Top 5 Bitcoin, Crypto News Updates Today (08.05.2025)

By: coinchapter|2025/05/09 02:00:07
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Here are the top five Bitcoin and crypto market news updates as of today (May 8, 2025). 1. UK and US Announce Trade Deal The United States and the United Kingdom have finalized a trade deal reducing tariffs on key goods. The U.S. will cut tariffs on British cars from 27.5% to 10% and scrap steel and aluminum duties. In return, the UK will lower tariffs on U.S. products, including beef and ethanol, and agree to purchase $10 billion in Boeing aircraft. The UK’s digital services tax remains unchanged, though both sides pledged to work on a future digital trade agreement. President Trump and Prime Minister Starmer hailed the deal as a “breakthrough” that strengthens economic ties amid ongoing global trade tensions. 2. Fed Warns of Economic Risks from Tariffs, Keeps Rates Unchanged The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates unchanged at 4.25%–4.5% as it evaluates the economic fallout from President Trump’s trade policies. Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned that prolonged tariffs risk higher inflation, slower growth, and rising unemployment. He noted growing economic uncertainty but said current policy remains appropriate while the Fed monitors the situation. Trump has pushed for rate cuts to counter potential downturns, adding tension between the White House and the Fed. Powell declined to address Trump’s calls directly but highlighted concerns about stagflation, where inflation stays high even as growth slows. Tariffs have already disrupted business plans, raised costs, and stalled some imports, raising the risk of shortages and price hikes. 3. Bitcoin Crosses $100,000 Milestone as Bullish Santiment Grows Bitcoin crossed the $100,000 mark as bullish momentum built, reflecting investor optimism fueled by improving trade deals. Estimates place Bitcoin between $120,000 and $250,000 by late 2025, and BlackRock’s Larry Fink sees the potential for $700K with modest institutional adoption. Elsewhere, Shiba Inu is nearing a breakout, while Solana struggles to break past $151. Bitcoin’s next move—especially if it breaks $100K—could define the crypto landscape for the rest of the year. 4. Ethereum Pectra Upgrade: Boosting Staking and Flexibility On May 7, Ethereum successfully launched its Pectra upgrade , bringing significant improvements for validators and the overall network. The upgrade increases the staking limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, allowing users to stake larger amounts in a single transaction and reducing the need for multiple validator nodes. This change streamlines operations, improves efficiency, and also introduces automatic reward compounding for smaller stakers, allowing both new and existing validators to earn rewards on their full stake. The upgrade includes 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) designed to improve the network’s performance, scalability, and user experience. 5. USD1 Stablecoin Crosses $2 Billion Market Cap USD1, the stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial (WLFI) and affiliated with former President Donald Trump, surged from under $130 million on April 27 to over $2.1 billion by early May. Blockchain explorers and analytics platforms—including BscScan, CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, and DefiLlama—recorded multiple large mint transactions on BNB Smart Chain, ranging from $50 million to $99 million, driving a supply increase of more than $720 million within 24 hours. The supply spike coincided with Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX’s announcement on May 1 that it would use USD1 to settle a $2 billion investment into Binance. MGX’s decision appears to have triggered the rapid minting, according to The Block’s research analyst Brandon Kae. Launched officially in April and backed by short‐term US Treasury bills , dollar deposits, and cash equivalents, USD1 also plans an airdrop to WLFI tokenholders to test its on‐chain distribution model. Its entry into the $231 billion stablecoin market—dominated by Tether’s $149 billion USDT and Circle’s $60 billion USDC—marks USD1 as a rising contender.

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Before using Musk's "Western WeChat" X Chat, you need to understand these three questions

The X Chat will be available for download on the App Store this Friday. The media has already covered the feature list, including self-destructing messages, screenshot prevention, 481-person group chats, Grok integration, and registration without a phone number, positioning it as the "Western WeChat." However, there are three questions that have hardly been addressed in any reports.


There is a sentence on X's official help page that is still hanging there: "If malicious insiders or X itself cause encrypted conversations to be exposed through legal processes, both the sender and receiver will be completely unaware."


Question One: Is this encryption the same as Signal's encryption?


No. The difference lies in where the keys are stored.


In Signal's end-to-end encryption, the keys never leave your device. X, the court, or any external party does not hold your keys. Signal's servers have nothing to decrypt your messages; even if they were subpoenaed, they could only provide registration timestamps and last connection times, as evidenced by past subpoena records.


X Chat uses the Juicebox protocol. This solution divides the key into three parts, each stored on three servers operated by X. When recovering the key with a PIN code, the system retrieves these three shards from X's servers and recombines them. No matter how complex the PIN code is, X is the actual custodian of the key, not the user.


This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.


The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.


The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.


After analyzing the X Chat architecture in June 2025, Johns Hopkins University cryptology professor Matthew Green commented, "If we judge XChat as an end-to-end encryption scheme, this seems like a pretty game-over type of vulnerability." He later added, "I would not trust this any more than I trust current unencrypted DMs."


From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.


In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.



As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."


Issue 2: Does Grok know what you're messaging in private?


Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.


For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.


This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.


There is also a structural issue: How quickly will this button shift from an "optional feature" to a "default habit"? The higher the quality of Grok's replies, the more frequently users will rely on it, leading to an increase in the proportion of messages flowing out of encryption protection. The actual encryption strength of X Chat, in the long run, depends not only on the design of the Juicebox protocol but also on the frequency of user clicks on "Ask Grok."


Issue 3: Why is there no Android version?


X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.


In the global smartphone market, Android holds about 73%, while iOS holds about 27% (IDC/Statista, 2025). Of WhatsApp's 3.14 billion monthly active users, 73% are on Android (according to Demand Sage). In India, WhatsApp covers 854 million users, with over 95% Android penetration. In Brazil, there are 148 million users, with 81% on Android, and in Indonesia, there are 112 million users, with 87% on Android.



WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.


X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.


These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.


Elon Musk's "Super App"


This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.



X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.


Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.


The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.


X Chat consolidates the three data lines of "who this person is, who they are talking to, and where their money comes from and goes to" in one company's hands.


The help page sentence has never been just technical instructions.


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