U.S. President Donald Trump is set to visit China this week, anticipating economic agreements and a warm reception. Bloomberg posted on X that Trump's visit comes at a time when Chinese President Xi Jinping has consolidated his power, presenting a potentially challenging environment for negotiations. The visit is expected to focus on trade discussions, with Trump aiming to secure favorable deals. However, Xi's strengthened position may influence the dynamics of the talks. Observers are keen to see how the interactions between the two leaders unfold during this significant diplomatic engagement.

France’s central bank deputy governor has called for public and private European entities to engage in digital asset development, according to CoinDesk. This position contrasts with the stance of European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, who has been more cautious about digital assets. The deputy governor's comments highlight a growing divergence in views on digital asset strategy within European financial leadership.

eBay has rejected a roughly $56 billion acquisition offer from GameStop, dismissing the bid as "neither credible nor attractive," according to market sources reported on May 12. The rejection sets the stage for a potential proxy battle after GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen signaled he is prepared to take the proposal directly to eBay shareholders if the board refuses to engage. How the bid came together GameStop made its offer on May 4, proposing to acquire eBay at $125 per share in a combination of cash and stock — a price that valued the e-commerce giant at approximately $56 billion. Cohen disclosed that GameStop already held around 5% of eBay's outstanding shares at the time of the offer, giving the company an existing stake in the target it was bidding for. The $125 per share offer represented a meaningful premium to eBay's trading price, and Cohen's public disclosure of GameStop's existing stake was a clear signal that the approach was not a casual inquiry — it was a calculated opening move in what he was prepared to make a prolonged campaign if necessary. eBay's rejection and what comes next eBay's board moved quickly to reject the offer, characterizing it in blunt terms as lacking both credibility and attractiveness. The dismissal leaves Cohen with a decision to make: walk away or escalate. Based on his stated position ahead of the rejection, escalation appears to be the more likely path. Cohen had already made clear that if eBay's board declined the offer, he was prepared to launch a proxy fight — a process through which GameStop would campaign directly to eBay's shareholders to either force a vote on the acquisition or push for board-level changes that would make a transaction more likely. With GameStop holding approximately 5% of eBay shares, Cohen has a meaningful platform from which to build that case to other investors. Proxy fights at this scale are expensive, time-consuming, and uncertain in outcome. But Cohen has a track record of using aggressive shareholder activism to force corporate change — most notably at GameStop itself — which makes the threat more credible than it might be coming from another acquirer. The broader context The bid represents an unusual move for GameStop, a company that has spent the past several years rebuilding its balance sheet and pivoting away from its brick-and-mortar retail roots. An acquisition of eBay at $56 billion would be transformational in scale — eBay's marketplace business would dwarf GameStop's current operations — and the financing structure of a cash-and-stock deal raises questions about how GameStop would fund and integrate an acquisition of that magnitude. Those are likely among the reasons eBay's board felt comfortable rejecting the offer as not credible. Whether shareholders agree with that assessment — or whether Cohen can assemble enough support to force a different outcome — is the question that will drive this story forward.

BlackRock has submitted a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a new tokenized fund structure. According to NS3.AI, this move follows the success of BlackRock's initial tokenized fund, BUIDL, which was developed in collaboration with Securitize and has grown to approximately $2.3 billion in assets. BlackRock has once again chosen Securitize to provide the necessary infrastructure for this new venture. The filing outlines a system where blockchain-based ownership records are integrated with regulated transfer agency and investor onboarding systems.

The CLARITY Act, CLARITY Relaunch: US Crypto Regulatory Legislation Enters a Critical Window (Golden Finance) - US cryptocurrency regulatory legislation is entering a critical window.

Coinbase, Coinbase is besieged on all sides. Golden Finance reports that exchanges are beginning to confront the structural problems of the cryptocurrency market.

This signifies that the competition in the stablecoin sector has escalated from "issuing tokens" to "building blockchains," shifting from vying for circulation volume to vying for control of the infrastructure.

Shares of Circle surged nearly 16% Monday to $131.76 — their highest level since March — after the USDC issuer delivered strong Q1 earnings and unveiled a massive $222 million ARC token raise that reinforced investor confidence in the rapidly expanding stablecoin economy.

Artificial Intelligence, Post-2000s Dropouts: Three Weeks of Code, Three-Person Team Creates Top 10 Consumer AI Applications in the US (Golden Finance), Three Young Men Manage the World's Largest Female-Oriented AI Romance Fantasy Website.

Prediction markets are wealth transfer machines, and bots are their operators.

Santa Clara County in California has sued Meta, accusing it of earning up to $7 billion a year from scam ads on Facebook and Instagram. It claims Meta failed to properly stop fraudulent ads and may have prioritised revenue, while Meta denies the allegations.

Sam Altman has once again ignited the AI world — this time launching a fully autonomous coding agent that would work independently like "Goblins" without the need of any supervision or looking after.

On the evening of May 11, Circle presented a fairly standard financial report, but instead told a future story that excited the market.

An industrial city without top universities, pioneering reforms, or a financial center status has transformed its manufacturing industry into the most scarce asset in the AI ​​era over the past thirty years.