Currency Forecast

The builders and institution-worshippers have celebrated this event—announced with fanfare on May 8—like a foreman who just found an extra potato in his soup. They promise that Axelar’s Interchain Token Service will let developers deploy smart contracts but once, reaching users strewn across the digital landscape like peasants on kvas. Routers like Squid, and wallets with names more befitting circus acts than finance—Backpack and SlushWallet—join this march toward a future where the chains of compatibility no longer chafe. Or so they claim, as the band plays on in the marketplace of blockchains. 

So, what’s the score? Well, Gaming and DeFi have been sitting pretty at 21% dominance in April, like smug kings on their thrones, judging by the percentage of unique active wallets. But, hold your horses, because AI has climbed up to a solid 16%, up from the humble 11% it recorded back in February. It’s like AI found the secret sauce and is now serving it up on a shiny silver platter!

According to a May 8 Bloomberg report (from “people familiar with the matter”—which is code for someone’s neighbor’s cousin who once used a MacBook), Apple is brewing up new processors for future devices. On the docket? Their first-ever smart glasses, designed to do everything short of leading you on a spiritual journey. You know, just in case you looked at Meta’s Ray-Bans and thought, “Yeah, but with less subtlety and more fruit logo.”

This week’s big event appears to be a rerun of last week’s—muted trading, mild tension, a general sense that maybe, just maybe, something dramatic will happen. Except now the spot market is having some sort of caffeinated fit and shooting higher, which means we might upgrade from yawning to, say, breathing-even-faster-than-normal excitement levels. Hold onto your hats. Or your Bitcoin, probably.

Hold your horses, folks! CoinMarketCap is showing that Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are up over 4% in the last 24 hours. That’s right, over 4%. How did this happen, you ask? Simple: it all started with the US Federal Reserve deciding to keep interest rates steady. Normally, a decision like that would be bad news for crypto, but wait—Jerome Powell, the Fed Chair, said something that stirred the pot. He spoke of an economy that’s in a good place, inflation coming down, and oh, tariffs being the only thing holding them back. Surprise, surprise, tariffs have actually turned into a friend to our meme coins. It’s like they found a loophole! 🏦

Star of the show? President Donald Trump, who apparently can sign trade deals faster than a Discworld bureaucrat can stamp paperwork. Investors, seeing ETF inflows that look suspiciously like floodwaters—upwards of $40 billion—clambered into the bullish lifeboat.

Now, before we all start popping champagne corks, let’s not forget that a few hurdles remain for this settlement to be fully realized:

On Thursday, Trump took his grievances straight to Truth Social (because, of course, where else would he go?) and gave Powell a rather harsh critique, calling him “a fool” who “doesn’t have a clue.” Now that’s some top-tier diplomacy right there. I mean, really, who needs the UN when you’ve got Twitter… sorry, Truth Social.

Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s legal head honcho (so much legal gravitas, the courtroom bows in his presence), announced on May 6th that the company’s blockchain eggheads were called in to assist with a New York City whodunit that would have taxed even the likes of Jeeves. The NYPD, not wanting to look like chumps, teamed up with Coinbase to unpick a nasty spree of robberies, overdoses, and night-time ne’er-do-wellery plaguing the swinging precincts of good old Manhattan.

Three winters ago, after the Diem—née Libra—venture was cast out like some modern-day devil from the garden of regulatory Eden, Zuckerberg retreated, licking his wounds and eyeing the ledger. Now, they say, the time has come to pilot Meta’s battered hulk back onto the blockchain seas, bracing for a second round with fate herself. This time, stablecoins are the weapon—tokens promising they won’t vanish in the night, like hope after a bad NFT drop.