Morning Report | Deloitte acquires crypto infrastructure company Blocknative; stablecoin company Checker completes $8 million financing; a16z may have become the largest external institutional holder of HYPE

整理：ChainCatcher

Important News:

• Stablecoin infrastructure company Checker completes $8 million financing, with participation from Galaxy Ventures and others
• Deloitte acquires crypto infrastructure company Blocknative
• Mastercard abandons investment in Zerohash, shifts focus to BVNK for stablecoin payment infrastructure
• a16z may have become the largest external holder of HYPE, accumulating over $356 million
• Tether acquires all shares held by SoftBank in Twenty One Capital (XXI)
• Decentralized derivatives trading platform Variational completes $50 million Series A financing, led by Dragonfly Capital
• Strategy CEO: 13 of the top 15 institutional shareholders increased their MSTR holdings, with total holdings growing by 27%

What important events happened in the past 24 hours?

Strategy CEO: 13 of the top 15 institutional shareholders increased their MSTR holdings, with total holdings growing by 27%

According to ChainCatcher, Strategy CEO Phong Le stated that in the first quarter of 2026, 13 of the top 15 institutional shareholders of Strategy increased their holdings in $MSTR, with total holdings growing by 27%.

Decentralized derivatives trading platform Variational completes $50 million Series A financing, led by Dragonfly Capital

According to ChainCatcher, decentralized derivatives trading platform Variational announced the completion of $50 million in Series A financing, led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.

The company is headquartered in the Cayman Islands and is committed to building an on-chain derivatives protocol for institutional and traditional financial traders, providing an instantly tradable on-chain market for real assets like oil and commodities by aggregating liquidity from traditional finance and crypto markets. Its core product, the Omni platform, adopts a zero-fee model and combines a liquidity pool mechanism to enhance market depth and execution efficiency.

Variational stated that its goal is not to compete directly with centralized exchanges but to connect multi-source liquidity through a "brokerage-style" model, including traditional financial market makers and mainstream crypto trading platforms, to address the "liquidity cold start" problem in on-chain markets.

NYSE parent company ICE plans to launch a computing power futures market

According to ChainCatcher, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), announced plans to launch futures contracts based on "computing power" to track changes in the cost of computing power, such as GPUs, that support the AI industry. This product still requires regulatory approval.

It is reported that ICE will collaborate with financial infrastructure company Ornn to develop a pricing system for related derivatives based on its GPU cost index. This index will support the computing power futures contracts.

Tether acquires all shares held by SoftBank in Twenty One Capital (XXI)

According to ChainCatcher, Tether International announced the acquisition of all shares held by SoftBank in Twenty One Capital (XXI), becoming the larger shareholder. After the transaction is completed, the board members of XXI appointed by SoftBank have exited the board according to the shareholder agreement.

Tether stated that this move reflects its long-term strategic commitment and confidence in building a publicly listed company centered around Bitcoin from scratch. The announcement noted that SoftBank's early involvement provided important institutional background and governance experience for XXI, helping the company complete its initial phase layout, and Tether will drive XXI into the next development stage based on this foundation.

Fintech company Mercury completes $200 million financing, led by TCV

According to ChainCatcher, fintech company Mercury announced the completion of a new round of financing totaling $200 million, led by TCV, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Coatue Management.

Mercury primarily provides banking services for startups, currently serving over 300,000 clients and achieving approximately $650 million in annualized revenue. The company stated that the recent AI startup boom has significantly driven demand for new company registrations and account openings, becoming an important growth driver.

Meanwhile, Mercury also announced that it has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and plans to apply for a federal banking license to expand its lending and payment network capabilities (such as Zelle) and reduce reliance on partner banks. The company's founder stated that the future goal remains to go public independently rather than being acquired.

Goldman Sachs to serve as lead underwriter for SpaceX IPO
According to ChainCatcher, Goldman Sachs will serve as the lead underwriter for SpaceX's IPO, responsible for coordinating the entire listing process, including pricing, roadshows, and stock allocation.
Insiders: SpaceX expected to pursue acquisition of Cursor 30 days after its IPO
According to ChainCatcher, insiders revealed that SpaceX is expected to pursue the acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor 30 days after its IPO.
Bankr multiple user wallets hacked, unauthorized transaction signatures due to interaction with Grok and Bankrbot
According to ChainCatcher, multiple user wallets of Bankr were hacked. @bankrbot responded that the incident was a social engineering attack targeting the trust layer between automated agents, specifically involving interactions between Grok and Bankrbot, leading to unauthorized transaction signatures.
Mastercard abandons investment in Zerohash, shifts focus to BVNK for stablecoin payment infrastructure
According to ChainCatcher, Mastercard has abandoned its investment plans in crypto infrastructure company Zerohash, which had previously agreed to acquire the UK stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK for $1.8 billion in March. Mastercard had considered a strategic investment in Chicago-based Zerohash in January this year. At that time, Zerohash was seeking to raise $250 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, and the company is currently pushing for a new financing round at a higher valuation. Founded in 2017, Zerohash primarily provides APIs and developer tools for crypto, stablecoins, and tokenized products.

Meanwhile, recent transactions involving Kraken's parent company Payward and Bullish indicate that consolidation in the digital asset infrastructure sector is ongoing. In terms of stablecoin payment layout, Mastercard has acquired BVNK for $1.8 billion and may pay an additional $300 million in performance-based compensation. BVNK currently serves payment and payroll platforms like Worldpay and Deel for cross-border payments, fund settlement, and financial management.

Mastercard plans to integrate BVNK's technology into its Mastercard Move network to support 24/7 stablecoin settlement for payment institutions and merchant acquirers and explore adding stablecoin checkout functionality in payment gateways. Analysts believe that this transaction will further intensify the competition between Mastercard and Visa in the strategic networking of payment networks and accelerate the evolution of traditional cross-border clearing systems towards stablecoin settlement models.

GitHub suspected of being hacked, investigating unauthorized access to internal code repository

According to ChainCatcher, GitHub officials stated that they are investigating an unauthorized access incident involving its internal code repository. GitHub said that there is currently no evidence to suggest that customer data stored outside of the GitHub platform has been affected, but the company is continuously monitoring its infrastructure to prevent further abnormal activity.

GitHub stated that if it is later confirmed that user data or services have been affected, it will notify customers through existing incident response and notification channels.

a16z may have become the largest external holder of HYPE, accumulating over $356 million

According to ChainCatcher, on-chain analyst Ai姨 (@ai_9684xtpa) monitored that a16z (@a16zcrypto) may have become the sixth largest entity holding HYPE and could be the largest external holder given that the top five are all part of Hype's own ecosystem.

Data shows that a16z began accumulating large amounts of HYPE in August 2025, accumulating 9.18 million HYPE (approximately $356 million), with an average purchase price of $38.77; after deducting the portion transferred to exchanges and market makers, there are still 8.844 million HYPE remaining, stored across dozens of addresses.

In just the past 11 hours, a16z added 206,000 HYPE (approximately $9.95 million) to its holdings; since April 16, it has accumulated a total of 2.35 million HYPE (approximately $10.2 million); since 2026, it has accumulated a total of 4.92 million HYPE (approximately $18.3 million). Based on current prices, its single coin floating profit has reached $7.929 million.

Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini urge the Senate to remove restrictions on crypto token listings
According to ChainCatcher, centralized exchanges Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini urged U.S. Senate members to remove specific provisions in the digital asset market structure bill that restrict trading platforms from listing tokens susceptible to market manipulation. The exchanges submitted amendments requesting the removal of this restriction, arguing that this regulatory standard derived from traditional commodity futures would hinder the listing of low liquidity small tokens on compliant exchanges and limit industry innovation.

Deloitte acquires crypto infrastructure company Blocknative

According to ChainCatcher, Deloitte announced on Tuesday that it has acquired crypto infrastructure company Blocknative through a talent acquisition-focused merger. According to the announcement, the Blocknative team will "focus on driving Web3 innovation within Deloitte's client ecosystem" in the future. Currently, Blocknative's official website displays an announcement stating that the company is "gradually ceasing operations." Its Blocknative API and Gas Network services will also be gradually shut down, expected to continue running until June 19.

Blocknative, founded in 2018, is a blockchain infrastructure company focused on real-time mempool monitoring, gas fee prediction, and transaction management. The company provides APIs and related tools to optimize on-chain transactions; its Gas Network is a decentralized oracle network that provides real-time gas fee data. This move comes amid a wave of overall consolidation in the crypto ecosystem, accompanied by traditional companies like Deloitte increasing their exposure to crypto. Deloitte now provides accounting, auditing, and other corporate services to crypto companies.
Stablecoin infrastructure company Checker completes $8 million financing, with participation from Galaxy Ventures and others

According to ChainCatcher, stablecoin infrastructure startup Checker announced the completion of $8 million in pre-seed and seed round financing, with participation from Galaxy Ventures, Al Mada Ventures, Framework Ventures, Bitso, Airtm, DFS Lab, Onigiri Capital, SNZ Capital, and Velocity.

The project's main business is to help financial institutions launch and expand stablecoins and related products by providing a single API. It is reported that Checker has processed over $3 billion in transaction volume in the past 12 months and plans to use the new funds to expand its network of financial institutions to Brazil, Kenya, Hong Kong, and the United States, while also planning to launch AI agents for customer onboarding, compliance assessment, and treasury operations.

Meme Popularity Rankings

According to the meme token tracking and analysis platform GMGN market data, as of May 21, 09:00,

The top five popular ETH tokens in the past 24 hours are: HEX, SHIB, LINK, PEPE, mUSD

The top five popular Solana tokens in the past 24 hours are: TROLL, HANTA, Buttcoin, testicle, MAGA

The top five popular Base tokens in the past 24 hours are: B3, SKYA, TOSHI, toby, KEYCAT

What are some noteworthy articles to read in the past 24 hours?

Duan Yongping builds a position in a crypto company for the first time: Why Circle?

Duan Yongping, a well-known investor often referred to as the "Chinese Buffett," recently submitted a 13F holdings report to the U.S. SEC for his family wealth management firm H&H International Investment LLC, covering the first quarter ending March 31, 2026.

According to the report, Duan Yongping's portfolio market value has significantly increased from $17.49 billion in the previous quarter to $20.004 billion. In addition to continuing to heavily invest in Apple (AAPL), Berkshire (BRK.B), and Nvidia (NVDA), a new face has drawn the attention of both the crypto industry and value investors: stablecoin giant Circle (NYSE: CRCL).

Harvard and other institutions liquidate, six core talents leave in one month, what’s wrong with Ethereum?

Recently, the Ethereum Foundation has once again faced personnel upheaval, with core researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma officially announcing their departure.

This year, at least seven core members or senior contributors have left in succession, from co-executive directors to protocol researchers, from upgrade coordinators to cryptography experts, raising significant concerns within the community about the foundation's stability and execution capability.

Meanwhile, institutional holding data has been released. Goldman Sachs has reduced its BlackRock ETHA position by about 70%, and Harvard University's endowment fund has completely liquidated its previous nearly $87 million Ethereum ETF position. South Korea's seventh-largest pension relief company recorded a loss of about $32.73 million due to investments in Ethereum leveraged ETFs.

Additionally, the Ethereum Foundation recently unstaked 21,271 ETH from Lido and has repeatedly sold ETH on-chain for treasury rebalancing.

With core team members leaving, large external funds exiting, and the foundation itself reducing holdings, Ethereum is being simultaneously voted against by different types of participants.

Recovering cryptocurrency assets is a lucrative business

Today in Hangzhou, I had a long conversation with a friend who specializes in recovering crypto assets.

They have handled numerous cases over the past year, with individual project amounts generally starting at $1 million, and some amounts even higher. Before our conversation, my understanding of this type of business was quite rough; I thought "crypto asset recovery" mainly involved more thrilling scenarios like theft, fraud, hacking, and on-chain tracking. After our discussion, I found that what actually occurs in large quantities are more everyday, concrete, and frustrating issues for the parties involved.

The tokenized market is set to reach a trillion-dollar scale, but there are still four major obstacles

We are at the dawn of a new financial era. Tokenization is no longer a niche experiment but is rapidly developing into an important field, with institutions competing to lead one of the largest emerging asset classes, while capital allocators seek more significant returns.

The question now is not whether trillions of dollars will shift on-chain, but who will lead this process. This article will explore the conditions necessary to achieve this process and the opportunities faced by operators and entrepreneurs in building platforms for custodianship and trading of trillions of dollars in funds.

Tokenized finance has already reached a considerable scale. The circulation of stablecoins alone has exceeded $300 billion, while the total market value of other tokenized financial assets (including money market funds, private credit, stocks, commodities, etc.) has also surpassed $300 billion. Many of the world's largest asset management companies, including BlackRock, Fidelity, and Franklin Templeton, have cumulatively put tens of billions of dollars of real-world assets on-chain.

This content is provided for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Any events, rewards, online promotions, or related information mentioned herein should not be considered a recommendation, solicitation, or invitation to purchase, sell, trade, or otherwise deal in any crypto assets. Crypto assets are highly volatile and may result in loss. The availability of WEEX services, products, and related events may vary by region. You are responsible for ensuring that your participation is in accordance with applicable local laws and regulations.