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BlackRock now holds over 567,000 BTC, valued at over $47 billion

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BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with approximately $11.6 trillion in assets under management, currently holds over 567,000 Bitcoin (BTC), valued at over $47.8 billion — making the asset manager one of the largest holders of BTC in the world.

According to Arkham Intelligence, the asset manager’s most recent BTC acquisition occurred on March 14 when a Coinbase Prime wallet transferred 268 BTC, valued at over $22 million, to the asset manager’s iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) wallet.

Tracking onchain funds to and from BlackRock. Source: Arkham Intelligence

Data from Arkham also shows that the asset manager holds over 1.2 million Ether (ETH), valued at over $2.3 billion, roughly 70 million of the USDC (USDC) stablecoin and a long list of altcoins.

The Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are widely cited as the most successful ETF launch in history, as asset managers like BlackRock drive tens of billions in liquidity to the crypto markets and disrupt the cyclical capital rotation that characterizes crypto investment.

BlackRock’s crypto holdings. Source: Arkham Intelligence

Related: BlackRock Bitcoin fund sheds $420M as ETF losing streak hits day 7

Crypto ETFs experience four weeks of outflows

Crypto ETFs experienced four consecutive weeks of outflows in February 2025 and early March due to macroeconomic uncertainty and fears over a prolonged trade war.

According to CoinShares, outflows from the recent market downturn totaled $4.75 billion, with the week of March 9 recording a total of $876 million in outflows.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin fund experienced $193 million in outflows for the week of March 9, with all BTC ETFs recording $756 million in month-to-date outflows.

Weekly crypto fund flows show a recent downturn featuring four weeks of consecutive outflows. Source: CoinShares

Despite the heightened volatility and macroeconomic uncertainty, BlackRock added IBIT to its model portfolio in February 2025.

BlackRock’s model portfolios are preset investment plans that feature a range of diversified financial instruments and different risk profiles. The portfolios are promoted to asset managers, who pitch the preset investment plans to investors.

The inclusion of an ETF or an asset in the model portfolio can significantly boost inflows into the asset by attracting fresh capital.

In the case of IBIT, including the ETF in a preset investment portfolio will expose investors, who may take a more passive approach, to Bitcoin without those investors having to self-custody the digital asset or make any onchain transactions.

Magazine: Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a ‘honeypot’ for hackers and governments: Trezor CEO

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Ripple commits $25M US school nonprofits

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Ripple, the US-based crypto services firm behind the XRP Ledger, has committed $25 million in Ripple USD (RLUSD) to education nonprofits DonorsChoose and Teach For America.

According to a May 5 announcement, the grant will be processed through the crypto charity intermediary service The Giving Block. DonorsChoose CEO Alix Guerrier said “teachers are going the extra mile for their students’ education, even spending hundreds — sometimes thousands — of dollars out-of-pocket for their classrooms.” The donations are meant to provide teachers with resources for such initiatives.

Ripple cites a 2024 Gallup survey showing that 55% of US parents and adults are dissatisfied with the quality of K-12 education in the United States. This highlights “constraints and gaps in funding for education,” the reports reads. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in the statement:

“We hope to inspire others to do the same, starting with Teacher Appreciation Week, and leading into the rest of the year to support students and teachers with the resources they need to build a stronger future for themselves and their communities.”

Teach For America CEO Aneesh Sohoni said the new funding will allow the organization to expand its “Ignite Tutoring Fellows program, drive innovation in our Reinvention Lab, and provide crucial financial assistance” to prepare teachers.

Related: The Giving Block starts disaster fund for California wildfire victims

Crypto-fueled charity

The cryptocurrency industry is familiar with charitable donations. Last month, Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao pledged over half a million dollars worth of crypto to the earthquake disaster relief effort in Thailand and Myanmar. The Giving Block forecasts crypto donations to reach $2.5 billion in 2025.

Another player in the crypto charity field, Blockchain For Impact (BFI), in March committed $90 million to advance biomedical research.

Magazine: 6 Questions for Alex Wilson of The Giving Block

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Crypto market manipulation schemes are becoming increasingly coordinated

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Opinion by: Tracy Jin, Chief Operating Officer, MEXC

Market manipulation is everywhere and yet nowhere to be seen. It is an invisible threat affecting crypto and traditional markets, leaving ordinary traders counting the costs. Sometimes, manipulation is obvious — illiquid tokens being pumped high before being dumped just as fast — but often, it’s subtler and more challenging to detect.

What’s more concerning is that these schemes are no longer the domain of rogue whales or amateur pump groups. Signs increasingly point to highly organized, well-funded networks coordinating activities across centralized exchanges, derivatives platforms, and onchain ecosystems. As these actors grow in sophistication, their threat to market integrity expands exponentially.

A tale as old as time 

Market manipulation is as old as markets themselves. In ancient Greece, a philosopher named Thales of Miletus used his knowledge of weather patterns to predict a bumper olive harvest, quietly leasing all the olive presses in the region at a low rate before the season started. Then, when the harvest came in, and demand for presses spiked, he rented them out at inflated prices, pocketing the difference. 

For a more recent historical example, albeit still 300 years in the past, see the South Sea Company bubble in which company directors dumped shares at peak prices, leaving regular investors rekt. Or the Dutch tulip bubble of a century earlier. 

Market manipulation has existed in crypto since the first exchanges came onstream around 2011. Those who were around back then may recall the pump-and-dump schemes on the BTC-E exchange orchestrated by a notorious trader called Fontas. Or they might remember Bear Whale, whose 30,000 BTC sell wall crashed the market at a time when total daily trading volume was less than $30 million — for all of crypto combined. While not technically market manipulation, it showed how easily one individual could move the crypto market.

Fast forward to today, and crypto is a multi-trillion dollar asset class, rendering manipulation of large-cap assets virtually impossible for solitary whales. But when a group of nefarious traders team up, it’s still possible to move markets — and well-organized insiders are doing just that.

Manipulators make their move

The days when a single whale could set a BTC sell wall that took weeks to topple are long gone. While crypto is magnitudes more liquid these days, it’s also much more fragmented. This presents opportunities to enterprising traders who hunt in packs to move markets to their advantage. Often working through private Telegram groups, people coordinate activities targeting markets where they can have the most effect. The trend highlights the growing participation of major players in market manipulation schemes, presenting a new level of risk for the crypto industry. 

Recent: What are exit liquidity traps — and how to detect them before it is too late

In February, analyst James CryptoGuru warned of large-scale manipulation risks involving spot Bitcoin ETFs. He explained that these instruments could put downward pressure on Bitcoin’s price — particularly when traditional financial markets are closed. Such a strategy could trigger liquidations among leveraged traders and create temporary imbalances, allowing large players to accumulate BTC and ETH at discounted prices.

Because crypto — both onchain and on-exchange — is highly interconnected, the ripple effects of a successful manipulation attempt extend far and wide. If a trading pair queried by APIs for feeding other markets is knocked out of sync on one centralized exchange, it can generate arbitrage opportunities elsewhere, including on perps markets. As a result, an attack can be initiated on one exchange, and the profits claimed on another, making it extremely hard to catch the culprits.

The integrity of the cryptocurrency market faces increased risk. Coordinated groups have deep pockets, technical tools, and cross-platform access to execute and mask complex operations. The troubling part is that most exchanges remain reactive by design since it’s virtually impossible to prevent market manipulation. As a result, attackers have a high chance of retaining the advantage, even if the window in which they’re free to run amok is becoming increasingly smaller.

Not all manipulators break the rules

Just as Thales of Miletus wasn’t breaking the rules when he profited off olive season, much of what constitutes crypto manipulation isn’t illegal. When a large fund starts buying a particular token through one of their public wallets to attract attention — is that manipulation? Or when market makers go beyond simply matching bid-ask spreads to actively propping up a token’s price at the request of a project? Many things move markets, but mostly things that aren’t illegal — at least not now.

While the moral code governing influencers, market makers, trading firms, and other players of serious size can be debated at length, other cases require less nuance. The last time anyone checked, using thousands of exchange accounts staffed by dozens of users to inflate a particular asset is blatant manipulation. Exchanges, aided by increasingly sophisticated AI-powered tooling, are fighting back.

The days when one user would cause mayhem on the markets may be over. The threat hasn’t, however, dissipated in the multichain, multi-exchange era — it’s multiplied. As a result, exchanges are now locked into a game of whack-a-mole, trying to detect suspicious behavior initiated by hundreds or thousands of accounts simultaneously.

Thankfully, exchanges don’t have to do it alone, as successful collaboration cases show. When Bybit was hacked in early 2025, other platforms stepped in to lend ETH and help it meet its withdrawal obligations — a rare but powerful sign of solidarity in the face of crisis.

As well-funded, highly organized groups continue to test the system, one thing becomes clear: manipulating the market may be relatively easy — but doing so without being detected is increasingly difficult. Collective vigilance, data sharing, and early detection are becoming the most effective tools in safeguarding the integrity of the crypto trading ecosystem.

Opinion by: Tracy Jin, Chief Operating Officer, MEXC.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

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Trump to host memecoin gala dinner amid backlash, impeachment calls

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US President Donald Trump will host a gala dinner for top holders of his Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin despite bipartisan criticism and renewed calls for impeachment.

In a May 5 Truth Social post, Trump announced that he will hold a gala dinner with major TRUMP holders on May 22. The announcement follows multiple US lawmakers expressing concern over the initiative.

In late April, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren called on government officials to address questions related to Trump’s memecoin and his media company. Controversies grew after Trump announced a dinner and White House tour for some holders of his TRUMP memecoin.

“President Trump’s announcement promises exclusive access to the presidency in exchange for significant investment in one of the President’s business ventures,” a letter co-signed by California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff read.

A call for impeachment over a memecoin

Also in late April, Senator Jon Ossoff expressed support for impeaching Trump during an April 25 town hall, citing the president’s plan to host the dinner for top TRUMP memecoin holders. He said:

“When the sitting president of the United States is selling access for what are effectively payments directly to him. There is no question that that rises to the level of an impeachable offense.”

Pro-crypto Senator Cynthia Lummis and at least one other Republican in Congress were reportedly also critical of Trump for offering the top holders of his memecoin a dinner and White House tour. Lummis, of Wyoming, reportedly said that the US president offering exclusive access to himself and the White House for people willing to pay for it “gives [her] pause.”

In a May 4 post on X, Warren claimed the Trump family’s stablecoin surged in market value due to a “shady crypto deal with the United Arab Emirates,” which involved settling the investment using USD1. She argued this raised serious national security concerns and warned against the Senate passing crypto-friendly legislation.

Warren expressed concerns around foreign involvement in the US president’s finances. She also suggested that the Senate should refrain from approving pro-crypto bills:

“The Senate shouldn’t pass a crypto bill this week to facilitate this kind of corruption.“

Related: America’s crypto renaissance is already failing; but we can fix it

Source: Elizabeth Warren

Niko Demchuk, head of legal at crypto compliance firm AMLBot, told Cointelegraph that “Senator Warren’s concerns about ‘pro-crypto’ bills highlight tensions between fostering stablecoin innovation and mitigating risks like foreign influence or self-dealing by public officials.” He said that lawmakers can build safeguards such as disclosure requirements, anti-conflict of interest provisions and independent audits. He added:

“These safeguards address Warren’s concerns by prioritizing transparency and accountability without stifling legitimate stablecoin development. They might ensure the U.S. remains a hub for responsible innovation while protecting against misuse by public officials or foreign actors.“

Warren’s post included a clip from a recent interview during which Trump gave conflicting answers to whether he has profited from the crypto memecoin he launched in January, just days before he reentered the White House. During the clip, the president claims not to have “even looked” to check whether he profited off his endeavours.

Related: Elizabeth Warren joins call for probe of Trump over crypto tokens

The United Arab Emirates deal

Warren was likely referring to the recent deal that saw Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX use USD1 to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. According to CoinMarketCap data, the stablecoin’s market cap shot up from under $137 million on May 1 to nearly $2.13 billion on May 2.

USD1’s Market Capitalization. Source: CoinMarketCap

Eric Trump announced the deal during a panel discussion at Token2049 in Dubai. Trump, the son of the president, serves as executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He said during the event:

“The US is seeing that the financial world has to progress. It’s a joke. Why do banks run nine to five, Monday to Friday, with an hour and a half of lunch break? It doesn’t make sense.”

Much like the memecoin, the USD1 stablecoin also attracted its fair share of criticism. In early April, some US lawmakers went as far as to allege that Trump wanted to replace the US dollar with USD1.

Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions

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