Platform and protocol updates
Binance Wallet Meme Rush now supports Pools Trade, Uniswap’s new launchpad on the Robinhood chain.
DeFi yield protocol Neutrl said on X that it has temporarily halted minting, redemptions, and other protocol functions after its reserves were affected. The team said the step was taken after consulting legal counsel, with the stated aim of protecting users and keeping the process orderly while the impact is assessed. It said a clearer handling process and timing details will be shared once determined.
WLFI said Ryan Ballantyne will join as chief business officer and lead global business strategy and partnerships. The company said he previously led Coinbase’s enterprise client strategy group, where he worked on digital asset treasury, trading, and custody adoption among public companies and institutions.
The Trump family-linked crypto project WLFI has delayed a token sale tied to a Maldives resort project. The token had been expected to launch in the spring and was designed to give buyers rights to part of the income used to fund the resort’s loan project. People familiar with the matter said the plan was delayed because the Iran war affected travel activity in the Middle East and nearby regions. The project had been viewed as part of World Liberty Financial’s push into tokenized real-world assets.
Trades, treasury moves, and positioning
Nasdaq-listed Ethereum treasury company Sharplink said it will stake $200 million worth of ETH through liquid staking protocol Lido to improve the yield profile of its ETH holdings. The company said it will receive wrapped staked ETH, or wstETH, representing the staked ETH and accrued rewards, with Anchorage Digital serving as institutional custodian. Sharplink said the setup expands its existing ETH staking and restaking strategy.
Garrett Jin, described here as the agent for the “1011 insider whale,” went long nearly $100 million worth of bitcoin at an average price of $76,117. The position lost $16 million, not including $1.2 million in funding costs.
Bit Digital said it bought 8,568 ETH in the second quarter of 2026 for $20 million, at an average cost of about $2,334.25 per ETH. The company said it did not sell any ETH during the quarter and now holds about 164,310.5 ETH in total, including 75,757.5 ETH held directly.
Formula News founder Vida said on a personal channel that he reduced one-third of his bitcoin position near $63,000. He wrote that bitcoin still has a bull market ahead, but its narrative has been overshadowed by AI, and that he does not see a new narrative emerging in the next one to two years. He added that bitcoin’s core remaining narrative is fiat replacement and hedging against fiat depreciation, and said he expects he may be able to buy the position back in one to three years at a lower price, in the $45,000 to $55,000 range.
Exchange and crypto company earnings
Crypto exchange Bullish, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under BLSH, reported second-quarter results showing digital asset trading volume of $32.6 billion, down from $58.6 billion a year earlier. Net income (loss) was negative $280 million, compared with $108.3 million in the same period last year. Adjusted revenue came in at $92.6 million and adjusted EBITDA was $29.5 million. Subscription, services, and other revenue reached a record $62.7 million.
Ethereum treasury company Bit Digital, listed on Nasdaq under BTBT, reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $32.1 million, up 15% from $27.9 million in the first quarter. Ethereum staking revenue was $900,000, down from $2.3 million in the prior quarter, though first-half staking revenue rose 246% year over year. Digital asset mining revenue was $2.4 million, and the company mined 32.3 BTC versus 48.1 BTC in the previous quarter. First-half mining revenue fell 58% from a year earlier, which the company said was consistent with the ongoing reduction of that business. Net loss attributable to Bit Digital shareholders was $107.2 million in the quarter.
Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto reported second-quarter revenue of $35.87 million and a net loss of $133 million. It recorded $48.7 million in bitcoin-related digital asset valuation losses, while revenue from bitcoin derivatives was $10.4 million. As of the end of June, the company held about 4,467 BTC with a fair value of about $261.5 million.
Gemini reported second-quarter revenue of $45.5 million, up 37% from $33.3 million a year earlier. Net loss narrowed 19% to $107.7 million from $133.2 million. Credit card revenue jumped 231% to $16.2 million, and staking revenue rose 50% to $4 million. Prediction markets generated $500,000 in revenue, slightly above the $400,000 disclosed when the product launched last December. The number of event contracts traded on the platform rose 93% from the first quarter. Monthly transacting users increased 11% year over year, but assets on the platform fell from $18.2 billion to $8.4 billion as the value of major assets including bitcoin dropped 50%.
Nasdaq-listed AVAX One said second-quarter revenue rose to $2.8 million from $500,000 a year earlier, driven mainly by $2.1 million in AVAX staking rewards and a smaller contribution from BTC mining. The company still posted a net loss of $35.1 million, or $4.41 per share, mainly because of unrealized non-cash losses on digital assets, including 14.1 million AVAX tokens held on its balance sheet.
Audit, financing, and institutional activity
Tether said it has completed its first full independent financial statement audit, with KPMG U.S. issuing an unqualified opinion on the 2025 accounts of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. Tether described an unqualified opinion, also called a clean opinion, as the most favorable form of opinion an independent auditor can issue because it carries no reservations, exceptions, or warnings. A KPMG U.S. spokesperson said: 「We can confirm that we issued an unqualified opinion, in accordance with AICPA standards, on the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025. Due to client confidentiality obligations, we have no further comment.」 Tether had said in March that it had hired one of the Big Four firms for its first financial audit but did not name the firm at that time.
AI data infrastructure company Databricks said it completed a $5 billion strategic financing led by Coatue, with Blackstone, MGX, and T. Rowe Price participating and Sixth Street Growth joining as a new investor. The post-money valuation reached $190 billion, above an earlier disclosed valuation plan of $188 billion. The company said the funds will go toward AI infrastructure, product research and development, and potential acquisitions.
Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi said the company’s revenue run rate now exceeds $7 billion, up more than 80% year over year. On AI agent infrastructure, Databricks said it expects AI-generated software to scale sharply and argued that every AI application will need database support.
AI architecture developer Pathway said it closed a $30 million seed round with participation from Id4 Ventures, TQ Ventures, Red Bridge Ventures, Kadmos Capital, and Wilson Sonsini affiliate WS Investment. Databricks chief AI scientist Jonathan Frankle also joined as an angel investor.
Pathway is developing a biologically-inspired dynamic hierarchy, or BDH, as a “post-Transformer” architecture. The company said the aim is to address limits created by today’s Transformer models, which continue to depend on more data, GPUs, energy, and capital. It said BDH can keep learning with less data and adapt continuously, rather than requiring periodic retraining like traditional large models.
The company also named former Google DeepMind Gemini product lead Adam Kurzrok as chief product officer. He will oversee product direction built on BDH models, including model packaging, evaluation systems, and commercial deployment.
According to people familiar with the matter, Kalshi is in advanced talks with Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management on a new $750 million financing round at a $40 billion valuation. The report said Sequoia, based in Silicon Valley, manages $56 billion in assets and already has an executive serving on Kalshi’s board. Wellington Management, based in Boston and managing $1.3 trillion in client assets, would be making its first investment in Kalshi if the deal goes through.
Kalshi raised $1 billion in May at a $22 billion valuation and has since become the highest-revenue prediction market platform. Polymarket follows behind it and had previously sought financing at a $20 billion valuation. In August, Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, invested $600 million in Polymarket at a $15 billion valuation.
AMD is planning a bond offering that could raise as much as $5 billion. People familiar with the matter said the transaction could become the company’s largest-ever investment-grade bond sale, though the final size remains undecided and may change with demand. Another person said AMD plans four tranches with maturities ranging from three to 10 years. Initial price guidance for the longest maturity was about 1.15 percentage points above U.S. Treasury yields.
Bill Ackman’s investment firm is preparing a new vehicle that would give investors exposure to private companies before IPO. Ackman and chief investment officer Ryan Israel said in a Wednesday shareholder letter that Pershing Square Inc. has started preparations for Pershing Square Ventures Ltd. They described it as an evergreen permanent-capital vehicle that can continue holding positions after portfolio companies go public. The letter said Pershing Square recently completed several investments in private companies that will form part of the new fund’s initial portfolio, and that some private company investments from Ackman’s family office will also be included.
Research and regulation
1kx released a report on crypto industry revenue for the first half of 2026. It said total crypto revenue fell 23% year over year to $47 billion. The report attributed the decline to two main factors. First, finance-related revenue ran below 2024 levels: centralized exchanges, derivatives, and market makers fell by $5.2 billion; on-chain DeFi revenue fell by $1.8 billion, or 32%; and ETF and fund management fees fell by $1.1 billion. Second, blockchain revenue kept sliding: staking and mining rewards fell by $6.2 billion, transaction fees and MEV were cut in half, and blockchain-related revenue accounted for only 25% of total industry revenue, a record low.
The report also said stablecoin and RWA issuer revenue increased by $700 million, stablecoin cards and payments rose by $100 million, prediction market fee revenue grew by roughly 10 times for an estimated $300 million increase, DePIN fees nearly doubled, and middleware on-chain fees rose about 70%, led mainly by Chainlink. It added that DeFi and broader financial revenue fell in dollar terms but still rose to 64% of total industry revenue share. Consumer on-chain fees performed better than the average, falling 20%.
CFTC Chair Michael S. Selig released the agenda for the first meeting of the agency’s Innovation Advisory Committee. The committee will meet on Aug. 20 and focus on regulatory issues tied to crypto assets, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets.
Selig said the U.S. has long been a global center for financial innovation and that the commission wants to engage with entrepreneurs, researchers, and industry builders to discuss how emerging technologies and financial products can drive market development and help explore what he called the “new financial frontier.”
The meeting will be livestreamed on the CFTC website. Committee members and participants are set to discuss digital asset regulatory frameworks, the effect of AI on financial markets, and prediction market development. Members of the public may submit comments through Aug. 27, and those comments will be published on Regulations.gov. The CFTC said the agenda may change based on later priorities. The committee is meant to advise the agency on emerging technologies, financial products, and innovation trends that could shape future market structure.
Macro data and rate expectations
U.S. producer prices rose 4.7% in July from a year earlier, below the 4.9% estimate and down from the prior 5.5% reading. Month on month, PPI was flat, versus an estimate for a 0.2% increase.
Cleveland Fed President Hammack reiterated that rates must rise now.
Initial jobless claims in the U.S. came in at 209,000 last week, versus an estimate of 202,000 and a prior reading of 199,000.
According to CME FedWatch, the probability that the Federal Reserve keeps rates unchanged by September stands at 65.2%, while the probability of a cumulative 25-basis-point hike is 34.8%. By October, the probability of no change is 50.1%, the probability of a cumulative 25-basis-point hike is 41.8%, and the probability of a cumulative 50-basis-point hike is 8.1%.
Other corporate and project developments
Unitree Robotics said in an exchange filing that its application for an initial public offering and listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market has been approved for registration by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The final offer price was set at RMB 150.8 per share, with 40.4464 million shares issued. Subscription payments for the offering were completed on Aug. 12, 2026. The final online allotment success rate was 0.01809759%. Online investors forfeited 8,734 shares and offline investors forfeited none. All forfeited shares were underwritten by the sponsor and lead underwriter for RMB 1.3171 million, accounting for about 0.02% of the total offering size. Total issuance expenses reached RMB 182 million.
According to National Business Daily, DeepSeek announced API pricing changes that will take effect on Aug. 17. The company will adopt peak and off-peak pricing, with off-peak rates set at half of peak rates. Peak periods are 9:00-12:00 and 14:00-18:00 Beijing time, with all other hours treated as off-peak. The new prices take effect at 00:00 Beijing time on Aug. 17, 2026. For deepseek-v4-pro, the peak-period output price can reach RMB 27 per million tokens.
DeepSeek Harness opened testing of its developer preview v0.1 to developers worldwide and released the code under the MIT license. The project uses an “everything is a plugin” design approach. Its open plugin-based architecture is built to assemble an agent harness in which models, tools, skills, sessions, sandboxes, storage, loops, scheduling, and UI are all modular plugin components that can be swapped and recombined.
Citrini analyst Jukan reposted a report on X saying investors in Anthropic believe rapid demand growth for Claude AI models and tools could support extremely high valuation expectations.
According to that report, investors expect Anthropic’s annualized revenue to reach $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of 2026, more than 10 times higher than at the start of 2026. One institutional participant said that if Anthropic can sustain annual revenue growth of about 800%, the company’s valuation could reach $3 trillion even at a lower 30x revenue multiple.
Investors said Anthropic is shifting from an AI model supplier toward an enterprise AI infrastructure platform as demand for advanced AI models from businesses keeps climbing. The report added that future valuation still depends on commercialization speed, enterprise adoption, and AI infrastructure costs.
Garrett Jin’s weekly market note
Garrett Jin, identified as the agent for the “1011 insider whale,” published a market analysis weekly note. On Korea, he said his team had waited for SK Hynix to pull back to a key support area before re-entering. The stock recently retested around KRW 1.42 million, touching the second support area of a previously identified double-bottom structure, then rebounded quickly. On Aug. 13 it rose as high as KRW 1.634 million intraday and closed up 5.9%.
He said the Korean stock market is still in a wide trading range rather than in a new trend cycle. In his view, overseas capital’s earlier short-term trading has not turned into long-term allocation, and pressure from leveraged ETFs is still affecting the market.
On macro assets, Jin said gold rose more than expected, gaining 7.8% in one week and reaching as high as $4,467. He attributed that move mainly to expectations for a weaker dollar, soft U.S. employment data, and reduced expectations for rate hikes. He added that the near-term gold trade looks crowded and that a pullback could create another accumulation opportunity.
By contrast, he said bitcoin has been relatively weak and is trading around $63,600, still constrained by support at $62,500 and resistance between $65,000 and $70,000. He added that the bottoming structure that began at $57,700 in July is still gradually taking shape.
On SpaceX, Jin said his team had flagged a buying opportunity on Aug. 6, the day lock-up shares were unlocked. About 911.5 million insider shares became available then, more than doubling the public float, while roughly 35% of the float was sold short, leading many in the market to expect price pressure.
SpaceX then moved higher instead, rising about 22% over two days, adding about $327 billion in market value, and reclaiming the $135 IPO price. Based on an earlier indicated entry around $110, the one-week gain was about 35%.
Jin said the large-scale unlock combined with heavy short interest ended up acting as a catalyst because the market had already digested expected selling pressure. Even so, he said more unlocks are still ahead, including about 319 million shares on Aug. 20 and about 700 million shares expected in each of September and October. On that basis, he said the area around $160 looks more suitable for profit-taking than for chasing the move.
Selected AI headlines
PANews AI Watch listed several AI developments from the past 24 hours.
- OpenAI launched an ultrafast mode for GPT-5.6 Sol, with Cerebras providing compute. The company said processing speed is 14 times that of the standard mode and output can reach 750 tokens per second.
- OpenAI named Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz, as chief revenue officer, succeeding departing executive Denise Dresser and taking charge of the global revenue organization. The report described him as the second executive departure at OpenAI this week.
- Google DeepMind officially released Gemini 3.7 Flash for low-latency, high-efficiency use cases. It is the latest speed-optimized model in the Gemini family.