PANews’ Aug. 18 daily digest was led by a proposed U.S. Treasury rule tied to stablecoin oversight, a fresh ETH accumulation update from Bitmine, and Unitree Robotics’ upcoming STAR Market debut in Shanghai.
U.S. Treasury opens comment period on GENIUS Act stablecoin framework
The U.S. Treasury issued a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking public comment on the implementation framework for Section 3 of the GENIUS Act. Under the notice, the law is expected to take effect on Jan. 18, 2027. In principle, issuing payment stablecoins in the United States would require a federal or state license. Starting July 18, 2028, digital asset service providers would generally be prohibited from offering U.S. users payment stablecoins issued by unlicensed issuers.
The public will have 60 days to submit comments after the rule is published in the Federal Register.
Regulation and macro
Austrian regulators issued the first fine against Bitpanda under MiCA.
Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is conducting an antitrust investigation into venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z. The review is focused on board positions held by firm partners at AI companies that compete with one another. Co-founder Ben Horowitz sits on the board of Databricks, while partner Martin Casado sits on the board of Fivetran. The two companies compete in data processing. Casado had also served on the board of dbt labs before its acquisition by Fivetran in June.
The report said the investigation has been under way for nearly a year and began with antitrust review of Fivetran’s acquisition of dbt labs. That transaction was approved unconditionally, but the inquiry into board seats is still active. Bloomberg said these cases often end with board resignations. The report also said a16z has close ties to the Trump administration. Its two founders donated millions of dollars to Trump-aligned groups in 2024 and pushed for weaker AI safety guardrails. The firm manages $90 billion in assets, recently raised a $15 billion fund, and counts SpaceX, OpenAI, and Cursor among its portfolio companies.
Exchanges and project updates
According to The Block, Kraken has rolled out U.S. stock trading to compliant clients in the European Economic Area. The service had previously been made available quietly to users in Germany, the Netherlands, and France, and has now expanded across all EEA member states. Kraken said it is currently the only crypto-native platform offering both traditional U.S.-listed equities and tokenized stocks, branded as xStocks, to EEA clients through a single regulated account.
Kraken said EEA users can trade more than 7,000 U.S. stocks, over 600 crypto assets, and more than 700 xStocks in the same account. Since xStocks launched in June 2025, cumulative trading volume has exceeded $3.8 billion. The service is provided by Cyprus-based Payward Europe Digital Solutions (CY) Limited, which is regulated under the European Union’s MiFID II framework. Kraken said it plans to expand the combined stocks-and-tokenized-stocks offering into more markets.
Binance said it will remove and stop trading the following spot pairs at 11:00 a.m. Beijing time on Aug. 21, 2026: F/USDC, HIVE/USDC, ILV/USDC, LTC/BNB, NMR/USDC, STEEM/USDC, and SUI/BNB.
Binance Alpha has listed the “Niulai” token.
Decentralized AI inference network DGrid AI released the tokenomics for DGAI. The token is positioned as the coordination layer for its decentralized AI agent network and will be used for node staking, AI service payments, contributor rewards, and protocol governance. Total supply is 1 billion tokens. Of that, 50% is allocated to node operators and infrastructure providers with a 10-year linear unlock, 15% to the community with a 6-month lockup and 2-year linear vesting, 10% each to the team and investors with a 1-year lockup and 2-year linear vesting, while 8% for airdrops and 7% for initial liquidity will be fully unlocked at TGE.
According to National Business Daily, after requiring new account applicants to confirm that investment funds came from lawful offshore channels, banks in Hong Kong have begun asking some existing mainland Chinese investment clients to submit declarations on the source of funds. The report said HSBC Hong Kong has recently notified some existing mainland Chinese investment clients that they must submit an “Account Opening / Maintenance Declaration” through the HSBC Hong Kong app and update contact details by Sept. 12.
The declaration includes confirmation that investment funds come from lawful sources outside mainland China and that the bank may disclose personal data at the request of law enforcement or regulators. The notice said investment services could be suspended if the form is not submitted by Aug. 20 and could be terminated if it is still not filed by Sept. 12.
An HSBC spokesperson said: 「When managing investment client relationships, we follow relevant regulatory requirements. We are therefore inviting relevant mainland Chinese investors to provide self-declarations and confirm that the information they provided in ‘know your customer’ and ‘customer due diligence’ processes is current and valid.」
Sequoia China is reportedly seeking to raise $1.2 billion for its first U.S. dollar fund since its separation.
The Ethereum Foundation launched the Platåberget testnet ahead of the Glamsterdam upgrade set for Aug. 20.
Tether is planning AI applications for users in emerging markets across healthcare, finance, sports, and other areas.
Bloomberg reported that Alibaba has agreed to sell its gaming unit Lingxi Interactive Entertainment to Asian private equity firm Trustar Capital in a deal valuing the business at at least $1.5 billion. Lingxi CEO Zhou Bingshu said in an internal memo that the move is intended to help Alibaba focus on strategic priorities.
The report said Alibaba is accelerating its AI and cloud transition and is targeting $100 billion in AI revenue within five years. This month the company unveiled what it described as its largest AI model to date and said performance could match Anthropic. The disposal is the latest step in a broader push to shed non-core assets and sharpen its AI focus.
Robinhood said in a post on X that its Agentic Trading crypto feature is being rolled out gradually to eligible users. Users can connect AI agents through Robinhood’s MCP server and trade crypto assets, stocks, and options in a dedicated agent account using only funds they have deposited.
According to Kechuangban Daily, hedge fund Situational Awareness is selling its $5 billion stake in Anthropic at a 20% discount as it rushes to raise cash. The fund was founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner and has recently faced a forced liquidation crisis tied to highly leveraged trading.
Treasury moves and corporate holdings
Strategy said in its latest Form 8-K that it sold about 3.46 million MSTR shares between Aug. 10 and Aug. 16, generating net proceeds of $333.7 million. Of that total, $132.2 million was used to repurchase 1.3887 million STRC shares and $149.1 million was used to increase U.S. dollar reserves. As of Aug. 16, those reserves stood at $4.8 billion. The company did not buy or sell Bitcoin during the period, leaving total holdings unchanged at 840,447 BTC.
Strive said in an 8-K filing that it bought 79 BTC, including fees, between Aug. 10 and Aug. 14 at an average price of about $63,231. Its Bitcoin holdings rose from 20,167 BTC to 20,246 BTC as of Aug. 14. The company also holds 505,000 shares of Strategy’s STRC preferred stock.
Unitree Robotics said its RMB-denominated common shares will begin trading on the STAR Market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Aug. 19, 2026, under stock code 688836. The company is offering 40.4464 million shares in the IPO, representing 10.00% of post-offering share capital. Total post-offering share capital will be 404 million shares.
For 2025, Unitree reported revenue of RMB 1.699 billion and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent of RMB 278 million, based on the lower of the figures before and after non-recurring items. The offering price is RMB 150.80 per share. On that basis, the 2025 diluted static price-to-sales ratio is 35.89x, above the average for comparable listed peers. The diluted price-to-earnings ratio, calculated on the lower figure before and after non-recurring items, is 219.23x, also above the industry’s average static P/E over the past month. Initially unrestricted tradable shares at listing total 30.0877 million, or 7.44% of total post-offering share capital.
Bitmine added 9,926 ETH last week, taking total holdings to more than 5.81 million ETH.
Fundraising and investment
The Wall Street Journal reported that AI chip startup Etched raised $700 million in a financing round led by Jane Street, bringing its valuation to $21 billion. Etched has signed Jane Street as its first customer and has started shipping chips.
AI chip startup Groq raised $350 million, but its valuation fell to $3.5 billion, roughly half the level from close to a year earlier. The round was led by Dallas-based investment firm Disruptive, and Nvidia is also set to participate. Founded in 2016, Groq had been viewed as one of Nvidia’s more important rivals in AI chips. It focuses on dedicated hardware for artificial intelligence computing and is now shifting toward becoming an AI data center operator serving inference demand.
OpenAI said it has reached an agreement with SB Energy, NVIDIA, and the U.S. Department of Energy to build an approximately 8 GW-IT data center cluster at the PORTS-Pike Technology Park in Pike County, Ohio. The first 800 MW is expected to come online in 2028, with the full buildout running through 2032.
SB Energy will fund grid upgrades and new transmission lines on its own, according to the announcement, and the data centers will use a closed-loop air cooling system to reduce water consumption. The project is expected to create about 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 long-term operations jobs. OpenAI and SB Energy will jointly contribute $80 million to a community fund, and roughly 844,000 college students in Ohio will receive a combined $84 million in credits for Codex, a tool inside ChatGPT. NVIDIA will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, and the data center cluster will be dedicated to NVIDIA AI compute deployments.
AI voice tool Wispr raised $280 million in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures.
Ethereum upgrade and market views
The Ethereum Foundation warned that changes to the gas model in the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade could cause some wallets, indexers, and gas estimation tools to malfunction. The foundation’s protocol operations team said any tool that depends on a hard-coded maximum gas limit 「will not work」 and urged developers to test their systems on the Platåberget testnet.
Glamsterdam is scheduled to activate on Aug. 20 and will then be deployed to the Sepolia and Hoodi testnets. The Ethereum Foundation said EIP-8037 introduces a separate state gas dimension. Transferring ETH to an existing account will remain at 21,000 gas, while transfers to a new account will incur an added state gas charge. The upgrade also includes built-in proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists, and a higher contract code size limit.
CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. said long-term holder supply stands at 16.35 million BTC, just 58,000 BTC below the all-time peak of 16.41 million BTC recorded on July 30. Over the past 90 days, that supply has increased by 1.38 million BTC. In the past 15 days, long-term holder supply fell on only two days. He said the frequency of declines is near the lowest level, pointing to no clear selling pressure.
Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley wrote that it is becoming harder to talk about “crypto” as a single category because the field has split into separate tracks including Bitcoin, blockchain infrastructure, tokenization, stablecoins, perpetuals, meme coins and NFTs, and lending markets. He said that shows the industry is maturing through differentiation. Looking ahead 12 months, he said discussion will center more heavily on “on-chain finance.”
On-chain data
Lookonchain said developer address 0x6af3 did not buy any of the “Niulai” tokens it created. Although the token’s market capitalization peaked at $49 million, the developer did not profit from it. The same address later launched three more tokens — “Banduoti,” “Niulailiao,” and “Moo” — and made $25,300 in profit.