What happened in the crypto market while everyone was sleeping — overview from May 8

The founder of Binance wants to obtain a pardon from Donald Trump, a way to profit from abandoned cryptocurrency has been found in Arizona, and miner Core Scientific reported its successes for the first quarter of the year — these and other cryptocurrency news from the morning of May 8 in our review.

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Behavior of cryptocurrencies — capitalization leaders

Bitcoin BTCUSD, according to TradingView, started the day with an increase. As of 06:46 (MSK), the cryptocurrency is trading at $99,027 (per token in rubles — RUB 7,983,968). The minimum Bitcoin price in the last 24 hours is $95,829, and the maximum cryptocurrency is updating at the time of writing this review.

The second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ethereum, also started the day with an increase. At the time of writing the review, the coin is trading at $1,893 (1 per token in rubles — RUB 152,206).

In the top 10 most capitalized cryptocurrencies, the best result over the past day is with Dogecoin (+4.18%), and over the week, it's with Bitcoin (+4.39%). Over the past 24 hours, all coins have appreciated. The worst result over seven days is with XRP (-1.36%).

In the top-100 most capitalized cryptocurrencies, the best result over the past 24 hours was recorded for EOS (+19.23%), and for the week — for Quant (+23.60%). Over the last 24 hours, the biggest price drop was seen with DeXe (-4.58%). The largest losses for the week were recorded for Optimism (-16.01%).

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Main cryptocurrency news of the morning of May 8

The founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), admitted that he applied for a pardon from Donald Trump for money laundering charges, although he previously denied the corresponding rumors. According to Zhao, he decided to officially submit the request after publications by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, and was also inspired by the precedent of the pardon of the founders of BitMEX.

Zhao admitted guilt in November 2023 and was sentenced to four months in prison for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. Binance paid a fine of $4.3 billion. A pardon does not annul the conviction but may allow Zhao to take a managerial position at Binance.US. Zhao himself does not plan to return to the CEO position.

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has signed bill HB 2749, which allows the state to claim digital assets abandoned by their owners if they have not been in contact for three years.

The discovered cryptocurrencies will be placed under the supervision of state authorities, and the Treasury will be able to stake the coins. The profits generated will go to the local reserve crypto fund.

In the first quarter of 2025, the mining company Core Scientific reported a net profit of $580 million, more than double the figure from a year ago ($210 million); however, revenue was only $79.5 million compared to $179.3 million a year earlier and was 8.1% below analysts' expectations from Zacks.

The main part of the income came from self-mining ($67.2 million), in second place is the hosting of mining farms ($3.8 million).

The decline in revenue is attributed to the effect of Bitcoin halving in April 2024 and the transition of some capacities towards HPC and AI processing, which was partially offset by a 74% increase in the average price of Bitcoin and a 33% reduction in electricity costs.

Recall that earlier the BeInCrypto editorial team reported that Bhutan and Binance launched a cryptocurrency payment system for tourists.