Key Takeaways

• Tom Lee declares the crypto bear market finished based on Bitcoin’s three consecutive monthly gains
• Bitcoin has risen approximately 5% in May after positive March and April closes; now trading around $80,000
• AI agents and tokenization identified as primary catalysts for upcoming bull cycle
• Stablecoin transaction volumes now exceed Visa payment networks, according to Lee
• Lee forecasts 2027 may bring “one of the biggest rallies we see in our lifetime”

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Tom Lee, Fundstrat’s co-founder and Bitmine’s chairman, declared at Consensus 2026 in Miami on May 7 that the cryptocurrency bear market has concluded.

Lee established a specific threshold: should Bitcoin finish May trading above $76,000, marking three consecutive positive monthly closes, the downward trend has definitively ended. “You have never in a bear market if bitcoin closes up three consecutive months,” Lee stated.

According to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index, Bitcoin concluded April at $76,300. Currently, BTC hovers just under $80,000, representing approximately 20% growth over the last month.

Lee’s assessment received support from legendary technical analyst John Bollinger, the inventor of Bollinger Bands. Bollinger announced via X that his trend model for Bitcoin had flipped bullish and his Tactica program had gone fully invested. Lee reshared Bollinger’s post with a straightforward message: “Crypto spring is here.”

Lee characterized the recent decline from $126,000 in October to $60,000 in February as the bearish phase. He contends that market participants remain mentally tethered to that correction and are failing to recognize the strength of the ongoing recovery.

Tokenization and AI Leading Next Bull Run

Lee identified two fundamental forces that will propel the upcoming bull market: the tokenization of real-world assets and AI agents leveraging blockchain infrastructure for autonomous financial transactions.

He highlighted stablecoin adoption as evidence this transformation is underway. Transaction volumes for stablecoins have already eclipsed Visa’s payment network, Lee noted. Research from Grayscale indicates the $300 trillion global securities market could eventually transition onto blockchain platforms as tokenized instruments.

“The networks that host a large share of tokenized activity are going to capture the economic value,” Lee emphasized.

Traditional Finance Versus Crypto-Native Operations

Lee drew comparisons between JPMorgan, expected to generate approximately $60 billion in earnings this year with 300,000 employees, and entities like Tether and Jane Street, which produce comparable profits with significantly smaller workforces.

He explained that crypto-native enterprises remove numerous conventional financial intermediaries. “In 10 years, half of the largest financial institutions in the world will be native digital,” Lee projected.

During a CNBC appearance, Lee also connected cryptocurrency strength to AI-fueled stock market gains, robust corporate earnings reports, and substantial capital remaining uninvested.

He recognized potential headwinds, including uncertainty surrounding the next Federal Reserve chair appointment and global oil supply vulnerabilities.

Lee reaffirmed his previous forecast that Bitcoin could achieve $250,000 this year if it establishes a new all-time high. Bitcoin’s current valuation stands near $79,245.

TLDR:

• Sei Labs requires all exchanges to complete SEI EVM migration by June 15, 2026, or face fund loss.
  
• Every native sei1… address already has a paired EVM 0x… address on the same Sei blockchain.
  
• Four migration paths exist, ranging from automated smart contracts to fully manual fund transfers.
  
• After deprecation, Cosmos RPC endpoints and address associations will be permanently unavailable.

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Sei Labs has announced a firm deadline for exchanges and custodians holding SEI tokens. The protocol is completing its transition to a unified, EVM-only architecture.

All platforms must migrate customer holdings from native Cosmos addresses to EVM addresses before June 15, 2026.

After that date, Cosmos and IBC-related functionality will be deprecated permanently. This move affects any service provider currently supporting SEI token deposits and withdrawals using native sei1… addresses.

What the Sei EVM Migration Means for Exchanges

Sei EVM is not a separate blockchain from the Sei network. It is the same chain with a second method of interaction.

Any integration currently treating both as distinct chains must be consolidated before the Cosmos shutdown. Exchanges operating under a split integration model need to act quickly.

Every native sei1… address has a corresponding EVM 0x… address on the same chain. The pairing exists at the keypair level and does not require any funds to move.

Exchanges need to derive or look up the EVM address for each native wallet under management. They must also ensure addresses are associated on-chain before the deprecation date.

Sei Labs stated on X: “The core thing exchanges and custodians need to know: Sei EVM is not a separate chain. It’s the same chain with a second way to interact with it.”

After June 15, 2026, Cosmos-native transaction interfaces will no longer be available. Exchanges will not be able to broadcast Cosmos-format transactions or interact via Cosmos RPC endpoints.

Address associations will also no longer be creatable through a Cosmos wallet. The FundsForwarder pattern will stop functioning for new deposits as well.

Four Migration Paths Available to Custodians

Sei Labs has outlined four upgrade paths for exchanges and custodians to follow. The first involves combining native and EVM access points, which is the cleanest option available.

The exchange surfaces the EVM address corresponding to each existing native wallet directly to customers. No funds need to move, and no customer action is required.

The second option involves an automated forwarding contract deployed by the exchange. The FundsForwarder smart contract moves customer funds from the native side to the EVM wallet automatically.

The contract was audited by OtterSec and has a fixed destination address. That destination cannot be changed after deployment.

The third path is a user-directed forwarding contract, where customers initiate the transfer themselves. This triggers the contract to forward funds to the appropriate EVM wallet on the exchange.

It suits exchanges that cannot operate the contract directly. However, it still provides customers with an automated destination.

The fourth option is a fully manual transfer, requiring customers to withdraw and redeposit funds. Exchanges notify customers to move holdings to a self-custodial wallet first.

Customers then redeposit to the new EVM address provided by the exchange. Sei Labs confirmed the June 15 deadline is firm, and address association must be completed before deprecation.

Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs have committed more than $50 million to grow the Aptos ecosystem. 

The funding will cover first-party products, research, protocol infrastructure, and a strategic fund for trading and AI partners.

The plan centers on markets and autonomous systems that can transact at machine speed. Aptos said it is building for AI agents that can operate without human checks, using fast settlement and low-cost blockchain infrastructure.

Decibel and Shelby lead the plan

Decibel is one of the main products in the plan. It is an onchain order book and perpetuals exchange that went live on Aptos mainnet in February. Aptos said Decibel has crossed $1 billion in cumulative volume.

Shelby is the other key product. Aptos describes it as a storage protocol for data-heavy workloads, including AI agents. The network said data could become the next major agentic workload as agents license, exchange, and trade datasets.

Moreover, Aptos is moving as more crypto firms build payment rails for AI agents. Crypto.news recently reported that Coinbase launched Agentic.market, where AI agents can find services and pay with USDC through x402. That report said x402 had settled about 165 million transactions across more than 480,000 agents.

Other projects are also testing agent payments. Oobit launched Visa-backed Agent Cards that allow AI agents to spend USDT under business controls. As previously reported, Solana and Google Cloud also launched Pay.sh, which lets agents pay for API services using stablecoins.

APT gets a central role

Aptos said APT will remain tied to network use. The token is burned in transactions, used for access to advanced features, and staked to support higher performance for large workloads.

The network also said stablecoin market cap on Aptos has grown nearly tenfold since late 2024, reaching a peak of $1.93 billion. It added that real-world assets on Aptos have reached $1.2 billion, while major asset managers have already deployed on the network.

Aptos is also working on privacy features for institutional use. Recently, Aptos launched Confidential APT on April 24, adding concealed transfer data while keeping verifiability.

Institutional investors have increasingly gained exposure to bitcoin BTC$79,512.22 and other major tokens through ETFs and centralized exchanges.

However, they have largely stayed away from decentralized exchanges (DEXes) offering perpetual (perp) futures tied to crypto and tradfi assets, panelists said at Consensus Miami, citing security risks and a mismatch between DeFi’s permissionless design and institutional identity and compliance requirements.

The session titled “Perp DEX Explosion: Bullish Volumes & Bear Market Resilience” featured Wizard of SoHo, a veteran trader and family office manager; Michaël van de Poppe, founder and CIO of MN Fund & MN Capital; and Michael Anderson of Canary Labs. Jason Atkins, chief commercial officer at liquidity provider Auros, moderated the discussion.

The discussion focused on perpetual-focused decentralized exchanges and what it would take for them to attract institutional capital and scale up.

Wizard of SoHo said that institutions are unlikely to move onto perp DEXs easily due to recurring security/exploit risks highlighted by the recent multi-million-dollar hack of Drift, and that the next major competitive battleground for all perp DEXs will be whether any of them can safely onboard institutional capital.

“How do you convince the big institutional players to go on the perp devs? I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge, especially given the exploit on Drift. And, you know, we’ve had a lot of exploits lately,” he said.

Canary Labs’ Anderson struck a cautious tone on decentralized finance, saying he is reluctant to use it despite having explored parts of the ecosystem.

“I’m scared to use DeFi right now,” he said. “It does feel like a bit of a minefield, and you’re just waiting for the next headline each day.”

Anderson added that while activity has picked up in some areas, particularly from Asia amid tighter KYC enforcement on centralized exchanges, the overall environment still feels risky.

“Right now, it feels slightly dangerous on the product side,” he said.

Anderson argued that the risk perception makes it difficult to see large institutional players adopting decentralized exchanges at scale, especially compared with centralized platforms.

“I think it’s gonna be very difficult for some of the larger firms to use it on the institutional level, versus some of the centralized exchanges,” he said.

Anderson also pointed to product innovation gaps as another constraint, noting that centralized exchanges are increasingly integrating trading tools, such as bots, into futures markets. In contrast, decentralized exchanges have yet to match that pace of development.

KYC, or know-your-customer verification, is another key point of divergence. DeFi is built around open, permissionless participation, where users can interact without formal identity checks or traditional onboarding requirements.

Institutions, by contrast, operate under strict regulatory obligations and must meet full KYC and compliance standards, which makes that permissionless model difficult to adopt at scale.

“Crypto wants to be more non-KYC,” he said, “but to bring on institutional [players] you need to have some form of KYC at the larger size.”

The discussion also broadened into adjacent themes shaping market structure, including the rise of AI-driven trading tools and Hyperliquid’s dominance.

Michaël van de Poppe said AI agents are effectively an evolution of algorithmic trading, rather than a fundamentally new concept.

“To be honest, I think that AI agents are just the next level algorithmic trading anyways, so it’s just a little different execution,” he said. Responding to a moderator’s point about reduced human control in automated systems, he acknowledged the shift in oversight but argued the direction is inevitable.

“Yeah, there are some risks, but I think that at the end of the day, we are not going to be trading ourselves anymore. Nothing will be manual,” he said. “AI agents will be doing it for us, and they are probably better.”

van de Poppe added that the technology is still early and highly dependent on how it is deployed.

“If you start using those AI protocols or LLMs and you’re not putting in the right context or framework, it’s going to build a bad trader for you,” he said. “So if you are not a good trader, then it’s not going to build anything for you.”

Bitcoin (BTC) reserves on major crypto exchanges have dropped to their lowest level since 2023, with nearly 100,000 BTC withdrawn from Binance, OKX and Gemini in less than three months.

The outflows coincided with stronger demand from accumulator addresses, as the cohorts’ holdings have increased by 60.5% over the past two weeks. 

Bitcoin exchange reserves fall to two-year low

Crypto analyst Amr Taha noted that Bitcoin reserves on Binance, OKX and Gemini have declined sharply since February. Binance recorded the largest drawdown, with reserves dropping to nearly 620,000 BTC on May 7, down from roughly 670,000 BTC on Feb. 21. The decline pushed Binance’s holdings below levels last seen in December 2023.

OKX followed the same trend. Its Bitcoin reserve fell to around 102,000 BTC this week, from nearly 132,000 BTC on March 2. Gemini also posted steady outflows, sliding to 95,000 BTC from 114,800 BTC in early February.

BTC multi-exchange reserves. Source: CryptoQuant

Combined, the three exchanges recorded an outflow of nearly 100,000 BTC, valued at over $8 billion at current prices. 

Taha noted that a synchronized decline across multiple exchanges carries more weight than isolated outflows from a single exchange. Fewer coins on trading platforms can amplify the price reaction when strong spot demand returns.

The move coincides with a shrinking OTC balance. Lower OTC balances can reduce the amount of Bitcoin available for large private transactions outside exchanges. 

The latest 30-day OTC balance change showed a net decline of 24,940 BTC, while the same metric had risen to nearly 25,300 BTC on Feb. 8 after Bitcoin’s drop toward $60,000. The reversal shows that OTC supply inflows have slowed significantly since the February sell-off. 

Bitcoin total OTC desk balance. Source: CryptoQuant

Related: Bitcoin Bollinger Bands push key breakout as creator acts on positive signal

“Accumulator” demand rises as Binance buyers turn positive 

Long-term participants increased their Bitcoin accumulation during the latest recovery phase. CryptoQuant data shows demand from accumulator addresses climbed to 264,000 BTC on May 6, up from 164,440 BTC on April 23. The same metric fell to nearly 100,000 BTC on March 15, after peaking above 205,000 BTC on Feb. 5.

Bitcoin demand from accumulator addresses. Source: CryptoQuant

The increase in accumulation coincided with Bitcoin’s recovery toward $82,800, indicating stronger buying activity by long-term holders during the recent price advance. 

Derivatives activity also strengthened during the recent rally. Binance’s seven-day net taker volume moved from approximately -$1 billion (seller-dominated) in late March to +$2.63 billion (buyer-dominated) on Thursday.

Binance’s seven-day net taker volume for BTC. Source: CryptoQuant

Related: VanEck’s Sigel sees Bitcoin reaching $1M within five years

This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.

Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs have committed $50 million to Aptos development, with a particular focus on AI agent infrastructure and research, including support for two products it shipped last year to meet rising demand for onchain AI agent activity. 

Those products include Decibel, an AI-powered onchain order book and perpetuals exchange that launched on the Aptos mainnet in February, and Shelby, a decentralized storage protocol that seeks to support the workloads of AI agents, the Aptos Foundation said on Thursday.

“Autonomous agents are already transacting onchain at frequencies no human can match, routing to whatever venue is fastest, most consistent, and least gameable,” it said.

Aptos joins a growing number of crypto protocols seeking opportunities in supporting the agentic AI economy. Aptos said there is a need to build infrastructure that offers sub-second finality and systems that “run 24/7 with no human to escalate to.”

AI agents can act as personal assistants for people, both at home and in the workplace, completing everyday tasks on their behalf, whether it be booking a flight, making a shopping purchase or executing a high-level trade onchain.

The Aptos ecosystem’s “full stack” plan for markets and machines. Aptos Network

Last month, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong predicted there will be “more AI agents transacting online than humans very soon,” echoing comments from Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire in January that “literally billions of AI agents” will be transacting onchain in three to five years.

The World Economic Forum is expecting a boom too, having predicted in January that AI agents could become a $236 billion market by 2034, a 43-fold rise from its $5.4 billion market size in 2024.

AI agents use blue-chip stablecoins to transact

On Wednesday, Amazon Web Services said it integrated Coinbase’s x402 payments protocol into Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to allow AI agents to make USDC (USDC) payments and access services through AWS-managed payment controls. 

A week earlier, crypto wallet startup Oobit launched a Visa-supported virtual card for AI agents to make online purchases in USDt (USDT) on behalf of businesses. 

The foundation said the Aptos (APT) token would play a central role in the ecosystem’s AI agent economy by being burned in transactions, required to access advanced AI agent features, and staked to improve performance. 

Related: How AI agents can reshape arbitrage in prediction markets 

The foundation said the $50 million would also be used to develop other aspects of the “Aptos stack,” which also includes integrations with neobanks, institutional platforms and wallet providers.

Aptos said it also plans to work on building encrypted mempools and offer confidential perps trading, among other things.

Aptos rolled out privacy-focused coin last month

Meanwhile, Aptos launched a privacy-focused coin — Confidential APT — on Aptos mainnet on April 24 as part of an effort to fix a long-standing trade-off between protecting user privacy and preserving transparency for compliance. 

Aptos Labs founding engineer Sherry Xiao, told Cointelegraph that Confidential APT could help businesses hide the salaries of employees who are paid onchain, as well as conceal treasury movements, settlement flows and trading strategies that competitors could otherwise see. 

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

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Crypto risk management and infrastructure provider Chaos Labs said its Chaos Oracle Network, which provides data feeds to blockchain applications, was not compromised after a hacking attempt over the weekend by a potential “nation-state.”

Chaos Labs founder Omer Goldberg said in an X post Thursday that the company identified an attack over the weekend, possibly by a “nation state,” and immediately moved to a full lockdown. 

“The surface area was strictly contained to operational wallets we use for routine onchain operations. At no point was the Chaos Oracle Network breached or compromised.”

“Chaos Oracles run in a fully isolated environment with nodes distributed globally, protected by layered security and cryptographic controls,” Goldberg said.

“The authorities and cyber professionals working with us have characterized the activity as consistent with nation-state attacks,” he added. “The investigation continues, and we will share more as it allows.”

State-backed hacker groups, particularly those from North Korea, have been seen as a persistent threat to the crypto space.

North Korea-affiliated actors have been accused of stealing at least $578 million across several major incidents in April and have been linked to many of the industry’s largest hacks. North Korea recently rejected claims linking it to global cybercrime, calling the allegations unfounded.

Goldberg said that Chaos Labs has rotated all keys since the attempted attack and said there hasn’t been any further suspicious activity. 

Source: Omer Goldberg

Recent industry exploits prompted “highest severity” response

The April Kelp DAO hack has been one of the year’s largest security incidents, causing broader ecosystem contagion and impacting the interconnected crypto lending market.

Drift Protocol, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, and at least a dozen other crypto entities were hacked in the same month. 

Goldberg said against the backdrop of recent exploits, Chaos Labs triggered its “highest-severity incident response” after detecting the attempted hack.

“We allocate a substantial share of our operating budget to cyber defense, alerting, and detection,” he added.

Several crypto firms shift to Chainlink

Borrowing platform Tydro said it is migrating to the Chainlink oracle platform following the attack on Chaos Labs, adding to the list of crypto firms that have switched providers in recent weeks.

Related: Chaos Labs taps out as Aave’s risk provider, decision ‘not made in haste’

DeFi protocol Kelp DAO is migrating its restaking token rsETH to the Chainlink oracle platform following the April exploit. It continues to blame the attack on LayerZero’s cross-chain infrastructure, which LayerZero has disputed. 

Decentralized finance platform Solv Protocol has also flagged plans to migrate its cross-chain infrastructure from LayerZero to Chainlink in “light of recent industry events.”

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

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

• Bitcoin retreated amid clashes in the Strait of Hormuz and rising oil prices.
• Analysts argue that a limited appetite for full‑scale escalation caps downside risk.
• Bulls aim for a rebound toward $82,000, but bears could target a breakdown below $78,000.

Bitcoin dropped to around $79,200 in early trading on Friday as fresh military skirmishes in the Strait of Hormuz rattled global risk assets.

The crypto bellwether was witnessing a sharp intraday pullback after a brief run above $80,000, with the latest price swing highlighting prevailing weakness amid potential geopolitical shocks.

However, despite this outlook, is a classic “bear trap” in play?

Iran ceasefire cracks dent Bitcoin momentum

Bitcoin rallied above $82,500 on Monday, igniting further bullish sentiment across the broader cryptocurrency market.

However, BTC has reversed as selling pressure resurfaced, dropping to support near $79,200.

The downturn coincides with fresh clashes in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran accused the United States of striking an oil tanker, prompting retaliatory strikes by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) against US warships.

The US says it responded with counterstrikes.

Energy markets reacted swiftly, with Brent crude pushing back above $100 per barrel as local skirmishes reignited fears of supply disruption in the world’s key oil chokepoint.

According to SosoValue, the flare‑up has injected fresh anxiety into the so‑called “14‑point deal” narrative, a diplomatic framework aimed at stabilizing the region.

However, the platform notes that President Donald Trump’s insistence that the ceasefire remains in place, and Washington’s framing of its actions as “self‑defense,” point to a lack of appetite for full‑scale escalation.

“If both sides publicly signal restraint, the damage to global risk appetite remains localized,” SosoValue observed on X.

Bitcoin price forecast: a bear trap or deeper retreat?

According to analysts, a scenario that sees the current macro fallout contained could set the stage for a bullish reversal.

Santiment has noted a wave of profit‑driven holder capitulation in recent days, which it says hints at a potential sharp rebound amid thinning liquidity.

“Capitulation is one of the key ingredients to the beginning of bull runs, and wallets can drop out during both a price fall (out of fear of losing more) or on a price rise (expecting prices to not go any higher),” the firm posted.

Meanwhile, veteran market technician John Bollinger recently flagged Bitcoin’s trend model as flipping positive. BTC has retreated from the upper Bollinger Bands line, but the BBTrend indicator remains bullish.

This suggests a short‑squeeze could materialize if prices hold support levels.

Bulls will also need to reclaim upward momentum on strong volume, largely helped by limited escalation in the Gulf, contained oil‑price spikes, and the crypto‑friendly CLARITY Act.

Key resistance levels could be around $85,000-$90,000. However, if downside risks continue, bears could eye a deeper correction toward the $60,000 support zone.

Bitcoin hovered around $79,615 on Friday morning.