Crypto Market Overview

• BTC BTC (+0.48% | Current price: 106,751 USDT):

  • BTC remains in a consolidation phase, trading sideways between $107,320 and $104,184. Its price volatility has narrowed slightly compared to the previous day; however, it has not yet broken through short-term resistance levels. In the short term, continued sideways movement is expected to dominate.
  • On Tuesday, BTC ETFs saw a net inflow of $41.7 million. Among these, Fidelity’s FBTC ETF recorded an inflow of around $23.3 million, and Ark Invest’s ARKB ETF saw $6.4 million.

• ETH (-1.32% | Current price: 2,533 USDT):

  • ETH briefly fell below the $2,500 mark during trading, before rebounding back above the key price level. Recently, ETH continues fluctuating around the $2,500 mark. Ethereum’s market dominance currently stands at 9.25%.
  • On Tuesday, ETH ETFs recorded net inflows totaling $19.8 million, with Fidelity’s FETH ETF accounting for the entire inflow. BlackRock has yet to update its data.

• Altcoins: The altcoin market generally fell, and the Altcoin Season Index remained unchanged at 23.

• Macro:
  • On Tuesday, all three major US stock indexes ended lower, with the S&P 500 snapping its six-day winning streak. At market close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average decreased by 114.83 points, or 0.27%; the S&P 500 index fell by 23.14 points, or 0.39%; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped by 72.75 points, down 0.38%. According to JPMorgan’s latest Treasury client survey, both bearish and bullish positions increased by 2 percentage points, while neutral positions decreased by 4 percentage points. Overall, bearish sentiment reached its highest level since February 10.
  • As of 10:00 AM, May 21 (UTC+8), spot gold traded at $3,302.26 per ounce, down 12.29% over the past 24 hours.

Trending Tokens

Swarms SWARMS (+2.40%, circulating market cap $31.18 million)

According to market data from Gate, the Swarms token is currently priced at $0.03136, up 2.4% in the past 24 hours.

Swarms (SWM) is a decentralized computing network based on artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology, which aims to address the high costs and inefficiencies involved in distributed computing resources. Swarms’ core vision is to become the world’s leading decentralized AI computing platform by integrating idle global computing resources with blockchain-based incentive mechanisms and AI optimization algorithms, providing users with highly efficient and low-cost computing services. Through its core products, Swarms addresses key industry challenges including waste of computational resources, data privacy, and centralized computing monopolies, offering secure and scalable decentralized computing solutions for developers, enterprises, and researchers.

On the news front, the AI-agent protocol Swarms announced on Twitter that the enterprise-grade Python client for its API had officially launched. This client has production-level functionalities and enables enterprise-grade reliability and performance, bringing multi-agent AI system capabilities into Python applications.

LQTY Liquity (+7.18%, circulating market cap: $92.2483 million)

According to Gate market data, the current price of the LQTY token is $0.9437, representing a 24-hour increase of 7.18%.

Liquity (LQTY) is a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform built on artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology, aiming to solve the high-cost and complexity issues inherent in traditional lending markets. Its core vision is to become a leading decentralized lending protocol within the Ethereum ecosystem. Leveraging smart contracts and algorithmically adjusted fee mechanisms, Liquity provides users with zero-interest loans and an efficient stablecoin lending experience.

Through its core products such as the LUSD stablecoin, Stability Pool, and LQTY staking mechanism, Liquity addresses industry pain points such as costly interest charges, governance complexity, and centralization risks. The platform provides users secure and low-cost lending services, as well as opportunities for passive income generation.

On the news front, centralized lending platform Liquity tweeted that Liquity V2 has relaunched on the Ethereum mainnet. Users are now able to borrow ETH and Liquid Staking Tokens (LST, such as Lido Finance’s wstETH and Rocket Pool’s rETH) at customizable interest rates and high loan-to-value (LTV) ratios. The newly launched BOLD stablecoin provides yields and can be redeemed for ETH or LST at any time. Liquity V2 has already reached licensing agreements with nearly 20 friendly forks across various EVM chains, including Felix Protocol, QuillFi, and OrkiFi. Forked projects will allocate part of their tokens as rewards to BOLD Stability Pool depositors and liquidity providers.

Alpha Insight

SEC Delays Decisions on XRP and Dogecoin ETFs

On May 20, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the postponement of its decisions regarding ETF proposals filed by 21Shares and Grayscale for the XRP Trust, as well as the Grayscale Dogecoin Trust ETF. In its filing, the SEC stated that this action was due to the legal and policy issues involved with these proposals, emphasizing that the delay does not indicate the Commission has reached any conclusions on the underlying questions. At the same time, the SEC also delayed its decision on Bitwise’s proposed Ethereum ETF, which would allow staking.

The SEC’s postponement of ETF decisions for XRP and Dogecoin reflects a cautious stance towards emerging crypto assets, underscoring compliance, anti-fraud measures, and investor protection concerns. It suggests that future ETF applications by other crypto projects need to place greater emphasis on transparency in legal frameworks and market maturity, including providing detailed custody arrangements and reliable price-tracking mechanisms. Additionally, XRP may enjoy regulatory clarity advantages over meme coins like Dogecoin due to Ripple’s ongoing lawsuit with the SEC, set to conclude in March 2025. Thus, other crypto projects should learn from XRP’s example by strengthening communication with regulatory authorities and optimizing the structuring of their proposals.

Story Protocol Empowers Virtuals Ecosystem AI Music Platform MUSIC, Enabling On-Chain Music IP Generation from Trending Tweets

The programmable IP protocol Story has announced its official role as infrastructure partner for MUSIC, the AI-powered music platform within the Virtuals ecosystem. Story will facilitate MUSIC’s launch of its AI music IP minting feature, Bangers, enabling users to instantly generate and mint music IP on-chain directly from popular tweets. Users simply tweet with the handle @musicbyvirtuals and add a prompt, upon which the AI automatically generates original music or music videos, with IP registration, authentication, and tokenization carried out seamlessly through Story. Each Banger token includes a built-in 1% transaction tax, designed specifically to reward original IP owners, content creators, and distributors. Story protocol provides complete on-chain copyright authentication and revenue-sharing support within this model.

This partnership marks not only a significant showcase for Story’s programmable IP capabilities, but also a practical application of its digital copyright authentication and revenue-sharing tools. Through integration with the MUSIC platform, Story significantly expands its application scenarios and is poised to attract more creators and IP-focused projects.

For the Virtuals ecosystem, launching MUSIC and its Bangers feature substantially enhances the platform’s capabilities in content generation and community engagement. By significantly reducing the barriers for music creation, MUSIC allows everyday users to participate easily in the generation and ownership of AI-driven music IPs. This unprecedented accessibility is expected to draw in a large number of non-professional users, further increasing Virtuals’ influence and reach. Additionally, strategic collaborations with Liquid State—a joint-venture music label of Sony and Tencent—as well as integration with over 1,000 AI agents, clearly highlight Virtuals’ ambitious plans to drive massive, community-powered music IP generation and distribution.

After Pectra Upgrade: Ethereum DEX Active Users Rebound Sharply by 73%, but Growth Challenges Remain.

Ethereum decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have recently seen a marked rebound in user activity. As of May 20, daily active users reached approximately 64,000, representing a 73% increase compared to the lowest point recorded on May 4, hitting a three-month high. This rebound signals a recovering interest in trading, likely driven by rising ETH prices and improving overall market sentiment. Uniswap has been dominant in this growth, contributing approximately $13 billion in trading volume and capturing about 97% of active user traffic.

However, despite higher user activity levels, monthly aggregate trading volumes on DEX platforms remain steady at around $15 billion, suggesting a prevalence of small-sized orders and limited involvement from institutions or large-scale traders. Furthermore, according to data from Glassnode, the Pectra upgrade launched on May 7 did not significantly increase overall network engagement metrics: new addresses declined by 1.8% compared to their yearly peak, and reactivated addresses fell by 8.4%, indicating that neither new nor returning users were substantially driven by this update. Nevertheless, user attrition rates decreased by 8.5%, suggesting an improvement in retaining existing users.

Overall, while the surge in DEX user activity reflects an immediate market enthusiasm for Ethereum’s ecosystem, the trading volume structure still reveals insufficient institutional participation, limiting the scale of ecosystem expansion to some extent. Although the deflationary effects and improved user retention brought by Pectra upgrade lay a solid foundation for long-term growth, the upgrade’s ability to attract new and reactivated users remains limited in the short run. Going forward, the continued growth of Ethereum’s ecosystem will depend on the speed at which decentralized applications (DApps) adapt to upgrades, the rate of adoption of Layer-2 solutions, and favorable macro market cycles. If positive market sentiment sustains and technical enhancements accelerate, we can expect synchronized growth in both DEX activity and broader network participation. Otherwise, the scenario of active retail traders combined with lukewarm institutional interest may persist in the near term.

Gate HODLer Airdrop

Token Offering Details

• Project Name: TOKYO GAMES TOKEN
• Token Symbol: TGT
• Subscription Deadline: By 16:00, May 21, 2025 (UTC+8)
• Subscription Method: GT Token
• Personal Subscription Limit: 5,000 GT
• Total Airdrop Supply: 750,000 TGT

Project Introduction

TOKYO GAMES TOKEN is a project launched by one of Japan’s largest mobile gaming companies, aiming to create a new entertainment experience integrating cryptocurrency assets. Its first flagship project is “TOKYOBEAST.” Within the ecosystem, games utilize an NFT proxy model (patent pending), ensuring stable NFT supply even amid user growth. The ecosystem clearly separates “Gameplay (Web2)” from “Web3 (foundation).” Thus, the TOKYOBEAST game serves as an entry point within a Web2 environment, playable seamlessly on mobile applications (Android, iOS) and browsers without requiring Web3 familiarity, effectively minimizing user attrition.


References

• Gate, https://www.gate.io/trade/BTC_USDT
• Farside Investors, https://farside.co.uk/btc/
• CoinGecko, https://www.coingecko.com/categories
• Investing, https://investing.com/
• Believe, https://www.believescreener.com/
• CoinMarketCap, https://coinmarketcap.com/cmclaunch/
• TheBlock, https://www.theblock.co/post/355127/sec-delays-decisions-on-xrp-and-dogecoin-etf-proposals-asks-for-public-input?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
• TheBlock, https://www.theblock.co/post/355013/succinct-introduces-zkvm-sp1-hypercube-claims-real-time-ethereum-proving
• Cointelegraph, https://cointelegraph.com/news/is-xrp-price-rally-over-for-now
• Gate, https://www.gate.io/zh/hodler-airdrop/2314?airdrop_name=TGT

Gate Research is a comprehensive platform offering in-depth blockchain and cryptocurrency research, including technical analysis, market reviews, trend forecasts, and macroeconomic insights.

Disclaimer
Investing in cryptocurrency markets involves high risk. Users are advised to conduct their own research and fully understand the nature of the assets and products before making any investment decisions. Gate is not responsible for any losses or damages arising from such decisions.