KuCoin Ventures used its latest weekly report to put a spotlight on two very different parts of the crypto market: a security failure in self-custody hardware and a capital shift toward regulated infrastructure. The report said the Coldcard incident has become one of the more significant personal custody security events of the year because the weakness was tied to seed generation rather than online exposure. According to the report, an integration error introduced in a March 2021 firmware update may have pushed some devices into a predictable software random-number path, cutting effective entropy from roughly 128 bits to as low as 40 bits. TRM Labs had tracked about 1,816 BTC stolen across more than 5,200 addresses as of Aug. 5, while Galaxy Research later raised the estimated losses to about $130 million. On markets, KuCoin Ventures said softer U.S. employment data eased immediate rate-hike pressure, though inflation and energy prices still limit room for a policy turn. It cited CME FedWatch data from Aug. 10 showing a 53.9% chance of no change at the Sept. 16 meeting and a 46.1% chance of a 25 bp hike. In crypto, weekly ETF flows improved, with close to $900 million in net inflows in the first week of August, yet BTC remained near $65,000 and ETH near $1,919. The report also said primary-market funding is still clustering around RWA, payments and compliant stablecoin infrastructure, highlighting Yellow Card’s $40 million strategic round and JPYC’s $38 million Series B2 financing.

PANews’ weekly funding roundup showed a pickup in crypto deal activity from Aug. 3 to Aug. 9, with 12 disclosed blockchain financing events totaling more than $94.9 million. Capital was concentrated in infrastructure, stablecoins, real-world assets and centralized finance, while DePIN, GameFi and rewards platforms also logged fresh deals. The headline M&A transaction came from Mastercard, which said it had completed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK, a deal previously reported in March as being worth up to $1.8 billion. On the financing side, Yellow Card announced a $40 million strategic round backed by SC Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital. Other disclosed transactions included rounds for Blockspace, MAGNE.AI, InvestiFi, JPYC, Dow Protocol, Vangrid and Bundle. PANews also tracked a separate wave of AI and robotics funding, where large checks continued to cluster around infrastructure, cloud capacity, optical networking and enterprise agent platforms, with Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures and the newly launched 224 Ventures also stepping up commitments to the sector.

A WuBlockchain-republished feature argues that the latest wave of layoffs across Web3 has been framed as an AI story on the surface, while the deeper driver is financial pressure and a weakening business model across much of the industry. The report says crypto exchanges and related firms have spent more than half a year cutting teams, reorganizing departments, and tightening internal controls, with employees often losing access to Slack, email, and internal systems before they even receive formal notice. Several named interview subjects in the article, identified by pseudonyms including Kevin, Richard, Xiaoyu, and John, describe abrupt dismissals, disputed severance, and a workplace culture where performance reviews, surveillance software, and difficult KPI structures can be used to turn layoffs into “performance-based” exits. The piece also ties the employment shock to broader structural changes in crypto. It says exchange revenues that once depended heavily on trading fees and listing fees are under pressure as retail participation weakens, token quality deteriorates, liquidity dries up, and onchain derivatives platforms such as Hyperliquid pull activity away from centralized venues. Coinbase’s May announcement of about 700 global job cuts, described by the company as an “AI-native reorganization,” is cited alongside claims from former employees and people familiar with the matter that the impact in India was much larger. The article ultimately argues that AI has become a convenient label, while the harder issue is that parts of Web3 no longer generate durable revenue in the way they once did.

Crypto venture funding slowed sharply in the first quarter of 2026, but stablecoin payment infrastructure remained one of the few areas still drawing large checks. Galaxy Research said crypto VCs invested $4 billion across roughly 355 deals during the quarter, down about 50% from the prior quarter, while deal count fell 16%. At the same time, 57% of capital went to later-stage companies, showing a clear preference for businesses that already have customers, revenue and payment volume rather than token-led narratives. That shift helps explain why companies such as Rain, OpenFX, RedotPay, Mesh and Conduit have continued to raise substantial rounds. Investors are not just backing stablecoin issuers. They are funding the wider stack around payments: cards, cross-border settlement, FX liquidity, wallets, banking access, orchestration and redemption. The appeal is straightforward. Stablecoins can serve as a 24/7 settlement asset, while the companies building on top of them can charge fees that look familiar to fintech investors, including transaction fees, FX spreads, card issuance fees and API subscriptions. Still, the article argues the excitement should be viewed carefully. On-chain stablecoin volume is not the same as real-world payment activity, and fundraising remains concentrated in a small number of scale players. Licensing, local banking ties, fiat on- and off-ramps, and rising competition remain central constraints even as the sector gains momentum.

WuBlockchain’s weekly roundup highlighted a broad set of crypto developments across U.S. regulation, treasury management, stablecoins, and market structure. The U.S. Senate has pushed a vote on the CLARITY Act to September, according to Politico reporter Jordain Carney, while Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger defended the bill against Wall Street Journal criticism and Bernstein said the odds of passage in 2026 are falling. Strategy disclosed the sale of 1,638 BTC at an average price of $63,957, using the proceeds for preferred dividends and STRC buybacks, while still holding 842,138 BTC. Elsewhere, BitMine raised its ETH holdings to 5.7978 million, Sam Blackshear said he is leaving Mysten Labs to join Anthropic, and Coinbase’s Bitcoin premium index stayed negative for 78 straight days. The week also brought Mastercard’s completed acquisition of BVNK, Hashdex’s plan to liquidate its DEFI ETF, Circle’s second-quarter 2026 earnings and USDC growth update, Arthur Hayes’ latest macro thesis tying an AI bubble break to renewed Bitcoin upside, and data from Brazil’s central bank showing crypto transaction volume rose 135% in the first half of 2026.

Seventeen of the largest U.S. banks have said The Clearing House will build on-chain clearing and settlement for tokenized deposits, linked to RTP and CHIPS for round-the-clock operation. The article argues that this is not simply a blockchain story. It is a liquidity story, centered on netting and liquidity-saving mechanisms that let banks settle large payment flows with far less prefunded cash than a gross, real-time model requires. CHIPS, for example, settles about $2 trillion a day with roughly $96 billion of prefunded liquidity, versus an estimated $442 billion under transaction-by-transaction gross settlement, according to the figures cited in the piece. That contrast sits at the core of the stablecoin debate. Stablecoins can move in seconds, but they generally require 100% prefunding. The article says this tradeoff resembles RTP, which also gives up netting in favor of prefunded instant settlement. At the same time, stablecoins have gained traction in areas traditional rails do not cover well: Global South payment corridors, weekends, merchant settlement, and access to transferable dollars outside the U.S. banking system. The piece also argues that stablecoins are not inherently incapable of netting. What is missing is clearing infrastructure around par exchange, redemption, and multilateral net settlement. It points to firms including Better Money Company, Ubyx, Glacis Labs, Cycles, and Circle’s CPN as signs that a token-era clearing layer is beginning to take shape.

Sonic Labs CEO Matt Visser used his 50th day in the role to publish a long public letter that rejects the idea of a return to "DeFi Summer" and resets the company around revenue. He argued that crypto has failed to deliver on its original promise to transform financial services, while market narratives that once supported the sector have weakened sharply. As one example, he pointed to Aave’s proposal last week to shut down its Sonic deployment, saying deposits on Aave tied to Sonic had fallen to about $7.6 million and were generating less than $5,000 in quarterly revenue for the protocol, not enough to cover maintenance costs. Visser said Sonic is now pushing four focused product tracks: payments and foreign exchange, AI agent infrastructure, perpetuals and real-world assets, and prediction markets. He added that each initiative will have a named owner, milestones, and clear stop conditions disclosed in Q4. Across all four, revenue is the main operating metric. On token design, Visser said S comes at the end of the sequence, not the beginning. Buybacks, burns, fee sharing, and flywheel structures are easy to announce, he wrote, but without real revenue they amount to moving treasury funds around and dressing that up as value accrual. His message was blunt: build products first, generate revenue second, and only then decide how value should be routed to token holders.

In an interview with TechFlow, Cregis founder and CEO Shawn Yan laid out the thinking behind more than a decade of entrepreneurship, from WeChat merchant SaaS and FinTech to enterprise digital asset infrastructure. Yan said he lived through the 2017 ICO frenzy, saw opportunities to make fast money, and chose not to pursue them. Instead, he said his team stayed focused on building transaction systems, enterprise wallets and capital operation tools tied to real business demand rather than market hype. He also shared his view on Bitcoin, stablecoins and tokenized gold as settlement tools, arguing that the three point to very different directions. In his account, stablecoins fit on-chain payment and settlement better today, while Bitcoin functions more as a store-of-value anchor than a daily payment rail. On the company side, Yan described Cregis as a three-part platform built around WAAS, Rails and Custody, with WAAS still serving as the core layer. The interview also covered licensing, compliance, customer demand from traditional financial institutions, product development shaped by repeated client pain points, and Cregis’ global expansion from Hong Kong into the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, Africa and the US. Yan said the company now serves more than 4,000 enterprise clients, and that trust in digital asset infrastructure is earned over time rather than through marketing.