Bitcoin’s BTC$81,002.49 transparency was once considered one of its greatest strengths. Now, Ray Dalio says, it may be the very reason central banks won’t adopt it as a reserve asset, even though corporations and institutional investors have embraced it.

The billionaire hedge fund manager, who is also a bitcoin investor, said on X that, “Bitcoin lacks privacy. Transactions can be monitored and potentially controlled, which is why central banks aren’t looking to hold it.”

Ray Dalio has previously said he allocates about 1% of his portfolio to bitcoin.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest blockchain network, operates as a decentralized peer-to-peer system built on a public ledger. Every transaction is permanently recorded on this transparent ledger, allowing anyone to view it in real time.

Anyone can open a Bitcoin block explorer, enter a wallet address into the search bar, and view the entire transaction history associated with it. While wallet addresses are pseudonymous rather than directly tied to identities, blockchain analytics firms and law enforcement agencies can often trace the movement of funds and link activity back to individuals or institutions.

In other words, the flow of BTC, the blockchain’s native token, is highly transparent and traceable, even if it is not always directly tied to real-world identities.

This level of transparency, often praised by Bitcoin supporters, may also be what keeps central banks away. Imagine being a central bank and accumulating an asset whose flows can be tracked in real time on a public ledger.

The lack of privacy is also a concern for large institutional players. At Consensus Hong Kong in February, participants noted that the mass adoption of blockchain technology at the institutional level may ultimately depend on stronger privacy features, particularly for large transactions.

The market seems to align with the growing expert consensus on privacy. For instance, the privacy-focused coin zcash (ZEC) has surged over 800% since early 2025. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is down over 10%.

Correlated to stocks

Dalio’s concerns, however, go beyond central bank adoption. He pointed to structural issues that limit bitcoin’s appeal as a reserve asset compared to traditional alternatives like gold.

One of them is its tendency to take cues from Wall Street, especially the technology stocks, rather than acting as an independent store of value during periods of stress.

As of writing, the 90-day correlation coefficient between bitcoin and the Nasdaq, Wall Street’s tech-heavy index, was 0.89, according to data source TradingView. That translates into an R² of 0.79, meaning roughly 79% of bitcoin’s price movements can be explained by its relationship with the Nasdaq over the 90 days. The data points to BTC’s behavior more as a risk-on asset than an independent store of value.

The other issue Dalio highlighted is the market’s scale and structure. Unlike gold, which is deeply established, widely held, and exists outside any single digital system, bitcoin remains a relatively small and more easily influenced market. In his view, these factors further weaken its case as a global reserve asset, despite growing institutional participation.

“Ultimately, gold is more widely held, deeply established, and still plays a central role in the global system,” he said.

Dalio has repeatedly favored gold over bitcoin, and his views have been countered by crypto industry experts.

Google’s Threat Intelligence Group said it found a zero-day exploit that likely used artificial intelligence during discovery and weaponization. 

The exploit targeted a popular open-source, web-based system administration tool and allowed attackers to bypass two-factor authentication after gaining valid login details.

The group said it worked with the affected vendor to disclose the flaw and stop the planned mass exploitation campaign. Google did not name the tool, the vendor, or the threat actor behind the operation.

Exploit needed valid credentials first

The flaw did not give attackers full access on its own. Google said the bypass required valid user credentials before the attacker could skip the second login step. That detail matters because two-factor authentication often protects crypto accounts, exchange logins, developer dashboards, and wallet-linked services.

Google said the weakness came from a logic error, not a common coding bug such as memory corruption or poor input handling. The company described it as a high-level semantic flaw, where a hardcoded trust assumption conflicted with the tool’s 2FA checks.

Moreover, Google said it had “high confidence” that the actor likely used an AI model to support discovery and weaponization of the vulnerability. The company said the exploit script included educational comments, a hallucinated CVSS score, and a clean Python format often linked to large language model output.

The company also said it does not believe Gemini was used in the operation. Its report noted that China and North Korea-linked actors have shown interest in AI-assisted vulnerability research, including prompt-based security testing and large-scale analysis of known flaws.

Crypto security risks widen

The warning adds to rising concern over AI tools in crypto security. Separate reports have tracked OpenClaw-related phishing, where attackers used cloned websites and malicious wallet prompts to target developers and drain crypto wallets.

Other security coverage has also warned that AI agents can create new weak points when they process outside content, connect to third-party tools, or act without enough human approval. Those risks are more serious when agents can access wallets, private files, browser data, or account credentials.

Google said threat actors are also testing AI for malware support, defense evasion, information operations, and access to AI systems. It named malware families such as PROMPTFLUX, HONESTCUE, and CANFAIL as examples of tools using LLMs for obfuscation or decoy code.

Bitcoin Ordinals explorer Ord.io will shut down on June 1, marking a fresh setback for the Bitcoin inscription market. 

The platform launched in 2023 and served more than 1 million users, according to the project’s public statement.

Creator Leonidas King said the team could no longer keep the project running. He wrote, “In the end we ran out of money and don’t see a path forward.” The statement points to funding pressure at a time when Ordinals activity has cooled from its 2023 and 2024 highs.

Zap also winds down

Zap, a consumer app linked to the same team, will also stop operations on June 1. The app aimed to let users sign up and buy bitcoin memecoins in under 30 seconds, but the team said it failed to reach the user growth needed to continue.

The platform told users to log in and export their private keys before the shutdown. Reports said users were advised to import those keys into Phantom to keep access to assets. Zap also said users who miss the deadline can still access funds through Privy Home.

Meanwhile, Ord.io said it plans to preserve part of its public history before going offline. The project said it would upload upvotes, replies, and public address profiles to GitHub so future developers can use that data if they build a new explorer.

The team also left the door open for another group to take over the platform. That leaves a possible path for Ord.io to survive, but no buyer or operator had been named at the time of the announcement.

Bitcoin inscription activity cools

The shutdown comes after a sharp boom-and-cool cycle for Bitcoin inscriptions. Ordinals allow users to attach data such as images, text, or code to individual satoshis, creating Bitcoin-native digital collectibles. Earlier explainers described Ordinals as a way to make specific satoshis distinct from others.

Runes later added another wave of activity around fungible tokens on Bitcoin. Earlier market updates showed Runes generated $135 million in fees in its first week after the 2024 halving, but activity dropped soon after. May 2024 data showed only two days in a 12-day period generated more than $1 million in fees.

The broader market has since shown mixed signals. OKX launched an Ordinals Launchpad in late 2024 and said trading volume for Ordinals, Runes, and BRC-20 collections on its platform had risen 50% since November. At the same time, Binance had already halted support for Ordinal assets, showing uneven demand across major platforms.

Ord.io’s closure adds to that split market picture. The protocol remains live on Bitcoin, but consumer apps need users, funding, and steady trading activity to survive. For builders, the next test is whether Bitcoin-native collectibles can move beyond short hype cycles and support products that stay open.

Shares in MARA Holdings fell after the bell on Monday as the Bitcoin miner’s first-quarter losses deepened from a year ago and its revenues missed analyst estimates.

MARA’s earnings released on Monday reported its revenue for the quarter ending March 31 dropped 18% year-on-year to $174.6 million, missing Wall Street expectations of $192.7 million.

The company reported a loss of $1.3 billion for the quarter, widening from its $533.4 million loss from the year-ago quarter. Its earnings per share were a loss of $3.31, compared to estimates of a loss of $2.20.

Shares in MARA Holdings (MARA) fell 3.44% in after-hours trading on Monday to $12.93, erasing gains over the trading day, which ended at a gain of 3.48% to $13.39.

MARA Holdings erased gains after the bell on Monday after the company’s earnings missed expectations. Source: Google Finance

MARA stock has fallen 16% over the last 12 months, but has begun to mount a return this year as it has focused on pivoting to build artificial intelligence data centers.

The company reported its first-quarter losses were largely attributed to unrealized losses in its 38,689 Bitcoin treasury as the cryptocurrency fell 23% during the quarter. MARA said it sold more than 15,100 Bitcoin worth $1.1 billion in the final week of March.

MARA said that Bitcoin mining remains the company’s “operational foundation,” even as it continues expanding into AI and high-performance computing to pursue additional revenue streams. 

MARA is one of several US-based Bitcoin miners that have seen profits turn into losses as challenging mining conditions continue to weigh on the sector. 

Bitcoin is trading more than 35% below its all-time high of $126,080, significantly reducing miner revenues per block, while mining difficulty, a measure of how computationally difficult it is to mine a block, has risen nearly 30% over the past year. 

MARA has also lost ground to competitors, falling from the largest Bitcoin miner by market cap to seventh place as rivals have more aggressively expanded into AI.

Related: Saylor signals another Bitcoin buy after hinting at selling in Q1 earnings call 

MARA’s current AI strategy centers on its partnership with Starwood Capital, aimed at converting Bitcoin mining sites into AI and HPC data centers, and Long Ridge Energy & Power, a gas-fired power plant and data center that it acquired for $1.5 billion in late April.

“Our strategy centers on co-locating new infrastructure with existing Bitcoin mining operations,” MARA said. “This approach creates flexibility: we can generate revenue today through Bitcoin mining while preserving the option to redirect power toward AI and critical IT loads as those opportunities mature on the same sites.” 

MARA added that the Long Ridge Energy & Power acquisition could eventually support 600 megawatts of AI computing capacity and that around 90% of its non-hosted mining capacity could be redeployed for AI and IT compute.

The company said it does not have any plans to purchase additional Bitcoin mining hardware.

Magazine: Bitdeer sells all Bitcoin, Metaplanet rejects misconduct claims: Asia Express

Google’s Threat Intelligence Group says it identified what it believes is the first-ever case of hackers using artificial intelligence to develop a zero-day exploit.

The group said in a Tuesday blog post that it had “observed prominent cyber crime threat actors partnering to plan a mass vulnerability exploitation operation,” using a zero-day vulnerability allowing them to bypass the two-factor authentication of an unnamed “popular open-source, web-based system administration tool.”

The exploit required valid user credentials first, but bypassed the second authentication factor, which is often also used to secure crypto accounts and wallets.

AI has been increasingly used in both cybersecurity and by crypto hackers seeking to carry out exploits or scams. AI company Anthropic claimed last month that its recent AI model, Claude Mythos, found thousands of software vulnerabilities across major systems.

Google said it had “high confidence that the actor likely leveraged an AI model to support the discovery and weaponization of this vulnerability,” as the script for the exploit included a hallucination and a format “highly characteristic” of an AI model’s training data.

The report did not specify the threat actor, but Google said that China and North Korea have “demonstrated significant interest in capitalizing on AI for vulnerability discovery.”

LLMs excel at high-level flaw identification 

Google said the vulnerability did not stem from “common implementation errors” like memory corruption, but a “high-level semantic logic flaw” where the developer hardcoded a trust assumption.

This implies the attackers used a frontier large language model (LLM), as the models excel at identifying high-level flaws and “hardcoded static anomalies,” Google added.

Related: AI agents like OpenClaw could drain crypto wallets via ‘malicious skills’: CertiK

Several malware families, such as PROMPTFLUX, HONESTCUE and CANFAIL also use LLMs for defense evasion, generating decoy or filler code to camouflage malicious logic, Google said. 

LLM vulnerability discovery capabilities compared with other discovery mechanisms. Source: Google

Industrialized LLM abuse is increasing 

LLM access abuse is becoming industrialized as threat actors have built automated pipelines to cycle through premium AI accounts, pool API keys, and bypass safety guardrails at scale — effectively running adversarial operations subsidized by trial account abuse.

“By leveraging anti-detect browsers and account-pooling services, actors are attempting to maintain high-volume, anonymized access to premium LLM tiers, effectively industrializing their adversarial workflows.”

Google concluded that as organizations continue integrating LLMs into production environments, the AI software ecosystem has emerged as a primary target for exploitation.

It observed adversaries increasingly targeting the integrated components that grant AI systems their utility, such as autonomous skills and “third-party data connectors,” but threat actors have yet to achieve breakthrough capabilities to bypass the core security logic of frontier models, it stated. 

Magazine: How AI just dramatically sped up the quantum risk for Bitcoin

Ether treasury company Bitmine Immersion Technologies has slowed the pace of its Ether purchases after previously increasing its buying rate and acquiring more than 100,000 tokens over the last three weeks.

Bitmine said on Monday that it purchased 26,659 ETH over the last week, down from the over 100,000 tokens a week it was previously maintaining, but that it was still on track for its goal to buy 5% of the token’s 120.7 million circulating supply by the end of the year. 

“We have decided to slow down our pace of weekly accumulation from >100,000 per week as we originally targeted reaching the ‘alchemy of 5%’ target in late 2026,” Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee said. “Our previous pace of >100k weekly buys would have us reach 5% by mid-July.”

Bitmine is the largest Ether treasury company and one of the most frequent buyers of the token, a business model it adopted from Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy.

Bitmine estimates it will reach its goal of holding 5% of the Ether supply by the end of 2026. Source: Bitmine

Bitmine plans staking of entire Ether stash

Bitmine’s total staked Ether stands at over 4.7 million, and the company estimates its annual staking rewards will be roughly $352 million once its entire stash is staked. Blockchain explorer beaconcha.in has tracked over 38 million Ether staked as of Sunday.

Lee said the goal is for Bitmine to eventually stake its entire stash.

“We intend to hold and stake our ETH holdings, which means our ETH holdings are essentially reducing available supply of ETH and removed 4.3% of ETH supply since June 30th, 2025. In other words, ETH supply has been disinflationary since June 2025,” he said.

Bitmine has staked over 4.7 million Ether. Source: Bitmine

Ether hit an all-time high of $4,946 in August 2025, but it dropped in line with the rest of the crypto market towards the end of last year. It’s still down 52% from its peak and has been drifting between $2,274 and $2,411 over the last seven days, according to CoinGecko.

Crypto spring in full swing

Lee also doubled down on his belief that a so-called “crypto spring has started and pointed to Ether’s price rising in correlation with software stocks as further evidence. 

“Crypto spring has commenced and we wanted to highlight the importance of owning ETH as a source of diversification, and the likely drivers of this coming ‘crypto bull’ cycle,” he added.

“If ETH closes above $2,100 at the end of May 2026, this would be the third consecutive monthly gain – this has never been seen in a crypto bear market. Thus, a close above $2,100 would validate ‘crypto spring’ has arrived.”

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs — Mid-2026 

The legislation that could fully insert the U.S. crypto industry into the regulated financial system has emerged in its latest form, with the Senate Banking Committee unveiling the market structure bill’s text just after midnight on Tuesday in advance of this week’s hearing that’s set to push the effort forward.

The latest version wasn’t expected to offer many surprises for the crypto industry that’s already had a chance to dig through it privately, but it includes still-contentious language on stablecoin yield and it maintains legal protections for decentralized finance (DeFi) developers, keeping that corner of the crypto sector happy (so far). Industry insiders waited for the release late into the night, and they’ll still have to study the language to ensure their expectations were met.

“This bill reflects serious, good-faith work across the committee and delivers the certainty, safeguards, and accountability Americans deserve,” committee Chairman Tim Scott said in a statement. “It puts consumers first, combats illicit finance, cracks down on criminals and foreign adversaries and keeps the future of finance here in the United States.”

While an approval in the committee would mark a major, long-stymied step forward, the bill’s arrival at President Donald Trump’s desk is far from assured. Action this week would keep the possibility of passage alive, though a number of other hurdles remain — including the insertion of an ethics provision that isn’t yet present in this draft.

Ethics provision

The conflict-of-interest section that would theoretically limit government officials from profiting from the crypto industry is not under the jurisdiction of the banking panel, so the topic has to get into the legislation later. It’s been a contentious issue, because its genesis was seated in President Donald Trump’s own wide-ranging crypto interests, but White House officials have repeatedly said they wouldn’t tolerate a bill that targets the president. Meanwhile, Democrats won’t allow the bill to move without such a section, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said last week at Consensus Miami 2026.

On the same stage in Miami, White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt said the current negotiating posture is to establish rules that apply “across the board, from the president all the way down to the brand new intern on Capitol Hill,” but reject anything that singles out a particular office or officeholder.

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Senator Elizabeth Warren, made clear that the ethics point is a priority, releasing a critical comment alongside the panel’s unveiling of the document.

“This bill puts investors, our national security and our entire financial system at risk — and it will turbocharge Donald Trump’s crypto corruption,” she said in a statement. “In just one year in office, the president and his family have raked in at least $1.4 billion in gains from crypto deals alone, and yet this bill stunningly includes zero provisions to prevent that.”

That ethics piece, though, remains on standby until the Senate committee can vote to approve the rest of the bill at its Thursday hearing.

Stablecoin yield

The newly released 309-page text includes the patch of policy ground over which lobbyists spent months fighting — the question regarding what type of yield would be acceptable for stablecoins. The document restricts the payment of interest or yield “solely in connection with the holding of … payment stablecoins” or on a stablecoin balance “in a manner that is economically or functionally equivalent to the payment of interest or yield on an interest-bearing bank deposit.”

Earlier on Monday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong — whose company was at the center of the stablecoin rewards negotiation — held a live event on social media site X in which he said, “Not everyone got everything they wanted, but they got the must-haves.” He said his company is working with at least five of the largest global banks and is committed to banks successfully integrating crypto, he said.

“We want it to be win-win and work with the banks,” Armstrong said.

The outcome may have been settled for committee negotiators, but the bankers who consider stablecoins a threat have mounted a final assault to revamp the outcome. Over the weekend, the industry lobbying groups petitioned their members to make a last push among lawmakers to further limit stablecoin rewards programs in advance of the hearing.

At the same time, research released last week from Galaxy contended that trillions of dollars worth of foreign capital will flow into the U.S. financial system, easily making up for any domestic disruptions to deposits. The report “suggests a majority of stablecoin growth will originate offshore, meaning foreign capital will flow into U.S. banking infrastructure at a rate that materially exceeds any domestic deposit migration.”

DeFi

The legislation still includes a section to match DeFi’s Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which protects software developers that don’t control people’s money from being treated as money transmitters, plus a number of other demands from DeFi defenders.

“We are encouraged by the direction of recent negotiations and note that the most important provisions for developers and infrastructure providers — the BRCA and protections under the Exchange Act — are in this bill,” the DeFi Education Fund said through a spokesperson, adding that the organizations will track amendments this week and will flag those that oppose the sector.

Meanwhile on Monday, Punchbowl News reported an accord among Senate lawmakers to address law-enforcement needs in the Clarity Act, specifically an allowance for prosecutors to pursue crypto misdeeds on the money-laundering front.

The White House’s Witt said last week that the administration is aiming for a July 4 finish for the Clarity Act, though Senator Gillibrand predicted its completion by the first week of August.

Work to do

Before then, Senate negotiators would still have some work to do on the bill after it advances beyond the committee. Assuming the Clarity Act gets a nod from the panel, it would still need to be merged with a similar version approved earlier by the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Then the lawmakers also need to resolve the sticky conflict-of-interest provision before a final version is likely to be available for a vote from the overall Senate, where 60 yes votes will be needed — necessarily including a significant number of Democrats. So far, the progress through the Senate has been dependent on Republican party-line voting, but other crypto efforts have typically reached major bipartisan support when the final votes come around.

Last year, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025 (GENIUS) Act succeeded on a 68-30 vote in the Senate, easily clearing the minimum.

Read More: Banking groups escalate fight over stablecoin yield ahead of Senate vote

UPDATE (May 12, 2026, 04:31 UTC): Adds comment from Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

UPDATE (May 12, 2026, 04:43 UTC): Adds language from the proposed bill text.

UPDATE (May 12, 2026, 05:01 UTC): Adds remarks from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

UPDATE (May 12, 2026, 05:05 UTC): Adds comment from Senator Elizabeth Warren.