A Coin Metrics analysis says the key split between USDC and USDT is not just supply, but how often each dollar moves. In 2026, USDC’s annualized turnover on adjusted supply reached 741x, versus 74x for USDT, even though USDT’s market cap remained more than $100 billion larger. Year to date, adjusted stablecoin transfer volume totaled $41.7 trillion, with USDC accounting for $32 trillion, or 77% of the market, and USDT at $8 trillion, or 19%. The report argues that most headline stablecoin volume still comes from internal crypto-market activity rather than consumer payments. On Base, USDC transfers were heavily concentrated in a few contracts, led by DEX liquidity rebalancing and flash-loan activity. On Ethereum, USDC volume leaned even more toward flash loans, while Ethereum-based USDT showed a larger share of exchange-related flows. Tron presented a different pattern: little visible DeFi-driven turnover, a notable exchange-transfer share, and the largest bucket of unclassified activity, which the report says likely includes remittances and payment use cases. The breakdown offers a chain-by-chain view of what is actually driving trillion-dollar stablecoin flows across crypto infrastructure.

ChainFeeds’ Aug. 13 research roundup pulls together five separate market narratives that are shaping crypto in Asia and beyond. One report argues that Upbit’s once-powerful listing effect is losing force as the exchange accelerates token additions while trading activity keeps shrinking. Another examines Li Lin’s path from Avenir Group to UMX, framing it as a push toward unified accounts that connect crypto collateral, U.S. equities, and cross-market risk management in one system. The package also looks at South Korea’s persistent outbound crypto demand. Tiger Research says unmet domestic demand for derivatives and broader digital asset products is increasingly being served by offshore exchanges and on-chain venues such as Hyperliquid, with billions of dollars in identifiable capital flows and fee revenue moving abroad. Coin Metrics, meanwhile, breaks down the source of this year’s $41.7 trillion in adjusted stablecoin transfer volume, showing that a large share comes from liquidity provision and flash loans rather than straightforward payment activity. The final piece from Foresight Ventures questions whether perpetual DEXs can rely on token rewards indefinitely, arguing that post-TGE value distribution often shifts away from actual trading contribution toward token ownership.

Coinmetrics argues that headline stablecoin transfer figures need far more context. In its latest report, the firm examined USDC and USDT activity across Ethereum, Base, and Tron and found that a large share of on-chain volume is tied to market plumbing rather than consumer commerce. USDC’s annualized velocity reached 741x, compared with 74x for USDT, even though USDT still carries a market capitalization that is more than $100 billion larger. The report says that gap is largely explained by heavy flash-loan usage and DEX liquidity rebalancing, especially on Base and Ethereum. On Tron, by contrast, USDT flows were more closely linked to exchange deposits, withdrawals, and other settlement activity, while identified DeFi-related volume was minimal. Coinmetrics said adjusted stablecoin settlement volume had reached $41.7 trillion in 2026 so far, with daily adjusted transfers at one point topping $250 billion even as exchange trading volume fell to about $18 billion a day. The report’s main takeaway is that stablecoin transfer growth is real, but much of it reflects liquidity management, arbitrage, and exchange settlement inside crypto markets, not a one-to-one proxy for retail payments or broader economic commerce.

Peter Steinberg, the founder of open-source AI agent project OpenClaw, used a recent talk to lay out a detailed account of how the project began, how it spread, and how close it came to breaking him. He said the original prototype was built on a rainy day in November 2024 after he grew frustrated by the lack of a simple way to send prompts from his phone to his computer while managing AI agent tasks. What started as a WhatsApp relay later expanded into a broader agent product, moved through earlier names including Claudis and Claudebot, and eventually became OpenClaw. Steinberg described a first night on Discord when users tried to break the agent, followed by waking up to roughly 800 messages and a wave of attention that brought late-night media calls, investor outreach and requests from AI labs. He said the pressure nearly pushed him to delete the project. Over eight months, more than 18,000 people filed issues or pull requests, generating more than 111,000 in total, while close to 3,000 contributors logged commits in the repository. He also pointed to the risks of over-optimizing for one model provider, saying a sudden 24-hour cancellation notice for user subscriptions left little time to adapt. OpenClaw later shifted toward open-weight models. Steinberg said weekly downloads fell to 835,000 in May, then hit a record 4.7 million in June after the project had been declared dead. The team now has 10 members, is hiring for a CEO and other roles, and is again using OpenClaw to build OpenClaw.

The Bank of England's digital pound lab is testing how a central bank digital currency can coexist with private stablecoins to simplify cross-border trade finance for small and medium-sized enterprises. On January 15, the lab unveiled its first working use case: NOBO Finance and Applied Blockchain executed conditional B2B payments on a simulated digital pound ledger. The Bank also published a systemic stablecoin policy statement on June 22, requiring pound stablecoin issuers to hold 70% government bonds and 30% central bank deposits as reserves. The design phase runs until mid-2026.

Vina Intelligence, a Hong Kong startup focused on synthetic reasoning and Q&A data for large models, has come into the spotlight after a paper on AI-assisted decision-making in kidney cancer surgery was published in Nature Communications. According to the report, the publication made Vina Intelligence the first Chinese data-generation technology company and the fourth worldwide to appear in a major Nature journal with an impact factor above 10 over the past three years. The paper addressed a long-standing clinical question in renal cancer treatment: how to make more quantitative decisions between partial nephrectomy and radical nephrectomy. The team proposed an RDPM model that put 3D imaging and clinical variables into the same prediction framework, training and validating it on a cohort of 1,621 patients. In external multi-center testing, the model recorded an AUC range of 0.788 to 0.873. The study predicted long-term renal function decline risk and aimed to provide measurable support for surgery decisions that have often depended heavily on physician experience. The report also traces founder Liu Qifeng’s path from academic and AI infrastructure work in Hong Kong to launching the company in July 2024, then raising a HK$50 million seed round led by Lenovo Capital, as Vina Intelligence pushes its thesis that AI systems need to learn how to ask better questions, not just produce answers.

In a recent update, Sui announced that Mysten Labs has introduced Tessera, an enterprise-facing B2B settlement prototype. The project is built on a combination of Seal MPC and Sui's private transfer technology. Its stated goal is to solve a problem that has long kept business settlements off-chain: most blockchains make transaction amounts visible to everyone. Tessera operates through an internal corporate network, and only members that have completed KYC verification can join. Within this network, participants settle invoices using a privacy-enabled stablecoin. The system records the payer, payee, and payment time on-chain, but the actual transaction amount remains hidden. In addition, the level of detail available to each viewer is not the same; the two parties to a transaction, competitors, and regulators are given different access ranges, depending on the viewer's relationship to the transaction. The relevant code has been open-sourced. Since Tessera is still a prototype, it is not yet a production-ready settlement service. The open-source release provides an early look at how Sui-based private settlement between companies might work in practice. The original announcement was shared by Sui.

Bitcoin Asia 2026 is scheduled for Aug. 27-28 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, with Metaplanet as host and BTC Inc. as organizer. According to the announcement, the event expects more than 10,000 attendees from over 125 countries and will run a dedicated business track alongside the main summit. That track includes Deal Day, an institutional area on the show floor, and the Bitcoin for Corporations Symposium. Deal Day is described as an invite-only program focused on pre-arranged 30-minute one-on-one meetings between Bitcoin companies, banks, funds and research analysts. BTC Inc. said the format builds on a previous Deal Day held during Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas, where 23 exhibiting companies and 23 investment partners took part in more than 200 structured meetings. The announcement also positions Hong Kong as a suitable venue because of its virtual asset licensing framework, approval of Bitcoin ETFs, and stated openness to institutional digital asset business. A GA+ business pass priced at $197 will provide access to the networking zone, in-app meeting booking, selected networking opportunities and priority main-stage seating, while access to the Bitcoin for Corporations Symposium requires a business or Whale pass plus an invitation. Deal Day requires a separate application and credentialing process.