Bitcoin rallies on “renewed optimism” amid hopes of government shutdown ending

After acquiring more than 5.2 million ethereum tokens, worth $12 billion at current prices, BitMine Immersion Technologies announced it will dial back its weekly buying.

The company commands 4.3% of the total supply of ethereum and will likely meet its target of 5% this year.

“If ETH closes above $2,100 at the end of May 2026, this would be the third consecutive monthly gain — this has never been seen in a crypto bear market,” according to BitMine Chairman Tom Lee. “Thus, a close above $2,100 would validate ‘crypto spring’ has arrived,” Lee continued in a statement.

Meanwhile, SharpLink Gaming, the second-largest ethereum treasury company, announced a nonbinding agreement with Galaxy Digital to roll out a $125 million liquidity fund that will deploy capital into on-chain yield strategies.

“This marks an extension of our treasury strategy into more active strategies, aimed at providing sustainable term structures to great projects,” SharpLink CIO Matthew Sheffield said in a press release.

SharpLink also released its Q1 earnings results Monday morning, reporting total quarterly revenue of $12.1 million and a net loss of $685.6 million, below analyst expectations, “primarily driven by non-cash unrealized losses and impairments offset by net realized gains.”

In other ethereum ecosystem news, Ronin, a gaming-based blockchain known for Axie Infinity, will be migrating on Tuesday to a layer 2 network on ethereum. Ronin was previously exploited for around $625 million by North Korea’s Lazarus Group in March 2022.

Circle, the stablecoin giant that had a mammoth IPO in June 2025, reported its first-quarter earnings early Monday, beating analysts’ estimates on earnings per share but missing on revenue.

Shares initially were up more than 8% at one point in premarket trading, but have since pared some of those gains; they were up 46% year to date before today’s results.

For the first three months of 2026, Circle reported:

• Revenue of $694 million, a 20% increase year over year, but below analysts’ expectations of $715 million, according to FactSet.

• Earnings per share of $0.21, above analysts’ predictions of $0.19.

Circle also said it raised $222 million in the presale of its ARC token, at a $3 billion fully diluted valuation, from investors including a16z Crypto, Apollo Funds, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Bullish, General Catalyst, Haun Ventures, Intercontinental Exchange, IDG Capital, and Janus Henderson Investors.

Circle issues USDC, the second-largest stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, with a $78.3 billion market cap. Its circulation grew 28% to $77 billion, the earnings report shows.

Last week, JPMorgan analysts raised their price target for December 2026 to $112 (in line with where the stock stands now) from $89. The analysts cited USDC growth as well as progress toward a compromise on the CLARITY Act allowing stablecoin rewards.

“As a reminder, we think passage of CLARITY would remove a key terminal risk overhang for Circle’s ability to grow USDC market cap via its distribution partners’ reward programs,” they said.

According to Benchmark Managing Director Mark Palmer, the markup on the bill is expected this week. At CoinDesk’s Consensus conference last week, Patrick Witt, executive director of the president’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, said the administration was targeting a July 4 passage.

TeraWulf, the bitcoin mining company transitioning into data center development, posted Q1 results that were essentially on par with expectations, but investors seemed to like the future transition from volatile bitcoin mining to a “more stable, contracted revenue model” revenue stream driven by “higher-value HPC workloads.”

TeraWulf reported:

• Revenue of $34 million, just missing analyst expectations of $34.7 million.

• An adjusted loss per share of $0.09, exactly meeting the consensus estimate from analysts polled by FactSet.

Around 62% of the firm’s Q1 revenue stemmed from high-performance computing lease revenue, “representing the initial ramp of long-term customer agreements,” TeraWulf CFO Patrick Fleury said.

“As we continue to scale, we expect the business to be increasingly driven by recurring, contracted revenue, reducing exposure to the volatility historically associated with bitcoin mining,” Fleury continued.

Fleury noted TeraWulf had $3.1 billion of cash to support its continued transition.