The ongoing military actions in Bint Jbeil exacerbate regional instability, complicating prospects for peace and increasing geopolitical tensions.

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Arsenal's defensive prowess could significantly impact the Premier League title race, challenging rivals with their strategic resilience.

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South Korea's AI investment reshapes global tech dynamics, enhancing Nvidia's position while highlighting SK Hynix's supportive role.

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Crystal Palace's strategic signings highlight their ambition to strengthen their squad depth for competitive domestic and European campaigns.

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The incident highlights the vulnerabilities in complex blockchain systems, potentially undermining trust and affecting tokenomics stability.

The post Core DAO plans emergency hard fork after validators draw excess rewards appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Slides as US-Iran Tensions Escalate 

Bitcoin slid on Tuesday after investors went into “risk-off” mode following escalating attacks between the U.S. and Iran. 

The largest cryptocurrency had initially shrugged off President Donald Trump’s threats to the Middle Eastern nation, as well as the first strikes. 

But things heated up on Tuesday, and bitcoin’s price slid. It was recently down more than 2% on the day, trading for $77,363. The coin had pushed past as high as nearly $81,282 on Friday. 

The Tuesday attacks from the U.S. were because Iran tried to put mines in the Strait of Hormuz, and also because of an attack on an American military base in Jordan, according to President Trump. 

U.S. Central Command said on X that Iran had also attacked commercial ships. 

“The strikes follow recent attempted attacks by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region,” the post read. 

Iran responded with a “decisive operation” against U.S. military bases, according to Iranian media. Oil surged on the news. 

Bitcoin’s price has been sensitive to geopolitical tensions this year — especially after Iran and Israel attacked Iran. The cryptocurrency has typically faced downward pressure on news of war, only to then rally when Trump raised hopes of a ceasefire. 

Despite Bitcoin’s price being relatively muted, in recent months, it has made more wild swings since mid-August. 

Bitcoin’s immediate reaction to rising oil prices is to drop: more expensive energy means higher inflation, and higher inflation typically means the U.S. central bank will postpone rate cuts, which can restrict the liquidity that bitcoin needs to gain momentum. 

The Federal Reserve’s chair, Kevin Warsh, last week gave his first major speech as leader of the central bank and said that inflation in the world’s largest economy had not come down enough. 

Traders are now no longer pricing in an interest rate cut this year, instead expecting a hike. Bitcoin has typically performed well in the past in low interest rate environments. 

Still, the coin had one of its best runs in August after the U.S. Treasury said it would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations, in response to surging borrowing costs. 

The announcement hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold have benefited. 

This post Bitcoin Slides as US-Iran Tensions Escalate  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Defies Seasonal Slump With Third-Best August Ever

Bitcoin is known for its summer slumps. But August was different. 

In fact, the leading cryptocurrency had its third best August ever. 

As highlighted on Tuesday by Bitwise’s European Head of Research, André Dragosch, bitcoin delivered returns of 25% last month. 

“No ‘summer lull’ so far,” Dragosch wrote on X, highlighting that the only better Augusts the coin has had were in 2017 when it gave investors returns of nearly 66%, and 2013, with close to 31%. 

Multiple analyses point to the months of June-September showing weaker average returns than the rest of the year.

Throughout most of June and July, bitcoin’s volatility was particularly muted, and the coin traded below $65,000. 

But that changed in mid-August after the U.S. Treasury Department said it would more than double the size of its government debt repurchases due to fixed income markets under pressure and yields surging to levels not seen in nearly 20 years. 

Lower long-term yields reduce the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold, and generally support risk-on sentiment. 

Investors flooded into bitcoin as a result. 

Positive news soon followed, with President Donald Trump urging lawmakers to get the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act over the line. The digital asset industry has long called for clear rules on how regulators should treat bitcoin, stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies. 

Despite a delay in a vote on the legislation, Trump called the draft “very powerful.” The president made the comments after having met with crypto industry bigwigs and CEOs. 

Investors also rushed back into ETFs in August, throwing over $2.8 billion at the vehicles — the most since October, when the coin hit a new all-time high. 

Bitcoin in August had its best run in three years — and is up nearly over 20% over the past month. 

The asset reached as high as $81,281 last week before sliding again on Friday. 

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at $76,883, nearly down 3% over a 24-hour period. 

This post Bitcoin Defies Seasonal Slump With Third-Best August Ever first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust Is Beating Top S&P 500 ETF 

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust exchange-traded fund has delivered better returns since its 2024 launch than Vanguard’s popular S&P 500 fund. 

That’s according to Bloomberg data highlighted by the firm’s senior ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, who said that the BlackRock product’s cumulative percentage return was only slightly ahead of Vanguard’s in the time period. 

BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF is up 71% since its January 2024 debut, while Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF up 66% on a total-return basis.  

The iShares Bitcoin Trust — IBIT — started trading in 2024 after the Securities and Exchange Commission gave the green light to 11 spot bitcoin ETFs following a decade of denials. 

“IBIT’s path to 70% looks like the El Toro roller coaster at Great Adventure (I needed two Advil last time I rode that thing) while $VOO was a walk in the park in comparison,” wrote Balchunas on Tuesday. 

U.S. investors now have several funds to choose from to buy shares that track the price of bitcoin managed by the likes of Fidelity, Grayscale and Morgan Stanley. But BlackRock’s product is the most successful: It currently manages $61.4 billion in assets, according to its website. 

By comparison, the second biggest bitcoin ETF, the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, manages nearly $11 billion. 

BlackRock, which manages over $15 trillion in assets, sent shockwaves through the crypto space after it applied for a spot bitcoin ETF in 2023. Its fund now allows more traditional investors to get exposure to bitcoin; its product also experiences more day-to-day trading action than the other ETFs. 

Investors piled back into ETFs in August, which has also helped bitcoin’s price. From August 17 to 27, investors threw over $2.8 billion at the vehicles — the most since October, when the coin hit a new all-time high. 

Bitcoin reached as high as $81,281 last week before sliding again on Friday. 

The price of the biggest cryptocurrency recently stood at $77,539, nearly down 1% over a 24-hour period. 

Bitcoin started a phenomenal run two weeks ago — its best in three years — and is up nearly 30% over the past month. 

This post BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust Is Beating Top S&P 500 ETF  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

South Korea’s Bitcoin ‘Kimchi Premium’ Returns

Bitcoin is up this month but there’s one place where it’s more significantly more expensive: South Korea. 

The so-called Kimchi Premium — when bitcoin costs more on Korean exchanges — is back as retail investors pile back into the coin. Bloomberg first reported the news and CoinGecko data shows that bitcoin’s price is nearly 1% higher on Upbit, Korea’s biggest exchange, than Binance. 

Named after a popular dish in the Asian nation, the phenomenon comes down to Korea’s market being partly walled off. Prices have historically run higher there because of strong local retail demand combined with strict capital controls and trading regulations.

As a result, the Bitcoin/won trading pair is more common in South Korea compared to the Bitcoin/U.S. dollar pair in other places. When there is demand for the asset, it will naturally be higher in the country as compared to other places.

The phenomenon has been described as a retail FOMO indicator, since Korea has few notable crypto funds and tight capital controls. The premium has reached as high as 21.5% in 2022. 

Bitcoin was recently trading for $78,287, unmoved over the past 24 hours. It’s also at the same price it was seven days ago, but over the past month, the coin has rallied by 24%. 

The price of the biggest digital asset started surging after the U.S. Treasury in August said it would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. The announcement hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold have benefited. 

President Donald Trump also said the same week that the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act was an important piece of legislation, and urged lawmakers to get it over the line. 

Crypto industry bigwigs have been calling for clear rules for distinguishing between digital assets that are securities, commodities or payment stablecoins, and news that regulators will soon have such a framework has typically benefited crypto markets. 

Speculators are now betting on Polymarket that there’s a 59% chance bitcoin will be above $82,500 this month, leading some to call an end to the bear market.

This post South Korea’s Bitcoin ‘Kimchi Premium’ Returns first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

BlackRock Re-Underwrites Bitcoin, and the Portfolio Math Still Holds

Bitcoin’s roughly 50% decline from its October 2025 high has created a useful test for the institutional investment thesis. It is relatively easy to make the case for a new asset while prices are rising, correlations are favorable and capital is flowing into the market. The more revealing exercise comes after a major drawdown, when investors can revisit the original assumptions and determine which were structural and which were simply products of the preceding cycle.

That is effectively what BlackRock has done in its latest research, Re-Underwriting Bitcoin: Still a Portfolio Diversifier. Rather than treating the recent drawdown as evidence for or against Bitcoin in isolation, the firm returns to the question most relevant to an allocator: how has Bitcoin actually affected the risk and return characteristics of a diversified portfolio?

The results are more consequential than the headline return figures suggest. In BlackRock’s rolling 10-year analysis through May 29, 2026, a traditional 60/40 equity and fixed-income portfolio generated an annualized return of approximately 9.9% with annualized standard deviation of roughly 10.1%. Introducing a 1% Bitcoin allocation increased annualized return to approximately 10.9%, while volatility moved only modestly higher to roughly 10.3%. At a 2% allocation, annualized return reached approximately 11.8%, with standard deviation of about 10.6%.

Put differently, the 2% allocation added roughly 190 basis points of annualized return relative to the traditional portfolio while increasing annualized volatility by approximately 50 basis points. The portfolio’s Sharpe ratio improved from 0.81 to 0.96, while maximum drawdown changed from -20.3% to -20.9%. Those figures are hypothetical and backward-looking, but they illustrate why judging Bitcoin primarily by its standalone volatility can produce an incomplete assessment of its portfolio impact.

The more relevant question is how that volatility interacts with everything else an investor already owns. BlackRock continues to characterize Bitcoin as having risk and return drivers that are fundamentally different from traditional assets, rooted in its fixed supply, decentralized structure and independence from any sovereign issuer. Those characteristics do not prevent Bitcoin from trading alongside risk assets during periods of deleveraging, but BlackRock’s research suggests those correlations have historically been episodic rather than permanent.

That distinction helps explain the portfolio results. A modest allocation does not import Bitcoin’s standalone volatility into a portfolio on a one-for-one basis. What matters is the marginal contribution of that allocation to total portfolio risk relative to the return it has historically generated. In BlackRock’s analysis, that trade-off remained favorable at 1% and 2%, even after incorporating one of Bitcoin’s most significant recent drawdowns.

Why 1–2% keeps appearing in BlackRock’s work

This is not the first time BlackRock has arrived at this range. Its earlier portfolio research approached Bitcoin sizing through risk contribution, concluding that a 1–2% allocation could represent a reasonable range for investors willing and able to accept Bitcoin’s risk. At those weights, BlackRock found that Bitcoin could contribute a similar share of overall portfolio risk as an individual mega-cap technology holding in a conventional 60/40 portfolio. Beyond 2%, however, Bitcoin’s contribution to total portfolio risk begins to increase disproportionately.

The new analysis approaches the same question from the opposite direction. Rather than asking how much risk Bitcoin contributes, it examines what investors historically received for assuming that additional risk. The improvement in Sharpe ratio from 0.81 for the traditional portfolio to 0.90 with 1% Bitcoin and 0.96 with 2% Bitcoin suggests that the incremental return historically more than compensated for the additional portfolio-level volatility.

This does not establish 1% or 2% as an optimal allocation, and BlackRock does not present it that way. The appropriate exposure will depend on liquidity requirements, investment horizon, governance constraints and risk tolerance. What the analysis does provide is a more rigorous framework for the discussion. The allocation question can increasingly be evaluated in terms of marginal risk, correlation, drawdown and portfolio efficiency rather than through a binary debate over whether Bitcoin itself is too volatile to own.

BlackRock has also seen the demand firsthand

There is another dimension to BlackRock’s latest analysis that is difficult to separate from the firm’s experience in the market.

BlackRock launched the iShares Bitcoin Trust, IBIT, in January 2024. Less than a year later, it had accumulated more than $50 billion in assets, making it what BlackRock itself has described as the largest exchange-traded product launch in history. It reached that milestone roughly five times faster than the previous record holder.

Its significance has only grown since then. BlackRock now describes IBIT as the world’s largest and most traded Bitcoin ETP, and the fund became the firm’s highest-revenue ETF in 2025 despite competing within a global BlackRock lineup of more than 1,000 products.

The concentration within the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF market is equally notable. According to current ETF holdings data tracked by Bitcoin For Corporations, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively hold approximately 1.25 million BTC, representing nearly 6% of Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply. IBIT alone accounts for roughly 775,000 BTC, or more than 60% of the Bitcoin held across the U.S. spot ETF complex.

View the full Bitcoin ETF Dashboard.

That does not make BlackRock’s research independent of commercial context; IBIT is an important and increasingly valuable BlackRock product. That context should be understood rather than ignored. But it also means the firm’s reassessment is occurring alongside more than two years of observing how investors actually use Bitcoin exposure at scale.

The distinction is useful. The theoretical case for Bitcoin as a portfolio asset is increasingly being accompanied by observable allocation behavior. Investors have now had access to Bitcoin through familiar brokerage, advisory and institutional infrastructure across multiple market regimes, including periods of rapid appreciation and severe drawdowns. IBIT’s growth suggests that demand has persisted well beyond its initial launch window.

A drawdown is precisely when a thesis should be re-underwritten

The timing of BlackRock’s report may ultimately be more informative than the portfolio simulation itself.

Bitcoin is not being reassessed at an all-time high. BlackRock published the analysis after an approximately 50% drawdown from Bitcoin’s October 2025 peak, a period the firm associates with leveraged positioning being unwound, slowing ETP flows and weaker demand from companies accumulating Bitcoin. Its conclusion is that these forces represented a positioning correction rather than a fundamental change in Bitcoin’s investment case.

That is what re-underwriting is supposed to accomplish. An investment thesis should not survive because investors are attached to it; it should survive because its underlying assumptions continue to hold when conditions change.

For Bitcoin, those assumptions extend beyond historical returns. The asset remains scarce by design, globally liquid, independent of a sovereign issuer and structurally different from the liabilities that dominate traditional portfolios. BlackRock argues that concerns around fiscal sustainability, monetary stability and geopolitical risk may therefore become increasingly relevant to Bitcoin’s long-term adoption.

The portfolio evidence does not prove what Bitcoin will return over the next decade, nor does IBIT’s success establish what an appropriate allocation should be. What the two developments show together is that the institutional conversation has advanced considerably. Bitcoin is no longer being evaluated solely as an unconventional asset that institutions may or may not choose to own. It is increasingly being evaluated through the same disciplines applied elsewhere in capital allocation: sizing, risk contribution, correlation, liquidity, drawdown and expected return.

What this means for corporate leaders

For CFOs, boards and corporate operators, that evolution may be the most important takeaway from BlackRock’s work.

The relevant decision is not whether Bitcoin is volatile; that is already known. Nor does a corporate allocation need to resemble the concentrated Bitcoin strategies pursued by companies that have explicitly built their capital structures around the asset. Between zero exposure and a Bitcoin-centric balance sheet sits a much broader spectrum of possible allocations.

BlackRock’s research provides a useful framework for thinking about that spectrum. A relatively small allocation was sufficient to materially alter the historical return characteristics of a conventional portfolio without producing a comparable increase in portfolio-level risk. At 2%, approximately 190 basis points of additional annualized return came with roughly 50 basis points of additional annualized volatility in the period studied. The allocation was small; its effect was not.

For corporate leaders, the implication is less about adopting BlackRock’s specific allocation range than adopting the discipline behind the analysis. Bitcoin can be underwritten like any other strategic allocation: define its purpose, determine an acceptable risk contribution, establish liquidity and governance requirements, size the position accordingly and periodically revisit the assumptions.

That is a considerably more mature question than whether a company should simply “buy Bitcoin.”

As Bitcoin becomes more deeply integrated into institutional portfolios and financial infrastructure, the burden of analysis is shifting. The question facing the C-suite is increasingly not whether Bitcoin belongs in the conversation, but what allocation, if any, can be justified by the company’s objectives, constraints and cost of capital.

BlackRock has now re-underwritten that question after another full market cycle and a roughly 50% drawdown. Its historical portfolio math still makes the case that, in measured amounts, Bitcoin can improve the equation. For corporate decision-makers, that is the takeaway worth bringing into the boardroom.

Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.

This post BlackRock Re-Underwrites Bitcoin, and the Portfolio Math Still Holds first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Nick Ward.

Bitcoin’s hashrate has spent 316 days below its record as miners redirect power toward AI.

The seven-day network average stood near 914 exahashes per second on Aug. 31, about 20.6% below its October 2025 peak of 1,151.6 EH/s. The stretch without a new high is the longest in a decade, exceeding the previous 252-day maximum in the same Blockchain.com series.

The decline followed months of weak mining economics, summer power curtailments and a growing shift by some operators toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Twenty One Capital CEO Raphael Zagury has described the episode as Bitcoin’s first sustained “economic hashrate bear market.”

That description has become more significant because Bitcoin itself has already delivered the kind of price recovery that historically helped revive mining.

BTC rallied 34.9% from late June through late August reaching as high as above $81,000, while network hashrate fell 10.1% over the same period, only the second such divergence since 2012.

Higher Bitcoin prices increase the dollar value of block rewards and normally encourage miners to restart machines that became uneconomic during a downturn. This time, the response has been much weaker.

The difference is that some of the power and data-center capacity leaving Bitcoin now has somewhere else to go.

Bitcoin’s rally has not brought enough machines back

The usual recovery signals are already appearing across mining economics.

VanEck estimated network hashrate at roughly 885 EH/s in the week through Aug. 11, while mining difficulty stood 18.3% below its November 2025 peak. That was the largest difficulty drawdown since China’s 2021 mining ban.

The Puell Multiple, which compares the dollar value of daily Bitcoin issuance with its one-year average, averaged about 0.73 over the preceding 30 days, placing it in the 16th percentile and pointing to unusually weak miner revenue conditions.

Those pressures forced marginal machines offline. Bitcoin then began doing what it was designed to do.

As hashrate falls, the protocol eventually reduces difficulty, allowing the remaining miners to compete for the same block subsidy with less computing power. Better margins can then entice idle capacity back.

However, signs of that rebound also emerged in August.

VanEck said the Aug. 8 difficulty adjustment rose 1%, the first upward move in the sequence it tracked, as hashrate recovered toward 925 EH/s. Difficulty later fell 1.31% on Aug. 23, providing another round of relief.

By Aug. 31, Hashrate Index put seven-day hashrate at 915 EH/s, up 3.3% from 886 EH/s a week earlier. Blocks were arriving every 9 minutes and 56 seconds, almost exactly on Bitcoin’s 10-minute target.

Hashprice had also improved to $39.36 per petahash per second per day, above its 30-day average of $34.63.

That combination of a roughly 35% Bitcoin rally, lower difficulty, and better hash price would normally make restarting machines increasingly attractive. Yet hashrate remains far below its record.

AI changes what happens after a miner switches off

For some operators, shutting down Bitcoin machines no longer means waiting for mining margins to recover.

IREN cut installed self-mining capacity from 50 EH/s in June 2025 to 23.2 EH/s by June 2026 as it decommissioned miners and redirected power and data-center infrastructure toward AI Cloud Services. About 40 megawatts of AI Cloud capacity was already operating at the end of June.

TeraWulf has also moved operating capacity toward high-performance computing. It reported 81 MW of critical-IT capacity at June 30 and 102 MW energized in July, alongside 145 MW of legacy Bitcoin mining capacity.

Riot Platforms highlighted how long those alternative commitments can last when it signed a roughly $9 billion, 20-year compute agreement with Anthropic in August.

That changes the economics of a mining recovery.

A machine taken offline because hashprice fell can be restarted when Bitcoin becomes more profitable. However, power committed to a long-duration AI customer cannot return nearly as quickly, even if Bitcoin rallies and difficulty falls.

Years spent building mining operations have made the sector particularly attractive to AI developers. Miners already control large power allocations, grid connections and data-center sites built to handle dense computing loads.

The hashrate downturn cannot be attributed entirely to that shift. Seasonal curtailments, particularly in Texas, reduced mining during periods of high electricity demand, while inefficient fleets were also shut down as margins deteriorated.

AI becomes important because it can determine what happens to that capacity afterward.

Better mining economics now have to compete with AI

The next phase of Bitcoin’s hashrate recovery will show how much capacity was merely idle and how much has effectively moved on.

Some miners are still expanding aggressively.

MARA reported 70.3 EH/s of energized hashrate as of June 30, while Bitdeer reached 76.7 EH/s of self-mining capacity in July. Riot increased deployed mining capacity to 44.4 EH/s from 38.5 EH/s even as it expanded into AI.

That leaves the industry split between operators still adding Bitcoin machines, those diverting infrastructure toward computing customers, and companies trying to pursue both.

Bitcoin’s own recovery mechanism remains intact. Difficulty continues to adjust, blocks are arriving near target and the recent rebound toward 915 EH/s shows that some hashpower is returning.

But the 316-day drought suggests the response has not yet been strong enough to restore the network’s late-2025 peak.

The question now is whether improving Bitcoin prices, hashprice and difficulty economics can pull enough idle machines back to end that drought.

If they cannot, the reason may increasingly lie outside Bitcoin itself: some of the infrastructure that once waited for the next mining recovery is now being paid to stay somewhere else.

The post Bitcoin’s 316-day hashrate drought shows why AI could make this mining downturn harder to reverse appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Robinhood Chain revenue from applications totaled between $2.66 million and $2.82 million over a rolling 24-hour window early on Sept. 1, creating an eye-catching measure of network activity with no disclosed bridge to Robinhood’s corporate accounts.

DefiLlama tracks application revenue, chain revenue and chain fees as separate layers. Its dashboard showed $963,612 of chain revenue on $1.07 million of chain fees during the same period. Public records provide no formula that turns either revenue figure into a Robinhood GAAP revenue line.

The recipients also show where the app total went. DefiLlama’s revenue table placed trading bot GMGN first at about $1.11 million and token launchpad Pons second at about $1 million. Uniswap led the corresponding protocol fee table.

What Robinhood Chain revenue means for the company

Robinhood has described its own monetization in transaction terms. During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, CFO Shiv Verma said Robinhood earns a few basis points per transaction, with approximately half shared with Arbitrum. He emphasized transactions as the basis instead of transaction volume.

The company provided no precise rate, eligible transaction count, fee base or reconciliation to its financial statements. DefiLlama also defines the $963,612 chain figure as gas revenue remaining after Ethereum execution and blob costs and the Arbitrum Expansion Program share. The available disclosures therefore establish substantial fee activity while leaving Robinhood’s exact corporate take unquantified.

The chain’s growth metrics still matter because sustained use could create a larger future earnings base. Rolling 24-hour decentralized exchange volume reached about $1.4 billion, led by Uniswap, compared with nearly $370 million on July 29. Chain-wide active real-world asset market cap rose from nearly $28 million in late July to about $163 million.

The composition tempers that growth signal. DefiLlama’s RWA table attributed about $95 million of the total to Syrup USDG private credit, the chain’s largest listed asset. The increase therefore reflects broad RWA growth across Robinhood Chain rather than equivalent growth in Robinhood-issued stock tokens.

Other short-term indicators also pulled in opposite directions. Twenty-four-hour chain inflows were negative by about $20 million even as DEX volume and RWA value remained well above their July snapshots. A trading bot and launchpad continued to lead application revenue.

Robinhood Chain has expanded its transaction and tokenized-asset base since July. The Robinhood Chain revenue mix and Robinhood’s limited monetization disclosure leave the larger question unresolved: how much of that growth will become recurring revenue in Robinhood’s accounts.

The post $2.7 million poured into Robinhood Chain apps in one day, but it barely touches corporate revenue appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Pocket Bitcoin breach exposed more than email addresses and support conversations for 291 customers, the company said. Some copied records linked real-world identities to public Bitcoin activity.

The finding expands the scope described in the Swiss non-custodial Bitcoin service's Aug. 21 disclosure. In an Aug. 31 update, Pocket Bitcoin said correspondence with partner banks contained varying combinations of names, postal addresses, Bitcoin addresses used for transactions, identity-document copies and source-of-funds records. Most people in the cohort had only some of those fields exposed, the company said.

The distinction creates a privacy and phishing risk without giving an attacker control of anyone's wallet.

Why public Bitcoin addresses still matter

Bitcoin addresses are public. Anyone with an address can inspect its balance and transaction history on the blockchain, as Bitcoin.org's privacy guidance explains. Connecting an address to a name and, for some customers, a postal address or payment amount removes a layer of separation between a person's offline identity and public on-chain activity.

The exposed information cannot, by itself, move Bitcoin. Spending requires a valid signature made with the corresponding private key, according to the Bitcoin developer guide. Pocket Bitcoin said it is non-custodial, never held customers' private keys and saw no risk to customer funds.

The more immediate concern is deception. Pocket Bitcoin warned that details from copied support correspondence could make emails, calls or messages about the incident look more credible. Separately, Switzerland's National Cyber Security Centre has documented scams and threats that use a recipient's real home address to increase pressure. That guidance illustrates the broader danger of exposed location data but is not evidence that Pocket Bitcoin customers have been targeted.

How the Pocket Bitcoin breach changed the disclosure

Pocket Bitcoin's initial disclosure said Bitcoin addresses, its customer database containing know-your-customer data and transaction history were not affected. The company later said that wording was too broad.

Pocket Bitcoin said neither the customer database nor the transaction database was compromised. However, related information was included in some correspondence stored in the affected support system. Payment amounts were often present when exposed records involved source-of-funds documents or discussions of a payment, the company said.

The company said every customer in the 291-person cohort received an individual notice listing the data affected in that person's case. It also said the forensic investigation and its review of the relevant partner-bank correspondence were complete, the vulnerability had been closed, the incident had been reported to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, and a police report had been filed.

Pocket Bitcoin said it had no indication that the copied information had been misused, adding that its current visibility was not a guarantee.

The post Leaked compliance records shatter anonymity of 291 crypto users by matching names directly to wallet activity appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Adjusted USDC transfer volume reached $32 trillion in 2026 through Coin Metrics' August measurement, with each dollar of supply turning over 741 times at an annualized rate. Those figures signal reach and settlement intensity. Circle's second-quarter revenue, however, remained dominated by yield on the assets backing USDC.

For the three months ended June 30, reserve income supplied $667.7 million of Circle's $701.3 million in total revenue and reserve income, or 95.2%. Transaction revenue was $5.3 million. Volume is a usage signal; balances and yields still determine most of Circle's revenue base.

Arc, Circle's blockchain infrastructure scheduled for a Sept. 16 public mainnet launch, is the company's clearest attempt to build a direct fee surface around some of that activity. Its test is whether traffic can become retained recurring revenue.

How USDC transfer volume is generated

Coin Metrics described the $32 trillion as adjusted USDC transfer volume in 2026 through its August analysis, not consumer payments, unique economic settlement or a full-year total. Its annualized velocity estimate measures how often supply moves relative to its size.

The composition of that movement matters. Coin Metrics' bottom-up analysis examined raw transfer volume through tagged lending contracts, decentralized exchange pools and known exchange wallets. On Base, 69% of USDC volume involved DEX liquidity provision and 23% involved flash loans. On Ethereum, flash loans accounted for 65%.

Those categories represent real crypto-market demand. Liquidity rebalancing, collateral movement and arbitrage make markets function, while generating enormous gross transfers without a matching increase in net capital moved, purchases made or fees collected by Circle. A liquidity position that is repeatedly rebalanced may move the same dollars many times, while a flash loan is borrowed and repaid within one transaction.

Coin Metrics also treated its tagged shares as lower-bound estimates. About 8% of Base volume and 33% of Ethereum volume remained outside the identified categories, and that residual could include payments, bridging, treasury activity and other settlement. It cannot safely be relabeled as commercial payments.

The result is a better reading of USDC's velocity: the stablecoin is deeply embedded in crypto's financial plumbing, but headline transfer volume is not a revenue ledger.

Circle's own Q2 activity metric reinforces the gap. The company said USDC onchain transaction volume rose 151% year over year to $14.8 trillion, while period-end circulation increased 19% to $73.3 billion. Total revenue and reserve income rose 6.6% to $701.3 million.

The Coin Metrics and Circle volume measures are not interchangeable. Coin Metrics reports adjusted transfer volume; Circle's filing defines its figure as native and canonically bridged USDC processed across supported chains other than Solana. Both show scale, but neither implies that Circle charges a toll on every transfer.

The SEC filing shows where Circle's growth translated into revenue. The company attributed about $147.4 million of year-over-year reserve-income improvement to a 25.2% increase in average daily USDC circulation. A 66-basis-point decline in average yields offset about $113.9 million of that gain, leaving reserve income up roughly $33.5 million.

That bridge explains why circulation matters more to current revenue than velocity. More USDC outstanding expands the reserve base that earns interest. The same USDC moving hundreds of times does not automatically create hundreds of revenue events for Circle.

The filing also separates reserve income from retained economics. Circle recorded $410.4 million of distribution and transaction costs in the quarter, including $324.6 million of Coinbase-related distribution costs, and $412.5 million when other costs were included. The Coin Metrics transfer total does not directly drive those costs. Their scale still shows why gross reserve income cannot be read as operating margin.

Rates remain the larger near-term sensitivity. Holding circulation and reserve allocation constant, Circle modeled a 100-basis-point move from June's average yield as changing reserve income by about $737 million and distribution and transaction costs by about $360 million over the following 12 months. That was a hypothetical sensitivity, not guidance, but its scale shows how far Circle remains from a revenue mix driven primarily by transaction fees.

Arc's monetization test

Arc is Circle's clearest attempt to bring more economic activity onto infrastructure it helps operate. Circle's latest Aug. 5 statements placed Arc in private mainnet with more than 100 builders and scheduled public mainnet for Sept. 16. As of those statements, the public launch had not occurred.

Arc's design gives the experiment a direct connection to USDC usage. Its gas and fee system denominates transaction fees in USDC, creating a dollar-denominated charge each time the network processes activity. That is a more visible fee surface than ordinary USDC transfers across third-party chains.

Recurring Circle revenue from Arc remains unproven. Arc's documentation does not establish how much gas-fee revenue Circle will retain, and Circle's Aug. 5 list of builders and prospective integrations does not prove transaction volume, commercial demand or margin after the scheduled public launch. The important post-launch signal will be whether activity appears in Circle's transaction and service revenue rather than only in network statistics.

The ARC Token presale is a separate economic event. Circle agreed to sell 807.5 million tokens for about $242.2 million, but the Q2 filing recorded the proceeds as deferred revenue, not recognized quarterly revenue. The prospective token is tied to a possible later transition from proof of authority to proof of stake or delegated proof of stake, whose timing and terms remain conditional.

Treating the presale as proof that Arc has already diversified Circle's operating revenue would therefore confuse financing and future performance obligations with recurring network economics.

Arc does not need to displace reserve income immediately to matter. It needs to show that Circle can capture a repeatable share of activity that USDC already enables elsewhere.

That creates a concrete scorecard after Sept. 16: whether public mainnet launches as scheduled, what kinds of transactions dominate, whether applications generate sustained activity outside mechanical liquidity loops, and whether Circle begins reporting material growth in transaction or subscription and service revenue. Retained economics will matter as much as gross fees.

USDC's $32 trillion year-to-date transfer total demonstrates reach and liquidity. Coin Metrics' decomposition shows why that number should not be mistaken for payments revenue. Until Arc or another Circle product turns more of that movement into durable fees, Circle's business will continue to be governed primarily by how many USDC are outstanding, what their reserves yield and how much of that income remains after distribution costs.

The post Circle processed $32 trillion in USDC transfers, yet 95% of its revenue relies entirely on interest rates appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Three blockchain networks stopped producing blocks within four days. Each blockchain halt used different emergency powers, and Cronos alone also replaced part of its canonical history.

Cronos said validators halted the network by consensus after an exploit affected Tectonic, restored the chain to state from before the incident, and resumed production from block 90,896,189. The action replaced state as well as stopping production. Transactions and state changes that existed only after the chosen restore point no longer belonged to the restarted canonical chain.

Ontology and ICON used different emergency levers. Ontology suspended block production before confirming malicious attack activity, and its Sept. 1 update said that activity did not compromise user assets. ICON first paused an affected contract, then halted a network that the ICON Foundation said it controlled during a migration period, after most of the affected ICX had already entered exchange custody.

A blockchain halt reveals only the first layer of control. The deeper questions are who can order the stop, whether they can replace accepted state, and which losses remain when funds cross into another chain or a centralized custodian.

Cronos crossed the line from stopping to replacing state

Cronos described the incident response as a “validator-consensus emergency action.” Its Aug. 31 restart notice said block production resumed as of 23:49:01 UTC on Aug. 30 from block 90,896,189, using chain state restored to before the Tectonic exploit.

Cronos's blockchain halt made the restore point an allocation decision. Exploit-related state after the checkpoint disappeared from the canonical chain, along with any unrelated transactions that existed only in the discarded history. The restart notice gives no transaction inventory, validator tally, voting-power threshold or list of participants. Cronos's promised postmortem will need to explain both the procedure and the technical scope.

Even the amount protected by the intervention remains unsettled. TRM Labs estimated that roughly $75 million was borrowed after TONIC's price was manipulated, with about $6 million reaching Ethereum and around $68.7 million reversed on Cronos. Bitquery reported a larger gross outflow, about $8.3 million on Ethereum and 10,961 discarded blocks.

Those figures measure different scopes; Tectonic's final official loss remains pending. A narrower conclusion is already clear: a Cronos restore could reverse state still on Cronos, while Ethereum state remained outside its reach.

Tectonic's recovery sequence leaves the user balance sheet unresolved. The protocol said it would reopen withdrawals and loan repayments first while keeping deposits and new borrowing paused. That creates an exit and deleveraging path, while suppliers' ability to redeem in full remains unconfirmed. Tectonic's pending postmortem still has to reconcile the exploit mechanism, gross outflow, bad debt, recovered assets and any residual liabilities.

Infrastructure also returns on a different schedule from consensus. Cronos warned that protocols, bridges, explorers and RPC providers would take longer to recover, while Alchemy's status page separately recorded the halt and later resolution. A chain can declare a canonical restart before every service that depends on it is ready.

Ontology's blockchain halt bought time rather than undoing transactions

Ontology's action came before the network confirmed malicious activity. The network said its core development team found a potential security concern during a daily check and immediately suspended block production so its technical team and validators could review the system.

A Sept. 1 update said the review had identified malicious attack activity, that the mainnet would remain paused for remediation and an upgrade, and that the activity had not compromised user assets. Ontology aimed to restore normal operations within 24 hours, subject to successful security checks, remediation, upgrade work and testing.

Ontology's blockchain halt left accepted state intact and stopped new settlement. Its announcement named no restore point or published set of transactions to invalidate.

The public description of authority remains incomplete. The announcement names the core development team, technical team and network validators, while leaving the binding decision-maker and numeric emergency threshold unidentified. Ontology's VBFT documentation explains normal consensus mechanics, including how nodes generate and confirm blocks and how a management contract updates the consensus set. Those documents cover normal consensus mechanics; the emergency-pause rule used on Aug. 31 remains undisclosed.

The pause can still impose material costs without creating an asset deficit. Ontology told users that on-chain transactions would not be processed, advised against time-sensitive activity and later said resumption would follow remediation, a network upgrade and testing. Positions could not be adjusted on-chain, transfers could not settle, and connected services had to wait for the network's next signal.

The resumption standard remains safety-based but is now more specific. Ontology said it aimed to restore normal operations within 24 hours if remediation, the network upgrade, testing and validation were completed successfully. The authority or threshold that would declare those conditions satisfied remains undisclosed.

The governance uncertainty is therefore specific. The network disclosed who was participating in the review, while the binding resumption authority remains unidentified. For users, the current exposure is operational delay rather than a confirmed user-asset loss or rollback.

ICON shows why a blockchain halt can arrive too late

ICON's incident provides the clearest chronology of detection, containment and custody slipping apart.

According to the Foundation's postmortem, an attacker replayed two previously valid signed withdrawal messages 1,492 times between 02:01:02 and 02:21:12 UTC on Aug. 27. A precision defect allowed 1,490 calls to succeed, releasing 119,866,000 ICX and 531,600 bnUSD from Foundation-held assets.

Monitoring alerted at 02:08 UTC. Technical staff began investigating later, and the affected contract was paused at 03:53. Exchanges began suspending ICX deposits and withdrawals at 05:54, while the network-wide halt took effect at 06:18:54. ICON restarted around 07:51 on Aug. 28, roughly 25 hours later, with a fix for the underlying defect.

The postmortem attributes the gap to incident response rather than missing detection. The first alert fired within seven minutes, but its severity did not page the on-call team because similar alerts had often accompanied unrelated RPC problems. Technical investigation opened around 03:40, shortly before the contract pause.

By the time the chain stopped, exchanges had already swept most of the affected ICX into their own custody. ICON-side controls could not stop an exchange from moving or converting assets it already held. The Foundation had to rely on exchange freezes, preservation notices, lawyers and law enforcement.

That custody boundary determined the loss allocation. ICON said all affected assets were Foundation-held and no user deposits, balances or positions were accessed. It reported 531,600 bnUSD and 1.366 million SODA recovered in full, plus 82,430 of 113,634 borrowed USDC recovered. Confirmed net loss stood at approximately 150.2 ETH plus 31,204 USDC, while most affected ICX remained frozen or traced at exchanges rather than recovered.

ICON's control structure also differed from the other two cases. The postmortem said the Foundation controlled the network during token migration, and earlier migration guidance said consensus was operating in maintenance mode with seven core nodes. Its halt therefore came through a distinct, explicitly Foundation-controlled operating structure.

Emergency powers are also balance-sheet powers

Each blockchain halt moved risk to a different place.

Cronos replaced canonical state. The restore could protect value still inside the chain's jurisdiction, while invalidating activity beyond the exploit itself and leaving assets on Ethereum untouched.

Ontology shifted risk into time, availability and the inability to settle transactions while an undisclosed concern was investigated. Its notice reported no known balance-sheet loss.

ICON contained the vulnerable contract and then the chain after custody had moved. Its confirmed loss stayed with the Foundation, while recovery of frozen ICX became dependent on exchanges and legal authority.

A single decentralization score would blur those outcomes. The practical test is more specific: Is the emergency rule public? What threshold activates it? Does it stop new blocks or replace accepted state? Who owns assets outside the chain when the intervention arrives? Who has promised to absorb any remaining loss?

Cronos and Tectonic still owe answers in their postmortems. Ontology still has to disclose the attack details and emergency authorization, and later confirm whether its targeted upgrade and resumption criteria were met. The useful comparison is the boundary each network drew around whose history, time and money could be placed at risk.

The post Stopping a blockchain doesn’t always recover stolen funds – What actually happened when 3 networks pulled the plug appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The open-source agent framework that started the "autonomous AI" hype cycle just shipped its biggest update ever, almost by accident, and it's coming for the enterprise now.

The deal, part of MediaTek's record $3.9 billion bond offering, ties Nvidia's chip ecosystem to a Taiwanese rival building its own AI accelerator business.

Trading on the Ethereum Layer 2 climbed 61% in a matter of days as DeFi deposits and stablecoin holdings approached $800 million.

Bitcoin has lost ground in eight of the last 13 Septembers. The stock market's had the same problem since 1928. Here's the case for the curse, what broke it last year, and what's coming in the next round.

Attackers reportedly registered Lenovo IDs using victims’ email addresses, allowing them to sign into existing Dropbox accounts without their passwords.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has fueled fresh speculation that the trading platform could expand its memecoin offerings.

The amount is not the Bitcoin bull's personal debt, but the disclosure is very notable nonetheless.

The mysterious figure behind the recent Grand Theft Auto VI leaks has reportedly cashed out roughly $350,000 from the CYBERLEEK crypto operation.

Choosing between AI stocks and Bitcoin is a mistake, according to Bitwise CIO amid the $40 trillion US debt dilemma.

Hyperliquid joins Bitcoin and XRP in Hashdex's Nasdaq ETF after a fresh SEC rebalance shifts top asset weights.

TLDR:

• XRP reserves on Binance dropped from 3.1 billion to 2.6 billion tokens since November 2025.
• Roughly 500 million XRP left Binance even as the XRP price fell 63% from its 2025 peak level.
• The launch of spot XRP ETFs in late 2025 may have driven part of the reserve outflow seen.
• XRP trades near $1.34, consolidating between its 20-week EMA and 50-week EMA resistance levels.

XRP reserves on Binance have declined to levels last seen in February 2024, according to on-chain data. Roughly 500 million XRP have left the exchange over the past year.

The outflow persisted even as the XRP price fell from a high of $3.66 to near $1.35, marking a 63% drawdown. Analysts point to long-term accumulation and the launch of spot XRP ETFs as possible drivers behind the shrinking reserves.

Binance XRP Reserves Fall to Multi-Year Low

The monthly average of XRP reserves held on Binance has fallen sharply since late 2025. Between November 2025 and today, that average dropped from 3.1 billion to 2.6 billion XRP.

This represents an outflow of roughly 500 million tokens. Analyst Darkfost tracked this movement closely on social media this week.

Darkfost observed that Binance reserves tend to rise during XRP price rebounds. Reserves then decline again during each following retracement, based on the data reviewed.

This pattern suggests some investors move tokens off exchanges during downturns. It may reflect a growing preference for self-custody among holders.

The reserve decline also lines up with the launch of spot XRP ETFs. Those products debuted in November and December of 2025.

ETF issuers may have needed to acquire XRP on the open market. That buying pressure could account for part of the recorded outflow.

Exchanges also shift reserves based on routine withdrawal and deposit activity. Some of the decline may reflect operational adjustments rather than pure accumulation.

Still, the scale of the movement points to more than short-term noise. Sustained reserve outflows are often viewed as a constructive long-term signal.

XRP Price Tests Support Near Key Moving Averages

XRP traded at $1.34 at the time of writing, down 2.85% over the past day. Trading volume reached close to $1.95 billion during that same period.

Source: CoinGecko

The token has also fallen 8.10% over the past seven days. That pullback comes despite XRP posting close to 30% gains for the month.

Trader ChartNerd pointed to two recent rejections at the 50-week EMA near $1.53. That level has served as resistance on recent attempts to move higher.

The 20-week EMA, currently around $1.27, could act as support. A break below $1.36 on lower timeframes may bring that level into play.

Price compression between two moving averages often precedes a directional breakout. Traders watching XRP reserves and price action call this pattern fairly common.

XRP appears to be consolidating within this broader range for now. A confirmed move beyond either average would likely draw fresh trader attention.

Falling XRP reserves alongside price consolidation create a mixed near-term picture. Reserve trends tend to carry more weight over longer time horizons than daily swings.

Traders continue watching the $1.27 to $1.53 range for the next signal. How XRP reserves evolve from here may shape sentiment into the next quarter.

The post XRP Reserves on Binance Hit Lowest Level Since 2024 as Price Tests Key Support appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• IonQ and QC Ware test hybrid quantum chemistry for faster drug discovery research
• IonQ Forte supports eight-qubit chemistry calculations through Amazon Braket cloud
• QC Ware reports interaction-energy results that meet chemical accuracy standards
• Promethium links GPU processing with IonQ Forte for advanced molecular modelling
• IonQ partnership expands trapped-ion quantum applications in pharmaceutical research

IonQ shares fell 4.02% to $37.73 as QC Ware reported a hybrid chemistry test using IonQ Forte. The project combined GPU processing with trapped-ion quantum computing through Amazon Braket. The test targeted quantum-assisted calculations for early drug discovery work.

IonQ, Inc., IONQ

IonQ Stock Slips as Partnership Expands Quantum Work

IonQ stock extended its decline from about $39.30 and traded at $37.73 during the session. Meanwhile, QC Ware used IonQ Forte to test a workflow for complex molecular interactions. The demonstration focused on research applications rather than broad commercial deployment or clinical use.

QC Ware selected the heme active site of cytochrome P450nor for the test. The enzyme belongs to cytochrome P450, and this family drives much of human drug metabolism. Therefore, the model provided a relevant setting for studying drug binding and metabolic behavior.

Better interaction-energy calculations could improve candidate ranking during pharmaceutical research, according to the companies. Earlier ranking can help research teams focus resources on compounds with stronger predicted characteristics. It can also support earlier metabolic risk checks before compounds enter costly development stages.

IonQ Forte Handles Eight-Qubit Chemistry Calculation

Promethium prepared a 115-atom model containing more than 1,000 molecular orbitals. The platform isolated four strongly correlated orbitals and mapped the active space onto eight qubits. IonQ Forte measured those qubits before Promethium completed final interaction-energy calculations using classical resources.

The workflow calculated electrostatic interaction energy within 0.5 kilocalories per mole of classical benchmarks. That result remained inside the one-kilocalorie-per-mole level commonly linked with chemical accuracy. The companies also reported more than twice the accuracy of the standard classical mean-field method.

IonQ Forte uses trapped ions and provides all-to-all connectivity between qubits. That connectivity enabled complex two-qubit operations without routing steps required by limited-connectivity designs. As a result, the test applied QC Ware’s workflow to another quantum architecture without changing its core approach.

AWS Braket Supports Cloud-Based Quantum Chemistry Test

Amazon Web Services supported the demonstration with cloud computing credits through Amazon Braket. The setup connected QC Ware’s GPU-native Promethium platform with IonQ Forte through cloud infrastructure. This structure showed how classical computing can work with remote quantum hardware inside one workflow.

QC Ware developed Promethium to run chemistry calculations across larger molecular systems and compound sets. QC Ware reports speed gains up to 20 times over conventional CPU-based DFT platforms for selected workloads. Those speed gains target drug discovery, catalysis, materials science, and other chemistry-intensive applications.

For IonQ, the project adds another applied example for its trapped-ion quantum technology. The demonstration expands IonQ’s chemistry presence, and accurate molecular calculations remain resource intensive. However, the test measured technical performance and did not establish clinical effectiveness or broader commercial results.

The post IonQ, Inc. (IONQ) Stock: QC Ware Partnership Targets Quantum Drug Discovery appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Cadence stock drops 6.84% despite first-pass PCIe 6.0 compliance test success
• Cadence PCIe 6.0 subsystem passes all official tests at full 64 GT/s speeds
• PCIe 6.0 milestone strengthens Cadence exposure to rising AI data center demand
• Cadence adds its PCIe 6.0 solution to the PCI-SIG official Integrators List
• TSMC N3-based PCIe 6.0 technology expands Cadence’s high-speed IP portfolio

Cadence Design Systems (CNDS) stock fell 6.84% to $315.62 despite reporting a major PCIe 6.0 technology milestone. The shares extended their decline after trading near $338.78 earlier in the session. Meanwhile, the development strengthened Cadence’s position across high-performance computing and AI data center infrastructure.

Cadence Design Systems, Inc., CDNS

Cadence PCIe 6.0 Technology Passes Major Compliance Test

Cadence confirmed its PCIe 6.0 PHY and controller technology passed official compliance testing on the first attempt. The company implemented the technology using TSMC’s advanced N3 manufacturing process. Moreover, testers evaluated the complete x8 subsystem at the PCIe 6.0 specification’s full 64 GT/s speed.

The subsystem passed every official PCIe 6.0 compliance test during the industry’s first formal testing workshop. As a result, PCI-SIG added Cadence’s complete solution to its official Integrators List. The achievement confirms that the PHY and controller can operate together under demanding industry requirements.

Cadence prepared for the testing process through extensive cooperation with technology partners and testing equipment providers. Furthermore, teams completed interoperability testing before the formal PCI-SIG evaluation began. That preparation helped identify technical issues before Cadence entered the official compliance program.

PCIe 6.0 Strengthens Cadence Position Across Data Centers

PCIe 6.0 technology provides higher bandwidth for modern data centers and high-performance computing systems. Therefore, companies can use the standard across accelerator cards, networking products, and advanced storage systems. Cadence expects these applications to support broader adoption as computing requirements continue expanding.

The technology carries particular importance for large computing facilities handling demanding artificial intelligence workloads. These systems require fast connections between processors, accelerators, storage devices, and networking hardware. Higher PCIe bandwidth can reduce connection bottlenecks across increasingly complex computing systems.

Cadence designed its subsystem to combine performance, power efficiency, and flexible protocol support. The architecture also uses ADC and DSP-based equalization alongside firmware-optimized SerDes operations. Additionally, Cadence included support for recent PCI-SIG engineering updates focused on lower power consumption.

Cadence Expands Semiconductor IP Role Despite CDNS Stock Drop

Cadence already supplies semiconductor design tools and intellectual property across several advanced computing markets. Its PCIe portfolio now extends through technology supporting specifications as advanced as PCIe 7.0. However, the PCIe 6.0 compliance milestone provides customers with a production-ready option available today.

Positron AI has licensed Cadence’s SerDes technology for an inference accelerator designed for transformer workloads. That customer adoption gives Cadence another commercial application for its PCIe 6.0 technology. Meanwhile, successful silicon testing strengthens the technology’s case for use in additional chip development programs.

Cadence developed the certified x8 configuration using TSMC’s N3 manufacturing technology for advanced semiconductor designs. The company now offers the complete PHY and controller subsystem to system-on-chip providers. Therefore, manufacturers can integrate the technology into future data center, enterprise, automotive, and computing products.

The post Cadence Design Systems (CNDS) Stock: Sinks as First Pass PCIe 6.0 Success Strengthens AI Data Center Outlook appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• APEI stock rises 0.74% as Hondros joins American Public University System.
• Hondros students gain wider access to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.
• The combination expands APEI’s healthcare education footprint across three states.
• Hondros now operates under American Public University System’s HLC accreditation.
• APEI adds another nursing education platform to its career-focused university network.

American Public Education (APEI) expanded its nursing education network after Hondros College of Nursing joined American Public University System. APEI stock traded at $45.99, gaining $0.34, or 0.74%, following the education provider’s latest organizational update. The combination broadens academic pathways while strengthening APEI’s position in career-focused healthcare education.

American Public Education, Inc., APEI

Hondros Joins American Public University System

Hondros College of Nursing now operates as an Academic Unit within American Public University System following the completed combination. The college will operate under the System’s Higher Learning Commission institutional accreditation while maintaining its nursing education focus. Meanwhile, the integration creates broader academic options for current students and future nursing professionals.

The organization will formally operate as Hondros College of Nursing part of American Public University System. However, Hondros will continue serving nursing students through its existing regional campuses and career-focused programs. The change connects Hondros with a larger education network that includes American Public University and American Military University.

The System also includes Rasmussen University, which offers additional nursing and career-oriented academic programs. Hondros students can access more opportunities to continue their education after completing initial nursing qualifications. Those pathways include bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral nursing programs across institutions operating within the broader System.

APEI Expands Healthcare Education Pathways

Hondros has provided nursing education for more than two decades through a structured approach focused on career progression. The institution has trained thousands of licensed practical nurses and registered nurses during that period. It currently serves students through eight campuses across Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan.

Six Hondros campuses operate in Ohio, while Indiana and Michigan each host one campus. The college also maintains relationships with healthcare organizations and local communities across its operating regions. These connections support practical nursing education and help align training programs with regional healthcare workforce requirements.

Joining American Public University System creates additional progression routes after students complete Hondros nursing programs. Students can continue into advanced nursing education or pursue other career-focused degrees across the System. As a result, the combination links entry-level nursing education with broader professional and academic development opportunities.

American Public Education Strengthens Education Network

American Public University System serves approximately 109,000 students and has more than 250,000 alumni worldwide. Its institutions now include American Military University, American Public University, Rasmussen University, and Hondros College of Nursing. Together, those institutions provide programs focused on career development, public service, healthcare, and other professional fields.

The Higher Learning Commission accredits American Public University System as an institution recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Hondros now operates under that institutional accreditation as an Academic Unit of the System. Consequently, the combination places Hondros within the same institutional structure supporting APEI’s wider education portfolio.

American Public Education owns the System and operates as a publicly listed career-focused higher education provider. The company concentrates on affordable programs designed for students pursuing workforce-oriented and service-related careers. Hondros adds a specialized nursing platform that expands APEI’s exposure to healthcare education demand.

Hondros Combination Supports APEI’s Growth Strategy

Healthcare workforce shortages continue to increase demand for practical training and advanced nursing education across several regions. Hondros already provides an established entry point for students pursuing practical nursing and registered nursing careers. Its integration gives APEI a stronger platform for connecting those students with advanced academic programs.

The expanded structure may also increase student retention across different stages of nursing education. Graduates can remain within the wider APEI system while advancing toward higher nursing qualifications. Furthermore, the network can serve students seeking additional credentials as their careers and professional requirements develop.

APEI gains another established education brand while Hondros receives access to a wider academic network. The combination also expands APEI’s healthcare education footprint across Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. With APEI stock at $45.99, the latest move adds another component to the company’s career-focused education strategy.

The post American Public Education (APEI) Stock: Hondros Integration Expands Nursing Education Pathways appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• CrowdStrike launches a new cyber research lab while CRWD shares fall 7.00%.
• Cyber Superintelligence Lab targets faster and more automated cyberdefense.
• Falcon data gives the new lab access to trillions of daily security events.
• Fifteen years of threat intelligence will support CrowdStrike’s new research.
• CRWD falls to $214.84 as CrowdStrike expands its long-term security strategy.

CrowdStrike (CRWD) stock dropped sharply as the cybersecurity company launched a new research lab focused on advanced cyberdefense and AI safety. CRWD traded at $214.84, down $16.16, or 7.00%, during the latest session after a steep market decline. The launch expands CrowdStrike’s research strategy while its shares remain under heavy pressure despite the new technology initiative.

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc., CRWD

CrowdStrike Launches Cyber Superintelligence Lab

CrowdStrike created its Cyber Superintelligence Lab to develop defensive systems for increasingly automated cyber threats across modern enterprise networks. The initiative brings researchers, offensive security specialists, and incident responders into one dedicated research group with a shared development mandate. Dr. Bartley Richardson will lead the lab as CrowdStrike expands work on autonomous security systems and advanced defensive research.

The lab will use CrowdStrike’s security data, threat intelligence, and incident response experience as its main research foundation. Falcon gathers signals from endpoints, cloud workloads, identities, data stores, and security monitoring systems across customer environments. This structure gives researchers a broad dataset for training and testing new defensive technologies under realistic operating conditions.

CrowdStrike wants the lab to develop systems that can learn, adapt, and respond at machine speed during active security incidents. The company expects automated threats to increase as attackers adopt faster tools and more sophisticated methods across digital systems. Therefore, CrowdStrike plans to improve security decisions while reducing the time required to identify, assess, and stop attacks.

Falcon Data Supports CrowdStrike’s Research Push

CrowdStrike’s research effort depends heavily on the large security dataset collected through Falcon across its global customer base. The platform processes trillions of events daily across enterprise systems, cloud infrastructure, identities, and several other security layers. Analysts also classify those signals and connect them with verified results from real attack investigations and response operations.

That process gives CrowdStrike more than raw event volume because the records include known security outcomes and analyst decisions. The company has also accumulated fifteen years of threat intelligence and incident response information from complex security incidents. These records show how attacks developed, which defenses worked, and how security teams contained breaches across different environments.

CrowdStrike can use that context to test new systems against realistic conditions and uncommon attack patterns at greater scale. Researchers can compare automated decisions with verified defensive outcomes, which may help improve accuracy and reduce weak security responses. The dataset also reflects diverse environments where attackers target endpoints, identities, cloud systems, applications, and valuable business data.

New Lab Expands CrowdStrike’s Security Strategy

The new lab strengthens CrowdStrike’s broader effort to automate more parts of enterprise cyberdefense as digital threats evolve rapidly. Falcon already combines threat intelligence, telemetry, detection tools, and automated response within one cloud-based platform for enterprise customers. CrowdStrike now plans to extend that foundation through deeper research into autonomous defensive technology and faster security operations.

The company sees faster response as essential because cyber threats continue to become more automated and difficult to contain. Attackers can use automation for reconnaissance, phishing, malware deployment, credential theft, and other offensive activity at larger scale. CrowdStrike aims to shorten response times while helping its systems learn from verified attack outcomes and past security events.

The initiative also adds another research layer to CrowdStrike’s long-term product strategy and wider enterprise security portfolio. CrowdStrike already covers endpoints, identities, cloud workloads, data protection, and security information management through its Falcon platform. The new lab could connect those areas through faster decision-making, stronger automation, and more coordinated defensive responses across enterprises.

The post CrowdStrike (CRWD) Stock: Cyber Superintelligence Lab Opens New AI Growth Path appeared first on Blockonomi.

Goldman Sachs, Jane Street Group, and Millennium Management were the three largest reported holders of spot XRP ETFs in second-quarter 13F filings, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data shared by James Seyffart on August 31.

The filings show that institutional exposure has grown alongside a sharp increase in XRP ETF inflows, even as the Ripple token itself has pulled back from its August highs.

Advisors Dominate XRP ETF Holdings

Bloomberg’s compilation puts Goldman Sachs well ahead of other reported holders, with $87.4 million in ETF exposure representing 84 million XRP. Jane Street followed with just under 16 million XRP, worth $16.6 million, while Millennium Management held 15.5 million tokens valued at about $16.2 million.

Intesa Sanpaolo ranked fourth with $14.4 million in exposure, followed by Marex UK Holdings at $8.1 million. Citadel Advisors also appeared in the filing data, although its XRP exposure fell by $645,000. But SIG Holdings recorded a much larger reduction, with its reported XRP exposure down by roughly $4.6 million.

Across the identified holders, total exposure reached $183.5 million, representing about 176.4 million XRP. Bloomberg also grouped the holders by category and found investment advisors far ahead of the other groups, with $120.9 million in exposure. Hedge fund managers accounted for $25.1 million, brokerages for $17.9 million, and banks for $14.8 million.

ETF Demand Rises While XRP Price Cools

The numbers come as demand for spot XRP ETFs has picked up, with the funds attracting $110.5 million during the week ending August 28, their strongest five-day inflow since the first week of December 2025, when they drew in more than $230 million. SoSoValue data shows another $5.6 million entered the products on August 31, taking cumulative net inflows to about $1.67 billion, with total net assets reaching roughly $1.45 billion.

Meanwhile, the token itself was trading near $1.40 at the time of writing, having hit a multi-month high of $1.70 last week. Although that price represents a nearly 9% dip over seven days, it is still 28% higher than where it was a month ago and almost 40% up from its level two weeks ago. That said, XRP’s value is still nearly half of what it was this time last year, and it is stuck approximately 62% below its all-time high of $3.65 recorded in July 2025.

Traders are now watching the $1.35 to $1.38 zone closely, since a break below could open the door to more downside, while analyst Ali Martinez fingered $1.60 as the next major resistance level were XRP to attempt another recovery.

The post These Wall Street Giants Are the Biggest Holders of Spot XRP ETFs appeared first on CryptoPotato.

July and August have been quite successful for the self-proclaimed Dogecoin killer, with its price closing both months in the green.

Nonetheless, certain important elements suggest that September may not be as beneficial and could deliver a move south.

The Worrying Signals

The first concerning element on the list is Shiba Inu’s burn rate, which has declined by 6% on a monthly scale. Data shows that less than 600 million tokens have been sent to a null address throughout August, an amount whose USD equivalent is negligible.

The burning mechanism aims to reduce the overall supply of the meme coin and potentially make it more valuable, but little to no activity on that front poses a serious obstacle to that mission.

Next is Shibarium’s stalled activity. The layer-2 scaling solution was exploited last year, and since then, the number of processed daily transactions has dropped to mere hundreds or even thousands (at most).

The feature has been labeled numerous times as important for the overall advancement of Shiba Inu’s ecosystem and something that can positively impact its price.

Last but not least, we shall mention the seasonal element. September has been a predominantly poor month for SHIB, with its price finishing the period in the red three out of five times. In 2022, July and August were green (just like this year), yet the following month stopped the uptrend. We have yet to see whether history will repeat itself.

The Bright Side

Not all aspects suggest that the meme coin could experience a downtrend in the coming weeks.

According to CryptoQuant, the amount of SHIB held on exchanges has declined over the past month, signaling that investors continue to abandon centralized platforms in favor of self-custody. This, in turn, reduces immediate selling pressure and could set the stage for a potential additional price ascent.

The post 3 Reasons Why Shiba Inu (SHIB) May Plunge This Month appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Artificial intelligence could usher in a new wave of concern over financial privacy, according to a Grayscale research report. The firm’s Head of Research, Zach Pandl, expects AI to create new privacy threats and drive demand for new solutions.

He sees Zcash as one potential option.

Zcash For Blockchain Privacy

Public attention to financial privacy has historically increased alongside major technological changes. The first wave came in the 1970s, when computers enabled the digitization and automation of financial record-keeping. A second wave followed in the 1990s with the expansion of the Internet and growing concerns over online privacy.

Grayscale believes a third wave has now begun as AI becomes more widely used. Pandl said AI tools are likely to create new privacy challenges across the economy, and the issue is particularly pressing for public blockchains that are transparent by default.

For instance, on the Bitcoin network, every transaction is recorded on a public ledger and can be viewed by anyone. When blockchain activity is linked with off-chain information, user addresses could potentially be de-anonymized, a risk also noted in the Bitcoin white paper.

While that risk existed before AI, Grayscale said advances in the technology could make blockchain address labeling more effective and widely available, increasing the need for privacy protection. Unlike Bitcoin, Zcash offers additional privacy features through shielded transactions, which use zero-knowledge cryptography to conceal both the addresses involved in a transaction and the amount being transferred. Grayscale said this privacy feature could become a “must-have” for users who prioritize financial privacy.

Grayscale had made a similar point earlier, while noting that ZEC had surged about 20 times in the past year but was still worth less than 1% of Bitcoin’s market cap. The firm said Zcash’s privacy features and other advantages may not be fully reflected in its current valuation, which leaves room for further gains.

The comments come days after Grayscale converted its Zcash Trust, launched in 2017, into a spot ZEC ETF. The fund began trading on the NYSE Arca on August 25.

$1,800 Target

ZEC has posted a strong performance. The privacy-focused crypto asset gained nearly 80% over the past month alone. Following the sharp rally, ZEC is trading around $850, but crypto analyst Ali Martinez is betting on further upside.

He said that “Zcash is about to melt faces,” while identifying $1,800 as the “first stop.”

The post Zcash May Have a Bigger Role to Play as AI Threatens Financial Privacy: Grayscale appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Prediction-market exchange Kalshi has permanently banned former US Rep. George Santos from accessing the platform after its Compliance Department found “reasonable cause to believe” that he engaged in insider trading and market manipulation.

The lifetime ban, effective August 28, 2026, is the first permanent penalty of its kind imposed by Kalshi on a user.

Penalty and Lifetime Ban

According to the official compliance document, Santos traded in markets linked to whether he would attend the State of the Union address on February 24, despite being prohibited from trading in those markets because he was capable of influencing the outcome of the underlying event. Kalshi said Santos placed a series of large trades between February 2 and February 25 in contracts whose results depended on his own attendance.

The platform said Santos materially benefited from the activity and earned $17,839.57 from the targeted markets. Alongside the permanent suspension of direct and indirect access to the exchange, the Compliance Department has also imposed a $71,356 penalty.

In response to the development, Santos took to X to attack Kalshi and accused the latter of violating its own notices and deadlines. He said that the August 7 notice allegedly gave his side 30 days before the latest action, as he questioned why the exchange had announced “frivolous nonsense” before that period was over.

“Leaking and attention seeking seem to be the M/O of this organization. Pathetic!”

The action comes after a settlement Santos reached last month with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has said it has jurisdiction over prediction markets. He agreed to pay $35,000 under the settlement but did not admit or deny the agency’s findings. His counsel, Joseph W. Murray, said Santos cooperated with the CFTC.

The former congressman was expelled from the House of Representatives in 2023 after facing federal charges. In April 2025, he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and identity theft. In October of that year, Trump announced that he had commuted the sentence, and Santos was released after serving less than three months.

Kalshi had previously suspended three US political candidates after finding they bet on election outcomes they were directly involved in, while calling the activity “political insider trading.”

More Heat on Prediction Markets

Prediction-market platforms face growing scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers. Last month, Baltimore officials sued Kalshi and Polymarket, alleging that their sports prediction contracts amount to unlicensed sports betting and can mislead consumers about their legal and regulatory status.

Meanwhile, Kalshi is also fighting a lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James. The exchange has separately faced a lawsuit from FlightAware over flight-related markets, although that case was withdrawn shortly after being filed.

The post Former US Rep. George Santos Banned From Kalshi for Life After Betting on Himself appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Solana was trading near $102 on Tuesday, down more than 7% from its recent seven-month high of nearly $110. The recent price weakness has not stopped signs of stronger demand from building across the network.

According to Ali Martinez, Solana recorded an average of 9.5 million new addresses per day over the past week, a level of growth the analyst considers an important adoption signal and one that has historically preceded major rallies.

Bullish Factors

Larger investors are also becoming more active. Wallets holding at least 10,000 SOL rose 1.58% after adding 52 new whale wallets to the network. At the same time, US spot Solana ETFs extended their streak of weekly net inflows to nine weeks. These funds attracted almost $154 million in capital last week. Interestingly, Bitwise’s Solana Staking ETF, BSOL, recently surpassed $1 billion in assets under management within 10 months.

Meanwhile, exchange balances are moving in the opposite direction, as seen with SOL held on exchanges dropping 4.91% after the withdrawal of roughly 2.6 million tokens over the past week. Martinez stated that $103 is an important support level, since it’s backed by 39 million SOL acquired there. The next hurdles are $123 and $132, each tied to about 20 million SOL in previous purchases.

Holding support and breaking those two levels could set up a move toward $150.

A similar sentiment was echoed by crypto investor Batman, who said that Solana may be entering a stronger bullish phase after breaking out of a major accumulation structure. But he expects SOL to retest the $83-$85 zone and believes a successful hold there could eventually push the asset toward $150 or higher.

Another market watcher, Gerla, believes the asset could be preparing for a much larger move after breaking its downtrend. He flagged the formation of higher lows, which suggests that the market may be entering a reaccumulation phase. If the structure remains intact, Gerla said that Solana could target $300 or higher as the next major expansion zone.

Other Key Developments

Solana saw several major developments this week. This includes the conclusion of its first binding on-chain governance vote, which was followed by a 25% increase in network speed, taking slot times from 400ms to 300ms. Separately, Charles Schwab announced plans to add SOL to Schwab Crypto Direct.

Additionally, Solana’s RWA holder base also crossed 350,000, while xStocksFi topped $500 million in AUM across more than 700 tokenized assets. Tokenized commodities on the network also reached a record $50 million in supply, and Solana became the leading network by total x402 transaction volume.

The post Solana’s 7% Pullback Isn’t Slowing Demand: Here’s the $150 Setup appeared first on CryptoPotato.