Altcoins’ roaring returns and falling USDT stablecoin dominance suggest ‘altseason’ is here

Key Takeaways:

Declining Bitcoin dominance and rising strength in altcoins and memecoins could be a sign that it’s altseason.

USDT dominance could drop to 2022 lows, indicating an accelerating capital rotation into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

The cryptocurrency market shows signs that an altseason, a period where altcoins significantly outperform Bitcoin (BTC), could be on the horizon. Technical charts and market sentiment align to suggest that May 2025 might start a broader altcoin rally, driven by key indicators and shifting capital flows.

The TOTAL2 chart, representing the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, excluding Bitcoin, has broken above a downtrend line in place since January 2025. This breakout is accompanied by a bullish break of structure (BOS) on the daily chart, forming higher-low patterns.

TOTAL2 chart 1-day. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

A decisive move above the $1.25 trillion resistance level could support a decisive uptrend comprised of higher lows and higher

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VanEck to launch its first RWA tokenization fund

Investment firm VanEck is launching a tokenized real-world asset (RWA) fund that offers exposure to US Treasury bills, developed in partnership with tokenization platform Securitize. The initiative places VanEck among a growing number of traditional finance firms entering the RWA tokenization space.

The fund, called VBILL, will be initially available on Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum and Solana blockchains, VanEck said in a May 13 statement. The fund’s minimum subscriptions start at $100,000 for investments running on Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Solana, while the minimum subscription on Ethereum is $1 million.

VanEck joins a burgeoning field of traditional financial firms that have launched RWA tokenized funds, with competitors including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton. In January, Apollo, an investment firm with $751 billion in assets under management, also launched a private credit tokenized

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Bitcoin shrugs off US CPI win as Binance CEO says BTC 'leading pack'

Key points:

Bitcoin fails to capitalize on lower-than-expected US CPI data, seeing a Wall Street sell-off for a second day.

Traders see BTC/USD buying time before its next move, and a trip below $100,000 is on the cards.

Bitcoin is showing “undeniable” momentum against gold and stocks, Binance’s Richard Teng says.

Bitcoin (BTC) saw a repeat sell-off at the May 13 Wall Street open as bears ignored positive US inflation data.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
BTC price stagnates after CPI inflation cools

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD again heading lower after failing to reclaim $104,000 as support.

The downside came despite the April print of the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) coming in below expectations in what should be good news for risk assets.

“The all items index rose 2.3 percent for the 12 months ending April, after rising

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Yuga Labs sells CryptoPunks IP to Infinite Node Foundation

Infinite Node Foundation (NODE), a nonprofit focused on digital art, has acquired the intellectual property of the CryptoPunks non-fungible token (NFT) collection from Yuga Labs, NODE said in a May 13 announcement. 

The acquisition of CryptoPunks, plus its additional $25 million endowment, establishes NODE as “the most well-capitalized nonprofit dedicated solely to digital art in the United States,” the foundation said in an X post. 

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

The nonprofit said it has assembled an advisory board to oversee the CryptoPunks collection. It comprises Matt Hall and John Watkinson — the artists behind the NFT collection — and a representative of Yuga Labs, among others. 

“Our role is to build a networked architecture that allows digital art like CryptoPunks to thrive within both digital and art-historical canons,” NODE said

The highest-grossing CryptoPunks NFTs. Source: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cryptopunks.app/cryptopunks/topsales" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"

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SEC hacker counters prosecutors with 366-day sentencing recommendation

Defense lawyers have asked a judge to sentence the person responsible for helping post a fake message announcing regulatory approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds to roughly a year in prison, countering prosecutors’ request for a two-year sentence.

In a May 13 filing in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Eric Council Jr.’s legal team asked that he be sentenced to no more than one year and one day in prison following his guilty plea.

Council was part of a group that took control of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) X account in 2024 through a SIM swap attack, posting a message that suggested the regulator had approved spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund listings for the first time.

“A sentence of twelve months and one day serves the ends of justice,” said the May 13 filing. “It sufficiently

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How to use tsUSDe on TON for yield-generating dollar savings

Looking for a way to earn passive income on your crypto without riding the rollercoaster of volatile coins? TsUSDe (the staked version) on The Open Network (TON) might be the answer. It’s a dollar-pegged stablecoin that earns yield by design, and you can boost those earnings even more by putting it to work on platforms like STON.fi and DeDust.

Here’s how it works and how to get started in just a few steps.

What is tsUSDe, and why use it?

TsUSDe is a US dollar-backed stablecoin on the TON blockchain. It’s designed to earn a base yield of around 10% APY, paid out in Toncoin (TON). That means just holding it in your wallet earns you rewards — no extra steps needed.

But if you want to go a step further, you can use tsUSDe in liquidity pools or

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Bitcoin remains unmatched as a global inflation hedge

Opinion by: Jupiter Zheng, Partner Liquid Fund at HashKey Capital

Whenever Bitcoin falls in value, the narrative is always the same: It’s failing as a hedge against inflation. In the eyes of critics, Bitcoin is not the “digital gold” that so many others claim it to be.

With gold hitting all-time highs, these critics have grown louder. If Bitcoin is an inflation hedge, they ask, why isn’t it also rallying as investors seek safety?

Even in today’s bearish, high-inflation environment, the cardinal truth holds: Bitcoin is an inflation hedge — arguably the most important one for long-term capital preservation the world has seen. 

Strength in scarcity

Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins, with full circulation expected by 2140. This built-in scarcity mirrors gold, which has historically served as an inflation hedge. Bitcoin has outperformed gold during multiple periods, such as the COVID-19 era, when global markets were flooded with liquidity.

Like gold, Bitcoin

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$1B Bitcoin exits Coinbase in a day as analysts warn of supply shock

Institutional demand for Bitcoin is growing, as Coinbase, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange, recorded its highest daily outflows of Bitcoin in 2025 on May 9.

On May 9, Coinbase saw 9,739 Bitcoin (BTC), worth more than $1 billion, withdrawn from the exchange — the highest net outflow recorded in 2025, according to Bitwise head of European research André Dragosch.

“Institutional appetite for bitcoin is accelerating,” Dragosch added in a May 13 X post.

Source: André Dragosch

Related: Nasdaq-listed GDC plans to buy Bitcoin and TRUMP memecoin for $300M

The outflow occurred as Bitcoin traded above $103,600 and just days after the White House announced a 90-day reduction in reciprocal tariffs between the US and China, easing market concerns and lifting broader investor sentiment.

Joint statement on US-China meeting in Geneva. Source: The White House

The 90-day suspension

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Bitcoin builders defend venture capital's role in layer-2 growth

Venture capital firms are critical to infrastructure development in the Bitcoin ecosystem, despite pushback from some in the community, according to builders speaking at the Token2049 conference in Dubai.

Charlie Yechuan Hu, CEO of Bitcoin layer-2 protocol Bitlayer, shared his insights on venture capital (VC) firms in the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem.

Hu told Cointelegraph that he views many VC firms in the space positively, as they offer support to early ventures that need capital to build infrastructure.

“You need developers, you need to open up the whole ecosystem foundation, everything,” Hu said. “You need to pay for the cloud, like AWS or RPCs, all that, servers […] So, we have to have VC on that.“

Hu challenged the usual Bitcoiner ethos that argues against outsider capital.

“It’s difficult to say, okay, let’s do a fair mint, and then have a very successful, healthy treasury, and you have to pay all

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South Korea’s Democratic Party sets up ‘Digital Asset Committee’

The largest political party in South Korea, the Democratic Party, has launched a Digital Asset Committee focused on developing cryptocurrency policies and promoting industry growth.

The committee held its inaugural meeting at the National Assembly Members’ Hall in Seoul on May 13, the local news agency News1 reported.

During its first meeting, the committee highlighted the importance of resolving regulatory uncertainty and addressing burning issues like stablecoin regulation amid the push for US-dollar stablecoins by the US government.

The new committee joins similar organizations in South Korea, including the Virtual Asset Committee launched in late 2024 and another public-private crypto task force introduced in 2022, both initiated by the Financial Services Commission (FSC).

Exchanges like Upbit and Bithumb involved

The leadership of the Digital Asset Committee includes South Korean

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