Zcash Foundation’s Q1 total liquid assets were approximately $36.70 million, with ZEC being the largest holding.
The Zcash Foundation (ZF) released its Q1 2026 financial report, showing that as of March 31, the foundation’s total liquid assets were approximately $36.70 million, and net liquid assets were approximately $36.68 million.
This includes approximately $12.11 million in cash, 506,556 USDC, 85,412 ZEC (approximately $21.20 million), 41.8 BTC (approximately $2.85 million), and 12.02 ETH (approximately $25,000.00).
In addition, the foundation’s average monthly operating expenses for Q1 were approximately $272,500.00, with the Protocol / Zebra project accounting for the highest proportion, reaching 50.40%.
Zcash Foundation Executive Director Alex Bornstein stated that the Q2 focus will continue to advance the NU7 upgrade, Z3 technology stack development, and Zebra performance optimization.
[ChainCatcher]
Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini: Urge the Senate to Remove Cryptocurrency Listing Restrictions
Centralized exchanges Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini are urging U.S. senators to remove specific provisions from the Digital Asset Market Structure Bill. The provision restricts trading platforms from listing tokens that are susceptible to market manipulation.
The exchanges submitted modification proposals requesting the removal of this restriction, arguing that this regulatory standard, which originates from traditional commodity futures, would hinder the listing of low-liquidity, small-cap tokens on compliant exchanges, thereby limiting industry innovation.
[crowdfundinsider]
South Koreans Liquidate Savings and Insurance to Chase SK Hynix and Samsung Rally
South Korean retail investors are pulling savings, fixed deposits, and life insurance funds to buy SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. Both stocks trade near record highs on AI chip demand. Savings bank deposits fell below ₩100 trillion ($66.24 billion) for the first time in four years. Commercial bank time deposits dropped by roughly ₩12 trillion ($7.94 billion) since February as cash rotated into equities.
Investors over 50 now hold about 62% of all margin loans at South Korea’s top brokerages. Margin debt among those in their 60s doubled from ₩3.9 trillion ($2.58 billion) to ₩8 trillion ($5.29 billion) in a year, according to data disclosed by domestic securities firms. Insurance policy surrenders at the top three life insurers jumped 16% in Q1 2026, with savings-type policies surging 23% as households cashed out for equities.
SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics together account for roughly 42% of the KOSPI after AI-fueled rallies. SK Hynix has gained 265% since November while Samsung climbed 162%, according to weekly TradingView data. Korea’s government added a ₩33 trillion ($21.86 billion) support package for the chip sector, layering policy fuel onto record retail flows.
The KOSPI dropped 19% in March before recovering, with leveraged older investors averaging roughly 20% losses during the slide. The same risk appetite has spilled into crypto, with the Korean Won handling about 30% of global spot volume on Upbit and Bithumb. Weekly RSI readings above 80 on both stocks signal overbought conditions, and the next Samsung and SK Hynix earnings cycle will test the leverage holding this rally together.
OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic
OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy announced that he has joined Anthropic, saying, “I think the next few years will be a particularly critical stage in the frontier development of large language models (LLM). I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D work.”
“I am still passionate about education and plan to continue to advance related work when the time is right in the future.”
[ChainCatcher]
Institution: Gold prices fell due to a stronger U.S. dollar and concerns about interest rates.
Gold prices continued to decline amid a stronger US dollar and concerns over monetary policy tightening, with spot gold falling more than $100 intraday.
IG analysts stated: “Markets are still anticipating that major central banks may need to raise interest rates again if energy prices remain persistently high.”
[Golden Ten]
Trump: I agree to give Iran another 2 to 3 days, maybe until Friday or Saturday
May 19th news, US President Trump said that he agreed to give Iran another 2 to 3 days, maybe until Friday or Saturday, time is limited. If the Iranians get nuclear weapons, they will destroy Israel.
Trump pointed out that Democrats are trying to stop him from negotiating with Iran. From a “psychological level”, obtaining Iranian nuclear dust is important. With the elimination of Iran’s first and second leadership echelons, the country’s regime has changed.
[PANews]
Kevin Walsh’s upcoming appointment will accelerate the fulfillment of the financial asset divestiture commitment.
Before assuming the role of Federal Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh had already sold the majority of his financial assets that he had pledged to divest. According to the latest government documents, this step was a key move to resolve controversies surrounding his nomination.
As one of the wealthiest Federal Reserve officials in history, Warsh received an “Asset Divestiture Certification” dated May 16, issued by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE). The document states that he has sold multiple investment holdings valued at no less than $100 million; however, the underlying assets of these investments had not previously been disclosed. Notably, the document omits two assets that Warsh had previously committed to selling before taking office—each valued between $250,000 and $500,000.
According to Warsh’s financial disclosure filings submitted during the nomination process, his total assets amount to at least $192 million. However, because the disclosures use range-based reporting, it is widely believed that his actual net worth may be even higher.
[Golden Ten]
Former Citadel quants’ fintech Moment raises $78.00M for AI trading stack
AI trading startup Moment, founded by ex-Citadel Securities quants, has raised $78m in new funding led by Index Ventures after signing major wealth managers to its automated fixed income and equity trading platform. Moment raised $78m after a year in which it onboarded firms including Edward Jones, LPL Financial and Hightower Advisors to its trading technology.
The round was led by Index Ventures, with existing backers Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Avra participating, bringing the company’s total venture funding well past $100m since its 2022 founding. Moment, launched by a group of former quantitative traders and researchers from Citadel Securities, focuses on helping banks, brokers and wealth managers automate their fixed income and equity trading workflows, from order routing and execution to analytics.
In earlier materials, Index Ventures described Moment as “the first operating system for fixed income,” an AI-powered platform that unifies trading, research, portfolio construction, and risk and compliance checks in a single vertically integrated stack. Traditional fixed income markets, worth an estimated $150 trillion globally, still rely heavily on manual processes, phone calls and spreadsheets, leaving even large institutions with fragmented data and slow execution in corporate bonds, munis and structured products.
Moment’s software is designed to automate much of that work, ingesting data from multiple venues and dealers, generating smart order-routing decisions, and providing real-time analytics to portfolio managers and traders across both bonds and equities. The company’s July 2025 round, also led by Index Ventures, raised $36m to accelerate adoption of its fixed income tools and expand its relationship with LPL Financial, one of the largest independent broker-dealers in the U.S.
Since then, Moment has broadened its client roster to include Edward Jones and Hightower, signaling growing demand among wealth managers looking to modernize legacy trading systems and compete with bulge-bracket desks that have long invested in proprietary automation. That trend mirrors a broader shift across capital markets, where firms from exchanges to asset managers are racing to deploy AI and automation in trading, as noted in multiple Bloomberg trading and market-structure insights.
For investors like Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, Moment sits at the intersection of two powerful currents: the migration of high-frequency, quant-style tooling into the broader buy side, and the rise of AI agents capable of handling increasingly complex financial workflows. The company’s founders are leveraging their Citadel experience — where speed, data and automation are table stakes — to bring similar sophistication to a wider set of institutions that historically lacked the budget or talent to build such systems in-house.
The latest $78m infusion comes amid a surge of funding into “agentic finance” and AI-first trading infrastructure, a wave that has also touched crypto and prediction markets. While Moment is squarely focused on traditional fixed income and equities rather than digital assets, the underlying theme is the same: automation is moving from an edge to a necessity, and firms that fail to upgrade risk being structurally outgunned on execution and risk management.
For now, Moment’s challenge will be to convert its marquee partnerships into deep, sticky deployments — and to prove that an AI-native stack built by former Citadel quants can scale beyond early adopters into the conservative core of global wealth management and banking.
[Bloomberg]
Trump: In talks with Iran, may have to strike Iran again
On May 19, news reported that U.S. President Trump stated, “We are negotiating with Iran.”
“We may have to strike Iran again; it’s currently uncertain.”
[PANews]
AI Influence Spreads to the Vatican: Pope Leo XIV to Meet Anthropic Co-Founder
Pope Leo XIV will release his first papal encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” on May 25. Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah will share the stage with the Vatican. The document focuses on protecting human dignity as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes labor and society. It marks the most direct engagement between a sitting pope and a frontier AI lab to date.
Pope Leo XIV signed the encyclical on May 15. The date marked the 135-year anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, the 1891 document on capital and labor. “Magnifica Humanitas” translates to “magnificent humanity.” The pope has repeatedly cited that lineage, casting AI as the defining industrial shift of his pontificate. The full subtitle reads “On the Protection of Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”
On May 16, the Catholic leader approved a new Vatican commission on AI ethics, which will draw representatives from seven dicasteries. Cardinal Michael Czerny said the body would address AI challenges inside the Holy See and for the wider Church.
Christopher Olah, who co-founded Anthropic and leads its interpretability research, will speak as a lay presenter. His team focuses on understanding how large language models like Claude reach their decisions internally. Pope Leo XIV will address the gathering and offer a final blessing, breaking with Vatican precedent for the launch of encyclicals.
The pope, born Robert Francis Prevost, is the first American to hold the office. He has flagged AI as a defining challenge of his papacy in earlier speeches in Rome. The presentation places a leading AI safety researcher at the center of one of the year’s most-watched moral debates. For Anthropic, it ties Olah’s work to a global conversation about AI regulation that now includes the Catholic Church. The event also raises fresh questions about public reliance on AI tools like Claude.
Zcash Foundation Q1 Report: Total liquid assets reached approximately $36.7 million, with ZEC holdings exceeding 85,000 tokens
The Zcash Foundation released its Q1 2026 report, disclosing total liquid assets of approximately $36.7 million, including approximately $12.11 million in cash, 506,556 USDC, 85,412 ZEC (valued at approximately $21.2 million), 41.8 BTC (valued at approximately $2.85 million), and 12.02 ETH (valued at approximately $25,000).
The Zcash Foundation added that it faced team changes within the Electric Coin Company’s development team and governance disputes during Q1 this year; however, network operations remained unaffected, with transactions and block production continuing normally.
On the regulatory front, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has concluded its investigation without taking any enforcement action, removing long-standing regulatory uncertainty.
[PANews]
Mining company Canaan reported a net loss of $88.70 million in Q1, with revenue in line with guidance.
Canaan, a Singapore-headquartered Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer and mining company, reported a net loss of $88.7 million for the first quarter of 2026, while revenue stood at $62.7 million—broadly in line with the company’s previously issued guidance range.
This net loss comprised: an operating loss of $54.3 million; a $24.9 million loss from changes in the fair value of cryptocurrency holdings; a $16.0 million loss from financial derivatives; and a $4.0 million foreign exchange loss. Of the total revenue, $42.9 million came from product sales and $19.1 million from mining operations.
The company stated that the revenue decline was primarily driven by a reduction in the scale of computing power sold and a weakening average Bitcoin price.
[Foresight News]
A whale withdrew 85,226 HYPE from Bybit. This address has cumulatively purchased 2.22M HYPE in the past month.
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a whale withdrew 85,226 HYPE tokens from Bybit, worth $4.08 million.
This address has accumulated purchases of 2.22 million HYPE tokens over the past month, worth $105.75 million.
[Odaily]
US SEC Proposes to Simplify Registration, Issuance, and Information Disclosure Rules for US Stock Companies
May 19th news, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has released two proposed rule amendments to significantly simplify the registration and continuous information disclosure requirements for listed companies.
In terms of registration and issuance, more listed companies with smaller market capitalizations will be able to use shelf offerings and enjoy the registration and communication flexibility currently limited to “seasoned large-cap issuers.” Securities firms can also provide research report coverage for more companies, and all registered issuances will be exempt from state-level securities registration requirements.
In terms of information disclosure, the SEC plans to raise the threshold for “large accelerated filers” from $700.00 million in public float market capitalization to $2.00 billion, and provide companies after IPO with at least a 60-month “IPO buffer period,” during which they will not be considered large accelerated filers regardless of market capitalization. The remaining companies will be uniformly classified as non-accelerated filers, enjoying most of the disclosure exemptions applicable to small and emerging companies, and will be exempt from the internal control auditor attestation obligation.
[PANews]
Deloitte absorbs Blocknative team as crypto infra firm winds down APIs and Gas Network
Deloitte has acqui-hired crypto infrastructure firm Blocknative, according to an announcement on Tuesday. Blocknative’s team will “focus on driving Web3 innovation across Deloitte’s client portfolio.”
The Blocknative website now returns an announcement post noting that the firm is “now in the process of ceasing operations.” The Blocknative API and Gas Network are winding down, with services expected to operate through June 19.
Founded in 2018, Blocknative is a blockchain infrastructure company that specializes in real-time mempool monitoring, gas fee prediction and transaction management. It offered APIs and other tooling to optimize transactions, while its Gas Network served as a decentralized oracle network for sourcing real-time gas fee pricing data.
“This chapter of our work in the ecosystem is coming to a close: on mempool visibility, transaction orchestration, block building, MEV auctions, private order flow, transaction pricing, and more,” Matt Cutler, Blocknative CEO, said. “That work was shaped by our customers, the protocol teams, wallet builders, researchers, and institutions who pushed for better answers.”
It is unclear whether the entire Blocknative team will join Deloitte. The Block reached out to Blocknative for additional details.
The move comes amid a wave of consolidation across the crypto ecosystem, with a number of major companies announcing layoffs and smaller projects winding down entirely. This includes core infrastructure providers, like Tally, which served as a much-used DAO governance and coordination platform.
It also comes as traditional companies like Deloitte increase their crypto exposure. Deloitte, for one, now offers accounting, auditing and other corporate services for crypto firms.
Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.
© 2026 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
[The Block]
Today’s Market Pulse
The crypto market today reflects a convergence of AI-driven financial innovation and evolving regulatory landscapes, with traditional finance increasingly adopting AI technologies while navigating new compliance frameworks that could reshape digital asset markets.
Key Themes
AI Integration in Financial Infrastructure
Former Citadel quants’ trading platform Moment secured $78M in funding, demonstrating how AI automation is penetrating traditional finance. This parallels OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy’s move to Anthropic, reinforcing AI’s growing influence across sectors. These developments signal that sophisticated automation is becoming table stakes for institutional players, potentially creating ripple effects in crypto markets where similar AI applications are emerging.
Regulatory Shifts & Market Structure
Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini are actively lobbying against restrictive listing provisions in the Digital Asset Market Structure Bill, while the SEC proposes simplifying disclosure requirements for public companies. The Zcash Foundation also resolved its SEC investigation without enforcement action, reducing regulatory uncertainty for this privacy-focused coin. These regulatory developments suggest a potential recalibration of compliance standards that could benefit market innovation while ensuring oversight.
Risk Appetite & Market Excess
South Korean retail investors are liquidating savings and insurance products at unprecedented rates to chase SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics stocks, creating extreme overbought conditions. This speculative behavior has spilled into crypto markets, with Korean exchanges handling 30% of global spot volume. Meanwhile, Canaan reported an $88.7M Q1 net loss, highlighting the challenging environment for mining operations despite Bitcoin’s price recovery.
Crypto Infrastructure Consolidation
The acqui-hire of Blocknative by Deloitte marks another example of traditional financial institutions absorbing crypto infrastructure capabilities. This consolidation trend suggests that while bear market pressures persist, established players are strategically positioning themselves for the next cycle by acquiring specialized technical expertise and market infrastructure.
RichSilo Verdict
Smart money should monitor how regulatory clarity emerges from the SEC’s proposed rule changes and the exchanges’ opposition to restrictive listing provisions, as these could unlock new capital flows into digital assets. The convergence of AI and financial systems presents both opportunities and risks, with Moment’s funding suggesting institutional adoption of AI-driven trading may accelerate. Meanwhile, the extreme risk appetite in Korean markets—both traditional and crypto—warrants caution as these positions become increasingly precarious and potentially vulnerable to sharp corrections.
