Weekly preview | The Federal Reserve FOMC announces interest rate decision; the U.S. House of Representatives may release a draft cryptocurrency regulation before the hearing on May 6

Important news:

• Source: U.S. House of Representatives to release draft cryptocurrency regulation before May 6 hearing
• Shardeum will hold a TGE on May 5th, and will announce details of airdrops and token distribution soon
• The Federal Reserve FOMC announces its interest rate decision
• Superseed: SUPR tokens will be available for claiming on May 5
• Ethereum Pectra upgrade is scheduled to go live on May 7 to optimize staking and wallet functions
• Coinbase plans to launch 24/7 Bitcoin and Ethereum futures trading on May 9

May 5

Project News:

Shardeum will hold a TGE on May 5th, and will announce details of airdrops and token distribution soon

Layer1 blockchain Shardeum has announced that it will be conducting a TGE (Token Generation Event) on May 5th, with more details on the SHM token airdrop, sale allocation, and listing coming soon.

IOTA: Rebased network upgrade to be launched on May 5

The IOTA Rebased network upgrade is scheduled for May 5, 2025, when the network will be migrated from the Stardust network to the new IOTA network. For IOTA token holders, the Rebased upgrade will be seamless, with no token migration required, and you only need to load your existing wallet into the new wallet to start using it.

Superseed: SUPR tokens will be available for claiming on May 5

The lending platform Superseed announced on the X platform that SUPR tokens will be available for claiming at 22:00 Beijing time on May 5, with no deadline for claiming, but can only be claimed on the Superseed mainnet.

Token unlocking:

Ethena (ENA) will unlock approximately 171 million tokens at 3:00 pm Beijing time on May 5, accounting for 3.10% of the current circulation and worth approximately US$50 million.

May 6

Policy supervision:

Source: U.S. House of Representatives to release draft cryptocurrency regulation before May 6 hearing

According to people familiar with the matter, French Hill, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and others are expected to release a draft regulation on cryptocurrencies before a hearing on May 6 (local time). The hearing will be held at 10 am Eastern Time on the 6th, with the theme of "American Innovation and the Future of Cryptocurrency: A 21st Century Blueprint". It is expected to focus on the long-awaited legislation to define the structure of the crypto market in the United States. The draft is expected to be similar to the 21st Century Financial Innovation and Technology Act (FIT 21) passed by the House of Representatives last year. A staff member of the House Agriculture Committee also confirmed that the draft text will be released before the hearing.

Committees in the House and Senate have advanced stablecoin-focused bills, while legislation to regulate the entire cryptocurrency industry is seen as the next step. President Donald Trump has said he wants to see a stablecoin bill by August, but some say the bills could be linked.

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee and the Agriculture Committee will hold a joint hearing on May 6 to discuss the blueprint for digital asset legislation

U.S. lawmakers returned to Congress after the Easter recess and made crypto legislation a priority, aiming to complete the stablecoin and market structure bill before the August deadline set by President Trump. The House Financial Services Committee and the Agriculture Committee will hold a joint hearing on May 6 to discuss the blueprint for digital asset legislation. The Senate is also integrating the 2022 Lummis-Gillibrand Act and the FIT21 Act.

Project News:

Sonic Labs: Sonic will upgrade to support native USDC and CCTP V2 on May 6

Sonic will suspend bridging USDC.e from May 6, and then upgrade to native USDC and integrate CCTP V2. The whole process is expected to take about a week. After the upgrade, users do not need to operate, USDC.e will automatically convert to native USDC, support faster and safer cross-chain transfers, and connect to Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, Linea and other chains. The original USDC contract address remains unchanged, only the name is updated to USDC.

Token unlocking:

Spectral (SPEC) will unlock approximately 10 million tokens at 8:00 am Beijing time on May 6, accounting for 70.90% of the current circulation, with a value of approximately US$24.6 million.

May 7

Project News:

Ethereum Pectra upgrade is scheduled to go live on May 7 to optimize staking and wallet functions

Ethereum developers have officially set the launch date of the Pectra upgrade mainnet as May 7, 2025. This upgrade is the largest system update since March 2024, including 11 improvement proposals (EIPs), focusing on wallet contract functions (improving usability and recovery capabilities) and EIP-7251 (increasing the upper limit of a single node's stake from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH). The upgrade has been successfully run on the Hoodi testnet.

Pharos Network announces the launch of testnet on May 7

Pharos Network, a Layer 1 public chain focusing on the RWA track, announced today that its test network will be officially launched on May 7. The test network released this time aims to demonstrate Pharos' innovative Layer 1 solution, which has high throughput and can increase the speed of on-chain transactions; at the same time, EVM compatibility allows developers to migrate and deploy Ethereum applications, thereby accelerating the development of the on-chain RWA ecosystem.

Token unlocking:

Neon (NEON) will unlock approximately 53.91 million tokens at 8:00 am Beijing time on May 7, accounting for 22.51% of the current circulation and worth $6.2 million.

May 8

Macroeconomics:

At 2:00 on Thursday, the Federal Reserve FOMC announced its interest rate decision;

At 2:30 on Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell held a monetary policy press conference;

Policy supervision:

The U.S. Department of Justice seeks 20 years in prison for Celsius founder Mashinsky; sentencing to take place on May 8

The U.S. Department of Justice has requested a 20-year prison sentence for Alex Mashinsky, the former CEO of Celsius Network, accusing him of planning a fraud that resulted in nearly $7 billion in customer losses. The sentencing will take place on May 8. Prosecutors stressed that his actions were "deliberate and carefully planned" fraud, not negligence. Celsius managed more than $20 billion in customer assets in 2021, but went bankrupt in 2022 due to unsecured loans and risky trading, freezing about $4.7 billion in customer funds.

May 9

Macroeconomics:

At 18:15 on Friday, FOMC permanent voting member and New York Fed President Williams delivered a keynote speech at the 2025 Reykjavik Economic Conference.

At 23:30 on Friday, FOMC permanent voting member and New York Fed President Williams will speak at the Hoover Monetary Policy Conference (via pre-recorded video)

Project News:

Ethereum ERC-7828 and ERC-7930 standards are expected to be finalized on May 9

The Ethereum core development team is about to complete the formulation of two key standards aimed at solving the problem of address identification in cross-chain interactions. The ERC-7828 and ERC-7930 standards are expected to be officially finalized on May 9, and are currently in the final community opinion collection on the Ethereum Magicians forum. It is understood that the ERC-7930 standard will provide a unified network identification format for the system, while the ERC-7828 standard is committed to converting complex encrypted addresses into a more recognizable "name@service" format. This improvement will effectively reduce the risk of asset loss caused by incorrect network selection.

It is worth noting that the Ethereum Pectra upgrade has been confirmed to be deployed to the mainnet on May 7. The upgrade was originally scheduled to be released in March 2025, but was postponed due to technical problems on the Holesky testnet. The development team said that the operation on the Hoodi testnet is currently stable.

Galaxy plans to list on Nasdaq on May 16, pending shareholder approval of restructuring plan on May 9

Galaxy Digital Holdings (TSX: GLXY) announced plans to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on May 16, 2025, subject to the approval of its restructuring and re-domiciliation plan at the special shareholders meeting on May 9 and final approval by Nasdaq. If all goes well, the reorganized US company Galaxy Digital Inc. will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker GLXY, while retaining its listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange in the short term.

CEO Mike Novogratz said the move will provide Galaxy with a new growth platform, expand its investor base, and better serve the digital asset and AI infrastructure ecosystem. Existing BRPHF shares in the OTC market will be converted into Nasdaq GLXY shares, and shareholders do not need to pay migration fees. The relocation documents and voting materials have been submitted to the US SEC and Canadian SEDAR platforms.

Token unlocking:

Movement (MOVE) will unlock approximately 50 million tokens at 8:00 PM Beijing time on May 9, accounting for 2.0% of the current circulation and worth approximately US$8.7 million.

May 10

Project dynamics:

TON will officially stop using Toncoin Bridge on May 10

TON will officially stop using Toncoin Bridge on May 10th. At that time, users will no longer be able to transfer Toncoin from TON to Ethereum or BNB Smart Chain through the bridge, but the previous cross-chain assets can still be collected. At present, the bridge function between Toncoin and TON will be temporarily retained, and the termination time will be announced separately.

May 11

Developer Activities:

a16z Speedrun launches new round of startup applications, application deadline is May 11

Andrew Chen, general partner of a16z, disclosed on the X platform that a16z Speedrun has launched a new round of startup applications, with the application deadline being May 11. a16z Speedrun will provide up to $1 million in investments to very early-stage startups, and then work closely with them over the next 90 days and help them promote them. The next round of projects will be launched from July 28 to October 10, 2025.