Tether Makes Strategic Expansion into New Business Segments Including AI and Education | Cryptocurrency Trends

1. Mainstream Exchange Trends:

• OKX HK withdraws its VASP license application and will stop providing centralized trading services to Hong Kong users at the end of this month.
• Coinbase makes another push to appeal the judge's ruling in its case with the U.S. SEC.
• Binance to release Cristiano Ronaldo's newest NFT collection on May 29.

2. Cryptocurrency Trends:

• The Stargate community votes regarding the use of potential LayerZero Token allocation received as a result of the LayerZero RFP Process. The proposal includes distributing the Stargate DAO's potential LayerZero token rewards to bridgers, LP providers, and STG stakers. The proposal currently has over 90% support.
• The Uniswap Foundation to vote on May 31 to upgrade its fee mechanism to reward UNI holders.
• LayerZero: Sybil bounty applications will reopen shortly with a required bond of 0.5 ETH.
• Tether to make strategic expansions into new business segments, including AI and education.
• The Arbitrum community votes on the 200M ARB Gaming Catalyst Program proposal, which aims to provide a three-year incentive program for games in the Arbitrum ecosystem. Support for the proposal is currently over 99%.
• Ether.fi is expected to launch its mobile wallet and Visa card, Ether.fi Cash, in September.
• Vitalik Buterin proposes the first block on the Taiko mainnet, saying that he looks forward to its launch.
• Sei to upgrade its v2 mainnet on May 27 to introduce a high-performance parallelized EVM to enhance network functionality.
• Jupiter's third round of LFG voting ends with deBridge winning with 59% of the vote.
• Gala Games announces that it has burned 4.4 billion GALA tokens in the attacker's wallet. The team has also recovered all ETH and used it for GalaSwap to buy back and burn nearly 1 billion more GALA.
• CARV, a modular data layer, partners with social network Cyber to reward each other's communities.

3. Financing Trends:

• Steven "Seven" Waterhouse, a former partner at Pantera Capital, is currently raising $50 million for a new fund.
• IVX, a native options protocol based on Berachain, raises $1.2 million in seed round funding led by Animoca Ventures and AVID3, with participation from Big Brain Holdings and others.
• Feature, a Web3 entertainment studio and tech company, raises $1.9 million in funding with participation from InterVest, Avalanche, Acme Innovation, and Sterling.VC.

4. Regulatory Trends:

• No trends of note.