PEPE rose about 25% this week, including a 22% gain over the past two days, as large-holder activity and derivatives positioning both picked up. Data from Santiment showed seven whale transactions worth more than $1 million each on Thursday, the highest single-day count since March 16. At the same time, exchange supply of PEPE has fallen by 1.45 trillion tokens since Aug. 12, while major non-exchange wallets added 3.54 trillion tokens over the same period. In derivatives, CoinGlass data showed PEPE futures open interest climbing to $250 million, a three-month high and about 19.6% above the prior day. The weighted funding rate remained positive, pointing to a bullish bias in the market. PEPE has also moved above its 50-day and 100-day exponential moving averages, with the next key resistance level near the 200-day line at around $0.00000363. According to CoinJournal, whale accumulation near local lows, shrinking exchange balances, and rising derivatives interest may support PEPE in the short term, though elevated open interest could also increase liquidation risk if price action reverses sharply.

Decrypt’s Morning Minute said Pump.fun’s PUMP token is showing its first golden cross since launch, with the 50-day EMA moving above the 200-day EMA after a prolonged downturn. The token fell to $0.001491 in July, traded as high as $0.003 intraday on Monday, and later changed hands near $0.002733. The report tied the move to improving business performance rather than price action alone. According to DefiLlama data cited in the piece, Pump.fun generated $11.52 million in revenue over the past seven days, ranking fourth among all crypto protocols behind Tether, Circle, and Canton. The newsletter also said annualized revenue stands at $458 million against a $1.09 billion market cap, while August 10 to 16 fees reached $10.74 million, up 7% week over week. Pump said Tuesday’s $1.73 million marked its strongest single revenue day since January 30. The article also highlighted Pump.fun’s buyback-and-burn structure, recent product changes including Callout Rewards and lower trading fees, plus broader market, macro, ETF, memecoin, token, and NFT developments covered in the daily roundup.

A PANews opinion piece by columnist Haotian argues that the crypto market has shifted away from trading on narratives and pre-launch expectations and is now focusing far more on cash flow and real-world execution. Based on discussions with several experienced on-chain participants, the author lays out four screening rules for the current cycle. First, he favors tokens with clear value-capture mechanisms, especially protocols that generate fees and return value to holders through buybacks, burns, or distributions, citing $UNI, $PUMP, $PONS, and $HYPE as examples. Second, he says projects should have already achieved product-market fit and built a working business loop, with asset tokenization and the so-called Agentic Economy named as two areas to watch, including examples such as $ONDO, $VVV, and $VIRTUAL. Third, he argues that assets with strong cross-cycle market consensus, including $DOGE, $PEPE, $PEOPLE, $ZEC, and $TAO, remain relevant because they have survived multiple boom-and-bust phases. Finally, he warns against pure VC-backed tokens with high fully diluted valuations, low circulating supply, and ongoing unlock pressure. The article states that the discussion reflects personal views only and does not constitute investment advice.

Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds brought in about $854 million to $865 million last week, according to Decrypt’s Morning Minute newsletter, marking their strongest weekly inflow since May and the first notably large return of capital after an eight-week stretch of outflows through June and early July. Ethereum ETFs also had a solid week, with $244 million in net inflows, which the newsletter said was roughly equivalent to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin ETF buying on a market-cap-adjusted basis. The report linked the move to a softer macro backdrop. U.S. earnings were broadly positive last week, while the July jobs report came in well below expectations, showing a loss of 23,000 jobs versus forecasts for an 80,000 gain. Unemployment still edged down to 4.1%. After that data, the odds of a September rate hike dropped from 67% to 42%. Elsewhere, major crypto assets were mostly flat over the weekend but still 3% to 4% above last week’s levels, with BTC at $65,000 and ETH at $1,916. The newsletter also tracked gains in select altcoins, token and protocol activity, Robinhood Chain assets, and a mixed NFT market, while noting fresh developments around the Clarity Act, NYSE tokenization infrastructure, MARA’s Bitcoin sales and borrowing, and Grayscale’s withdrawn ETF filings.

Pump.fun rolled out an app upgrade on Aug. 7, 2026, adding Callouts, token alerts that can be pushed to all followers, zero-fee trading and seamless cross-chain transfers in USDC. In a long-form analysis, Foresight framed the move against sharply different industry choices: Base has stepped back from social features, while Binance and OKX are building social layers deeper into trading products. The article argues that Pump.fun’s shift looks less like expansion from a position of strength and more like an attempt to respond to weakening user growth, poor retention, intensifying competition and mounting legal and reputational pressure. It points to Pump.fun’s own disclosed 1.4% graduation rate, heavy token mortality, and a business model tied to constant inflows of new users. Foresight also highlights pressure from GMGN, Robinhood Chain and Uniswap’s new launchpad, alongside lawsuits in the U.S. and prior action by the U.K.’s FCA. The core problem, the piece says, is not just competition. It is that fewer newcomers are arriving, and the platform’s name has increasingly become associated with controversy rather than product momentum.

ChainFeeds’ Aug. 8 research roundup brings together five separate discussions shaping the digital-asset policy and infrastructure debate. One piece, citing a16z, argues that the proposed CLARITY Act is needed to draw a workable line between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, replacing years of case-by-case enforcement with a clearer market structure for digital assets. Another, from Tiger Research, says Asia’s prediction market problem is less about demand and more about legal classification, with current gambling and financial-product regimes both failing to provide a usable framework. The roundup also highlights Joseph Chalom’s case against EIP-8363, which he says could weaken DeFi, erode ETH’s yield advantage, and raise the cost of onchain capital. A separate report from TechFlow examines the pull of AI on crypto’s technical talent, pointing to declining GitHub activity across major ecosystems and to cases where AI tools rapidly identified code vulnerabilities. The final piece from Odaily reviews Robinhood’s listing of CashCat and the growth of Robinhood Chain, including tokenized stock access in more than 120 countries and regions, new-address inflows, and activity linked to Uniswap’s Pools.trade launch.

MetaMask on Thursday rolled out Agent Wallet, a self-custodial product built for AI agents that can execute crypto trades within user-defined limits. The wallet lets agents handle swaps, perpetuals, prediction-market wagers, and staking across Ethereum-compatible chains and Hyperliquid, but only after the user sets spending caps, chooses which protocols the agent may access, and selects a risk profile. Users can pick between Guard Mode, which requires pre-approval for addresses and protocols and pauses out-of-policy activity for 2FA confirmation, and Beast Mode, which removes the allowlist while keeping spending caps and a malicious-transaction 2FA backstop in place. MetaMask said each transaction goes through simulation, threat scanning, and MEV protection, and eligible trades can receive up to $10,000 per month in loss coverage. The product also integrates with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenClaw, and can settle gas fees in the token being moved so the agent does not need to hold a chain’s native asset. The newsletter also noted broader market moves, ETF inflows, Robinhood Chain activity, and NFT trading data, while stating that the analysis and opinions in Morning Minute are those of author Tyler Warner, not necessarily Decrypt.

Robinhood has listed CashCat, a native meme token from the Robinhood Chain ecosystem, in a move that the original report frames as more than a routine token addition. CashCat, based on a crying cat meme and tied to Robinhood’s own early mascot history, briefly pushed past a $200 million market capitalization and posted gains of more than 80% over 24 hours, according to the article. The listing is described as a sign that Robinhood is beginning to open its main platform to projects born inside its own chain ecosystem. The report argues that CashCat stands out from earlier meme coin listings on Robinhood because of its symbolic role in the company’s identity, its meme-native branding, and its position as the first breakout meme token on Robinhood Chain. It also links the move to comments made by CEO Vlad Tenev on the company’s second-quarter earnings call, where he said Robinhood Chain was built for real-world assets while also making clear that he likes memes. The article also points to fast early growth on Robinhood Chain, including billions of dollars in DEX volume, record transaction counts, rising TVL and stablecoin supply, and a user base that appears to include a large share of first-time or incremental crypto participants. It further highlights Uniswap’s launch of Pools.trade on the chain as another sign that competition and token issuance activity are accelerating inside the ecosystem.