8Qef2u, the largest $ASTEROID holder on Solana, bought 10.04M $VIRL ($17.7K).

May 20: Lighter gained significant traction after its founder Vlad Novakovski sat down with Vitalik for a recent "Fireside Chat" centered on Ethereum’s high-performance applications and ZK Rollup scaling roadmap. As smart money shifted out of the HYPE token frenzy to chase undervalued assets in the same crypto sector, Lighter’s native token Lit has outperformed the broader market—currently trading at $1.771 with a 21.87% 24-hour gain. Market focus now centers on Lighter’s high-performance use cases within the Ethereum ecosystem, its scaling roadmap, and the future trajectory of decentralized finance (DeFi). Per DefiLlama data, Lighter’s 24-hour trading volume hits $12.89 billion, with total value locked (TVL) exceeding $7.6 billion.

May 20 – Non-custodial crypto wallet Sorted Wallet has closed a $4.4 million seed round of financing. The equity investment portion of the round amounts to $3.4 million and is led by investors Tether and Gnosis. Vox Solutions contributed an extra $1 million in strategic support, with angel investors including Movement, Angel Invest Group, and the founder of RWA.io joining the financing. Separately, Tether made a $1.5 million strategic investment in Sorted Wallet back in 2024.

On May 20, blockchain analytics platform LookOnChain’s monitoring shows that Evaded (@ICanPlug) opened 10x leveraged long positions on 36,875 ZEC (worth approximately $21.59 million) and 287,618 HYPE (valued at roughly $13.89 million) yesterday, with current unrealized gains of around $2.1 million.

May 20 (via Hunan Daily) — Police in Baojing County, Hunan Province, China, have recovered 100,000 yuan from a cryptocurrency scam and returned the full amount to the victim, Mr. Liu, more than three months after the fraud occurred. The scam was reported at around 8 p.m. on February 9 by Liu, a victim from another province. Liu said he lost the equivalent of $13,800 when he tried to buy USDT, a stablecoin cryptocurrency, online. Local officers quickly assembled a specialized investigation team to probe the case, working through the night to gather leads. They identified the suspect as Shi, who had no steady income and was ineligible to engage in cryptocurrency trading. To trick people out of money, Shi posted screenshots of others’ crypto trading profits online to pose as an experienced, profitable trader. Liu fell for the ruse and sent Shi 100,000 yuan to buy USDT, but Shi never delivered the cryptocurrency. Instead, he used part of the funds for gambling and other extravagant spend

As of May 20th, margin loan balances (a key measure of leverage) in South Korea’s stock market have surged to roughly 35 trillion Korean won—an all-time high, per data from the Korea Financial Investment Association cited by Barchart—signaling extremely aggressive positioning among local traders. South Korea’s stock market has seen major volatility lately, driven by negotiations and a strike between Samsung Electronics and its union over employee benefits. High leverage levels plus a large share of retail investor participation have further amplified the market turbulence in recent sessions.

May 20th — Last week, the highly anticipated CLARITY Act officially cleared review by the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, taking a concrete step toward implementation. Earlier this week, Patrick Witt, a key digital asset advisor to Trump, dropped a major announcement that the "U.S. Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Plan" is expected to be unveiled in the coming weeks. Additional news includes the SEC potentially introducing an "Innovation Exemption" for tokenized stocks, paired with today’s signing of a crypto-friendly executive order by Trump. The Trump administration has recently been doubling down on its support for cryptocurrency. BlockBeats analysts argue Trump’s primary motivation likely stems from pressure over the upcoming U.S. midterm elections. Historically, the president’s party tends to lose ground in midterms; current forecasts signal Democrats may retake the House, with Republicans only holding onto the Senate. As such, Trump is scrambling to win over young, tech-savvy, and liber