OKX confirms $53 million investment to acquire 20% stake in Coinone crypto exchange
OKX Ventures, the investment arm of the global crypto exchange OKX, announced today that it will purchase a 19.6% stake in Coinone, one of South Korea’s five licensed digital asset trading platforms.
According to the press release, Coinone signed strategic equity investment agreements with OKX Ventures, Korea Investment & Securities (KIS), and Com2uS and its affiliated company. Today’s announcement confirms earlier local media reports of the investment.
OKX Ventures and KIS will each invest 80 billion Korean won ($53 million), giving each a 19.6% stake in the company upon completion of the investments and receipt of regulatory approvals. The two are set to jointly become the third-largest shareholders of the South Korean exchange, following Coinone CEO Cha Myung-hun (27.8%) and Com2uS Holdings and affiliated company (25%).
The investment will be made via a combination of secondary share purchases from Cha and Com2uS, as well as subscription of newly issued shares, the release said. OKX’s investment in Coinone marks the latest move by a global crypto firm to secure a foothold in South Korea, following Binance’s acquisition of Gopax.
“South Korea is one of the world’s most sophisticated digital asset markets, and its regulatory framework is highly respected globally,” said Netero Dai, vice president of OKX Global Markets. “We believe that the future of finance will be built on compliant, well-regulated infrastructure, and our investment in Coinone with Korea Investment & Securities reflects that conviction.”
OKX Ventures and Coinone plan to exchange insights on user protection, security, and risk management, the firms said. Meanwhile, KIS said it will pursue collaborations on security tokens and stablecoins, in light of the recent regulatory developments in South Korea.
This news aligns with a recent flurry of major investments from prominent South Korean financial institutions into the crypto sector. On Thursday, three Samsung subsidiaries announced they will invest $408 million in Upbit parent company Dunamu to acquire a combined 4% stake. Mirae Asset, a local financial services conglomerate with over 1,000 trillion won ($665 billion) in assets under management, announced in February that it would buy a 92% stake in the Korbit crypto exchange.
KB Kookmin, Shinhan, NHN KCP, and other major financial institutions have also formed partnerships with global blockchain platforms such as Solana and Avalanche to run proof-of-concepts for upcoming payment systems featuring tokenized deposits and stablecoins. This aggressive push by South Korea’s largest financial players takes place as local regulators develop the Digital Asset Basic Act — a comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto. However, the legislation has faced significant delays, leaving its enactment timeline uncertain.
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]
Ethereum spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $121 million yesterday, marking the 13th consecutive day of net outflows.
According to SoSoValue data, yesterday (May 28th, US Eastern Time), the total net outflow of Ethereum spot ETFs was $121.00 million.
Yesterday, the Ethereum spot ETF with the largest single-day net inflow was Blackrock’s Staked ETH ETF ETHB, with a single-day net inflow of $3.11 million. Currently, ETHB’s total historical net inflow has reached $521.00 million.
Yesterday, the Ethereum spot ETF with the largest single-day net outflow was Blackrock’s ETF ETHA, with a single-day net outflow of $80.39 million. Currently, ETHA’s total historical net inflow has reached $114.76 billion.
[PANews]
Sei releases Giga upgrade roadmap, aiming to achieve 200,000 TPS and 400ms finality
Sei has released the roadmap for its next-generation protocol upgrade, “Giga,” which plans to significantly improve transaction performance by restructuring the execution client, state management, and consensus mechanism.
Key upgrades include: Ares execution client (optimizing performance through pipelined execution and asynchronous processing); Eidos state management (replacing Merkle trees with flat key-value storage, separating hot data from cold archives); Autobahn consensus mechanism (targeting 200,000 TPS and 400ms finality, with internal testnets already achieving 5 Gigagas processing capacity); Sedna private mempool (introducing encrypted transaction propagation mechanism); and a gradual deprecation of Cosmos SDK and CosmWasm via SIP-3, transitioning to a pure EVM architecture.
[PANews]
Gemini turns to Grok as crypto exchanges chase prediction markets
Gemini has added a Grok-powered feature to its prediction markets platform as the crypto exchange expands beyond spot trading. The new feature, called Command Center, gives users a personalized market feed. It uses open positions, watchlists, and past prediction activity to select what each user sees.
Gemini said Command Center can track crypto, sports, commodities, politics, economics, and culture. The company said the tool aims to reduce the time users spend searching news and social feeds. The product uses Grok and SpaceXAI models to create real-time market summaries, sentiment checks, and personalized signals. Gemini said, “Rather than forcing you to dig through social feeds to find what’s relevant, Command Center meets you where you are.”
Introducing Command Center Built in collaboration with @SpaceX and @xAI to bring AI directly into Gemini. Command Center is a personalized market feed that surfaces real time insights across every topic that matters to you Create your Command Center today pic.twitter.com/W3BO1xaEA4
Moreover, the launch follows Gemini’s recent move into agentic trading. That feature lets users connect AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude to their Gemini accounts. Those tools can monitor markets and place trades under user-set limits. The latest Grok feature is different because it focuses on market discovery and prediction feeds, not direct trade execution.
Gemini’s prediction markets business is still early. The company said the unit made $400,000 in revenue from 20,000 users in the first quarter. That figure remains small compared with larger platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Still, Gemini’s wider business showed growth in the quarter. Total revenue rose 42% year over year to $50.3 million. As previously reported by crypto.news, Gemini’s exchange revenue fell 27% as trading volume dropped. That pressure helps explain why the company is building new revenue lines across credit cards, services, derivatives, and prediction markets.
Gemini’s prediction market expansion comes with legal and regulatory attention. New York sued Gemini Titan and Coinbase Financial Markets in April, claiming their event markets broke state gambling rules. Gemini also gained more federal market infrastructure this year. Its Olympus affiliate received a CFTC clearing license in April, after Gemini Titan secured a CFTC market license in December 2025. In a separate development, the CFTC has asked a court to scrap Gemini’s $5 million enforcement settlement from a 2022 case. The agency said the case would not have been filed under its current standards.
The Grok launch shows how Gemini is using AI to support its broader market strategy. It also places prediction markets closer to personalized trading tools, as crypto exchanges look for growth outside basic crypto trading.
Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $229 million yesterday, marking the 9th consecutive day of net outflows.
May 29th news, according to SoSoValue data, yesterday (US Eastern Time May 28th), the total net outflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs was $229.00 million.
The Bitcoin spot ETF with the largest single-day net outflow yesterday was Blackrock’s ETF IBIT, with a single-day net outflow of $178.00 million. Currently, IBIT’s total historical net inflow has reached $63875.00 million.
The second largest was Grayscale’s ETF GBTC, with a single-day net outflow of $26.19 million. Currently, GBTC’s total historical net outflow has reached $26616.00 million.
[PANews]
Some banks in Hong Kong are tightening the opening of investment accounts, with no temporary impact on savings accounts.
Reports indicate that banks in the Hong Kong region are tightening account opening procedures. According to sources familiar with the matter, in compliance with requirements set by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), some Hong Kong-based banks began tightening the opening of investment accounts starting May 26, including requiring customers to sign paper declarations.
However, savings accounts are currently unaffected.
[Odaily]
Ethereum asset management firm FG Nexus deposited 5,000 ETH to Galaxy Digital, valued at approximately $10.06 million.
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, Ethereum asset management company FG Nexus deposited 5,000 ETH to Galaxy Digital, worth approximately $10.06 million.
The company currently still holds 16,354 ETH, worth approximately $34.15 million.
[Foresight News]
sudoswap co-founder plans to launch a new DEX, TamaSwap
NFT automated market maker protocol sudoswap co-founder Zefram Lou plans to launch TamaSwap, stating that TamaSwap is the first DEX to achieve “provably unhackable” status through Lean formal verification. The project is based on the classic xy=k model and uses machine verification to prove that no single attacker can extract value from the system regardless of their actions, while ensuring that liquidity is not reduced and reserves are always supported by real ERC-20 tokens.
The TamaSwap front-end is fully deployed on-chain (following ERC-4804/ERC-5219), enabling permanent online access, no maintenance, and censorship resistance. In addition, the project has no protocol fees and supports one-click, no-code deployment to any EVM chain by anyone. TamaSwap is built with the Tama + Verity toolchain, and the code and formal specifications are open-sourced on GitHub (AGPL license).
[Foresight News]
Base Azul Mainnet Launches, Upgrading Network Speed and Security
Base Azul is now live on the mainnet. This upgrade makes the Base network faster and more secure.
[Odaily Planet Daily]
Sei releases the Giga upgrade roadmap, aiming for 200,000 TPS and 400ms finality
Sei has released the Giga upgrade roadmap. Giga is Sei’s next-generation protocol upgrade, designed to achieve higher transaction performance by refactoring the execution client, state management, and consensus mechanisms.
According to the roadmap, Sei will roll out several core upgrades, including: the Ares execution client upgrade (significantly boosting performance via pipelined execution, asynchronous processing, and other optimizations); the Eidos state management upgrade (replacing Merkle trees with a flat key-value store and separating hot state from cold archives); Autobahn consensus (targeting 200,000 TPS and 400ms finality—already achieving 5 gigagas processing capacity on internal distributed testnets); Sedna private mempool (introducing encrypted transaction propagation); and a gradual transition to an EVM-only architecture (deprecating Cosmos SDK and CosmWasm via SIP-3).
[Foresight News]
Data: Bitcoin spot ETFs had a total net outflow of $229.00 million yesterday, with net outflows continuing for 9 days.
According to SoSoValue data, Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $229 million yesterday (May 28th, Eastern Time). The BlackRock ETF (IBIT) experienced the largest single-day net outflow at $178 million, bringing its historical total net inflow to $63.875 billion. This was followed by the Grayscale ETF (GBTC), with a net outflow of $26.1938 million, bringing its historical total net outflow to $26.616 billion. As of press time, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs was $94.25 billion, with an ETF net asset value ratio (market capitalization as a percentage of Bitcoin's total market capitalization) of 6.39%, and a historical cumulative net inflow of $55.788 billion. [ChainCatcher]
Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $229 million yesterday, marking the 9th consecutive day of net outflows.
According to SoSoValue data, yesterday (May 28, US Eastern Time), the total net outflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs was $229.00 million.
The Bitcoin spot ETF with the largest single-day net outflow yesterday was BlackRock’s ETF IBIT, with a single-day net outflow of $178.00 million. The total historical net inflow of IBIT has reached $63875.00 million.
The second largest was Grayscale’s ETF GBTC, with a single-day net outflow of $26.19 million. The total historical net outflow of GBTC has reached $26616.00 million.
As of press time, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs is $94250.00 million, and the ETF net asset ratio (market value as a percentage of the total market value of Bitcoin) reached 6.39%, with a total historical net inflow of $55788.00 million.
[Odaily]
Today’s Market Pulse
The crypto market is experiencing persistent ETF outflows while simultaneously witnessing significant infrastructure upgrades and strategic expansion moves by major players, indicating a bifurcation between short-term sentiment and long-term development.
Key Themes
ETF Capital Flight Continues
Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs are seeing sustained outflows, with Bitcoin ETFs recording $229M in net outflows yesterday (9th consecutive day) and Ethereum ETFs experiencing $121M in outflows (13th consecutive day). BlackRock’s IBIT and ETHA are particularly affected, with GBTC continuing its outflow trend. This suggests institutional investors may be taking profits or reallocating capital despite the broader market narrative of ETF-driven adoption.
Layer 1 Scaling Revolution
Several L1 protocols are undergoing significant upgrades to address scalability limitations. Sei is rolling out its “Giga” upgrade targeting 200,000 TPS and 400ms finality through architectural changes. Similarly, Base Azul mainnet has launched, enhancing network speed and security. These developments signal that the industry is moving beyond incremental improvements to fundamental protocol redesigns to achieve mass adoption.
Strategic Expansion and Innovation
Major exchanges are expanding beyond traditional trading models. OKX has secured a 19.6% stake in South Korea’s Coinone, following similar moves by global firms in the region. Meanwhile, Gemini is integrating Grok-powered prediction markets and personalized trading tools, seeking new revenue streams amid declining exchange trading volumes. These moves highlight how established players are evolving to capture new market opportunities.
Regulatory Cross Currents
Different regions are taking divergent regulatory approaches. Hong Kong banks are tightening investment account procedures, while South Korea’s comprehensive Digital Asset Basic Act faces implementation delays. In the US, regulatory clarity remains mixed as seen in the legal challenges to prediction markets and the CFTC’s review of past enforcement actions. This regulatory uncertainty continues to impact market structure and product development.
RichSilo Verdict
Smart money should monitor the ETF outflow trend as a potential indicator of institutional sentiment shift, while focusing on the protocol upgrade catalysts that could drive next-generation performance. The bifurcation between short-term capital flows and long-term infrastructure development creates opportunities for investors who can distinguish between market noise and fundamental progress. Key risks include regulatory crackdowns on innovative products and prolonged ETF outflows that could impact market liquidity.
