerZero developer account, obtain session keys, and infiltrate.

Mars Finance News: Santander Bank's fintech venture capital fund Mouro Capital announced the completion of its third fund's $400 million first round of fundraising. The investor is also Santander Bank. The fund will prioritize investments in artificial intelligence, blockchain, capital markets, and wealth management, aiming to penetrate the deep intersection of financial services, artificial intelligence, and enterprise software. It is reported that Mouro Capital previously also participated in the DeFi platform M^ZERO.