Some of the biggest banking companies in the US are reportedly exploring a team-up to launch a crypto stablecoin.

Companies owned by JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo have discussed the possibility of jointly issuing a stablecoin, The Wall Street Journal reported on May 22, citing people familiar with the matter.

Other financial institutions linked to the potential stablecoin include Early Warning Services, the parent company of digital payments network Zelle, and the payment network Clearing House.

The discussions are still in the early stages, and a final decision on the project could change depending on the regulatory environment and the demand for stablecoins.

A JPMorgan spokesperson told Cointelegraph the company had no comment. Bank of America, CitiGroup, and Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On May 20, the US Senate voted 66-32 in favor of advancing discussion on the stablecoin-regulating Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. 

The bill outlines a regulatory framework for stablecoin collateralization and mandates compliance with Anti-Money Laundering laws. The bill is now headed to debate on the Senate floor.

Earlier this week, White House crypto czar David Sacks said he expects the bill will be passed and that it will receive bipartisan support.

However, high-ranking Democrats plan to amend the bill to include a clause prohibiting President Donald Trump and other US officials from profiting from stablecoins.

Trump and his family launched the crypto platform World Liberty Financial, which created the USD1 stablecoin in March. Critics argue that President Trump stands to personally benefit from passing favorable stablecoin regulation.

Related: World Liberty Financial brushes off oversight concerns from Congress

Stablecoin demand surges

The demand for stablecoins has been on the rise, with nation states adopting and institutions wanting to incorporate stablecoins.

The total market capitalization of stablecoins has shot up to $245 billion from $205 billion at the start of the year, representing a 20% increase.

Earlier this week, it was reported that yield-bearing stablecoins now account for nearly 4.5% of the entire stablecoin market, with a circulating supply of $11 billion.

Austin Campbell, a New York University professor and founder of Zero Knowledge Consulting, said the American banking lobby is “panicking,” as stablecoins can disrupt the traditional banking business model.

Earlier this month, it was reported that tech giant Meta is exploring ways to incorporate stablecoin payments into its platforms.

Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight

Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic has launched the latest generations of its chatbots amid criticism of a testing environment behaviour that could report some users to authorities.

Anthropic unveiled Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 on May 22, claiming that Claude Opus 4 is its most powerful model yet, “and the world’s best coding model,” while Claude Sonnet 4 is a significant upgrade from its predecessor, “delivering superior coding and reasoning.”

The firm added that both upgrades are hybrid models offering two modes — “near-instant responses and extended thinking for deeper reasoning.”

Both AI models can also alternate between reasoning, research and tool use, like web search, to improve responses, it said. 

Anthropic added that Claude Opus 4 outperforms competitors in agentic coding benchmarks. It is also capable of working continuously for hours on complex, long-running tasks, “significantly expanding what AI agents can do.” 

Anthropic claims the chatbot has achieved a 72.5% score on a rigorous software engineering benchmark, outperforming OpenAI’s GPT-4.1, which scored 54.6% after its April launch. 

Claude v4 benchmarks. Source: Anthropic 

Related: OpenAI ignored experts when it released overly agreeable ChatGPT

The AI industry’s major players have pivoted toward “reasoning models” in 2025, which will work through problems methodically before responding. 

OpenAI initiated the shift in December with its “o” series, followed by Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro with its experimental “Deep Think” capability.

Claude rats on misuse in testing

Anthropic’s first developer conference on May 22 was overshadowed by controversy and backlash over a feature of Claude 4 Opus.

Developers and users reacted strongly to revelations that the model may autonomously report users to authorities if it detects “egregiously immoral” behavior, according to VentureBeat. 

The report cited Anthropic AI alignment researcher Sam Bowman, who wrote on X that the chatbot will “use command-line tools to contact the press, contact regulators, try to lock you out of the relevant systems, or all of the above.” 

However, Bowman later stated that he “deleted the earlier tweet on whistleblowing as it was being pulled out of context.”

He clarified that the feature only happened in “testing environments where we give it unusually free access to tools and very unusual instructions.”

Source: Sam Bowman

The CEO of Stability AI, Emad Mostaque, said to the Anthropic team, “This is completely wrong behaviour and you need to turn this off — it is a massive betrayal of trust and a slippery slope.”

Magazine: AI cures blindness, ‘good’ propaganda bots, OpenAI doomsday bunker: AI Eye

Cybercriminals are using fake Ledger Live apps to drain macOS users’ crypto through malware that steals seed phrases, a cybersecurity firm warns. 

The malware replaces the legitimate Ledger Live app on victims’ devices and then prompts the user to input their seed phrase through a phony pop-up message, a team from Moonlock said in a May 22 report.

“Initially, attackers could use the clone to steal passwords, notes, and wallet details to get a glimpse of the wallet’s assets, but they had no way to extract the funds,” the Moonlock team said.

“Now, within a year, they have learned to steal seed phrases and empty the wallets of their victims,” it added. 

One way the scammers replace the real Ledger Live app with a clone is through the Atomic macOS Stealer, designed to steal sensitive data, which Moonlock said it has found lurking on at least 2,800 hacked websites.

Source: Moonlock 

After infecting a device, Atomic macOS steals personal data, passwords, notes and wallet details and replaces the real Ledger Live app with a phony. 

“The fake app then displays a convincing alert about suspicious activity, prompting the user to enter their seed phrase,” the Moonlock team said.

“Once entered, the seed phrase is sent to an attacker-controlled server, exposing the user’s assets in seconds.”

Malware campaign active since August 

Moonlock has been tracking malware that’s distributing a malicious clone of Ledger Live since August, with at least four active campaigns, and they think hackers are “only getting smarter.” 

Threat actors on the dark web are offering malware with “anti-Ledger” features. However, one of the examples examined by Moonlock did not feature the full anti-Ledger phishing functionality advertised. The firm speculates those features could “still be in development or is forthcoming in future updates.” 

Moonlock says hackers are offering malware for would-be thieves to steal from Ledger users. Source: Moonlock

“This isn’t just a theft. It’s a high-stakes effort to outsmart one of the most trusted tools in the crypto world. And the thieves are not backing down,” Moonlock said. 

“On dark web forums, chatter around anti-Ledger schemes is growing. The next wave is already taking shape. Hackers will continue to exploit the trust crypto owners place in Ledger Live.” 

Related: Ledger secures Discord after hacker bot tried to steal seed phrases

To avoid falling prey to similar malware scams, the cybersecurity firm recommends being wary of any page that warns of a critical error and asks for a 24-word recovery phrase.

At the same time, never share a seed phrase with anyone or input it on any website, no matter how legitimate it looks, and only download Ledger Live from its official source. 

Ledger didn’t immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment. 

Magazine: ChatGPT a ‘schizophrenia-seeking missile,’ AI scientists prep for 50% deaths

Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) has hit record levels on crypto derivatives exchanges as traders anticipate the cryptocurrency will continue and reach new all-time highs. 

Bitcoin (BTC) futures open interest reached a peak of just over $80 billion on May 23, according to CoinGlass. It’s an increase of 30% since the start of May as derivatives speculators load up on leverage in anticipation of higher Bitcoin prices.

Open interest is the total number of outstanding futures contracts that allow traders to bet on the future price of Bitcoin, which have not been settled or closed, showing the total amount of current market speculation.

Total Bitcoin futures OI. Source: Coinglass

When OI surges, it indicates massive leveraged positions are built up in the market, with lots of traders holding large positions with borrowed money. 

If Bitcoin’s price moves against these over-leveraged positions, traders get forcibly liquidated, and the flushout can create selling pressure on Bitcoin, which can cause a rapid drop in prices and high volatility.

However, analysts suggest the surge in spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows, which have seen more than $2.5 billion this week, can counter some of that extended leverage.

Related: Crypto perp futures coming ‘very soon,’ says CFTC’s Mersinger

Bitcoin options markets show a similar pattern with open interest over $1.5 billion at the $110,000 and $120,000 strike prices on the Deribit exchange. There is also more than $1 billion in OI at strike prices of $115,000, $125,000, and $130,000.

Around $2.76 billion worth of notional value contracts are due to expire on May 23 with a put/call ratio of 1.2%, meaning there are more short (put) sellers than longs (call), and a max pain point of $103,000, where most losses will be made on expiry, according to Deribit. 

Bitcoin options OI by strike price. Source: Deribit Bitcoin slips below $111,000

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has slightly lost its recent gains and briefly slipped below $111,000 on Coinbase,  according to TradingView. 

The asset has now gained almost 20% since the beginning of the year and almost 50% since its crash to $75,000 on April 7 following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of global tariffs. 

Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $112,000 on May 22 and had mostly traded just above $111,000 over the last 24 hours, but had again slipped below the level at 4:15 am UTC on May 23.

Magazine: Crypto scam hub expose stunt goes viral, Kakao detects 70K scam apps: Asia Express

Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) has hit record levels on crypto derivatives exchanges as traders anticipate the cryptocurrency will continue and reach new all-time highs. 

Bitcoin (BTC) futures open interest reached a peak of just over $80 billion on May 23, according to CoinGlass. It’s an increase of 30% since the start of May as derivatives speculators load up on leverage in anticipation of higher Bitcoin prices.

Open interest is the total number of outstanding futures contracts that allow traders to bet on the future price of Bitcoin, which have not been settled or closed, showing the total amount of current market speculation.

Total Bitcoin futures OI. Source: Coinglass

When OI surges, it indicates massive leveraged positions are built up in the market, with lots of traders holding large positions with borrowed money. 

If Bitcoin’s price moves against these over-leveraged positions, traders get forcibly liquidated, and the flushout can create selling pressure on Bitcoin, which can cause a rapid drop in prices and high volatility.

However, analysts suggest the surge in spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows, which have seen more than $2.5 billion this week, can counter some of that extended leverage.

Related: Crypto perp futures coming ‘very soon,’ says CFTC’s Mersinger

Bitcoin options markets show a similar pattern with open interest over $1.5 billion at the $110,000 and $120,000 strike prices on the Deribit exchange. There is also more than $1 billion in OI at strike prices of $115,000, $125,000, and $130,000.

Around $2.76 billion worth of notional value contracts are due to expire on May 23 with a put/call ratio of 1.2%, meaning there are more short (put) sellers than longs (call), and a max pain point of $103,000, where most losses will be made on expiry, according to Deribit. 

Bitcoin options OI by strike price. Source: Deribit Bitcoin slips below $111,000

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has slightly lost its recent gains and briefly slipped below $111,000 on Coinbase,  according to TradingView. 

The asset has now gained almost 20% since the beginning of the year and almost 50% since its crash to $75,000 on April 7 following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of global tariffs. 

Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $112,000 on May 22 and had mostly traded just above $111,000 over the last 24 hours, but had again slipped below the level at 4:15 am UTC on May 23.

Magazine: Crypto scam hub expose stunt goes viral, Kakao detects 70K scam apps: Asia Express