Crypto News

According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), net crude oil imports in the United States fell to a negative value in the latest week, a record low, and weekly crude oil exports in the United States rose to a record high of more than 6 million barrels per day. (Jin Shi)

ChainCatcher news, according to Gate market data, the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indices both turned up, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now down 0.39%.

Odaily Planet Daily News The United States EIA crude oil inventories for the week ending April 24 were -6.234 million barrels, expected to be -231,000 barrels, and the previous value was 1.925 million barrels. (Jin Shi)

According to ChainCatcher news, Gate founder and CEO Dr. Han recently said in an interview with The Block that the integration of AI and Web3 is accelerating the improvement of industry efficiency. The company has fully opened AI enterprise accounts for team members, which are widely used in scenarios such as coding and development, significantly improving overall production efficiency. On this basis, the product iteration rhythm has been greatly compressed from the past "several weekly updates" to "daily updates". At the same time, Web3 provides AI agents with automated payment capabilities, enabling low-cost and efficient fund settlement through on-chain protocols. AI has also become an important tool for dealing with massive on-chain assets, which can quickly complete liquidity screening and transaction path optimization based on instructions. When talking about compliance and industry competition, Dr. Han pointed out that the current crypto trading platform has become homogeneous at the product experience level, but fierce competition continues to promote the improvement of overall service levels. Gate currently has regulatory coverage in 81 jurisdictions around the world, compliant operations in 46 US states, and a European MiCA license for 29 European markets, as well as relevant licenses in Dubai, Japan and Australia. Blockchain is gradually evolving from a single cryptocurrency carrier to an infrastructure that carries multiple assets. Dr. Han believes that as AI and Web3 continue to integrate, Gate is continuously optimizing the user experience and pushing the platform to extend to a wider range of daily usage scenarios.

According to Arkham monitoring, about 1 hour ago, Grayscale transferred 3,004 ETH to Coinbase, worth $6.95 million.

Odaily Planet Daily News, IPO documents show that he can only be removed from SpaceX's board seat or executive position by voting through a stock class controlled by Musk. (Jin Shi)

Odaily Planet Daily News xAI's latest practice shows that even if a large number of Nvidia server-level GPUs are successfully obtained, how to efficiently utilize them is still one of the core bottlenecks faced by AI training. As AI developers continue to compete for Nvidia's computing power resources, the issue of tight GPU supply has been widely concerned, but the new challenge in the industry lies in "usage efficiency" itself. AI model training often exhibits a distinct "bursty" characteristic: the GPU runs at high intensity for a short period of time and then enters an idle period for outcome analysis and strategy adjustment. This uneven pattern of computing power usage makes it difficult for large-scale GPU clusters to maintain sustained high utilization, making computing power waste significant even when hardware is sufficient. Industry insiders pointed out that this problem is forcing AI companies to redesign training architectures and scheduling systems to improve the overall utilization efficiency of GPU clusters, rather than just expanding the scale of computing power. （The Information）

Jason Karsh, the new chief marketing officer of the Stellar Development Foundation, said that for the crypto industry to achieve mainstream adoption, it must shift from short-term speculation and "hype cycles" to long-term value creation, emphasizing that "get rich slow" is the key path to building trust. Karsh pointed out that the industry's long-standing reliance on obscure terms and technical expressions has widened the cognitive gap with the average user. He argues that crypto "peaked prematurely at the public level" due to the speculative frenzy in the early days, distorting its true value potential. He emphasized that the real opportunity lies in rebuilding global financial infrastructure for more efficient flow and storage of value, and that the Stellar Development Foundation, which has been focusing on payments and cross-border financial applications since 2014, is now benefiting from the gradual regulatory recognition of stablecoins and tokenized assets. Karsh referred to stablecoins as "the first killer app" but also noted that there are still barriers to understanding among the masses, suggesting redefining them as "programmable dollars." He said that the industry's future goal is to push trillions of dollars of assets on-chain, but the key is to rebuild trust simultaneously from the product and narrative level, rather than relying on token issuance to drive growth. He concluded that the next round of crypto growth will come from the replacement of traditional financial infrastructure, not just a speculative cycle, but it is still necessary to prioritize the basic popularization stage of "attracting 100 million real users" in the short term. （CoinDesk）

White House officials said Trump met with oil company executives on Tuesday to discuss the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz if necessary. The price of U.S. Treasury bonds, which were already under pressure, fell on the news. Brent crude oil continued to climb on the impact of this news, and the intraday increase expanded to 5%, further hitting the Treasury bond market. Commodity trading advisors (CTAs) covered profitable short positions after the data was released and then resumed selling. And as the support levels of the yield curve are breached, algorithmic trading dominates. (Jin Shi)

According to official news, OKX Onchain OS has released the Agent Payments Protocol (APP), which is a set of open payment standards for AI Agent business behavior. The agreement defines the payment methods of agents in business scenarios, expanding them from a single payment to a complete business process, and will support multiple payment modes such as single payment, batch payment, pay-as-you-go payment, and guaranteed payment. It is reported that the APP adopts a multi-chain open architecture, and any chain can implement its own version, and the first batch of partners include the Ethereum Foundation, Uniswap, Aptos, Nansen, Paxos, MoonPay, Altlayer, Zerion, QuickNode, etc. OKX Onchain OS said that the launch of the APP will provide critical payment infrastructure for the agent economy, propelling AI Agents from "executing payments" to the "business era."

European financial giant BNP Paribas (BNP Paribas) issued a stern warning of the global economic outlook in its latest quarterly outlook, believing that three potential scenarios, including oil prices reaching $200 per barrel, could plunge the global economy into recession. The war in Iran has had a clear impact on the global economy, but it has not yet completely derailed it. Global GDP growth will slow and inflation will remain high compared to expectations at the beginning of the year, and central banks will maintain more hawkish monetary policy. WTI crude oil rose to 5% during the day, Brent crude oil hit $109 per barrel for the first time since March 23, as Iran threatened to make an "unprecedented" military counterattack against the U.S. naval blockade, and White House officials said Trump discussed with oil companies plans to extend the Iran blockade for months if necessary. BNP pointed out that in addition to oil prices soaring to $200, there are two major factors that could trigger a global recession. And in the case of prolonged conflicts, there is a high probability that the three will occur at the same time and reinforce each other. The first risk is the disruption of energy supply in the Middle East, exacerbating global supply chain bottlenecks. Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz has been blocked, leading to poor global transportation of energy and key components, and some supplies may be forced to be limited in supply. The second risk is high inflation, which will force central banks to tighten monetary policy. Continued monetary tightening will further dampen economic activity and amplify the risk of recession.

According to ChainCatcher news, Squads, a multi-signature protocol in the Solana ecosystem, announced the completion of a $18 million strategic financing, led by Solana Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, L1D, etc. Squads used the funding round to expand its stablecoin corporate finance platform, Altitude.

Odaily Planet Daily News The exchange rate of the Iranian currency rial against the US dollar fell to a record low, and the exchange rate has now exceeded the level of 1 US dollar to 1.81 million riyals. The report said that the exchange rate of the rial against the US dollar accelerated the downward trend that began two days ago, falling by more than 230,000 riyals. (Xinhua News Agency)

The Ethereum Foundation announced a list of funding and ecological support projects for the first quarter of 2026, focusing on cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs (ZK), protocol security, and core infrastructure construction, and continuing to strengthen Ethereum's underlying technology stack and long-term scalability. This quarter's grants cover a number of key areas. At the protocol and client level, including Geth and Erigon client optimizations, Lighthouse client upgrades, and Pectra upgraded network monitoring tools, focus on improving network performance and attack resistance. Projects such as HSM key management, Vero, a validator security tool, and DISC-NG node discovery mechanism are also supported to enhance node-layer reliability and institutional-grade compliance. In the direction of cryptography and ZK, the foundation continues to increase projects such as Poseidon hash function analysis, Gröbner-based attack research, anti-quantum and homomorphic hybrid encryption exploration, and RISC-V zkVM formal verification to further strengthen the security boundary between zero-knowledge proofs and cryptographic infrastructure. In terms of developer ecosystem, tool chains such as BuidlGuidl education system upgrades, ERC standard community construction, WalletConnect signature clearing library, and Open Creator Rails continue to advance to lower the development threshold and improve user interaction security. At the same time, L2BEAT continues to provide Layer2 transparency analysis and strengthen the data infrastructure of the scaling ecosystem. In addition, the foundation also supports privacy technologies (such as Tor integration and Privacy Pool SDK), decentralized identity (did:ethr standard upgrade), DAO governance research, and public goods experimental projects, covering the complete ecological structure from the protocol layer to the application layer. Overall, this round of funding continues Ethereum's long-term investment in the three core directions of "cryptography + ZK+ protocol engineering", emphasizing the support of future multi-layer expansion and institutional-level application implementation through infrastructure and standardization construction.

Odaily Planet Daily News The U.S. Senate Banking Committee will vote in ten minutes to advance Walsh's nomination for Fed chairman. (Jin Shi)

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, Bitcoin remained fluctuating above $77,000 on Wednesday, and the market remained cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision. This FOMC meeting is seen as a key node, and the market generally expects interest rates to remain unchanged, but the real focus is on whether Fed Chair Powell releases a "higher-for-longer" hawkish signal. In addition, this meeting may also be his last meeting as chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the market is also uncertain about pricing policy and potential transfer of power. Overall, Bitcoin is still in a "low liquidity + high event risk" structure and may maintain a range of $72,000 to $80,000 in the short term, waiting for further clarification on the Fed's policy path.

White House officials said Trump discussed with oil companies a plan to extend the Iran blockade for several months if necessary. (Jin Shi)

According to ChainCatcher news, the US dollar against the Japanese yen (USD/JPY) briefly touched 160, hitting a new high since April 7, according to Golden Ten.

ChainCatcher news, according to Jinshi, major investment banks have conducted a forward-looking analysis of the Fed's future interest rate path. Wells Fargo and ING both expect the Fed to cut interest rates by 25 basis points each in September and December. ANZ believes the rate cut cycle may resume in the third quarter. Goldman Sachs Group and Barclays also said that if inflation falls, the Fed will ease policy around September. Bank of America predicts a possible 50 basis point rate cut.