Protos reported that HTX changed how it handled user reserves after sanctions from the Council of the European Union and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. The outlet said HTX’s June proof-of-reserves report was the first to disclose that a large portion of reserves had been moved to an unnamed third party, while the exchange did not identify the custodian users were told to contact for verification. Protos said that gap made most of those balances impossible for it to verify. The report also cited TRM Labs, which said HTX has been rotating wallets at a high rate. Ari Redboard, TRM’s global head of policy, described the behavior as an effort to stay ahead of screening systems built on static lists, while HTX had previously called it normal cybersecurity practice. Using HTX’s past reserve-reporting tool and on-chain transfers, Protos said it traced WBTC, roughly $200 million in sUSDS, and some Spark-related positions through addresses labeled by Etherscan as Poloniex 7, Poloniex 10, and Poloniex 9. Protos said those related-party transfers, involving hundreds of millions of dollars in value, raise questions about internal controls at HTX and Poloniex. HTX did not respond to the outlet before publication.

A DeFi whale lost roughly $25 million to $26 million after multiple wallets were drained within 15 minutes early on Aug. 13, according to Scam Sniffer and on-chain tracking cited by Foresight News. The stolen assets included DAI, WBTC, aUSDC, LDO, sUSDe, and native ETH. Analyst Ember said three wallets were affected, including one address with no prior token approval history, a detail that suggests the incident may have involved direct private key compromise rather than a standard approval-phishing attack. On-chain records show the victim’s main wallet and a related address moved assets to a newly created recipient wallet around 5:05 on Aug. 13. Within about an hour, tokens including WBTC, cbBTC, LDO, USDS, CRV, and sUSDe were swapped into DAI and ETH. Of that amount, 20 million DAI was sent to a downstream address labeled by Arkham as a separate entity and had not moved again as of publication. Other ETH was split into batches, routed through smart contracts, swapped to USDC on Uniswap, sent to Circle’s Token Minter, bridged to Arbitrum through CCTP, and then deposited into Hyperliquid. The same victim had already suffered a phishing loss of about $24.23 million in September 2023 after signing a malicious increaseAllowance transaction.

Christopher Harborne, an equity holder in Tether and Bitfinex, has formed a new US company called Skyline Apex LLC, according to Protos. The move marks a notable shift for Harborne, who the report says had previously limited his business and non-profit formation activity to England and a handful of other jurisdictions. The company is tied to Wyoming, though its intended business line has not been disclosed. Protos places the filing in the middle of mounting scrutiny around Harborne in the UK. The billionaire has recently drawn tabloid attention over an unreported £5 million gift to Nigel Farage, given at a time when the Reform UK leader was not bound by standard campaign finance rules. The report also revisits Harborne’s background as an early shareholder in Tether and Bitfinex, his wealth from McKinsey and an aviation fueling business, and his long residence in Thailand under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit. The article also notes Harborne’s past attempts to challenge or suppress reporting about him. It highlights a defamation case he brought in Delaware in 2024 against Dow Jones, parent of The Wall Street Journal, over a 2023 story referencing Harborne, AML Global, and Signature Bank. Protos says the case ended quietly in 2026 with a stipulated dismissal after the Journal had already removed the disputed section and published a clarification.

HTX platform data for Aug. 2 to Aug. 9 showed that the broader crypto market did not rise across the board, with Bitcoin dominance staying above 56% and capital still concentrated in large-cap assets. Even so, several mid- and small-cap tokens posted independent rallies. The most concentrated move came from the BSC meme sector, where TUT surged 733% for the week, while MUBARAK and TST also advanced together. In the AI segment, SKYAI rose 291% after ending a three-month consolidation. DeFi names remained active as well: BICO climbed 240%, BMT gained 110%, and BTW rose 153%, marking its third straight week on the gainers list. HTX said many of the week’s top performers had spent extended periods in weakness before being repriced by the market.

A joint report released by CoinShares and Token Terminal on Aug. 6 points to a sharp split inside on-chain finance. In Q2 2026, total DeFi deposits fell about 15% year over year, while deposits tied to real-world assets, or RWA, jumped from $2.33 billion to $7.44 billion, an increase of more than 200%. Over the same period, DEX spot volume dropped roughly 70%, but RWA spot trading volume rose about 220%. The report argues that the part of DeFi now shrinking is mostly crypto-native, while the growth is being driven by tokenized U.S. Treasuries, yield-bearing stablecoins, private credit, money market funds, gold, oil and equity-linked products. It also shows that RWA perpetuals have expanded quickly, with quarterly volume rising from $12.37 billion in Q4 2025 to $202.7 billion in Q2 2026. CoinShares said the shift suggests on-chain finance is not disappearing, but changing composition. In its view, tokenized assets are gaining traction because they offer settlement speed, round-the-clock liquidity and better capital efficiency, rather than relying on token incentives or a crypto bull market.

A joint report released by CoinShares and Token Terminal on Aug. 6 points to a sharp shift inside on-chain finance. In the second quarter of 2026, total DeFi deposits fell about 15% year over year, while deposits tied to real-world assets, or RWA, jumped from $2.33 billion to $7.44 billion, up more than 200%. Over the same period, total DEX spot volume dropped roughly 70%, but RWA spot volume rose about 220%. The report argues that growth on-chain is no longer being driven primarily by crypto-native assets. Instead, the expansion is coming from tokenized U.S. Treasuries, money market funds, private credit, gold, crude oil, and equity index futures. Ethereum still dominates RWA-backed lending collateral with close to 70% market share, while platforms such as Aave, Morpho, and Kamino are taking in more tokenized assets as collateral. On the trading side, RWA perpetuals have gone from a negligible segment to a major source of on-chain volume in less than six months. The report also highlights BlackRock’s growing role in tokenized Treasuries and says the broader trend suggests blockchain is not replacing Wall Street, but increasingly serving as its settlement rail.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has formally approved the roughly $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery by Paramount Skydance. The regulator said the deal will not raise competition concerns in the United Kingdom. The transaction was announced in February 2026. Since then, it has received approval from the US Department of Justice, the European Commission and shareholders. After closing, the combined company is expected to have around 207 million streaming subscribers. CryptoBriefing, the outlet that reported the approval, also highlighted the Web3 angle. According to the report, the deal involves digital content distribution infrastructure and is technically linked to content ownership, creator royalties and decentralized distribution, all topics central to Web3. That connection makes the merger relevant to the crypto and blockchain community even though the CMA's decision was confined to competition issues. The approval is the latest in a string of regulatory clearances for a media transaction spanning the US, Europe and the UK.

Risk assets moved higher after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States and Iran could reach an agreement as early as Wednesday to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The prospect of restored energy shipping helped lift U.S. and Asian markets, with Bessent saying any deal would aim to guarantee “freedom of passage” through the waterway. Before the war, roughly 20% of global oil shipments moved through the strait. The market focus was not limited to geopolitics. Investors were also digesting earnings and capital spending from major technology companies. SpaceX, in its first earnings report since listing, posted second-quarter revenue above expectations, but a sharp jump in capital expenditures pressured the stock in after-hours trading. The company said capex reached $18.4 billion in the quarter, including about $16 billion for AI computing infrastructure. AMD also beat expectations in the second quarter, though its capex climbed to $808 million from $282 million a year earlier, and its shares also fell after hours. Paramount Skydance, by contrast, raised its full-year profit outlook after revenue topped Wall Street estimates and its streaming business grew.