• Triple sell-off across stocks, bonds and the dollar happened again, further tightening global liquidity and showing urgency to initiate QE.
• This week’s incoming data includes Fed comments, FOMC minutes, US GDP, core PCE, personal income/spending data, etc.
• Bitcoin hit a new all-time-high of over $110,000 last week.
• Soon has got listed on Binance Alpha with a FDV of 385 million and has yet to gain traction from the secondary market.
• Cetus, the biggest dex on Sui, got hacked last week, causing a loss of 223 million.
• Sei introduced Sei Giga as first Multi-Proposer EVM L1, promising sub-400ms finality & high throughput.
• Jupiter pushes into Lending with Fluid partnership to expand DeFi capabilities.
• Republic Technologies integrates mETH, signaling institutional shift in Ethereum treasury strategy.
• Most funded projects are in the infrastructure sector.

Macro Overview

Triple sell-off across stocks, bonds and the dollar happened again, further tightening global liquidity and showing urgency to initiate QE.

On May 21, the auction of 20-year US Treasury bonds drew weak demand, with the high yield surpassing 5% and the bid-to-cover ratio dropping to 2.46, triggering market panic. US markets once again experienced a “triple sell-off” across stocks, bonds, and the dollar. Meanwhile, Japan’s 20-year government bond auction also saw weak demand. These simultaneous happenings in both economies reflect a tightening global liquidity, and the Japanese yen’s liquidity shortage may further accelerate the triple sell-off in the US.

As Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”could be passed soon, the US debt ceiling issue is nearing a solution and the US Treasury may issue new debts this summer, increasing a systematic liquidity shock. A sharp rise in interest rates, elevated market volatility, and a tightening liquidity environment may suppress US equities, increase pressure on foreign financial institutions to reduce US asset holdings, and force deleveraging. This could lead to foreign capital outflows and disruption among the stocks, bonds and the dollar. The urgency for the Federal Reserve to initiate QE or other balance sheet expansion measures to stabilize markets is rising.

Fed minutes from the May 6–7th FOMC meeting will be scoured for insights into the Fed’s thoughts after rates were again unchanged. More up-to-date comments from FOMC members will also be this week with views regarding the growth and inflation in focus given the uncertainty of tariffs. The second estimate of first quarter US GDP will be updated this Thursday, and the core PCE index for April will be released this Friday, which is one of the most dominant indicators for the Fed’s decisions. Other data to be released this week includes durable goods orders, consumer confidence, home prices and personal income and spending data.

The dollar index dropped significantly last Friday as the 20-year US Treasury yield went high. As Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Apple, Samsung phones, and Bessent said that EU is not negotiating in good faith, US dollar fell significantly while Japanese yen boosted.

The total assets ripped off $24.5bn last week, where both the MBS and the US Treasury has been reduced. While the overall amount didn’t exceed the $40bn cap for asset rip-off this month, next month the asset control pace will be determined in the next FOMC meeting.

As the gold price reconfirmed its local bottom of around $3,200, last week the gold price started pumping again. As Trump raised more conflicts with the EU and tech giants like Apple, investors’ demand for safe haven assets sparkled again.

Crypto Markets Overview

1. Main Assets

As of this Monday, the prices of BTC and ETH were around $110,000 and $2,500 respectively, marking weekly increases of 5.7% and 6.5%. Solana was priced at $177, up 7.7% from the previous week. The SOL/ETH exchange rate remains in an upward trend on the weekly chart.

2. Total Market Cap

Last week, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at $3.39 trillion. Excluding BTC and ETH, the altcoin market cap was $903.14 billion, representing a week-over-week surge of 6.6% and 5.2%, respectively. BTC continues to significantly outperform altcoins. It is advisable to maintain selective bets on tokens driven by strong individual fundamentals, rather than adopting a broad-based investment view on an altcoin market-wide rebound.

3. Top 30 Crypto Assets Performance

Last week, the vast majority of tokens were in an uptrend, with many showing signs of a potential reversal on their candlestick charts. This suggests that selective bets on tokens with strong fundamentals may be worthwhile. Among the top 30 tokens, HYPE posted a gain of over 50%, breaking above $40. Its market cap reached $12.89 billion, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $38.6 billion — surpassing that of SUI.

SUI, on the other hand, saw a slight decline of 2.9% last week, following a hack on CETUS, the largest CEX on the network. The attacker stole approximately $223 million, but the SUI team managed to freeze $162 million by expanding the blacklist.

4. New Token Launched

Last week saw the launch of numerous new tokens, though most of them were meme coins. The main listings on exchanges were Giza and SOON.

Giza has built a decentralized infrastructure for inference computation with large language models. It was listed on Gate with a market cap of $8.7 million and a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $135 million. Giza is a notable project within the Starknet ecosystem. It previously raised $3 million in a seed round led by CoinFund, and later received additional investments from MH Ventures and the Base Ecosystem Fund.

SOON is an OP Layer 2 project built on Solana. One of its market makers is Jump Trading, although only a very small portion of the tokens are in circulation. It was listed on Binance Alpha, but has yet to gain traction in the secondary market. Its FDV stands at $382 million, while the latest funding round valued the project at approximately $200 million.

The Key Crypto Highlights

1. Sei introduced Sei Giga as First Multi-Proposer EVM L1, promising sub-400ms finality & high throughput.

Sei Labs has published the whitepaper for Sei Giga, positioning it as the first multi-proposer EVM Layer 1 blockchain, purpose-built to push the boundaries of Ethereum-compatible performance. Designed from the ground up, Sei Giga introduces parallel block proposals via its custom Autobahn consensus, achieving ~200,000 TPS, 5 gigagas throughput, and sub-400ms finality, metrics that aim to redefine expectations for high-throughput decentralized applications. Unlike many EVM-compatible chains that build on gETH or rETH, Sei Giga features an entirely new EVM execution client, enabling 40x execution efficiency and 70x faster block production. Additionally, asynchronous state commitments decouple consensus from state generation, removing bottlenecks from the transaction pipeline. Fully compatible with Solidity and Vyper smart contracts, Sei Giga is designed to serve web3 applications that require low-latency, real-time performance while maintaining the Proof-of-Stake trust model and Ethereum tooling. This isn’t just another EVM chain, it’s a fundamental redesign targeting the scalability needs of real-world apps like trading, gaming, and DePIN.

2. Jupiter pushes into Lending with Fluid partnership to expand DeFi capabilities.

Jupiter, the dominant DEX aggregator on Solana, has unveiled Jupiter Lend, a new lending protocol developed in partnership with Fluid, a liquidity layer originally built on Ethereum. Announced at the Solana Accelerate conference, this expansion marks a significant vertical move for Jupiter, which already accounts for 95% of Solana DEX aggregation volume and recently completed a $580M token distribution. Designed to be the “most advanced money market” on Solana, Jupiter Lend will feature up to 90% loan-to-value (LTV) ratios_far higher than the typical 75% in DeFi. This is made possible through a bespoke liquidation engine and dynamic risk isolation limits, giving users more credit capacity with less collateral. Fees are expected to be as low as 0.1%. The product suite will initially include two core components: a one-click lending protocol and a vault system for optimized borrowing rates. While still in pre-launch with an open waitlist, Jupiter Lend’s design is fully composable and open to third-party integrations, a direct appeal to Solana’s expanding DeFi developer community.

3. Republic Technologies integrates mETH, signaling institutional shift in Ethereum treasury strategy.

mETH Protocol has partnered with Republic Technologies, the Ethereum-focused treasury division of Beyond Medical Technologies (CSE: DOCT | FSE: 7FM), marking the first time a publicly listed company has added a liquid staking token to its balance sheet. The move underscores a new phase of Ethereum institutionalization, as staking transitions from a crypto-native practice to a compliant and yield-generating treasury asset. Republic Technologies has converted a significant portion of its ETH holdings into mETH to enable native yield, operational simplicity, and regulatory-grade reporting, aligning its on-chain strategy with institutional standards. Built for large allocators, mETH abstracts away validator operations and offers composable access to staking rewards. The protocol has rapidly grown into the fourth-largest ETH liquid staking solution, securing $2.19B in TVL, supporting 170,000 mETH restaked into EigenDA, and integrating with over 40 platforms across three networks. The protocol’s adoption by a publicly traded entity validates its institutional readiness and integration into broader capital markets infrastructure. Looking ahead, mETH is set to play a key role in Mantle’s $400M-backed MI4 tokenized index fund and the forthcoming Mantle Bank product suite, positioning it as a foundational asset for institutional Ethereum strategies that bridge staking, DeFi, and fiat interoperability.

Key Ventures Deals

1. Circle Co-founder raises $18M for Catena Labs aims to redefine banking with AI Agents.

Circle Co-founder Sean Neville has launched Catena Labs, an ambitious new startup focused on building an AI-native financial system, with $18M in Seed funding led by a16z crypto, and participation from Breyer Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, and Tom Brady. Unlike traditional banks or fintech apps, Catena’s long-term vision centers on a future where AI agents, not humans_initiate and manage financial transactions. Neville envisions a world where consumers interact directly with intelligent agents that operate autonomously across financial services. Built from scratch with a lean team of nine, Catena Labs is developing open-source protocols for AI-powered payments and digital identity, with stablecoin integration but without launching a token or stablecoin of its own, at least for now. While product specifics remain under wraps, Neville emphasizes that today’s financial infrastructure is outdated and incompatible with a world shaped by LLMs and automated agent-based activity.

2. Hyperdrive Secures $6M in Series A to build core stablecoin yield infrastructure

Hyperdrive has raised $6M in a Series A round led by Hack VC and Arrington Capital, with participation from Ergonia, Mirana, BHD, Hashkey, L1D, CMS, and Breed, to build what it calls the final layer of stablecoin yield infrastructure. Founded on the thesis that stablecoins represent crypto’s largest, fastest-growing vertical, now exceeding $243 billion in supply, Hyperdrive focuses on sustainable lending mechanics by integrating with HyperliquidX’s Hyperliquidity Provider (HLP). HLP’s market-making vault delivers yields of over 19% APY with daily drawdown risk under 1%, driven by proprietary strategies and priority liquidation flow, distinguishing it from unsustainable, ponzi-like sources. Hyperdrive will enable users to tokenize HLP positions, use them as collateral, and loop yield strategies once Hyperliquid dependencies are live. Looking ahead, Hyperdrive envisions itself as “The Home of Stablecoin Yields,” supporting tokenization protocols like HyperUnit, a diverse array of vaults, payment rails, and DeFi apps, all composable on-chain.

3. Slash raises $41M in Series B to scale vertical Neo-Bank model.

Slash, a vertical neo-banking platform, has raised $41M in Series B funding led by Goodwater Capital, pushing its valuation to $370M. Originally focused on sneaker resellers, the startup pivoted after the collapse of the Yeezy resale market due to Kanye West’s controversy. With its infrastructure repurposed for industries like performance marketing, crypto firms, and HVAC operators, Slash now processes $300M per month, with over 1% of Facebook ads reportedly transacted via its issued cards. Unlike horizontal fintech peers like Mercury and Brex, Slash takes a vertical software approach, offering sector-specific financial tools such as sub-accounts for ad budgets or integrated fiat-to-crypto swaps. Backed in earlier rounds by NEA, Slash now positions itself as a niche-first, infrastructure-rich challenger to legacy financial institutions. The company’s close partnership with Column, a tech-aligned chartered bank, has also helped it scale while navigating recent BaaS disruptions. With 35 employees and fresh capital, Slash is eyeing expansion into e-commerce, property management, and travel, aiming to become a stealthy heavyweight in the commercial credit card and vertical banking space.

The number of deals closed in the previous week was 21, with Data having 7 deals, representing 33% for each sector of the total number of deals. Meanwhile, Infra had 6 (29%), Gamefi had 2 (10%) and DeFi had 6 (29%) deals

The total amount of disclosed funding raised in the previous week was $259M, 33% deals (7/21) in previous week didn’t public the raised amount. The top funding came from Infra sector with $157M. Most funded deals: WorldCoin $135M; Slash $41M

Total weekly fundraising rose to $259M for the 4th week of May-2025, an increase of +188% compared to the week prior. Weekly fundraising in the previous week was up +7% year over year for the same period.

About Gate Ventures

Gate Ventures, the venture capital arm of Gate, is focused on investments in decentralized infrastructure, middleware, and applications that will reshape the world in the Web 3.0 age. Working with industry leaders across the globe, Gate Ventures helps promising teams and startups that possess the ideas and capabilities needed to redefine social and financial interactions.

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