Bitcoin Bullish Index Rises to 80 Ethereum Developers Activate Pectra Upgrade

Bitcoin

CryptoQuant: Bitcoin bull index rises to 80, market sentiment reverses

CryptoQuant said on the social platform that Bitcoin sentiment has reversed. Spot demand has risen, and Bitcoin's bull index has jumped from 20 to 80. A score of more than 60 means bullish sentiment and supports price increases.

US Vice President Vance will deliver a speech at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference

According to an article published by Bitcoin Magazine, US Vice President Vance will deliver a speech at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference.

Bitcoin's market value surpasses Amazon and rises to fifth place in the world's assets

According to 8Marketcap data, Bitcoin's current market value is $2.045 trillion, surpassing Amazon in the global asset ranking and rising to fifth place.

El Salvador Bitcoin Office: El Salvador buys more Bitcoin

El Salvador Bitcoin Office: El Salvador buys more Bitcoin.

Viewpoint: Easing global trade tensions pushes Bitcoin above $100,000

After Trump announced a trade deal with the UK, expectations that trade tensions would ease pushed Bitcoin above the $100,000 mark for the first time since February this year. On Thursday, the largest digital asset rose 3.4%, and most other major tokens also rose, with Ethereum rising as much as 12%. On January 20, the day Trump was inaugurated, the price of Bitcoin rose to a record level of around $109,000. Trump said that the full details of the agreement will still be negotiated in the coming weeks. But under the agreement, the UK will speed up the passage of US goods through customs procedures and reduce barriers to agricultural, chemical, energy and industrial exports. This is the first agreement since Trump imposed high tariffs on dozens of US trading partners.

Ethereum

Ethereum developers activate Pectra upgrade, including 11 changes

The Ethereum mainnet successfully activated the Pectra upgrade at 6:05 EST, which is the most important network update after the 2022 merger (The Merge). This hard fork includes 11 EIP improvement proposals, focusing on three major directions: improving staking efficiency, optimizing user experience, and enhancing Layer2 scalability. The successful deployment of the test network Hoodi in March laid the foundation for this upgrade. Pectra lays the foundation for the Fusaka upgrade, which will introduce key technologies such as Verkle Trees and PeerDAS. The most eye-catching of this upgrade is the EIP-7702 account abstraction scheme, which allows ordinary wallets to temporarily execute smart contract functions. In the future, users can realize innovative experiences such as third-party payment of gas fees, batch packaging transactions, and even recover lost private keys through social contacts. In terms of the staking mechanism, the ETH staking limit of a single verification node has been greatly increased from 32 to 2048, and institutional pledgers can reduce the complexity of operation and maintenance through node mergers. For Layer2 expansion, the Blob data capacity of each block has doubled to 6 (peak 9).

Ethereum ICO participants continue to sell ETH and currently still hold 8,300 ETH

According to Lookonchain monitoring, an Ethereum ICO participant continues to sell his ETH. The whale received 76,000 ETH at a cost of $23,560 at the genesis, and deposited the remaining 1,900 ETH (about $4.44 million) on the Kraken exchange 3 hours ago. Since ending a long period of dormancy on April 17, the investor has sold 21,700 ETH (about $38.9 million) at an average price of $1,792, and currently still holds 8,300 ETH (about $15.28 million).

ConsenSys says Ethereum's new staking limit does not hinder decentralization and paves the way for institutional participation

ConsenSys Research Director Mallesh Pai said that the Ethereum Pectra upgrade "does not pose a threat to decentralization" and the upgrade simply cleans up "a lot of the complicated work that the network is doing behind the scenes." He emphasized that "rewards continue to be proportional to the amount of ETH staked," that is, "large validators will not gain more advantages as a result." The upgrade raised the upper limit of a single validator's staking from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, raising concerns about decentralization. Pai pointed out that many technical validators "are not really independent" and that the keys can be integrated after the upgrade. "We have seen this happen" and "ideally, the number of validators will drop to about 30,000." The vice president of institutional business at P2P.org said the new upper limit "makes institutional staking easier to integrate and less risky."

BlackRock updates Ethereum ETF application, incorporating "physical redemption" and quantum computing risk disclosure

Analyst James Seyffart said that BlackRock has just submitted a revised S-1 document for its Ethereum spot ETF, $ETHA, with the main change being the addition of the statement "allowing physical creation/redemption after SEC approval." He and his peer Eric Balchunas both expect the SEC to approve the mechanism at some point this year. In addition, he pointed out that this is the first Ethereum ETF application to propose a physical redemption mechanism, and the final approval deadline is approximately October 11, 2025. He also mentioned that BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF $IBIT also submitted a revised document, which included similar physical redemption language as early as February. This time, a description of "quantum computing risks" was added as part of the standard risk disclosure. He emphasized: "These are just basic risk disclosures. They will list any potential problems... This is completely in line with the regulations and completely reasonable."

Vitalik: Ethereum Rollup security should be implemented in three stages, gradually moving towards de-trust

Vitalik published an article dividing Ethereum Rollup security into three stages: Stage 0: The security committee can completely veto the proof system and control is centralized. Stage 1: 6/8 members must agree to intervene, there is a threshold for external members, and intervention is limited. Stage 2: Intervene only when a verifiable error occurs, and it cannot be arbitrarily ruled. He suggested: As trust in the proof system increases, we should gradually transition from Phase 0 to Phase 2. Phase 0 has the lowest security and should avoid staying there for a long time. Rollup should at least start from Phase 1, while focusing on the audit and maturity of the proof system.

Other projects

Stripe launches stablecoin account services in more than 100 countries around the world

Stripe announced a new feature on May 7 that allows platform customers to "send, receive and hold US dollar stablecoin account balances, similar to how traditional fiat bank accounts operate." The account supports Circle's USDC and Bridge's USDB, which was acquired by Stripe in October 2024. The service will cover more than 100 countries including Argentina, Chile, Turkey, Colombia and Peru.

Robinhood plans to launch a blockchain-based platform to support European users to trade U.S. stocks

According to Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources, Robinhood is planning to launch a blockchain-based platform that will enable European users to trade U.S. securities. The plan "may be launched through cooperation with a digital asset company", and "Layer 2 blockchain Arbitrum is being considered as a potential partner for this cooperation." Robinhood has provided cryptocurrency trading services in Europe since 2023, but has not yet opened U.S. stock trading.

Binance will launch an Alpha points consumption mechanism

According to the official announcement, Binance will launch an Alpha points consumption mechanism from May 13, 2025. According to this mechanism, if a user successfully participates in a token generation event (TGE) or receives an airdrop, the system will deduct a certain number of Alpha points.

Adidas launches NFT blind box for Xociety game based on Sui chain

Adidas creates NFT skins for the upcoming third-person encrypted shooting RPG game Xociety, supporting Sui public chain. 2,600 Adidas mysterious blind box NFTs can be opened to reveal in-game skins, including black hoodies, neon sportswear and other styles printed with the Adidas logo. Each blind box contains clothing sets of different rarity, divided into four grades: Uncommon, Rare, Epic and First, and will be minted on Tradeport at 9 a.m. Eastern Time on May 16.

Tether CEO: Tether.ai is about to be launched, and plans to support USDT and Bitcoin payments

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino posted on the X platform that Tether.ai is about to be launched, and Personal Infinite Intelligence will be a completely open source AI Runtime product that can adapt to and develop any hardware and device-no API key is required, no centralized failure point, fully modular and composable, and integrated with WDK to support USDF and Bitcoin payments. Tether AI technology will create a peer-to-peer network composed of billions of AI agents.