SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said Bitcoin’s tight trading range reflects three forces at work: miners shifting resources toward AI, capital moving into AI investments, and crypto’s position in its four-year market cycle. Speaking in a CNBC interview cited by Yahoo Finance, Scaramucci said he still expects Bitcoin to reach $100,000, though the next catalyst may not arrive for another 20 months. He described Bitcoin as being in a "clear bear market," but argued that the roughly 55% decline in this cycle is materially smaller than the 75% to 80% drawdowns seen in earlier cycles. In his view, that is an encouraging sign because it suggests there are substantial net buyers building for the next bull market. He also noted that over the past three months, Bitcoin outperformed the S&P 500 on only about one-third of trading days, though it did beat major U.S. equity indexes on both Monday and Tuesday this week.

Stablecoin yield project Osero has officially launched Osero App and opened it to all users. According to its website, the app is currently offering an annual percentage yield of 3.52%. Supported assets include USDC.e, USDe, AUSD, GHO, PYUSD, RLUSD, USDD, USDG, USDtb, and frxUSD. Osero says the yield comes from sUSDS and the savings rate mechanism within the Sky Ecosystem. Earlier reporting from Foresight News said Osero was incubated by Stablewatch and raised $13.5 million in May this year, with Sky Ecosystem and Plasma co-leading the round. The launch marks the public rollout of the app after that financing update.

Global sovereign bond markets are going through one of their sharpest selloffs in decades, with long-dated yields rising under pressure from inflation concerns, fiscal expansion and a structural decline in demand from traditional buyers. In the U.S., the 30-year Treasury yield touched 5.33% this week, its highest level since 2007, while comparable yields in France, Germany, the U.K. and Japan also climbed to multi-year highs. According to figures cited by Wallstreetcn and Bloomberg-compiled data, the average yield on a benchmark basket of investment-grade sovereign debt has risen to about 4.5%, the highest since records began in 2015. The report says the move is being driven less by a jump in inflation expectations and more by higher real yields, as investors demand more compensation to hold long-duration debt. On the supply side, heavier issuance by governments and even tech companies is adding pressure, while on the demand side, pensions and other traditional long-bond buyers are becoming less dominant. Strategists and asset managers remain divided on whether the repricing now offers value or whether yields may need to rise further before returns on long-duration bonds become more attractive.

Off-balance-sheet commitments tied to AI infrastructure at nine major U.S. technology companies have reached roughly $3 trillion, according to a Wall Street Journal report published on Aug. 18 and cited by Odaily. The companies named were Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Nvidia, Broadcom, SpaceX and AMD. The total was about five times their combined capital expenditures of $600 billion over the past year, about three times their outstanding lease and long-term borrowing balances, and roughly 50% higher than the prior estimate of about $1.8 trillion just two months earlier. The commitments were mainly made up of about $1.2 trillion in uncommenced leases and about $1.9 trillion in purchase obligations, both of which can stay off the balance sheet before rent starts or goods and services are delivered under current accounting rules. The report also pointed to a separate layer of risk in residual value guarantees, or RVGs. Citing a Bloomberg report from Aug. 15, the article said those structures had grown to about $70 billion. Rating firms including Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings, along with bond investors, have raised concerns over how quickly these contingent liabilities are building across the AI financing chain.

Compound Finance’s DAO approved a $52 million budget on Aug. 17, the largest in the protocol’s history, alongside a management shake-up and a strategic pivot away from retail lending. The move comes after a steep contraction in the protocol’s total value locked, which fell from roughly $12 billion at its 2021 peak to about $1.2 billion now, a 90% drop. Over the same period, Aave’s TVL reached about $14.8 billion, putting it more than ten times ahead of Compound. According to the report, the new budget will fund compliance-focused infrastructure for institutional clients, including whitelisting systems, legal entity integration, risk management frameworks, and KYC/AML tooling. CoinDesk was cited as saying the target audience is traditional financial institutions that want onchain lending access but must operate within compliance constraints. The shift also highlights a deeper tension. Compound built its identity around permissionless lending, where users can borrow and lend without KYC or approval. Institutional participants tend to want the opposite: verified counterparties, legal recourse, formal custody structures, insurance coverage, audit documentation, and clearer regulatory pathways. The report frames Compound’s move as part of a broader DeFi push toward institutional capital as token incentives weaken, retail liquidity fades, and protocols look for steadier revenue sources.

According to a ChainCatcher newsflash citing monitoring by Ai Yi, @Skylinee joined the LAB public sale in October 2025 with a $5,000 investment. Based on the token’s market price, the position’s value at one point climbed to about $5.6 million, translating into a paper return of roughly 1,120x. The report said the picture changed after the project team unilaterally postponed the token unlock schedule. The participant only recently received the unlocked tokens, and their current value is now about $3,219. That marks a drop of roughly 99.94% from the earlier paper peak. The figures reflect changes in value calculated from token prices and the timing of the unlock described in the ChainCatcher brief.

An LAB public sale participant who put $5,000 into the offering in October 2025 briefly saw the position’s value climb to about $5.6 million, according to monitoring data cited by Odaily from Ai Yi. Based on token price calculations, the holding at one point delivered a paper return of roughly 1,120x. That gain did not hold. Odaily said the project team later unilaterally delayed the token unlock schedule. The participant, identified as @Skylinee, only recently received the unlocked tokens. By the time the tokens became available, their value had dropped to about $3,219. Measured against the earlier paper peak, that represents a decline of about 99.94%. The case highlights the gap that can emerge between peak mark-to-market valuations and the amount investors are actually able to realize once lockups end and tokens become transferable.

On-chain tracker @ai_9684xtpa said an X user identified as @Skylinee joined the LAB public sale in January 2025. The position reportedly turned a $5,000 allocation into paper gains of 1,120x over nine months, with the holding at one point valued at $5.6 million. After the team unilaterally delayed the unlock schedule, the address eventually received its tokens. The current value of those tokens has now fallen to $3,219, representing a 99.94% drop from the earlier peak value cited in the post. The update highlights a sharp reversal between notional gains during the lockup period and realized value after tokens became available.