The lawsuit could redefine AI data practices, potentially increasing costs for AI development and impacting industry-wide data acquisition norms.

The post Sony and Warner Music sue Anthropic over unauthorized song use in AI training appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Cashlink's integration with Avalanche enhances European tokenization, fostering a more flexible, multi-chain approach in institutional finance.

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Messi's farewell marks the end of an era, prompting Argentina to seek new icons while his legacy inspires future generations globally.

The post Lionel Messi played farewell match in Argentina before retirement appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

OpenAI's ad revenue surge highlights a strategic pivot, underscoring the necessity of diversified income streams for sustainable growth.

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Phil Schiller's departure marks a pivotal shift in Apple's leadership, potentially impacting its strategic direction and innovation approach.

The post Phil Schiller steps down from App Store and events role at Apple appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Russia’s Sberbank Estimates $46.4B Trading Volume in First Year of Crypto Buildout

Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, has said it expects trading volume with its new crypto rollout to hit 4 trillion rubles ($46.43 bln) in the first year, according to reports. 

Volumes are also expected to hit 7.5 trillion rubles ($87.06 bln) by 2029, Sberbank Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board Anatoly Popov was quoted saying, as reported by Tass on Saturday. 

The forecast was deemed “conservative” according to the news report. Sberbank in July revealed plans to debut a Bitcoin and crypto wallet as well as digital asset custody by December. The Bank of Russia in July published draft regulations for crypto trading, and the State Duma is preparing the comprehensive regulation of digital assets. 

And in a Friday report, Tass quoted Sberbank Deputy Chairman Anatoly Popov saying that the bank was planning to accept Bitcoin — and other cryptocurrencies — as collateral for loans. 

Russia is fast moving ahead with regulating digital assets in the country. Russian President Vladimir Putin this month signed a law to set in stone the regulation of digital currencies and digital rights in the country. 

The new law reportedly allows only registered entities to operate as exchanges, and puts limits on the amount of crypto retail investors can use. 

Still, despite the rollout, using digital assets as a means of payment or legal tender within Russia is still banned. Using crypto as a form of payment has been prohibited in Russia since 2022. 

President Putin has appeared to praise Bitcoin in the past, once saying that the leading cryptocurrency can’t be stopped. 

Since the U.S. and European governments cut Russia off from the SWIFT payments system after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, Russian companies have been using Bitcoin to skirt around the penalties. 

But the Russian state keeps a tight grip on what its citizens can do with crypto: authorities have been cracking down and arresting people operating unregistered crypto exchanges. 

And the amounts involved barely matter — a nuclear engineer in Sarov was sentenced to 18 years for sending about $13 from his crypto wallet to groups the state designates as terrorist organizations.

This post Russia’s Sberbank Estimates $46.4B Trading Volume in First Year of Crypto Buildout first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy Resumes Bitcoin Buying After 10-Week Hiatus 

Bitcoin treasury Strategy resumed its bitcoin buys last week, snapping up nearly $370 million in the leading cryptocurrency, according to a Monday announcement from the company. 

A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Strategy bought 4,603 bitcoins for $369.7 million between August 24 to August 30. Each coin was bought at an average price of $80,318, according to the filing. 

The buy comes after Strategy paused its bitcoin buys in June, instead focusing on building a cash buffer, buying back its stock and even sometimes selling some of its holdings. 

“Strategy is evolving from one-way capital issuance to active capital management,” Strategy CEO Phong Le said in June. “We intend to move between issuing securities when capital is attractive and repurchasing securities when our instruments trade at levels that make buybacks accretive. This flexibility is designed to create shareholder value, improve corporate performance, and strengthen the quality and market standing of Strategy’s securities in the eyes of investors.”

Strategy now has $5.1 billion in its USD Reserve and $1.61 billion its new USD Cash reserve — which was announced last week. 

The company holds 845,050 bitcoins worth $65.8 billion at today’s prices. 

Software company Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy — began buying bitcoin in August 2020 as a treasury strategy to boost shareholder returns during the pandemic. 

It has since spent more than $63.7 billion on buying bitcoin and remains by far the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin in the world. Its approach spawned a wave of copycat companies that have since adopted similar crypto-treasury strategies of their own.

Chairman and Strategy founder Michael Saylor has said that the company is now focusing on creating digital credit: high-yield products, such as its preferred equity, STRC, which are backed by its bitcoin holdings. 

Strategy’s stock (NASDAQ: MSTR) was trading slightly higher on Monday morning in New York. Year-to-date, its price has dipped nearly 20%. 

Bitcoin was trading for $77,821 on Monday morning in New York after hitting a high last week of $81,281. Over a 24-hour period, the coin now sits unmoved, but over a 30-day period, it has jumped by more than 24%. 

This post Strategy Resumes Bitcoin Buying After 10-Week Hiatus  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

What Is Worth Preserving: Rupture on Remains, Decay, and the Collector’s Dilemma

In 1915, Kazimir Malevich hung a black square on a gallery wall and called it the zero point of painting – the end of the image, presented as an image. A little over a century later, the black square returns in Remains, but this time as consequence rather than statement. If the collector of one of these works by artist Rupture does nothing, the on-chain response is to produce the black square for them, one pixel at a time, one block at a time, until nothing is left of the image.

Remains is a series of four hybrid works in which a painting and a related ordinal are structurally bound. Each inscription contains exactly 210,000 pixels – the number of blocks mined in a bitcoin halving epoch. Beginning at the next halving in April 2028, the inscription begins to decay in real time: one pixel dies for every block the network mines. The only way to stop it is hidden beneath the surface of the physical painting – a unique alphanumeric code, retrievable only by destroying a meaningful portion of the work, which must then be inscribed as a “child” of the ordinal to permanently halt the decay. Preserve the painting, and the image on the blockchain is consumed. Save the inscription, and the painting is wounded forever. The collector cannot remain passive. Inaction is itself a choice, and the Bitcoin blockchain makes both outcomes permanent.

Art history is full of destruction deployed as a gesture. Robert Rauschenberg erased a de Kooning drawing in 1953 and framed the absence. Banksy fed Girl with Balloon through a shredder hidden in its own frame the moment the auction concluded at Sotheby’s. And in 2016, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu caged an industrial robot at the Guggenheim and gave it a single task: sweep the blood-red fluid endlessly pooling around its base back toward itself, a futile act of self-maintenance it performed for three years, slowing visibly, until it stopped. Can’t Help Myself may be the saddest machine ever built. It is also a close ancestor to Remains: both works run on a clock, and both make the audience watch something decay in real time. But where the robot’s fate was sealed by its programming, Remains leaves the outcome unwritten. Destruction here is not a spectacle performed by the artist. It is stewardship demanded of the collector.

Rupture (b. 1993, Switzerland) is a self-taught artist based in Mexico City. Within the digital art space, he has produced one of the most widely collected artist-made bodies of work on Bitcoin, the Persona series (750 works, 2024–2025), alongside earlier work on Ethereum; he was also among the first artists to release work on Solana. The physical practice reaches back further: exhibiting internationally since 2016, with presentations at Museum Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris, Art Basel Miami, the 2nd Triennial of Self-Taught Visionary Art in Belgrade, and a nomination for the Prix Suisse d’Art Brut, figurative painting built on dense, obsessive mark-making and an insistence on the irreversible. Remains is where the two paths collide: painting and blockchain bound into single objects, each incomplete without the other.

Bitcoin is the most consequential permanence system produced in the digital age. Its architecture assumes that what is recorded cannot be lost. Remains takes that assumption seriously enough to test it — and in doing so forces a reckoning with a fundamental asymmetry between physical and digital culture: one forgets by nature, the other records permanently regardless of intent.

I sat down with Rupture ahead of the exhibition to talk about decay as a medium, the collector as an unwilling participant, and what it costs to save anything.

BMAG: Let’s start with the mechanism, because it’s the basis of the whole series. Each digital component contains exactly 210,000 pixels – the number of blocks in a Bitcoin halving epoch – and beginning at the April 2028 halving, one pixel dies for every block the network mines. Discuss how you arrived at that structure. Did the concept come first and the math followed, or did the number 210,000 suggest the work?

Rupture: The concept was there before any of the pieces existed. I was thinking a lot about permanence, especially in relation to digital mediums. Bitcoin is seen as the most permanent and unchangeable record humanity has built, and Ordinals were marketed on exactly that thesis – a truly permanent storage layer, unlike NFTs on other chains with their broken links and files sitting on someone’s server. Persona, my first series on Ordinals, embraced that promise. With Remains I wanted to turn it on its head.

I think there is something beautiful about impermanence. We live in a moment where movements like transhumanism want to engineer it away, and I understand the impulse, but I’d argue the opposite: life would lose its meaning if it were eternal. The same applies to art. Tibetan monks spend weeks building a sand mandala and then sweep it away – the dissolution becomes part of the work.

So I set out to make a digital work that would be consumed by Bitcoin’s own metabolism. From there the structure basically assembled itself. The closest on-chain analogue to a pixel dying was a block being mined – a discrete, irreversible event that happens roughly every ten minutes, forever. So I linked them one to one. An epoch is 210,000 blocks, which meant the image had to be 210,000 pixels. The math followed the concept.

BMAG: The “kill switch” is hidden beneath the paint on the physical painting. To retrieve the code that stops the decay, the collector has to destroy a meaningful portion of the physical work – and then inscribe it as a child of the Ordinal. Did you paint these differently knowing the surface is also a type of vault? It’s very taboo to touch (or cut) a painting (outside of Lucio Fontana). 

Rupture: I tried to approach these the way I would approach any other painting. The only real difference is that I had to start with the code. Each one was written on paper, laminated, and sealed at the center of the panel under layers of molding paste and gesso. Only then could the painting begin. So the secret is literally the first layer. Everything else sits on top of it.

As for the taboo – I think most of us, me included, are conditioned to ascribe a much higher value to the physical object. The painting feels irreplaceable in a way the inscription doesn’t, even when the inscription is the scarcer thing. That conditioning is what makes the concept work. The taboo gives the act of destruction its emotional weight, and that weight is what the collector has to sit with.

I deliberately left it open-ended. I’m not telling anyone what the right choice is. The collector confronts the question of value and permanence and answers it for themselves – publicly, and only once.

BMAG: There’s a lineage of destruction in art – Rauschenberg erasing de Kooning, Tinguely’s self-destroying machine at MoMA, Banksy’s shredder at Sotheby’s. And more recently, the “burn a physical to mint a digital” gesture that flared up during the initial NFT boom. Remains feels like a response to that last one in particular: in your work, destruction isn’t a spectacle the artist performs – it’s a responsibility the collector inherits. Where do you place yourself in that lineage, and what do you think the burn-to-mint era got wrong?

Rupture: I like to think of destruction as integral to creation. Jasper Johns destroyed nearly everything he made before 1954 so he could start over. Agnes Martin did the same, more than once. So artists questioning the preciousness of the art object is nothing new. And I think that preciousness is inherited – art objects have absorbed the aura that used to belong to relics. Now that commodities are the closest thing we have to a religion, cutting open a painting might be our version of desecration. Which is exactly why it carries weight.

The burn-to-mint mechanic treats the physical as a husk. You burned the painting to “upgrade” it into a token, the destruction was filmed, and the spectacle was the marketing. What it got wrong, I think, is that nothing was actually at stake. You destroyed something to get something the market valued more. That’s more of a transaction than a sacrifice.

In Remains there’s no version where you come out ahead. The collector already owns both halves, and destruction doesn’t produce anything new, it only decides which loss to accept. The loss runs on Bitcoin – a system built for remembering, repurposed as an engine of forgetting.

BMAG: The press text says the collector cannot remain passive – that inaction is itself a choice. That’s a strong tenet of the bitcoin idea. Self-custody works the same way: hold your own keys, and doing nothing is perhaps the best outcome. Did you set out to build a custody parable of some kind, or did the parallel arrive after? Artmaking can sometimes be nonlinear and we don’t see the connections in order. 

Rupture: The parallel only occurred to me after the work existed. And funny enough, Remains actually inverts the rule. In self-custody, doing nothing is the safe move, while for Remains, doing nothing is what kills half the work.

But the deeper thing is the same in both. You’re on your own. There’s no institution behind you, no support line, no one to make the decision for you or undo it afterwards. The system just records what you do, and there are no exceptions.

Most people have never owned anything under those conditions. Bitcoiners have. I think that’s why they tend to understand this work faster – they know what it feels like to be the only one responsible for something that can’t be undone.

BMAG: At the next halving, the decay clock starts for any un-rescued work. Anyone can watch the inscriptions on-chain as they change. Is a completed black square a failed Remains, or the most honest version of the work?

Rupture: It definitely isn’t a failed Remains. It’s the piece brought to one of its logical outcomes. The work was never meant to be just the image – it’s the image plus the decision, and a black square is what one of those decisions looks like. It means the collector chose the painting, whether out of conviction or paralysis, and the chain holds the receipt: 210,000 confirmations of a single choice, applied one block at a time over four years. I don’t know of another artwork that documents its owner’s decision at that resolution.

And then there’s the Malevich analogue, which you opened with. He declared the zero point of painting. Remains arrives at the black square instead of starting from it – block by block, with an exit available the entire time. I don’t know which of the four pieces will end there, if any. That’s the one part of the work I can’t determine.

BMAG: For someone standing in front of these four paintings at the exhibition – someone who knows bitcoin as a price ticker but has never thought about what permanence actually costs – what do you want them to walk away thinking about?

Rupture: How permanence is never free. Nothing survives by default. Every object in every museum is there because someone paid for it to be – in money, in labor, in space, in other things thrown away to make room. History isn’t just what happened. It’s what someone decided was worth keeping. What persists does so because something else was set aside or destroyed. We just rarely see the other half of the equation.

Remains by Rupture debuts September 2–8, 2026 at PRIV.Y Gallery, 46 Hester Street, New York, presented by BMAG and running parallel to NFT.NYC. The opening reception is September 2. RSVP at luma.com/cckjg9kl.

BMAG is also running a bounty on X: enter for a chance to win Memory Theatre VI, an original work by Rupture. Full details and entry at shop.museum.b.tc/items/memory-theatre-vi.

Remains is now available to preview at https://shop.museum.b.tc/preview/remainsbyrupture. For acquisition inquiries, DM @BMAG_HQ on X or email bmag@btcmedia.org.

Follow Rupture on X @RuptureNFT. 

The Bitcoin Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG) is the curatorial and cultural programming division of BTC Inc and the Bitcoin Conference. Learn more at museum.b.tc.

This post What Is Worth Preserving: Rupture on Remains, Decay, and the Collector’s Dilemma first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Dennis Koch.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Cools Off After $3 Billion ETF-Driven Surge 

Bitcoin slid Friday afternoon, cooling down after a phenomenal run following huge investment from U.S. ETF buyers. 

The leading cryptocurrency was trading for $77,379 on Friday afternoon in New York after dropping more than 3% over a 24-hour period. 

Bitcoin hit a high this week of $81,281 but slowed down after Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh gave his first major speech as head of the central bank — saying on Friday that he had “more work to do” to fight inflation. 

The Bitcoin price has in the past dropped when the Federal Reserve thinks inflation is too high because it means less chance of a rate cut; the leading cryptocurrency typically does better in a low-interest rate environment. 

Bitcoin started surging last week after the U.S. Treasury would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. The announcement last week hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets have benefited. 

Exchange-traded funds, managed by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale have received net positive inflows for nine days in a row, according to Farside Investors data. Last week was their best week since October — when bitcoin hit a new all-time high — and that run has continued into this week. 

Since August 17, investors have thrown over $3 billion at the funds. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust received the lion’s share of the investment, but Morgan Stanley’s new Bitcoin Trust — which debuted this year — also experienced significant inflows. 

Analysts have said that the so-called debasement trade — when investors buy an asset as a way to hedge against a currency losing value — was leading investors to eye-up bitcoin again. 

Investors taking part in the trade think that bitcoin, gold and other precious metals are a good way to protect themselves from excessive government spending. 

Total U.S. debt crossed $40 trillion for the first time this month. 

This post Bitcoin Cools Off After $3 Billion ETF-Driven Surge  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Debasement Trade Is Here Thanks to Government Debt — And Bitcoin Will Benefit: Grayscale

The debasement trade is back — and will benefit bitcoin. 

That’s according to asset manager Grayscale’s crypto research team, who wrote in a note this week that the U.S. government debasing its currency would lead to cash hitting digital assets. 

“Unchecked government debt growth undermines the credibility of fiat currencies and drives investors to seek out alternative stores of value like physical gold and certain cryptocurrencies,” the note by the firm’s head of research, Zach Pandl, read, adding that primarily bitcoin would benefit. 

The so-called debasement trade is when investors buy an asset as a way to hedge against a currency losing value. The trade was hot last year, and helped bitcoin’s run, but the digital asset’s run lost steam after October as traders turned their attention to stocks related to artificial intelligence. 

But since last week, bitcoin has benefited from news that the U.S. Treasury would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. The announcement last week hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets have benefited. 

“That buybacks are needed at all is the problem: heavy growth in government debt is driving up the cost of borrowing,” the note continued. “The Treasury is treating the symptoms (rising bond yields) because they cannot cure the disease (structural deficits).” 

The note added that on the same day last week as the buyback announcement, the Treasury also said the U.S. public debt exceeded $40 trillion for the first time.

As debt and interest payments grow, the government needs to either raise taxes, cut spending, or issue more debt. 

Bitcoiners see the more politically likely path as expanding the dollar supply — which is ultimately bad for the dollar, and good for scarce assets like bitcoin. 

After bitcoin started surging last week, the dollar had its worst week of August and was trading at a three-month low. 

Bitcoin was trading for $77,493 on Friday afternoon in New York after hitting a high this week of $81,281. Over a 24-hour period, the coin now sits unmoved, but over a 30-day period, it has jumped by more than 20%. 

This post Debasement Trade Is Here Thanks to Government Debt — And Bitcoin Will Benefit: Grayscale first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Around 15.5 million WFLOW drained from the lending market More Markets on August 31, 2026, worth roughly $9.3 million according to the security firm Blockaid. The attacker needed no stolen keys and no gap in the blockchain underneath. They used two building blocks that are wired into almost every larger lending market: a liquid staking token as collateral, and the so-called E-Mode, which treats both sides of a loan as equivalent.

That is precisely why this incident can concern you beyond one small chain. If you have borrowed against staked Ethereum somewhere, or one stablecoin against another, your position is very likely running in the same mode. This article sets out what is established as of today, what remains open, how E-Mode works, and which four details you can look up in your own lending market.

More Markets Exploit: What Happened on Flow EVM on August 31, 2026

More Markets is a non-custodial lending market from More Labs that builds on the Aave V3 codebase and runs on Flow EVM. Users deposit assets there to earn interest, or post them as collateral to borrow against. WFLOW and ankrFLOW are among the supported markets.

According to Blockaid, the incident began on August 31, 2026 at 07:58 UTC. 15.5 million WFLOW disappeared from the reserve labelled mFlowWFLOW. Blockaid explicitly described the figure of roughly $9.3 million as detected impact and not as a final loss figure; the definitive amount is not yet settled, because the transactions are still being traced. The security firm made the incident public first through its channel on the short-message service X, from where several trade outlets picked it up the same day.

More Markets commented briefly on the same day, saying its own team was investigating the reports of an attack and would share its findings. A full post-mortem of the incident is not available at the time of writing. Everything this article says about the sequence of events therefore comes from the security firm's observation and not from the protocol's own analysis.

ankrFLOW and E-Mode: How the Attack Worked According to Blockaid

Blockaid's brief description is that the attacker used a bonded liquid staking token from Ankr together with E-Mode to empty the WFLOW reserve. Put at greater length: the value of the deposited ankrFLOW holdings was set higher in the protocol than it actually was. Against that overvalued collateral, the attacker borrowed real WFLOW and cleared out the reserve with it.

What matters just as much is what that description does not say. Blockaid did not describe either Ankr itself or the Flow blockchain as compromised. On this account, only the More Markets application running on Flow EVM was affected. Whether the weakness sat in the More Markets implementation, in the way the Ankr asset was handled, in the pricing assumptions, or in the interplay between those parts, has not been established so far.

Why a Loan Can Arise Without Price Manipulation

In the two incidents of the past week, the lever lay in the price of a thinly traded token each time. That can be observed and read off the price chart after the fact, as our analysis of the Moonwell exploit on Base on August 30 describes. The route sketched out here is a different one: it does not necessarily require a market price to be driven upwards. It is enough for a protocol to derive the value of collateral from a rule that, under certain conditions, no longer matches reality.

E-Mode Explained: Why a Lending Market Treats Two Assets as Equivalent

E-Mode, written out as Efficiency Mode, is a setting in Aave V3 that permits considerably higher borrowing limits for closely correlated assets. The idea behind it is obvious enough. Anyone posting Ethereum as collateral and borrowing Ethereum carries almost no price risk between the two sides, because it is the same good. Anyone posting staked Ethereum and borrowing Ethereum carries almost no price risk either, because both values normally move in lockstep.

Aave turns this into categories of its own. Each category sets its own values for the assets it contains: the borrowing limit, the threshold at which liquidation kicks in, and the bonus a liquidator receives. The difference is substantial. According to Aave, ordinary borrowing against Ethereum permits around 80 percent of the deposited value, while E-Mode with staked Ethereum as collateral and Ethereum as the loan allows up to 93 percent.

Those thirteen percentage points sound unremarkable, but they change the arithmetic fundamentally. At 80 percent, a fifth of the collateral value remains as a buffer. At 93 percent, seven percent is left. A price drop that would pass without consequence in ordinary mode leads to liquidation in E-Mode. Aave describes the setting in its own documentation on Efficiency Mode and names the underlying assumption there as well: the mode assumes that correlated assets stay correlated.

Liquid Staking Tokens as Collateral: What Sets a Bonded LST Apart From Its Underlying Asset

A liquid staking token is a tradable receipt for a deposited staking position. Anyone staking a cryptocurrency locks it up for a certain period. A liquid staking provider accepts the deposit, takes over the staking, and issues a token in return that can still be traded, lent and posted as collateral. With Ethereum, stETH and rETH are the best-known examples; with Flow it is the ankrFLOW involved here.

The decisive point for any lending market is this: that token is not the same thing as the underlying asset. Its value is derived from a position that can only be unwound after a waiting period. How a protocol sets that derived value is a decision each protocol makes for itself. Some query a market price. Others calculate the value from the ratio of deposited quantity to issued receipts. Both have advantages and drawbacks, and both can come under pressure.

Anyone interested in the yield side of these products will find the providers and their terms in our overview of the best staking platforms. For this article the other side counts: a liquid staking token serving as collateral ties together two risks that were previously separate. The staking risk and the lending market risk then hang on the same position.

What Is Established and What Remains Open in the More Markets Exploit

As of the afternoon of August 31, 2026, the incident breaks cleanly into three parts. The on-chain movement is established: 15.5 million WFLOW left the reserve, and Blockaid named both the triggering transaction and the onward transfers of the funds that followed. The security firm's assessment is likewise established, namely that a bonded liquid staking token and E-Mode together opened the route.

The figure of roughly $9.3 million is flagged as an estimate. Blockaid marked it as detected impact, which means the sum may come out above or below the final number, depending on where the funds went and how much of that can be recovered.

The cause remains open. Nobody has yet evidenced whether the fault lay in More Markets' adaptation of the Aave code, in the parameters of the E-Mode category, in the price source for ankrFLOW, or in some combination of these. Anyone naming an unambiguous cause today is going beyond what is publicly known. That restraint is more than a formality: in the incidents of recent weeks, the first explanation offered has shifted several times once the post-mortem arrived.

Aave V3 Fork Instead of Aave: Why an Offshoot's Parameters Can Differ

A large share of today's lending markets are copies of an established protocol placed on a different chain and fitted out with their own values, rather than independent designs. The technical term for that is a fork. More Markets is one such offshoot of Aave V3.

For you as a user, that produces a difference which is barely visible in the interface. The code may be the same; the numbers are not. Borrowing limits, liquidation thresholds, caps on the borrowable quantity and the choice of price source are set by each offshoot itself, and it does so for a market that is often considerably thinner than the original's. The same setting that is defensible on a deep market can be dangerous on a shallow one.

On top of that comes the question of who is allowed to adjust those values at all, and how quickly that works. The Ajna incident of August 29 showed the opposite pole: there the protocol was immutable and had no governance, which is why there was no pause button. Almost all lending markets sit somewhere between those two ends, and where exactly a protocol stands determines what is possible at all in an emergency.

Checking Your E-Mode Position: Four Details You Can Find in Your Lending Market

This is where the incident turns practical. If you have an open position in a lending market, there are four things you can look up today, and you need neither programming knowledge nor special tools for it. All four appear in the interface of the protocol concerned or in its documentation.

First: is your position running in E-Mode? The setting is usually a toggle in the account view and carries labels there such as E-Mode, Efficiency Mode or Correlated Assets. If it is active, the higher limits of the relevant category apply to you.

Second: how far is your position from the liquidation threshold? Most interfaces show a health factor for this. If it sits close to one, a small movement is enough. The buffer in E-Mode is narrower by construction, so the same numeric value is less reassuring there than in ordinary mode.

Depeg in E-Mode: What Happens When Two Values Drift Apart

A depeg is the drifting apart of two values that are meant to move in lockstep. With a liquid staking token, that means the receipt is worth less on the market than the position it represents. It happens when many holders want to exit at once while unwinding the staking position takes time.

In ordinary mode, drift of that kind is uncomfortable. In E-Mode it can end the position, even though nothing has been lost to you economically. Your collateral still represents the same quantity of the underlying asset, but the price the protocol applies has fallen, and the narrow buffer no longer absorbs it. Aave names exactly that as the principal risk of this setting.

Anyone wanting to see the yield side and the risk side of lending markets next to each other will find the providers and their terms in the comparison of crypto lending platforms; we took apart the underlying mechanics of interest and risk in our article on the interest and risks in crypto lending from August 16, 2026.

Bad Debt: Who Ultimately Carries the Shortfall in a Lending Market

Bad debt describes a loan that no longer has sufficient collateral behind it and can no longer be covered by liquidation either. That gap does not disappear; it travels. In a lending market it hits the depositors of the reserve that was borrowed from first.

On More Markets, the reserve concerned is the WFLOW reserve. Anyone who deposited WFLOW there to earn interest is tied to an event they took no part in and made no decision about. That is the most uncomfortable feature of incidents of this kind, and it repeats: in the incident on Base mentioned above, the open gap hit depositors who had never touched the token that triggered it.

Third in the series of details you can look up: which market exactly is your deposit sitting in? Many protocols separate a core market, in which several assets share a common liability, from isolated markets, in which a shortfall stays contained. This distinction determines whether a shortfall in an entirely different asset can reach you.

Fourth: where does the protocol source the price of your collateral? The answer is in the documentation, usually under headings such as Oracle or Price Feed. If a single trading venue is named there as the source and the asset is thinly traded, you know the weak point.

What You Can Do Without Closing the Position

There is plenty of room between doing nothing and exiting entirely. You can switch E-Mode off if your buffer allows it, and fall back to the ordinary limits. You can add collateral and widen the distance to the threshold. And you can move a position sitting on an offshoot with a thin market over to the protocol whose parameters are carried by broader oversight. Which of these routes makes sense for you depends on your position; none of them is a recommendation for everyone.

Tax and Evidence: What to Document After an Exploit

Regardless of whether this incident affects you, the same advice applies to every shortfall in a lending market: secure the evidence while it is still retrievable. That includes the address of your position, the transaction numbers for the deposit and the outflow, the balance before and after the event, and a dated printout of the protocol interface.

Whether and how a loss of this kind has tax consequences is a question of the individual case and the circumstances, which a tax adviser has to assess. What you can influence yourself is the evidence. Protocol interfaces tend to disappear quickly after incidents, and what you can still download today may be out of reach in a few weeks.

Flow and Ankr: What Is Not Affected According to the Reports So Far

Because reports about incidents often take on a life of their own in circulation, the boundary belongs here explicitly. On Blockaid's account there was no indication that Ankr itself was affected, and none that the Flow blockchain or its infrastructure were impaired. What was described is an incident in a single application running on Flow EVM.

This distinction is no quibble. For you it marks the difference between a chain whose balances are in question and a chain on which one of many applications has taken damage. If you hold assets on Flow that have nothing to do with this lending market, no action is required on what is publicly known so far. How that looks once a full post-mortem is available remains to be seen.

Lending Markets Without Your Own Due Diligence: Where the Responsibility Sits

There is a reason why this kind of incident does not occur in supervised offerings: there a provider makes the decisions about collateral and borrowing, and is liable for them. In an open lending market, that assessment sits with you. It is the price of direct access, and anyone unwilling to pay it will find the supervised alternatives and their terms in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges. For an understanding of the prices such positions run against, a look at our Ethereum price prediction helps, because most E-Mode categories ultimately hang on that value.

The number of incidents in lending markets has been strikingly high in recent days, and all of them followed different routes. Deriving a pattern from that would be premature, because the post-mortems are still outstanding. What can be said is more modest and useful all the same: the building blocks taken apart here are present in many protocols, and their values can be looked up.

Checking E-Mode Collateral: What to Take Away

1. Check whether your position is running in E-Mode and how narrow the buffer really is. The toggle is in your protocol's account view, and the distance to the liquidation threshold is in the health factor beside it. Which providers set which limits is shown in the comparison of crypto lending platforms.
2. Check where the price of your collateral comes from, especially with liquid staking tokens. If the documentation names a single thin trading venue as the source, you know your biggest risk. Anyone wanting to see the yield side of these tokens side by side will find it in the overview of the best staking platforms.
3. Decide deliberately how much due diligence you want to carry out yourself. Anyone unwilling to check an offshoot's parameters regularly is better served by a supervised provider; the terms are in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

The incident was picked up by several trade outlets the same day; the fullest account, including Blockaid's figures, is at crypto.news.

(As of August 31, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The Mina network will temporarily suspend operations on Thursday, September 3, 2026. Between 10:00 and 18:00 UTC, a transaction stop, a full network halt and a restart under new protocol rules follow one another. Anyone holding MINA is affected in three places: transfers submitted too late will not make it onto the chain. Exchanges will suspend deposits and withdrawals. And anyone who has delegated their holdings will receive no block rewards for the duration of the pause, because no filled blocks are produced during that time.

The upgrade is called Mesa. The development company o1Labs has published the timetable with exact times, along with an overview of what users, exchanges and node operators can expect. Both documents are publicly available and form the basis of this article. The deadline is three days away, and the only preparation the vast majority of investors need takes five minutes.

Mina Mesa Hard Fork: What Exactly Happens on September 3, 2026

Mesa is a hard fork, meaning a change to the protocol rules that is not backwards compatible. A hard fork requires every node on the network to switch to the same new software at the same time, because the old version would no longer recognize the new blocks as valid. At Mina, this switch does not happen while the network keeps running. The chain is halted on schedule, brought into a defined final state, and then restarted under the new version.

The date was prepared in several stages. The rule changes were confirmed in an on-chain vote that ran from December 8 to December 15, 2025; voting power was determined by a snapshot date of November 22, 2025. A dedicated testnet and dry runs with node operators followed. On August 19, 2026, Mesa was first rolled out on the Devnet testnet before the mainnet date was set.

For you as an investor, the governance history matters in one respect only: it shows that the date is a planned event rather than an emergency measure after an incident. That sets Mesa apart from the chain halts that have followed attacks recently. Knowing the difference between a planned halt and a forced one makes reports about stalled blockchains far easier to read calmly.

The Mesa Timetable in Detail: From 10:00 UTC to the First Mesa Block

The o1Labs timetable names four markers, all on September 3, 2026 and all in UTC. Central European Summer Time runs two hours ahead, so 10:00 UTC is 12:00 in Berlin.

• 10:00 UTC: The stop-transaction slot begins. From this point on, submitted transfers are no longer included in the chain that continues after the upgrade.
• 15:00 UTC: The stop-network slot is reached. The network halts and no further blocks are produced.
• 16:30 UTC: The Mesa packages are released. From here, node operators can obtain the new version.
• 18:00 UTC: The first Mesa slot begins and block production starts up again.
• Between 10:00 and 15:00 UTC the network technically keeps running, but produces only blocks without content.

In practice this means the decisive moment for you is 10:00 UTC, and not 15:00 UTC. From the late morning onwards the chain is already dead for transfers, even though it is still technically writing blocks. Anyone who initiates a withdrawal at 14:00 UTC has missed the train, without any error message saying so.

Hard Fork Explained: Why a Blockchain Has to Halt for a Rule Change

A blockchain is a shared ledger without a central authority. For thousands of computers to arrive independently at the same result, they have to apply the same rules. When those rules change, there are two routes. Either the new version is built so that old nodes continue to accept the new blocks, which is called a soft fork. Or the change goes deep enough that the old and the new version reject each other, and then it is a hard fork.

For Mesa, Mina takes the orderly route through a defined halt. The network agrees on a final valid state, freezes it, and restarts from that state. The advantage is that two competing chains cannot emerge, as has happened with contested hard forks in the past. The price is the downtime you will feel on September 3.

What that looks like in practice can be read off a second date in the same week: Zilliqa is carrying out its hard fork as early as September 2, with its own swap mechanism for the tokens. We described that case in Zilliqa Hard Fork on September 2, 2026. The Pasteur hard fork at BNB in August followed the same pattern. The comparison is worth making, because it shows how differently the networks handle the same underlying problem.

Stop-Transaction Slot: Why MINA Transfers After 10:00 UTC Are Lost

The stop-transaction slot is the point from which submitted transfers no longer feed into the state that survives the upgrade. The wording in the timetable is unambiguous: transactions submitted after the stop-transaction slot are not present on the chain after the upgrade.

This is not a loss of your balances. Your holdings remain where they were before 10:00 UTC. The movement is what disappears; the money stays put. So anyone sending MINA from an exchange to their own address at 11:00 UTC has to expect that the transfer simply did not take place and will have to be initiated again after the restart.

It gets awkward wherever a payment is tied to a deadline. If you are settling an invoice in MINA, want to post collateral for a position elsewhere, or have a deadline to meet with a third-party provider, take September 3 out of your planning altogether. The calmest route is to get everything necessary done on September 1 or 2 and treat Thursday as a public holiday.

MINA on Exchanges: Why Deposits and Withdrawals Pause

The vast majority of investors hold MINA on a trading venue and not in their own wallet. For this group the message is clear: MINA deposits and withdrawals will be suspended during the downtime window. No individual exchange is choosing this. It follows inevitably from a chain that processes no transfers at all during that period.

Trading on the exchange itself can carry on unaffected. Buying and selling take place in the provider's own books and never touch the blockchain. Anyone who only wants to trade may notice nothing at all. Anyone who wants to move MINA in or out on that day stands in front of a locked door. Which trading venues come into question, and how they differ on deposits and withdrawals, is shown in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

How to Check Whether Your Exchange Has Announced a Pause

Every provider announces pauses of this kind in its own notification area, usually under headings such as Announcements or System Status. Two points matter here. First, the exchanges' windows rarely start and end exactly at the protocol's times; most providers add a safety buffer before and after. Second, the absence of an announcement says nothing about whether the pause is coming. It is coming regardless, because the chain has stopped. The announcement only tells you how generous the buffer is.

If you have a withdrawal firmly scheduled and find no notice by the evening before, asking support is the faster solution than trying your luck on the day itself. A stuck withdrawal is laborious to resolve, as our article on transfers that do not arrive shows with a different example.

Three Hours or Eight Hours? What the Conflicting Downtime Figures Mean

This is where the two o1Labs publications diverge, and the difference deserves to be named openly. The timetable with the exact times puts the network halt at 15:00 UTC and the first new block at 18:00 UTC, which comes to three hours. The accompanying overview speaks instead of roughly eight hours of expected downtime during the upgrade window.

Both figures can be reconciled once you separate what each one measures. The three hours are the period in which no blocks are produced at all. The eight hours cover the entire window from 10:00 UTC, during which the chain is already unusable for transfers even though it is still writing empty blocks. For you as a user, the second number is the more honest one, because a chain that no longer accepts your transfer has come to a standstill as far as you are concerned.

Plan with the larger figure. If the upgrade runs faster, you lose nothing. If it is delayed, which happens regularly with hard forks, you have already built the buffer into your plans. During a coordinated halt, delays are routine as long as the developers communicate the current status.

Delegation and Block Rewards: What MINA Stakers Lose During the Network Halt

Mina works with delegation. Anyone who does not run a block producer themselves transfers their voting weight to an external node and receives a share of that node's rewards in return. These rewards come from blocks that are produced, and that is exactly where the upgrade intervenes.

The timetable states that no block rewards are generated during the upgrade phase, because the blocks remain empty. For delegators this means a shortfall in earnings for the duration of the window. Measured against an annual yield, the amount from a few hours of downtime is small, but it is real, and it hits every delegator equally.

What an Empty Block Means for Your Yield

An empty block is a block without transactions. It formally keeps the chain running, but carries no fees and, in this phase, no reward either. Anyone calculating their yield across the year should book windows of this kind as part of routine network maintenance. Anyone calculating with day-by-day earnings, for example because they hold a position on borrowed money, should show the shortfall in their figures.

A second point concerns the choice of block producer. A node that sleeps through the upgrade will produce nothing at all after the restart. Delegators have no direct influence on that, but they can check after September 3 whether their node is delivering blocks again, and switch if in doubt. How providers differ on yield, fees and availability is set out in our comparison of staking platforms.

Node Operators: Which Version You Have to Install Before the Deadline

Anyone running a Mina node themselves has real work to do before September 3. The timetable distinguishes two routes. Those using the automated operating mode, Automode, install the stable version 4.0.0. Those updating by hand install the stop-slot version 3.5.0 first and switch to the Mesa version 4.0.0 once the packages have been released.

For block producers there is an additional requirement that is easily overlooked: at least one node has to keep running continuously until after the stop-network slot. Shutting your node down early because nothing is happening anyway withdraws capacity from the network in its most sensitive phase. The task is therefore to update in good time and to leave the node running afterwards instead of switching it off early.

The upgrade itself runs automatically under Automode as soon as the packages are available at 16:30 UTC. Anyone working by hand should have that time in their calendar and should not count on catching it in passing.

Archive Nodes and Schema Migration: The Step Many Overlook

An archive node is a node that holds the full history of the chain in a database instead of only checking the current state. Block explorers, tax tools and exchanges fall back on archives of this kind when they have to evidence old transfers.

These operators face a requirement of their own: the database schema migration has to be complete before the stop slot. Anyone who misses it ends up after the restart with a database that no longer fits the new chain, and has to catch up while everyone else is already running again.

Even if you do not run an archive yourself, there is something in this for you. When archives lag behind after a hard fork, explorers and analysis tools temporarily display incomplete histories. If you pull a tax report during that period and wonder about the gaps, repeat the export a few days later before passing it on to the tax office. Which tools are suitable for that is shown in our overview of crypto tax tools.

MIP 6 to MIP 9: What Mesa Changes Technically at Mina

Mesa bundles four improvement proposals, which are tracked in the Mina ecosystem as Mina Improvement Proposals. A Mina Improvement Proposal is a formalized request to change the protocol, which holders vote on before it is implemented.

• MIP 6 shortens the block time and thereby increases transaction throughput.
• MIP 7 raises the limit for state data on the chain from eight to thirty-two fields.
• MIP 8 extends the limits for events and actions that an application is allowed to emit.
• MIP 9 increases the number of account updates a zkApp can carry out in a single operation.

For investors with no interest in development work, one thing above all is relevant here: all four points target capacity and the applications that are meant to run on Mina. Whether that actually translates into more usage will only be decided in the months after the upgrade. Anyone trading the date as a price event is trading an expectation, with no proven effect behind it.

Self-Custody or Exchange: Where Your MINA Is Better Off on the Day

A hard fork is one of the few moments when custody stops being a question of principle and becomes a question of logistics. Both routes have a visible drawback on September 3.

On an exchange you depend on its buffer. If the buffer is generous, you may already be unable to withdraw on September 2 and have to wait until September 4. In return, you do not have to concern yourself with node versions and timings. In your own wallet you keep control, but your transfer fails just the same if you miss the window, and nobody catches the mistake for you.

The sober answer is therefore that the place of custody is secondary for this one day, while the timing is what counts. Anyone already thinking about pulling larger holdings off an exchange should do it before September 1 and not in the week of the upgrade. Which devices come into question for that is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

Phishing Around Hard Forks: Why Nobody Will Ask You for Your Recovery Phrase

Every announced upgrade attracts fraud attempts, because it supplies a credible reason for urgency. The pattern is always the same: a message warning of an alleged loss, a link to a page dressed in the project's visual identity, and a request to connect your wallet or enter your recovery phrase.

With Mesa the situation is unambiguous. For holders of MINA no action on the wallet is required: no swap, no migration, no confirmation. Anyone claiming otherwise is after your holdings. The only addresses that count for this date are the project's official channels and the notification areas of the trading venues.

A second note concerns the time after the upgrade. If a transfer does not arrive after the restart, the first place to look is the block explorer, and not a help page that a search engine puts at the top of its results. Fake support offers live off exactly this moment of uncertainty.

Surviving the Mina Hard Fork: What to Take Away

The date is manageable as long as you know about it. Three steps are enough to prepare.

1. Complete all MINA transfers by September 2. From 10:00 UTC on September 3, nothing submitted after that point lands on the chain. Check your trading venue's notification area to see when its pause starts; an overview of the relevant providers is in the exchange comparison.
2. Expect a shortfall in earnings if you delegate. No block rewards are generated during the window. Check after September 4 whether your block producer is delivering again, and switch if in doubt; the differences between the providers are set out in the staking comparison.
3. Postpone reports and tax exports by a few days. Archives need time after a hard fork before the history is complete again. Exporting too early means working with gaps; which tools are suitable for the job is shown in the tax tool comparison.

The sources for this article are the o1Labs timetable with the times for the upgrade day and the accompanying overview of what users, exchanges and operators can expect. Both can be read here: Timetable for the Mesa upgrade and What to expect from Mesa.

(As of August 31, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Cosmostation is shutting down its wallet. From September 1, 2026, a single function will remain reachable in the app: the export of the recovery phrase and of the private key. Everything else will be wound down in stages, according to the provider. If you manage holdings from the Cosmos ecosystem through Cosmostation, you still have time today for the step that matters: secure your key material and check in another wallet whether it shows the same addresses and the same balances.

Nothing is lost in the process. Cosmostation is a non-custodial wallet, and your holdings sit on the respective blockchains, not in the app. That is precisely the point at which shutdowns of this kind become expensive: anyone who never wrote the recovery phrase down, or can no longer find it, loses access along with the interface. This article sets out what ends on September 1, what you should export before then, and where a migration fails in practice.

Cosmostation wallet shutdown: what ends on September 1, 2026

Cosmostation announced the discontinuation of its wallet on August 14, 2026, through its own @IBCwallet account on X. The wording of the notice is brief: „After careful consideration, we have decided to discontinue Cosmostation Wallet.“ The iOS app, the Android app and the Chrome extension are affected, which covers every route through which users have operated the wallet so far.

September 1 is not a switch-off date in the sense of a hard ending, but the start of a wind-down. From that date on, only the export of the recovery phrase and the export of the private key remain operable; the remaining functions will be dismantled in stages, according to the provider, until the applications disappear entirely. Cosmostation has not published a timetable for those stages, and the company has not commented on the reasons for the decision either. Crypto Briefing, among others, reported on the announcement.

For you, that staged logic means one thing above all: September 1 is the last date on which you can still rely on a complete set of functions. Whether a transaction, the unbonding of a staking position or a change of validator will still work on September 5 or on September 20 has not been promised. Anyone who waits is waiting on an interface whose range of functions is shrinking.

Non-custodial wallet explained: why your coins are not held in the app

A non-custodial wallet is a program that holds your private keys on your device and signs transactions with them. The holdings themselves sit on the respective blockchain and are tied to an address that is derived from the key. The provider therefore custodies nothing and cannot pay anything out to you; it supplies an interface and a connection to the networks.

From this follows the good news of this shutdown. Your ATOM, and everything else you managed through Cosmostation, stays exactly where it is. There is no deadline by which you would have to „withdraw“, as would be the case with an exchange, and there is no provider with control over your balance. What you lose is the keyring manager, not the key.

But the uncomfortable side follows from it as well. There is nobody you can write to if you no longer have your recovery phrase. A custodial exchange has customer support, an identity check and, in case of doubt, a procedure. Here there is none of that. This is why the order matters: export first and verify the export, then take the app off your device.

Recovery phrase and private key: what to export before the deadline

The recovery phrase, often also called a seed phrase, is the sequence of words from which all keys and addresses of a wallet account can be derived. The private key, by contrast, belongs to exactly one account. Cosmostation will continue to offer both exports after September 1, and both are important for a simple reason: the recovery phrase brings you to the same state in another wallet, while a single key rescues only one account.

In practice that means: write the recovery phrase down on paper or in metal, not as a screenshot, not in a notes app and not in cloud storage. A screenshot ends up in the photo gallery and therefore often in an automatic backup that more programs can reach than you are aware of. How to solve storage permanently, what role an additional passphrase plays and when splitting it across several places is worthwhile is described at length in our guide to storing your seed phrase safely.

If you have created several accounts in the app, check each one individually to see whether it derives from the same recovery phrase. Wallets allow you to import a single key or a second phrase on top. Accounts like these are not attached to the main phrase and simply will not show up after a restore. A list of all accounts with their addresses, drawn up before you delete anything, costs ten minutes and saves you a long search in case of doubt.

How to verify the export before the deadline runs out

An export is only worth something once it can be loaded back in. Install a second wallet that supports the Cosmos ecosystem, import the recovery phrase there and compare the addresses with those in Cosmostation. If they match and the new wallet shows the same balances, the migration is technically done and you can remove the old app. Which software wallets are suited to which purpose, and how they differ in handling and supported networks, is shown by our software wallet comparison.

Run this test while Cosmostation is still fully operational. Only then can you place both interfaces side by side and see the differences. If the old app has already lost functions, you have no benchmark, and in case of doubt you will not know whether a missing position is down to the new wallet or to the dismantled old one.

Coin type 118: why the new wallet has to show the same addresses

A recovery phrase on its own does not yet determine which addresses a wallet calculates from it. That is what the derivation path does. This path contains a number that designates the network, and for Cosmos that number is 118. It is recorded in the SLIP-0044 registry, in which the common networks register their identifying numbers.

That sounds technical but has a very practical consequence. If you load your recovery phrase into a wallet that uses a different path for the Cosmos ecosystem, you will see correct but empty addresses. The balance is not gone; the wallet is simply looking in the wrong place. Anyone unaware of this takes the migration for a failure and falls into exactly the panic in which mistakes happen.

The countermeasure is unspectacular. Before the import, check whether the new wallet supports the Cosmos path, and then compare the first address character by character with the one from Cosmostation. Many wallets also let you state the path explicitly during the import. If the address is identical, all further accounts from the same phrase are reachable too.

Delegated ATOM: what happens to staking positions and rewards

If you have delegated ATOM, you are not managing a position in the app but an entry on the chain. The delegation is tied to your address and remains in place no matter which wallet you use. The accrued rewards do not disappear when Cosmostation shuts down either. As soon as your new wallet holds the same key, you will see the same delegations and can carry on managing them there.

The order is what matters. Do not unbond a delegation in a panic shortly before the deadline just to „be on the safe side“. The Cosmos Hub provides for an unbonding period of 21 days for ATOM, held as a parameter in the chain’s staking configuration. During that time the balance earns no rewards, cannot be transferred, and remains exposed to the validator’s slashing risk. An unnecessary unbonding therefore costs you three weeks of yield without making anything safer.

The sensible route runs through the key and not through the position: export the key material, load it into another wallet, check the delegations there, done. If you are thinking about where your holdings should generate returns in future anyway, it is worth a look at the overview of staking platforms before you dissolve an existing delegation.

What the 21-day unbonding period means for your schedule

The unbonding period is the reason why a wallet migration and a change of staking strategy do not belong in the same week. A migration concerns only the management of your keys and is done in half an hour. A reallocation in staking ties up your balance for three weeks. Anyone who mixes the two ends up with a new wallet and a locked balance, and cannot react to price movements during that time.

Our own survey: which Cosmostation addresses still respond today

To gauge how far the wind-down has already progressed, on August 31, 2026 at 06:59 UTC we checked eight hostnames belonging to the provider: for each one the name resolution on the network and, where a record existed, a retrieval over HTTPS with the response code noted. Seven addresses in the cosmostation.io space were checked, along with the Mintscan blockchain explorer operated by the same company. cryptoticker.io collected this survey itself on August 31, 2026.

The result is mixed. The provider’s main site answers with code 200, as does the version with a leading www and the Mintscan explorer. Four further hostnames, by contrast, could no longer be resolved at all, among them the address of the web wallet, the address of the guides section and the address of the blog. A fifth address in the documentation area still resolved but no longer returned an answer.

These figures say nothing about whether the apps on your phone still work today; applications do not run through these hostnames, and we were unable to check either the app stores or the extension marketplace reliably. What the measurement shows is something else: parts of the environment have already vanished, and they did so before the announced date. Anyone looking for a manufacturer guide today will no longer find it at its previous address. That is a good reason not to push the export back to the last day.

Hardware wallet or software wallet: what the migration changes about custody

A shutdown is a good occasion to rethink your own custody, because you are holding the recovery phrase in your hands anyway. With a software wallet the key sits on a device that goes online; with a hardware wallet it sits in a separate element that never releases it and displays transactions for confirmation on a screen of its own. The difference becomes noticeable precisely when your computer or your phone has been compromised without your noticing.

For the migration itself that means an additional consideration. If you want to use a hardware wallet in future, generate a new recovery phrase on the device and move your holdings in a regular transaction. Simply loading the old phrase into the device would be convenient, but it spent years stored on an ordinary phone and carries that whole history with it. Which devices come into question, and how they differ in handling, supported networks and price, is shown by the hardware wallet comparison.

Anyone staying with software should at least take the separation along: one account for small amounts and everyday use, a second for holdings that stay untouched for a long time. This split costs nothing and limits the damage if an approval ever falls into the wrong hands.

Leap and Cosmostation: why the wallet layer around Cosmos is shrinking

Cosmostation is not the first departure of this year. Leap Wallet, likewise geared towards the Cosmos ecosystem, ceased operations on May 28, 2026, and back then also called on its users to export the recovery phrase or the private key. Within a few months, two providers from the same ecosystem that had been standard tools for years have therefore closed down.

For you as an investor, a rule can be derived from this that reaches beyond this case: the wallet is a tool with a limited lifespan, your key material is not. If you keep your backup in a way that works independently of any particular app, the next shutdown will hit you as a scheduling matter and not as an emergency. Anyone who has never given the recovery phrase a thought, because the app was running, ends up under time pressure with every new announcement.

A second point belongs to the assessment. Cosmostation has not commented on the reasons for the decision, and we are not speculating about them here. All that can be established is the sequence: announcement on August 14, start of the wind-down on September 1, and parts of the web environment had already vanished beforehand, according to our measurement today.

Changing wallets and tax: why a migration is not a sale

If you transfer your balance from one wallet to another and both belong to you, the beneficial owner does not change. Such a transaction is not a disposal, and in particular it does not start a new holding period. The acquisition date of the individual holdings remains the date on which you acquired them.

The case is different as soon as the migration turns into a swap. Anyone who takes the opportunity to swap one token for another in order to hold it more conveniently in the new wallet has, for tax purposes, carried out a sale and a purchase, with all the consequences for the holding period and the calculation of gains. How quickly that line is crossed in practice was shown by Phantom Wallet dropping Sui and Monad, where of the two routes offered only one remained free of tax consequences.

In practical terms, for the Cosmostation case that means: document the plain migration with the date, the sender and recipient address and the transaction identifier, and keep the records. If you hold balances across several wallets, a portfolio tool helps to carry acquisition dates and holding periods cleanly across the change; which programs manage that is set out in our overview of crypto tax and portfolio tools. For questions of doubt about your own tax assessment, your tax adviser remains responsible; this text is no substitute for advice.

Phishing around shutdowns: how to spot a fake migration request

Announced shutdowns are a template for fraudsters, because they supply a genuine deadline on which pressure can be built. The pattern is always the same: a message in the provider’s name, a reference to the upcoming date, a pointer to a supposed migration tool and the request to enter the recovery phrase there or to connect the wallet.

Two sentences are enough to fend that off. First: no reputable provider ever asks for your recovery phrase, in no form and in no conversation. Whoever asks for it wants your balance. Second: a migration between wallets needs no tool on the web. You load your phrase locally into an application that you selected yourself and installed from the official source.

More dangerous than the crude request is the variant that only wants to move you to a confirmation. A token approval that has been granted keeps working even after you have long closed the window, and it cannot be withdrawn without action on your part. What happens technically with a confirmation of this kind, and how to collect old approvals back in, we described in our article on wallet drainers and signature approvals.

Cosmostation shutdown: what to take away from it

1. Export today, not tomorrow. Secure the recovery phrase and the private key from Cosmostation, note them down away from your devices and load them into a second application as a test. Which software wallet comes into question for that is set out by the software wallet comparison.
2. Check addresses before you delete. In the new wallet, compare the first address with the old one and make sure that the Cosmos derivation path is supported. Only once addresses and balances match do you take the old app off the device. If you want to raise your custody standard while you are at it, the hardware wallet comparison helps with the choice.
3. Leave delegations in place for now. Staking positions hang on your address and not on the app; unbonding locks your ATOM for three weeks. Decide on validator and platform only after the migration, with an eye on the overview of staking platforms.

(As of August 31, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The nominal staking yield of Solana (SOL) stands at around 5.25 percent a year today. In three years it will be roughly 2.25 percent, according to the calculation of the asset manager 21Shares. The decision behind it was taken on August 28, 2026: in the network's first binding vote, validators doubled what is known as the disinflation rate. A start date for the reduction still does not exist.

That is the short answer. The longer one matters more, because two things were decided on the same night and only one of them appears in the German-language reports. The cut to new issuance has been approved. The fee reform, which was meant to cushion the loss of income on the other side of the equation, failed. Anyone reading only the first half will consider the matter half as serious as it is for stakers.

How high the Solana staking yield is today and where it is heading

The staking yield is the annual return in percent that you receive for depositing your SOL in the network and thereby supporting the security of the blockchain. This return is usually quoted as APY, the effective annual rate including compounding.

The asset manager 21Shares put a figure on the path after the decision, quoted at Decrypt: from around 5.25 percent today to roughly 2.25 percent within three years. Intermediate steps lie at approximately 4.34 percent in the first year and 3 percent in the second. These numbers are one provider's projection, not a guaranteed quantity: what ends up in your stake account also depends on your validator's commission, its uptime and MEV earnings.

What matters for understanding this is where the yield comes from. The return stems almost entirely from newly issued SOL and only to a small extent from users' transaction fees. When the network prints fewer new tokens, the pot from which all stakers are paid shrinks. That is exactly what has been decided.

What SGP-0002 decided: disinflation rate from 15 to 30 percent

The disinflation rate is the annual pace at which new SOL issuance shrinks. The figure therefore describes the speed of the decline, not the level of issuance itself. Solana had set it at 15 percent a year so far; the proposal SGP-0002 doubles it to 30 percent.

Technically this is implemented by proposal SIMD-0550, submitted by engineers of the infrastructure company Helius. The consequence: according to the figures in the proposal, Solana reaches its fixed inflation floor of 1.5 percent as early as 2029 instead of 2032. Over the next six years this means around 18.9 million fewer SOL will come into existence than would have under the old schedule.

For holders who simply leave their SOL untouched this is good news: less new supply means less dilution. For stakers it is a cut to their ongoing income. Both sides sit inside the same decision, and whoever stakes feels the cut first.

Why the counterweight is missing: the fee reform SGP-0003 failed

The second economic proposal of the same evening was called SGP-0003, technically SIMD-0553, submitted by the research firm Temporal. It would have split the transaction fee on Solana into two parts: a base fee for inclusion in a block, which continues to go to validators, and a new resource fee measured by a transaction's computational cost, which would have been burned outright.

Burning here means that the coins disappear from circulation permanently. According to the figures in the application, this would have raised the daily burn from about 650 SOL to as much as 9,000 SOL, twelve to fourteen times as much. That would have been the counterweight to the reduced issuance, because a higher burn tightens supply without any intervention in staking rewards.

The proposal failed and ended at 53.9 percent approval: 142.84 million SOL in favor, 50.15 million against and a heavy 72.03 million abstentions. That was not enough for the required two-thirds majority. What is notable is that the proposal had already passed the code review of both client teams, Anza and Firedancer, on July 20. The vote was not about technical maturity, only about switching it on.

It is precisely this split that is missing from the German coverage of August 27 and 28, which describes both proposals as a single package. Anyone reading them as a package assumes that the cut and the compensation arrive together. Only the cut arrived.

How close the vote was: 0.334 percentage points above the threshold

SGP-0002 cleared the two-thirds hurdle of 66.67 percent with 67.0 percent approval. In absolute numbers: 176.29 million SOL in favor against 66.19 million opposed, spread across 1,326 votes at a turnout of 60.7 percent. The on-chain analysis by Solana Compass puts the result at 67.001 percent and the margin at 0.334 percentage points.

A custodian tipped the balance. The exchange Kraken, whose voting weight stood at 8.92 million SOL, voted against throughout the entire count and only withdrew that vote shortly before the close. Kraken's co-chief executive Arjun Sethi justified the step publicly with the line that custodians should be conduits and not votes. The asset manager Galaxy had initially abstained, which counts like a rejection under this method, and likewise changed its position in the final hour.

For comparison, the third proposal of the same evening: SGP-0001, the Solana constitution, passed with 86.0 percent approval, 193.65 million SOL in favor against 4.63 million opposed across 1,153 votes. It governs how votes will be held in future. The network was divided only on the two proposals with money attached to them.

Institutional holders also pulled in different directions. The listed Solana Company voted for the constitution and against both economic proposals, arguing that the timing was wrong for institutional stakers, who need a plannable yield. DeFi Development Corp voted the other way and subsequently bought 19,000 SOL for $1.86 million.

When the cut takes effect: the feature gate and the open precondition SIMD-0607

Here is the point that no German-language report has named so far: the disinflation rate has not changed yet. No date for it has been published.

SIMD-0550 is implemented through a feature gate, a switch in the network that arms an already shipped change for everyone simultaneously at a set moment. It takes effect at an epoch boundary. An epoch is Solana's settlement period, at the end of which staking rewards are distributed; it currently lasts a good two days. All epochs up to the flipping of the switch settle under the old schedule, all following ones under the faster one.

A hard precondition stands before that switch. The two productive validator clients on mainnet, Agave and Firedancer, must deliver bit-for-bit identical results in every reward calculation. Those results feed into the bank hashes through which validators agree on the state of the chain. If one client's calculation deviates even in the last digit, that is a consensus failure.

Floating-point arithmetic cannot guarantee this, because the same operation can produce different results on different hardware and with different compilers. That is why SIMD-0607 has to be merged first: it replaces the floating-point calculation in the reward computation with deterministic integer mathematics and targets client version Agave v4.4. The associated pull request is open and awaits sign-off from one representative each of the Anza and Firedancer teams. Anza has named the order itself in a thread: the implementation is a single permanent feature gate, one precondition is under review, and the switch can be scheduled after that.

In practice this means for you: your yield does not fall on a known cut-off date. The decline sets in as soon as this technical chain has been worked through, and then runs down in steps over years. Anyone who gives you a date has made it up. How such an activation date comes about at Solana is something we wrote up using the Alpenglow upgrade as an example in our article on the Solana upgrade and your SOL staking.

How Solana staking rewards come about in the first place

Solana works on the proof of stake method: whoever deposits tokens may help decide on the order and validity of transactions and is paid for it. The machines that do this are called validators. As an ordinary holder you do not run your own validator but delegate your stake to one. Your SOL do not leave your control in the process.

Three quantities matter for the payout. The commission is the share of the reward your validator keeps as an operating fee. Uptime describes how reliably it is online and confirming blocks; one that fails often earns less for its delegators. MEV stands for additional income from the ordering of transactions within a block, which some validators pass on to their delegators and others do not.

Because the reward comes from new issuance, the decision affects every route through which you stake in the same way. A better validator can soften the decline; none can stop it.

What the cut means concretely for 100 SOL

A worked example, deliberately rough and without any price assumption for the future. Anyone staking 100 SOL receives around 5.25 SOL a year at 5.25 percent. At 2.25 percent it is 2.25 SOL. The quantity of new coins flowing to you each year therefore falls by about 57 percent once the end point of the reduction is reached.

Measured against the price of $102.55 per SOL on August 31, 2026 at 06:40 UTC according to CoinGecko data, that would be roughly $538 a year compared with around $231. Price performance is expressly not included in this calculation, and it can completely override the figure in either direction. The point of the example is solely the order of magnitude of the cut, not a yield forecast. If you want to know how the return differs between providers, a look at our comparison of staking platforms helps, where commission and payout mode stand side by side.

Native staking, liquid staking and staking through an exchange

With native staking you create your own stake account in your wallet and delegate it to a validator of your choice. The keys stay with you. Activation and deactivation each take effect only at the next epoch boundary, so your stake is not immediately available for around two days.

With liquid staking you hand your SOL to a protocol and receive a tradable token that represents your share including accrued rewards. JitoSOL is one of these instruments, and in the vote it was more than an investment product: according to the analysis by Solana Compass, JitoSOL stakers outvoted their validators. The price of that flexibility is an additional smart contract risk, because your claim hangs on the protocol's code.

With staking through an exchange the provider handles everything. That is convenient and costs you custody: the coins sit with a third party, and in case of doubt that third party votes on the rules of the network, as the Kraken case showed that evening.

Which risks remain in Solana staking

The most common worry is whether the stake itself can be lost. With native staking your deposited amount is not automatically seized if your validator performs badly or is temporarily offline. What you lose during that time are rewards, not the stake itself.

The real risks lie elsewhere. Price risk is the largest: a yield of 5 percent does not carry a price decline of 30 percent. Added to that is custody risk when a third party holds your coins, along with smart contract risk in liquid staking. And there is an availability risk, because your stake is tied up until the next epoch boundary and you cannot sell immediately in a fast-moving market.

Since August 28 a planning risk has been added: the yield you are counting on today is a falling quantity with no known schedule. Anyone budgeting firmly for staking income should adjust that number downwards.

How you as a delegator outvote your validator

The vote ran according to the voting weight of the deposited stake. By default the validator you delegated to votes on behalf of your share. You can, however, cast that vote yourself and thereby replace your validator's vote for your share. That is exactly what happened in this vote, when JitoSOL stakers outvoted the position of their validators.

A practical consequence follows from this that reaches beyond this single vote. If your provider holds custody for you, you effectively surrender that vote. Anyone who wants a say in future proposals needs their own stake account and has to keep an eye on the voting period. The decision here came down to a margin of 0.334 percentage points, and single votes the size of a custodian's tipped it.

Tax on staking rewards in Germany

Staking rewards are other income in Germany under section 22 number 3 of the Income Tax Act. They are taxable at the moment of receipt, valued at the market price at that time. An exemption limit of 256 euros a year applies. Exemption limit means: if the amount is exceeded by even one cent, the entire amount is taxable and not merely the excess.

If you sell the coins you received later, the one-year holding period for private disposal transactions applies. Under the prevailing administrative view, staking does not extend that period to ten years. The authority here is the Federal Ministry of Finance circular of March 6, 2025 on individual questions in the taxation of crypto assets, which also describes the record-keeping obligations. Because every single credit has to be valued, clean record-keeping of the rewards is the actual work; suitable tools are listed in our comparison of crypto tax tools. For your specific case, a visit to a tax adviser remains the safe route.

One side effect of the cut is notable at this point: anyone who was just above the 256-euro exemption limit may slip below it as the yield falls. That is no cause for celebration, but it is a point for your tax planning in the coming year.

How this decision fits into Solana's recent weeks

The decision is the provisional end point of a debate that has been running for weeks. For context on the price move around the vote and on the relationship between SOL and Bitcoin, we described the situation in our article on the SOL/BTC breakout, which still lists the two proposals as an ongoing vote. The result is now in, and it is split.

For you as a holder, the combination of an approved cut and a failed fee reform means that the argument about a supply squeeze stands on one leg. Fewer new SOL really are coming. The additional burn that many observers had factored in is not coming for now. Whether and when a revised version of SIMD-0553 will be put to a vote again is open.

Reviewing your Solana staking: what to take away

1. Recalculate your staking expectation. For the coming years assume a declining path towards 2.25 percent instead of today's 5.25 percent, and take the opportunity to check your provider's commission. The comparison of staking platforms shows where that deduction stands at what level.
2. Get your records in order. Every credit counts at the moment of receipt, and the 256-euro exemption limit decides the tax liability of the entire amount. A tool from the comparison of crypto tax tools takes the collecting work off your hands.
3. Decide who votes for you. If the rules of the network matter to you, your stake belongs in your own stake account rather than in third-party custody. Where you can obtain SOL and then hold it yourself is set out in the comparison of crypto exchanges.

The sources for this text: the voting result with all vote counts at Decrypt and the technical precondition for activation in the analysis by Solana Compass.

(As of August 31, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Bitcoin abroad: the tax duty Austrian users carry themselves

Anyone who is tax-resident in Austria and sells bitcoin through a foreign crypto platform does not escape Austrian taxation by doing so. The decisive difference from many domestic providers lies rather in the fact that often no Austrian capital gains tax is withheld automatically.

Taxable bitcoin gains must then, as a matter of principle, be recorded by the investor personally through the income tax assessment. For private crypto income the special tax rate of 27.5 percent continues to apply in principle.

A foreign platform does not mean tax-free

Austria taxes income from cryptocurrencies as income from capital assets. This covers both certain ongoing income and realized increases in value. A taxable sale exists in particular where bitcoin is disposed of for euros or another legal currency. Using it to purchase goods or services can also constitute a realization.

Example:

• bitcoin bought for 20,000 euros
• later sold for 50,000 euros through a foreign platform
• taxable gain: 30,000 euros

At 27.5 percent this results in principle in a tax of 8,250 euros.

The fact that the platform is based outside Austria does not, in principle, change this calculation.

When does the exchange not take care of the tax?

Where a domestic crypto service provider is involved, an obligation to deduct capital gains tax applies to certain crypto income. The provider withholds the tax and remits it to the tax office. With a foreign platform, such an Austrian withholding agent is often absent.

The investor must then, in particular, do the following personally:

• determine the sale proceeds in euros,
• establish the acquisition costs for tax purposes,
• calculate gains and losses,
• record the taxable income in the assessment.

Acquisition costs remain decisive

The tax is not levied on the entire sale proceeds but, in principle, on the gain. Where several purchases of bitcoin of the same kind have been made on the same relevant wallet or address, the moving average price applies in principle to new assets.

Particular care should therefore be taken in documenting:

• date of purchase,
• quantity of bitcoin purchased,
• acquisition costs in euros,
• fees,
• wallet transfers,
• earlier crypto-to-crypto exchanges.

Foreign platforms do not necessarily supply reporting that corresponds exactly to Austrian tax rules.

Losses must also be evidenced by the investor

An advantage of the assessment can arise where a bitcoin loss for tax purposes was realized on the foreign platform. Crypto losses can in principle be offset against certain other capital income. A loss offset across providers is not carried out automatically, however; it takes place through the income tax assessment. Reliable transaction data is particularly important for that.

Conclusion

Austrian investors must in principle pay tax on taxable bitcoin gains even where the sale takes place through a foreign crypto platform. The essential difference lies in the procedure: without an Austrian capital gains tax deduction, the investor regularly has to determine their taxable income themselves and declare it through the income tax assessment. The tax rate for private taxable crypto gains remains in principle 27.5 percent.

(As of August 31, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The PlayStation maker is fighting a California class action over "Buy Now" buttons, and has asked the judge to send the case to arbitration.

The purchase lifts Bitmine's stash to 5.9 million ETH—4.9% of supply—as chairman Tom Lee points to crypto's strong third quarter.

Three consortia will run the service, sharing up to 512 Nvidia B200 chips supplied by the state, with beta testing due in September.

Vlad Tenev’s new blockchain is soaring in all metrics as memes paired with tokenized stocks start to take off.

The 4,603 BTC cost an average of $80,318, some 29% above what the company took for the coins it sold this summer.

SHIB token is up 20% this quarter but faces its worst historical month under a huge price wall.

Michael Saylor has finally purchased Bitcoin again after about a two-month break, now adding 4,603 Bitcoin to its holdings amid market criticisms.

A setback in the action could create a governance bottleneck at an important time for the Cardano network, with a major upgrade at risk.

Bitcoin may be gearing up for another move higher after holding key support despite a sharp intraday sell-off.

XRP targets an early autumn rally as crucial chart sync meets a pivotal US Senate decision and heavy institutional buying.

TLDR

• Paramount extends WBD-linked debt offers through September 11 ahead of closing.
• PSKY rises 1.33% to $11.02 after recovering from earlier intraday weakness.
• Tender participation reaches 66.28% while exchange offer participation hits 75.48%.
• Paramount plans debt settlements around the closing of its proposed WBD acquisition.
• Debt offers cover WBD notes with maturities stretching from 2027 through 2052.

Paramount Skydance Corporation extended key debt offers tied to its planned Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition through September 11, 2026. The company aims to align the debt settlement process with the proposed transaction’s closing schedule. PSKY traded at $11.02, gaining 1.33% after recovering from earlier weakness during the session.

Paramount Skydance Corporation Class B Common Stock, PSKY

Paramount Extends Tender and Exchange Offer Deadlines

Paramount moved the expiration deadline for its tender and exchange offers to 5:00 p.m. New York time on September 11. The offers cover selected notes issued by Discovery Global Holdings and Discovery Communications. Paramount may extend the deadline again if the acquisition timetable requires a later settlement.

The company currently expects settlement to occur during the third quarter of 2026. However, Paramount intends to match settlement timing with the WBD acquisition closing or a date immediately afterward. Eligible noteholders may withdraw valid tenders before the extended expiration deadline.

Paramount had already extended the offers several times between June 12 and August 24. Those extensions gave noteholders more time while the acquisition process continued toward closing. The latest move keeps the debt restructuring process linked to Paramount’s wider transaction plan.

Tender Participation Reaches High Levels

By August 28, holders had tendered about 66.28% of eligible tender offer notes. Meanwhile, holders had tendered about 75.48% of eligible exchange offer notes by the same deadline. Paramount said ongoing extensions could change the final participation levels before the offers close.

The tender offer includes Discovery Communications’ 3.950% senior notes due in 2028. It also includes Discovery Global Holdings’ 3.755% senior notes due in 2027. The exchange offers cover several additional debt series with maturities ranging from 2029 through 2052.

Eligible dollar-denominated notes total several billion dollars across the listed series. The program also includes euro-denominated Discovery Global Holdings notes due in 2030 and 2033. Paramount plans to issue new notes to qualifying holders who participate in the exchange offers.

Debt Offers Support Planned WBD Acquisition

Paramount launched the debt offers as part of preparations for its proposed Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition. The company designed the offers to address selected WBD issuer debt before the transaction closes. That process could simplify portions of the combined company’s financing structure after completion.

Paramount alone makes the offers, while WBD and its debt issuers do not manage them. Each offer operates separately, and Paramount may amend, extend, terminate, or withdraw individual offers when conditions allow. The company can also waive certain offer conditions within applicable legal requirements.

The exchange offers rely on exemptions from federal securities registration requirements. Only qualified institutional buyers and eligible non-U.S. persons may participate after completing required eligibility procedures. Paramount continues to manage the debt process as it works toward completing the proposed WBD acquisition.

The post Paramount Skydance Corporation (PSKY) Stock: Debt Offers Extended Ahead of WBD Acquisition appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• ICE has agreed to invest in tZERO’s latest funding round as part of a new set of agreements.
• tZERO’s patent portfolio spans 23 patent families and 103 patents covering token lifecycles.
• ICE will license tZERO’s blockchain patents for use in its new Digital Trading Platform build.
• tZERO is expected to seek approval as a digital transfer agent on ICE’s NYSE-linked platform.

Intercontinental Exchange has signed agreements with tZERO to build infrastructure for a planned NYSE-affiliated tokenized securities platform. The deal covers digital transfer-agent and broker-dealer systems designed to support on-chain settlement.

ICE will also invest in tZERO’s latest funding round. In exchange, ICE gains a license to tZERO’s blockchain patent portfolio.

ICE and tZERO Outline Roles for Tokenized Securities Platform

The two firms signed a memorandum of understanding covering tZERO’s role as a design partner. 

tZERO will help shape transfer-agent and broker-dealer infrastructure for ICE’s Digital Trading Platform. That platform is being developed under ICE’s NYSE affiliation to support tokenized securities trading and settlement. The arrangement positions tZERO as an early technical partner rather than a simple vendor.

ICE’s investment in tZERO comes as part of the company’s latest financing round. Terms of the investment were not disclosed in the announcement. 

Alongside the funding, ICE receives a license to use tZERO’s patent portfolio across the Digital Trading Platform and other applications. That license extends beyond the platform itself to future blockchain use cases at ICE.

tZERO’s patent holdings span 23 patent families and 103 individual patents. They cover compliance-aware transfer logic and upgradeable smart contract frameworks. 

The portfolio also includes tools for corporate-action handling and broker-dealer identity interoperability. Those components are meant to support the full lifecycle of a security token, from issuance through settlement.

Michael Blaugrund, ICE’s vice president of strategic initiatives, said tZERO’s regulated infrastructure experience supports the exchange’s digital transfer agent program. 

Alan Konevsky, tZERO’s chairman and chief executive, called the partnership a step forward for the firm’s infrastructure-as-a-service business. He described the tie-up as an extension of years spent building regulated tokenization technology.

Standards Work and Collateral Use Cases Move Forward Next

Under the memorandum, ICE plans to consult with tZERO on standards for digital transfer agents and tokenization agents. Those standards would also apply to broker-dealer subscribers operating on the Digital Trading Platform. 

Regulatory and technology requirements still need to be met first. ICE has not set a public deadline for finalizing those standards.

tZERO is expected to seek designation as an approved digital transfer agent for the platform. That designation would also cover its role as a subscriber, pending regulatory sign-off. No timeline for approval was included in the announcement. 

Approval would let tZERO operate directly within ICE’s new tokenized trading infrastructure.

ICE and tZERO will separately evaluate using tZERO’s tokenized assets for collateral management. That use case would extend across ICE’s clearing houses and other affiliated entities. 

The companies did not specify which asset classes are under consideration. Collateral use would mark a further application of tokenized assets beyond trading and settlement.

The agreements mark tZERO’s deepest tie yet to a major exchange operator. tZERO has spent years building regulated infrastructure for tokenized securities markets.

The ICE partnership extends that infrastructure toward public equities trading. Both companies framed the deal as an early step rather than a finished product.

The post NYSE Parent ICE Taps tZERO for Tokenized Stock Infrastructure appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Nvidia announces a $3.5 billion convertible bond investment in MediaTek to strengthen its AI infrastructure network
• Crude oil surged more than 2% past the $90 mark following U.S. military strikes on Iranian facilities
• PG&E shares tumbled approximately 18% as California wildfire liability concerns resurface
• GameStop stock gained ground even after projecting quarterly sales between $780 million and $800 million, down from last year
• Market participants are preparing for Broadcom’s upcoming earnings release and Friday’s employment data

Markets opened the week with notable individual stock movements and heightened geopolitical developments affecting energy commodities.

Nvidia Strengthens AI Position Through MediaTek Partnership

Nvidia has committed $3.5 billion to MediaTek via convertible bonds. This arrangement grants MediaTek’s client base access to Nvidia’s advanced NVLink Fusion platform.

The partnership extends across multiple sectors including AI-powered personal computers, automotive applications, and data-center semiconductor solutions.

This move represents Nvidia’s continued effort to diversify beyond its core GPU business. Through strategic alliances, the company is constructing a comprehensive AI infrastructure that extends its technological influence.

The collaboration underscores the accelerating integration of AI capabilities across diverse hardware categories and computing environments.

Crude Prices Surge Following U.S. Military Strike on Iran

Oil prices experienced significant gains after U.S. military operations targeted Iranian installations on Larak Island. Brent crude advanced over 2%, pushing back above the $90 threshold.

Market focus immediately shifted to potential supply disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global petroleum shipments.

Supply constraints in this region could drive energy costs substantially higher. Elevated crude prices present headwinds for manufacturing and logistics sectors, while potentially complicating the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decisions regarding interest rate reductions.

PG&E Shares Tumble on California Wildfire Concerns

PG&E experienced a dramatic decline of roughly 18% during Monday’s session, marking one of the most significant individual stock selloffs.

The sharp downturn followed heightened investor anxiety over potential wildfire-related liabilities throughout California. Utility providers face substantial financial exposure from major fire incidents through litigation and insurance claims.

The selloff created ripple effects across the utilities sector more broadly. Market observers are monitoring developments regarding PG&E’s actual financial risk exposure from recent fire activity.

GameStop Advances Despite Revenue Decline Forecast

GameStop projected second-quarter revenues ranging from $780 million to $800 million. This represents a significant decrease from the $972.2 million recorded during the comparable period in the prior year.

The revenue contraction stems from ongoing retail location closures and the company’s withdrawal from the French market.

Counterintuitively, shares appreciated following the announcement. Market participants responded positively to management’s plan to deploy cash reserves toward retiring a portion of a $1.4 billion debt restructuring. This strategic move could minimize future equity dilution concerns.

Broadcom Results and Employment Data Loom Large

Investors are preparing for two consequential market catalysts. Broadcom will release quarterly earnings, while Friday delivers the August employment situation report.

Broadcom attracts significant attention due to its central position in AI infrastructure development, spanning custom accelerator chips and advanced networking solutions. The company’s financial performance will offer critical insights into whether technology sector AI capital expenditures maintain momentum.

Economic forecasters anticipate approximately 55,000 net job additions for August, following July’s unexpectedly weak performance. Robust employment growth could reinforce expectations for additional Federal Reserve rate hikes. Conversely, disappointing figures might diminish those concerns.

These upcoming developments are positioned to influence market sentiment through week’s end.

The post Market Movers Today: Nvidia (NVDA), PG&E (PCG), GameStop (GME), and Crude Oil Rally appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• ChatGPT’s advertising platform has achieved a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in approximately 200 days of operation
• The advertising system is currently operational across more than 40 nations, with self-service capabilities rolling out to India, Europe, MENA region
• Advertisements display to free-tier users and Go plan subscribers, featuring transparent labeling without conversation data access
• The AI giant projects $2.5 billion in advertising revenue for this fiscal year while maintaining a trajectory toward $40 billion in overall annualized revenue
• Second quarter 2026 revenue reached $6.7 billion as the organization prepares for its anticipated 2027 public offering

On Monday, OpenAI announced that its advertising division within ChatGPT has achieved a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate. The firm positioned this achievement as evidence of revenue diversification as it approaches a potential public market debut.

This advertising vertical has been operational for approximately 200 days. It complements the company’s existing revenue channels, which include enterprise licensing agreements, direct consumer subscriptions, and pay-as-you-go API services.

The company initiated ad testing within ChatGPT across the United States in February. This strategic decision attracted scrutiny from competitor Anthropic, which featured OpenAI’s advertising strategy prominently in its inaugural Super Bowl marketing effort.

Global Expansion Reaches Over 40 Markets

The ChatGPT advertising platform has expanded its presence to over 40 countries worldwide. This week, OpenAI activated its self-service advertising infrastructure for marketing professionals across India, European markets, the Middle East, and North African territories.

OpenAI introduced advertising capabilities in India during the previous week, targeting one of ChatGPT’s most significant user bases. The initial launch featured fifty brand partners, supported by major agency collaborations with WPP and Omnicom. Indian advertisers will gain access to a self-service ad management platform on September 4, requiring a minimum daily investment of approximately $7.60.

Promotional content surfaces for individuals using the no-cost tier and those subscribing to the Go membership level. The company emphasized that advertisements carry clear identification and do not influence ChatGPT’s response generation process. Marketing organizations cannot access users’ confidential conversation histories.

Earlier this year, the organization implemented cost-per-click payment structures. This pricing innovation provides advertisers with an alternative billing mechanism that charges exclusively for user clicks, supplementing the established cost-per-thousand-impressions framework. OpenAI simultaneously eliminated its $50,000 minimum spending threshold when democratizing access to its self-service Ads Manager platform for all American businesses.

Revenue Trajectory and Public Market Timeline

OpenAI has established an advertising revenue objective of $2.5 billion for the present fiscal year. The organization maintains momentum toward surpassing $40 billion in total annualized revenue, representing approximately double its performance rate from late 2025.

During Q2 2026, OpenAI generated $6.7 billion in revenue, marking an increase from the previous quarter’s $5.7 billion.

The organization recorded a $38.5 billion net loss during 2025 against $13.07 billion in revenue. Currently advancing toward its scheduled 2027 initial public offering, the company faces mounting expectations to validate its $852 billion valuation before potential investors.

OpenAI outlined that upcoming initiatives will deliver advertising capabilities to additional geographic markets while introducing innovative ad formats, purchasing mechanisms, and analytics capabilities. The organization indicated plans to develop additional pathways for commercial entities to engage with users throughout the ChatGPT platform.

The post ChatGPT Advertising Revenue Reaches $1 Billion Milestone in Under Seven Months appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• The crypto infrastructure collaboration between Coinbase and Webull now includes Canada
• Webull Canada Crypto Limited will utilize Coinbase for custody solutions and liquidity provision
• The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) oversees Webull Canada’s operations
• Canadian crypto ownership has surged to 25% from 10% in 2023
• Digital assets on Webull Canada do not qualify for CIPF insurance coverage

The digital asset exchange Coinbase and brokerage platform Webull have revealed plans to expand their infrastructure collaboration into the Canadian market. This development builds upon their existing partnerships across the United States, Brazil, and Australia.

The arrangement positions Coinbase as the primary infrastructure provider for Webull Canada Crypto Limited. Canadian Webull users will benefit from Coinbase’s liquidity networks and secure custody solutions through this collaboration.

Webull Canada Crypto Limited operates under the oversight of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO). The entity maintains membership in the Canadian Investor Protection Fund as well.

That said, digital currency holdings managed via Webull Canada fall outside CIPF insurance parameters. The service provides execution-only cryptocurrency trading capabilities.

Throughout Canada’s provinces and territories, Coinbase Canada holds Restricted Dealer registration status. This regulatory framework enables the company to facilitate the partnership’s Canadian operations.

According to Michael Constantino, CEO of Webull Canada, the collaboration equips the platform with robust infrastructure capable of meeting client expectations for scale and dependability. He emphasized that cryptocurrency has emerged as an increasingly significant component of Canadian investment portfolios.

Surging Canadian Crypto Adoption

Data from an Ontario Securities Commission survey reveals that cryptocurrency ownership among Canadians has reached 25% of the population. This represents a dramatic increase from the 10% figure recorded in 2023, illustrating rapid market penetration.

The timing of this expansion aligns with rising demand. Webull aims to capture Canadian investors seeking cryptocurrency access within a regulated brokerage framework.

Coinbase’s Crypto-as-a-Service infrastructure serves as the foundation for these services. The same technology platform supports Webull’s digital asset offerings across its international markets.

Both companies emphasized their commitment to providing cryptocurrency access through compliant and dependable infrastructure. They characterized the partnership as contributing to the broader evolution of digital finance for emerging investor demographics.

Market Response

Equity markets reflected the announcement with modest movement. Webull shares declined 1.3% while Coinbase dropped 0.5% during Monday morning trading sessions.

Coinbase Global, Inc., COIN

Coinbase operates as a publicly listed entity on major stock exchanges. Webull functions as an international brokerage that has steadily diversified its service offerings in recent periods.

The Canadian market entry represents another milestone in Coinbase’s approach of enabling cryptocurrency services for partner platforms beyond direct retail customer engagement.

Through this partnership, Webull Canada gains access to Coinbase’s extensive liquidity pools and secure infrastructure architecture. The firms indicated this arrangement aims to enhance the overall cryptocurrency experience for Canadian Webull clients.

Canada joins an expanding roster of international markets where these two companies collaborate on digital asset service delivery.

The post Coinbase (COIN) and Webull Bring Crypto Services to Canada Through Strategic Partnership appeared first on Blockonomi.