Techub News said Pi Network has completed its Protocol 26 upgrade and described Protocol 27 as the project’s “final planned upgrade.” The project’s MiCA white paper has been registered with ESMA, but claims about partnerships with PayPal and RoboPay have not been verified. The report also said Pi Network has more than 421,000 nodes, PI trades around $0.09, and the circulating supply is about 11 billion tokens. Crypto.news said the network’s infrastructure has made tangible progress, while claimed ecosystem partnerships still appear to outpace verifiable facts.

Techub News said BitMart, the cryptocurrency exchange that had announced a permanent shutdown weeks earlier, said on Aug. 21 that it may restart part of its business. The exchange is now working on a restructuring plan rather than a full wind-down, and it has hired White & Case as restructuring adviser. Any phased restart would take place alongside asset distributions to creditors. BitMart had previously said on July 26 that it would stop all trading on Aug. 26 and fully close on Jan. 31, 2027. Its BMX token fell as much as 46% after the shutdown plan was disclosed. BitMart said the decision was based on operating conditions and strategic considerations, while users reported withdrawal issues and founder Sheldon Xia denied the allegations. BeInCrypto said analysts had viewed exchange closures as a healthy market cleanup, but BitMart’s latest move challenged that view.

BounceBit said its blockchain network was hit by a protocol-level exploit between 21:02 UTC on Aug. 19 and 01:54 UTC on Aug. 20, after an attacker abused an authorization flaw in the underlying Evmos architecture. According to the project, the attacker moved about 286.5 million BB tokens from nine mainnet accounts across 14 transactions without account owners’ approval. The team said the incident was limited to BounceBit Chain and did not involve private key leaks, forged signatures, wallets, hardware devices, or exchange account security. It also said BounceBit CeDeFi Strategy, Promo Vaults, Prime, and RWA products were unaffected. After the attack, BounceBit Chain stopped producing blocks at height 20,702,857. The team decided against a chain upgrade and will permanently shut down BounceBit Chain instead. BB will be reissued as a BEP-20 token on BNB Chain, based on an onchain snapshot taken before the first abnormal transfer at block height 20,697,260. BounceBit said the 286,543,148 BB moved by the attacker will not be included in balances for the new token. Users do not need to file claims or migrate wallets manually, and staked BB will be restored based on the snapshot.

Justin Sun and World Liberty Financial are publicly disputing what happened at a California federal court hearing tied to Sun’s lawsuit against the company. Sun said the judge ruled that his case and his individual claims would proceed in court, calling the development a major win and saying the court rejected WLFI’s effort to push all company-related claims into arbitration. He also said WLFI was trying to move the dispute into secret arbitration and keep documents out of public view. WLFI CEO Zach Witkoff offered a sharply different version hours later. He said the court made no ruling on Sun’s claims, that WLFI never sought arbitration for Sun’s individual claims, and that the company instead wanted those claims dismissed. Witkoff added that the court agreed with WLFI that many claims brought by Sun’s companies must go to arbitration, and said even Sun’s lawyers conceded that point in court. The hearing stems from Sun’s April lawsuit accusing WLFI of fraud and breach of contract after it froze his tokens using what he described as undisclosed blacklisting powers. Court documents from the hearing have not yet been posted online, leaving the public dispute unresolved for now.

As Bitcoin stabilized and Ether started to catch up, expectations for capital rotation into higher-beta altcoins picked up again, according to a market analysis published by TechFlowPost and written by Biteye. The piece argues that this cycle is unlikely to produce a broad-based rally across every token. Instead, it highlights projects that, in the author’s view, are more likely to attract spillover flows from major coins because they have real users, steadier protocol revenue, clearer token value capture, and healthier holder structures. The analysis groups candidates into four sectors: high-performance blockchains, DeFi lending, perpetual decentralized exchanges, and RWA plus on-chain financial infrastructure. It names SOL and SUI in the public-chain category; UNI, AAVE, and MORPHO in DeFi lending; HYPE in Perp DEX; and LINK and ONDO in the RWA and infrastructure segment. For each asset, the report compares circulating market cap, fully diluted valuation, three-day performance, TVL or other on-chain activity, unlock schedules, and token concentration. The article also notes that Bitcoin moved toward $77,000 over three days and rose above EMA200, while Ether jumped 20% in a single day and approached $2,400. Against that backdrop, the author’s framework favors selective positioning over broad altcoin exposure.

Ethereum has climbed back above $2,300 for the first time in more than three months, with ETH trading near $2,354 on August 21 after a roughly 25% weekly gain. The move was helped by short liquidations, sustained inflows into spot ETH ETFs, rising institutional exposure, and a record-high amount of ETH locked in staking. ETH/BTC also recovered to around 0.031, while BitMine’s paper loss narrowed as prices rebounded. The report also notes growing debate over staking yields and future protocol changes, including EIP-8061 in the planned Glamsterdam upgrade.

A day before Bitcoin jumped about 10% and briefly broke above $70,000, Digital Asset News founder Rob told The Milk Road Show that he still thought the market might not have found a bottom and that the low could arrive around October. In the Aug. 19 episode, recorded before the rally, Rob laid out a simple framework built around long-term accumulation rather than short-term calls: buy more as risk falls, take profit in pieces, and accept that nobody consistently sells the exact top. He said he uses Ben Cowen’s risk meter as a guide, increasing his Bitcoin purchases as the reading drops from 0.49 to 0.39 and below 0.29. The conversation ranged well beyond price targets. Rob argued that Congress is unlikely to deliver a major near-term catalyst, describing the White House crypto meeting and the delayed CLARITY Act as more political theater than a clear turning point. He also discussed the SEC’s new "Regulation Crypto" framework, saying clearer rules for fundraising and ICO-style issuance arrive years late and may bring money back into the sector, even as he questions whether crypto needs more new tokens. On portfolio construction, Rob said he spreads custody risk across wallets, custodians and ETFs after recent hardware wallet incidents. For altcoins, he said he mainly trusts four chains tied to stablecoin activity: BNB, Ethereum, Solana and Tron. Looking ahead, the theme he finds most compelling is AI agent payments, especially after Cloudflare’s move to support crypto payments for AI agents, though he also flagged the operational risks that autonomous software could introduce.

Crypto mining pool operator Poolin Technology PTE. LTD and its affiliated entities, Lonestar Taproot LLC and Lonestar Dream, Inc., filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code on July 22, 2026, according to the case information page maintained by Verita Global. The filing was submitted to the federal bankruptcy court in New Jersey. The jointly administered case is being overseen by Judge Eamonn J. O'Hagan under case number 26-18325. The docket timeline listed on the case page shows that the creditors' meeting has already been held on Aug. 28. The bid deadline is scheduled for Sept. 8, and a sale hearing for the assets is set for Sept. 18. The debtors are represented by Archer & Greiner, P.C. The case page also states that creditors may submit proofs of claim by mail to the KCC dba Verita Global claims processing center in El Segundo, California. The update identifies the filing as a Chapter 11 bankruptcy process involving Poolin and the two named related entities.