The Trump administration has awarded $2 billion in grants to nine quantum computing companies in exchange for equity.

May 21: Per Bitget market data, the three major U.S. stock indexes opened lower today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.27%, the S&P 500 dropped 0.39%, and the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.5%. Microsoft was a standout gainer, rising 1.1% on news that AI startup Anthropic is in talks with the company to use its artificial intelligence chips. This morning, Nvidia— which reported its first-quarter (Q1) earnings after the prior session’s market close—edged down 1%. Conversely, cryptocurrency-focused stock Circle outperformed peers, surging over 2%. Separately, the U.S. quantum computing sector posted sharp gains, fueled by word of U.S. government financial support. D-Wave Quantum jumped 16%, Rigetti Computing rose 14%, Infleqtion rallied 25%, the broader quantum computing stock group gained 9%, and Ionq added 3.1%.

MAY 21 – The bipartisan hybrid political action committee (PAC) Blockchain Leadership Fund, co-founded by Anchorage Digital and Chainlink in March of this year, announced its first slate of endorsements for the 2026 U.S. midterm elections, revealing it will issue campaign donations to multiple congressional candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties. The endorsed candidates include Senate hopefuls Barry Moore, Kurt Alme, Jon Husted, and Angie Craig, plus House candidates Houston Gaines, Jim Kingston, Jon Bonck, Adrian Boafo, Christian Menefee, and Don Davis. The races span key states across the country: Alabama, Montana, Ohio, Minnesota, Georgia, Texas, Maryland, and North Carolina. The PAC noted it will continue vetting candidates and expand its support to include competitive races at the federal, state, and local levels moving forward.

On May 21st, per HTX market data, Bitcoin accelerated its downward movement after U.S. stock markets opened, breaking below the $77,000 level. As of press time, it is trading at $76,911.06, down 0.69% over the past 24 hours.

May 21, per Onchain Lens monitoring: James Wynn shorted the S&P 500 index with 50x leverage, with a liquidation price of 7474.6.

On May 21st, monitoring from OnChainMind reveals that Bitcoin’s “ancient supply” — also referred to as revived supply, which denotes wallets holding BTC for 5, 7, or 10 years — has halted all movement after the ETF launch and amid the current active high-price range, creating a historic lull in long-held coin activity. Market analysis points out that this scenario commonly occurs when the market hits the bottom of a deep bear market.

May 21 update: Per on-chain analyst Ai (@ai_9684xtpa), the "BTC OG Insider Whale" has deposited an extra $9 million in USDC into Hyperliquid, bringing its total deposits on the platform to $19.01 million since yesterday. The whale’s current buying moves include: 1. Limit Buy Order for HYPE: The whale intends to purchase $1.15 million worth of HYPE via limit orders within the $49.725–$52.36 price range; it already holds $2.48 million in HYPE spot positions. 2. Long BTC Positions: The whale currently holds 504.4 BTC long contracts with 5x leverage, valued at $38.95 million, with an unrealized loss of $85,000.