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Anthropic plans to let early investors and staff sell stock in its upcoming market debut, according to a recent report by The Information. SpaceX gave its own backers no such option in June.
The prospectus should land soon after Labor Day on September 7. That document sets out the risks and the finances before anyone can buy.
Anthropic IPO Departs From Musk’s SpaceX Structure
Big listings can sell two kinds of stock:
New shares raise money for the company.
Existing shares pay early backers instead.
SpaceX sold only the first kind. Its pricing release covered 555,555,555 new shares at $135 each. Not one came from an existing holder.
Underwriters then took another 83,333,333. That brought the total to 638.9 million shares and roughly $86 billion, still the largest listing ever.
Every dollar went to the company, with the filing estimating that Musk kept about 82.4% of the voting power once trading began.
Anthropic has copied part of that design, as indicated in a recent report. As BeInCrypto reported, it described supervoting shares for founders, the same tool Musk used to hold control.
Letting insiders sell changes the other half:
Backers get cash at the offer price.
Buyers absorb more stock on day one.
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Longer Lockups Could Offset the Early Selling
A lockup bars insiders from selling for a set period after a debut. It shields a young stock from a flood of supply. SpaceX shows what the delay looks like, because on August 6, about 911.5 million insider shares became sellable at once. That topped the 638.9 million sold in June.
IN 16 DAYS, $116B OF SPACEX STOCK BECOMES SELLABLE FOR THE FIRST TIMEOn August 6, restrictions lift on as many as 911.5 million insider shares, per Bloomberg, two days after the company's first earnings report. And that is only the opening wave.The schedule:– Tradeable… pic.twitter.com/bBCIMdaRQx
— IPO Newsroom (@IPONewsroom_) July 21, 2026
The tradable pool more than doubled overnight, rising from 4.9% of the company to 11.8%. The stock still closed up 6.1% that day.
Anthropic appears to want the smoother path. A sale inside the deal is priced and placed with buyers in advance. A lockup expiry is neither.
The company is weighing lockups longer than the norm. Insiders would take cash early, then wait longer for a second window.
ANTHROPIC COULD GO PUBLIC AS SOON AS NEXT MONTHAnthropic plans to unveil its IPO prospectus after Labor Day, with a potential listing in late September or early OctoberAlso considering letting existing shareholders sell stock in the IPO while using longer-than-usual lockups… pic.twitter.com/NPSFdgbcGh
— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) August 27, 2026
The backers in line are also large, given Anthropic raised $65 billion in May at a $965 billion valuation, according to its own announcement. Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia led that round.
Sovereign money joined too, with Singapore’s state fund GIC co-leading alongside Capital Group and Coatue. Those are the names that would be selling.
They would sell at a far higher price, as Anthropic last reported revenue in May, when it said its run rate had exceeded $47 billion. It has not updated that number since.
The prospectus would answer some of these questions. It is also expected to name public backlash against AI as a formal risk.
Crypto traders already price the same stake. Anthropic exposure trades through pre-IPO token markets on Solana, where PreStocks handles 78% of OpenAI and Anthropic volume.
The filing will probably name who sells and for how much, with the list likely to reveal more about Anthropicis valuation.

US President Donald Trump’s meme coin just rewarded $1 million worth of tokens to 10 American businesses. It was part of the America First Business Challenge, which ran for nearly 3 months.
The competition was announced back in April at the President’s Mar-a-Lago crypto conferences. Around 616 businesses applied for it, and 36 were approved. Now, 10 of them are walking away with a million dollars.This could be the first time a meme coin was used for a business grant at such scale. But there’s a big twist here.
Back in April, the 36 businesses had to buy the TRUMP meme coin before they were eligible for the grant. So, buy TRUMP and then get TRUMP back in rewards?
America First Business Challenge. Source: Website
The pot is split into one award of $250,000, six of $100,000, and three of $50,000. No winner gave up a share of their company.
There was one condition on voting. Participants had to connect a crypto wallet that held TRUMP. That turned the contest into a reason to buy. Ahead of the Mar-a-Lago event that launched it, whale wallets holding TRUMP climbed to a five-month high.
Today, we’re proud to announce that we awarded $1 million in $TRUMP to 10 incredible American businesses through the America First Challenge — all as non-equity grants.Supporting American businesses doing great things for America. 🇺🇸 Learn more: https://t.co/9foB8YtIiZ
— TrumpMeme (@GetTrumpMemes) August 26, 2026
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The Coin’s Own Website Denies It Has Any Use
GetTrumpMemes.com calls TRUMP an expression of support, not an investment. It states the token has no payment function and no commercial integration.
“Trump Memes are intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol “$TRUMP” and the associated artwork, and are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type.”
Read plainly, that rules out spending it. A winner cannot pay staff or a supplier in TRUMP. To use the grant, they have to sell it.
Selling means competing with a lot of future supply. Only 250.9 million tokens circulate out of a 1 billion cap, so roughly 75% has yet to arrive.
Two companies control most of it. CIC Digital LLC, a Trump Organization affiliate, and Fight Fight Fight LLC hold 80% on a three-year unlock. Both also collect trading fees.
The Last TRUMP Contest Ended With Holders Selling
This is not the first prize the coin has dangled. In May 2025, the top 220 holders won a dinner with Trump.
Investors spent more than $145 million buying the token to compete. Then 26 members of Congress wrote to the Justice Department.
“After the contest closed, at least 34 of the top 220 investors sold most of their meme coin holdings, further confirming that the $TRUMP meme coin is not a worthwhile investment, but rather a vehicle to buy influence with the Trump Administration,” read the lawmakers’ letter dated May 22, 2025.
Organizers frame the challenge differently. Their launch pitch was money for founders outside venture networks.
The same letter puts insider trading fees above $320 million since launch. The grant pool is worth less than one three-hundredth of that.
Scale tells a similar story. TRUMP turns over about $642 million a day in trading volume, so the entire $1 million fits within roughly two minutes of trading. The price is moving fast, too. TRUMP trades near $2.74, up 25% in the last 24 hours.
Official Trump (TRUMP) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Even so, the TRUMP token’s price chart sits 96.3% below its January 2025 peak. It touched an all-time low of $1.37 on August 13. The rally began before the grants were announced, not after.
A key detail is still missing. Nobody has named the 10 winners, so no transfer on Solana can be matched to any business.
Until those names appear, the case for utility rests on a social media post. The real test is simpler than the debate. Can one of these 10 companies actually spend what it won?

Strategy (MSTR), the Bitcoin treasury firm formerly known as MicroStrategy, says dollar reserves now offset nearly all its $6.75 billion debt. MicroStrategy stock climbed 12% on Thursday as fears of forced bitcoin (BTC) sales faded.
The company put its net leverage at roughly 0.1% in the announcement. In plain terms, its cash nearly cancels its debt, while its 840,447 BTC stack stands almost free and clear.
Our USD Assets now almost entirely offset our debt, reducing net leverage to 0.1%. $MSTR pic.twitter.com/jP6MdQ8wNr
— Strategy (@Strategy) August 27, 2026
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MicroStrategy Stock Jumps as Cash Nearly Matches Debt
MSTR traded at $138.38 by midday Thursday, up 12%. The stock is now down less than 9% in 2026. One session repaired much of the year’s damage.
MicroStrategy (MSTR) Stock Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance
The advance builds on last week’s crypto stocks rally, which had already lifted MSTR to a two-month high.
The company’s chart shows MicroStrategy holds $6.69 billion in dollars against $6.75 billion of debt. The gap is just $60 million.
MicroStrategy Debt vs Cash Reserve. Source: Strategy
The centerpiece is a $5.10 billion reserve earmarked for dividend and interest payments. That pot held $4.0 billion at the start of August, per an SEC filing.
It swelled because the firm raised $3.28 billion this month and bought no Bitcoin at all.
STRC is Strategy’s largest preferred share series. Its terms pay a 12% annual dividend on nearly $10 billion of notional value.
Does the Bitcoin Sell-Off Fear End Here?
The fear was never abstract. MicroStrategy sold 1,638 BTC in July at roughly $64,000 per coin, the same filing shows. That sale fed doubts the treasury could survive a long crypto winter.
Skeptics argued a deeper drawdown would force more selling to cover obligations. Cash matching nearly all the debt weakens that case considerably.
Meanwhile, the prize is scale. MicroStrategy began buying Bitcoin in August 2020 and now controls roughly one of every 25 coins that will ever exist. The stack is worth about $67.9 billion, with Bitcoin trading above $80,000 at press time.
MicroStrategy BTC Holdings. Source: Bitcoin Treasuries
The margin is thin, though. The company paid an average of $75,419 per coin, so the whole treasury sits barely 4% in profit.
Other risks moved rather than vanished. Preferred shares still rank ahead of common stock and demand steady dividends. Much of the new cash came from selling MSTR shares, which dilutes holders.
The stock also remains well below last year’s levels after a bruising one-year performance duel with Bitcoin itself.
Saylor recently published a Bitcoin credit risk model that maps the price floors where those obligations bite. The next question is simple. Does Strategy start buying Bitcoin again, or keep stacking dollars?

An estimated $390 billion in stablecoin payments took place in 2025, according to McKinsey and Artemis. But inside this market, AI agents are creating an interesting kind of payment activity.
Research shows that agents completed more than 176 million on-chain transactions worth over $73 million between May 2025 and April 2026. But most of them were very small transactions.
The median x402 payment was between $0.01 and $0.10, while 76% of transactions fell below the $0.30 fixed-fee threshold for card payments. USDC accounted for 98.6% of settlements.
Annual Stablecoin Payments in 2025. Source: McKinsey
Although the transaction amounts are small, the frequency of AI agentic payments is staggering — 173 million.
Software can buy data, compute and other services hundreds or thousands of times without the human behaviors that define conventional commerce. For example, opening an account, entering card details, approving an invoice or waiting until the next banking day.
XDC Network believes this offers an early glimpse of how more payments could work in future.
“Money has always moved as fast as the slowest part of the process, like a bank, a clearinghouse, or normal business hours,” Atul Khekade, Co-Founder of XDC Network, told BeInCrypto. “Agents just show what happens when you get rid of those delays. Payments stop being something you wait around for and turn into a continuous process happening in the background at the speed of the underlying network.”
Machine Payments
Software can transact continuously. An AI service may need a weather feed for one calculation, a market-price API several seconds later, and compute resources immediately afterward.
Each interaction can carry its own price, turning what might once have been a monthly subscription or invoice into thousands of individual transactions.
That helps explain why Keyrock found activity spread across such a large population of AI agents and service directories. The report found more than 104,000 agents registered across at least 15 directories by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
The economics favor systems that can handle payments measured in cents or fractions of a cent. The payments industry is already preparing:
Stripe launched the Machine Payments Protocol, or MPP, in March. The open standard allows agents and services to coordinate micropayments and recurring payments programmatically, with Stripe supporting stablecoins as well as traditional payment methods;
Google’s Agent Payments Protocol, or AP2, concentrates on proving user authorization and establishing an auditable record of what an agent was permitted to buy. Google transferred the protocol to the FIDO Alliance in April and added support for autonomous “Human Not Present” transactions;
Cloudflare entered the market in August with Cloudflare Wallets and cloudflare.pay, giving agents identities and programmable spending controls. Its payment tools support both x402 and MPP;
Mastercard’s Agent Pay for Machines service, announced in June, is designed for continuous, high-frequency and low-value payments, with settlement across cards, accounts and stablecoins. More than 30 companies, including Stripe, Coinbase, Cloudflare and Tempo, were named among its initial supporters.
2️⃣ Secure agentic purchases on Google✅ We designed Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to help agents make secure payments on your behalf — with boundaries and accountability to give you peace of mind.✅ AP2 lets you set strict guardrails for agentic payment transactions. Just…
— Google (@Google) May 27, 2026
Invisible Settlement
XDC’s contribution to this market is XDCAI.tech, which uses the open x402 protocol originally introduced by Coinbase.
x402 turns the HTTP ‘402 Payment Required’ response into a payment mechanism. An agent requests a resource, receives its price, authorizes the payment, and repeats the request with proof of payment. The process allows software to purchase an API call or another digital service within the same interaction.
Coinbase introduced the protocol in May 2025, and its use has since expanded through integrations with companies including AWS.
XDC AI applies x402 to USDC settlement on XDC Network. Users fund a smart wallet with USDC and establish an on-chain spending limit. An agent can then pay an x402-enabled service per request. EIP-3009 allows the payment to be signed off-chain while a relayer covers the network fee, leaving the agent itself to hold and spend USDC.
For years, AI agents could reason, plan, and execute tasks.But they couldn't pay.APIs, subscriptions, checkout pages, and payment flows were built for humans — not autonomous software.So we built XDC AI.A platform that gives AI agents a wallet, lets them discover…
— Rushabh Parmar (@rushabh96975767) July 11, 2026
The system can also connect to AI applications through MCP or a command-line interface, allowing agents running through products including ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and Codex to discover and pay for services.
XDC already had much of the underlying settlement infrastructure in place. Native USDC and Circle’s CCTP went live on XDC in September 2025.
XDC lists two-second block times, six-second finality, and transaction costs around $0.00001, characteristics aimed at high-volume financial applications.
Invoices Could Disappear
Invoices package several functions together. They communicate what is owed, set payment terms, and provide records for reconciliation and accounting. Many businesses then wait days or weeks for the actual transfer to arrive.
Software dealing with software can compress part of that cycle. A service can state its price in a machine-readable format, an authorized agent can evaluate the request, and payment can be settled immediately. Transaction records can then feed directly into treasury and accounting systems.
Next wave of payments = AI + Agentic Commerce. XDC is building the infrastructure:• x402 micropayments• Gasless USDC settlement• Real-time, sub-cent autonomous payments for AI agents Tonight in NYC, @atulkhekade shares how we’re making this a reality. The future of… https://t.co/FokrYWhAbw
— XDC Network (@XDCNetwork) July 9, 2026
This comes as agents are taking on increasing responsibility for procurement, cloud spending, portfolio management, and recurring commercial obligations. A company could eventually give an agent a budget and a set of rules, then allow it to buy compute when demand rises, renew services, pay suppliers or rebalance liquidity within those boundaries.
XDC therefore sees today’s one-cent API payment as the smallest version of something much larger.
The card networks see it too. Visa’s stablecoin settlement program reached a $7 billion annualized run rate in April after growing 50% quarter-over-quarter and expanding to nine blockchains. Mastercard announced stablecoin settlement across networks including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon, Tempo and XRPL in June.
The competition is consequently broader than blockchain networks attempting to replace card companies. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google, Coinbase, Cloudflare and blockchain developers are increasingly building interoperable pieces of the same machine-commerce market.
The Other Half of the Problem
Greater autonomy raises questions about permission and accountability.
An agent paying 3 cents per API request incurs limited financial exposure. However, an agent managing a corporate treasury or procurement budget needs controls around authorization, counterparties, limits, and auditability, which is why the major platforms are converging on different pieces of the same problem. This explains why:
Google has concentrated on cryptographic mandates that record what a user authorized;
Cloudflare lets owners impose spending caps and approved merchant lists;
Mastercard’s system combines agent credentials with permissioning rules;
XDC AI places spending limits at the wallet level
Those controls determine how quickly agentic payments graduate from micropayments into larger financial relationships.
They also temper the idea that cards and invoices disappear on a fixed timetable. Card networks are already adapting their products for autonomous software, while invoices serve legal, tax, credit and accounting functions that extend beyond transferring funds.
XDC believes that payment and service delivery can happen almost simultaneously: APIs, data, compute, digital services and other machine-to-machine transactions. Success there could establish the habits and technical standards that would later be used for larger transactions.
Khekade expects the terminology itself to disappear as the technology becomes commonplace.
“In 5 years nobody will describe this as agentic payments, the same way nobody today calls a wire transfer an internet payment,” he said. “It will just be how value moves. The interesting question is not whether that happens, it is which networks were actually built for it versus which ones bolted it on afterward.”

Ethena (ENA) jumped 11% after its Foundation bought out seed investors who sold after the October 2025 peak. The move capped a near-100% monthly rally as an ENA buyback vote went live.
The token has carried the same weight since launch, with early investor tokens unlocking every month. That supply drip just ended.
Ethena (ENA) Price Performance in August. Source: TradingView Ethena Buys Out Investors Who Sold After the Peak
The Ethena Foundation announced the deal Thursday, indicating that they spent the past two weeks buying locked tokens directly from early backers. Each was originally allocated more than 0.25% of ENA supply.
We are excited to announce four updates regarding the Ethena ecosystem, further details on each point are provided in the blog linked below:1. Buyout of early investors:The Ethena Foundation executed a buyout of all locked tokens from certain major seed investors that sold any…
— Ethena Foundation (@EthenaFndtn) August 27, 2026
The Foundation split those backers into two groups:
Investors who sold any ENA after the October 10, 2025, peak had their locked tokens bought out.
Only one wallet said no.
Investors who never sold got a full-price offer.
None accepted.
“As a result, the investors who have been selling into the market during the relevant time frame now hold no unvested ENA which could be sold into the market in the future,” the Foundation wrote in its blog.
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The rest of the investor calendar now ends early. All remaining investor tokens unlock on October 5, 2026, and the monthly calendar disappears. Team tokens stay locked on their original schedules. Roughly 12% of supply stays locked, all of it team, ecosystem, and Foundation holdings.
The pressure this fixes was real. Ethena released 171.88 million tokens in early August alone. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes bought 9.05 million ENA days before that release.
One large holder sits outside the deal. StablecoinX, an ENA treasury company, still holds about 20% of supply under a separate lockup disclosed in SEC filings.
ENA Buyback Vote Ties the Fee Switch to USDe Growth
The fee switch is the second piece. A Snapshot governance vote, open through September 2, would send protocol revenue into ENA purchases. Ethena’s Risk Committee has already approved the design.
There is a catch. Buybacks only start once USDe circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. At that level, 5% of protocol revenue buys ENA. The share scales up to 20% if supply reaches $20 billion.
USDe sits near $4.6 billion today, down from a 2025 peak of about $15 billion. So the switch stays off until supply climbs roughly $3 billion. The Foundation says it wants USDe above $100 billion within five years.
Once that first threshold hits, 95% of net revenue paid to the Foundation funds the purchases. Each buy will be tracked on Ethena’s public dashboard.
The playbook has precedent. Uniswap’s fee switch proposal sent UNI to a two-month high last November.
Ethena also addressed a second old doubt. A Master Framework Agreement, due in October, hands protocol intellectual property and residual value to tokenholders. Ethena Labs equity investors get neither. The Foundation says Labs equity has never taken a dollar of protocol revenue.
Will the ENA Rally Hold?
ENA trades near $0.155 after gaining 11% in 24 hours. The token is up 56.5% in a week and 84.6% over the past 30 days. Its market cap stands near $1.52 billion.
ENA Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
The bull case is simple. The sellers are gone, the unlock calendar dies in October, and a buyback pipeline is on the ballot. The bear case is just as clean. Buybacks stay off until USDe nearly doubles, and StablecoinX’s 20% stake sits outside the deal.
The Snapshot vote still needs quorum. From there, the signal to watch is USDe supply. Every dollar it climbs brings the ENA buyback switch closer.

Hyperliquid (HYPE) climbed to an all-time high of $84.80 on Thursday, its second record in seven days. The altcoin trades near $84.07, up nearly 4% today, with its market cap nearing $19 billion.
The rally cleared the old $77 ceiling last week and has since held that level as support. Weekly and daily charts now point to $92 as the next resistance band.
Buybacks and a Regulatory Nod Fuel the Rally
Hyperliquid activated its AQAv2 reserve yield program on August 26. Roughly 90% of the cost-adjusted yield on $6.74 billion in USDC deposits now funds HYPE buybacks.
Hyperliquid Officially Activates "AQAv2" to Buy Back and Burn HYPE with USDC Reserve YieldHyperliquid announced the activation of its "AQAv2 (Aligned Quote Asset v2)" framework starting August 26, which directs yield generated from USDC reserves toward programmatic market… pic.twitter.com/3Np1YerhyX
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 26, 2026
Under a 3% yield scenario, that adds about $182 million a year. The figure represents an 18% lift on current revenue of roughly $2.76 million per day. First distributions land Oct. 3.
Regulation supplied the second leg. President Donald Trump said on Aug. 20 that Hyperliquid could be available in the US soon, with the CFTC already working on a compliant pathway.
On Wall Street, spot HYPE exchange-traded funds have meanwhile logged renewed inflows, and the token leads its top 10 peers this month.
Weekly Chart Confirms the $77 Breakout
The weekly candle that broke $77 gained roughly 40%. This week HYPE dipped to $76.75, retested the old record, then reversed higher.
Before that move, the price bounced off an ascending trendline three times. The third touch in early August landed on the 0.618 Fibonacci level at $55.41.
HYPE weekly chart. Source: TradingView
Weekly RSI has reclaimed 70. A similar reading in mid-May preceded a rally of about 100% into the previous record. A repeat would target the 1.618 Fibonacci extension at $111.93. Volume, however, remains well below January levels.
HYPE Price Prediction After the All-Time High
The daily chart flipped to a bullish Supertrend on Aug. 19. That signal holds while HYPE stays above $68.
Volume expanded during the breakout between Aug. 21 and Aug. 25. Volatility reached 100% for several days after sitting at 0% on Aug. 12, and has since cooled to about 40%.
HYPE daily chart. Source: TradingView
The 1.272 Fibonacci extension at $92.37 is the next target, roughly 10% above the spot price. The nearest risk is Hyperliquid’s $1.2 billion token unlock on August 29, with another due a month later.
Altcoin traders should watch $68 as the make-or-break price point for HYPE. A daily close below this level would end the bullish structure.

Bitcoin (BTC) trades near $80,244 after gaining 14.3% over the past week, moving within $3,000 of the level two research firms identify as a key test for the market
CryptoQuant says Bitcoin has already entered a new bull market, though confirmation depends on a close it has not yet made.
Bitcoin (BTC) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets CryptoQuant Calls a Regime Shift
In its latest report, CryptoQuant said that the recent rally has “flipped Bitcoin into a new market regime.” The Bull Score has climbed from 30 to 80 in a single week. That is its most bullish reading since October 6, 2025, when BTC traded at $124,000.
Eight of the firm’s 10 valuation metrics now register as bullish. Apparent spot demand is expanding at its fastest monthly pace since late December.
Spot and futures demand are also growing together for the first time since early October 2025. BeInCrypto reported that Washington policy signals started the rally. Trump’s remarks about a Bitcoin purchase added to the move, and back-to-back short liquidations amplified it.
However, the firm said that confirmation requires a daily close above Bitcoin’s 365-day moving average. That level sits near $83,000.
“This is a genuine regime shift, the initial phase of a new bull market… but it needs official confirmation,” the report read.
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The Wall Sits Where Confirmation Lives
Glassnode mapped the market differently and arrived at around the same number. Every overhead structure the firm tracks now sits between $81,000 and $86,000.
“That band is where the recovery’s demand meets its test,” the firm said.
The first self-custody cost-basis shelf begins at $80,800, leaving the price just below it. Dealer gamma turns negative at $82,300, and a surviving cluster of short liquidation levels extends to $86,000.
Long-term holder supply fills the $83,000 to $86,000 band. Glassnode frames the move as a staged recovery. Its own confirmation marker is a settled close beyond $83,300 with ETF demand holding.
Bitcoin Holders Are Selling Into the Rally
Some holders are not waiting for that test. Long-term holders have started distributing, and analyst Darkfost found their supply turned net negative.
The monthly average now reads minus 21,000 BTC, reversing a peak of plus 286,000 BTC in early June. Realized profits are climbing with price.
The analyst put weekly average net profits at a 2026 record, with close to $1 billion booked over the past seven days, driven mainly by short-term holders.
🔴 During this rally toward $80,000, STH didn’t hesitate to already take profit.The amount of bitcoin:native sent by STH surpassed 60,000 BTC on August 20th. 💥 All of this BTC was in profit at the time.This was the strongest STH movement of recent months.Profit taking… pic.twitter.com/SkqQQDy7b1
— Darkfost (@Darkfost_Coc) August 26, 2026
Darkfost noted that counterbalancing demand has offset those sales, holding up BTC. CryptoQuant flagged separate signs of strain. It put trader unrealized profit at 20.5%, the highest since June 2025, and reported a record $614 million in whale realized profits on August 20.
Santiment data shows the crowd has not chased the advance, with weighted sentiment turning negative on Wednesday for the first time since the rally began.
Below current prices, Glassnode says weakness would first show at the $70,000 short-term holder cost basis. The $62,000 to $65,000 floor sits beneath that, held by the recent buyers who funded the move.
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Ripple has opened a Delta One trading desk inside Ripple Prime, its prime brokerage arm. It lets institutional investors bet on the price moves of US-listed stocks, major stock indices, and crypto without directly owning them.
It puts Ripple into a business dominated by Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. And despite Ripple’s crypto roots, XRP is not stated as a requirement for using the new service.
Ripple Delta One Desk Enters a Bank-Dominated Market
Delta One sounds obscure, but the idea is simple. These desks sell products that move one-for-one with the asset they track. Their core tool is the total return swap (TRS). A client collects the full return of a stock, index, or token. The client never has to own it.
The stakes on these desks are enormous. In 2008 and 2011, rogue traders at Société Générale and UBS lost billions on Delta One books. Those scandals showed how much money flows through this corner of the banking industry.
Rogue-trader losses on Delta One desks, 2008 and 2011. Source: BeInCrypto
Ripple announced the desk on Wednesday, with the product live and aimed at hedge funds and asset managers. Clients face one counterparty. They can offset margin across stocks, foreign exchange (FX), bonds, derivatives, and crypto around the clock.
Introducing Ripple Prime’s Delta One business – bringing Total Return Swaps across US-listed equities, indices and digital assets to clients, tailored to their investment horizons, risk mandates and reporting requirements. Single counterparty. Cross-margined. Structurally…
— Ripple (@Ripple) August 27, 2026
Ripple also claims a clean-hands edge over the incumbents. JPMorgan markets Delta One hedging tools, and its Nexus platform wraps custom baskets in Delta One swaps.
Bank desks like these sit beside in-house trading units, Ripple argues. Ripple Prime says it only clears and finances client trades.
“Clients can now access equities, FX, derivatives, fixed income, and digital asset prime brokerage, clearing, and financing all through a single counterparty that is built for the future of finance: cross-asset, structurally aligned, 24/7,” said Noel Kimmel, President of Ripple Prime,” the company said in a statement.
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What the Launch Means for XRP
The desk is not an XRP product. The token can sit inside a swap as one asset among many, next to Bitcoin or Apple stock. However, the contracts do not settle on the token or the XRP Ledger.
The money trail runs through the company instead. Ripple bought its seat at this table, paying $1.25 billion for prime broker Hidden Road in 2025.
Today, Ripple announced it is acquiring Hidden Road for $1.25B– becoming the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker. Together, Ripple and Hidden Road are bringing the promise of digital assets to institutional customers at scale, bridging…
— Ripple (@Ripple) April 8, 2025
Earlier this year, the rebranded unit joined the NSCC, the clearinghouse behind US stock trades.
The war chest is growing too. Ripple Prime holds over $1 billion in regulatory net capital and raised $475 million in debt this year. Meanwhile, Fortress and Citadel Securities led a $500 million investment late last year that valued Ripple at $40 billion.
XRP traded for $1.46 as of this writing, up by over 5% on the day. The gains likely associate with broader market rally, and not on account of this news. Token holders do not collect the new swap fees. That revenue belongs to the company.
XRP Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
The unknowns now are clients and volume. Ripple named no launch customers and gave no pricing against the bank desks.
If big funds move real exposure to a crypto-native counterparty, the desk becomes a franchise. If they do not, it stays a press release.

Nike stock closed at $38.59 on Wednesday, a 12-year low that puts the shoemaker on pace for its worst calendar year since 1993.
That was the year Michael Jordan first retired. A Barchart post comparing the two years is circulating widely, and the parallel runs deeper than the coincidence suggests.
BREAKING 🚨: Nike$NKE on track for its worst year since Michael Jordan announced his first retirement in 1993 pic.twitter.com/EEowP3dylI
— Barchart (@Barchart) August 27, 2026
The 1993 Collapse Started Before Jordan Walked Away
Jordan announced his first retirement on October 6, 1993. By that date, Barchart’s data shows Nike stock had already fallen roughly 40% on the year.
$NKE stock is doing what MJ did in '93: leaving. pic.twitter.com/pj8QQTw71t
— AlphaSpace (@alphaspace) August 26, 2026
The retirement was not the cause. The United States sneaker market had saturated, and Nike posted its first revenue decline in a decade.
Fiscal 1994 revenue fell 3.6% to $3.79 billion. Net income dropped 18% to $298.8 million. Jordan’s exit deepened a selloff that was already running.
The 2026 sequence looks similar. Shares fell 15.5% on April 1 after earnings. That was months before August’s China headlines.
1993 2026 Calendar-year loss 43.5% 38% through Aug. 26 Blamed catalyst Jordan retires Oct. 6 China, tariffs, downgrades Already down beforehand about 40% about 29% by April 1 Business problem Revenue down 3.6%, first drop in a decade China EBIT down 45%, 8 straight down quarters Chief rival Reebok at its peak On, Hoka, Anta, Li-Ning What came next +63.7%, +88.9%, +73.6% Unknown
Greater China revenue has now declined for eight consecutive quarters. A one-time tariff refund also flattered the most recent quarter’s reported margin.
Nike Stock Monthly Chart Shows Rare Technical Damage
The monthly chart places Nike stock 78.55% below its November 2021 record. Price has returned to where it traded in August 2014.
The monthly relative strength index (RSI) reads 28.64, under the 30 line that marks oversold conditions. Readings that low are rare on a monthly timeframe.
NKE monthly chart / Source: Tradingview
Volume has climbed steadily through the decline. That indicates conviction behind the selling, although heavy volume at multi-year lows can also mark capitulation.
Two converging trendlines point toward the low $30s by year’s end. Support sits at $38.41, with resistance at $43.21. The drawdown already exceeds Bitcoin‘s over the same stretch.
A monthly close between roughly $33 and $35 would beat the 1993 loss, depending on how it is measured.
What Happened After 1993
Nike stock gained 63.7% in 1994, then 88.9% in 1995 and 73.6% in 1996. Jordan returned to basketball in March 1995.
History guarantees no repeat. Nike has scheduled an investor day for November 16 and 17. Replacement Sportswear product does not arrive until spring 2027.
Those two dates, rather than the Jordan anniversary, may decide whether 2026 marks a bottom or a waypoint.

StarkWare said Wednesday that a quantum-safe Bitcoin (BTC) transaction has been mined on the live network, a first for the method.
On-chain data shows the transaction spent a 10,000-satoshi output, worth about $8 at current prices, and paid a fee of 5,179 satoshis.
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Quantum-safe Bitcoin, mined on mainnet, Today.Designed by @avihu28 – the first ever quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction was built in collaboration with @MARAFoundation_ and our own @giladi_tom85141.Every chain faces the same quantum deadline. Today we took a huge step to move…
— StarkWare 🥷 (@StarkWareLtd) August 26, 2026
How the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Transaction Works
Quantum-Safe Bitcoin (QSB) attaches a hash-based lock beside the elliptic curve signature that normally guards a Bitcoin output. Shor’s algorithm, the quantum technique that derives private keys from published public keys, cannot break hash functions.
StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy published the QSB method in April. It uses signature grinding. This produces a valid Bitcoin signature without a private key.
The sender grinds offchain until a candidate spending transaction hashes to a value that is itself a validly formatted signature.
Security then rests on reversing a hash rather than keeping a private key secret. The technique builds on Binohash, developed by Robin Linus, the creator of BitVM.
MARA Pool mined the transaction in block 964,199. What worked was a single construction, not an upgrade, and Bitcoin itself remains unchanged.
What the QSB Method Cannot Do
StarkWare said the method does not make Bitcoin quantum-safe. Three constraints narrow what the spend actually protects.
The first limit is prior exposure. An address whose public key already sits on-chain gains nothing, because an adversary with a quantum computer could derive the corresponding private key.
The second is the migration step. Coins reach a hash-secured output through a transaction signed the ordinary way, which exposes the sending address’s public key. The output spent on Wednesday was funded in July by exactly such a transaction.
The third is delivery. QSB transactions use nonstandard formats, so ordinary nodes will not relay them, and MARA’s Slipstream service supplied the route to a miner.
Cost compounds the limits. Levy’s repository puts the offchain compute at $75 to $150, while StarkWare described this transaction as costing several hundred dollars.
“People have long assumed that protecting Bitcoin holdings from a quantum adversary would require changing the Bitcoin protocol. Today shows otherwise. A soft fork is still the better long-term answer, as StarkWare has argued for consistently, but it is no longer the only option,” the blog read.
Bitcoin has not adopted a protocol-level fix, and Wednesday’s transaction does not change that.
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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) says $1 million Bitcoin will not take 25 years. Asked at Bitcoin Asia 2026 in Hong Kong what would define the Bitcoin century, he pointed to a much shorter clock.
The price, he argued Thursday, is the easy part. The real work is utility, from payments at scale to Bitcoin inside retirement and pension reserves.
What Has to Happen for $1 Million Bitcoin
CZ’s fireside chat was titled The Bitcoin Century. The host asked whether the milestone needs a quarter century. The Binance executive gave a shorter timeline.
“I actually don’t think we need 25 years. I think it’s gonna happen much quicker. But more than price, I think we need a lot more utility,” he said in stage.
His checklist is short, comprising the use of Bitcoin for mass payments and a seat in retirement and pension funds. He expects the core infrastructure built within 10 years.
Part of that checklist is already moving. President Trump opened the door for crypto in 401(k)s in August 2025. Washington also turned seized coins into a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve under a March 2025 executive order, and Trump recently hinted at more purchases.
The scale of the call is still easy to miss, with Bitcoin trading for $79,323 as of this writing. A $1 million price target would therefore imply a nearly 13x climb.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Bitcoin has made a move that size before, running from about $5,000 in March 2020 to $69,000 by late 2021. It was a much smaller asset then.
The Gold Flip and a Reserve Recipe
CZ repeated his warning that ignoring Bitcoin is as risky as sitting out artificial intelligence (AI). He also expects Bitcoin to displace gold in national reserves.
“I think Bitcoin will, for sure, become more important than gold.”
He put the gap to gold at roughly 10x. The real number is tougher. Market trackers value above-ground gold near $32 trillion against bitcoin’s $1.58 trillion, closer to 20x.
Notwithstanding, his two calls do fit together, though. At $1 million per coin, Bitcoin’s roughly 20 million circulating coins would be worth about $20 trillion. That is still below gold’s value today, so his price target does not even require a full flip.
For governments that want in, his recipe is simple. Take the top five cryptocurrencies, drop the stablecoins, and weight by market cap.
That lands near 50% in BTC, up to 20% in Ethereum (ETH), and a slice in BNB, Binance’s own token. CZ admitted the advice is somewhat self-serving.
Not everyone shares the urgency. Analyst Benjamin Cowen recently argued crypto is the cheapest since 2010 relative to fair value, and said prices could fall further before any run toward record territory.
CZ’s clock is aggressive, and the 20x gold gap shows the ground left to cover. Nevertheless, the milestones he named, payments, pensions, and state reserves, give readers a scoreboard to track.

Meme coins enter September rising but trailing, and the gap is not small. The sector’s top-10 basket gained 10.24% over 30 days while a comparable altcoin basket gained 40.28%, a 30-percentage-point lag, per CoinGecko data.That mismatch makes the meme coins to watch in September a selection problem, not a sector bet.
Three names stand out, one leading with a supply question, one diverging quietly, and one rallying into visible selling.
Pudgy Penguins (PENGU): The Leader With a Supply Test
Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) is up 47.45% in seven days and 60.02% in 30, beating the broader altcoin basket by nearly 20 points even without an altcoin season setup, per CoinGecko.
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The move has a fresh feeder, since the Schleich collectible figurines from the Pudgy Penguins partnership go on sale August 28, right at September’s doorstep.
PENGU Momentum Check: BeInCrypto
That attention is already showing up in the wallets. Nansen’s labelled cohorts show fresh wallets adding $427,000 and top-PnL wallets $611,000 over seven days, and Binance top traders sit far more bullish than the crowd, so new and sophisticated money agree.
PENGU Demand Versus Supply: BeInCrypto
The same Nansen data also holds September’s test.
Nansen Coin Scroller: Charlie Quant Lab
Nansen also shows $7.50 million flowing into exchange wallets. This can signal possible sell pressure. Therefore, the buyers the figurines attract must absorb that supply for the rally to extend.
Shiba Inu (SHIB): The Quiet Divergence
Shiba Inu (SHIB) looks weakest on the surface, up just 13.58% in seven days and still down 22.26% this year, per CoinGecko. Underneath, tracked DEX buys exceeded sells by $30.39 million over seven days, a +69.82% demand skew, per Dune data. This price-to-buying divergence is one of the key September catalysts for this OG meme coin.
SHIB Hidden Bid: BeInCrypto
The same quiet buying shows on exchanges, where $1.97 million left trading venues, an outflow that can indicate possible accumulation, per Nansen. Japan gives that accumulation a September storyline, as the FSA register lists SHIB among six assets authorized for Nomura-backed Laser Digital Japan, potential future institutional access with no launch date yet.
SHIB Demand Versus Supply: Charlie Quant Lab
The catch is who is selling. Top-PnL wallets cut $824,000, so the catch-up case stays unconfirmed until that cohort turns.
Official Trump (TRUMP): The Rally Meeting Distribution
Official Trump (TRUMP) has the loudest tape, up 29.44% in seven days with volume running 6.5 times its monthly norm. Fresh wallets added $5.85 million, the largest new-money reading of the three.
TRUMP Activity And Risk: BeInCrypto
However, that new money is walking into busy exits. Nansen shows $18.33 million moving into exchanges, whales cutting $375,000, and Binance top-trader conviction falling through the same rally the fresh wallets are chasing.
Binance Top Traders: BeInCrypto
Wallets described as team-linked, supposedly netted $3.39 million through liquidity cycling, though the project has not confirmed the attribution.
The #Trump team is selling $TRUMP by adding and removing liquidity.Over the past 10 hours, they have received 3.39M $USDC from selling $TRUMP.https://t.co/emffG5nCa7 pic.twitter.com/GYt1jfLPIm
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) August 24, 2026
Fresh demand meeting sophisticated selling is the classic fade setup, and heading into September it holds only while new buyers keep arriving.
TRUMP Demand Versus Supply: BeInCrypto
Analyst’s View: Here is the detail that frames September for these meme coins to watch. Over the past 60 days, memes captured only about 70 cents of every dollar the altcoin basket gained, so even a genuine meme season starts the month from behind.
Meme Sector Gauge: BeInCrypto
That is why the exchange columns matter more than the charts. PENGU confirms its bullish setup if its inflow reverses. SHIB confirms if the profitable wallets stop selling. And finally, TRUMP’s setup turns bullish only while fresh buyers outrun the exits.

Lending protocol Moonwell lost an estimated $8.7 million to an exploit on Thursday. No smart contract was broken. An attacker simply made MAMO, a small Base token, look far more valuable than it is.
The inflated price let the attacker borrow real assets, including Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin (cbBTC) and USD Coin (USDC). Security firm Blockaid caught the activity, and Moonwell froze new borrowing within hours.
How the Moonwell Exploit Worked
The trick was price, not code. Blockaid reported that the attacker manipulated MAMO collateral pricing to drain cbBTC from Moonwell’s mCBTC market. Its first estimate showed 50.6 cbBTC gone, worth more than $4 million.
Blockaid’s Exploit Detection identified suspicious activity against @MoonwellDeFi on Base.An attacker manipulated MAMO collateral pricing to borrow cbBTC from the mCBTC market.Observed impact so far: 50.6 cbBTC ($4.0M+) drainedMore details to follow. 🧵
— Blockaid (@blockaid_) August 27, 2026
MAMO is the token of Mamo, a yield tool built on Base. Every MAMO in existence is worth about $7.6 million combined, and the token trades near $0.011366. A market that small is cheap to pump.
MAMO Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
That was the whole attack. Pump MAMO on thin markets, post it as collateral at the fake price, and borrow assets with real value. Moonwell’s oracle, the system that feeds prices to the protocol, believed the pump.
Security firm PeckShield later put total losses at $8.7 million. That is more than the market value of every MAMO token. The firm said the funds now sit in the DAI stablecoin at a wallet starting with 0xD71d.
#PeckShieldAlert @MoonwellDeFi on Base has suffered an exploit, resulting in a loss of $8.7M. The stolen funds, in $DAI, are sitting in 0xD71d…C384 pic.twitter.com/YyTgIZRe3W
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) August 27, 2026
Borrow Caps Cut to One Wei as Recovery Questions Begin
Moonwell acknowledged the incident in a post, indicating that they were already working to stop the bleeding.
“We are aware of an issue affecting the MAMO Core Market on Base and are actively investigating. As a precaution, borrow caps for all Core Markets on Base have been set to 1 wei, preventing new borrowing and limiting the potential for further impact,” the team wrote.
One wei is the smallest unit possible. The change blocks all new loans without touching withdrawals. Supply caps for MAMO and WELL, Moonwell’s governance token, also fell to one wei.
Thursday’s exploit is not a first. Bad prices, not bad code, keep costing Moonwell money. A wrsETH oracle malfunction created around $3.7 million in bad debt in November 2025. A cbETH oracle misconfiguration added $1.78 million more in February. Pricing failures have now cost the protocol over $14 million in ten months.
The wider sector shows the same weakness. Term Labs lost roughly $8.5 million to a governance exploit on Sunday. Analysts increasingly blame economic design failures rather than broken code for DeFi’s biggest losses.
Moonwell says another update is coming. Two numbers will tell the real story. The first is the final bad debt once MAMO’s price settles. The second is how much cbBTC and USDC remains for suppliers who want out.

Web3 social network Friend.tech’s native token FRIEND surged more than 1,500% today. The rally followed a $1 million buyout offer from Machi Big Brother.
The proposal targets a social app whose original team relinquished control over its smart contracts roughly 2 years ago.
Why Is FRIEND Token Up Today?
Friend.tech launched on Base in 2023 and peaked fast. The platform’s token opened up for trading in May 2024.
FRIEND hit an all-time high of $3.26 on May 3, 2024, per CoinGecko. BeInCrypto reported that in September, the founding team transferred the admin and ownership parameters to a null address.
The wider SocialFi sector had already thinned out by then. Farcaster, Lens, and Friend.tech all shed users through late 2024.
FRIEND kept sliding and hit an all-time low of $0.00002225 in July 2026. It now trades near $0.051 after Thursday’s 1,590% jump.
Friend.tech (FRIEND) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
Market cap climbed to $4.89 million, up from under $300,000. The altcoin’s trading volume hit $5,627,502 over 24 hours, a 100,823.30% jump from the previous day.
Machi Big Brother Offers $1M for Friend.tech
The surge in activity can be traced to an offer from Machi Big Brother, the pseudonym of Taiwanese-American high-profile trader Jeffrey Huang. In an X post, Huang offered to buy out Friend.tech for $1 million. He described a narrow scope for the deal.
“I just need the X account and URL,” he said.
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Friendtech is trading at less than 300k market cap. I’m offering a 1 mil usd buyout offer to Racer and @paradigm. We can CTO relaunch base:0x0bd4887f7d41b35cd75dff9ffee2856106f86670.
— Machi Big Brother (@machibigbrother) August 27, 2026
Huang had previously taken a significant position in FRIEND, linking him closely to the token’s fortunes. He bought 11 million FRIEND for roughly 5,200 Ethereum (ETH), according to Lookonchain. His holdings were worth about $500,000 after the token’s collapse.
“He has lost over $16M on FRIEND,” Lookonchain noted.
On-chain data also shows he sent all 11 million tokens to wallet 0x3205 five days earlier. The bid arrives while Machi runs heavy leverage elsewhere.
The trader is well known for his highly leveraged trades and frequent liquidations. Arkham puts his portfolio at $12.06 million, with $11.61 million in open positions.
He holds a 24,100 ETH long at 25x leverage and a 499 BTC long at 40x leverage. A 199,000 HYPE long at 10 times rounds out the book.
Those three trades carry a combined notional value of nearly $117 million. They show $2.5 million in unrealized profit, while his all-time profit and loss (PNL) sits at negative $24.72 million.
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BeInCrypto has partnered with MetaQuotes, the company behind MetaTrader 4 and 5, the world’s most widely adopted retail trading platforms to bring curated crypto news directly to millions of traders, creating a unified experience across traditional and digital markets.
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“Crypto is no longer a separate conversation from traditional trading, it’s part of the same one” said Alena Afanaseva, CEO and Founder of BeInCrypto. “Partnering with MetaQuotes puts our reporting where traders already are, on a platform they rely on every day. We hope this gives MetaTrader users a clearer view of what’s happening in digital assets and how it affects broader market movements.”
Under the terms of the agreement,BeInCrypto will syndicate news across MetaQuotes’ platform and content portal metatraders.com.
The partnership reflects a broader trend in the financial industry with the convergence of traditional and digital markets. As more investors explore digital assets alongside conventional portfolios, access to reliable and timely news becomes a critical advantage. By working together, we are positioning users to navigate both markets with confidence.
Readers and traders can now access the latest updates by visiting beincrypto.com and metaquotes.net
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Solana (SOL) validators are voting on two supply proposals. One would raise the disinflation rate, and the other would burn more SOL.
Together, they would reduce projected emissions by about $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion over six years. But what could that mean for Solana’s price? Other protocols may offer some precedent.
What Solana Is Voting On
Solana’s staking yield sits near 5.25%, drawing mainly from protocol inflation of about 3.78%. Transaction fees and maximal extractable value (MEV) supply the rest.
SGP-0002, which corresponds to the technical proposal SIMD-0550, proposes reducing the inflation schedule. This would be done by increasing the disinflation rate.
“It doubles Solana’s annual disinflation rate from -15% to -30%, compressing the timeline to Solana’s 1.5% terminal inflation rate from approximately 5.7 years to 2.8 years, reaching that level by H1 2029 rather than H1 2032,” 21Shares explained.
Under this, nominal staking yield falls to roughly 4.34% in the first year. It drops to 3% in year two and 2.25% in year three.
SGP-0003, based on SIMD-0553, would divide Solana’s current 5,000-lamport signature fee into two parts: a 2,500-lamport base inclusion fee paid to the block leader and a resource fee determined by requested compute units and the applicable resource fee rate, which would be burned.
“At current network activity, daily SOL burns would rise from approximately 600–800 SOL to approximately 7,500–9,000 SOL, or $712,500 to $855,000, as of August 24. It is a meaningful acceleration in supply destruction, though not sufficient alone to offset current inflation of roughly $4.5 million per day,” the blog added.
Voting is set to continue through epoch 1023. According to 21Shares, the two proposals could roughly halve staking yields within two years and make the asset “structurally scarcer.”
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Ethereum and Cosmos Offer an Imperfect Comparison
21Shares pointed to two previous upgrades to gauge how markets could react to Solana’s supply-reduction proposals.
Cosmos’ (ATOM) Proposal 848 cut maximum inflation in November 2023. ATOM gained 25% over the following month and 10% over three months. However, the period also coincided with growing optimism around the approval of spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs.
Ethereum’s EIP-1559 introduced a burn mechanism in August 2021. ETH climbed 37% in one month and 60% over three months. However, broader market conditions also supported the rally as the crypto market approached its cycle peak.
The two examples suggest that supply-reduction upgrades can strengthen a token’s narrative. However, broader market conditions can have a larger influence on price.
“In both cases, the near-term move (1–3 months) likely came from a mix of the deflationary signal and supportive market conditions, not the upgrade alone. At the same time the subsequent 6–12 month drawdowns had little to do with the upgrades: for ETH, the onset of the 2022 bear market and the Fed beginning its rate hiking cycle; for ATOM, the broader summer 2024 slump,” the team added.
21Shares suggested that for SOL holders, the precedents offer a potentially bullish signal, but they do not guarantee a similar price reaction.
Solana (SOL) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
SOL trades near $101 after gaining close to 20% over the past week. The advance tracks a broader market rally rather than the governance vote itself.
Neither proposal alters the protocol on its own. Approval would hand developers a mandate, with the technical work and activation timing still to be settled.
That leaves two open questions for holders. Whether the changes reach mainnet and whether tighter supply extends the current rally will take months to answer.
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CYBERLEEK has given back a large share of its parabolic rally. Indeed, the token fell by nearly 60% right after the account behind the campaign posted footage of the game’s prologue.
The Solana meme coin ties directly to the Grand Theft Auto VI leaks. Now, it trades at 71.30% below its all-time high of $0.03436, reached on August 23.
CyberLeek (CYBERLEEK) Price Performance. Source: CoinGecko Why the Bigger Leak Failed to Reverse the Slide
CyberLeek began circulating gameplay clips on August 18, days after the token itself went live. Early videos showed driving, flying, nightclubs, stores, radio stations, and map details from Leonida.
The clips were watermarked with QR codes pointing buyers toward the coin. Holders even used CYBERLEEK transfers to vote on which footage would drop next.
The token’s launch was not a coincidence. On-chain records show the project domain was registered on August 14, and the token first traded on August 15, while the first public leak arrived three days later.
That sequence, combined with buy prompts inside the videos, raised suspicion. Critics accused the campaign of functioning as a pump dressed up as a consumer protest. As a result, the market cap jumped from near zero to more than $20 million at the peak. Short-term gains, in fact, exceeded 1,400% during the frenzy.
On August 26, the leaker posted a roughly five-minute clip from a Lucia-focused prologue section, after earlier footage of Jason in a police chase that ended with a brief Lucia cutscene.
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A 5-minute GTA 6 prologue leak has been releasedIt’s the first time a major story spoiler has appeared in the leaks so far pic.twitter.com/4QB8t9yiiO
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) August 26, 2026
That drop was billed as the first true story spoiler. It arrived the same day Rockstar Games broke its silence, calling the leaks “heartbreaking and unfortunate” while confirming that the Netflix Extended Look would still air as planned.
“…Many thought initially this would be a HUGE catalyst, and the Cyberleek team shared the ENTIRE prologue of one of the main characters from GTA6, however it did not move the needle…,” one analyst said on X.
What the Collapse Reveals About the Trade
The market did not treat the spoiler as fresh fuel. CYBERLEEK now trades at $0.006819, with a market cap of $4.99 million, according to CoinGecko data, 71.30% below its August 23 peak. The takedown of the project’s own website added fresh pressure, sparking what the exchange described as developer desperation and accelerating an already steep decline.
Classic meme coin mechanics, profit-taking after a listing-driven pump, collided with mounting legal pressure. Take-Two has sought subpoenas against Microsoft, Discord, and X to identify the source of the leaks.
CyberLeek has framed the leaks as a fight for physical discs, offline single-player access, and an end to locked fake DLC. Rockstar’s statement did not address those demands. Boxed copies of GTA VI are expected to contain a download code rather than a disc.
Consumer groups such as Stop Killing Games have rejected the leak tactic even while sharing some of the ownership concerns.
On the other hand, the official Extended Look airs on Netflix today, August 27, giving fans their first officially sanctioned look at the game after weeks of unauthorized leaks.
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GRAND THEFT AUTO VI: AN EXTENDED LOOKTOMORROW 12PM PT | 3PM ET pic.twitter.com/koKvt9xsg8
— Netflix (@netflix) August 26, 2026
Whether that footage ends the leak premium or merely gives traders another headline will determine whether CYBERLEEK’s collapse is a pause or the end of the trade.

Apple has confirmed a “Surprise and shine” keynote for Wednesday, September 9, at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. The company will stream the event live from Apple Park in Cupertino.
Marketing chief Greg Joswiak posted the invitation on Wednesday. Tim Cook shared the post and said he is counting down, yet neither executive named a single product.
Apple Enters the Ternus Era With Its Stock Off the Peak
Counting down with everyone! https://t.co/FhRumftT4S
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) August 26, 2026
The timing carries weight. John Ternus, who has led Apple’s hardware engineering, becomes chief executive on September 1, eight days before the keynote.
Cook shifts to executive chairman after 15 years in the top job. Therefore, September 9 becomes the first launch under Apple’s new leadership.
Cook praised his successor when Apple announced the handover in April.
“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor,” Tim Cook, Apple CEO, statement.
Investors have backed the transition so far. AAPL closed at $313.45 on Wednesday, up 1.15% on the day and 15.13% for the year.
The stock still trades roughly 8% below its July peak, however. Apple briefly crossed $5 trillion in market value last month.
Soft guidance then pushed shares below support after the June quarter results. Traders now treat the keynote as the next catalyst.
AAPL Stock Chart. Source: TradingView Foldable iPhone Headlines the September 9 Lineup
Apple has confirmed no hardware. Reports point to the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the first foldable model.
Those reports describe a 5.5-inch outer screen paired with a roughly 7.8-inch inner display. Touch ID sits in the side button instead of Face ID.
That choice keeps the phone at 4.5mm when open. However, it also costs the device a telephoto lens, leaving a 48-megapixel main camera and an ultra-wide.
Price sets the real test. Early reports put the entry model above $2,000, with higher storage tiers passing $2,500.
Meanwhile, the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 should also appear. A new home hub, an updated Apple TV 4K, and a refreshed HomePod mini sit on watchlists, too.
Cost pressure hangs over the launch. An AI-driven memory shortage has tripled chip prices and already forced the company to lift Mac and iPad pricing this year.
Analyst Dan Niles argues that Apple’s slower approach to AI spared it a costly capital expenditure trap. Others counter that the company still trails rivals on artificial intelligence features.
Pricing, therefore decides how the market reads on September 9. Investors want to know whether Apple can charge a premium for a folding screen without denting volumes.

Core Lightning developers confirmed that several vulnerabilities in the Bitcoin Lightning Network software are real. The team will publish patched software updates within days, yet the technical details stay secret for two weeks.
Lightning moves small Bitcoin payments off the main blockchain through channels between nodes. Until operators install the fix, money parked in those channels sits behind code the team already knows is flawed.
Bitcoin Lightning Network Vulnerability Emerged From a Flood of AI Reports
Core Lightning (CLN) is one of the main implementations of the Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s payment layer. Blockstream backs the project, and the software has run on Bitcoin’s main network since 2018.
On August 13, the team said it had received a wave of AI-generated vulnerability reports from multiple sources over the previous 10 days. A small group of developers and volunteers then sorted real bugs from noise.
Several reports held up. That result turned routine cleanup into a coordinated security release, and the team dropped its original plan for a quick patch update.
Bitcoin infrastructure has taken repeated hits this year. In August, BTCPay Server warned operators to update after attackers drained user funds through a credential flaw. A Coldcard wallet exploit had surfaced days earlier.
What the Two-Week Embargo Means for Bitcoin Users
Withholding details is the point. Attackers who read a public bug report can often build a working exploit within hours. Therefore, the team ships the fixed software first and publishes the full account in early September.
The updates carry developer signatures confirming reproducibility, so outsiders can check that the release matches the source code. The fixes cover many of the reported flaws, though not every one.
Ordinary Lightning users hold no lever here. Their payments travel through nodes that other people run, so the pace of the rollout rests with those operators.
Operators who skip the upgrade have a fallback. Taking a node offline cuts its links to other nodes while leaving the daemon alive. A daemon is the background program behind a node, watching the blockchain and reacting when a payment channel closes.
To be clear about what we are recommending: you do not need to shut your node down.Our advice is to upgrade. When the release lands, verify the signatures and install it, and do that promptly rather than eventually.–offline is the alternative for anyone who is not going to… https://t.co/rjq8Haz4pE
— Core Lightning ⚡️ (@Core_LN) August 27, 2026
Core Lightning. Source: X
The stakes climb as Lightning reaches more people. Recent products have pushed it into self-custodial mobile wallets and chat-app payment tools, which widens the group exposed to a routing failure.
Blockstream chief executive Adam Back has spent much of 2026 in public fights over Bitcoin’s scaling direction. Quiet maintenance work like this rarely draws the same audience.
Nodes left unpatched and online carry risks the developers describe as known but will not yet detail. The embargo lifts in early September, which hands operators a clear runway to update while the details stay out of reach.

Operation Bluebird has switched on a working Twitter clone at the address twitter.now, complete with the blue bird logo and a tweet button. The move escalates the Twitter trademark lawsuit X Corp. filed in Delaware.
Two trademark attorneys run the Virginia startup, and one of them handled Twitter’s brand portfolio before Elon Musk bought the company. They argue Musk gave up the name in 2023.
Trademark Lawsuit Turns on One 2023 Statement
X Corp. sued Operation Bluebird in Delaware federal court on December 16, 2025, according to the court docket. The case runs on federal trademark infringement, and X has demanded a jury trial.
Bluebird’s case rests on abandonment. Musk said in July 2023 that the platform would bid adieu to the Twitter brand. The startup’s petition to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) treats that as a surrender.
Trademark law does not treat a rebrand as abandonment by itself. A challenger must show the owner stopped using the mark and meant to stop. Courts weigh evidence of continued commercial use.
However, X rejects that reading outright. It also updated its terms in January to restate ownership of the name, the tweet wording, and the bird logo.
“continues to exclusively own the Twitter and Tweet trademarks and the bluebird logo,” X Corp. countersuit filing, via TechCrunch.
Judge Colm Connolly then complicated things in April. He signaled that X may have lost its grip on the tweet and the bird, though no written order has followed.
X still uses the name in places, including its legacy domain and app store listings. That residual use may yet save the mark.
Meanwhile, the trademark board suspended its own cancellation case. Both sides now trade supplemental briefs on a preliminary injunction. Therefore, the Delaware docket decides who owns the bird.
A Second Twitter Arrives as X Chases Payments
The rival site runs replies, retweets, and a trust dial that lets each member filter posts by credibility. A bot called Vera checks claims in real time.
Twitter.now homepage. Source: Twitter.now
Founders pay $20, and later tiers cost more, so members fund the service instead of advertisers. A footer states the platform is not affiliated with X Corp.
Timing cuts against Musk. X spent this year rebuilding itself around money, and its X Money payments launch reached US Premium subscribers in June.
The company also pushed XChat to No. 1 on the App Store in April. In August, an X product chief exit followed a run of hurried releases.
In contrast, Musk is fighting on several fronts, including a Grok trading bot promise that his own terms appear to cap. Platforms are also spending heavily in court, as the Meta youth-safety trial shows.
X will press its injunction request in Delaware. Still, the sharper question is whether Connolly puts his April doubts in writing, and how quickly a small early base turns into a real audience. The real test, though, is whether users actually switch back.