Wu Says Daily Selected Crypto News + This Week's Macro Indicators

1. Circle completes Arc native token pre-sale financing, raising $222 million

Circle has completed its new public chain Arc native token pre-sale financing, raising $222 million, corresponding to a fully diluted valuation of approximately $3 billion. a16z led the round with $75 million; BlackRock, Apollo, ICE, SBI, ARK Invest, and others also participated. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said that Arc is positioned as a public-chain infrastructure for institutional finance, with the goal of expanding Circle from a stablecoin issuer into an “internet platform company.” Circle released its Q1 2026 financial report: at the end of the quarter, USDC circulating supply was $77 billion, up 28% year over year; Q1 on-chain trading volume reached $21.5 trillion, up 263% year over year. The company’s total revenue and reserve revenue in Q1 were $694 million, up 20% year over year; net profit from continuing operations was $55 million, down 15% year over year; adjusted EBITDA was $151 million, up 24% year over year.

2. Strategy increases holdings by 535 BTC, total holdings 818,869 BTC

From May 4 to May 10, Strategy increased its holdings by 535 BTC for approximately $43 million, with an average price of about $80,340. As of May 10, 2026, Strategy holds a total of 818,869 BTC, with a total purchase cost of approximately $61.86 billion and an average holding cost of about $75,540. Strategy said its 2026 BTC Yield has reached 9.4%.

3. Bitmine: ETH holdings increase to 5,206,790

Bitmine Immersion Technologies disclosed that its ETH holdings have increased to 5,206,790, an increase of approximately 26,659 ETH from the previously disclosed 5,180,131 ETH, and it has staked 4,712,917 ETH. At present, the company’s total scale of crypto assets, cash, and “moonshots” investments is approximately $13.4 billion, including 52.1 thousand ETH, 201 BTC, $750 million in cash, a $200 million Beast Industries investment, and an equity stake in Eightco Holdings valued at approximately $88 million.

4. SlowMist alert: high-risk phishing targeting TRON users detected

SlowMist issued a security alert saying it detected high-risk phishing activities targeting TRON users. The attackers trick users into installing malicious plugins by forging the TronLink Chrome extension and using Unicode bidirectional control characters together with Cyrillic look-alike characters to impersonate official names, inducing users to install the malicious plugin. The plugin dynamically loads phishing pages via a remote iframe, enabling it to steal mnemonics, private keys, Keystore files, and passwords, and it relays the data back in real time via a Telegram Bot. Users are reminded to uninstall suspicious extensions.

5. Digital asset investment products saw net inflows of $857.9 million last week

Digital asset investment products saw net inflows of $857.9 million last week, recording inflows for the sixth consecutive week. Total assets under management rose to $160 billion. Improved market sentiment may be related to progress on the stablecoin yield compromise plan under the U.S. “CLARITY Act.” Among them, Bitcoin saw inflows of $706.1 million, Ethereum saw inflows of $77.10 million, and Solana and XRP saw inflows of $47.60 million and $39.60 million, respectively. Short Bitcoin products recorded net outflows of $14.40 million, the largest single-week outflow this year.

6. Wu’s macro indicators and analysis this week: U.S. CPI, Powell’s term ending

Summary

Last week’s U.S. employment data was strong. Against the backdrop of rising energy prices and increasing inflation pressure driven by tariffs and the Iran war, the futures market is currently almost no longer pricing in a Fed rate cut this year. This week, the focus will be on the U.S. CPI and other items, including the end of Powell’s term.

Review of last week

The U.S.-Iran situation temporarily eased, but there was also intense volatility amid an extreme standoff of “neither war nor peace,” as Iran is drafting a bill related to the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. April ADP employment increased to 109,000, the largest rise since January of last year; expectations were 99,000, and the prior value was 62,000.

In the week ending May 2, the number of initial unemployment claims in the U.S. was 200,000, expected to be 205,000, coming in below market expectations. The prior figure was revised from 189,000 to 190,000.

U.S. April 2026 non-farm employment increased by 115,000, higher than the market expectation of 62,000; the data shows that while the U.S. labor market continues to cool, it remains resilient overall.

The U.S. unemployment rate in April 2026 remained at 4.3%, in line with market expectations. However, the number of unemployed increased by 134,000 to 7.37 million, while total employment decreased by 226,000 to 162.62 million. Strong employment data weakened the rationale for near-term rate cuts. Against the backdrop of rising energy prices and increasing inflation pressure driven by tariffs and the Iran war, the futures market is currently almost no longer pricing in a Fed rate cut this year. U.S. bank economists have pushed back expectations for rate cuts from this year’s September and October to July and September 2027, and said that the data “does not support a rate cut this year.”

Key events & indicators this week

May 11

Continue monitoring developments in the Iran situation

May 12

Japan’s Bank of Japan releases a summary of the opinions of members reviewed at its April monetary policy meeting (07:50)

U.S. April CPI, unadjusted, year over year (20:30)

May 13

U.S. April PPI, year over year (20:30)

May 14

Initial jobless claims for the week ending May 9 (tens of thousands) (20:30)

May 15

Powell’s term as Chair of the Federal Reserve ends; Kevin Wawsh is expected to take over