The Bank of Korea's gold investment signals a strategic shift in reserve diversification, potentially impacting global gold market dynamics.

The post Bank of Korea invests in gold assets for first time in 13 years appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

DeepSeek's strategic expansion into AI agents could intensify market competition, challenging existing leaders and reshaping industry dynamics.

The post DeepSeek forms team to challenge Anthropic’s Claude Code with new AI agents appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Anthropic's potential acquisition of Decart could significantly enhance its AI capabilities, potentially boosting its market valuation.

The post Anthropic in talks to acquire Decart for $6B to boost AI efficiency appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Gold's rise signals increased market confidence, potentially influencing global economic strategies and investor behavior amid macroeconomic shifts.

The post Gold breaks six-month resistance as China, ETFs boost demand appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The upset highlights challenges for progressive Democrats, indicating potential shifts in voter sentiment and strategy reassessment.

The post David Crowley wins Wisconsin Democratic primary in upset over Francesca Hong appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price May Be Battered, but Structural Adoption Story Still Intact: Grayscale

Bitcoin’s price has shown signs of stabilizing after a rough stretch, but even setting aside where prices go in the near term, asset manager Grayscale says adoption of the cryptocurrency over the medium and long run remains largely unchanged.

The reason: continued, unsustainable growth in government debt as a factor that keeps inflation and currency-debasement risk elevated. 

That backdrop, Grayscale argues, could push a widening range of investors toward scarce assets and alternative stores of value — a category where Bitcoin, with its fixed supply, is increasingly well positioned as a candidate.

It added that the adoption of stablecoins and tokenization are set to make blockchain infrastructure commonplace across financial services. Top banks and asset managers have piled into the tokenization space the past year and are fast adopting crypto technology. 

Grayscale argues that as that spreads, more banks, brokerages, and other intermediaries will have both the technical rails and regulatory clarity needed to hold and transact in Bitcoin — eroding the wall that has historically kept it structurally separate from mainstream finance.

“As the spread of the technology continues, many more intermediaries will have the necessary infrastructure (and regulatory clarity) to transact and store balances in Bitcoin — it will no longer be structurally apart from the rest of the financial system,” the note by the firm’s head of research, Zach Pandl, reads.

The firm added that younger investors show a markedly higher appetite for digital assets, and alternative investments have become a standard portfolio component rather than a fringe allocation. 

The analysis expects institutions, wealth platforms, and individual investors alike to keep folding Bitcoin into diversified portfolios — largely through exchange-traded products, a shift it describes as already well underway.

Taken together, the report says that a cyclical downturn in price doesn’t undercut the longer-term adoption thesis. 

The Bitcoin price was recently $63,549, down close to 50% from its October record of $126,080. 

This post Bitcoin Price May Be Battered, but Structural Adoption Story Still Intact: Grayscale first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Goldman Sachs to Acquire NEOS Investments in $2.25B Deal, Adding Bitcoin Income ETFs to Lineup

Goldman Sachs has agreed to acquire NEOS Investments in a deal worth up to $2.25 billion that will give the Wall Street giant another Bitcoin-related product for its portfolio, the banking giant announced Wednesday. 

The deal will be in cash and equity, contingent on performance and service milestones, and will bring the Neos Bitcoin High Income ETF (BTCI), Boosted Bitcoin High Income ETF (XBCI) and Ethereum High Income ETF (NEHI) under Goldman Sachs Asset Management. 

CEO David Solomon called NEOS’s approach “highly complementary” to Goldman’s existing buffer, managed-outcome and income capabilities. 

NEOS co-founders Garrett Paolella and Troy Cates, who will join Goldman Sachs Asset Management as partners, framed the deal as pairing NEOS’s “entrepreneurial spirit” with Goldman’s scale.

NEOS manages roughly $30 billion across 19 ETFs that use options strategies to generate monthly income. 

Combined with Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s existing $40 billion in income-oriented, options-based ETFs, the deal will push Goldman’s active ETF business to about $80 billion — making it the eighth-largest active ETF manager, according to Morningstar — inside a broader $130 billion ETF platform.

The move follows Goldman’s earlier acquisition of Innovator Capital Management, rounding out a three-way combination focused on derivative-income and buffer/outcome strategies.

The Bitcoin ETFs in question don’t hold the cryptocurrency directly, rather they use derivatives to generate income from crypto-linked exposure rather than owning the underlying coins, per NEOS’s disclosures. 

Therefore, the high headline yields come largely from selling options premium, not necessarily reflecting the price performance of Bitcoin itself. 

The acquisition effectively hands Goldman Sachs a ready-made foothold in crypto-income ETFs — a corner of the market it hadn’t built organically — right as institutional appetite for digital-asset-adjacent, income-generating products continues to grow alongside the broader derivative-income boom.

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, pending regulatory approval.

This post Goldman Sachs to Acquire NEOS Investments in $2.25B Deal, Adding Bitcoin Income ETFs to Lineup first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Flashes Bottom Signals as “Digital Gold” Narrative Returns

Bitcoin is sending two notable signals to the market this week: on-chain data suggests the cryptocurrency may be forming a macro bottom, while its price behavior is increasingly echoing gold’s role as a safe-haven asset.

That’s according to two reports from blockchain data firm CryptoQuant, whose analysts pointed to the early stages of a bottoming process for the biggest and oldest cryptocurrency. 

The price of the largest cryptocurrency recently stood at $63,362, mostly unmoved over a 24-hour period. Over the past week, Bitcoin is down nearly 2%. Since it notched a record of $126,080 in October, it has shed nearly 50% of its value. 

“At each major cycle bottom, long-term holders were sitting on deeper unrealized losses than the broader market,meaning the cohort normally associated with the strongest conviction and lowest sensitivity to volatility is carrying greater unrealized stress than the market as a whole,” wrote analyst MorenoDV.

“The current structure fits that pattern,” he added. 

The signal comes from adjusted Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL) data for long-term holders (LTH) — investors typically seen as the most resilient cohort in the market. 

Currently, LTH aNUPL has crossed into negative territory and sits below the broader market average, meaning even long-term holders are now sitting on losses greater than the market as a whole. Historically, this exact pattern — long-term holders hurting more than average — has shown up at every major cycle bottom.

The setup lines up with Bitcoin trading roughly 50% below its cycle high, reinforcing the view that this is more than an ordinary correction.

But analysts caution against calling a bottom just yet. In previous cycles, LTH aNUPL fell into much deeper, more prolonged negative readings before a true low was in — a level of losses some describe as “depression territory.” Today’s numbers haven’t reached that extreme.

The report added that Bitcoin could still need one more capitulation leg to push long-term holder losses to historical extremes. Alternatively, stronger institutional demand and a more structurally resilient holder base could allow the market to bottom with comparatively less damage than in past cycles.

Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation with gold has swung from nearly -0.9 in early 2026 to around +0.7, according to data highlighted by CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, who described the move as a return to “digital-gold-era levels.”

The shift suggests investors are once again pricing Bitcoin as a scarce, non-sovereign asset — one that can act as a hedge against currency debasement, fiscal stress, and geopolitical uncertainty, much like gold. 

Investors have long-touted Bitcoin as “digital gold” — a long-term store of value like the precious metal. And sometimes, they have been correlated. 

But Bitcoin’s behavior remains split. A month-to-date comparison shows it sometimes trading in step with the Nasdaq, behaving like a liquidity-sensitive risk asset, while at other times tracking gold’s moves as a scarcity play. 

Its volatility, though, continues to run far higher than gold’s.

Analysts also urge caution in reading too much into the correlation shift. A positive correlation isn’t inherently bullish — the two assets can just as easily fall together as rise together. 

This post Bitcoin Flashes Bottom Signals as “Digital Gold” Narrative Returns first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

OCC Says It’s ‘Open for Business’ as Crypto Firms Line Up for Bank Charters

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency says it will keep pushing to revive de novo bank chartering, a campaign that has already opened a federal on-ramp for some of the largest companies in crypto.

In a statement Tuesday, the regulator said reinvigorating new bank formation remains a priority and commended the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for its own recent efforts on the issue.

“De novo chartering is a sign of a healthy banking system,” said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould, adding that the FDIC’s new process for reviewing deposit insurance applications aligns with the OCC’s work to reverse the decline in new charters.

Over the past 15 years, de novo chartering fell significantly, the OCC said. From 2011 through 2014, the OCC received an average of fewer than four charter applications per year, and in some years it received none at all.

“For more than a decade, regulators signaled that those seeking a federal bank charter and federal deposit insurance need not apply,” Gould said. “Entities that engage in legally permissible activities, including those involving digital assets and other novel technologies, should have a path to becoming a national bank. America and the OCC are once again open for business.”

The numbers have turned. The OCC has received 40 de novo applications in the last 18 months, including applications for national trust banks — a charter type it has granted for decades. In many cases it has ruled within 120 days of receiving a complete application. For the first time in five years, a full-service national bank has received final approval and opened its doors: Erebor Bank, N.A., backed by Palmer Luckey, Joe Lonsdale and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

A number of top crypto companies have received conditional approval, including Ripple, Circle, Crypto.com and Paxos. Donald Trump-backed decentralised finance platform World Liberty Financial has also applied, hoping to get institutions on board with using its native stablecoin, USD1.

The appeal is structural: the charter lets crypto companies hold client assets and handle trade settlement inside a federally regulated framework. For an exchange like Coinbase, whose application remains under review, it would mean serving as a crypto custodian on a federal basis, managing assets for larger entities.

Not everyone is happy about it, though. The Independent Community Bankers of America in December urged the OCC to reject Coinbase’s application for a national trust bank charter, arguing the exchange has “demonstrably flawed risk and control functions” and operates under governance that “prevents independent oversight.” 

And in February, the American Bankers Association — the country’s largest banking lobby — urged the OCC to slow its review of crypto companies’ charter applications.

Underneath the procedural objections is a turf war. One of the biggest gripes from traditional banks comes down to stablecoins: companies like Coinbase want to pay users rewards for holding the tokens, which banks say is unfair and could erode their deposit base.

The OCC, for its part, says it will continue to encourage the formation of new banks and strengthen the resilience of the federal banking system.

This post OCC Says It’s ‘Open for Business’ as Crypto Firms Line Up for Bank Charters first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Yawns As Fed’s Favorite Inflation Gauge Eases 

Bitcoin’s price dipped slightly before remaining mostly steady after data on Wednesday showed that U.S. inflation was subdued. 

The price of the largest cryptocurrency recently stood at $63,863, mostly unmoved over a 24-hour period. Over the past week, Bitcoin is also flat. 

The core consumer price index, which excludes often-volatile food and energy categories, rose 0.2% from a month earlier and increased 2.5% from a year earlier — the slowest pace since March 2021.

Energy and gas prices fell for a second month and grocery prices dropped for the first time since March, according to the print. 

The news takes the pressure off Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh to raise interest rates in September. 

Softer inflation data eases the path toward rate cuts, and lower rates reduce the opportunity cost of holding an asset that pays no yield. Bitcoin has typically performed well in a low-interest rate environment. 

Sticky inflation in the world’s biggest economy has led the Federal Reserve to take a cautious approach with interest rates. Despite Wednesday’s softer inflation data, prices are still higher ​than they were a year ago and wages in the U.S. are not keeping up.

Bitcoin has faced increased volatility since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, with the leading cryptocurrency dropping hard on initial reports of war. Bitcoin is now down nearly 30% year-to-date. 

Still, in recent weeks, investors have shown a growing appetite for the asset. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. have experienced massive inflows — the biggest since April last week — despite negative news for the crypto industry: a massive exploit of the popular Coldcard Bitcoin hardware wallets last month shook crypto investors and a vote on the long-awaited digital asset market structure bill, the Clarity Act, has been delayed. 

This post Bitcoin Yawns As Fed’s Favorite Inflation Gauge Eases  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (BITA) recorded $79,073 of realized gains and $265,776 of unrealized appreciation on written options in its first operating period, helping offset losses on its Bitcoin holdings and shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT).

BITA posted an $860,335 decrease in net assets from operations through June 30, its first quarterly filing shows. IBIT is BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin fund and one of BITA’s underlying investments.

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BlackRock's BITA recorded $782,203 of unrealized losses on Bitcoin and $417,644 on IBIT, for a combined $1,199,847. Its $344,849 of realized and unrealized option gains offset about 28.7% of those marks. A $5,337 net investment loss resulted in an overall decrease from operations of $860,335.

Comparative downside protection remains unmeasured because the performance figures use different windows.

Three windows limit the verdict for this Bitcoin ETF

BITA’s financial-statement NAV per share fell 3.08%, from $50 on the April 21 seed date to $48.46 on June 30. The filing separately says Bitcoin fell 4.43% and IBIT fell 4.75% from the fund’s initial purchases on June 9 through quarter-end.

A direct comparison requires one common start date, and the filing’s three metrics cover different periods. Its third figure is a negative 5.61% total return from the June 12 start of public trading through June 30.

The options entries show how the income strategy affected BITA’s accounts while Bitcoin and IBIT were falling. Relative performance over a common window remains unmeasured.

BITA’s prospectus targets written-call notional equal to 25% to 35% of NAV. Selling those calls produces premiums that can offset losses, and the covered holdings retain their downside exposure while surrendering gains above the options’ exercise prices.

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Jun 11, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

A roughly three-week record is too short to establish how that trade-off behaves through a major drawdown, a rapid rebound or a full Bitcoin market cycle.

BITA ended June with $42.6 million in net assets, but capital contributions created that scale. The fund received $43.5 million as shares rose from 2,000 to 880,000, including 198,000 additional seed shares and 680,000 created shares.

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A July 1 filing declared a $457,924.72 distribution for premiums or other income received from June 9 through June 30. That was $113,075.72 more than BITA’s combined GAAP option gains.

BITA’s first period shows that option gains can absorb part of an underlying loss inside the fund. The record remains too short to tell whether that relief compensates investors for the upside they surrender.

The post BlackRock’s Bitcoin income ETF offset less than 30% of its $1.2M crypto losses with options appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Zcash treasury firm and Leap Therapeutics owner, Cypherpunk Technologies, reported $39.4 million in second-quarter net income, reversing a $16.6 million loss a year earlier.

Cypherpunk recorded a $4.7 million operating loss, while a $46 million unrealized gain on its ZEC treasury drove the change in its bottom line.

Research and development expense accounted for $0.2 million of the quarter’s costs, while general and administrative expense was $4.5 million. That left the company loss-making at the operating level before the ZEC revaluation was reflected in the income statement.

The accounting treatment recognizes price movements without requiring Cypherpunk to sell the tokens.

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The $46 million gain was a period-end accounting result, and Cypherpunk marks its Zcash holdings to market at each reporting date. It used a ZEC price of $400.09 at June 30, valuing the treasury at $129.4 million on its balance sheet.

Cypherpunk said it held 323,394.38 Zcash as of Aug. 11 at an average purchase price of $341.83, which is approximately 1.92% of the circulating supply. That average implies an aggregate acquisition cost of roughly $110.5 million.

ZEC traded at $489.34 on CoinGecko at 11:27 UTC on Aug. 12, putting the holdings at approximately $158.2 million.

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May 7, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Cypherpunk reported $7.6 million in cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, separate from the ZEC balance it classified as a digital asset receivable. The quarter shows how the company’s earnings can be shaped by the price used to revalue its treasury.

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Jun 5, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

The cash figure sits alongside a separate decision in Cypherpunk’s biotechnology business. Its wholly owned biotech subsidiary, Leap Therapeutics, initiated a process to secure the resources needed to advance sirexatamab into Phase 3 development.

Leap said the process could include financing the program as an independent entity or pursuing a transaction with a pharmaceutical or biotechnology company. The alternatives include a partnership, a license, a collaboration, a sale, or another business combination.

Cypherpunk set no timetable and cautioned that financing or a transaction was not assured, and it did not link Leap’s resource search to the Zcash strategy.

For investors, the immediate picture is a profitable quarter dominated by an unrealized token gain, alongside a drug program whose next stage still depends on securing additional resources.

The post Cypherpunk secures a $46M Zcash gain and turns a $4.7M operating loss into $39.4M profit appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin miner HIVE Digital Technologies missed the Aug. 10 deadline for its quarter-ended-June 30 Form 10-Q even as preliminary revenue climbed to approximately $79 million.

In an Aug. 11 late-filing notice, the firm said the delay relates exclusively to the accounting and disclosures for contested Swedish value-added tax assessments, and that it expects to file within the Rule 12b-25 extension period.

HIVE said recent developments in the Swedish proceedings increased the probability that it would record a noncash accrual. It needs more time to decide the accounting amount and finish the related financial statements and disclosures.

Until that amount is set, investors have a preliminary top-line figure but no quantified view of expected losses.

Revenue for the quarter is preliminarily expected to rise about 73% from $45.6 million a year earlier. HIVE attributed the increase mainly to more Bitcoin rewards from higher company hashrate and the start of revenue recognition under a previously announced high-performance computing contract.

The figures remain management estimates and could change as the reporting process is completed.

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Apr 18, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

That leaves three distinct financial markers: a $79 million revenue estimate, SEK 765.6 million of assessed exposure, and an accounting accrual that HIVE has not yet determined.

The missing charge sits below the revenue line

HIVE expects operating and net losses to increase significantly from the prior-year quarter, primarily due to a potential VAT-related charge, but said it cannot yet provide reasonable estimates for either loss.

The comparable quarter produced $35 million of GAAP net income and carried no such charge, according to HIVE's prior-year results.

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HIVE's fiscal 2026 annual filing disclosed Swedish VAT assessments totaling SEK 765.6 million, then approximately $80.5 million, while management said at the time that the amount claimed as owed was not probable.

That assessed total is not a proxy for any potential accrual: the Aug. 11 notice says HIVE still cannot determine the accounting amount.

HIVE said an accrual would be noncash when recognized and would not, by itself, represent a current payment. Its ultimate financial impact will depend on how the proceedings are resolved and may differ from the amount booked.

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Jun 30, 2026 · Gino Matos

The completed 10-Q should therefore answer the question the revenue estimate cannot: how much the Swedish VAT accounting decision weighs on reported earnings.

Until then, HIVE's $79 million top-line estimate remains preliminary, its expected operating and net losses remain unquantified, and the potential charge is still unpriced.

The post Bitcoin miner HIVE’s $79M quarter runs into an $80M Swedish tax problem appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Bank of Russia has proposed opening public organized crypto trading with only Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether’s USDT eligible for admission.

Under the draft directive, a Russian resident who is not a qualified investor could spend up to ₽300,000, nearly $58,000, on cryptocurrency through a single broker in a calendar year. The cap measures cumulative purchase costs through that broker.

That structure makes the broker the unit of the proposed ceiling. It also limits acquisitions: the directive’s formula totals the ruble cost of cryptocurrency purchases made for the client through the broker during the year.

The draft remains open for comments through Aug. 24, according to its explanatory note. The central bank can amend the three-asset appendix, cap, or other provisions before issuing a final directive.

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Investor status changes the gate for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT

Public organized trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT would begin with the three assets in the appendix. Qualified investors have a wider regulated route under the framework described by the central bank.

In its overview of the underlying law, the Bank of Russia said that qualified investors must also pass a test, after which they may buy and sell any cryptocurrencies through intermediaries without a ceiling on the amount.

The overview places brokers and management companies alongside crypto exchanges and digital repositories within the planned market infrastructure, with organized trading available as a single transaction channel.

Crypto exchanges would buy and sell cryptocurrencies, while digital repositories would record rights to the assets. Brokers and management companies would provide additional routes for investor transactions, including access to organized trading.

The official summary separates admission to the public venue from the range of assets available to qualified investors through regulated intermediaries.

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Russia’s underlying cryptocurrency market law is scheduled to take effect on Sept. 1, with the proposed directive taking effect 10 days after official publication. Its date and number remain blank while consultation continues, so the publication-triggered clock has yet to begin.

The overview of the law also describes a distinct channel for foreign trade. Exporters and importers may use any type of wallet or cryptocurrency for cross-border payments, either directly or through intermediaries. That provision concerns international settlement rather than domestic public-market admission.

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The Aug. 24 deadline is the immediate decision point for the organized-trading gate. The current text assigns Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT to the public venue, grants tested, qualified investors broader intermediary access, and leaves the wording and publication date of the final directive unresolved.

The post Russia picks Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT for public trading as retail faces $58,000 cap appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The 21Shares XRP ETF lost more than half its assets during the first six months of 2026 as falling XRP prices collided with heavy redemptions that crystallized $13.36 million in losses.

TOXR ended June with $112.9 million in net assets, down 54.4% from $247.7 million at the end of December, its Aug. 11 quarterly filing showed. XRP fell 42.9% to $1.0431 over the same period, while the fund’s outstanding shares dropped 20% to 11.11 million from 13.89 million.

The difference shows how investor withdrawals amplified the damage from XRP’s price decline.

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Aug 12, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

TOXR recorded $75 million of redemption distributions during the half against $25.5 million contributed through creations, leaving the fund with $49.5 million in negative net capital transactions. It issued 1.47 million shares while 4.25 million were redeemed.

Those redemptions also forced part of the fund’s XRP holdings to be realized at a loss. TOXR recognized $13.36 million of losses on XRP disposed of for redemptions, while another $71.52 million of depreciation remained unrealized on tokens it continued to hold.

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Q2 recovery failed to produce sustained demand

The fund's redemption pressure eased sharply during the second quarter, but subsequent flows suggest the improvement did not develop into a broader recovery.

Per the filing, the first quarter accounted for 4.03 million of the 4.25 million shares redeemed during the half and $11.68 million of the $13.36 million realized redemption loss.

Between April and June, TOXR instead created 480,000 shares and redeemed 220,000, producing net issuance of 260,000 shares. Even with that increase, the fund’s NAV fell 20.56% during the quarter as XRP declined 22.37%.

However, that stabilization has remained fragile despite XRP-linked funds performing strongly in the current market conditions.

CryptoSlate previously reported that XRP funds are currently on a four-month inflow streak that has drawn around $300 million.

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During this period, TOXR has performed weakly, registering less than five days of inflow worth around $6 million, while its cumulative net flow since launch has fallen to roughly -$20 million.  Notably, the fund is the only US spot XRP ETF with negative cumulative flows.

At the same time, its share count stood at 11.12 million on Aug. 11, only 10,000 above its June level.

Meanwhile, 21Shares reported $109.58 million in assets, below the $112.9 million recorded at quarter-end, leaving the fund smaller even after the second quarter’s brief improvement in creations.

The post 21Shares XRP ETF loses 54% of assets as redemptions lock in $13.4 million loss appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Solana launchpad Pump.fun took in more than $10 million in protocol fees in the week of 3–9 August, its first week ever above that mark. Three days later, 6.875 billion new tokens hit the market. The price barely moved. Taken together, the two facts say more about the state of meme trading on Solana than any price chart.

The record week in numbers

According to crypto.news, the platform earned $10.03 million in the week of 3–9 August, roughly twelve percent more than the week before.

Since the spring, the platform has directed half of its net revenue to buybacks and burns and the other half to operations. That it out-earned Hyperliquid over a 30-day window is notable — Hyperliquid is regarded as one of the highest-revenue protocols in the market.

The unlock that wasn't

On 12 August, according to Crypto Briefing, 6.875 billion PUMP were released: roughly 4.17 billion to the team and 2.71 billion to early investors. That is 0.69 percent of the fixed one-trillion supply, worth a low double-digit million sum.

Very little happened. PUMP trades at around $0.00278 on 13 August per CoinGecko, essentially flat on the day and about 18 percent above where it stood a week earlier. Market capitalisation sits near $1.09 billion across roughly 392.7 billion circulating tokens.

The comparison explains why: July saw 82.5 billion tokens released at once, more than ten times as many. After a twelve-month cliff, distribution to team and investors now continues monthly. The August date was not an event but an instalment — and the next one follows.

Why this case is atypical for the meme segment

For most meme tokens, supply and demand can only be guessed at. Here both sides can be quantified: buybacks funded by actual fee revenue on the demand side, a published vesting schedule on the supply side. Whether the arithmetic works out is an open question. That the arithmetic can be attempted at all is the exception in this segment.

One distinction matters and is routinely blurred: PUMP is not the meme token, it is the house where meme tokens are traded. The platform earns on turnover regardless of whether any individual token launched on it survives. For investors those are two entirely different risks. We described the same conflation of infrastructure and speculative object in more detail in our Robinhood Chain guide.

Where Solana's meme ecosystem stands

Meme tokens now account for roughly 42 percent of daily volume on Solana's decentralised exchanges, with Pump.fun contributing about $492 million of the roughly $1.18 billion traded daily. That is well below the peaks of more than $2 billion a day seen at the start of the year — but a clear recovery from the spring.

How thin the base under individual tokens remains is illustrated by JIMOTHY, launched on Pump.fun in July around a viral raccoon from Seattle. After Elon Musk posted a raccoon video on X, the price rose around 331 percent — to a valuation of roughly $16 million. A token with no product whose price hangs on somebody else's social media post is not an asset class. It is a derivative on attention.

What investors should take from this

• Fee revenue is a fundamental, not a price target. It shows that trading is happening on the platform. It says nothing about what the token should be worth.
• Supply keeps growing on schedule. Monthly distribution to team and investors runs for years yet. One well-absorbed date is no evidence that the next ones will go the same way.
• The platform and the tokens on it are two separate risks. Anyone wanting exposure to Solana meme activity should decide which one — and size either position as a possible total loss.

If you want to follow individual Solana meme tokens further, our running assessments are in the dogwifhat price prediction and the Bonk price prediction. Both state plainly that these tokens have no business model — something a record week for the platform they trade on does not change.

(As of 13 August 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Transparency note: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editorial team before publication. All figures and claims were checked against the primary sources linked in the text.

Revolut is removing USDT from its trading list for customers in the European Economic Area and Switzerland. Purchases have been unavailable since July 6, 2026, and deposits have been blocked since July 30, 2026. The deadline expires for good on August 31, 2026: anyone who has not sold or transferred by then will have their remaining USDT balance converted automatically into their account currency at the prevailing market rate.

This goes beyond the question of where you keep your stablecoins. Under German tax law the forced conversion is itself a disposal, one the platform triggers without any action on your part. Letting the deadline pass costs you a trading option and also produces a taxable event at a time and a price you did not choose.

Revolut delists USDT: purchase stop, deposit block and the hard deadline of August 31

The shutdown comes in three stages. Since July 6, 2026, USDT can no longer be bought through Revolut. Since July 30, 2026, the app has also stopped accepting deposits; USDT sent to Revolut from an external wallet has been rejected ever since. The third and final stage follows on August 31, 2026, when USDT can no longer be held in the account at all. Several trade publications report this consistently, citing Revolut's own notice, among them The Paypers.

The same geographic scope applies to all three dates: customers in the European Economic Area and in Switzerland are affected. Outside that region, Revolut continues to offer USDT unchanged, according to the reports.

Until August 31 you have two active options: sell your USDT, or move it to a wallet or an exchange that still lists the stablecoin. If you do nothing, a third option applies automatically, and it is barely an option at all, because you control neither the timing nor the price. Counting from today, a good three weeks remain, which is enough for a sale or a transfer but no longer enough for lengthy hesitation.

Why Revolut is dropping USDT: Tether's missing MiCA licence

The trigger is the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, MiCA for short, whose transition period for stablecoin issuers ended on July 1, 2026. Since then, MiCA-regulated platforms may only offer stablecoins whose issuer is authorised as an e-money institution and holds minimum reserves with banks in the EU. Tether has so far not applied for that authorisation for USDT.

Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino has publicly criticised the reserve requirements and, according to reports, argued that the rule does more to raise liquidity risk than to reduce it. The criticism does not change the legal position: without authorisation, USDT remains a delisting candidate for MiCA-compliant platforms in the EU, whatever the company thinks of the regulation.

What happens to your USDT balance if you do nothing before August 31

If USDT is still sitting in your Revolut account after August 31, 2026, the app converts the balance automatically into your account currency, at the market rate applicable at that moment. At that point you make no decision at all, neither about the timing nor about the rate nor about whether the conversion works out well or badly for you in tax terms.

That sets the case apart from an ordinary reallocation. Normally you decide yourself when to close a position, and you can align the timing with your personal holding period or your tax situation. A forced conversion removes that room for manoeuvre. If you know your balance and act in time, you at least keep control over when the transaction happens.

USDT tax: the forced conversion counts as a disposal under section 23 EStG

According to our coverage of stablecoins and taxes from July 3, 2026, the German Federal Ministry of Finance makes the position clear: exchanging crypto assets for government-issued currencies, goods, services or other crypto assets can constitute a disposal. That classification applies whether you trigger the transaction yourself or a platform carries it out automatically on your behalf.

The decisive provision is section 23 (1) sentence 1 number 2 of the German Income Tax Act. It covers disposals of other assets, a category that includes crypto assets in the view of the tax authorities, where no more than one year lies between acquisition and disposal. The statute also expressly addresses the case of several similar foreign-currency amounts: where there have been several purchases, the amounts acquired first are deemed to be disposed of first.

The transaction also falls into a new reporting environment. The EU's DAC8 directive has applied since January 1, 2026, requiring MiCA-regulated crypto platforms such as Revolut to report their customers' transaction data automatically to the tax authorities. The first reporting period covers 2026 and is expected to reach tax offices from 2027. The forced conversion therefore does not vanish quietly inside an app; sooner or later it reaches the tax office as well.

Crypto tax: the one-year holding period starts afresh with your USDT

For calculating the period, the relevant date is the moment you acquired your USDT, and the date of your first investment in crypto assets makes no difference. If you swapped Bitcoin tax-free into USDT after two years, for example, a new one-year period begins for that USDT. If the forced conversion falls within that period, any resulting gain is generally subject to income tax.

One relief remains in place: gains from private disposal transactions stay tax-free if the total gain from all such transactions in the calendar year comes to less than €1,000. This exemption threshold applies to all of the year's private disposals taken together, and the Revolut conversion is simply one of them. If you have already realised other crypto gains this year, count the forced conversion towards them, because even a small additional gain can push you past the threshold.

Three ways to act on your USDT before August 31

Doing nothing is the one option you do not have to choose actively, and it still has consequences. Three alternatives are open to you, with different practical and tax implications.

1. Sell your USDT and move into euros or another currency. That way you determine the timing and the price yourself. In tax terms the event stays the same: a disposal whose outcome depends on your holding period and your acquisition price.
2. Transfer your USDT to an external wallet or to an exchange outside Revolut. A pure transfer to an address of your own is not in itself a taxable event. Which trading venues still list USDT now that the MiCA transition period has ended is shown in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Switch into a stablecoin listed on Revolut, such as USDC. This route avoids the forced conversion on August 31, yet it is itself a swap and falls under the same disposal rules as a sale into euros.

Kraken, Coinbase and the rest: Revolut is the laggard in the USDT exit

Revolut is not the first platform to drop USDT for its EU customers. Coinbase delisted the stablecoin back in December 2024 and Kraken followed in March 2025; Crypto.com and OKX also restricted their USDT offering for EU users before Revolut did. According to market data cited by the trade publication cryptopolitan.com in its reporting, the global market capitalisation of USDT recently stood at around $184 billion and that of USDC at around $73 billion. Globally USDT therefore remains the considerably larger stablecoin, while in the EU the delistings by the major platforms are shifting the picture in favour of USDC, whose issuer Circle has obtained MiCA authorisation.

A similar pattern of withdrawal and transition period appeared recently at the trading platform Luno, which is winding down its business for customers in the EU; our coverage of the account closure deadline at Luno describes how differently providers handle such deadlines. The difference at Revolut: only a single product disappears, while the account itself remains in place and usable.

The MiCA test: what to check on your next crypto exchange

Before you transfer USDT to a new platform, its MiCA status is worth a look. The European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA, has maintained a central register of all authorised crypto-asset service providers since the end of 2024. It is updated regularly and rests on notifications from the national supervisory authorities; in Germany that is BaFin.

Check whether the provider appears there with a current MiCA authorisation, bearing in mind that national transitional registrations expired on July 1, 2026. Check as well whether the specific stablecoin you want to hold is listed on the new platform as an authorised e-money token, and not merely tolerated for as long as nobody looks too closely. And check whether the provider supplies a comprehensible annual summary of your transactions, the one you will need for your tax return.

What to take away from this

1. Check your Revolut balance now. Until August 31, 2026 you still decide what happens to your USDT; after that the app decides. Which exchanges continue to list the stablecoin is shown in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Document the price and timing of your transaction. Whether you sell, transfer or wait for the forced conversion, record the conversion rate you will need for your tax return. Software from our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers can automate that.
3. Secure your Revolut transaction history. Download an annual summary while you still have access to your USDT trading record. Which platforms deliver a complete, exportable overview is shown in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

(As of August 10, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Transparency note: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editorial team before publication. All figures and claims were checked against the primary sources linked in the text. The feature image was generated with AI.

If you buy a tokenized Tesla or Apple share through a crypto app, you probably start from a rule you know from Bitcoin: hold for a year and the gain is tax-free. Carrying that rule across is the most expensive mistake in this product segment. Whether the one-year holding period applies is decided by the category of income a gain has to be assigned to. For tokenized stocks that assignment regularly comes out differently than it does for a cryptocurrency.

This article sorts the two regimes that come into consideration using the wording of the law. It does not replace tax advice in an individual case, because the classification hangs on how the particular token is structured contractually.

Tokenized stocks: what sits behind the token, and why the legal wrapper decides the tax treatment

The term “tokenized stock” does not describe a uniform product. What is meant is a token recorded on a blockchain whose value tracks the price of a real, existing share. How that link is established differs from provider to provider.

In practice you will mainly meet two designs. In the first, a custodian holds the underlying shares and issues a token that securitises a claim against the issuer. In the second, the token merely replicates the price movement. In both cases you are, as a rule, not a shareholder in company law terms: voting rights are not part of the package, and the claim runs against the issuer of the token, not against the company whose name is on the product.

That contractual construction is precisely where tax law takes hold. The Income Tax Act knows no category called “token”. It asks whether the gain stems from the disposal of an asset or from a capital claim that promises you repayment. Which description fits follows from the issuer documents and not from the label the app files the instrument under.

Which trading venues offer such products in Europe at all is set out in our overview of exchanges for real world assets and tokenized stocks. Which provider suits the way you invest is covered in the comparison of the best crypto brokers.

The one-year holding period under Section 23 EStG covers “other assets” only

The rule Bitcoin investors have in mind sits in Section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the German Income Tax Act (EStG). What it captures there are “disposal transactions in other assets where the period between acquisition and disposal is no more than one year”. Hold for longer and you no longer meet the elements of the provision at all, so the gain stays out of the calculation.

Two details of this norm are regularly overlooked. First, under sentence 4 of the same provision a period of ten years applies instead of one if the asset generates “income in at least one calendar year”. Second, under Section 23(3) sentence 5 the gain is only tax-free if the total gain from all private disposal transactions in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros. That is an exemption limit and not an allowance: at a total gain of 1,000 euros the full amount is taxable, not just the excess. You can read Section 23 EStG in the original wording directly at the Federal Ministry of Justice.

The decisive point for tokenized stocks lies in the opening feature. Section 23 presupposes an “other asset”, meaning an item that is precisely not already captured by a category of income that takes precedence. As soon as a product has to be classified as a capital claim, it leaves that scope, and the holding period loses its significance entirely.

A repayment claim against the issuer: the feature that brings tokenized stocks under Section 20 EStG

Section 20(1) no. 7 EStG captures “income from other capital claims of any kind where repayment of the capital or a consideration for letting the capital be used has been promised or granted”. The disposal of such claims is captured through Section 20(2) sentence 1 no. 7. Alongside it, no. 3 covers the gain from forward transactions “through which the taxpayer obtains a cash settlement or an amount of money or advantage determined by the value of a variable reference figure”. The full text of Section 20 EStG shows how far that catalogue reaches.

The element that in practice almost always decides the matter for tokenized stocks is the promised repayment. If the issuer undertakes contractually to redeem the token against the deposited share or against its cash equivalent, much speaks for a capital claim. If instead the token only maps a price movement and the claim is for a cash settlement, classification as a forward transaction moves to the fore. Both routes lead out of Section 23.

An editorial assessment: because the structure differs from product to product, the classification cannot be settled in blanket form for the whole product group. What is solid is the reverse statement, and for your planning it usually suffices. The assumption that after twelve months the gain is automatically tax-free does not hold for these products.

Flat tax of 25 percent under Section 32d EStG: what falls due on investment income from tokenized stocks

If the gain falls under Section 20 EStG, the separate tax rate applies. Section 32d(1) sentence 1 EStG provides: “The income tax on income from capital assets that does not fall under Section 20(8) is 25 percent.” On top of that come the solidarity surcharge and, if you are liable to church tax, the church tax; for the latter, sentence 3 of the provision provides for a reduction.

The practical difference from the crypto world reaches further than the bare percentage suggests. With an asset under Section 23 EStG the holding period decides whether any tax arises at all; where it does fall due, it is measured by your personal income tax rate. With investment income the tax arises regardless of the holding period, but at a fixed rate.

Exemption limit and saver’s allowance: two amounts of 1,000 euros each that have nothing to do with one another

This is where confusion arises particularly often in practice, because the figure 1,000 turns up in both systems. The amounts are constructed differently, though, and cannot be set off against one another.

• Exemption limit under Section 23(3) sentence 5 EStG: gains from private disposal transactions stay tax-free if the total gain in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros. Once the threshold is reached, the entire gain is taxable.
• Saver’s allowance under Section 20(9) EStG: for income from capital assets an amount of 1,000 euros is deducted as income-related expenses; spouses assessed jointly are entitled to a combined allowance of 2,000 euros. It works as a genuine deduction rather than as an all-or-nothing threshold.

If you disposed of both Bitcoin and tokenized stocks in the same year, you have to keep the two calculations apart. An unused saver’s allowance does nothing for the gain from the crypto sale, and a gain below the exemption limit of Section 23 does not reduce the tax on investment income. A look at the comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers is worth it above all when your transactions are spread across several platforms.

Loss offsetting: why losses on tokenized stocks do not run against Bitcoin gains

The separation of the two systems shows most clearly when something goes wrong. For private disposal transactions, Section 23(3) sentence 7 EStG provides that losses “may be offset only up to the amount of the gain the taxpayer realised from private disposal transactions in the same calendar year”. A loss from a crypto sale within the one-year period therefore stays in its own bucket.

The same applies in reverse: a loss from a product governed by the investment income rules cannot be set against a gain from a private disposal transaction. If you want to tidy up your portfolio at year-end, you should therefore know beforehand which bucket each position sits in. Which events trigger tax on other crypto products is broken down in our article on stablecoins and taxes.

Annex KAP or Annex SO: which part of the tax return the gain on tokenized stocks belongs in

The assignment to a category of income follows through directly to where the transaction lands in the tax return. Income from capital assets under Section 20 EStG is entered in Annex KAP. Private disposal transactions under Section 23 EStG count as other income and therefore belong in Annex SO.

You do not set this switch as you see fit; it follows the classification of the product. Entering the same transaction in both places to be on the safe side creates a double entry that prompts queries. Which records you should gather for both annexes is set out in our overview of the documents for the crypto tax return.

The review path: how the issuer documents tell you which regime governs your tokenized stocks

The classification cannot be derived from the product name, nor from the category an app files the instrument under. What counts are the documents the issuer provides. Work through them in this order.

1. Identify the issuer. Establish who your claim runs against. The name on the product is that of the company whose price is being tracked; the contractual counterparty is someone else.
2. Look for repayment or redemption. Check whether you are promised a return against the deposited share or against its cash equivalent. This feature is the point of attachment for Section 20(1) no. 7 EStG.
3. Read the key information document. Where a key information document is provided for the product, you will find the product type described there in standardised form.
4. Check voting rights and dividends. Establish whether distributions are passed through. For tax purposes these are separate events that do not form part of the disposal gain.
5. Document the result. Record what you base your classification on and file the documents with the purchase receipt. If a query comes, the burden of explanation is yours.
6. Ask when it stays unclear. If the structure is still open after you have read the documents, that is a case for tax advice and not for an estimate.

How to recognise a reliable answer

A sound classification names the contractual clause it follows from. Information pages that speak in general terms about “crypto taxes” and treat the one-year period as settled miss the question.

Foreign issuer and no tax withheld: why the filing duty for tokenized stocks stays with you

Many tokenized stocks are traded through platforms that are not a domestic paying agent. No withholding tax is then deducted, and the transaction appears in no annual tax certificate.

Section 32d(3) sentence 1 EStG is unambiguous at this point: “Taxable investment income that has not been subject to withholding tax must be declared by the taxpayer in their income tax return.” Under sentence 3, an assessment is to be carried out in that case. A missing deduction at source is therefore the trigger for a duty of your own and not a sign that there is nothing to declare.

If you trade across several platforms, you should therefore check whether the provider supplies a usable annual statement. Which trading venues deliver documented exports is listed in the comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

What to take away on tokenized stocks

1. Check first whether repayment is promised to you. This one feature decides whether the one-year period comes into consideration at all. Which providers keep their product documents accessible is shown in the comparison of the best crypto brokers.
2. Keep two separate schedules. Private disposal transactions and investment income are calculated separately, offset separately and declared in different annexes. Software that keeps the two areas cleanly apart is covered in the comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.
3. Secure the documents at the time of purchase. Download the product description and the annual statement while your access to the platform still exists. Which trading venues deliver reliable exports is shown in the comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

(As of August 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Transparency note: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editorial team before publication. All figures and claims were checked against the primary sources linked in the text. The feature image was generated with AI.

There is a proposal circulating among Bitcoin developers that would, if adopted, make roughly a third of all Bitcoin permanently unspendable. Not stolen. Not confiscated by a government. Simply frozen by the rules of the network itself, including an estimated 1.7 million coins widely believed to belong to Bitcoin's anonymous creator.

The proposal is not a fringe idea. It was authored by a group including Jameson Lopp, a co-founder of the custody firm Casa and one of the most established security researchers in the field. It has a formal number in Bitcoin's official proposal system. And it exists because of a threat that has moved, over the past eighteen months, from a distant theoretical concern to something developers now treat as a scheduling problem.

This piece explains what is actually being proposed, why the threat is considered credible, and why the proposed cure is more contested than the disease.

What is being proposed, in plain terms?

Bitcoin developers publish formal change proposals in a numbered system. Each one is called a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, abbreviated BIP. A number does not mean a proposal is approved or scheduled. It means the idea has been documented in a standard format so the community can examine it. Most BIPs are never adopted.

Two of them matter here, and they work in sequence.

• The first, BIP-360, creates a new type of Bitcoin address that a quantum computer could not break. This is the constructive half. It adds an option without removing anything, and it is comparatively uncontroversial.
• The second, BIP-361, formally titled "Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset," is the contested half. It sets a deadline. Coins that have not moved to the new quantum-safe address type by that deadline would become unspendable. The proposal was assigned its number on 11 February 2026 and remains in draft status. No activation has occurred, and no date has been fixed.

The critical detail, and the one most coverage skips: BIP-361 cannot function until BIP-360 is activated first. The deadline clock only begins after the safe destination exists.

Why can a quantum computer steal Bitcoin at all?

To follow the argument, one piece of technical vocabulary is unavoidable.

Every $Bitcoin wallet holds two mathematically linked numbers. The private key is the secret that authorizes spending. The public key is derived from it and can be shared safely. The relationship runs one way: deriving the public key from the private key is trivial, while working backwards from the public key to the private key would take a conventional computer longer than the age of the universe.

That one-way property is what secures Bitcoin. It is also precisely what a sufficiently powerful quantum computer would dismantle. Quantum machines can run algorithms that make this reverse calculation practical rather than impossible.

The vulnerability therefore depends on a single question: has the public key ever been revealed on the blockchain?

For most modern addresses, it has not. The address you share is a scrambled shortened version of the public key, and the key itself only becomes visible at the moment you spend from that address. But two categories of coin are permanently exposed. The first is Bitcoin's oldest address format, used in 2009 and 2010, which published the raw public key directly on the chain. The second is any address that has been used to spend and then received funds again, a habit known as address reuse, which is still common and which permanently exposes the key.

There is a further problem that makes detection unreliable. An attacker who broke a key would not need to spend immediately. The proposal's authors describe a scenario in which private keys are computed quietly and funds are drained gradually over weeks or months, specifically to avoid alerting anyone. Under that scenario, the industry might not learn a quantum attack had begun until long after it did.

How much Bitcoin is actually exposed?

The proposal's own figure is that as of 1 March 2026, more than 34 percent of all Bitcoin had revealed a public key on the blockchain. A Google-commissioned study puts the total at approximately 6.7 million BTC sitting in quantum-vulnerable addresses.

Within that total, roughly 1.7 million coins sit in the oldest address format from Bitcoin's first two years. These are widely believed to include Satoshi Nakamoto's holdings. They have never moved. If the keys are lost, as is generally assumed, no migration is possible, because there is nobody left to perform it.

At current prices, the exposed supply is worth somewhere in the region of $425 billion. That figure is what turns a cryptography question into a market question. A successful attack would not only transfer those coins to an attacker. It would introduce enormous unexpected supply and, more damaging still, demonstrate that Bitcoin's security guarantee had failed.

How close is the threat, realistically?

No machine capable of this exists today. That point deserves emphasis, because the topic attracts considerable exaggeration.

What has changed is the shape of the estimates. McKinsey's research places the arrival of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, meaning one actually powerful enough to break this class of encryption, as early as 2027 to 2030. Expert surveys put the probability of arrival before the late 2030s at above 50 percent.

The more significant shift is in software rather than hardware. Google's security researchers have tracked improvements in quantum algorithms of up to twentyfold, which lowers the amount of physical hardware an attacker would need. In other words, the target is moving closer even in periods when quantum computers themselves are not improving quickly.

The standards bodies have already responded. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized three post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024, giving the industry approved replacement algorithms to build on. Bitcoin's difficulty is not the absence of a solution. It is that no major blockchain has completed a migration of this kind, and Bitcoin's governance is deliberately designed to make change slow.

What would the migration actually involve?

BIP-361 sets out three phases. The following table reflects the proposal text directly.

Phase C is the part that determines how severe this actually is, and it is also the least developed. If it works, holders with their recovery phrase could unlock frozen funds even after the deadline, and the freeze becomes a strong inconvenience rather than a permanent loss. If it does not, Phase B is final. The proposal explicitly lists Phase C as pending research, demand, and consensus.

One activation detail is worth noting for anyone tracking timelines. The proposal specifies that miner signalling would not begin before 1 January 2027, and would require 90 percent support. That is a deliberately high bar. For comparison, the BIP-110 proposal that reached its signalling window this August has attracted under 2 percent miner support.

Why is this so controversial?

Because it collides directly with Bitcoin's central promise.

The phrase "not your keys, not your coins" expresses the idea that possession of the private key is absolute and that no authority can interfere with your funds. BIP-361 proposes that the network itself decide certain coins can no longer move. Critics argue this is confiscation in effect even if not in form, since the coins are not transferred to anyone else, and that the precedent is more dangerous than the threat it addresses. If the network can render one category of output unspendable for a good reason, the mechanism exists to do so again for a worse one.

There is also a legitimate question of authority. Who determines what counts as vulnerable, and on what timetable? Bitcoin has no chief executive and no foundation empowered to ship a consensus change. The last one, Taproot, activated in November 2021, and nothing has changed the rules since.

This is why the debate has shifted from cryptography to governance. The underlying question is whether a system engineered specifically to resist change can agree on a significant upgrade before it becomes urgent.

What is the case in favour?

Supporters frame the choice as one between two bad outcomes rather than between a bad outcome and a clean one.

Their central argument is that doing nothing does not preserve the vulnerable coins. It hands them to whoever reaches quantum capability first. The proposal describes three possible approaches: allow anyone to take vulnerable coins, allow them to be taken gradually, or allow nobody to take them. There is no fourth option in which the coins simply remain safe. Freezing, on this reading, preserves ownership rather than removing it, particularly if the Phase C recovery route is built.

A second argument concerns attacker motivation. An economically motivated attacker would want to stay hidden and extract value quietly. A politically motivated one might simply want to destroy confidence in Bitcoin. Since it is impossible to know which you face in advance, the authors argue the defensive position has to be established well before any attack.

A third argument is about time. Coordinating wallet providers, exchanges, hardware manufacturers and custodians has historically taken years in Bitcoin. A fixed, published deadline is what converts a collective problem everyone can defer into a private one each participant has to solve. That is the proposal's actual mechanism: it does not force anyone to do anything today, but it removes the option of indefinite delay.

What does this mean for Bitcoin holders now?

Nothing is required today. BIP-361 is a draft. It has not been activated, it depends on a prerequisite that has not been activated either, and signalling could not begin before 2027 under its own terms. Anyone claiming holders must act immediately is misinformed or selling something.

That said, the direction of travel is clear enough to justify a few observations.

Coins held in modern address formats that have never been spent from are not currently exposed, because the public key has not been published. Address reuse is the practice that converts a safe address into an exposed one, and it remains a reasonable habit to avoid regardless of quantum considerations. Holders using custodial services or exchange-traded products face an institutional question rather than a personal one, since the migration burden would fall on the custodian.

The more consequential point is for the long term. Any Bitcoin intended to sit untouched for a decade or more, including inheritance arrangements and long-dated corporate treasury positions, now carries a migration requirement that did not exist two years ago. Estate planning that assumes a seed phrase in a safe will remain sufficient indefinitely may need revisiting.

What should be watched next?

Three markers will indicate whether this moves from debate to implementation.

• The first is BIP-360 progress, since nothing in BIP-361 can proceed without it. It has reached testnet implementation, which is a meaningful step but well short of activation.
• The second is Phase C research. If a workable recovery mechanism is demonstrated, much of the opposition loses its strongest argument, because permanent loss becomes recoverable friction.
• The third is the January 2027 signalling window written into the proposal, and specifically whether miner support approaches the 90 percent threshold. Recent Bitcoin governance offers little reason for optimism on that front.

The most likely outcome over the next two years is neither adoption nor rejection, but continued deadlock while the estimated arrival of quantum capability draws closer. That is an uncomfortable position, and it is the one Bitcoin currently occupies.

Only two of the ten largest cryptocurrencies are in the green for 2026, and neither of them is $Bitcoin or $Ethereum. $TRON is up 18 percent on the year and Hyperliquid has almost doubled, while Bitcoin sits 27 percent lower and $XRP has lost 45 percent of its value since January.

Today's tape hides all of it. July inflation data landed exactly where economists expected, Bitcoin held the low $63,000s, and almost every large-cap token finished the last 24 hours within one percent of where it started. The daily numbers are flat. The yearly ones are not.

What Are the Top 10 Crypto Prices Today?

Here is where the ten largest non-stablecoin assets stand right now.

Three things jump out. Hyperliquid is up almost 120 percent on the year while the rest of the majors sit deep in the red. TRON is the only other green YTD name in the top 10, quietly compounding an 18 percent gain on steady network usage rather than narrative. And XRP is the worst performer of the group, down more than 45 percent since January and now sitting on the $1.00 handle.

Why Is Bitcoin Stuck Near $63,000 After the CPI Report?

Because the inflation print gave traders nothing to trade. July CPI came in precisely in line with consensus, with the headline index rising 0.1 percent month over month and 3.4 percent year over year. Bitcoin briefly tested support near $63,200 ahead of the data amid a flush of leveraged longs before recovering into the mid-$63,000s.

That was roughly the expected outcome. Options markets had priced only limited moves going into the print, around 1.3 percent for Bitcoin, signalling that most participants anticipated a contained reaction rather than a breakout. An in-line number leaves Federal Reserve expectations exactly where they were, which means the market now has to wait for September.

The one real shift came a few days earlier. July payrolls fell by 23,000 against forecasts for an 80,000 gain, and traders responded by pricing out a September rate hike. That is a meaningfully less hostile macro backdrop than crypto has traded against for most of 2026.

Why Are Zcash and Hyperliquid the Only Real Outperformers?

Two completely different stories.

• Zcash is riding the strongest sector narrative of the year. Privacy assets have decoupled from the broader market, with ZEC extending a rally exceeding 400 percent on an annualised basis and Monero taking out its 2021 all-time high even as Bitcoin and Ethereum touched multi-month lows. The demand looks structural rather than speculative: roughly 28 percent of Zcash supply now sits in shielded addresses, and more than a third of all transactions touch that private layer. Monero sits just outside this list at $397.19, up 12.38 percent on the week, confirming the sector move rather than a single-token story.
• Hyperliquid is a fundamentals-and-supply story. The protocol runs a continuous buyback funded by trading fees, and regulated products have added a second bid. HYPE spot ETFs returned to net inflows in the week ending August 7, adding $2.84 million after three straight weeks of redemptions, bringing cumulative net inflows to $280.8 million. HYPE still trades well below its June 16 all-time high of $76.67, so the 119 percent YTD figure reflects an early-year base rather than current momentum.

What Happened to XRP at the $1 Level?

XRP is the most leveraged name in the top 10 right now, and that makes it the most dangerous one. Open interest in XRP futures climbed to 2.67 billion XRP, worth about $2.73 billion, the highest since October, up from 2.25 billion at the start of the month.

Rising open interest into a falling price usually points to fresh short positioning rather than long liquidation. At the same time, whale addresses have accumulated more than 380 million XRP, taking their combined holdings to roughly 13 percent of total supply. That sets up a binary: a break above the $1.06 retracement level could squeeze shorts toward $1.21, while losing $1.00 opens the path back to the $0.99 swing low. Today's in-line CPI resolved nothing, so the setup stays live.

Which Crypto News Actually Moved the Market This Week?

1. Institutional flows turned positive again. US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $853.54 million across all five sessions last week, their strongest run since April 17, while ether funds added roughly $245 million and XRP, Solana and HYPE products all closed the week with net inflows. BlackRock's IBIT and ETHA absorbed about $896 million of that, more than four fifths of the combined total. Worth keeping in perspective: Bitcoin ETFs are still around $4.44 billion in net outflows for 2026 as a whole.
2. The Coldcard exploit reshaped custody behaviour. TRM Labs estimated attackers drained roughly 1,816 BTC, worth about $116 million, from more than 5,200 addresses starting July 30. Galaxy Research put potential total losses above $130 million, and K33 measured approximately 890,000 BTC moving on-chain in the following seven days, the highest weekly figure of 2026. Bloomberg's Eric Balchunas has floated the link to the ETF inflow surge, though ether ETFs posted their own best week since April despite ETH holders having zero exposure to a Bitcoin-only hardware wallet flaw, which complicates the theory.
3. Bitcoin's fork drama arrived and fizzled. The mandatory signaling period for BIP-110 went live at block 961,632 on August 8, but miner support has stayed under 1 to 2 percent of total hashrate. Standard payments remain valid under the proposed rules, and near-zero adoption means nothing changes for regular users either way.
4. Russia moved to fence in retail access. Non-qualified investors face a 300,000 rouble annual purchase limit per intermediary, roughly $3,600, with trading restricted to Bitcoin, ether and USDT, while qualified investors have no cap.

What Are the Next Crypto Catalysts to Watch?

September is the month that matters.

• The CLARITY Act vote on 15 September. Senate Majority Leader John Thune queued up a procedural vote before the August recess, setting the bill for immediate floor consideration when lawmakers return in mid-September. Republicans need 60 votes, meaning all 50 Senate Republicans plus at least eight Democrats, with negotiations stalled over an ethics provision barring public officials and their families from profiting off digital asset ventures. Bitwise called its passage the top catalyst of Q3 and suggested it could mark the bottom of the current bear market, though prediction market odds have slid to near 40 percent from 75 percent in May.
• The September FOMC decision. Markets are pricing close to a 50-50 split between a hike and a cut, and Bitcoin's average September return sits at just 3.08 percent, one of its weaker months historically.
• The eCash hard fork. Targeted at block 964,000, around 21 August, this one is a separate chain rather than a change to Bitcoin itself, but exchange and wallet handling is worth watching.
• Solana's upgrade path and ETF decisions. The Alpenglow upgrade and SIMD-0266 are still ahead, with pending SEC approval for additional spot Solana products as a second lever.
• GENIUS Act implementation. Stablecoin supply has held near $300 billion since last autumn, and Bitwise expects more firms to launch stablecoin projects ahead of the January 2027 effective date, which is a direct demand driver for Ethereum and Solana block space.

What Does This Mean for Traders Right Now?

The market is in a holding pattern, and it has a date on the calendar for when that ends. Inflation is behaving, the labour market is softening enough to take a rate hike off the table, and institutional flows have turned positive for the first time in months. None of that is enough to break Bitcoin out of the $60,000s on its own.

What could is the September combination of a CLARITY Act vote and an FOMC decision landing within days of each other. Until then, the interesting action stays where it has been all year: in privacy assets that trade on their own narrative, and in protocols like Hyperliquid where token supply mechanics matter more than the macro tape.

A Kansas City security researcher ran 31 million tests to teach a model how to paint camouflage for the algorithm age.

Researchers found every major AI provider encrypts reasoning tokens with a single global key—and exploited it to decode 315,320 hidden thinking blocks from public logs, recovering passwords and live API keys along the way.

The April preview got benchmarked to death and landed 18 points behind Anthropic’s flagship. DeepSeek’s own numbers for the finished model tell a very different story.

The AI agent can navigate workplace software and coordinate with other bots, raising questions about security and control.

The cash-and-equity deal for the options-income specialist folds in NEOS's roughly $1 billion Bitcoin covered-call fund, giving Goldman instant scale in a crypto ETF niche it had only just entered on paper.

The market is in stalemate rather than anything else, especially after all top tier assets report little to no volatility at this point in time.

MoneyGram is bringing its global cash network to Solana.

Hyperliquid is making a push toward the U.S. market amid its explosive growth.

Canada’s second-largest bank, Bank of Montreal, reveals XRP fund positions inside its fresh $303 billion portfolio disclosure.

Bitcoin entrepreneur Samson Mow has argued that the BIP-110 movement was largely a backlash to decisions and behavior within the Bitcoin Core ecosystem.

TLDR:

• XRP futures open interest reached 435.1M on Binance, pushing its 30-day Z-Score to about 1.20.
• A Z-Score above 1.0 shows above-average open interest, not necessarily a bullish direction.
• XRP Ledger wallets holding over 1M tokens grew by 32 in three months, Santiment data shows.
• RLUSD has grown into a key institutional stablecoin while XRP trades near $1.00 to $1.02.

XRP open interest on Binance remains elevated even as the token’s price continues to soften, data shows. Open interest in XRP futures contracts has reached roughly 435.1 million XRP, well above the 30-day moving average near 403.6 million XRP. 

The gap has pushed the Open Interest Z-Score to about 1.20, a level that points to derivatives activity running above typical ranges. 

XRP traded near $1.01 at the time of writing, reflecting continued price weakness despite this elevated positioning.

Source: Coingecko

Open Interest Data Points to Active Derivatives Positioning

The standard deviation for XRP open interest over the past 30 days stands at approximately 26.3 million XRP. Measured against this range, current open interest sits more than one standard deviation above the recent average. 

This places the Z-Score reading at roughly 1.20, a figure traders often watch for shifts in derivatives behavior. A high Z-Score does not automatically point to a bullish setup. The metric only tracks the volume of open positions on the exchange. 

Source: Cryptoquant

It does not separate long positions from short ones in the underlying data. As a result, rising open interest can reflect added leverage on either side of the market.

Open interest staying above its average while XRP trades near $1.02 suggests speculative positioning has not eased. 

Traders appear willing to keep contracts open even as spot prices soften. This pattern often signals that market participants expect a decisive move rather than continued drift.

The next stretch of price action will likely determine how these positions resolve. A rise in open interest paired with firmer prices could support renewed momentum for XRP. 

A continued price decline alongside elevated open interest raises the risk of forced liquidations, particularly if selling pressure accelerates.

Large XRP Wallets Keep Accumulating During the Downturn

Santiment Intelligence noted that XRP Ledger wallets holding over one million tokens added 32 new wallets over three months. 

The addition of large-holder wallets during this stretch came alongside a 29% decline in market capitalization.

XRP has traded near $1.00 through much of the summer, with performance described as underwhelming. Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, trading around $0.99, has expanded into a notable presence within institutional stablecoin markets during the same period.

Ripple’s broader infrastructure continues to support settlement activity on the Ledger. Payments, custody, and tokenization services remain tied to ongoing use cases for XRP. This network activity persists independent of short-term price swings in the token.

Growth in million-XRP wallets during a market cap decline often signals accumulation by larger holders. Trading volume over the past 24 hours reached $905,040,648, alongside a 1.76% price drop for the day. The seven-day decline for XRP stands at 6.07% as of writing.

The post XRP Open Interest Climbs Above Average as Price Slips Near $1.02 appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Cerebras core Q2 revenue doubled to $209.9 million as cloud demand surged sharply.
• CBRS stock fell 13.93% after hours despite a strong 11.63% regular-session gain.
• Core cloud revenue jumped 287% year over year to a record $127.7 million in Q2.
• Cerebras raised 2026 core revenue guidance to between $880 million and $890 million.
• Remaining performance obligations reached $25.4 billion at the end of June.

Cerebras Systems (CBRS) shares posted sharp second-quarter growth as cloud demand lifted revenue and strengthened its 2026 outlook. However, CBRS stock plunged 13.93% after hours to $225.55 after closing the session at $262.06. The reversal followed an 11.63% regular-session gain and came despite stronger core revenue and raised annual guidance.

Cerebras Systems Inc., CBRS

Cerebras Q2 Revenue Doubles as Cloud Business Expands

Cerebras reported second-quarter GAAP revenue of $180.1 million, representing a 74% increase from the previous year. Meanwhile, core revenue reached $209.9 million and increased 103% from the same period last year. Cloud and other services provided the strongest growth as demand for fast AI inference continued expanding.

GAAP cloud and services revenue reached a record $126 million, representing growth of 281% year over year. Core cloud and services revenue increased 287% to $127.7 million during the quarter. Therefore, cloud operations accounted for a significant share of Cerebras’ quarterly growth and supported its broader infrastructure expansion.

Core gross margin improved to 41%, rising about 940 basis points compared with the second quarter of 2025. Additionally, core operating margin improved by roughly 2,600 basis points but remained negative at 16%. GAAP gross margin stood at 14%, while the company’s GAAP operating margin remained deeply negative at 265%.

Cerebras Expands AI Capacity and Strengthens Major Partnerships

Cerebras ended June with $25.4 billion in remaining performance obligations, providing substantial contracted business for future periods. The company also reported $8.6 billion in cash, restricted cash, equivalents, and short-term investments. Furthermore, Cerebras secured an $850 million revolving credit facility to support additional data center capacity.

The company increased contracted data center capacity to more than 600 megawatts for delivery through the end of 2027. Its wider pipeline now includes several gigawatts of potential data center opportunities. Cerebras also expects manufacturing capacity to increase more than tenfold during 2026 through additional contract manufacturing lines.

Cerebras expanded manufacturing partnerships with Flex, Sanmina, and Rocket EMS while securing wafer supply from TSMC. Its wafer-scale architecture also reduces reliance on HBM memory, CoWoS packaging, and three-nanometer fabrication technology. Consequently, the company expects fewer supply constraints as infrastructure deployments accelerate during 2027 and beyond.

Cerebras Raises 2026 Outlook as Cloud Demand Builds

Cerebras strengthened its technology relationships with OpenAI, AMD, AWS, CrowdStrike, and several emerging AI software companies. Its infrastructure now supports OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol at speeds reaching 750 tokens per second. Additionally, Cerebras and AMD developed disaggregated inference systems designed to increase throughput by as much as five times.

The AMD-supported inference offering remains scheduled for production during the fourth quarter of 2026. Cerebras also expects similar throughput improvements through Amazon Bedrock during the first quarter of 2027. Meanwhile, Cognition and Lovable signed new cloud capacity agreements as Cerebras expanded its customer base.

For the third quarter, Cerebras expects core revenue between $214 million and $216 million. Management also forecasts core gross margins between 38% and 40%, with operating margins remaining negative. For 2026, Cerebras raised core revenue guidance to $880 million through $890 million alongside stronger margin expectations.

The post Cerebras Systems Inc. (CBRS) Stock: Surge as Q2 Revenue Doubles , Strong Cloud Growth and 2026 Outlook  appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Cisco stock drops 4.66% after hours despite record Q4 revenue and earnings.
• Cisco Q4 revenue jumps 18% to $17.3 billion as networking demand strengthens.
• AI infrastructure orders hit $4 billion in Q4 and $9.3 billion for fiscal 2026.
• Cisco expects AI infrastructure revenue to reach $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027.
• Cisco forecasts fiscal 2027 revenue between $72.2 billion and $73.4 billion.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) stock fell 4.66% after hours to $118.11 despite record fourth-quarter revenue and strong annual growth. The decline reversed gains from the regular session, when shares closed at $123.88 up 2.46%. Cisco also reported $4 billion in quarterly AI infrastructure orders from hyperscale customers.

Cisco Systems, Inc., CSCO

Cisco Posts Record Q4 Revenue and Earnings Growth

Cisco reported fourth-quarter revenue of $17.3 billion, representing an 18% increase from the same period last year. Product revenue increased 24%, while services revenue remained unchanged from the prior-year quarter. Networking revenue led product growth with a 28% increase during the period.

GAAP net income reached $3.9 billion, while diluted earnings increased 52% to $0.97 per share. Meanwhile, non-GAAP net income rose 23% to $4.9 billion during the fourth quarter. Non-GAAP earnings also increased 23% to $1.22 per share.

Cisco generated $5.4 billion in operating cash flow during Q4, representing a 27% annual increase. GAAP operating income rose 38% to $4.3 billion, supported by stronger revenue and operating efficiency. Non-GAAP operating income increased 23% to $6.2 billion, while its operating margin reached 35.9%.

AI Orders and Networking Demand Strengthen Cisco’s Growth

Cisco recorded $4 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscale customers during the fourth quarter. Consequently, total AI infrastructure orders reached $9.3 billion across fiscal 2026. Cisco generated approximately $4 billion in AI infrastructure revenue during the full fiscal year.

The company expects AI infrastructure revenue to reach about $7.5 billion during fiscal 2027. Meanwhile, total product orders jumped 35% year over year during the fourth quarter. Orders still increased 25% after excluding hyperscale customers from the quarterly comparison.

Networking product orders climbed 40%, marking an eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Demand also expanded across every geographic region and customer market during the quarter. These gains supported Cisco’s view that networking demand remains in a strong replacement and expansion cycle.

Cisco Issues Strong FY 2027 Revenue Guidance

Cisco reported full-year fiscal 2026 revenue of $63.3 billion, representing annual growth of 12%. GAAP net income increased 30% to $13.3 billion, while annual GAAP earnings reached $3.33 per share. Non-GAAP earnings increased 14% to $4.33 per share during the year.

For fiscal 2027, Cisco expects revenue between $72.2 billion and $73.4 billion. The company forecasts GAAP earnings between $4.00 and $4.06 per share for the year. Cisco also expects non-GAAP earnings between $5.05 and $5.11 per share.

Cisco projects first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue between $18 billion and $18.2 billion. The company expects first-quarter non-GAAP earnings between $1.32 and $1.34 per share. However, the strong outlook failed to prevent CSCO stock from falling sharply after the earnings release.

The post Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) Stock: Sink After Hours Despite Record Q4 Earnings and $4 Billion AI Orders  appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and Pepe lead the sector at $11.24 billion, $2.65 billion and $1.19 billion.

• Bullski runs a presale with a capped 120 billion supply and an ERC-20 contract on Ethereum.

• Stage 1 was roughly 96 percent sold on August 11, 2026, leaving about 42.6 million tokens.

• SPX6900 shows what a strong run looks like, with a $2.27 high on July 28, 2025.

Picking the best meme coins in August 2026 means weighing size against room to grow. Dogecoin is the large one at $11.24 billion. Pepe is the quick one at $1.19 billion.

Bullski is the early one, priced at $0.00001 during stage 1 of a 16-stage sale, with a listing reference of $0.0025. About 42.6 million tokens were left in that opening rung on August 11, 2026. Check the official Bullski sale for today’s count.

What Separates the Best Meme Coins to Buy Now

Two things decide most meme coin outcomes. How much money is already parked inside, and how many people still care. Attention and scale both sit with Dogecoin today.

An $11.24 billion cap means every doubling needs $11.24 billion of fresh buying, which is a tall order. Smaller names need far less to move the same percentage. Bullski carries no cap at all yet, since the token has not listed anywhere.

Its price comes from a published schedule rather than a chart. Buyers hunting the best meme coins to invest in usually want that mix of a low entry and rules written down early.

Timing shapes results as much as picking does. Pepe, Brett and Turbo all set their record highs back in December 2024, and none has returned to those levels. Bitcoin at $63,609 sets the mood for everything smaller.

When the largest coin drifts, meme prices tend to drift along with it. A fixed presale price appeals for exactly that reason. Buyers know their entry regardless of what the charts did that morning.

By the numbers: Meme coins were worth $25.52 billion on August 11, 2026, up 0.92 percent, with $1.56 billion changing hands inside 24 hours.

Best New Meme Coins Start From a Fixed Price

$BULLSKI is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. Buyers pay with ETH, BNB or USDT. Supply stops at 120 billion tokens, and 40 percent of that sells through a 16-stage ladder.

Stage 1 costs $0.00001, stage 2 costs $0.000015 and stage 3 costs $0.00002. Liquidity locks at launch, team tokens vest over time, and both staking and referral rewards run during the sale. Etherscan already shows a verified contract, with an audit in process.

Read the $BULLSKI feature list and compare it line by line against any other new token on your watchlist.

Older meme coins rarely offered any of this. Most arrived straight onto a chart with no ladder, no vesting and no lock. For the wider ranking, see our ranking of the top meme coins for 2026, which sorts the sector purely by size.

Most best meme coins 2026 shortlists pair one large name with one early name for exactly that reason.

DOGE, SHIB, PEPE and SPX6900 on August 11, 2026

Dogecoin trades at $0.0723 with an $11.24 billion cap, up 3.7 percent on the day. Its $0.7316 record dates to May 7, 2021. No supply cap exists here, so new coins keep arriving and dilute holders quietly year after year.

Shiba Inu costs $0.00000449 for a $2.65 billion cap, down 2.3 percent, according to CoinGecko. October 27, 2021 brought its $0.00008616 high. Roughly 590 trillion tokens exist, and regular burns barely dent a number that large.

Pepe changes hands at $0.00000284 with a $1.19 billion cap, down 1.1 percent. December 9, 2024 marked its $0.00002803 peak. PEPE offers no staking and no roadmap, so it lives entirely on how loud the crowd gets in any given week.

SPX6900 trades at $0.3197 for a $297.5 million cap, up 1.6 percent. Its $2.27 high on July 28, 2025 made it one of the best performing meme coins 2025 produced. Momentum has cooled a lot since then, and the token leans heavily on one tight community.

Two smaller names round out the picture. Floki holds a $198.6 million cap at $0.00002059, down 1.8 percent, while Brett carries $40.3 million at $0.004067 after a 3.7 percent slide. Both trade far under their old peaks.

Caps that small move on modest volume, in either direction. Bullski begins smaller still, because stage 1 is priced at $0.00001 by schedule rather than by trading.

Fun fact: Shiba Inu launched in August 2020 with one quadrillion tokens, and roughly 590 trillion still circulate today.

Shortlists like this one age quickly. Readers can check our earlier list of the best meme coins to buy now and see which names held their place once prices moved.

How to Join at the Current Stage

Setup is simple enough. Load an Ethereum wallet with ETH, BNB or USDT, connect it to the sale page, choose your amount and confirm. Tokens are recorded against the wallet you paid from.

Every rung costs more than the last, so the entry price only travels one way. On August 11, 2026, roughly 42.6 million tokens remained from the 1,192,283,023 allocated to the opening rung, and about 62 million had gone in 24 hours. Gas fees on Ethereum apply to each transaction, so leave a little spare in the wallet.

Read the live stage on the official site, then get $BULLSKI at the current stage while it is open.

Watch out: Presale counters update all day long. Confirm the rung and the price on the sale page before you send anything.

Best Meme Coins FAQ

What is a meme coin?

A meme coin is a token built around a joke or an internet character rather than a product. That category began with Dogecoin in 2013. Community size drives value here, so attention matters more than features or technology ever will.

What are the best meme coins to buy now?

At $0.0723, Dogecoin covers the large end. Pepe at $0.00000284 covers the fast end, and Bullski covers the early end at $0.00001 per token. Split any budget by how much movement you can comfortably sit through.

What are the best meme coins to invest in for 2026?

Look for capped supply, locked liquidity and a public contract. Bullski publishes all three, which is why it heads most best meme coins to buy 2026 shortlists built on terms rather than on memecoin news cycles.

What are the best dog meme coins?

Two dog themed tokens still lead that group, Dogecoin at $11.24 billion and Shiba Inu at $2.65 billion. Bullski uses a bull mascot instead, which gives it a different crowd from the dog pack.

For More Information

Website: Visit the official Bullski website at bullski.io

Telegram: Join the Bullski Telegram channel at t.me/BullskiCoinOfficial

X (Twitter): Follow Bullski on X at x.com/bullskicoin

The post Best Meme Coins to Buy Now: DOGE, SHIB, PEPE and the $BULLSKI Presale appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• GM stock drops 2.89% as Samsung SDI takes full control of Indiana battery plant.
• Samsung SDI acquires GM’s 49.99% stake in the $3.5 billion Synergy Cells venture.
• GM reduces direct battery manufacturing exposure as US electric vehicle demand slows.
• Samsung SDI plans to initially use the Indiana factory for energy storage batteries.
• GM and Samsung SDI will still develop next-generation prismatic EV battery cells.

General Motors (GM) stock fell 2.89% to $86.77 as the automaker exited another major electric vehicle battery manufacturing venture. Samsung SDI agreed to acquire GM’s 49.99% stake in their Synergy Cells battery plant in Indiana. The transaction reflects GM’s broader effort to reduce manufacturing exposure as United States electric vehicle demand grows more slowly.

General Motors Company, GM

Samsung SDI Takes Full Control of Indiana Battery Plant

Samsung SDI will gain full ownership of the $3.5 billion battery factory under development in New Carlisle, Indiana. GM and Samsung SDI originally announced the joint venture in 2023 as part of expanding American battery production. However, changing market conditions pushed both companies to restructure the project before commercial production begins.

The plant initially targeted annual battery capacity of 27 GWh, with planned expansion to 36 GWh. The companies expected the 275-hectare facility to support more than 1,600 jobs once production reached full scale. However, the expected production start moved from 2026 to 2027 as electric vehicle market conditions weakened.

Samsung SDI now plans to direct initial production toward batteries designed for energy storage systems. That strategy gives the company more flexibility as stationary battery demand expands across the United States. Meanwhile, the plant could later produce electric vehicle cells if market conditions support additional automotive battery capacity.

GM Reduces Battery Manufacturing Exposure

GM’s withdrawal allows the automaker to reduce capital commitments tied to large battery manufacturing projects. The company will instead continue working with Samsung SDI through battery development and supply arrangements. GM retains access to future technology without maintaining direct ownership of the Indiana production facility.

Both companies plan to develop next-generation nickel-rich prismatic battery cells for possible future electric vehicle programs. These cells could offer strong energy density while supporting faster charging and simpler battery pack designs. GM has also increased its focus on alternative battery technologies that may lower vehicle production costs.

GM continues developing lithium manganese-rich prismatic cells with LG Energy Solution for future electric vehicles. The technology could reduce reliance on more expensive nickel and cobalt while maintaining competitive battery performance. Consequently, GM can pursue several battery formats while limiting financial exposure to individual manufacturing plants.

GM Adjusts EV Strategy After Demand Slowdown

The Indiana exit follows other changes across GM’s electric vehicle manufacturing strategy during recent years. GM previously transferred its stake in a Lansing, Michigan, battery plant to LG Energy Solution. The company has also slowed production plans and adjusted capacity across other electric vehicle operations.

GM recorded substantial charges after reassessing electric vehicle investments and production expectations. The company announced a $1.6 billion write-down in October 2025 linked largely to its electric vehicle business. It followed with another $6 billion write-down in January 2026 as management revised investment plans further.

The United States electric vehicle market also changed after the federal $7,500 purchase tax credit expired in September 2025. That policy change increased pressure on automakers already facing slower growth and affordability concerns. GM’s latest restructuring shows its strategy now favors lower costs, flexible supply agreements, and reduced manufacturing risk.

The post General Motors (GM) Stock: Drops as Samsung SDI Takes Full Control of Indiana Battery Plant appeared first on Blockonomi.

US President Donald Trump was sued on August 12 in federal court in Manhattan over Truth API, the Truth Social feed that delivers his posts to paying subscribers for as much as $100,000 a month.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed the complaint alongside Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon LLP.

It calls the arrangement “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional,” argues that the First Amendment guarantees equal access to presidential announcements and that the Fifth Amendment bars charging unreasonable sums for them, and asks the court to stop the program.

Feed Costs $100,000 Monthly

Trump Media launched Truth API on August 1 as a business-to-business subscription carrying low-latency access to posts from the ten most-followed Truth Social accounts, among them @realDonaldTrump, @WhiteHouse, and Vice President JD Vance. Access costs $100,000 per month, or $60,000 for customers who commit to three years.

More than ten customers have signed, interim Chief Executive Officer Kevin McGurn said in the company’s second-quarter release. Direct buyers are primarily high-frequency trading firms that ingest the posts to inform algorithmic trading, McGurn told Axios in an interview. Trump Media filed with the SEC.

He said the company would also disrupt scrapers that collect the same posts for free.

“We’re going to create a lot of friction for those folks that aren’t coming to us directly,” McGurn stated.

Prediction Markets Replace Crypto.com Build

McGurn said during the earnings call that Trump Media is evaluating licensing the feed to prediction market operators and is weighing deals with large language model developers.

The complaint quotes those remarks back, describing the prediction market plan as one that would facilitate betting on the president’s announcements.

Trump Media terminated its Trump Media Group CRO Strategy venture with Crypto.com on August 7, and Cronos (CRO) fell under $0.05, its lowest price since October 2023.

Both companies now plan a marketing agreement putting Crypto.com’s prediction markets in front of Truth Social users, replacing the embedded integration announced in October 2025 that lifted CRO 10% in an hour.

McGurn said the sector is already crowded with established companies, and Intercontinental Exchange has committed around $2 billion to Polymarket.

The post Trump Sued Over $100K Truth Social Feed as Trump Media Eyes Prediction Market Data Deals appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Goliath Ventures and its CEO, Christopher Alexander Delgado, are facing action from two US financial regulators over the same alleged crypto Ponzi scheme.

The actions came two months after Delgado pleaded guilty to charges in the case.

Regulators Target Goliath

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a complaint against the company and Delgado in the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed separate charges on the same day.

The regulators allege that Goliath raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors by promising to generate profits through crypto asset trading and liquidity pools. The CFTC said about 1,600 customers contributed at least $397 million, while the SEC put the amount raised at around $425 million from more than 1,300 investors.

According to the SEC, the company operated the scheme from at least January 2023 through January 2026 through an unregistered securities offering. Investors were told they could “partner” with Goliath to invest in crypto asset liquidity pools. They were promised monthly returns of 3% to 10% from fees paid by buyers and sellers trading crypto assets in those pools, in addition to the return of their principal.

The money, however, was not invested in the liquidity pools, the SEC claimed. Instead, funds from new and existing investors were allegedly used to pay promised returns to earlier investors. The CFTC also said customer funds were used to pay fictitious profits and support Delgado’s lifestyle.

The CEO took at least $51 million for personal use, including homes, luxury vehicles, a yacht, and travel, according to the filing. The company also hired sales agents to attract more investors and paid them commissions from investor funds. Account balances and investment performance figures were fabricated to make it appear that investors were earning profits and that their assets were invested in crypto pools, the SEC said.

Delgado Faces Permanent Bans

The defendants also issued false account statements and falsely guaranteed investment returns, according to the CFTC. By November 2025, Goliath could no longer bring in new money quickly enough to repay existing investors. It stopped monthly distributions, and the scheme collapsed.

The SEC charged Goliath and Delgado with violating several federal securities laws. Delgado has agreed to a bifurcated settlement, subject to court approval. He agreed to be permanently barred from violating the charged provisions, participating in certain securities transactions, and acting as or being associated with a broker or dealer.

The post $51M for Homes, Cars, and a Yacht: Regulators Target Goliath, CEO Delgado appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The world’s leading crypto exchange will briefly halt certain trading services later this week to successfully perform a scheduled upgrade.

It will also delist trading pairs and digital assets that no longer meet the necessary standards.

TRX Investors, Take Note

Binance will conduct wallet maintenance for the Tron Network on August 13, which is expected to take about one hour. During this time, it will suspend TRX deposits and withdrawals and resume operations once everything is wrapped up.

As usual, the company assured that trading of tokens on the aforementioned network will not be impacted and promised to handle all technical requirements involving users.

“Deposits and withdrawals for token(s) on the aforementioned network will be reopened once the network is deemed to be stable. No further announcement will be posted,” the disclosure reads.

Less than a month ago, Binance once again halted TRX deposits and withdrawals to perform wallet maintenance. There haven’t been any complaints or reports of complications, meaning traders and investors shouldn’t be overly concerned about the upcoming disruption.

Over the years, the exchange has taken similar action to support improvements across many other ecosystems, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), and others.

The Delistings

The company regularly checks all cryptocurrencies and trading pairs listed on its platform and has the habit of removing those that fail to comply with the required criteria, such as adequate liquidity and trading volume.

Based on its latest analysis, it decided to scrap APT/BTC, AR/BTC, A/USDC, BTTC/TRY, CYBER/USDC, LPT/BTC, and WAL/FDUSD, with the actual delisting scheduled for August 14.

The affected tokens did not witness major volatility following the news, yet it is a completely different story when Binance terminates all services for a certain cryptocurrency.

At the start of August, it triggered a double-digit price collapse for Across Protocol (ACX), Hashflow (HFT), PIVX (PIVX), Vulcan Forged PYR (PYR), Vanar (VANRY), and Viction (VIC) after completely withdrawing support for them. A similar reaction was observed at the end of June when Binance said goodbye to Alchemix (ALCX), Ardor (ARDR), NFPrompt Token (NFP), and Marlin (POND).

In addition to the aforementioned move, the exchange said it will delist and cease trading on all margin trading pairs for BitTorrent (BTT) and Poweledger (POWR) on August 14.

The post Attention Binance Users: Some Services Will Be Temporarily Stopped This Week appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin moved toward the top of its range last week as institutional demand through U.S. spot ETFs strengthened. Cooler employment data reduced expectations for an immediate Federal Reserve rate hike, but persistent selling pressure kept the move contained.

The stronger ETF demand was reflected in $865.3 million of net inflows across five straight sessions, the funds’ strongest weekly showing since April. According to a recent Bitfinex Alpha report, the funds absorbed about 13,300 BTC during the period. That was more than four times the roughly 3,150 BTC newly created by the network.

ETF Inflows Return, But Sellers Push Back

BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC accounted for much of the ETF activity. Ether-focused ETFs also recorded $243.7 million in inflows, extending their weekly streak and showing that demand was not limited to Bitcoin.

The renewed demand came as broader risk assets also moved higher amid easing tensions and falling oil prices. The S&P 500 rose 3.58% for the week, while Bitcoin gained slightly more than 2%, indicating that other sources of supply continued to weigh on its price.

One notable source of that supply came from Strategy, which disclosed the sale of 1,638 BTC for approximately $104.7 million. The company sold the coins at an average price of about $63,957 and said it would use the proceeds for preferred dividends and a discounted share repurchase.

Strategy’s sale adds to a broader supply overhang visible on-chain around Bitcoin’s current trading range. An estimated 1.79 million BTC have cost bases between $62,000 and $65,000, creating potential selling pressure as the price moves through the band.

Why the Macro Picture Remains Mixed

U.S. labor data added to the macro backdrop, with July payrolls falling by 23,000 and earlier figures revised lower. The three-month average job gain dropped to about 20,000, while unemployment reached 4.1% as participation declined.

Initial jobless claims remained low, indicating that the labor market was cooling rather than collapsing. Futures markets lowered the probability of a September rate hike to 43.9%, while Treasury yields and the dollar eased.

However, long-term borrowing costs stayed high, with the 30-year Treasury yield above 5.2% amid inflation concerns and heavy government borrowing. Bitfinex said Bitcoin could break above $65,000 if ETF demand remains strong while inflation and long-term yields ease.

The post ETFs Are Buying, But Who Is Selling? Inside Bitcoin’s Tug-of-War appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Market analyst Jamie Coutts said x402 daily settlement volume is down 93% year-to-date as a late-2025 testing wave died out.

The decline contrasts with growing infrastructure for AI agents, leaving the protocol’s actual payment activity well behind the expectations surrounding the agentic economy.

x402 Activity Remains Far Below Late-2025 Levels

Coutts posted the assessment on August 12, pointing to a Helios Analytics chart tracking x402 settlement volume from October 2025 through July 2026. The data shows heavy activity during the final quarter of 2025, with several daily peaks approaching or passing $800,000 and $1 million.

That activity did not last. Settlement volume fell steeply after December and remained subdued through most of 2026. The chart puts the seven-day average at around $41,800, while the latest provisional daily figure is roughly $28,400.

The wider figure tells a similar story. x402 volume is down 55% over three months and 93% year-to-date. Yet the one-year figure is still 358 times higher, largely because activity was starting from a very low base.

Coutts described the numbers as a “reality check” for claims that the agentic economy is already here. Still, he does not see the current slowdown as permanent. He expects agent activity to begin rising alongside greater use of agent harnesses in the fourth quarter.

His argument rests partly on a recent development involving Cloudflare. On July 1, the company launched its Monetization Gateway, which lets customers charge for pages, APIs, datasets and MCP tools. The service uses x402 for stablecoin settlement and handles usage measurement and settlement at the edge.

Coutts said the system expands Cloudflare’s earlier Pay Per Crawl model. That service focused on charging AI bots, while the new gateway can charge any caller, including people and AI agents.

Infrastructure Is Growing While Usage Catches Up

The muted settlement data comes despite a series of developments aimed at machine-to-machine payments. On July 14, Ripple joined the newly launched x402 Foundation, hosted by the Linux Foundation, as a premier member alongside other crypto firms overseeing the Coinbase-built protocol.

Markus Infranger, senior vice president of RippleX, said “open standards like x402 help lay the foundation for trusted, interoperable machine-to-machine payments.” Ripple said its XRP Ledger already supports x402, meaning agents could transact using XRP or its RLUSD stablecoin, something it had previewed a month earlier with an AI Starter Kit for building autonomous payment apps on the XRPL, built with t54.

A16z had flagged x402 by name back in December 2025, predicting AI agents would need payments that move at internet speed and calling programmable settlement tools a way to make value transfer “a native network function rather than a separate operational layer.” Almost eight months later, Coutts’ chart shows the anticipated activity has mostly gone quiet.

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