Bitcoin slid nearly 10% to $74,027 on May 23 after a $766 million liquidation event hit leveraged positions, then rebounded to reclaim its monthly open. Bitfinex analysts say the bounce has struggled near the weekly open, with $79,000 framed as a heavy breakeven resistance level that could cap a near-term recovery.

On Monday, May 25, an unidentified wallet sent 107.1302 BTC (valued at more than $8.2 million) to a bitcoin burn address, making the funds permanently unspendable. The transfer, first flagged on Tuesday by Timechainindex.com founder Sani, lifted the address balance to 807.238 BTC, valued at $62.15 million. No onchain identity or clear connection to a protocol launch has been linked to the burn.

Strategy said it repurchased $1.5 billion principal of its 0% Convertible Senior Notes due 2029 for about $1.38 billion in cash on Tuesday, cutting total convertible obligations to $6.7 billion. It also reported buying 24,869 bitcoin using proceeds from STRC preferred stock and an at-the-market common stock program, bringing total holdings to 843,738 BTC and a year-to-date BTC Yield of 13.3%.

On May 25, Babylon Labs submitted a Temperature Check to Aave DAO proposing Trustless Bitcoin Vaults that would let users post native BTC on Aave V4 without bridges, wrappers, or custodians. The plan adds two Ethereum Mainnet Spokes to enable borrowing against BTC and to settle liquidations by swapping seized BTC into WBTC. Babylon Labs says the next steps could include ARFC review and later an onchain AIP vote if the snapshot sentiment is favorable.

Iranian officials arrived in Doha on May 25, 2026, to hold high-level discussions with U.S. counterparts on a peace framework that also covers the Strait of Hormuz. Markets reacted with Brent crude down roughly 4%–6% to about $95–$97 per barrel, while bitcoin traded near $77,699 and was up 1.47% over 24 hours.

Brent crude fell below $99 on May 24 after President Trump said a U.S.-Iran arrangement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was "largely negotiated," while bitcoin traded around $77,000 during the Memorial Day weekend. Brent was indicated near $98.87 in weekend CFD trading (about -4.87%), as BTC stayed in a tight $76,700–$77,200 range with U.S. venues set to be shut for May 25.

On May 24, 2026, Vitalik Buterin said the Ethereum Foundation will narrow its mission and operate as a smaller, more opinionated organization focused on censorship-resistance, privacy, and open infrastructure. He also stated the EF holds about 0.16% of all ETH, while he personally keeps nearly 90% of his net worth in ETH and about $40 million in onchain fiat already allocated to open-source projects.

Keyrock's May 2026 report says AI agents settled more than $73 million across about 176 million transactions since May 2025, with the average payment near $0.48. It adds that 76% of those transactions fall below card networks' $0.30 fixed-fee floor and that 98.6% of recorded payments were settled in USDC. The report also outlines four emerging machine-payment approaches from Coinbase, Stripe/Tempo, Google, and Visa while noting upcoming enforcement dates for MiCA, the GENIUS Act, and the EU AI Act.

Michael Burry said this week that the U.S. could drift toward a “Snow Crash cyber-punk future” as the SEC prepares rules that may allow crypto platforms to trade tokenized versions of U.S. stocks. He published the warning in a May 19 post on his Substack “Cassandra Unchained,” and later added that regulators should avoid “opening scary doors.” The SEC proposal was reported May 18 and was later paused on May 22, 2026.