Memecoins MOODENG, BUILDon and MOG are making waves again, all posting double- digit gains in the past 24 hours and showing bullish momentum. Moo Deng (MOODENG) is up 25% in the past 24 hours, currently trading at $0.30, with the trading…

Memecoins on the move today: MOODENG, BUILDOn, and MOG rally in double digits

**Key points:**
 * Bitcoin joins risk assets in a knee-jerk reaction to the latest instalment of the US trade war, this time focused on the EU.
 * BTC price action dives up to 4% before recovering with $110,000 now a resistance level.
 * Traders demand that price holds higher levels going forward to protect bullish momentum.
Bitcoin (BTC) saw flash volatility into the May 23 Wall Street open as news 
headlines liquidated longs.
_BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView_
## 
Bitcoin trips as Trump says EU talks &#8220;going nowhere&#8221;
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting 
lows of $107,367 on Bitstamp before rebounding.
This marked daily losses of up to 4% as markets reacted to comments from US 
President Donald Trump over tariffs on the European Union.
&#8220;Our discussions with them are going nowhere!&#8221; Trump wrote in a post on Truth 
Social.
&gt; &#8220;Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, 
&gt; starting on June 1, 2025.&#8221;
_Source:__Truth Social_
US stocks reacted immediately at the open, with the S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq 
Composite Index down 1% and 1.2%, respectively, at the time of writing.
Reflecting on the latest developments, crypto market participants were 
unsurprised, given the existing precedent for tariff-related volatility.
&#8220;Nice aggregate flush of long leverage &amp; de-risk selling from spot,&#8221; popular 
trader Skew summarized in a post on X.
&gt; &#8220;All driven by headlines once again.&#8221;
_Binance Bitcoin futures market data overview. Source: Skew/X_
Data from monitoring resource CoinGlass put 4-hour liquidations at nearly $350 
million, with the 24-hour tally at over $500 million.
_Total crypto liquidations (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass_
&#8220;There&#8217;s the break from the compression with a push from Trump. Markets 
worldwide obviously not liking the news,&#8221; fellow trader Daan Crypto Trades 
continued.
&gt; &#8220;Will have to see where this settles today and how BTC ends up performing 
&gt; relative to equities now the trade uncertainty is back.&#8221;
_BTC/USDT 15-minute chart. Source: Daan Crypto Trades/X_
Commenting on the macro outlook, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter 
suggested that the Trump administration was caught between a rock and a hard 
place.
&#8220;We have now learned: Too much tariff pressure causes the basis trade to 
unwind. Too little tariff pressure causes inflation expectations to rise,&#8221; it 
wrote in part of an X response.
&gt; &#8220;Now, President Trump must find a middle ground to maintain tariffs but also 
&gt; suppress treasury yields WITHOUT Fed cuts.&#8221;
Kobeissi referred to the Federal Reserve&#8217;s unwillingness to hasted interest 
rate cuts despite declining inflation &#8212; a key ingredient in further risk- 
asset upside.
_**Related: **__**Bitcoin buyer dominance at $111K suggests &#8216;another wave&#8217; of 
gains**_
Elsewhere, traders eyed key BTC price levels to preserve going forward as the 
market sought a rebound.
&#8220;We need to hold the green zone,&#8221; trader Crypto Caesar argued alongside a 
chart showing an area of interest immediately below $110,000.
_BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Crypto Caesar/X_
Another trader, Poseidon, acknowledged the comparative lack of resistance 
above spot price, keeping the door open to easy upside.
&gt; Don&#8217;t forget: above here, it&#8217;s nothing but thin air. No resistance in 
&gt; sight.$BTC pic.twitter.com/ugQEGQIcpD 
&gt; 
&gt; &#8212; Poseidon (@CryptoPoseidonn) May 23, 2025
&#8220;Front ran $110K tag,&#8221; Skew continued alongside a chart of order book 
liquidity concentrations.
&gt; &#8220;Important level from here for the market to auction above (key for 
&gt; continuation).&#8221;
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every 
investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their 
own research when making a decision.

Bitcoin price drops 4% as Trump EU tariff talk liquidates over $300M

Bitcoin ETFs attracted $935 million in net inflows on Thursday, marking the 
7th straight day of gains and pushing net assets to $134 billion. Ether ETFs 
followed suit with a powerful $111 million inflow, inching closer to a $10 
billion milestone. Bitcoin ETFs See Massive $935 Million Inflow As Ether ETFs 
Near $10 Billion in […]

Bitcoin and Ether ETFs Roar With Over $1 Billion Combined Inflows in a Single Day

Alchemy&#8217;s acquisition of HeyMint could significantly enhance web3 
accessibility, driving broader adoption and innovation in decentralized 
technologies.
The post Alchemy acquires NFT launchpad HeyMint to supercharge Smart Wallets 
appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Alchemy acquires NFT launchpad HeyMint to supercharge Smart Wallets

_**Opinion by: Grigore Ro șu, founder and chief executive officer of Pi 
Squared**_
For some, the audacity of questioning the primacy of blockchain in Web3 is 
borderline heretical. The idea that decentralization and progress could exist 
without blockchains seems absurd to those who built careers around Bitcoin, 
Ethereum, and their descendants. Given blockchain&#8217;s well-documented scaling 
limits, however, there is an argument to be made that Web3 doesn&#8217;t actually 
need blockchains to thrive. Instead, it requires payment systems and 
verifiable settlement systems that are super fast. Blockchains are just one 
way to achieve that, not the only way.
While blockchain solved the double-spending problem, it introduced its own 
architectural burden: the rigid fixation on total ordering, dictating that 
every transaction must wait its turn in a global queue, processed through a 
monolithic consensus mechanism. Initially, this made sense in the context of 
payments, where security and simplicity were paramount. Still, in the context 
of Web3, where complex applications require speed, flexibility, and scale, 
this same mechanism has become a constraint. It imposes a kind of serialized 
tyranny, throttling throughput and locking developers into a narrow lane of 
design options.
## The undeniable influence of FastPay
Mobile remittance app FastPay proved that double-spending can be avoided 
differently without a total order. This inspired systems like Linera, which 
use independent local orderings while maintaining global verifiability, 
proving that a different, more scalable future is possible and already 
underway. FastPay also inspired the likes of POD and Sui&#8217;s single-owner 
objects protocol. If FastPay had been invented before Bitcoin, blockchain 
might never have captured the cultural or technical imagination in the way 
that it did.
_**Recent:**__**Beijing to invest in blockchain, integrate into 
infrastructure**_
Some will no doubt argue that total ordering is essential for financial 
integrity or that without blockchains, decentralization itself unravels. These 
concerns, however, mistake a particular implementation of trustlessness for 
trustlessness itself. What truly underpins decentralized systems is the 
verifiability of a transaction, not the precise order in which it happened 
relative to every other global transaction.
## Blockchain&#8217;s growing pains are still on display
While Ethereum&#8217;s Dencun upgrade sought to improve transaction throughput 
through &#8220;blobs,&#8221; the core architecture remains tied to total ordering. Even 
with Solana&#8217;s introduction of the Lattice system, the network continues to 
suffer outages caused by bugs and excessive load. Additionally, the explosion 
of L2s is more a workaround than a solution, offloading transactions from 
mainnets only to reintroduce them later in delayed batches, resulting in an 
endless cycle of what is essentially congestion management.
## The rise of flexible payment and settlement protocols
Like in legacy tech circles, the &#8220;evolve or die&#8221; mantra certainly applies to 
investors and builders anchored to traditional blockchain architectures. 
Moving forward, protocols prioritizing flexible, verifiable payment systems 
and settlement over rigid total ordering will unlock far greater throughput 
and better user experiences. As decentralized applications evolve and 
autonomous agents driven by AI begin interacting with blockchains, the cost of 
sequencing everything in order will become a competitive liability.
There have already been signs of this tectonic shift taking place, with the 
growing adoption of modular blockchain frameworks like Celestia underscoring a 
broader recognition that classical blockchains are too inflexible. Data 
availability layers, execution shards and offchain verification mechanisms are 
all attempts to decouple blockchain&#8217;s trusted validation from its limiting 
sequencing model. While these efforts may not break entirely from the past, 
they point unmistakably toward a future of more adaptable infrastructure.
## A new role for blockchain
This doesn&#8217;t mean blockchain will disappear, but it must evolve. Looking 
ahead, its most enduring role may be as a universal verifier, less a master 
ledger and more of a decentralized notary within a broader, more agile stack. 
While this is a necessary evolution, unfortunately, it&#8217;s hard to see how that 
shift will be smooth, as too much capital, ideology and career risk is tied up 
in the legacy narrative.
Many venture funds, DeFi protocols, and &#8220;Ethereum killers&#8221; are financially and 
reputationally invested in keeping the blockchain central. But history has 
little mercy for technological incumbents that cling to yesterday&#8217;s model. 
Just as the internet outgrew its early walled gardens, Web3 is poised to move 
beyond the rigidity of block-based sequencing. The fruits from the next wave 
of infrastructure will belong to those who understand and capitalize on this 
inflection point.
_**Opinion by: Grigore Ro șu, founder and chief executive officer of Pi 
Squared.**_
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and 
should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and 
opinions expressed here are the author&#8217;s alone and do not necessarily reflect 
or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Spoiler alert: The future of Web3 is not blockchain

Bitcoin and most altcoins pulled back on Friday, erasing some of the gains 
they made earlier this week. Bitcoin (BTC) dropped to $107,300, down by 4.12% 
from its highest point this week. Similarly, Ethereum (ETH) fell by over 8% 
from…