Foresight News has published its latest weekly Web3 roundup, organizing the week’s major crypto stories into three sections: the market rebound, industry flashpoints and project developments.
The week’s main reading list
01 Bullish turn
- “Crypto is back: which assets rebounded the hardest?”
- “Behind ENA’s surge: Ethena Foundation’s four-part self-rescue playbook”
- “LIT keeps hitting fresh highs: what did Lighter get right?”
- “Why did PENGU jump 70% in a week? A single post may explain it”
02 Crypto debates
- “Changpeng Zhao at Bitcoin Asia 2026: the Bitcoin century, multichain coexistence and crypto in the AI era”
- “An eight-year ‘friends’ setup’: influencer Dishi says Sun Zeyu cheated him out of tens of millions”
- “Is WLFI’s biggest backer a defaulter?”
- “Selling monkeys to stay alive: how Machi Big Brother turned $150,000 into $12.72 million”
- “Nearly 20 billion yuan moved in 20 months? Shanghai police break down a virtual-currency underground bank”
- “Hack VC faces employee exploitation claims: has ‘996’ reached crypto?”
03 Project watch
- “Selected projects in YZi Labs EASY Residency Season 4”
- “Tokenized stocks are still early. Coinbase’s slowness may be another kind of speed”
- “Prospecting guide: Entropy becomes a new player in Hyperliquid HIP-3”
ETF inflows, tighter ETH supply and regulation stood out in the rebound
Foresight News said the crypto market, after nearly a year of relative quiet, has staged a strong rebound. Bitcoin’s maximum intraday gain during the move topped 26%, reviving calls that a bull market has returned. The outlet attributed the move to a mix of U.S. liquidity adjustments and favorable regulatory developments for crypto, with spot ETF money flowing back in. It also described a clear rotation across majors, altcoins and meme tokens, while noting that many assets still remain below prior all-time highs.
In its piece on the market rebound, Foresight News argued that Ether showed stronger elasticity than the rest of the market for three reasons on top of the broader liquidity backdrop and short-squeeze dynamics. First, spot Ether ETFs saw about $697 million in net inflows last week, the strongest week since October 2025. Second, exchange supply kept shrinking: exchange-held ETH fell from roughly 7.7 million at the beginning of June to about 6.54 million by mid-August, a drop of about 15%. At the same time, more than 42 million ETH had been staked, leaving less circulating supply available for trading. Third, the SEC on Aug. 18 proposed a new public rule framework for crypto token sales, which the market viewed as a positive signal toward clearer issuance rules.
The same report said Bitcoin rose 22% and Ether climbed nearly 30%. Among altcoins, and based on data compiled by multiple platforms, the top five gainers among the 50 largest altcoins by market capitalization for the week ending Aug. 23 were ENA, PUMP, Stacks, Trump and Zcash.
ENA, LIT and PENGU each rode a different narrative
In a separate article on ENA, Foresight News tied the token’s short-term surge to a series of moves by the Ethena Foundation. Those moves included buying back VC-locked tokens, removing recurring monthly unlock pressure, linking protocol revenue to ENA buybacks, and aligning incentives between the foundation and the development entity. The stated aim was to repair the token’s value-capture mechanism.
The publication described token unlocks as ENA’s biggest bearish narrative over the past two years. Seed investors, Series A investors, team members and advisers all had regular releases that fed the market with supply. Foresight News said the foundation moved directly against that structural overhang, while also warning that shrinking USDe circulation still leaves risk in the story.
Lighter and its token LIT were another focal point. Foresight News said the perpetual DEX has tried to separate itself by using a custom ZK-Rollup architecture, encoding matching and liquidation rules into ZK circuits while pairing higher performance with Ethereum-grade security and an onchain forced-exit mechanism.
The publication said LIT started printing new highs from Aug. 20 and touched $3.8 on Aug. 26, up nearly fivefold from roughly $0.78 on March 30 this year. Current circulating supply is only about 25% of total supply, according to the report, while team and investor allocations remain locked until Dec. 30, 2026. Selling pressure now mainly comes from staking rewards. Foresight News also cited the project’s dashboard as showing 17.3 million LIT repurchased, equal to 1.73% of total supply and 6.92% of circulating supply.
PENGU’s near-70% weekly jump was linked to a post from Pudgy Penguins Chief Executive Officer Luca Netz. On Aug. 23, Netz posted on X without text, using only a pair of eyes, a penguin, a building and an arrow labeled “SOON.” Crypto users quickly read the building as a signal that Pudgy Penguins could be heading toward a listing.
Foresight News, citing an earlier Decrypt report, said Luca Netz stated publicly in August 2025 that the company planned to complete an IPO before 2027. He said at the time, “If we can’t IPO within the next two years, I’ll be disappointed in myself, and you should hold me accountable then.” He also said the company was on track to generate $50 million in revenue in 2025. Foresight News said that pledge was reignited by the recent post, though it also pointed out that token returns are not tied to company equity economics, leaving open the question of how much value an IPO would actually pass through to the token.
Zhao focused on Bitcoin, tokenization and AI-linked finance at Bitcoin Asia 2026
Foresight News said Changpeng Zhao used his appearance at Bitcoin Asia 2026 to discuss Bitcoin’s long-term value, multichain coexistence, tokenization and AI agent finance. According to the report, he argued that Bitcoin could surpass gold over time and called for better global crypto regulation.
Zhao said Bitcoin reaching $1 million is bound to happen and will arrive faster than in 25 years. He also said utility matters more than price, pointing to the need for large-scale Bitcoin payments and for Bitcoin to become a reserve asset for retirement pensions. He added that people often overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in a decade, and said major infrastructure will be built over the next 10 years.
Foresight News also said Zhao pointed to a sharp shift in traditional finance’s attitude toward Bitcoin over the past two years, and said tokenized stocks have expanded quickly in the past year. Binance bStocks, he said, has grown rapidly in only about three months since launch. He also named payments, AI, agentic financial infrastructure, stablecoins and tokenization as sectors likely to see heavy development over the coming decade.
Livestream accusations, backer scrutiny and leveraged trading all fueled debate
One of the week’s most discussed personal disputes came from Chinese influencer Dishi. In a livestream on Aug. 26, he said he had been set up by blockchain investor Sun Zeyu, whom he had known for eight years, and had suffered cumulative losses worth tens of millions of yuan. Foresight News said part of the Ether involved even came from a fake chain built by the other party with only seven addresses.
Another report centered on WLFI, the Trump family’s crypto project, after it received a $100 million investment from Aqua 1 Foundation. Foresight News said the foundation’s ultimate controller has gradually come into view as Zhou Guren, a Chinese national born in Shanghai in 1984. Citing Caixin, the report said Zhou appears on China’s public enforcement records as a dishonest debtor in six cases involving about 25 million yuan in unpaid obligations. A recent indictment provided by the U.K. Crown Prosecution Service also showed him to be involved in a money-laundering case in Britain. Foresight News added that information from Caixin and The New York Times linked him to the controversial crypto organization Web3Port.
Onchain trading was represented by Machi Big Brother. Foresight News said he turned $150,000 of principal into a $12.72 million long over three days using extreme leverage during last week’s one-way market. The report put the single-trade profit at $12.5 million, or 84 times the starting capital. As of 18:00 on Aug. 24, the Hyperliquid address machibigbrother.eth held total assets of $10.07 million while carrying a $124 million long position. The article also said he sold Bored Ape NFTs at lower prices to maintain the derivatives position.
Shanghai police detailed a large underground FX case, while Hack VC faced workplace claims
Foresight News also highlighted a law-enforcement case in Shanghai. On Aug. 27, the Shanghai Public Security Bureau announced that it had cracked a major underground banking operation that used virtual currencies for illegal cross-border foreign-exchange settlement. Police detained 19 suspects, and the amount involved was close to 20 billion yuan.
According to the police notice cited by Foresight News, the group had recruited clients seeking currency exchange since August 2024, using coin dealers and offshore channels to complete foreign-currency payouts while charging service fees. Shanghai economic crime investigators said they discovered online promotion of the business during cyber patrols in January 2026 and began rolling up the case in batches from April. Five people, including Liu, Xu, Gao and Wang, were approved for arrest on suspicion of illegal business operations and assisting information-network criminal activity. The remaining suspects were placed under criminal coercive measures, and the case is still under investigation.
Hack VC was the source of a separate labor dispute. In its article on the matter, Foresight News said former partner Hsin-Ju rejected settlement and insisted on making her employment records public. Her claims focused on working conditions while employed and the handling of health insurance after her departure.
According to her account, she was required to keep working at high intensity last year despite diagnosed Graves’ disease, hyperthyroidism and severe insomnia. She said she worked 13 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, and often slept less than four hours. Hsin-Ju said she tried to resign several times but was refused and warned that leaving before Korea Blockchain Week-related events were completed could get her blacklisted from the industry. In posts she said that after nearly a month in that condition, she attempted suicide. She later told Hack VC in writing that she did not intend to sue and only asked not to face retaliation or defamation. Still, she said the firm delayed handling her COBRA health insurance just one month after the suicide attempt, and the issue lasted nearly four months until a lawyer intervened.
YZi Labs, Coinbase and Entropy rounded out the project watchlist
In the project section, Foresight News first reviewed YZi Labs’ EASY Residency Season 4. On Aug. 25, YZi Labs announced the full list of selected teams. A total of 24 early-stage companies were chosen, each receiving a $500,000 investment. The incubator, aimed at early founders in Web3, AI and biotech, will run for 10 weeks, beginning online before founders gather in Bhutan for an in-person build phase.
Foresight News said this season is focused on next-generation global financial infrastructure, including stablecoin payments, onchain foreign exchange, institutional market structure, privacy, credit and AI-native execution.
Coinbase’s tokenized stock rollout on Base was another major item. Foresight News said the product went live on Aug. 25 with Apple, NVIDIA, Meta and Alphabet as the first batch of names. The issuer is a newly established entity, Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd. The underlying shares are custodied by licensed broker Alpaca and placed into a trust structure supervised by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market, or ADGM.
Users hold a “Certificate” token representing a proportional beneficial interest in the trust assets rather than a direct investment in the underlying shares. The report said the product is not available to U.S. users, first-day liquidity mainly came from Base-based decentralized exchange Aerodrome, and the tokens have already been accepted as collateral by lending protocols including Aave.
The final project spotlight was Entropy, a new entrant in Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 segment. With HYPE trading higher, Foresight News said attention around HIP-3 has picked up. Entropy has completed a $14 million fundraising round and secured support in the form of 40 million dollars’ worth of HYPE staking, while launching perpetual contracts tied to products such as Anthropic Pre-IPO.
According to the report, Entropy is trying to build a perpetual-contract pricing and trading system for assets in traditional markets that are difficult to trade continuously, while supporting multiple asset classes. Its framework is straightforward: when reliable public pricing exists, it uses that market as an anchor; when continuous public pricing is unavailable, it shifts weights dynamically between external data and internal price formation based on executable depth in the order book.
Foresight News also warned that HIP-3 projects carry operating-continuity risk. It pointed to Ventuals, another Hyperliquid ecosystem project focused on Pre-IPO perpetuals, as a recent example. Ventuals had received support of more than 500,000 HYPE and generated more than $650 million in cumulative trading volume, yet the team announced in June 2026 that it would stop operating and join another team inside the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Its HIP-3 markets were later settled and closed. The takeaway in the report was narrow but clear: strong HYPE backing and large trading volumes do not guarantee a market will keep running. Participants still need to weigh fees, funding rates, spreads and slippage before trading.
The original roundup ended with a disclaimer saying markets carry risk, the material is not investment advice, and readers should decide whether any opinion, view or conclusion fits their own circumstances before making decisions.
