Weekly: Musk lost the OpenAI case, SpaceX filed for IPO, and Google launched a new wave of AI updates

Bitcoin dropped below $77,000, Ethereum followed, spot Bitcoin ETFs saw the largest weekly outflow since February, and on top of that came Trump’s threats toward Iran, more expensive oil, inflation, and weaker sentiment in derivatives. At the same time, completely different stories added pressure: SpaceX accelerated its path to the stock market, Musk lost the court case against OpenAI, Anthropic is preparing a closed briefing for G20 financial regulators, and Google at I/O is once again pushing AI into a mass-market product.

Bitcoin slipped

On May 17–18, Bitcoin fell below $77,000 and at one point reached 76,583. In the middle of the week it was still holding, but on May 22 it went down again. The main pressure came from outside: escalation around Iran, inflation in the US, high oil prices, and rising yields on long-term US bonds. Against this backdrop, the daily volume of futures liquidations reached almost $675 million.

Some analysts see it this way: amid worsening global liquidity, Bitcoin may prove more resilient than the rest of the crypto market in the coming months. Others point to unusually pessimistic sentiment in derivatives and a prolonged negative funding rate, which looks more like bottom formation than a short rally within a bear market. At the same time, miners are not giving a signal of panic selling, but the market has not shown a confident reversal either.

Around $1 billion was withdrawn from spot Bitcoin ETFs over the week, making it the worst figure since February. After several weeks when ETFs supported the market, this time they started working in the opposite direction.

Large players are acting very differently

Strategy bought another 24,869 BTC during the same week for about $2.01 billion and brought its total reserve to 843,738 BTC. On the other side were Yorkville America and Trump Media & Technology Group: one structure withdrew its application for the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF and paused two more products, while the other moved 2,650 BTC to an exchange, which the market read as a possible sale.

Add to this SoftBank’s exit from Twenty One Capital and Mark Cuban’s statement that he sold most of his Bitcoin because he was disappointed in the thesis of BTC as a hedge asset. As a result, we have a market where large players are no longer moving in one direction. Some are buying aggressively, others are reducing exposure, and others are simply losing faith in old narratives.

Ethereum and major alts

Ethereum fell to the area of $2,115 and was trading near 2,126 at the time this weekly was prepared. Institutional money did not support the market here either: spot Ethereum ETFs saw outflows of $255.11 million, making it the largest outflow since February.

At the same time, some altcoin-based ETFs, including XRP, SOL, LINK, and HYPE, received capital inflows instead. This looks more like an early attempt by the market to find new points of interest than a full sector reversal. Solana fell below $85, BNB dropped to 640, while HYPE gained more than 50% over the week and broke above $50 for the first time in eight months, and later above 60. In other words, capital is now moving very selectively, and this is an important signal: broad risk appetite has not returned yet.

Regulation is pressing again

Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to simplify regulation of fintech, digital assets, and payment services, while the Federal Reserve was instructed to assess the possibility of giving fintech and crypto companies access to payment infrastructure. This looks like a signal toward easing, but at the same time the market is also seeing tougher accents.

Elizabeth Warren is demanding explanations regarding the issuance of trust licenses to crypto companies. The ARMA bill appeared in Congress, proposing the creation of a federal strategic Bitcoin reserve of up to 1 million BTC over five years. Japan legalized foreign trust stablecoins in its national payment system, while the European Commission launched consultations on whether MiCA still matches a market that is changing very quickly. Formally, regulation is moving forward, but the market still does not get a sense of calm from it. The rules are not stabilizing; they are being rebuilt while everything is already in motion.

Hacks reminded again how easily infrastructure falls apart

The Verus-Ethereum cross-chain bridge lost about $11.4 million. The problem turned out not to be key compromise, but the absence of outgoing amount verification. Later, the hacker returned most of the funds in exchange for a reward and a promise not to prosecute him, but this does not change the main point: infrastructure once again failed because of a basic error.

Echo Protocol on the Monad network suffered an even harder hit. The attacker minted 1,000 eBTC worth $76.7 million without real backing, used part of it as collateral on Curvance, and then moved the assets to Ethereum. At the same time, more than $700,000 was withdrawn from the Polymarket deployer address on Polygon. When cases like this pile up in one week, trust in DeFi drops again even harder than prices.

AI this time was not at the center as a trend, but as a source of power and risk

One of the most telling stories of the week was the regulators’ reaction to Anthropic Mythos. The company is set to hold a closed briefing for financial regulators from G20 countries because of the risks identified by the Claude Mythos Preview model. The logic here is direct: if new AI models can find critical vulnerabilities in software and networks, this is no longer a problem of one separate lab, but a potential systemic risk for banking infrastructure.

At the same time, the AI market is not slowing down commercially either. Buidlpad opened the Anthropic Pre-IPO pool, HIVE Digital Technologies announced the construction of a large 320 MW AI factory, OPPO showed a new type of Android agent, while Alibaba presented a new AI chip and the Qwen3.7-Max model. Google at I/O 2026 added Gemini 3.5, Omni video generation, and the Stitch design tool to this. 

SpaceX accelerated its IPO preparation and may list on Nasdaq as early as June 12, 2026. The company officially filed an application with the SEC and disclosed financial figures: a loss of about $4.9 billion for 2025, another $4.3 billion loss in the first quarter of 2026 with revenue of $4.69 billion, as well as 18,712 BTC on its balance sheet. Almost alongside this came Elon Musk’s defeat in court against OpenAI and Sam Altman in a $150 billion case. The California court dismissed the main claims, and Musk has already said he will appeal. 

Kursoff’s view

Last week clearly showed that the market is now being held together not by comfort, but by tension. Bitcoin slipped, but did not collapse. Ethereum looks weaker than expected, alts are not yet giving a new impulse, and institutional money has flowed out through ETFs so noticeably for the first time in a long while. Alongside this, DeFi is again falling apart on basic things, regulation is moving in different directions, and AI is already pressing not only as a fashionable narrative, but also as a factor of real systemic risk.