Crypto markets saw a dense mix of policy, institutional and infrastructure developments over the past 24 hours. Hyperliquid is exploring a compliant route into the U.S. perpetual futures market, according to The Information, a move that would matter because the platform does not currently serve U.S. users. At the same time, GSR markets head Spencer Hallarn said in an interview with Cryptonomist that many tokenization platforms still lack meaningful trading activity, arguing the bottleneck is platform design rather than demand for tokenized assets. Elsewhere, MARA disclosed in an SEC filing that it pledged 18,750 BTC to secure two bitcoin-backed loans totaling $750 million, with proceeds set to support general corporate purposes and its acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power. New York City Council has also opened an inquiry into advertising practices across prediction market platforms including Polymarket and Kalshi, adding another layer of scrutiny to the sector. Other major items included Fidelity’s plan to add staking and quarterly cash distributions to its spot Ether ETF, a Coreum bridge exploit that drained nearly 200,000 XRP, and data showing public bitcoin miners have sold about 28,000 BTC this year. The session also featured updates on Bitmine’s growing ETH treasury, Kalshi’s fundraising push, and a fresh warning from Australia’s ASIC over the digital asset platform Yepbit.

Binance Futures will add multiple U-margined TradFi perpetual contracts on August 14, covering ZHONGJIUSDT, SAMSUNGEMUSDT, HANMIUSDT, LGELECTRONICSUSDT, NAVERUSDT and KODEX200USDT. The contracts will go live in a staggered window between 10:00 and 10:25, with maximum leverage set at 20x.

Pump.fun lost a large slice of the token-launch market in early July as a wave of launchpads on Robinhood Chain, led by NOXA and later Pons, pulled its weekly share down to 26.7%. Four weeks later, that share had climbed back above 50%, with pump.fun posting a 90-day high of $9.21 million in weekly fees for the week ended Aug. 11. The broader launchpad market expanded even faster than pump.fun lost ground, with total fees across 125 launchpads rising 77% to $75.39 million in the 30 days through Aug. 11, according to The Defiant’s calculations using DefiLlama data. Much of that growth came from Robinhood Chain, whose launchpad fees nearly matched Solana over the same 30-day window before cooling on a weekly basis. Pons became the largest new challenger, generating $19.80 million in 30-day fees across two versions, while Uniswap Labs entered the chain with pools.trade and a zero launchpad-fee model. Even so, the surge in launchpad activity has not translated into a broad recovery in memecoin prices: CoinGecko data cited by The Defiant shows the sector remains 83% below its December 2024 peak.

ChainCatcher reported, citing crypto KOL KUAI DONG, that Bitget is set to restart its CNY/RMB-related customer-to-customer, or C2C, business after the service had been halted for three years. KUAI DONG said the claim was confirmed through checks with multiple sources. According to the post, Bitget has recently offered high salaries to recruit people tied to the business, and internally the exchange sees the effort as one of its most important initiatives this year, following its U.S. stocks business. The stated goal is to connect the full path for users seeking to invest in U.S. equities, from funding and obtaining stablecoins to making stock investments. The report also pointed to an earlier post by Bitget Chinese-language regional head Xie Jiayin, who wrote: 「The most important thing this year is coming soon. You may be looking forward to it. You won’t need to go through the hassle anymore.」

Robinhood’s broader business is still expanding, yet its crypto segment has lost momentum. In the second quarter of 2026, Robinhood posted record quarterly revenue of $1.31 billion, up 32% year over year, while crypto revenue fell 38% to $100 million and accounted for just 8% of total revenue. Retail crypto trading volume on the Robinhood app dropped 36% to $18.2 billion, and crypto assets under custody slipped to 7% of total custody assets, the lowest quarterly share on record. Against that backdrop, Robinhood launched Robinhood Chain on July 1, 2026, and the network opened with one of the strongest Layer 2 debuts in recent years. The chain generated $3.6 million in real economic value, or REV, in July alone, taking 38% of all L2 chain revenue tracked by growthepie and outpacing Polygon and Base. But the report argues that the early activity was driven mostly by meme coins, not tokenized real-world assets. Meme coins made up 51% of July spot volume, while RWA accounted for 5%, and 48% of RWA volume came from pools pairing RWA with meme tokens. Blockworks Research says the bigger monetization opportunity may sit above the infrastructure layer. USDG is estimated to be capable of generating about $10.5 million in annualized interest income at current scale, while Morpho’s integration points to the commercial value of direct distribution through the main Robinhood app. By contrast, Lighter’s deployment through Robinhood Wallet contributed only 0.2% of Lighter’s total perpetuals trading volume. For now, the report concludes that Robinhood Chain is not yet large enough to move Robinhood’s overall financials in a meaningful way.

BlockBeats reported on August 12 that Upbit has issued an official notice regarding a temporary suspension of deposit and withdrawal services. Citing the Ontology network upgrade, the exchange will halt these services starting at 23:00 Korea Standard Time on August 20, 2026. The suspension covers digital assets operating on the Ontology network, specifically Ontology (ONT), Ontology Gas (ONG), and MovieBloc (MBL). While deposits and withdrawals are paused, trading for these assets will continue unaffected. Upbit stated that after the network upgrade is completed and stability is validated, it will notify users through a separate announcement when normal deposit and withdrawal operations resume.

A ChainCatcher-published translated article argues that speculation in crypto should not be viewed only as noise or a casino-like side effect. In some cases, it acts as the first source of liquidity, and that liquidity later supports more durable trading and pricing systems. The piece, written by Prathik Desai and translated by Saoirse of Foresight News, frames the debate through both financial history and recent crypto market examples. It points to Chicago grain futures in the 19th century as an early case where speculators took the other side of farmers’ risk, helping create the liquidity that eventually made Chicago a global wheat pricing hub. It then moves to current crypto markets: Uniswap’s Pools launch on Robinhood Chain for Meme coin issuance and trading, Hyperliquid’s expansion from leveraged crypto trading into perpetuals tied to assets such as gold, oil, silver, stock indexes, Nvidia and Tesla, and Robinhood Chain’s attempt to use Meme coin traffic to help build on-chain stock trading infrastructure. The article’s core argument is narrow but clear: speculation only becomes a durable base when it is tied to an underlying asset or use case capable of sustaining value. Otherwise, it remains a short-lived bubble.

A TechFlowPost article argues that Uniswap, Hyperliquid and Robinhood Chain are moving along the same evolutionary track in finance: speculative trading arrives first, liquidity forms around it, and more durable financial infrastructure is built on top. The piece, written by Prathik Desai and translated by Foresight News, frames speculation not simply as noise or a bubble, but as an early market mechanism that can help bootstrap liquidity if it remains tied to assets or trading venues with lasting utility. To make that case, the article links current crypto developments with older examples from financial history, including the rise of the Chicago futures market and Keynes’ distinction between enterprise and speculation. On the crypto side, it points to Uniswap’s Pools launch on Robinhood Chain, where traders discovered pre-release contracts and drove more than $150 million in volume before the public rollout. It also highlights FRONG, a frog-themed token that became the platform’s unofficial mascot, and notes that Uniswap V4 daily volume on-chain jumped from $86.2 million to $228.3 million. The same pattern appears in Hyperliquid, where real-world asset perpetuals accounted for 52% of total volume in early July, and in Robinhood Chain, whose daily active users surpassed Base three weeks after launch, according to the article.