Compiled by ChainCatcher
Crypto headlines over the past 24 hours centered on U.S. market access, tokenization, ETF structure, mining balance sheets, prediction-market scrutiny and bridge security.
Hyperliquid looks for a compliant path into the U.S. perpetuals market
According to The Information, Hyperliquid is seeking a compliant route to bring its perpetuals business into the U.S. market. The platform does not currently serve U.S. users.
Earlier, the Hyperliquid Policy Center, funded by Hyper Foundation, began policy research and advocacy work in Washington aimed at building a regulated access framework for onchain perpetuals and decentralized market infrastructure in the United States. If that route becomes clear, it would create the conditions for Hyperliquid to offer perpetuals and related products to U.S. users.
GSR says hype around tokenization is running ahead of actual usage
Cryptonomist reported that Spencer Hallarn, head of markets at crypto market maker GSR, said in an interview that hype around tokenization has moved ahead of real usage on many platforms. In his view, the issue is not demand for tokenized assets, but how the platforms themselves are designed.
Hallarn said many walled-garden tokenization venues with strict KYC requirements lack meaningful trading volume, with cumbersome onboarding and compliance processes limiting activity. He argued that the larger opportunity is not tokenization for its own sake, but fixing the plumbing of traditional banking and settlement systems, especially the infrastructure used to move money and assets between institutions. That would make tokenization look more like an infrastructure repair effort than a pure crypto product story.
He also said this year’s stagnation in crypto has been tied in large part to capital shifting into AI infrastructure. Large technology companies have raised massive sums through equity financing to fund AI buildouts, tightening liquidity across asset classes, including crypto. Hallarn said clients are also moving away from short-term momentum trades and toward long-range budget planning, OTC hedging and RWA exposure. If AI investment cools and the Federal Reserve cuts rates, he said liquidity could improve and support bitcoin.
10x Research says bitcoin may be breaking away from the S&P 500
According to 10x Research, bitcoin may be decoupling from the S&P 500. The firm said BTC and gold could both benefit if the Federal Reserve cuts rates in September because summer labor data weakens.
The note said bond traders briefly became convinced after the late-July 2026 FOMC meeting that the Fed would raise rates in September, with market pricing implying two hikes before year-end. But the firm argued the hurdle for the four voters who leaned toward holding rates steady in July to swing toward hikes within six weeks is high. It also pointed to seasonality, saying labor markets have historically weakened in summer, a pattern that helped drive rate cuts in September 2024 and September 2025. With the World Cup now over, a similar softening in jobs data could force bond traders to reprice tightening expectations, which 10x said would favor gold and bitcoin.
Trader Killa compares Clarity Act potential to the ETF narrative in the last cycle
Well-known trader Killa said in a post that during the last bull market, bitcoin had already started recovering from its lows before ETF rumors turned into formal approval, arguing that markets often price in positive developments early.
He said this cycle may rhyme, with the Clarity Act now forming a fresh narrative. In his words, 「if it does become the catalyst, it will likely mark the beginning of BTC’s first meaningful uptrend after the initial bear market recovery, and the approval itself would soon send BTC to a new ATH, just like ETF approval did.」
Killa, a quantitative trader focused on BTC, said he called the cycle top in May 2025 and has more than 200,000 followers on X. He shorted bitcoin at $74,688 in mid-April and turned bullish during the broad market drop on June 5.
Nick Timiraos says cooling inflation eased pressure for a rate hike next month
Federal Reserve watcher Nick Timiraos said the July inflation report came in broadly in line with market expectations, easing pressure on the Fed to raise rates next month.
Wall Street is focused on CPI data. Some officials still believe higher rates may need to stay in place and argue that policy is already restrictive, while elevated inflation reflects external shocks rather than loose monetary settings.
MARA pledges 18,750 BTC to secure $750 million in loans
Crowdfund Insider reported that bitcoin miner MARA Holdings disclosed in its latest quarterly SEC filing that it pledged 18,750 BTC as collateral for two bitcoin-backed loans totaling $750 million in principal.
The financing from Coinbase Credit includes a refinancing of an existing $150 million credit line and an additional $300 million in new capital. Two Prime Lending provided another $300 million. Both loans have been fully drawn, carry a blended financing cost of about 7.56%, and mainly mature in August 2028.
The 18,750 BTC used as collateral was worth about $1.2 billion when the transactions closed. If bitcoin falls and loan-to-value thresholds are breached, MARA could face margin calls, and the pledged BTC could be liquidated if additional collateral is not posted. The new funds will be used for general corporate purposes and to support MARA’s acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power.
The transaction values the target at about $1.5 billion. Long Ridge owns a natural gas power plant in Ohio with expected capacity of 505 MW and more than 1,600 acres of industrial land. MARA plans to develop the site further for bitcoin mining, AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.
New York City Council opens inquiry into prediction-market advertising
U.S. media reported that the New York City Council is investigating advertising practices at four prediction-market platforms, opening a new front in the legal disputes surrounding the fast-growing sector.
Council Member Julie Menin sent question-heavy inquiry letters to Polymarket, Kalshi, Coinbase Global Inc., and Titan, the prediction-market platform under Gemini Space Station. The inquiry is part of what the council described as a legislative investigation reviewing whether current city laws are sufficient to protect residents from false or deceptive marketing tied to these emerging platforms.
The council is also studying policy responses for products that could lead users to 「compulsively wager on event contracts.」 In its letter to Polymarket, the council said, 「The Council is investigating allegations involving Polymarket and, more importantly, the prevalence of similar marketing behavior across the broader prediction market industry, as well as the related social harms to New York City residents.」
Attestable launches with a $20 million seed round
AI security startup Attestable said it has formally launched and closed a $20 million seed round. The financing was co-led by Altimeter Capital’s Jamin Ball and TLV Partners’ Yonatan Mandelbaum, with participation from Halcyon Futures, Cerca Partners and other investors.
Founder Yogi said that as AI moves deeper into critical infrastructure, national security and large enterprise systems, verifying whether AI systems are operating in a trustworthy way has become an important global problem. The company aims to build a general verification layer for frontier AI labs, critical infrastructure and state-level applications.
Attestable said it uses zero-knowledge proofs to shift trust in AI systems away from the data center and toward mathematical verification. The approach can prove that an approved model, model weights, input data and execution policy generated a specific output, without exposing model parameters or user privacy data and without rerunning the model.
The company said it has already achieved verifiable inference for Meta Muse Glimmer 30B on a single NVIDIA H100 GPU at 85 tokens per second. The resulting proof files are small and designed with quantum resistance in mind, allowing fast verification. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin commented that the result means the performance overhead for zero-knowledge proofs of large language models is now close to the single-digit range. He added that the next challenge is reducing the performance cost of technologies such as fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE.
Goldman Sachs plans to buy Neos Investments for as much as $2.25 billion
Bloomberg reported that Goldman Sachs will acquire ETF provider Neos Investments in a cash-and-equity deal worth up to $2.25 billion, expanding its presence in actively managed ETFs.
Neos was founded in 2022 and currently offers nearly 20 income-focused ETFs built around options strategies, with about $32 billion in assets under management. After the transaction closes, Goldman’s ETF assets are expected to rise to roughly $130 billion. Neos co-founders Troy Cates and Garrett Paolella are expected to become partners in Goldman’s asset management division, and the broader Neos team is also expected to join.
Goldman’s asset and wealth management arm oversaw more than $4 trillion at the end of the second quarter, up by more than $700 billion from a year earlier, while revenue at the division rose 20% year over year.
Arkham says Bitmine is close to its 5% ETH target
According to Arkham research, Bitmine, described as the world’s largest Ethereum treasury company, now holds about 5.81 million ETH worth nearly $11 billion. After 14 months of steady accumulation, its holdings equal 4.8% of ETH supply, or about 96% of its publicly stated 5% acquisition target.
Unlike bitcoin treasury firms such as Strategy, Bitmine stakes more than 5 million ETH for yield. At an estimated 2.63% return, annualized staking income would be about $257 million.
Arkham said the most likely scenario after Bitmine reaches the 5% mark is a slowdown in buying rather than a full stop. Onchain data shows the pace of acquisitions has already cooled this year, and the company may shift toward balance-sheet management and maximizing staking yield once it passes 5%. A second possibility is that it keeps buying at roughly the same pace, given that Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee, who has led the strategy, has consistently been bullish. The least likely scenario, Arkham said, is a complete halt. If the market’s largest corporate ETH buyer exits the demand side, bullish sentiment could weaken in the short term, though the company’s staked holdings would still grow passively through network rewards.
Coldcard flaw drives weekly jump in new bitcoin addresses
The Block reported that wallet migration triggered by the Coldcard vulnerability pushed weekly new bitcoin addresses from about 260,000 to more than 330,000, reversing the broader downtrend seen for most of 2026.
Since July 30, Coinkite hardware-wallet users have lost at least 1,816 BTC, or about $116 million, across four waves of attacks. The flaw traces back to a 2021 firmware issue in which mnemonic phrases were generated with a weaker software random number generator instead of the device’s built-in hardware entropy source, making offline-generated wallets vulnerable to brute-force attacks. Coinkite has advised users who created wallets between March 2021 and the release of the security patch to move funds to fresh wallets.
The incident highlighted the practical risks of self-custody and has pushed users to reassess the trade-offs between self-custody and custodial options such as centralized exchanges and ETFs.
Rain acquires merchant-wallet company Ansa
Stablecoin card issuer and payments platform Rain said it has acquired branded stored-value and closed-loop payments platform Ansa. The Ansa team will join Rain, and founder and CEO Sophia Goldberg will become head of payments at Rain.
Ansa provides merchants with branded prepaid wallets and incentive tools, allowing stored-value balances to be used over Mastercard rails at existing POS terminals. Rain plans to combine that with its own Visa and Mastercard issuing capabilities to extend stored-value balances into more merchant settings and integrate them with wallets, rewards and stablecoin functions. Ansa had previously raised about $19.4 million.
SEC and CFTC sue Goliath Ventures and its founder
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission each filed civil actions against Goliath Ventures and founder Christopher Delgado, accusing them of running a crypto Ponzi scheme worth about $400 million.
The SEC said the company raised at least $425 million from more than 1,300 investors through unregistered securities offerings. It alleged that Goliath Ventures promised to place funds into crypto liquidity pools and deliver monthly returns of 3% to 10%, but invested no money or crypto assets and that Delgado misappropriated at least $51 million for personal spending.
The CFTC said about 1,600 customers put at least $397 million into bitcoin and ether trading. Delgado has agreed to settle the SEC case, with terms still subject to court approval. The CFTC is seeking restitution, disgorgement, civil penalties and a permanent injunction. He had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, and admitted causing at least $250 million in investor losses.
Empery Digital sells 1,635 BTC and cuts holdings to 1,279 BTC
Empery Digital sold 1,635 BTC between July 1 and August 6 for proceeds of $102.2 million, reducing its holdings to 1,279 BTC. Of that amount, 954 BTC has been pledged to secure $35 million of debt, leaving only 325 BTC unrestricted, down sharply from 1,375 BTC on June 30.
In the first half of the year, Empery Digital also sold 1,167 BTC for $80.1 million and spent $54 million on stock buybacks, repaying $50 million under buyback financing and another $10 million loan. After June 30, the company repaid $20 million of debt, and the lender returned 585 BTC, reducing pledged collateral from 1,539 BTC to 954 BTC.
The company has invested $2.9 million into EMHU, an independent real-estate project managed by Texstack, and may need to commit another $62.1 million if the acquisition closes. It has also completed a $20 million investment in Cardinal Data Power for roughly an 8% stake. As of June 30, the company held $3.7 million in cash including restricted cash and had a working-capital deficit of $5.7 million.
Thrive Holdings raises $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation
According to Thrive Holdings, the AI investment platform has completed a $2 billion financing round that values the company at $12 billion, with SoftBank, D1 Capital Partners and Altimeter Capital among the participants.
Thrive Holdings was founded in 2025 by Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner. Unlike traditional investment firms, it does not directly invest in developers of large AI models. Instead, it acquires traditional service businesses and integrates AI into business workflows to improve efficiency. The company says it wants to build platforms and products that bring frontier AI into critical industries used every day by millions of businesses and individuals. It had previously raised about $1 billion in initial funding.
Public miners have sold about 28,000 BTC this year
CoinDesk reported that Blockware Intelligence data shows listed bitcoin miners held 127,000 BTC at the start of the year and now hold 99,000 BTC, implying year-to-date sales of about 28,000 BTC worth roughly $1.78 billion at current prices.
The report said that while the selling is smaller than the more than $4.4 billion in net outflows from U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs, that steady source of marginal sell pressure can be underestimated during weak markets and soft demand. BTC has fallen 27% since the start of 2026, underperforming major assets including the S&P 500.
Mining economics have also tightened, with average production cost now around $74,300 per BTC. More miners are shifting toward AI compute infrastructure. At the same time, network mining difficulty has fallen about 18% from its November peak, lifting mining revenue for remaining operators by a similar 18% and reshaping industry competition.
Fidelity seeks staking and quarterly cash payouts for its Ether ETF
CoinDesk reported that Fidelity plans to add ETH staking and a quarterly cash distribution mechanism to its spot Ether ETF, the Fidelity Ethereum Fund, or FETH. The fund currently has about $898 million in net assets and would be allowed to stake as much as 100% of its ETH holdings under normal conditions.
Under the proposed arrangement, Fidelity would retain 85% of staking rewards, while the remaining 15% would go to the fund sponsor, custodian and node operators including Blockdaemon, Figment and Galaxy. Net staking income would first cover operating expenses, with any remaining amount distributed to investors in cash each quarter.
The move was prompted by a November 2025 Internal Revenue Service safe-harbor notice that allows eligible crypto trusts to stake without losing their grantor trust tax status.
KOL says Bitget may restart CNY/RMB-related C2C operations
Crypto KOL KUAI DONG said on X that, based on checks with multiple sources, Bitget will restart its CNY/RMB-related C2C business after a three-year suspension. He said the exchange has recently offered high pay to recruit people for the business and internally sees it as one of the most important initiatives of the year after its U.S. stock business.
He said the goal is to connect the full process for users seeking U.S. stock exposure, from deposits to obtaining stablecoins and then investing in U.S. equities. Earlier, Bitget’s Chinese-language regional head Xie Jiayin wrote on X, 「The most important thing this year is coming soon. You may be looking forward to it. You won’t have to go through the hassle anymore.」
Spot bitcoin ETFs post $4.8862 million in net inflows for the day
According to SoSoValue, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded total daily net inflows of $4.8862 million. BlackRock’s IBIT led the table with $50.1956 million in net inflows for the day, bringing its cumulative historical net inflows to $61.172 billion.
The largest daily outflow came from Franklin’s EZBC, which lost $16.4616 million, while cumulative historical net inflows for EZBC stand at $310 million. As of publication, total net asset value across spot bitcoin ETFs was $77.457 billion, with ETF net assets equal to 6.06% of bitcoin’s market capitalization. Cumulative historical net inflows reached $52.038 billion.
Coreum bridge exploit drains nearly 200,000 XRP
The cross-chain bridge linking XRP Ledger and Coreum was attacked on Aug. 9. The attacker exploited a validation logic flaw to steal about 199,900 XRP, reducing bridge-held balances from about 200,400 XRP to 493.5 XRP.
The attack did not involve private-key compromise and did not target the XRP Ledger protocol itself. The attacker forged deposit actions, which the bridge system treated as real deposits, triggering actual XRP transfers from the wallet on the other side of the bridge. Onchain data shows the attacker moved funds within 97 minutes through 94 multisig authorization transactions. Those transactions required 17 signatures from a set of 28 relay-node keys, allowing the attacker to bypass the bridge’s validation logic.
As of Aug. 11, the Coreum bridge remained paused and the Coreum Development Foundation had not yet released a formal incident report. XRP mainnet security and user private keys were not affected.
Kalshi seeks new funding at a $40 billion valuation
According to The Information reporter Yueqi Yang, prediction-market platform Kalshi has surpassed $4 billion in annualized revenue, double the level from two months ago, and is now seeking a new financing round at a $40 billion valuation. That would be 82% above the company’s $22 billion valuation in its Series F round in May.
The report added that Kalshi has been spending aggressively on marketing. Its June operating expenses reached $300 million, mainly tied to promotion and user acquisition.
Analysis says bitcoin perpetual volume has dropped to a three-year low
The Block reported that a K33 research note showed 30-day average BTC/USDT perpetual volume on Binance and Bybit had fallen to $10.8 billion, the lowest level since 2023. Only 5% of trading days posted lower volume.
At the same time, average daily spot bitcoin volume fell 18% from the prior week to $1.8 billion, while seven-day volatility dropped to 0.6%, the lowest reading since Christmas 2025. K33 head of research Vetle Lunde said weak trading activity and market apathy are feeding a self-reinforcing “hibernation loop.”
Open interest in bitcoin perpetuals remains elevated, however, averaging about 300,000 BTC from June through August, above the 2025-2026 average and leaving room for liquidation-driven volatility. Markets are now waiting for U.S. July CPI data due Wednesday. Economists expect headline CPI to rise 3.4% year over year and core CPI to rise 2.5%, while CME FedWatch shows roughly a 50% chance of a 25-basis-point rate hike in September. Bitcoin has traded in a $60,000 to $80,000 range for six straight months and remains about 50% below its October 2025 all-time high.
Santiment says LINK whale activity hit a five-month high
Santiment data showed a sharp rise in Chainlink whale activity, with 246 LINK transactions larger than $100,000 over the past 24 hours, the highest single-day count in five months.
Wallets holding between 100,000 and 10 million LINK now collectively own about 466.3 million LINK, or 46.57% of total supply, suggesting that whale activity has been accompanied by balance growth. Santiment said Chainlink continues to expand across CCIP, tokenized assets, stablecoins, institutional data and new cross-chain channels, with official metrics still positioning the network as core oracle infrastructure for onchain finance.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund discloses SpaceX stake for the first time
CNBC reported that Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which manages $2.34 trillion, posted more than $182 billion in profit in the first half, a record for the period, with a 9.4% investment return. Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, said the performance was mainly driven by strong stock markets, especially gains in Asian technology shares.
In its latest half-year report, the fund disclosed a SpaceX position for the first time. It owns about 0.05% of the company, valued at slightly more than $1.2 billion as of June 30. By comparison, the fund holds about 1.3% of Nvidia worth $61.8 billion and about 1.2% of Apple worth $52.7 billion.
The NBIM-managed fund was established in the 1990s to invest Norway’s oil and gas revenue. It now invests in more than 7,000 companies across over 50 countries and owns about 1.5% of all listed companies globally. Equities account for more than two-thirds of the portfolio, and U.S. stocks make up about 40% of the total portfolio.
Australia’s ASIC shuts down Yepbit sites
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission said it had shut down multiple websites linked to digital asset platform Yepbit and warned users not to trade with the platform. ASIC said it had received reports from several investors who were unable to withdraw funds.
Yepbit claimed to offer digital asset and futures trading services globally, including to Australian investors. ASIC said Yepbit fabricated the claim that “ASIC froze the funds” in an effort to delay refund requests. Yepbit does not hold an Australian financial services license and is not registered with AUSTRAC as a virtual asset service provider. ASIC said investors should verify whether a platform is licensed and exercise extreme caution when they cannot independently confirm an investment opportunity.
Bitwise keeps adding HYPE, with more than $5 million bought in the past week
Arkham monitoring shows Bitwise has continued buying Hyperliquid’s HYPE and has not sold any HYPE since last month. Since the start of August, Bitwise has only made HYPE purchases.
Data shows clients in Bitwise’s HYPE ETF bought more than $5 million worth of HYPE over the past week. Bitwise had previously launched an investment product tied to Hyperliquid to give institutional investors exposure to HYPE.
Meme watchlist
According to GMGN data as of Aug. 13 at 08:45:
- Top five ETH trending tokens over the past 24 hours: V4, LINK, UNI, PAXG, CRV
- Top five Solana trending tokens over the past 24 hours: Plumber, GTA, PITCOIN, TOAD, apes
- Top five Base trending tokens over the past 24 hours: QUID, CHECK, sami, VELVET, ELSA
Articles highlighted in the roundup
- “VC Will Disappear, Prediction Markets Are Overvalued, and Which Perp DEX Can Challenge Hyperliquid?”
- “Hyperliquid Open Interest Hits a Record While Revenue Falls for a Fourth Straight Quarter: Where Did the Money Go?”
- “Kalshi CEO on Polymarket: Not Competition, but a Clash of Ideas”
- “From Polymarket to U.S. Stocks: How Events Map Into Asset Prices”
- “If Ethereum Had Never Moved From PoW to PoS: A Game That Never Happened”
- “Why Does Payment End at the Account?”
- “Kalshi Founder: What Will Your Real Life Look Like Over the Next 12 Months?”