On May 18, 2026, US-Iran nuclear negotiations lost patience away from the television cameras: According to Al Jazeera citing US sources, Iran was told that “there are only a few days left, not weeks,” to break the deadlock; otherwise, Trump tends to turn to military options in case of no progress. Almost at the same time, according to Tasnim News Agency, Tehran insisted that the US pay war reparations and return frozen assets in a clear manner, making the stakes in negotiations resemble a final showdown before war. Meanwhile, in the same news window filled with the ominous clouds of war, capital raced in another lane—Hangzhou Cloud Deep Technology announced an IPO fundraising plan of approximately 2.503 billion yuan, Playground Global completed a new fund of $475 million, SiMa.ai raised funds at a valuation of around $1.4 billion, and HIVE announced the construction of a 320 MW AI infrastructure base in Toronto; the story of AI and computing power grew larger and larger. In contrast, the cryptocurrency sector faced price pressure: according to a single source, US stock crypto concept stocks generally weakened, with Strategy opening down nearly 6%, and even though Kraken's parent company Payward reported approximately $507 million in adjusted revenue for the first quarter, up 51% year-on-year in futures business, it couldn’t stem the tide of declining sentiment. On-chain investigator ZachXBT even offered a reward of up to $10,000 to investigate whether Hong Kong market maker HSBG manipulated the market. Amid the countdown to war and the surge of AI, the crucial question behind all this news is what global capital is betting on and how to reprice risk and opportunity between energy, computing power, and on-chain assets.

Countdown of a Few Days: Trump Administration's Negotiating Patience at Its Limit

According to Al Jazeera, US sources revealed on May 18 that it was “a few days, not weeks”—this was not a rhetorical statement, but directly embedded the negotiations into a countdown to military action. Since the resumption of US-Iran nuclear negotiations in 2025, both sides have repeatedly tugged on sanctions, nuclear project limitations, and regional security issues. Iran insists on gaining tangible benefits through negotiations while the Trump team, facing domestic pressures and ally expectations, is tightening political patience. What is presented in front of the cameras is no longer a technical extension but a binary framework of “sign within the next few days or go to war.”

Once this countdown ends in a negotiation breakdown, the market will first price not the details of the terms, but the violent repricing of oil prices and risk appetite: historical geopolitical military conflicts have repeatedly pushed up energy prices and traditional safe-haven assets, while compressing the valuation space of high-risk assets. When Washington issues a final notice of “a few days,” traders instinctively pull the black swan scenario into their models ahead of time—extreme assumptions that initially only appeared in scenario analysis footnotes are quickly elevated to be core variables that must be hedged. The volatility of energy-related assets, AI computing power infrastructure, and the cryptocurrency sector is forced to respond early to potential rupture risks under such countdown signals.

Iran’s Maximum Price: Compensation and Assets as Major Minefields

At the moment Washington threw out the countdown warning of “only a few days left,” according to Tasnim News Agency, Iranian officials flipped the stakes to the maximum: the US must not only pay war reparations but also return Iran’s frozen assets in a clear and determined manner, emphasizing that it is being “returned to the Iranian people.” This is not a technical disagreement, but directly touches on two of the most sensitive nerves in the context of US domestic politics and international law—war reparations imply a massive amount and require substantive responsibility recognition, which in the mainstream political narrative of the US is almost equivalent to acknowledging “illegal war”; whereas the handling of frozen assets is a core element of the entire financial sanctions framework, and once loosened for Iran, it sharply contrasts with the US's previous willingness to only marginally lift sanctions, being seen by other sanctioned countries as a replicable breakthrough.

Because of this, the issues of compensation and assets quickly rose to the surface from among many topics, becoming the real minefield of the current stalemate, making the “countdown of a few days” look more like a high-risk bet: the US side finds it difficult to incur such high political costs that are hard to explain domestically in the short term, while Tehran also finds it challenging to gracefully retreat from its already publicly raised asking price. Since the resumption of negotiations in 2025, Iran has continuously reinforced the narrative of “being sanctioned” and “having assets plundered” in domestic public opinion, shaping economic pain into a collective memory of national humiliation. Now, putting war reparations and asset returns front and center serves to prove domestically that it has not bowed under military pressure, as well as to display an attitude of “not being able to have economic sovereignty taken away at will” to surrounding regions, turning economic compensation itself at the negotiation table into a political symbol, making any potential compromise carry a higher prestige cost and greater escalation risk.

Another Capital Chain: Acceleration of Financing and IPO in the AI Sector

At the same time that US-Iran negotiations are bogged down by war reparations and frozen assets, the capital market on the other end is speeding up to tell a completely different story. In early May 2026, Hangzhou Cloud Deep Technology submitted a prospectus aiming to raise approximately 2.503 billion yuan (according to a single source), converting ten years of imagined “embodied intelligence” in the laboratory into specific revenue estimates: according to a single source, its projected revenue for 2025 includes about 322 million yuan from embodied intelligent robot projects, approximately 11.95 million yuan from product components, and about 2.57 million yuan from supporting services. Unlike the usual futuristic narratives common in sci-fi storylines, this company included the robot itself, parts, and the services surrounding them in cash flow expectations, providing the secondary market with a relatively clear commercialization coordinate.

Expanding to the global view, the pace has not slowed because of the ominous clouds over the Middle East. From the beginning of 2026 to now, Playground Global completed a new fund of $475 million, continuing to place bets on deep tech and AI-related startups; SiMa.ai raised funds in the AI chip and inference acceleration fields at a valuation of about $1.4 billion. Against the backdrop of overlapping macro and geopolitical uncertainties, at a time when US-Iran negotiations are pressed into a “countdown of a few days”, venture capital has not collectively withdrawn but is instead focusing its stakes more on AI, embodied intelligence, and chips—In some funds’ account books, rising geopolitical risks do not necessarily point to “avoiding all risky assets” but speed up the transition of allocations from fragile short-term gambles to technology dividends that may pay off over the next decade.

HIVE Invests $2.55 Billion: A New Battlefield for Computing Infrastructure

Following this path of capital migration, HIVE's choice seems almost like a textbook answer. In mid-May 2026, this company, originally engaged in crypto mining, announced plans to invest approximately $2.55 billion (about 3.5 billion Canadian dollars) in the Toronto area to build an AI infrastructure base with a planned capacity of 320 MW—this is no longer “simply running some AI business” but staking itself directly in the main channel of data centers and computing power. On the day the news was announced, HIVE's stock opened with an increase of over 35% (according to a single source), and the secondary market voted through price increases: even with only “a few days” left in the US-Iran negotiation countdown, what is truly in demand is not the abstract “AI concept”, but the visible, tangible, and depreciable computing power factory.

For HIVE itself, this step also means a rewriting of its business narrative—previously highly tied to crypto mining, computing power, and electricity contracts have now been repackaged as the underlying resources needed for AI training and inference. The mining room has transformed into an AI data center, marking not only an adjustment in the paths of equipment and energy use but also an attempt to shift from high-volatility on-chain yields to a longer-term combination of “hard assets + technology”. In the current tight geopolitical situation and heightened regulatory uncertainty, capital is voting with its feet: compared to purely crypto assets that see prices sharply swing with sentiment, those facilities, lines, and power access that can stand for decades in the real world, when combined with the growth story of AI computing power, are more easily regarded as asset anchors that can withstand the next round of shocks.

Cryptocurrency Stocks Weakening: Kraken’s Revenue Growth Amid Manipulation Allegations

Funds retreating from high-volatility assets is particularly evident in US stock cryptocurrency concept stocks. According to a single source, this sector weakened overall, with Strategy opening down nearly 6%, and in the context of the US-Iran negotiation countdown and heightened regulatory shadows, this decline looks more like a collective vote on “how long the valuation premium can last.” On price levels, the market has already priced in geopolitical and regulatory uncertainties with discounts, even though the on-chain narrative has not experienced a decisive collapse.

However, in the cash flow of trading operations, the story is not entirely the same. According to a single source, Kraken's parent company Payward reported approximately $507 million in adjusted revenue for the first quarter of 2026, with a 51% year-on-year increase in futures business, and demand for derivatives continues to rise, indicating that users still have a strong trading willingness towards cryptocurrency assets. Compared to the pressure on stock prices in the secondary market, this revenue resilience represents a sharp contrast: business is still ongoing, and there is growth on the books, but the capital market is unwilling to pay high multiples for this kind of growth.

The rising cost of trust is also materialized through another clue. According to a single source, on-chain investigator ZachXBT publicly offered a reward of up to $10,000 for evidence regarding market manipulation by Hong Kong market maker HSBG, known for uncovering security incidents and on-chain tracking. This time naming the market maker brings the question of “who is pushing the prices up” back into the spotlight. When cryptocurrency stock prices are weak, leading platforms report revenue growth, while the community remains highly sensitive to market making and manipulation news; when these three lines converge, they outline the same picture: a sector with fundamentals that can still be justified by financial reports, but with valuations and trust being discounted simultaneously.

Asset Choices Under the Shadow of War and AI Frenzy

In the US-Iran negotiation countdown of “a few days, not weeks,” one side has put military options on the table, while the other insists on maximum pricing for war reparations and asset returns, suddenly raising short-term geopolitical tail risks, with market sentiment more like a tightly compressed spring under pressure: not fully hitting the brakes, but any slight change could trigger a violent repricing. Parallel to this is the AI sector, with Hangzhou Cloud Deep Technology's fundraising plan of approximately 2.503 billion yuan, Playground Global’s new fund of $475 million, SiMa.ai’s financing at a valuation of around $1.4 billion, and HIVE’s $2.55 billion computing power base being implemented, while the cryptocurrency sector faces a dual discount in valuation and trust amidst Kraken’s 51% year-on-year growth in futures business, yet still encountering a nearly 6% drop for Strategy and ZachXBT’s investigation into HSBG for manipulation. Bringing these lines together paints a mid-term outline: capital is shifting from single high beta bets to technology and computing power with more industry landing expectations, while also leaving a safety margin in its combination for geopolitical conflicts and regulatory black swans. The homework left for investors is actually quite specific—keep an eye on the US-Iran negotiation window that may close “within a few days”, verify the pace from announcement to commencement of AI infrastructure projects, from capacity to customer delivery, and track how cryptocurrency compliance and manipulation events, including those involving HSBG, conclude, because these nodes will directly determine the way large-scale capital redraws lines between AI, computing power, and cryptocurrency in the next round.

Join our community to discuss and get stronger together!
Official Telegram Community: https://t.me/aicoincn
AiCoin Chinese Twitter: https://x.com/AiCoinzh
OKX Benefit Group: https://aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=l61eM4owQ
Binance Benefit Group: https://aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=ynr7d1P6Z

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。