US Treasury Secretary Bessent said he will hold a news conference next Monday to discuss actions related to economic sanctions on Iran, according to Odaily, citing Jin10. He said that “maximum economic pressure” could mean military action will not be restarted, and added that the oil market had misunderstood what economic pressure means. Bessent also said interest rates are unrelated to repurchase decisions. On the Federal Reserve’s reduction of Treasury holdings, he said adjustments would be made in whatever form that process takes. The remarks covered sanctions policy, the market’s reading of economic pressure, and his view on rates, repo decisions, and Fed Treasury runoff.

TS Lombard said the U.S. Treasury’s move to buy back ultra-long government bonds "sounds a lot like" yield curve control, arguing that efforts to hold yields down by intervention could weaken the U.S. dollar. In a report, chief economist Freya Beamish said the United States is running procyclical fiscal policy and, in her view, interest rates should be rising, a setup that would normally support the dollar. She said long-term bond investors want compensation, while the Treasury is intervening to suppress yields and further shorten debt duration even though the average maturity of debt is already relatively short. Beamish said the main question is how markets ultimately push back: by keeping pressure on long-end yields and forcing the Federal Reserve to act sooner than currently expected, or by selling the dollar instead. She added that the Fed will eventually raise rates.

BitcoinTreasuries.NET said in a post on X that Strategy, described as a Bitcoin treasury company, recorded trading volume above Google and moved up to become the 17th most-traded stock in the United States. The post also said Strategy’s volume surpassed that of several major technology and financial companies. The update did not provide additional figures in the brief item, but it highlighted Strategy’s place in U.S. stock trading activity based on the statement shared on social media. Odaily cited the post in its newsflash.

U.S. premarket headlines on Aug. 20 included a fresh pro-crypto message from President Donald Trump and new regulatory movement from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. During a White House meeting with leaders from the technology and innovation sectors, Trump said the administration had fully ended the "war" on cryptocurrency, said the U.S. is leading the industry’s development, and urged Congress to pass a "fair" version of the Clarity Act. The update came alongside fund flow data showing $454.8 million in net inflows to spot Bitcoin ETFs and $186.8 million in net inflows to spot Ethereum ETFs on the previous day. Elsewhere, OpenAI’s chief financial officer said the company plans to go public before 2027. Goldman Sachs said September rate-hike pricing is leaning hawkish, with pressure on U.S. equities coming from shifting interest-rate expectations. In crypto regulation, the CFTC opened a public comment process on proposed computing-power derivatives contracts, while the agency’s chair is also pushing for Hyperliquid to enter the U.S. market in a compliant way.

Blockcast, citing a report republished from Crypto City, described an undercover remote interview in which Unchained CEO Laura Shin posed as recruiter "Sophie Wang" to question a software engineer calling himself Justin Lim. The candidate was presented as a young developer claiming ties to Singapore and the United States, but prior research had already linked him to signs that he may actually have been operating from Vladivostok, Russia and may have been involved in a 2022 theft of about $2.7 million from Meta Play. During the call, he appeared stiff in casual conversation and reportedly exposed inconsistencies around his identity, accent, and personal background, while showing strong command of blockchain topics such as multisig wallets and reentrancy attacks. The interview took a decisive turn when Shin asked whether he could say something negative about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. According to the report, he hesitated, said "I think that’s not really…," then blamed a bad connection and abruptly ended the video call. Nine minutes later, he tried to resume contact on Telegram, but avoided the question again before blocking and reporting Shin’s account.

Flock Safety, the surveillance company whose camera network spans more than 6,000 U.S. communities, is facing fresh scrutiny after Wired reported that the company has built an AI investigative tool capable of identifying and following drivers using movement patterns alone. According to the report, the system—once called Nightshift and now renamed OS Investigate—was discovered in code pulled from files hosted on Flock’s own site and accessible through its login pages. Flock said the product remains in development and is being tested with a small group of law enforcement partners. Wired described a system that lets officers choose from 69 preset prompts or write their own queries. Some of those prompts reportedly require no name, plate number, or physical description. Instead, an officer can enter a location, a time window, and a behavioral pattern, such as vehicles visiting several retail stores over several days or multiple banks within a week, and the software returns matching people. The report also says the code contains association logic that looks for repeated co-appearance near the same cameras. The disclosure has intensified criticism from civil-liberties advocates, former police officers, and lawmakers. Flock maintains that OS Investigate is separate from its license-plate reader product and says the tool’s features could change before any broader release.

HYPE surged 26.86% in 24 hours to $73.9, leaving it less than $3 below its recent high near $76.5, as attention shifted to Hyperliquid’s prospects in the United States. In its analysis, Odaily said the move was not driven by price action alone. It linked the rally to a White House crypto meeting where Donald Trump said the chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, is working to bring Hyperliquid into the U.S. in a fully compliant and legal way. That comment came on top of earlier signals from Hyperliquid’s policy push, including a joint SEC submission by the Hyperliquid Policy Center and trade.xyz proposing a framework for pre-IPO perpetual products known as IPOP. Odaily also reviewed several milestones around that lobbying effort, from trade.xyz’s five IPOP markets on Hyperliquid to meetings with the SEC crypto task force and prior regulatory discussions tied to IPO reform. The report further highlighted CFTC chair Michael Selig’s public remarks on regulatory clarity and his role in derivatives approvals involving platforms such as Kalshi and Coinbase. The article then outlined three possible routes for Hyperliquid to enter the U.S. market in a compliant form: partnering with licensed clearing or execution venues, listing Hyperliquid-related assets through regulated platforms, or acquiring or rebuilding a U.S.-compliant venue from scratch. Odaily said the process could still take several months to more than a year.

Circle co-founder, chairman and CEO Jeremy Allaire used a nearly 47-minute Q2 2026 investor AMA on Aug. 19 to answer 11 questions spanning USDC adoption, Arc’s roadmap, CPN expansion, EURC growth, AI agent payments and U.S. crypto legislation. His central message was that stablecoins and onchain finance are still early, even as they start moving well beyond crypto-native trading into cross-border settlement, treasury management, capital markets and machine-to-machine payments. Allaire said Circle’s strongest execution edge comes from long-built cross-functional coordination, disciplined hiring and growing internal use of AI across the company. He described reserve income as a durable core economic engine for Circle, while arguing that transaction and infrastructure revenue should expand as USDC distribution scales and new products such as CPN and Arc mature. He framed Arc as an "economic operating system" and said its public mainnet is scheduled to launch on Sept. 16. On product traction, Allaire said more than 175 financial institutions have joined CPN, EURC circulation has surpassed €400 million, and over 99% of agent payments on protocols such as x402 are using USDC. He also said GENIUS Act coming into force in January should support stablecoin growth in the U.S., but argued USDC adoption would keep rising even if the CLARITY Act does not pass in September because demand is global and much of current stablecoin usage already sits outside the United States.