CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
*Data as of 6:45 AM UTC on May 8, 2026.
Bitcoin (BTC) showed strength early in the week, but faltered to a weak finish, rising 3.40% this week, while Ethereum (ETH) fared much worse, falling 0.18% in the same week. Nevertheless, total crypto market cap still rose 3.5% to $2.66T, up from $2.57T from the previous week.
Weekly liquidations started off heavily on the short side as Bitcoin pushed strongly over the $80K level. But as the level failed to hold, liquidations quickly swung to the long side, taking out late longs. Funding rates also paint a strong picture, with majors showing gradual increases in funding rates, indicating increased confidence in the rally.
📌 Michael Saylor’s Strategy acquires 3,273 BTC for $2.55M, bringing their total holding to 818,334 BTC. - Link
📌 CME Group extends trading hours for cryptocurrency futures and options, enabling 24/7 trading for them beginning May 29th. - Link
📌 Western Union launches their own stablecoin USDPT on Solana. The stablecoin is issued by Anchorage and is integrated across Western Union’s infrastructure. - Link
Why does it matter?
Despite unresolved tensions in the Middle East and a potential epidemic brewing, both the equity and crypto markets performed well this week, with both kicking off the week strong, before giving back some of the gains by the end of the week. Nevertheless, the S&P 500 finished the week strong, closing 1.42% up from the week prior, while the Nasdaq surged an impressive 3.84% in the same period.
Notable altcoin outperformers this week included BuildOn (B), Toncoin(TON), Tagger (TAG), SKYAI (SKYAI), ZCash (ZEC), and Jito (JTO).
Narrative of the Week 📰
Hyperliquid continues to ship and reach into new sectors, creeping toward their target as “The Blockchain To House All Finance”.
📌 Hyperliquid launches HIP-4 Outcome Markets on mainnet, with the first released market on BTC price. - Link
📌 Trade[XYZ] launches pre-IPO perpetuals, with the first listing being Cerebras (CBRS), which is expected to IPO in May 2026. - Link
📌 Ledger integrates Hyperliquid perpetuals trading into its hardware wallets, supported by Yield.xyz. - Link
Why does it matter?
Hyperliquid continues to be at the forefront of DeFi, pushing new primitives and expanding their product suite to capture the entirety of the DeFi market.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 World Liberty Financial strikes back against Justin Sun, initiating a lawsuit for defamation against the Tron founder. - Link
📌 Coinbase cuts 14% of their workforce, citing poor market conditions and the use of AI to restructure the company. - Link
📌 Telegram founder, Pavel Durov announces that Telegram is now the largest TON validator and will replace the TON Foundation in driving the development of the TON blockchain. - Link
📌 Base partners with Succinct Labs to bring zero-knowledge proofs to Base Azul, the L2’s latest upgrade. - Link
Why does it matter?
The World Liberty Financial and Justin Sun drama carries on, this time with retaliation from the World Liberty Financial team, just two crypto giants duking it out for dominance over the narrative.
DeFi Brief 🏦
*Data as of 6:45 AM UTC on May 8, 2026.
📌 Aave files for an emergency motion to vacate a restraining notice served on Arbitrum DAO, which attempts to seize $71M in ETH tokens from the recent KelpDAO exploit, reasoning that the seizure will hinder the timeline to make affected users whole. - Link
📌 KelpDAO announces plans to migrate their cross-chain infrastructure to Chainlink’s CCIP instead, over LayerZero’s. - Link
📌 Perpetual DEX, Drift, outlines plans for users affected by their exploit, with users to receive recovery tokens which are claimable from the recovery pool, formed from capital contributions and exchange revenue. - Link
📌 Solana liquid staking protocol, Jito, announces plans to develop JTX, a professional trading platform built for serious traders. - Link
Why does it matter?
The legal situation between Aave, Arbitrum DAO and the courts is a legal showdown between the power of a code-enforced DAO structure against state-enforced legal action. Depending on the direction this resolves, it could set a core precedent for the DeFi space regarding exploits.
Fundraises 💰
📌 Global payment rail infrastructure protocol, Fun, raises $72M in a Series A funding round led by Multicoin and SignalFire, with support from Infinity Capital, Pharsalus Capital, and more. - Link
📌 Stablecoin yield infrastructure protocol, OpenTrade, raises $17M in a strategic round led by Mercury Capital and Notion Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, Albion VC, and CMCC Global. - Link
📌 Solana on-chain asset manager, OnRe Finance, raises $5M in a Series A funding round led by RockawayX and Forward Industries. - Link
📌 Solana yield exchange, Exponent, raises $5M in a seed round led by Multicoin, with other investors including RockawayX, L1D, Solana Ventures, and more. - Link
Airdrops 🪂
📌 Apyx announces plans to release the APYX token, concluding Season 1 of their points program. The airdrop will distribute 5% of the total token supply to eligible point holders. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: @CL207
Remember, no dips.
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