Crypto Daily Update Americas: Bitcoin Faces Risks from Regulatory Setbacks and Decreased Demand

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

As the cryptocurrency market, particularly bitcoin (BTC), awaits the Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates set for Wednesday, an unusual development has surfaced that may heavily influence market sentiment: renewed skepticism surrounding U.S. crypto regulations.

On Tuesday, it was reported that Senate Democrats are reluctant to advance a significant bill regarding stablecoins, owing to apprehensions about President Donald Trump’s increasing financial involvement in cryptocurrencies.

When Trump assumed the presidency, many anticipated a straightforward path for crypto regulation. In retrospect, that optimism may have been unfounded. With the president’s active participation in digital assets through initiatives linked to his family, such as WLFI and various memecoins, there has been increasing opposition, potentially hampering regulatory advancements.

This situation could compel investors to reassess regulatory risks at a time when indicators for BTC and XRP suggest potential pullbacks. Additionally, recent findings from CryptoQuant indicate a decline in bitcoin interest among American investors.

“In the past month, the premium had a significant recovery but is trending down again, which corresponds with the latest correction in BTC prices,” noted CryptoQuant contributor AbramChart.

On a positive note, U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) experienced three consecutive days of net inflows.

Acting CFTC Chairman Caroline Pham shared with crypto journalist Eleanor Terret that the derivatives market regulator intends to observe several pilot programs focused on tokenization to evaluate the technology and its real-world functionality.

Turning to traditional markets and macroeconomic factors, the Taiwan dollar forward contracts show immense pressure on the U.S. dollar, suggesting that the greenback may continue to depreciate against Asian currencies and potentially other major currencies like the euro. The overall weakness of the USD could provide a supportive environment for cryptocurrencies. If volatility persists in the FX market, investors might gravitate towards gold and possibly bitcoin, unless this leads to a broader risk-off sentiment, which might negatively impact BTC.

Another encouraging development comes from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who mentioned that current U.S. interest rates reflect sovereign credit risks, not solely long-term growth and inflation expectations. This indicates that rates are artificially elevated due to the U.S. government’s current status as a risk premium, as noted by the pseudonymous observer EndGame Macro. A shift away from U.S. assets towards alternative investments may therefore continue. Remain vigilant!

What to Watch

Crypto:
- May 6, 7:15 a.m.: Casper Network (CSPR) will launch its Version 2.0 mainnet, offering quicker transactions, enhanced smart contract capabilities, and improved staking features to promote enterprise adoption.
- May 7, 6:05 a.m.: The Pectra hard fork will go live on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet at epoch 364032, combining the Prague execution layer hard fork and the Electra consensus layer upgrade.
- May 8: Judge John G. Koeltl is set to sentence Alex Mashinsky, founder and former CEO of the defunct Celsius Network, at the Southern District Court of New York.
Macro
- May 6, 9 a.m.: S&P Global will release the April purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data for Brazil.
  - Composite PMI Prev. 52.6
  - Services PMI Prev. 52.5
- May 6, 10 a.m.: A joint hearing of the U.S. House Financial Services and Agriculture Committees titled “American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets: A Blueprint for the 21st Century.” Livestream link.
- May 7, 2 p.m.: The Federal Reserve will announce its interest rate decision, followed by a livestream of the FOMC press conference 30 minutes later.
  - Federal Funds Rate Target Range Est. 4.25%-4.5% vs. Prev. 4.25%-4.5%
- May 8, 7 a.m.: The Bank of England will announce its interest rate decision, with a livestream of the Monetary Policy Report Press Conference 30 minutes after.
  - Bank Rate Est. 4.25% vs. Prev. 4.5%
Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
- May 6: Cipher Mining (CIFR), pre-market, $-0.08
- May 8: CleanSpark (CLSK), post-market, $-0.11
- May 8: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $1.88
- May 8: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market, $-0.10
- May 8: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market, $-0.52
- May 13: Semler Scientific (SMLR), post-market

Token Events

Governance votes & calls
- Uniswap DAO will vote on a proposal to pay Forse, a data analytics platform from StableLab, $60,000 in UNI to create an “analytics hub” that evaluates incentive programs across four additional blockchains. Voting concludes on May 6.
- Arbitrum DAO will cast votes on whether to allocate the final $10.7 million from its $35 million diversification fund into three dollar-based low-risk funds from WisdomTree, Spiko, and Franklin Templeton. Voting ends on May 8.
- May 6, 1:30 p.m.: MetaMask and Aave will organize an X Spaces session to discuss USDC utilization within Aave that can be spent via the MetaMask card.
- May 7, 7:30 a.m.: PancakeSwap will host an X Spaces AMA session regarding future trading strategies.
- May 7, 9 a.m.: Binance will conduct an AMA about its Binance Seeds program.
- May 7, 11 a.m.: Pendle will lead a Pendle Yield Talk: Stablecoin Alpha X Spaces session.
- May 8, 10 a.m.: Balancer and Euler will collaborate on an AMA session.
Unlocks
- May 7: Kaspa (KAS) will unlock 0.55% of its circulating supply valued at $13.24 million.
- May 9: Movement (MOVA) will release 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $8.97 million.
- May 11: Solayer (LAYER) will unlock 12.87% of its circulating supply worth $55.93 million.
- May 12: Aptos (APT) will unlock 1.82% of its circulating supply valued at $54.97 million.
- May 13: WhiteBIT Coin (WBT) will unlock 27.41% of its circulating supply worth $1.12 billion.
- May 15: Starknet (STRK) will unlock 4.09% of its circulating supply worth $16.34 million.
Token Launches
- May 7: Obol (OBOL) will be listed on multiple exchanges including Binance, Bitget, Bybit, Gate.io, and MEXC.
- May 16: Galxe (GAL), Litentry (LIT), Mines of Dalarnia (DAR), Orion Protocol (ORN), and PARSIQ (PRQ) will be delisted from Coinbase.

Conferences

CoinDesk's Consensus is scheduled in Toronto from May 14-16.

Day 1 of 2: Financial Times Digital Assets Summit (London)
Day 1 of 3: Stripe Sessions (San Francisco)
May 7-9: SALT’s Bermuda Digital Finance Forum 2025 (Hamilton, Bermuda)
May 11-17: Canada Crypto Week (Toronto)
May 12-13: Dubai FinTech Summit
May 12-13: Filecoin (FIL) Developer Summit (Toronto)
May 12-13: Latest in DeFi Research (TLDR) Conference (New York)
May 12-14: ACI’s 9th Annual Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance Forum on Fintech & Emerging Payment Systems (New York)
May 13: Blockchain Futurist Conference (Toronto)
May 13: ETHWomen (Toronto)
May 14-16: CoinDesk's Consensus 2025 (Toronto)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

Tokens from leading DeFi projects are gaining traction as users shift focus to fundamentals amid a stagnant market.
Hyperliquid’s HYPE token experienced a remarkable 72% rally in the past week, outperforming the majority of the top 100 tokens. The platform’s gas-free, order book-driven decentralized exchange model is attracting traders in quest of efficient and transparent trading settings.
AAVE has witnessed heightened activity following the integration of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin into its V3 Ethereum Core Market, aiming to bridge the gap between traditional finance and DeFi, which is likely to attract institutional investors.
Despite a recent security incident involving Curve Finance’s X account, CRV still recorded a 40% increase over the past week, underscoring ongoing investor confidence in its foundational protocol.
Kay Lu, CEO of HashKey Eco Labs, indicated that traders are gravitating towards projects with robust fundamentals and tokenomics as interest in memecoins wanes.

Derivatives Positioning

XMR, TAO, and ADA stand out among major cryptocurrencies in terms of growth in perpetual futures open interest over the last 24 hours, while XRP shows the highest negative cumulative volume delta, indicating increased selling pressure.
BTC’s funding rate is slightly positive, whereas ETH’s has shifted to marginally negative, suggesting a decline in bullish momentum.
CME futures basis has increased to between 5% and 10%, rekindling interest in cash-and-carry arbitrage strategies, according to Binance Research.
Trading activity in the Deribit options market has been mixed, with movements in May BTC calls and puts observed.

Market Movements

BTC has decreased by 0.19% since 4 p.m. ET Monday, currently at $94,160 (24hrs: -0.18%)
ETH has declined by 1.09% to $1,795.10 (24hrs: -0.66%)
CoinDesk 20 index is down by 1.05% at 2,675.34 (24hrs: -0.96%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate increased by 7 basis points to 2.964%
BTC funding rate sits at 0.0046% (5.1147% annualized) on Binance

DXY is down 0.14% to 99.69
Gold has risen 1.99% to $3,379.76/oz
Silver is up 2.13% at $32.99/oz
Nikkei 225 closed up 1.04% at 36,830.69
Hang Seng closed up 0.7% at 22,662.71
FTSE dropped 0.18% to 8,580.67
Euro Stoxx 50 fell 1.14% to 4,719.66
DJIA closed down 0.24% at 41,218.83
S&P 500 closed down 0.64% at 5,650.38
Nasdaq closed down 0.74% at 17,844.24
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed down 0.31% at 24,953.52
S&P 40 Latin America closed down 1.15% at 2,493.86
U.S. 10-year Treasury rate increased by 1 basis point to 4.36%
E-mini S&P 500 futures have fallen 0.74% to 5,629.75
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures have decreased by 1.05% to 19,845.50
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.61% to 41,067.00

Bitcoin Stats

BTC Dominance: 64.91 (0.13%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01910 (-0.52%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 908 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $50.13
Total Fees: 5.10 BTC / $480,379.20
CME Futures Open Interest: 143,680 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 28.1 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 7.97%

Technical Analysis

VIRTUAL, the native token of the Base-native Virtuals Protocol designed for creating and owning AI agents, has established support above the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of the January-April decline.
The breakout signals the potential for a rally towards the 38.2% Fibonacci level at $2.22.
VIRTUAL has been the top-performing token over the past month.

Crypto Equities

Strategy (MSTR): closed Monday at $386.53 (-1.99%), down 1.25% to $381.68 in pre-market
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $199.40 (-2.7%), down 0.63% to $198.15
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.51 (-1.23%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $13.09 (-9.6%), down 1.22% to $12.93
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.90 (-5.84%), down 1.27% to $7.80
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $8.75 (+0.11%)
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.09 (-8.17%), down 0.62% to $8.04
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $14.26 (-4.74%)
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $33.58 (-7.13%), down 0.24% to $33.50
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $41.28 (-7.84%), up 0.51% to $41.49

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: $425.5 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.63 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.17 million

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: $0 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.53 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.47 million

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility has fallen to the lowest level since last July. This situation makes options less expensive, a scenario that seasoned traders often favor.

While You Were Sleeping

Top U.S. CEOs, including those from BlackRock and Citi, are set to visit Saudi Arabia, coinciding with President Donald Trump’s arrival on May 13 for the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, aimed at enhancing trade and investment.
Bitcoin developers are planning to remove the OP_RETURN limit in the next software release, though the proposed change has polarized the community, with some advocating for cleaner UTXO management and others warning about potential spam concerns.
Long-term BTC holders may consider cashing out at a target price of $99,900, consistent with their behavior of selling upon achieving significant paper gains, according to insights from on-chain data.
VIRTUAL’s value surged by 200% in the past month, fueled by a $14.2 million influx from knowledgeable investors.
Ukrainian forces targeted Moscow with drones on the second consecutive night, leading to the closure of four Moscow airports due to drone interceptions shortly before the city’s planned World War II victory celebrations.
The Federal Reserve is facing a difficult situation regarding rate adjustments amid ongoing tariff issues and global supply chain disruptions.