Crypto, macro, and regulatory headlines landed in quick succession between Aug. 19 and Aug. 20, with large on-chain positions adding to the volatility.
Binance Alpha opens third STABLE airdrop round
Binance Alpha has opened the third round of its Stable (STABLE) airdrop. Users with at least 243 Binance Alpha points can claim 1,053 STABLE on the Alpha event page on a first-come, first-served basis.
If the airdrop pool is not fully claimed after a period of time, the points threshold will automatically drop by 5 points every 5 minutes. Participating in the claim consumes 15 Binance Alpha points, and users must confirm within 24 hours on the Alpha event page or forfeit the allocation.
AI and data center funding updates
AI data center operator DataVita said it raised £300 million, or about $406 million, with participation from ING, ABN AMRO, Santander, the Scottish National Investment Bank, and Siemens Financial Services.
The new capital will be used for an AI data center campus. DataVita also signed a 15-year data center lease with AI cloud provider CoreWeave.
Elsewhere, Nvidia is in talks to invest in data-labeling provider Mercor in a round that values the company at $20 billion. Existing investor General Catalyst is in talks to lead the financing. Mercor has historically generated most of its revenue from closed-model AI companies including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, though revenue tied to Nvidia has been growing as Nvidia pushes its Nemotron open-source model efforts.
People familiar with the matter also said AI chip startup Fractile is seeking roughly $600 million at a pre-money valuation of $6.5 billion, with Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures set to co-lead and Thrive Capital and Founders Fund participating. The talks are ongoing and terms could still change.
Fractile raised $220 million about three months ago at a valuation of roughly $1 billion. The company has reached a preliminary agreement to sell about $250 million worth of chips to Anthropic, with delivery expected in 2027. Fractile was founded in 2022 by Oxford robotics specialist Walter Goodwin and focuses on AI inference chips.
OpenAI, facing tighter competition with Anthropic, said it will strengthen AI safety measures. The company recently said it would temporarily slow model scaling and commit more resources to safety safeguards after tests surfaced unusual behavior in its AI systems, raising concerns around model safety, cyberattack risk, and control over autonomous capabilities.
At an all-hands meeting on Wednesday local time, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees the company will go public in 2027, though it could reach public markets sooner if business momentum remains strong. Attendees said Friar also told staff that OpenAI is confidentially preparing an IPO filing, that Anthropic is doing the same, and that OpenAI had already raised $122 billion in March.
U.S. Treasury to expand long-dated buybacks
The U.S. Treasury said it is at least doubling the size of liquidity-support buyback operations for long-dated nominal coupon securities, covering the 10- to 20-year and 20- to 30-year maturity buckets.
The current cap is $2 billion per operation. Going forward, the size will be raised to at least $4 billion each time. The change takes effect on Sept. 9, 2026, and will remain in place through the rest of the current quarterly refunding period, ending Nov. 4, 2026. Treasury said it will provide more information on future buyback sizes at its next quarterly refunding meeting scheduled for Nov. 4, 2026, and will publish an updated tentative buyback schedule later.
The department said the move reflects its aim to provide stronger liquidity support for the long-dated nominal Treasury market. After the plan was released, the Treasury yield curve flattened sharply.
Bitcoin rises after buyback announcement, though stablecoin liquidity remains thin
Market analysis tied a sharp move in Bitcoin to the Treasury announcement. After U.S. equities opened on Wednesday, Bitcoin climbed to as high as $69,749, its strongest level since June 2, with an intraday gain of about 6%.
Treasury had said it would expand long-dated buyback operations from Sept. 9, lifting the maximum size from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. The market viewed the move as added liquidity support for long-term bonds, helping push risk assets higher.
Following the announcement, the 30-year Treasury yield fell quickly, dropping about 9 basis points from its earlier near-20-year high to 5.19%. Treasury said the larger buyback size is meant to meet persistent investor demand in the long-dated Treasury market and improve liquidity.
Bitfinex said that despite the recent rebound in Bitcoin, upside remains limited by weak stablecoin liquidity. It said exchange-held stablecoin supply has fallen by about $14 billion since May. In Bitfinex’s words: 「Before stablecoin supply recovers, the current rally lacks funding support.」
On-chain data showed the Stablecoin Supply Ratio, or SSR, a metric comparing Bitcoin market value with aggregate stablecoin market value, has continued to rise, moving from 9.82 on June 30 to 11.69. That points to tight liquidity conditions. The analysis said improved expectations for U.S. fiscal liquidity could support Bitcoin and other risk assets in the short term, but without a clear return of stablecoin capital, further upside still needs confirmation.
Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said Bitcoin could reach $100,000 by the end of 2026 as the U.S. Treasury expands liquidity support for the long-end of the bond market.
In a client note, Kendrick said Bitcoin’s key technical resistance stands at $65,500. A break above that level could suggest that the cycle low is already in place. He said investors should begin positioning for Bitcoin to rise toward $100,000 by year-end. Alongside the four-year Bitcoin cycle, he cited Treasury’s expanded long-bond buyback program as another major catalyst.
He also pointed to Treasury’s plan to raise the buyback cap for the 10- to 20-year and 20- to 30-year sectors from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation from Sept. 9 through Nov. 4. After the announcement, long-dated Treasury yields moved lower, easing pressure from the prior bond-market selloff. Kendrick described the move as the kind of environment Bitcoin tends to favor because the asset has previously benefited from government liquidity intervention and because its fixed supply gives it a hedge-like appeal against currency debasement.
Matt Cole, chief executive of Strive, wrote on social media that he has believed for more than a decade that the U.S. Dollar Index is in a structural downtrend and that it may now be approaching a larger downward phase with major implications for Bitcoin.
Cole said that if this view proves correct, the next five to seven years could become one of the strongest macro backdrops in Bitcoin’s history. He argued that the long decline in the dollar since the late 1960s shows up both in the technical pattern of lower highs and lower lows and in U.S. fiscal fundamentals.
He added that Bitcoin’s major bull cycles have coincided with dollar weakness. During 2017, DXY fell from about 103 to 88. In the 2020 to 2021 cycle, it moved from about 103 to around 89. During Bitcoin’s 2025 all-time-high period, the dollar also weakened from roughly 108. His base case is that DXY could keep falling over the next three to seven years and may even test the area around 70 last seen in 2008.
ZeroStack signs Memecore token-for-equity deal
Nasdaq-listed ZeroStack Corp. said it entered into a deal with Puple AI Inc. and Blockcat Pte. Ltd., under which the counterparties will contribute about $1 billion worth of Memecore (M) tokens in exchange for 3.5 million shares of ZeroStack common stock and up to 36,198,293 pre-funded warrants exercisable at $25.19 per share.
The price represents a premium of more than 12 times ZeroStack’s recent market price. The roughly 925,925,926 M tokens are valued at $1.08 each. Any new shares issued upon exercise of the pre-funded warrants require shareholder approval under Nasdaq Rule 5635, and the shares could be subject to a lock-up period of as long as 10 years.
ZeroStack said the transaction will deepen its collaboration with the Memecore ecosystem, and Rudy Rong, head of Memecore, will become ZeroStack president.
Berachain renames HONEY to Bera USD
The Berachain Foundation said its stablecoin HONEY has been rebranded as Bera USD with the ticker BUSD. The contract address and token itself remain unchanged, with only the name and symbol being updated.
According to the foundation, the change is meant to make the token immediately recognizable as a U.S. dollar stablecoin for more institutionally oriented users. At the technical level, because the token name is part of the EIP-712 domain separator design, permits or off-chain approvals previously signed under the HONEY name will automatically become invalid and need to be signed again.
Berachain said the BUSD-related updates will roll out across integrations soon, with more upgrades to the stablecoin to follow.
CFTC enforcement and rulemaking activity builds
According to the CFTC website, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered supplemental consent orders against former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang. Ellison received a five-year trading ban and a 10-year registration ban. Wang received a five-year trading ban and an eight-year registration ban. Both must continue cooperating with the CFTC’s investigation.
The agency said it is not currently seeking disgorgement, restitution, or civil monetary penalties, in part because both defendants substantially cooperated and because related criminal cases already resulted in a $11.02 billion forfeiture order.
The CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee will hold its first meeting on Aug. 20 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern, which is Aug. 21 from 1:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. Beijing time.
The meeting agenda is split into three parts. The first covers the shift in crypto regulation from uncertainty to clarity, including the absence of a federal market structure, fragmented state licensing, overlapping regulatory authority, regulation by enforcement, and how to improve clarity under existing statutory powers. The second focuses on AI in trading, compliance, surveillance, risk management, and agentic finance, explicitly covering areas where crypto and AI intersect. The third centers on prediction markets and event contracts, including federal and state jurisdiction, state-level litigation and enforcement, market manipulation, customer protection, and a long-term regulatory framework.
CFTC Chair Michael S. Selig, IAC Chair Walt Lukken, and designated federal officer Michael J. Passalacqua are set to deliver opening remarks.
Separately, the CFTC said it plans to seek public comment on the proposed listing of computing-power derivatives contracts.
Hong Kong police classify ZD Group IPO funding case as fraud
A large number of mainland Chinese and Hong Kong investors used ZD Group to participate in Hong Kong IPO subscriptions, but related funds were not repaid on schedule. Hong Kong police said that as of Aug. 17 they had received reports from 24 investors. The case is being handled as fraud by the Wan Chai district crime squad, and no arrests have been made so far.
Investors had previously been told that bank accounts tied to ZD Group affiliates were frozen, preventing redemptions. The funds involved were said to be on the scale of billions of Hong Kong dollars, including some cross-border capital from mainland investors going to Hong Kong.
Large BTC and ETH positions swing hard
One address had previously opened a 1,800 BTC short at around $63,991, with notional value of about $125 million. As Bitcoin rebounded to around $69,500, the position was force-liquidated over two nights. The full short was wiped out, and roughly $2.92 million in principal was lost.
The whale known as @Jason60704294, associated with the phrase 「set 10 big targets first」, has closed longs and flipped short. The position now stands at 1,894.784 BTC, worth about $132 million, with an entry price of $69,826.89. The stated logic is to short when the market rises 5% to 10% quickly without an extreme news catalyst, with a stop-loss at $70,400 and a take-profit zone between $66,500 and $68,000.
Across the past 24 hours, 174,350 traders were liquidated for a combined $2.98 billion, making it the eighth-largest liquidation event in crypto history.
ETH saw its own high-profile swings. Thirteen hours earlier, a whale opened a new wallet, deposited 20 million USDC to Hyperliquid, and went 4x long 20,000 ETH, a position worth about $45.38 million. ETH then moved higher, leaving the position up $6.66 million.
The Hyperliquid trader 「pension-usdt.eth」 was liquidated on an ETH short with a closing exposure of about $108.18 million. Realized losses reached $26.66 million, though the trader still has $17.76 million in lifetime profit. The account had previously held a 50,000 ETH short worth about $85 million.
After ETH jumped 17%, Machi Big Brother, Huang Licheng, was sitting on an unrealized gain of $3.34 million on an ETH long worth $48.22 million, though total losses still stood at $31.5 million.
HYPE jumps as Trump comments on Hyperliquid, while tokens move to exchanges
At a Wednesday press conference with technology leaders and agency heads, U.S. President Donald Trump said CFTC Chair Michael Selig was working to bring perpetual trading platform Hyperliquid into the United States in a 「fully compliant and lawful way.」 Following the remarks, Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE was up more than 20% over 24 hours at the time of writing.
Trump also urged lawmakers to pass the CLARITY Act, calling it 「strong structural legislation」 that would help the U.S. stay ahead in crypto. The CFTC had previously approved Bitcoin perpetual futures from Kalshi and Coinbase. People participating in the event included SEC Chair Paul Atkins, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev.
At the White House crypto event, Trump again urged Congress to move the CLARITY Act, calling it 「very powerful structural legislation」 that would put the United States 「ahead of every country.」 Armstrong said the industry should work together to get the bill over the finish line, while Atkins said crypto-asset rules proposed by the SEC this week complement the legislation and support congressional passage.
Trump later brought executives into the Oval Office for a closed-door discussion. Chainlink Labs CEO Sergey Nazarov said Trump’s team sees the bill as 「very feasible,」 with only a small number of issues and several senators still needing outreach. The bill needs 60 votes to clear the Senate before the September recess. The White House event came just before the first meeting of the CFTC’s innovation advisory body. Members include the CEOs of Kraken, Anchorage Digital, Grayscale, and OKX.
Trump also said the U.S. has discussed plans to accumulate large reserves of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He added that after the day’s meeting, 「we will ensure that the United States continues to maintain an undisputed leadership position not only in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but also in technologies such as prediction markets and artificial intelligence.」
On token flows, FalconX moved 198,750 HYPE, worth about $14 million, to Gate this morning, potentially for sale. The report said several OTC buyers that accumulated HYPE over recent months appear to be selling, with similar activity seen on other OTC venues.
Multicoin Capital sent a combined 136,170 HYPE to Coinbase Prime today, worth about $9.65 million. After previously moving 62,730 HYPE, it sent another 73,440 HYPE worth about $5.28 million. The transfers may be intended for sale. It still holds 2.02 million HYPE worth about $144.67 million.
Coinbase, Base App, and new listings
Coinbase said Wednesday that it has integrated decentralized perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid into Base App, giving eligible users access to crypto perpetual trading with leverage of up to 50x. The service is not available in jurisdictions that restrict leveraged crypto derivatives trading, including the U.S., the U.K., and Canada.
With the integration, Base App users can access more than 290 perpetual markets covering BTC, ETH, and markets tied to stocks and commodities. Execution is powered by Hyperliquid, allowing users to trade on-chain derivatives without leaving the Base App wallet.
Chintan Turakhia, head of engineering at Coinbase, said perpetuals account for the majority of crypto trading volume today, adding that 「about 75% of crypto trading volume now comes from perpetuals rather than spot trading.」 He said leverage trading and perpetual contracts have long ranked among the most requested features from Coinbase’s high-activity users.
Coinbase also said it will list Aligned (ALIGN). Users can already generate deposit addresses for ALIGN on coinbase.com, Coinbase App, and Coinbase Exchange, though deposits will only be enabled once the issuer unlocks transfers. A day earlier, Aligned published ALIGN airdrop details and opened the airdrop checker, while the TGE date remained undecided.
Nethermind leaves LayerZero DVN and joins Chainlink
Ethereum core contributor Nethermind said it will exit LayerZero’s decentralized verifier network business after what it described as a comprehensive review and will migrate its cross-chain infrastructure work to the Chainlink network.
Nethermind said Wednesday that it has stopped operating LayerZero’s DVN and joined the Chainlink network as a node operator and strategic technical provider. Going forward, it plans to offer engineering tools, infrastructure services, and integration support for blockchain developers.
The move comes after a security incident in the LayerZero ecosystem. In April, Kelp DAO’s rsETH bridge was attacked, resulting in the loss of about 116,500 rsETH worth roughly $292 million at the time. After that incident, a number of companies began shifting cross-chain operations from LayerZero to Chainlink.
Still, Nethermind did not say directly whether the migration was linked to the Kelp DAO incident, nor did it disclose any specific technical issues at LayerZero or changes in commercial terms between the parties.
U.S. equity options and Fed minutes
Analysis said the behavior of U.S. retail investors has shifted sharply since April. Data from Vanda Research showed that while direct stock buying has slowed this year, retail demand for put options has surged.
For the 12 most popular stocks among retail investors in 2026, put buying has nearly doubled from the first quarter. Put purchases as a share of net cash buying climbed from about 26% to 110%. Industry analysts said this could reflect broad profit-taking after years of successful buy-the-dip behavior, while some capital may also have moved into speculative stocks, leveraged ETFs, and prediction markets.
Minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting showed several officials leaned toward raising rates last month, with many policymakers saying tighter monetary policy may be needed if inflation fails to decline. At the July 28-29 meeting, however, uncertainty kept officials on alert.
The minutes said Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, and Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari dissented in favor of a 25-basis-point hike. Kansas City Fed President Schmid and St. Louis Fed President Musalem, who did not have voting rights in July, said they would have supported a hike if they had been able to vote.
Most participants expected inflation to ease gradually through the rest of the year as the effects of tariffs and energy-price increases fade, though many also warned inflation could stay elevated for longer. The minutes described the inflation outlook as highly uncertain and said the renewed escalation of the Iran war had made it even murkier. Officials said the labor market remains stable and broadly balanced. The post-meeting statement was almost identical to the June version, again committing to price stability and describing economic growth as solid, with strong capital investment and productivity growth.
Industry talks with Washington continue
People familiar with the matter said that before Trump and crypto industry leaders spoke at the White House, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, a16z’s Chris Dixon, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Kraken co-founder Arjun Sethi met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
The discussion focused on the importance of passing the Clarity Act and what it could mean for U.S. jobs, economic growth, and bringing crypto companies back to the country. Participants also discussed the remaining obstacles, including issues around ethics provisions, and how the White House could help find a path to bipartisan support.
Compute markets, AI agents, and new crypto projects
Arthur Hayes published an essay titled The Book of Genesis outlining the core logic and token design of his AI-crypto project Flop Labs. He argued that the AI market lacks a unified pricing standard for compute and that different models define and price tokens differently.
Hayes proposed a decentralized compute network called Flop Network, using FLOP as the native token and framing it as a direct claim on compute measured in FLOPs, allowing AI agents and humans to trade at a globally unified compute price.
Under the proposed tokenomics, FLOP launches through a fair-launch model with no presale and team self-funding. Miners earn block rewards and inference fees by providing proof of useful inference, or PoUI. AI agents can use FLOP to buy compute and combine it with decentralized storage for persistent memory. Testnet participants will receive about 20% of total token supply distributed over 10 years. Hayes said that if his thesis on the AI-agent economy proves correct, Flop Network could eventually be worth more than Bitcoin. He had previously said he was returning to lead Flop Labs and launch the AI agent token FLOP.
Linera, a Layer 1 blockchain founded by a former Meta engineer, also laid out its ambition to become the next Hyperliquid. It said it will launch an LNRA token sale and a Linera Originals product set, including a badge system and prediction markets that settle in under one minute.
Linera said event markets usually take days or weeks to settle, while real-time markets have remained underused because traditional blockchains cannot support them. Its architecture runs multiple lightweight parallel chains, or microchains, giving each user and market its own chain. Finality is under one second and throughput scales linearly with the number of microchains. Details of the LNRA token sale will be announced later, and badge holders will get access to a dedicated participation pool.
Strategy’s top holders add in Q2
Strategy said 12 of its top 15 institutional shareholders increased their positions in the second quarter, lifting their holdings by $1.2 billion in total.
Capital International Investors remained the largest holder with a $3.49 billion position after adding $346 million quarter over quarter. Goldman Sachs posted the biggest increase, raising its position from $149 million to $555 million, an increase of about $407 million. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund added $45 million to reach $398 million. Only Geode Capital, UBS, and Capital Research Global Investors reduced their positions.
Robotics and AI briefings
At the 2026 World Robot Conference, Unitree founder and chairman Wang Xingxing said humanoid robots have not yet been deployed at large scale in factories and homes mainly because their overall efficiency and capability are still insufficient. He said robots can already do some work, but their efficiency remains below that of humans.
Wang added that when humanoid robots face new tasks, they often need retraining, which drags efficiency lower. The goal, he said, is to make the technology more general and more precise before pushing it into large-scale real-world deployment.
PANews’ AI watch section also highlighted several developments from the past 24 hours. xAI has open-sourced the Grok model repository on GitHub, and Elon Musk reposted the announcement, driving view count beyond 18 million. The GitHub page shows the project has entered public release status and includes full model weights and inference code.
Replit and OpenAI rolled out a Free Mode feature built on Luna, the most cost-efficient model in the GPT-5.6 family, allowing Core and Pro subscribers to handle lighter tasks without using AI credits. Luna’s operating cost is about 80% lower than Sol, the flagship model in the same series.
DeepReinforce AI released the Ornith 1.0 model family in four MoE sizes ranging from 9B to 397B, all under the MIT license. The model scored 82.4% on SWE-Bench Verified, supports a 262K context window, and includes self-scaffolding agentic coding support.