By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Bitcoin BTC surpassed Wednesday’s record to reach an all-time high of $111,875 in the early hours of Thursday, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index, as traditional financial markets contended with rising bond yields and renewed concerns over ballooning U.S. debt.

The largest cryptocurrency has gained around 3.8% in the last 24 hours while the broader CoinDesk 20 CD20 index rose 4.74%, continuing a trend of strength driven by mounting institutional demand and growing interest in crypto exposure.

The rally is unfolding against a backdrop of higher yields on U.S. and Japanese government bonds. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose to 4.6%, while the 30-year topped 5%, driven by concerns over President Donald Trump’s tax bill that analysts estimate could add as much as $5 trillion to the country’s debt, according to Reuters.

In Japan, yields on 30- and 40-year government bonds also hit record highs. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 234%, QCP Capital said, and growing scrutiny coupled with weak demand for long-dated JGBs sent yields soaring.

That matters because higher yields — and thus higher returns — on investments that are considered relatively safe tend to lower the appeal of riskier assets like stocks, not to mention cryptocurrencies. While BTC, with its history of trading as a risky asset, hasn’t shown much sign of ebbing demand, it raises the question of how long the rally can continue.

Still, traders have been building large long positions in BTC options, with the most open interest now concentrated at the $110,000, $120,000 and even $300,000 calls for contracts expiring in late June in a sign of continuing bullish conviction.

U.S.-traded spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds have also been seeing significant demand. Total net inflows hit $1.6 billion over the week, and $4.24 billion so far in May, SoSoValue data shows. The inflows, coupled with bitcoin’s price rise, have seen the ETFs’ total net assets hit a record $129 billion.

There are, however, some muted signs of bearish activity.

“The largest block flow this week continues to be ETH December call spreads, while overnight BTC butterfly positions hint that some traders are positioning for consolidation around current levels,” Wintermute OTC trader Jake O. said.

Note, he’s talking about consolidation, not declines. And traditional participants may even be too bearish. While the U.S. endured a recent credit downgrade, markets are now pricing in a 6-level cut all the way down to BBB+.

On top of that, per Jake O., a recent equities market sell-off may not be a result of repositioning given higher bond yields, but rather profit-taking after nine consecutive positive sessions. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto
  • May 22: Bitcoin Pizza Day.
  • May 22: Top 220 TRUMP token holders will attend a gala dinner hosted by the U.S. president at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington.
  • May 30: The second round of FTX repayments starts.
  • May 31 (TBC): Mezo mainnet launch.
• Macro
  • Day 3 of 3: Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem will co-host the three-day meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors in Banff, Alberta.
  • May 22, 8 a.m.: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases (final) Q1 GDP growth data.
    • GDP Growth Rate QoQ Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. -0.6%
    • GDP Growth Rate YoY Est. 0.8% vs. Prev. 0.5%
  • May 22, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases April producer price inflation data.
    • PPI MoM Est. -0.5% vs. Prev. 0.5%.
    • PPI YoY Prev. 4.7%.
  • May 22, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases unemployment insurance data for the week ended May 17.
    • Initial Jobless Claims Est. 230K vs. Prev. 229K
  • May 23, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases (Final) March retail sales data.
    • Retail Sales MoM Est. 0.7% vs. Prev. -0.4%
    • Retail Sales YoY Prev. 4.7%
  • May 23, 10 a.m.: The U.S. Census Bureau releases April new single-family homes data.
    • New Home Sales Est. 0.692M vs. Prev. 0.724M
    • New Home Sales MoM Prev. 7.4%
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • May 28: NVIDIA (NVDA), post-market, $0.88

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Arbitrum DAO is voting on launching “The Watchdog,” a 400,000-ARB bounty program to reward community sleuths for uncovering misuse of the hundreds of millions in grants, incentives and service budgets the DAO has deployed. Voting ends May 23.
  • Lido DAO is voting on adopting Dual Governance (LIP-28), a protocol upgrade that inserts a dynamic timelock between DAO decisions and execution so stETH holders can escrow tokens to pause proposals at 1% of TVL or fully block and “rage-quit” at 10%. Voting ends May 28.
  • Arbitrum DAO is voting on a constitutional AIP to upgrade Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova to ArbOS 40 “Callisto,” bringing them in line with Ethereum’s May 7 Pectra upgrade. The proposal schedules activation for June 17, and voting ends on May 29.
  • May 22: Official Trump to announce its “next Era” on the day of the dinner for its largest holders.
  • June 10: Ether.fi to host an analyst call followed by a Q&A session.
• Unlocks
  • May 31: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.89% of its circulating supply worth $24.67 million.
  • June 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 1.32% of its circulating supply worth $182.58 million.
  • June 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 5.34% of its circulating supply worth $11.99 million.
  • June 12: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.7% of its circulating supply worth $16.78 million.
  • June 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.79% of its circulating supply worth $61.86 million.
• Token Launches
  • June 1: Staking rewards for staking ERC-20 OM on MANTRA Finance end.
  • June 16: Advised deadline to unstake stMATIC as part of Lido on Polygon’s sunsetting process ends.

Conferences

• Day 3 of 7: Dutch Blockchain Week (Amsterdam)
• Day 3 of 3: Avalanche Summit London
• Day 3 of 3: Seamless Middle East Fintech 2025 (Dubai)
• Day 2 of 2: Crypto Expo Dubai
• Day 2 of 2: Cryptoverse Conference (Warsaw)
• May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025 (Las Vegas)
• May 27-30: Web Summit Vancouver
• May 29: Stablecon (New York)
• May 29-30: Litecoin Summit 2025 (Las Vegas)
• May 29-June 1: Balkans Crypto 2025 (Tirana, Albania)
• June 2-7: SXSW London
• June 15-17: G7 2025 Summit (Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada)
• June 19-21: BTC Prague 2025

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• The HYPE token is in focus after a billion-dollar bitcoin trade boosted Hyperliquid’s fundamentals.
• Pseudonymous trader James Wynn opened a $1.1 billion long on BTC using 40x leverage via Hyperliquid in one of the largest on-chain DEX trades ever recorded.
• The position, tied to wallet «0x507,» was entered when BTC was priced at $108K and now sits on over $40 million in unrealized profit.
• Wynn booked partial profits early Thursday by closing 540 BTC (~$60 million), to net $1.5 million.
• His prior exits were followed by BTC declines, so traders are watching closely, as reported.
• Hyperliquid runs on its custom L1, HyperEVM, using the HyperBFT consensus (200K+ TPS) with CEX-level features like real-time order books and deep liquidity — no KYC required.
• The platform’s permissionless design and lightning-fast execution are increasingly drawing capital from centralized venues to DeFi , and this trade could set a precedent for whale activity.
• HYPE jumped 15% in the past 24 hours on renewed attention and usage-driven speculation.

Derivatives Positioning

• Analyzing the liquidations heatmap of the BTC-USDT pair on Binance, the largest liquidations cluster around $108.5K and $106.9K with liquidations worth $143 million and $112.5 million, respectively.
• Meanwhile, BTC the options market swells post-breakout, with open interest on Deribit climbing above $34 billion, just shy of the all-time high of $35.9 billion set in December. The bulk of this positioning is centered on the 30 May expiry, which now holds over $9 billion in notional value to become a key date for potential volatility.
• Bullish sentiment is clearly in control, with traders aggressively targeting upside via calls. Strikes at $100K, $120K and $150K have attracted particularly large open interest, reflecting growing conviction in a continued rally.
• Put/call ratios underscore this shift in sentiment — the 24-hour volume ratio has dropped to 0.49, while the open interest ratio sits at 0.60, indicating a meaningful tilt toward bullish exposure following BTC’s move above $110K.
• Near-term options activity is also picking up, with weekly and monthly contracts seeing notable inflows. Traders appear to be positioning for further momentum or short-term price swings in the wake of the breakout.

Market Movements

• BTC is up 1.19% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday at $110,690.36 (24hrs: +4.05%)
• ETH is up 6.19% at $2,662.72 (24hrs: +5.23%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 3.64% at 3,348.63 (24hrs: +4.88%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is unchanged at 3.03%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.03% (10.95% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is up 0.25% at 99.81
• Gold is down 0.26% at $3,305.6/oz
• Silver is down 0.83% at $33.17/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed -0.84% at 36,985.87
• Hang Seng closed -1.19% at 23,544.31
• FTSE is down 0.68% at 8,726.62
• Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.96% at 5,402.31
• DJIA closed on Wednesday -0.91% at 41,860.44
• S&P 500 closed -1.61% at 5,844.61
• Nasdaq closed -1.41% at 18,872.64
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.83% at 25,839.17
• S&P 40 Latin America closed -1.31% at 2,597.38
• U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 2 bps at 4.58%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are unchanged at 5,865.50
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.15% at 21,188.50
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.17% at 41,875.00

Bitcoin Stats:

• BTC Dominance: 63.90 (-0.62%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02409 (3.52%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 875 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $58.24
• Total Fees: 7.89 BTC / $847,124
• CME Futures Open Interest: 160,740 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 33.4 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 9.47%

Technical Analysis

• Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $111,875 this morning, breaking decisively above the previous peak just above $109,000 set in January.
• With a confirmed close above that level and no sign of a swing failure pattern, the bias remains firmly tilted toward continued upside. In the near term, BTC may encounter resistance around the $112,000–$113,000 range, aligning with a trendline drawn from the prior highs in December and January.
• However, last week’s consolidation above $100,000 — and the successful reclaim of the previous all-time high — suggest this area is now acting as short-term support.
• A pullback below $100,000, especially into the weekly order block, would likely represent a healthy correction within the broader uptrend and could offer a compelling reentry opportunity if further downside is seen.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $402.69 (-3.41%), up 1.73% at $409.67 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $258.99 (-0.91%), up 2.78% at $266.20
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$31 (+1.57%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $15.84 (-2.16%), up 4.42% at $16.54
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $8.84 (-1.01%), up 3.39% at $9.14
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $10.78 (-1.28%), up 1.48% at $10.94
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.11 (+4.23%), up 4.65% at $10.58
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $17.75 (-1.33%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $44.89 (+7.19%), up 6.01% at $47.59
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $32.76 (-5.07%), unchanged in pre-market

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: $607.1 million
• Cumulative net flows: $43.35 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1.19 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: $0.6 million
• Cumulative net flows: $2.61 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.49 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows bitcoin open interest has hit a new all-time high.
• Most OI is concentrated on major centralized exchanges, with Hyperliquid showing solid growth.

While You Were Sleeping

• Bitcoin Smashes Past $111K, Setting New Record Highs, on Institutional Fervor (CoinDesk): Bitcoin hit an all-time high above $111,800 Thursday, surpassing Wednesday’s record.
• Bitcoin’s Rally to Record Highs Puts Focus on $115K Where an ‘Invisible Hand’ May Slow Bull Run (CoinDesk): The rally may face resistance near $115,000 as options dealers with positive gamma exposure hedge by selling into price strength, creating contrarian flows that could limit further upside.
• King Dollar Falls, Bitcoin Marches Toward Sound Money Highs (CoinDesk): Despite soaring 50% from April lows and outperforming tech stocks and Treasuries, bitcoin has yet to reclaim its all-time highs against traditional safe havens such as gold and silver.
• GOP Leaders Make Last-Minute Changes to Trump Tax Bill (The Wall Street Journal): Republicans aim to extend and expand Trump’s 2017 tax cuts while covering only part of the cost, raising concerns over delayed spending curbs and worsening budget deficits.
• Japan’s Possible Response to Rise in Super-Long Bond Yields (Reuters): Yields on these bonds are spiking amid concerns about large tax cuts and increased government spending. The central bank is likely to consider technical tweaks while avoiding broader intervention.
• Russia’s Struggling War Economy Might Be What Finally Drives Moscow to the Negotiating Table (CNBC): Mounting pressure from inflation, falling oil revenues and depleted military reserves may eventually force Moscow into real peace talks.

In the Ether

Bitcoin (BTC) miner MARA Holdings (MARA) will provide 500 BTC to broker Two Prime for generating yields, the companies said on Thursday.

The deal will enhance the existing partnership between the two crypto firms, the SEC-registered Two Prime has provided bitcoin-backed loans to MARA.

Recently, MARA announced its first-quarter results which missed Wall Street-estimates. However, the company’s focus on cost-cutting was viewed positively by analysts.

Read more: Bitcoin Miner MARA Stock Surges Despite Earnings Miss as Analysts Applaud Cost Cutting

«MARA has one of the largest bitcoin corporate treasuries in the world, and they’re setting the standard for how institutional holders can responsibly unlock its value,» Two Prime CEO, Alexander Blume said in a press release.

«This expanded partnership is about more than just yield – it’s about building a model for capital efficiency, transparency, and risk-aware innovation in digital asset management,» Blume added.

Last month, many listed bitcoin miners were forced to cash out some of their holdings, according to TheMinerMag. The mining news outlet’s latest research revealed that public miners sold 115% of their bitcoin production in April — meaning they sold more than they produced. That is the highest ratio since the tail end of the 2022 bear market.

Read more: Bitcoin Miners Sold Record Amount of BTC Ahead of May’s Price Surge

UPDATE (May 22, 11:00 UTC): Adds comment from Two Prime and background on bitcoin miners.

FIFA, football’s global governing body, plans to use Avalanche’s network to power its own dedicated layer-1 blockchain.

The FIFA Blockchain is an Avalanche L1, a customizable blockchain that uses Avalanche’s technology (also previously known as a subnet). The news comes as the Avalanche network recently went through its major Avalanche9000 upgrade, aimed at attracting new developers and encouraging them to create customized L1s.

Thursday’s announcement is not FIFA’s first foray into the world of blockchain and crypto. In 2022, the football body released a non-fungible token (NFT) collection on the Algorand blockchain ahead of the Qatar World Cup. FIFA also teased this change in April, noting that it would shift its collection to an EVM-compatible blockchain while continuing to pursue Web3 initiatives.

The NFT craze, which saw large institutions and corporations jumping into the trend, has now mostly vanished after the brutal crypto winter that dampened industry sentiment for several painful years. However, a large entity such as FIFA’s continued focus on blockchain likely signals that the use case for the technology hasn’t died down, and big enterprises are still looking to dabble in the industry.

“Avalanche is designed for enterprises and organizations looking to build custom, high-performance blockchain solutions,” said John Nahas, chief business officer at Ava Labs, in a press release shared with CoinDesk . “FIFA’s decision to launch its L1 on Avalanche is a testament to our technology’s ability to support global-scale applications with speed, flexibility, and security.”

While FIFA currently only has a World Cup NFT collection and a digital collectibles marketplace, it did not share what else it is planning to release on its new blockchain.

Read more: FIFA Embraces NFTs Tied to Classic Games Highlights for World Cup 2022