BlockAI News editorial desk — breaking stories and market signals from the Web3 × AI frontier.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc plans an eCash hard fork on August 21, 2026 (block ~964,000): 1:1 BTC airdrop plus manual reassignment of Satoshi's dormant coins to early investors. Rootstock's Sergio Lerner warned the mechanism is 'hazardous' due to replay attack risk and cold storage exposure.
Prediction Markets
Polymarket + Bitget Wallet Q1 2026 report: $25.7B monthly volume in March, 1.29M active wallets, annualized run-rate $240B. Retail users are returning 4x more often and trading across more categories — the 'casino' label is losing accuracy.
Bitcoin
Paradigm GP Dan Robinson published PACTs on May 1 — Provable Address-Control Timestamps — letting Bitcoin holders cryptographically prove key control before quantum computers could derive them, without moving coins. ~1.1M BTC ($75B) in exposed P2PK addresses are at stake.
Regulation & Policy
Reuters found Nobitex — Iran's largest exchange handling ~70% of national crypto volume — was founded by the politically connected Kharrazi family, with ties to Iran's supreme leaders since 1979. Blockchain forensics linked it to tens of millions tied to the IRGC and sanctioned Bank Markazi.
Regulation & Policy
Brazil's Banco Central do Brasil published Resolution BCB No. 561 on April 30, barring fintechs and payment firms from using stablecoins or crypto assets as settlement within the country's regulated eFX cross-border payment corridors, effective October 1, 2026. Individual holdings remain legal.
Stablecoins
Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks struck a bipartisan yield compromise, clearing the CLARITY Act for a Senate Banking Committee markup the week of May 11. Coinbase CEO Armstrong endorsed within hours. Passive interest prohibited; activity-based rewards explicitly protected.
RWA
BlackRock filed a formal comment letter with the OCC opposing a proposed 20% ceiling on tokenized assets as stablecoin reserves under the GENIUS Act's draft rulemaking. The cap would constrain BlackRock's BUIDL fund. BlackRock is asking the OCC to remove the limit and expand eligible asset types.
AI
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on May 2 that AI-generated performances and AI-written screenplays are ineligible for Academy Award consideration, effective for the 99th Awards. Human performers must be 'demonstrably' credited and consenting; scripts must be human-authored.
AI
OpenClaw (323k+ GitHub stars) turned the $599 Mac mini into the default local-AI workstation — and Apple cannot build them fast enough. Tim Cook Q2 2026: Mac revenue $8.4B, up 6% YoY. Supply constraints may last several months.
AI
Mistral AI released Medium 3.5 — a 128B-parameter dense model with 256k context under a Modified MIT license, scoring 77.6% on SWE-Bench Verified. Pricing of $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens is multiples above Chinese rivals on the same benchmarks.
Stablecoins
Coinbase Asset Management partnered with Superstate to launch CUSHY — a stablecoin credit fund whose tokenized share class will issue onchain via Superstate FundOS on Ethereum, Solana and Base, expected to go live in Q2 2026. Northern Trust handles fund administration.
Prediction Markets
Polymarket integrated Chainalysis market-integrity tools — real-time onchain surveillance plus a prediction-market detection model. The deal lands after DOJ indicted Army soldier Gannon Van Dyke for $33K in bets that returned $409,881 on classified intelligence.