Circle Technology Services said Wednesday it has partnered with cross-border payments platform Nium to connect USDC-based settlement with "last-mile" global payouts. The deal brings Nium into the Circle Payments Network, giving financial institutions a single integration to reach payouts across more than 190 countries and 100 currencies, including delivery to accounts, wallets and cards.

On May 26, OpenZeppelin co-founder Manuel Aráoz said he now views all DeFi as unsafe and claimed AI coding agents have shifted the advantage to attackers. He added he has been urging friends and family to exit positions, citing Aave, MakerDAO, and Compound among protocols he no longer considers safe. Others on X disputed the claim, arguing most recent losses stemmed from operational and credential failures rather than smart-contract bugs.

Ethereum is trading around $2,080 after sliding from the mid-May rejection near $2.4K, with the 100-day moving average near ~$2.2k acting as resistance. The daily structure shows weakening momentum and a key downside reference at the $1.8K demand zone, while the 4-hour chart outlines a possible inverse head-and-shoulders that would need a close above ~$2.15K to confirm. On-chain, exchange reserves are cited at 14.8M ETH, with a recent rise from 14.4M in early May worth watching for potential sell-side pressure.

XRP is trading around $1.33 as May nears its end, extending a steady slide that has pushed it toward levels not seen since March. The $1.20 support area is now nearby, while $1.40 has turned into resistance after the 100-day moving average was lost again; on the XRP/BTC chart, price is near 1,760 sats with 1,730 sats as the next key support.

U.S. crude prices slid on Wednesday after WTI fell 5.7% to $88.53 a barrel by 8:33 a.m. ET, while Brent dropped about 4.7% to $94.91. The move followed a report that Iran has committed to return commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to pre-war levels within one month of a framework agreement with the U.S.

In May 2026, Ethereum ETFs logged 10 straight outflow sessions, totaling $216 million as net assets slipped from $12.07 billion to $11.90 billion. The pressure intensified after May 23, 2026, when a Laser Digital analyst tied near-term ETH weakness to the SEC delaying its review of a tokenized stock trading plan. Over May 11–15, BlackRock’s ETHA alone posted $184.59 million in weekly outflows, while flows rotated toward XRP and SOL products.

Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten said institutional desks often sell Bitcoin first on weekends because it remains liquid while traditional markets are closed. He pointed to GBTC’s post-conversion ETF outflows of more than $21 billion and argued ETFs broadened awareness but left many investors with price exposure rather than on-chain ownership.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin highlighted Kohaku's wallet feature that generates a new Ethereum address for each dapp a user connects to, arguing that relying on one global address is a privacy norm that needs to change. The approach aims to reduce onchain metadata linking across activities such as DEX use and lending, while Kohaku also advances privacy tooling through its v0.0.1-alpha.21 update that enables ERC-4337 relaying for Railgun transactions.