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SEBA Bank secures in-principle nod for crypto services in Hong Kong

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SEBA Hong Kong’s approval joins a flurry of regulated crypto activity that’s taken place over the past month.

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US crypto ETFs smash new record amid 4-week inflow streak

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May 12, 2025

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Cryptocurrency investment products continued receiving healthy inflows last week, attracting $882 million as global crypto funds approached all-time high asset levels.

Global crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) recorded $6.3 billion of inflows in the past four weeks, accounting for 93% of total inflows year-to-date (YTD), according to data from European crypto investment firm CoinShares.

Total YTD inflows now stand at $6.7 billion, closing in on the record $7.3 billion posted in early February, according to CoinShares’ head of research James Butterfill.

Weekly crypto ETP inflows since late 2024. Source: CoinShares

Amid strong investor demand, crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States reached a record $62.9 billion in cumulative net inflows since launch in January 2024, surpassing the previous high of $61.6 billion set in February, Butterfill noted in a May 12 fund flows update.

Total AUM nears historic record of $173 billion

The continued inflow streak has brought total assets under management (AUM) in global crypto funds to $169 billion, just 2.5% below the historic record of $173.3 billion seen in the last week of January, according to CoinShares data.

However, the latest $882 million of inflows were a notable cooldown from $2 billion seen in the first week of May and $3.4 billion posted in the last week of April.

Bitcoin (BTC) dominated with $867 million in inflows in the past week, with YTD inflows reaching $6.6 billion and AUM rising to $146 billion.

Crypto ETP flows by asset as of May 10, 2025 (in millions of US dollars). Source: CoinShares

Inflows to Ether (ETH) investment products were less significant, posting $1.5 million inflows, with AUM edging up to $12 billion.

Sui (SUI) was the biggest winner among altcoins, with Sui ETPs seeing $11.7 million of inflows last week.

Solana (SOL) was the only altcoin to see outflows last week, totaling $3.4 million and dragging month-to-date outflows to $2.9 million.

BlackRock’s iShares outstrip total inflows

According to CoinShares, crypto fund inflows were again highly concentrated in BlackRock’s iShares products, which saw $1 billion of inflows last week.

Year-to-date, BlackRock has attracted $8.1 billion in inflows, significantly exceeding the industry’s total of $6.7 billion.

Related: BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF posts $356 million inflows, marking the longest streak of 2025

Grayscale and Bitwise continued to see outflows, losing $168 million and $27 million respectively during the past week. Fidelity and ARK reversed previous negative trends, reporting inflows of $62 million and $46 million, respectively.

Crypto ETP flows by issuer as of May 10, 2025 (in millions of US dollars). Source: CoinShares

Bullish trend driven by rise in money supply, macro factors

The ongoing bullish trend in the crypto ETP industry came amid a rally in the cryptocurrency markets, with Bitcoin reclaiming $100,000 for the first time since January on May 8.

Amid the growing investor sentiment, the total crypto market capitalization surged to nearly $3.5 trillion, down 11% from the historic high of $3.9 trillion posted in mid-December 2024, according to data from CoinGecko.

Bitcoin (BTC) price chart since January 2024. Source: CoinGecko

“We believe the sharp increase in both prices and inflows is driven by a combination of factors: a global rise in M2 money supply, stagflationary risks in the US and several US states approving Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset,” CoinShares’ Butterfill wrote.

Bitcoin traded at $104,407 at the time of publication, slightly down from a historic high above $106,000 posted on Dec. 17, 2024.

Magazine: Bitcoin eyes ‘crazy numbers,’ JD Vance set for Bitcoin talk: Hodler’s Digest, May 4 – 10

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What is RISC-V, and why does Vitalik Buterin want it for Ethereum smart contracts?

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May 12, 2025

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What is RISC-V?

RISC-V, pronounced “risk five,” is a modern open-source instruction set architecture (ISA) based on reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. In simple terms, it’s like a blueprint that defines a set of instructions that a processor can execute.

RISC-V is designed to be highly modular, efficient and flexible. Originally developed by the University of California in 2010, the open-source framework gives developers the flexibility to tailor its functionality and use cases, plus offers cost savings compared to proprietary ISAs like ARM or x86. This offers a wide range of uses, from supercomputers to smartphones and now blockchains like Ethereum.

On April 20, 2025, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin unveiled a “radical” new scaling proposal to replace the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with the RISC-V instruction set architecture, aiming to boost the speed and efficiency of the network’s execution layer. The idea is that RISC-V is the best way to solve the blockchain’s scalability constraints. 

“It aims to greatly improve the efficiency of the Ethereum execution layer, resolving one of the primary scaling bottlenecks, and can also greatly improve the execution layer’s simplicity – in fact, it is perhaps the only way to do so.

The idea: replace the EVM with RISC-V as the virtual machine language that smart contracts are written in,” said Buterin.

Ethereum continues to face high transaction fees and reduced transaction volume as users shift to layer 2s for cheaper, faster transactions. This aligns with Ethereum’s scaling strategy post-Merge (2022). Buterin’s idea to reshape the chain is seen as a chance for it to modernize and retain its dominance as a top smart contracting platform.

Did you know? Ethereum’s execution layer has become its main scalability bottleneck. The inefficient processing of smart contracts and transactions due to single-threaded execution, wasteful computational design and complex state management is causing network congestion.

How would RISC-V work on Ethereum?

Adding RISC-V to Ethereum is still just a proposal being discussed by the community and network governance. Buterin outlines several approaches to implement the proposal, including running two virtual machines (VMs) or a complete switch to RISC-V.

The first idea to support VMs would enable contracts to be written and executed in either the existing EVM model or RISC-V. Both contract types would have access to functionality such as persistent storage, holding Ether (ETH) balances and making and receiving calls. Adding to this, the contract could integrate so they can call one another. 

An alternative approach, described as “more radical,” would modify the protocol to convert existing EVM contracts. This would require rewriting current contracts to interact with an EVM interpreter, while new contracts would be written directly in RISC-V.

A major challenge for such a drastic change is to avoid breaking existing decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts. Ethereum can’t risk breaking existing contracts written in the current EVM code. A transitional solution could involve using an interpreter — essentially a translation layer between different computing languages. This would allow developers to begin building with RISC-V while ensuring legacy EVM contracts continue to function without disruption.

Did you know? In 2022, Ethereum made a leap forward in its energy efficiency and delivered more scalability, security and sustainability. In a process dubbed “The Merge,” the chain switched from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS). This involved merging the Ethereum mainnet with a separate PoS blockchain called Beacon Chain.

Key benefits of RISC-V vs. EVM

If RISC-V causes a major shift in the Ethereum architecture, what will be the benefits of making this change? In the long run, RISC-V would enhance the Ethereum smart contracts’ performance and processing.

According to Buterin, the new architecture could theoretically deliver efficiency gains of 100x; in reality, this number will be hard to reach, but gains would still be significant. The efficiency gains are tied to RISC-V’s suitability for both zero-knowledge (ZK) proof systems and general smart contract execution, as it eliminates EVM overhead.

It’s less about replacing the EVM outright and more about using RISC-V as a backend for zkEVM or similar ZK rollups, where proving costs dominate. Scalability improvements would largely come from offloading execution to ZK rollups, with RISC-V optimizing the proving process.

RISC-V smart contracts could run faster and use fewer computational resources. This increased efficiency would likely translate to lower gas fees for the end users. In the process, it would also enable the network to handle more users and transactions without slowing down. That would be a direct improvement to the scalability of Ethereum, potentially solving one of the biggest criticized points of the blockchain industry. 

Additionally, RISC-V’s simple, flexible instruction set is better suited for ZK-proof computations than the EVM, which incurs overhead from administrative tasks like gas accounting and state management. 

Rather than rebuilding the EVM for ZK-proofs, RISC-V offers a streamlined alternative, simplifying the development of ZK-optimized execution layers. This could accelerate Ethereum’s roadmap for privacy and scalability via ZK rollups, making RISC-V a compelling complement to the EVM.

Below is a comparison table summarizing the key differences and benefits of RISC-V vs. the EVM.

Did you know? Ethereum has gone through several major development milestones over its first decade. Notably, in 2016, it conducted a hard fork to roll back the chain after The DAO hack. The result is still noticeable today with Ethereum and Ethereum Classic chains both in existence.

Will RISC-V be implemented in the future?

Buterin’s proposal has sparked a lively debate among Ethereum users and developers. It is an ambitious idea that could be a milestone in the development roadmap for the leading smart contract blockchain. 

Programmer Ben Adams raised several concerns about the proposal: In short, the ZK-proof might become more efficient, but there could be a trade-off. Block building and execution, which run the smart contracts, could end up becoming significantly slower. 

“The risk here is that ZK-proving may get better, but block building and execution will deteriorate significantly,” commented Ben Adams.

A sentiment that was echoed by another anonymous commenter, “I agree with Ben Adams here, The EVM as a whole is very much U256 based, so abstracting down to RISC-V would decrease overall execution performance.”

Others appeared to agree that RISC-V was a good idea to help reduce bottlenecks but questioned if it was a priority, given the potential technical difficulty and cost. 

“Agree, it seems like a good idea for the L1 that solves points 2 and 3 of the L1 bottlenecks. But is this the set of priorities we want to solve for, especially given the scale of technical cost here?” added Adam Cochran. 

It’s clear that the proposal still needs clarity and further discussions within the Ethereum community. While the promise is one of radical simplification that drives efficiency and speed, it also introduces a complex technical change. It would require potentially years of dedication to rethinking how the layer-1 blockchain works.

Of course, as with any decentralized project, the green light doesn’t just rely on technical planning; it needs the consent of the community. So, currently, Buterin’s proposal has opened a wide conversation about any impending development action.

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BTC bulls get 'biggest signal' — 5 Things to know in Bitcoin this week

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May 12, 2025

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Bitcoin (BTC) launches into US CPI week with new multimonth highs as traders dig in for volatility.

BTC price action is giving increasingly bullish signals, joined by a key cross on the weekly MACD indicator.

The weekly close fell just short of expectations, raising doubts over whether price discovery will return in the immediate future.

CPI and PPI headline the week’s US macro data drops, but markets are all about the US-China trade deal and its implications.

Bitcoin supply in loss drops below 2% in a rare test of hodlers’ staying power.

Despite the gains, crypto market sentiment remains cool amid a lack of mainstream interest.

Bitcoin MACD cross copies October 2024

Bitcoin managed to preserve its highest levels since January around the weekly close as bulls battle resistance below all-time highs.

Volatility was visible over the weekend thanks to BTC/USD staying sensitive to developments around US trade tariffs.

On the hourly chart, these manifested as snap moves up and down before a broad sideways trend continued, resulting in several “long wick” candles. 

That pattern continued into the week’s first Wall Street open, with Bitcoin hitting new highs of $105,706 on Bitstamp, per data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

“Price action was making it seem like something big was coming. Any tiny dip was getting scooped up instantly and price started to move ~1 hour prior to the announcement,” popular trader Daan Crypto Trades wrote about the tariffs phenomenon in part of a post on X. 

“We’re seeing quite a lot of ‘aware’ price action precede big announcements lately. The insider/leaking is real and it’s used to trade our markets. Keep in mind, seeing this is such a big one including two major countries, it could be anyone anywhere.”BTC/USDT perpetual swaps 15-minute chart. Source: Daan Crypto Trades/X

Fellow trader James Wynn continued by forecasting additional volatility to come.

“It’s about to get seriously volatile for $BTC. Sharp wicks down, sharp wicks up,” part of his own X post stated.

An accompanying chart showed exchange order book liquidity from monitoring resource CoinGlass. To the upside, $106,000 was the key area to break through on low timeframes. 

BTC liquidation heatmap. Source: CoinGlass

Others pointed to a bullish cross on the moving average convergence/divergence (MACD) indicator, which on weekly timeframes provided a key upside impetus.

“Probably the biggest signal you can get at the moment,” popular trader Moustache summarized to X followers, noting that the last such cross was in October 2024.

BTC/USD 1-week chart with MACD data. Source: Moustache/X

As Cointelegraph reported, MACD had previously offered mixed signals, with daily performance giving traders pause for thought.

Bitcoin bulls narrowly miss key weekly target

Despite hitting its highest levels in three-and-a-half months after the weekly close, Bitcoin failed to flip a key support line that would secure a fresh breakout.

The weekly candle closed at around $104,100 — a stone’s throw from what analysis previously described as the ticket to price discovery.

BTC/USD 1-week chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Updating X followers on the topic, popular trader and analyst Rekt Capital confirmed a rejection at $104,500.

“Going forward, it’ll be worth watching for Bitcoin to form Lower Lows on the price action and Higher Lows on the RSI for a Bullish Divergence to develop,” he concluded.

BTC/USD 1-day chart with RSI data. Source: Rekt Capital/X

Before the close, BTC/USD had given strong cues that a retest of all-time highs could be on the cards and even a venture beyond.

“Bitcoin is on the cusp of beginning Price Discovery Uptrend 2,” Rekt Capital stated at the time.

BTC/USD 1-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital/X

Price thus returned to a trading range only recently reclaimed during a week in which bulls enjoyed gains of 9.9%.

As Cointelegraph reported, BTC price targets already included $150,000 and higher during June.

CPI week dawns with uncertainty “everywhere”

Another crunch macroeconomic data week for risk-asset traders makes for a potentially volatile environment for Bitcoin and altcoins.

Two key inflation markers, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) print for April, are due in the coming days.

At the same time, markets are on edge over US trade policy, with news of a deal with China sparking flash moves in crypto over the weekend.

“We have yet to receive a statement from Trump directly on the US-China trade deal,” trading resource The Kobeissi Letter noted in part of ongoing X coverage. 

“This explains why markets are only up ~1.3% on this otherwise massively bullish news. Uncertainty is still everywhere.”S&P 500 E-mini futures chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Kobeissi added that retail earnings reports could also shape market performance over the coming week.

Continuing, trading firm Mosaic Asset argued that trade news aside, risk assets lacked bullish impetus thanks to an ongoing hawkish policy stance from the US Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell. 

The Fed left interest rates unchanged at its meeting last week, with markets increasingly pricing out a cut before July.

“While there is some easing of tensions on the trade front, the latest interest rate setting meeting by the Federal Reserve isn’t delivering any bullish catalysts,” Mosaic Asset wrote in the latest edition of its regular newsletter, “The Market Mosaic.”

“Despite capital market volatility this year, Fed Chair Powell reiterated his message that the Fed can take a ‘wait and see’ approach to how tariffs are impacting the economy and inflation.”Fed target rate probabilities (screenshot). Source: CME Group

The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool puts the chance of a rate cut in June at under 15%, while the Fed’s July meeting attracts around 50% odds.

Euphoria vs. “smart distribution”

The proportion of the Bitcoin supply held in profit has reached more than 98% — something barely seen before, new research says.

In one of its “Quicktake” blog posts on May 11, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant examined whether the Bitcoin investor base was inclined to “smart distribution” at current levels.

“When BTC’s supply in loss drops to between 0–2%, it typically coincides with late-stage bull runs,” contributor Kripto Mevsimi summarized. 

“As shown in the chart, these moments cluster near macro tops — a zone often characterized by overconfidence.”BTC supply days in loss (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant

The post added that long-term holders — those hodling for at least six months — may see the return to six figures as a suitable opportunity to reduce BTC exposure. Newcomers and speculators, on the other hand, may only now be planning an entry.

“With nearly all BTC holders in profit, distribution risk increases. Long-term holders may see these conditions as a signal to derisk, especially with BTC near all-time highs,” Kripto Mevsimi continued. 

“Meanwhile, newer entrants could interpret this strength as confirmation to chase, creating a potential sentiment mismatch.”

Last week, research nonetheless suggested that buy-side and sell-side pressure was broadly balanced, with the implication that Bitcoin could continue moving higher without a significant rush to the exit.

Mainstream retail ignores $104,000 Bitcoin

In an interesting development — one potentially supporting sustained BTC price upside — the market is less “greedy” at $104,000 than it was when Bitcoin traded more than 10% lower.

Related: Ethereum chart pattern supports ‘moon shot’ rally to new price highs if confirmed — Trader

The latest data from the Crypto Fear & Greed Index shows that while “greed” does characterize the general mood, the initial push to $94,000 on April 23 delivered higher readings.

Fear & Greed measured 70/100 on May 12, while on April 23 it reached 72/100, just inches from “extreme greed” territory.

Lower levels of greed in the face of higher prices could potentially signal more sustainable price growth as investors resist the urge to act erratically.

Crypto Fear & Greed Index (screenshot). Source: Alternative.me

Analyzing Google Trends volumes for “Bitcoin” in particular, market commentators have come to similar conclusions.

Despite being close to new all-time highs, Bitcoin is still not attracting significant mainstream retail interest.

Google Trends searches for Bitcoin indicate that $BTC is no longer a retail game.

Which confirms my theory as to why CT isn’t crazy about a 100k $BTC.

Graphic: @invest_answers pic.twitter.com/R56JjQpZXa

— Westy💾 (@Westy_Dev) May 11, 2025

“Google searches for ‘Bitcoin’ at close to a 5-year low. Price over 100k,” Vijay Selvam, author of “Principles of Bitcoin,” summarized on X at the weekend. 

“Retail hasn’t even properly checked back in since 2020.”

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

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