PANews’ Aug. 23 daily roundup pulled together a wide spread of developments across crypto markets, regulation, AI and trading data, with large on-chain transfers taking center stage. Market maker Wintermute moved a combined $57 million worth of SOL and BTC to Binance and Coinbase, then sent another 590.9 BTC to Binance, bringing its weekly BTC deposits there to 3,834.3 BTC. Separately, an address linked to F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun moved 12,765 ETH to Binance over more than three days and withdrew 87.68 million USDC to repay a Spark loan, in what the report described as a likely ETH deleveraging move. The roundup also highlighted institutional growth in South Korea’s crypto market. As of the end of July, the country’s five largest virtual asset exchanges had 6,590 registered corporate accounts, with Bithumb accounting for 3,280 and Upbit-linked accounts totaling 2,086. In corporate strategy news, Alibaba said it plans to place HK$80 billion in new shares, with net proceeds fully earmarked for investment in full-stack AI capabilities and infrastructure. Other items in the digest ranged from Grayscale’s views on Bitcoin’s cycle and proposed SEC crypto fundraising rules to Hong Kong’s warning on a suspicious tokenized investment product and a humanoid robot in Beijing that clocked 9.32 seconds in a 100-meter test.

ChainCatcher reported that ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood said Bitcoin is preparing for another major move and that she still sees the asset eventually reaching $1.5 million. Wood said she has kept that target unchanged, even when many people thought she had "lost her mind." She said her bullish case rests on three pillars: institutional adoption, Bitcoin’s fixed supply, and its growing role as a true digital store of value. Wood also said a specific catalyst could accelerate that timeline: the U.S. government buying Bitcoin.

ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood said Bitcoin is setting up for another major rally and maintained her long-standing view that the asset could ultimately reach $1.5 million. Speaking in an interview cited by BlockBeats on Aug. 22, Wood said she remains constructive on Bitcoin even after facing skepticism when she first put forward that price target. Her thesis rests on three main points: rising institutional adoption, Bitcoin’s fixed supply, and its growing role as a genuine digital store of value. Wood also pointed to one potential catalyst that, in her view, could materially accelerate the timeline for that target: purchases of Bitcoin by the U.S. government. The remarks reflect a position she has repeated multiple times, according to the report.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs drew $606.29 million on Thursday, their largest single-day inflow since May 1, according to SoSoValue. The category has now posted four straight days of net inflows, totaling about $1.61 billion, with August reaching $2.07 billion so far. BlackRock’s IBIT took in $502.99 million on the day, or about 83% of the category’s inflows, while Ethereum, XRP and Solana funds also saw money come in. Hashdex closed its DEFI Bitcoin ETF, the first U.S. spot Bitcoin fund to be liquidated.

Lorenzo Valente, head of digital asset research at ARK Invest, said Hyperliquid is in discussions with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission about enabling U.S.-regulated companies to offer perpetual futures on its public blockchain. He argued that a Gemini acquisition could give Hyperliquid a direct route into the U.S. market through an existing regulated entity. Valente said Gemini’s current market value is about $450 million, down more than 85% from its $3.3 billion valuation at the time of its 2025 IPO. In his view, that price would allow Hyperliquid to acquire Gemini’s full U.S. regulatory stack, including a NYDFS Trust Charter, DCM, DCO, FCM, MTLs, and a broker-dealer license. He added that Hyperliquid could use roughly 7.9 million HYPE from its community reserve, worth about $550 million at $70 per token, to fund the deal at around a 20% premium to Gemini’s current market value. Under the proposed structure, Gemini would handle KYC, custody, fiat rails, brokerage, clearing, and compliance in the U.S., while Hyperliquid L1 would provide market infrastructure, liquidity, and on-chain settlement.

ARK Invest digital assets research head Lorenzo Valente said trading venues focused on real-world assets, or RWAs, can reach meaningful scale with little reliance on Bitcoin and Ether liquidity, potentially pushing RWA liquidity to split by asset class. Speaking on July 23, Valente said DeFi is moving into a new phase as trading activity around tokenized equities and other RWAs grows. Data cited in his remarks showed RWAs accounted for 54% of Hyperliquid’s weekly volume, while single stocks made up 61% of RWA trading volume. Over the same period, decentralized exchanges recorded $79 billion in perpetual futures volume, with Hyperliquid contributing $50 billion. Valente added that if Trade.xyz were to account for 90% of Hyperliquid’s trading volume, it could seek a larger share of user fees. He also said most successful applications are still likely to rely on shared infrastructure, with teams considering their own chain only when the cost of operating independently outweighs the value they get from rented liquidity, users, and security.

Circle is being priced like a plain stablecoin issuer, but Artemis Analytics argues that view misses the company’s deeper moat in payments and its broader ambition to become a full-stack money platform for the internet. In the note, translated and published by TechFlow, Artemis says the market reaction to Open Standard’s launch — a consortium stablecoin backed by more than 140 companies including Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and Google — showed how narrowly investors still frame Circle’s business. Circle shares fell 17% that day, pushing CRCL close to its historical low, as traders appeared to bet that a coalition model could break the Circle-Tether duopoly and redistribute stablecoin economics across members. Artemis takes the opposite side. The firm argues that stablecoins are likely to grow at a 40% compound annual rate and exceed $1 trillion in supply by 2030, while liquidity and network effects make the market structurally winner-take-most. On that basis, Circle’s lead in cross-chain, app and exchange liquidity would be hard to replicate. The report also says Circle’s valuation multiples look compressed versus payment networks and high-growth fintech peers. Using assumptions that include $1 trillion in stablecoin supply by 2030, a 20% USDC share, 2% rates, growing transaction volume at Circle Payments Network, and additional fee generation from Arc if it reaches Tron’s scale, Artemis arrives at a revenue path close to $5 billion and argues that a 10x multiple could support a $50 billion market capitalization.

A White House crypto gathering set the tone for the day’s market and policy headlines. U.S. President Donald Trump urged Congress to move the CLARITY Act forward, calling it a powerful market-structure bill, while saying Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the U.S. in a fully compliant way. HYPE rose more than 20% over 24 hours following those remarks. The event came ahead of the first meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee, which is scheduled to cover crypto regulation, AI in trading and compliance, and prediction markets. At the same time, Coinbase said it has integrated Hyperliquid into Base App to offer perpetual futures trading to eligible users with up to 50x leverage in supported jurisdictions. Outside the policy story, VanEck said Bitcoin has triggered eight of its 12 capitulation indicators, suggesting the market is approaching historical bear-market bottom zones, though not necessarily a confirmed bottom. PANews’ daily roundup also highlighted Unitree’s launch of a 7-axis bionic robotic arm starting at 9,900 yuan, fresh ETF flow data, new funding deals across AI infrastructure, and several project updates spanning Berachain, Nethermind, Aligned, Linera and Flop Labs.