The Aug. 17-23 calendar includes a dense run of crypto, market-structure, and regulatory events, led by a planned White House gathering involving crypto industry executives, the release of Federal Reserve meeting minutes, a first meeting for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Innovation Advisory Committee, and new rules in South Korea affecting both leveraged products and crypto operator registration.
Aug. 17: Strategy Q&A, Hashdex ETF closure, and exchange changes
Strategy said it will hold a live investor Q&A at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Aug. 17. Founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and Chief Executive Officer Phong Le are set to appear. The company said the session is expected to focus on issues that have drawn market attention, including its bitcoin strategy, capital operations, financing plans, and future business direction.
Hashdex will also shut down and liquidate its bitcoin ETF, DEFI, listed on NYSE Arca. The fund had about $14.7 million in assets under management as of July 30. Hashdex said the decision was based on factors including asset scale, trading liquidity, operating costs, investor interest, and product-line positioning. Aug. 17 will be the fund’s last trading day. After that, it will stop accepting creation orders and will be delisted from NYSE Arca. Shareholders who hold through the last trading day are expected to receive cash liquidation distributions around Aug. 28. Hashdex said it still manages more than $200 million in products available to U.S. investors.
DeepSeek will put a new API pricing plan into effect on Aug. 17. The company said it will adopt peak and off-peak pricing, with off-peak pricing set at half the peak rate. Peak hours are 9:00-12:00 and 14:00-18:00 Beijing time, with the remaining hours treated as off-peak. The new pricing takes effect at 00:00 Beijing time on Aug. 17, 2026.
Solana Name Service, or SNS, said new registrations for .sol domains will be suspended on Aug. 17 for an eligibility snapshot. The snapshot covers only .sol names registered before the suspension. After the snapshot is completed, users will be able to check eligibility for a new round of rights or upgrades. .sns registration is expected to resume in mid-September, with more details to be announced. SNS also warned users about fake claim links and said it will not ask users to sign transactions or pay fees to claim new .sol domains.
World Chain plans to launch full block access lists based on EIP-7928 on mainnet on Aug. 17 by using a runtime flag, which means no coordinated network-wide hard fork is required. The network said it will become the first production L2 to stream EIP-7928 access-list data in every flashblock. It said access-list data will be transmitted every 200 milliseconds, allowing validators to verify transactions in parallel while blocks are being built. World Chain said the target is to reach throughput of up to 1 gigagas per second without raising validator hardware requirements. EIP-7928 is an Ethereum improvement proposal that introduces block-level access lists to record the accounts and storage slots touched during block execution. World Chain said internal testing showed validation latency stayed stable on standard cloud infrastructure at 1 gigagas per second.
Binance will stop trading and delist six tokens at 03:00 UTC on Aug. 17, 2026: AcrossProtocol (ACX), Hashflow (HFT), PIVX (PIVX), VulcanForgedPYR (PYR), Vanar (VANRY), and Viction (VIC). All spot trading pairs tied to those tokens will be removed, and trading bot services will end at the same time. Deposits will stop after 03:00 UTC on Aug. 18, 2026, and withdrawals will remain available until 03:00 UTC on Oct. 17, 2026. Related services in derivatives, margin, and earn products will also be wound down.
Coinbase said its next stock-index perpetual-style futures product, US500, will go live for U.S. traders on Aug. 17, giving users a way to go long or short the broader U.S. large-cap equity market. Coinbase also said it will stop supporting USDC deposits and withdrawals on the Noble network on Aug. 17, 2026. After that date, users will no longer be able to send or receive USDC on that network.
Aug. 18: Reddit joins the S&P 500, Korean exchanges remove tokens
S&P Dow Jones Indices said Reddit, trading under ticker RDDT, will officially join the S&P 500 before the market opens on Aug. 18, replacing AvalonBay Communities, or AVB, following its acquisition.
South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb said it will end trading support for GRACY, SPURS, ZTX, WIKEN, and FITFI on Aug. 18 because the reasons behind their trading-caution designation were not resolved. Upbit separately said it will delist SPURS on Aug. 18.
Aug. 19: White House innovation meeting and Korean leveraged-product rules
According to CoinDesk, citing people familiar with the matter, the White House is expected to host a gathering next Wednesday for executives from the cryptocurrency and prediction-market industries. President Donald Trump plans to attend. Chief executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, Robinhood, Polymarket, and Kalshi are also expected to take part.
The report said those CEOs are members of the CFTC’s newly formed Innovation Advisory Committee. The White House event is expected to serve as a lead-in to the committee’s first formal meeting, with discussion set to cover developments in crypto, prediction markets, and artificial intelligence.
In South Korea, the Financial Services Commission said it will raise the entry threshold for investors in single-stock leveraged ETFs and ETNs starting Aug. 19. In addition to the existing 30 million won basic deposit requirement and three hours of prior education, first-time retail investors in domestic and overseas single-name leveraged products must also complete simulated trading.
The rules also tighten deviation-rate controls. For domestic Korean ETFs and ETNs, the closing deviation-rate management band will narrow from 3% to 2%. For overseas products, it will tighten from 6% to 5%. Negative deviation rates will be calculated on an absolute-value basis. Under the new framework, if a deviation rate exceeds twice the management range, the product can face screening and a preliminary designation notice. If that happens again within 10 trading days of the notice, or if the rate exceeds the standard for two straight trading days, the product can be designated as an investment-caution item and moved to three trading days of call auction trading. The commission said the tighter controls reflect the negative compounding effect in single-stock leveraged products, where investors can lose money even if the underlying asset trades sideways.
Aug. 20: Fed minutes, first CFTC advisory meeting, and expanded Korean crypto reviews
The Federal Reserve will release minutes from its July monetary policy meeting at 2:00 a.m. Beijing time on Thursday, Aug. 20. At that meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee voted 9-3 to keep the federal funds rate in a range of 3.5% to 3.75%. Cleveland Fed President Hammack, Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari, and Dallas Fed President Logan favored an immediate 25-basis-point rate hike.
The report said that split contrasts with current market pricing. LSEG data as of Friday showed money markets assigning only a 27% probability to a 25-basis-point hike in September, with one full hike not fully priced in until early 2027. Traders will be watching the minutes for two questions: whether more officials beyond the three dissenters thought July already justified a hike, and what evidence the majority would need before backing one.
The same report also noted that the minutes are inherently backward-looking. Since the July meeting, U.S. data has softened overall. July nonfarm payrolls unexpectedly fell, CPI annual growth slowed from 3.5% to 3.4%, producer prices were flat month on month, and retail sales unexpectedly dropped 0.6%. Together, those figures have weakened the case for a September hike and left a wait-and-see stance as the market’s baseline view.
The CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee will hold its first meeting in Washington on Aug. 20, with a livestream on the agency’s website. According to the agenda released by CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig, the session will focus on crypto asset regulation, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets. Selig said he looks forward to discussing with committee members how emerging technologies and financial products are shaping markets and driving financial innovation. Public comments related to the meeting can be submitted through Aug. 27.
South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit and Financial Supervisory Service held a briefing in Seoul on Aug. 13 for virtual asset service providers and potential operators, releasing a revised registration manual. Under the updated standards, which take effect Aug. 20, review coverage for crypto operator registration will expand. The review will cover not only the largest shareholder and major shareholders holding more than 10%, but also shareholders with special relationships to the largest shareholder. If the largest shareholder is a corporation, that corporation’s largest shareholder and representative may also be included in the review. If a major shareholder changes, or if the company’s legal compliance framework changes, operators must notify financial authorities 30 days in advance.
Binance will also adjust tick-size precision for more than 20 spot trading pairs at 05:00 UTC on Aug. 20, 2026, including 0G/TRY, 1000CAT/USDT, and EGLD/EUR. Binance said the change is meant to improve market liquidity and trading experience and will not affect spot trading or other related functions. API users can check updated precision through GET /api/v3/exchangeInfo. Existing spot orders placed before the adjustment will continue to match using the old precision, and users running bots were told to update settings to avoid disruption.
Upbit said it will suspend deposits and withdrawals for digital assets on the Ontology network from 23:00 Korean time on Aug. 20, 2026. The affected assets are Ontology (ONT), Ontology Gas (ONG), and MovieBloc (MBL). Trading in those assets will continue during the suspension. The exchange said it will restore deposit and withdrawal services after the network upgrade is complete and stability is confirmed.
Aug. 21: Planned bitcoin eCash hard fork and Step App shutdown
A report said bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc announced in April that the bitcoin eCash hard fork will activate at block height 963648, around Aug. 21. That event is set to create a new chain called eCash. It also plans a 1:1 airdrop of eCash network token ECX to all addresses holding bitcoin before block height 963648. No registration or pre-claim is required, but users must move BTC into an eCash self-custody wallet. The same report said support for the hard fork within the bitcoin community remains low as of now.
The report also said bitcoin is set for a BIP-110 soft fork in August. BIP-110 enters its enforcement phase at block height 961632, around Aug. 7, and the soft fork formally activates at block height 963,648, around Sept. 1.
Step App said it will shut down after four years of operation. All services will stop on Aug. 21. Users were told to unlock any staked tokens and manage exchange-held positions before that date. Step App said the platform recorded more than 1 million downloads, tracked tens of billions of steps, and helped push the Move-to-Earn, or M2E, segment while linking Web2 and Web3.
Binance will stop supporting deposits and withdrawals for Sophon (SOPH) through the BNB Smart Chain network at 16:00 Beijing time on Aug. 21, 2026. Deposits sent through that network after the cutoff will not be credited and may lead to asset losses. Users will still be able to use other supported networks on Binance for deposits and withdrawals.
Aug. 22: No major item listed
There is no major scheduled item listed so far for Aug. 22.
Aug. 23: Manus returns to independent operations, with migration required for some users
Manus said it will resume operating as an independent company. Some users must complete data backup before 7:59 a.m. Beijing time, which it also gave as Singapore time, on Aug. 23, 2026, and can begin data restoration after 8:00 a.m. on Aug. 25 to keep using the service normally.
According to Manus, affected users will receive details by email and through in-app notifications. Users who signed up through Apple ID or Facebook should watch for in-app notices. Backups can be run multiple times before the deadline, and users can rerun the process even if new data is added after an earlier backup. Starting at 8:00 a.m. on Aug. 25, affected users can import their data through the restoration entry point and continue using the service from the same state as before.
Manus said affected users will not be charged during the migration period and will receive a welcome-back reward. Users who are not affected do not need to take action and can continue using the service normally, with status confirmation delivered through app notifications. The company also said it will support users through help-center guides and around-the-clock customer service during the transition.