🤖 OpenAI grabs Jony Ive’s stealth hardware startup | 🤑 Bitcoin options frenzy blasts past $42 B | 🔒 Signal slams the window on Microsoft’s Recall

Wall Street’s in a holding pattern: equities shuffle sideways while traders squint at tomorrow’s PCE inflation print. The 10-year Treasury hovers near 4.46 %, hinting at “higher for longer” rate vibes. Oil prices slip on middling demand data, crypto keeps flirting with fresh highs, and AI chipmakers soak up any spare optimism. Investors should watch bond-market breadth—credit spreads are inching wider, an early tell that risk appetite might be losing carbs.

S&P 500: $SPY ( ▼ 1.12% ) 

DowJones: $DJI ( ▼ 1.79% ) 

Nasdaq: $QQQ ( ▼ 1.26% ) 

German DAX: $DAX ( ▼ 1.69% ) 

Indian NIFTY: $NIFTY50.NSE ( ▼ 0.68% ) 

Bitcoin: $BTC.X ( ▲ 0.58% ) 

Ethereum: $ETH.X ( ▲ 1.6% ) 

Bitcoin options mania

TL;DR: Open interest on Deribit rockets past $42.5 billion as BTC trades above $110 k. You’re basically watching Wall Street’s favorite volatility playground light up like Times Square.

Why it matters: Heavy options flow can turbo-charge spot moves—brace for whiplash.

Further read: https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/bitcoin-rises-new-record-high-eclipses-january-top-2025-05-21/

GENIUS Act heads to Senate floor

TL;DR: White House advisor David Sacks says the bill will legalize USD-backed stablecoins and could unleash “trillions” in Treasury demand overnight. You read that right—stablecoins as patriot bonds.

Why it matters: Clear rules + big yields = dollars staying onshore instead of fleeing to offshore tokens.

Further read: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-scores-a-victory-as-genius-act-stablecoin-legislation-stays-alive-in-senate-114538080.html

Pakistan OKs Digital Assets Authority

TL;DR: Islamabad signs off on a federal regulator to license exchanges, tax gains, and (finally) drag trading out of the gray zone. You get AML rules plus a sandbox for token projects.

Why it matters: Another 230 million-person market just flipped the crypto switch from “off” to “on.”

Further read: https://decrypt.co/313703/binance-co-founder-cz-advise-pakistan-crypto-council

OpenAI buys Jony Ive’s io Products for $6.5 B

TL;DR: Sam Altman grabs the ex-Apple design legend and his 55-person hardware shop, betting the next computing platform has zero screens and all smarts. Ive calls the prototype “the coolest tech the world will have ever seen,” which is British for pretty neat. 

Why it matters: If OpenAI controls the device, it sidesteps Apple and Google’s tollbooths—hello vertical integration.

Further read: https://www.theverge.com/news/672357/openai-ai-device-sam-altman-jony-ive 
Deep dive: https://www.wired.com/story/jony-ive-open-ai-hardware-io

Signal flips the “screenshot shield” in Windows 11

TL;DR: The privacy app now blocks Microsoft’s Recall AI from grabbing chat windows. Try snapping a pic—boom, blank frame. Signal’s devs say they’d prefer an API, but DRM beats doom-scroll-and-expose.

Why it matters: Third-party devs are building walls where OS vendors left doors; privacy arms-race engaged. What do you call a screenshot of an empty Signal window? A silent movie.

Further read: https://www.theverge.com/news/672210/signal-desktop-app-microsoft-recall-block-windows-11-ai

GOP committees demand FTC probe into Gmail spam filters

TL;DR: The NRCC and NRSC claim Google buries Republican fundraising emails in spam and want regulators to step in before 2026 campaigning heats up. Google says filters are ideology-blind—blame your open rates, not our algos.

Why it matters: Political pressure on Big Tech’s ranking engines is back just in time for election season.

Further read: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/google-defeats-rnc-lawsuit-claiming-email-spam-filters-harmed-republican-2024-07-31/

Dyson’s PencilVac shaves the vacuum to 38 mm

TL;DR: Meet a cordless stick so skinny it uses the same 28 mm motor as the Supersonic hair dryer. Two-stage dust separation, lasers to spotlight crumbs, but only 30-minute battery life—think city apartments, not ranch houses.

Why it matters: Shows how consumer gear is borrowing mini-motors and sensors straight out of wearables.

Further read: https://www.theverge.com/news/671739/dyson-pencilvac-vacuum-cleaner-thin-skinny-slimmest

Mistral AI drops Devstral, a 24-B parameter code agent you can run locally

TL;DR: The French upstart teams with Open-Devin folks to ship Devstral, a laptop-friendly model scoring 46.8 % on SWE-Bench—20 pts above some GPT-4-mini variants. Apache-2 license, 128 k context, $0.10/M tokens via API.

Why it matters: Open-source coding agents are sprinting; enterprises get low-latency, private AI without Nvidia-sized bills.

Further read: https://huggingface.co/mistralai/devstral-small-2505