The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will hold a public meeting on Aug. 14 to consider whether to propose a “Regulation Crypto” framework that would allow some crypto projects to raise funds without completing a full securities registration process. If the agency opens the proposal for public comment, it would mark the SEC’s first formal, long-term rulemaking effort for the crypto industry.
In a separate legal development, Judge Vernon D. Oliver of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut denied Kalshi’s motion for a preliminary injunction and ruled that the platform’s sports-event contracts are not swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act. On that basis, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission did not secure exclusive jurisdiction.
Top centralized exchange tokens and 24-hour movers
The 10 most-traded tokens on centralized exchanges and their 24-hour performance were:
- BTC: -1.79%
- ETH: -2.48%
- XRP: -2.28%
- SOL: -1.16%
- BNB: -0.96%
- TRX: 0.12%
- DOGE: -0.03%
- LINK: 2.39%
- ZEC: -3.84%
- ADA: -3.24%
According to OKX data, the top gainers over the past 24 hours were:
- LSK: 13.74%
- GODS: 11.36%
- LUNA: 10.16%
- ASP: 10.15%
- xUSAR: 7.83%
- CSPR: 7.26%
- LQTY: 7.16%
- DGB: 6.90%
- BABYDOGE: 6.65%
- FLOW: 6.56%
Data from msx.com showed the top crypto-related stock gainers over 24 hours were:
- VELO: 26.1%
- CRWV: 18.52%
- SIDU: 13.3%
- NBIS: 13.25%
- NCLD: 12.56%
- BWET: 11.46%
- AEHR: 10.83%
- ONTO: 10.16%
- DXYZ: 10.06%
- SKUU: 9.68%
GMGN listed BOT, Mario64, Plumber, ORANGE and Lenny as the top five on-chain meme tokens.
SEC to weigh a crypto fundraising framework
The SEC’s public meeting is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Aug. 14. The agency will discuss a proposed “Regulation Crypto” structure that would let certain crypto projects raise capital without going through full securities registration.
The framework would also create a path for projects to move out of SEC oversight once developers no longer actively manage the project and the network has become decentralized. SEC Chair Paul Atkins previously said the exemption period could last as long as four years, though the meeting notice did not disclose a fundraising threshold.
The U.S. Senate did not advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act before entering its August recess. Even if the SEC opens the proposal for public comment, the final rule would still take months to complete.
Kalshi ruling narrows the CFTC argument on sports contracts
Judge Oliver’s ruling said Kalshi’s sports-event contracts do not qualify as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, so the CFTC did not gain exclusive jurisdiction through that route.
The opinion said sports-event contracts account for 80% to 90% of listed contracts and revenue on Kalshi’s platform, and that the CFTC had never reviewed any of those contracts under the relevant special rules. Oliver wrote that the result of a sporting event is an event outcome, not a separate event.
In another regulatory development, the CFTC said it had required prediction-market operator Kalshi to continue operating in New York. New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the company at the end of July and sought to shut the platform down. The CFTC said it used “emergency powers” to require continued operations after Kalshi asked for assistance.
Bitwise cuts staff while overseeing about $9 billion
Digital asset manager Bitwise Asset Management reduced headcount from about 180 employees to about 155, a cut of roughly 14%. The company said the move came during a period of continued weakness in digital asset prices.
Chief executive Hunter Horsley said Bitwise’s post-layoff workforce still stands at the highest level in the firm’s eight-year history. He also said he expects the business to keep growing as cryptocurrencies become more integrated into the global economy.
Bitwise manages more than 70 products across exchange-traded funds, private funds and separately managed accounts. Its Bitcoin ETF accounts for about $2.3 billion, and total assets under management stand at about $9 billion.
COLDCARD Mk3 flaw raises duplicate mnemonic risk
Bitcoin News reported that a technical analysis released by @KLoaec found some vulnerable COLDCARD Mk3 wallets may derive from only about 4.5 million random-number-generator initial states. Those possibilities could be exhausted in about three seconds on a single RTX 4090 GPU.
The analysis said that even after accounting for extra uncertainty in the way each wallet is generated, an attacker might still search the space in about 50 minutes on a single high-end GPU. More seriously, the flaw could cause different devices to generate the same mnemonic phrase.
Project updates from Hyperliquid, Robinhood Chain, Kalshi, Twenty One Capital and Polymarket
HyperliquidNews said Hyperliquid averaged 96,030 daily active users over the past week, setting a record high.
Robinhood Chain posted average daily transactions of 11.6 million last week, also a record high and about 30% above the prior week. Total value locked reached $473 million, up 32% from the previous week. Average daily active accounts rose 3.3% week over week, though the figure remained 11% below the July 16 peak. Within on-chain stablecoins, USDe reached $253 million, about 43% of the total stablecoin supply on the chain. One month earlier, USDe stood at $17 million. Robinhood’s native USDG had previously been dominant.
Prediction-market platform Kalshi has crossed $4 billion in annualized revenue and is seeking a $40 billion valuation.
Bitcoin treasury company Twenty One Capital, backed by Tether and listed on the NYSE under XXI, reported results for the second quarter of 2026. The company posted a net loss of $413.5 million, mainly because of a decline in the value of its Bitcoin holdings.
Its earnings release showed that about $401.5 million of the second-quarter loss came from the drop in the book value of its Bitcoin assets. Because the company uses Bitcoin as a core balance-sheet allocation, BTC price swings flow directly into financial performance.
New CEO Raphael Zagury said Twenty One Capital cannot remain only a “Bitcoin treasury” company and needs to shift toward a broader financial services platform.
Polymarket is reorganizing ahead of an expected autumn trading surge. The prediction-market company has brought in new executives, reworked its marketing structure and strengthened compliance teams as it prepares to expand in the U.S. market. It recently hired Bird founder and former Uber and Lyft executive Travis VanderZanden as chief growth officer to lead growth strategy and marketing. VanderZanden said prediction markets are at a fast-moving stage and the company needs a stronger management bench to support long-term growth.
The changes come while Polymarket faces regulatory scrutiny. The CFTC has investigated its business model over issues tied to marketing activities and partnership policies. People familiar with the matter said Polymarket has reorganized its marketing department, updated rules for promotional partners, trained employees and hired consulting firm AlixPartners to monitor whether partner content complies with the new standards.
The company has also added several executives focused on U.S. compliance and risk management: former Robinhood executive Megan McGrath as chief compliance officer for the U.S. platform, former Coinbase executive Natalie Oblazny in charge of U.S. regulatory affairs, former FBI and Coinbase employee Shana Bautista as head of global investigations and intelligence, and former Nasdaq executive Paul Jordan as chief risk officer for the U.S. platform.
Funding round-up across AI, market infrastructure and banking
Lin Junyang, the former technical lead for Qianwen, said he has founded a new company in Shanghai called Yuyong Technology, focused on next-generation agents spanning the digital and physical worlds. He said this financing round was jointly led by Gaorong Ventures and HSG, with support from Tencent and the Shanghai Future Industry Fund. A person familiar with the matter said the round was an angel financing at a $2 billion valuation.
AI infrastructure startup Trajectory said it raised $40 million at a post-money valuation of $300 million, with Sequoia Capital participating. The company did not disclose the financing round label or the other investors. Founded by researchers from companies including Google and Apple, Trajectory helps enterprises customize open-source AI models for specific business needs and improve the software toolchain that supports AI agents, described as an “Agent Harness.”
Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, has started an offering of U.S. investment-grade bonds two weeks after announcing an approximately $6 billion acquisition of electronic bond trading platform MarketAxess. People familiar with the matter said the bond sale could be split into as many as five tranches with maturities ranging from three to 10 years. Initial price talk on the longest tranche was about 1.15 percentage points above U.S. Treasury yields.
ICE previously said it would buy MarketAxess Holdings for about $6 billion to expand its position in fixed-income trading. MarketAxess is one of the world’s leading electronic bond trading platforms, serving institutional investors in products including corporate and government bonds.
Prediction-market trading infrastructure startup River Markets announced an $8.5 million seed round led by Haun Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Coinbase Ventures and Qube Research Technologies. The funds will be used to expand the engineering team, improve trading system speed and security, add institutional clients and build new tools for large-scale capital management and cross-platform trading.
Erebor Bank, a crypto-friendly bank founded by Palmer Luckey and Joe Lonsdale, is seeking $1.5 billion in financing and expects to complete the round within weeks. Its target pre-money valuation is $8 billion, and a16z is among the potential investors listed. The business focuses on crypto-friendly banking services. Erebor Bank completed a $350 million financing in December 2025 at a valuation of $435 million.
Shanghai-based quantum computing company Buchou Quantum said it recently completed a Series A round worth several hundred million yuan, bringing cumulative financing to nearly 1 billion yuan. Participants included Guotai Haitong, Jinding Capital, Zhongxin Juyuan, Shanghai Sci-Tech Innovation Group, industrial investors, a CITIC-affiliated fund, TCL Ventures, Jinpu Intelligent, Daohe Long-term Investment, Yuanhe Holdings, Yangpu Menghang, the Shanghai Industrial Intellectual Property Fund and Sichuan Venture Capital.
River AI, founded by xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin, said it raised $1.1 billion in a round led by General Catalyst and AMP PBC, with Nvidia and AMD also participating. Strategic investors in the round included Y Combinator and Temasek.
Venture firm Accel said it raised $3.5 billion across four new funds for early-stage investment globally. The global growth fund totals $1.35 billion and will support larger early rounds and follow-on investments. Its U.S. fund and Europe-and-Israel fund are each sized at $800 million, while the India fund totals $550 million.
GPU market data infrastructure company Silicon Data announced a first close of its $30.5 million Series A round led by Valor Atreides AI Fund. Investors also included CME Ventures, DRW, Samsung Next, VanEck, Jump Trading and Wintermute. The company said the money will support GPU benchmark pricing, performance measurement, institutional and alternative data, and risk infrastructure for derivatives, insurance and credit markets.
A second SEC initiative covers tokenized securities trading
Alongside the tailored issuance framework for certain crypto-related investment contracts, the SEC is also preparing what it calls an “innovation exemption” for digital securities trading.
The plan had originally been expected in May this year, but the agency delayed it after taking feedback from stock exchanges, public companies and other market participants. People familiar with the matter said the revised proposal may include a mechanism allowing stock issuers to object when third parties seek to list tokenized versions of their shares. It may also tighten anti-money-laundering requirements, including a possible rule that relevant token trading platforms must be entities registered in the United States.
Sriram Krishnan sees a new wave of AI-against-AI security startups
Former White House senior adviser on AI policy Sriram Krishnan said in a CNBC “Squawk Box” interview that a new wave of cybersecurity startups built around “AI fighting AI” is likely to emerge.
He said the rapid improvement of AI models, especially the rising risk from autonomous “rogue AI models,” will require new defense systems capable of identifying, monitoring and stopping AI-driven attacks in real time.
Krishnan said cybersecurity competition is moving toward an “AI offense-versus-defense” model. Attackers may use AI to find vulnerabilities and launch attacks automatically, while defenders will need AI to improve threat detection and response, creating room for a new generation of cybersecurity startups.