Cointelegraph

An effort by Alex Mashinsky, the former CEO of now-defunct cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius, to convince a federal court to vacate his 12-year sentence for fraud and market manipulation faces pushback from US prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY).
In a Friday filing, SDNY Attorney James McDonald and Assistant US Attorney Allison Nichols said that the court should deny Mashinsky’s petition to vacate his conviction and sentence, saying that many of his legal arguments were “without merit” and pushing back against claims of ineffective assistance of counsel.
The former Celsius CEO informed the court in May that he would be proceeding pro se — that is, representing himself in the case — and filed a motion to vacate, including claims about cryptocurrency exchange FTX and his former colleague, the company’s chief revenue officer Roni Cohen-Pavon.
“Mashinsky has not even submitted a sworn declaration in support of these baseless allegations, and his petition should be denied without a hearing or further fact-finding,” said prosecutors, adding:
“[...] He presents a litany of complaints, blaming others for problems at Celsius and rehashing the evidence presented at his sentencing hearing. Though Mashinsky stops short of claiming that he is factually innocent, he blames his lawyers for failing to press certain arguments on his behalf.”
As of Tuesday, the judge overseeing the case had not responded to the federal prosecutors’ filing. Mashinsky was sentenced in May 2025 to 144 months in prison, having pleaded guilty to commodities fraud and securities fraud related to “manipulative and deceptive devices” at Celsius. Cohen-Pavon, who according to the government provided “substantial assistance” to the prosecutors case again Mashinsky, was sentenced to time served in May.
Celsius was one of a slew of crypto companies to file for bankruptcy in 2022 amid a market downturn starting with the collapse of Terraform Labs. Authorities indicted Mashinsky and Cohen-Pavon in 2023 and both subsequently pleaded guilty. The former CEO was ordered to pay $48 million in forfeiture at sentencing and agreed to pay $10 million as part of a separate settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission.
Mashinsky banned from commodities markets trading
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced in June that the former Celsius CEO was permanently banned from trading in markets within the commodities regulator’s purview.
The CFTC case was one of the last against Mashinsky and Celsius to be resolved following the company’s collapse in 2022. However, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) civil action against the co-founder, first filed in 2023, was still ongoing despite the court reaching a judgment against the platform months after the initial complaint.
As of July 30, the SEC reported that its attorneys and Mashinsky were “engaged in settlement discussions.“ The regulator asked the court for 60 days to file a status report on the matter, pushing any potential resolution to the end of September.
Magazine: ‘Fabricated rumors’ about BitMart founder, Binance bStocks dominate: Asia Express

Metaplanet, the Tokyo-listed company that has adopted Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset, plans to take a controlling stake in Nasdaq-listed Super League Enterprise, expanding its Bitcoin treasury strategy into the United States and potentially opening up new sources of capital.
On Tuesday, Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich said the company plans to contribute 2,100 Bitcoin (BTC) and $2.5 million in cash to Super League, which will be renamed Superplanet and become the company’s US Bitcoin treasury platform.
The 2,100 BTC contribution represents just under 5% of Metaplanet’s 43,000 BTC holdings and is worth roughly $135 million at current Bitcoin prices. Because the Bitcoin will come from Metaplanet’s existing treasury, the transaction does not represent a new BTC purchase.
Gerovich said the structure would give the company two avenues for raising capital, with Superplanet tapping US markets while Metaplanet continues to raise funds in Japan. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions, including approval from Super League shareholders.
Under the proposed structure, capital raised by either company could support the group’s broader Bitcoin treasury strategy. Metaplanet said Superplanet could also pursue acquisitions in the US Bitcoin treasury sector that may not be available to the Japanese parent company.
Super League Enterprise currently operates an immersive gaming, content and advertising business. Its shares surged more than 50% following the announcement, accompanied by a sharp increase in trading activity.
Trading volume reached roughly 37.3 million shares, compared with about 393,000 shares previously, an increase of nearly 95-fold, according to Yahoo Finance data.
Super League Enterprise (SLE) stock. Source: Yahoo Finance
Bitcoin treasuries face new capital pressures
Metaplanet has emerged as the third-largest corporate Bitcoin holder, trailing Twenty One Capital by roughly 500 BTC. Twenty One Capital is a publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company backed by Tether, Bitfinex and SoftBank that was formed to accumulate Bitcoin and increase holdings on a per-share basis. Metaplanet last added to its Bitcoin holdings in early July, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET.
Michael Saylor’s Strategy remains the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, with more than 840,000 BTC. However, the company has also sold Bitcoin in recent months to fund dividends, share repurchases and its US dollar reserve, highlighting some of the capital-management challenges facing publicly traded Bitcoin treasury companies.
Magazine: ‘Fabricated rumors’ about BitMart founder, Binance bStocks dominate: Asia Express

Asset manager Neuberger has launched its first tokenized fixed-income fund through Securitize, offering an actively managed high-yield strategy across four blockchains, Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX) and Sui (SUI).
The Neuberger Securitize High Income Tokenized Fund (HINC) will invest primarily in high-yield bonds, with additional exposure to collateralized loan obligations and leveraged loans, according to an announcement Tuesday.
The launch comes as investors are demanding higher yields amid heated competition for corporate and government funding.
“The previous market regime rewarded investors for assuming that capital would remain cheap and plentiful,” Saxo chief investment strategist Charu Chanana said in a Tuesday client note. “The emerging regime may reward investors for recognising that capital has a price again.”
The new fund is available to qualified investors, with Securitize providing the infrastructure to issue and manage tokenized shares across the four blockchain networks.
Neuberger will serve as subadvisor to a tokenized fund for the first time. Its fixed-income platform manages more than $230 billion in assets, while the firm manages about $613 billion overall.
Securitize has about $4.96 billion in distributed asset value across 26 tokenized real-world assets, according to RWA.xyz data. Its products include BlackRock’s $2.7 billion BUIDL fund, a $355 million tokenized AAA CLO fund and a $95 million Apollo diversified credit fund.
The company’s shares rose around 5% in Tuesday morning trading, giving the company a market capitalization of about $838 million. Despite the gain, the stock remains down more than 50% from levels reached shortly after its public debut in July.
Securitize’s distributed asset value. Source: RWA.xyz
Magazine: ‘Fabricated rumors’ about BitMart founder, Binance bStocks dominate: Asia Express

Bitcoin (BTC) hit $65,000 after Tuesday’s Wall Street open as US stocks rebounded in spite of geopolitical pressure.
Key points:
Bitcoin reaches $65,000 for the first time since Aug. 10 as risk assets navigate fresh US-Iran signals.
Analysis warns of surging US 30-year bond yields, which hit 29-year highs of 5.34%.
BTC price analysis flags decision time on a head-and-shoulders bottoming structure.
Bitcoin diverges from US stocks as Trump says Strait of Hormuz “open”
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD building on the week’s gains as the S&P 500 bounced from 7,696, its lowest level since Aug. 4.
BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
This came after US president Donald Trump posted a map of the closed Strait of Hormuz oil route to Truth Social where it was labeled “new US territory.”
Both the US and Iran lay claim to control of Hormuz, with Trump threatening US ally Oman with military action over its plans to work with Iran on charging tolls to shipping traffic. In a subsequent post, Trump confirmed that further diplomacy with Iran was not on the agenda.
“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated,” he wrote.
S&P 500 one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
As on Monday, oil avoided major volatility, with WTI crude down 1% at the time of writing at $84 per barrel. US government bonds continued to show strain, with the 30-year yield hitting 5.34%, its highest since January 2007.
“Bond prices are sending warnings,” BNY Mellon analyst Geoff Yu wrote in a research note quoted by the New York Times. Yu said that the surge came as “investors demand more compensation for inflation risk,” while also attributing the upside to government borrowing.
US 30-year bond yields one-month chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
BTC price faces crunch rebound test
Updating X followers on BTC/USD, trader and analyst Aksel Kibar eyed the culmination of a potential reverse head-and-shoulders pattern at $62,300.
“If $BTCUSD is going to rebound, it has to come from here,” he argued on Monday.
Kibar offered a $53,000 target in the event of the head-and-shoulders structure failing, with $76,000 a potential upside target should the rebound sustain.
BTC/USD one-day chart. Source: Aksel Kibar on X.com
Previously, Cointelegraph reported that underwater investors were contributing to Bitcoin’s inability to break higher. Its rebound to $64,500 also stopped short of an overhead trend line, the 50-month exponential moving average (EMA). This moving average is now in place as resistance at $65,827.

Toyota’s finance arm is launching a tokenized bond that retail investors can buy directly through the Japanese carmaker’s mobile payment app, Toyota Wallet.
Toyota Finance said Tuesday that applications have opened for the one-year bond, with investments starting at 100,000 Japanese yen ($676). The new bond will be distributed directly by Toyota Finance, allowing investors to buy it without opening a securities account.
The 1 billion yen bond carries a 1.72% annual interest rate and will be managed on blockchain infrastructure provided by Japanese security-token firm BOOSTRY.
The carmaker said the direct distribution model will allow it to integrate applications, communications with bondholders and investor benefits within the same ecosystem.
Investors may also receive Toyota Wallet balances and qualify for benefits including Fuji Speedway tickets and test-drive experiences, including in Lexus and selected classic Toyota vehicles.
The offering is Toyota Finance’s second security token bond following its debut issuance in March 2025, which was sold through securities companies.

MoonPay has integrated Cash App Pay as a payment option for cryptocurrency purchases, allowing eligible US customers to fund transactions using their Cash App balances.
The crypto payments company said in an announcement shared with Cointelegraph Tuesday that Cash App Pay is now available through MoonPay’s own checkout and with select partners, including Trust Wallet, Bitcoin.com, MetaMask, Moonshot, Ledger, BitPay, Uniswap, Tangem, LOBSTR and Edge.
The integration lets customers use their Cash App balance to buy crypto directly through MoonPay without switching between apps or completing a separate login.
MoonPay now supports payment integrations with Cash App, PayPal and Venmo, having added PayPal in 2024 before later expanding to Venmo.
Cash App, the mobile payments service operated by Jack Dorsey’s Block, already allows customers to buy and sell Bitcoin directly through its app. The MoonPay integration broadens that access to a wider range of cryptocurrencies. Cash App reported 59 million active users in June, according to Block’s second-quarter shareholder report.
“Cash App is where tens of millions of Americans already manage their money,” MoonPay co-founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright said. “This integration means that those users can access the digital asset ecosystem, funded instantly from an app they already know and trust.”
Expansion beyond crypto onramps
MoonPay is licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services through a BitLicense and Limited Purpose Trust Charter, and is authorized under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation in the Netherlands.
The company has spent much of 2026 on an acquisition spree as it expands beyond its traditional fiat-to-crypto onramp business. It acquired Solana trading infrastructure provider DFlow in May, following an April deal for crypto security firm Sodot as part of a broader push into institutional crypto services.
In July, it acquired cross-chain infrastructure startup Glide and launched PayBox, a vault that lets ChatGPT and Claude users authorize crypto transactions while keeping custody of their assets.
Asia Express: ‘Fabricated rumors’ about BitMart founder, Binance bStocks dominate

Bitcoin (BTC) short liquidations hit their highest in almost one month as it hit $64,500 on Monday, new data reveals.
Key points:
Bitcoin passed $64,000 thanks to a short squeeze on derivatives markets, CryptoQuant says.
An ongoing downward funding-rate reset from 0.006% to 0.003% over 24 hours could mean further short squeezes.
The absence of spot demand raises doubts whether the upside is sustainable after a week of $267.2 million in net ETF outflows.
Bitcoin short liquidations near one-month high
BTC/USD rallied after Sunday’s weekly close, gaining up to 3% on Monday to top out at one-week highs of $64,550 on Bitstamp.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Examining the impetus behind the latest BTC price gains, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant pointed to illiquid markets and funding-rate imbalances among exchanges.
Before rebounding on Monday, BTC circled near $62,750. Around this level, funding rates between exchanges began to diverge. Shorts were dominant on major platforms such as Binance, Bybit, OKX and Deribit, while the funding rate on HTX briefly spiked to 0.05%.
Funding rates refer to periodic payments exchanged by long and short traders on Bitcoin derivatives markets in order to maintain their positions. Positive aggregate funding rates show that long traders are actively paying shorts, with the reverse true for negative funding rates.
“This crowded short positioning served as the primary catalyst, fueling a short squeeze that drove prices higher,” CryptoQuant continued.
BTC/USD one-hour chart with exchange funding-rate data (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant
Data puts total Bitcoin short liquidations at 637 BTC for Monday, the largest single-day tally since July 21.
Describing the event as a “low-volume liquidity trap,” CryptoQuant nonetheless suggested that the market could see more short squeezes next, with funding rates already declining again as traders increase short exposure.
Bitcoin short liquidations. Source: CryptoQuant
Crucial spot demand remains absent
Previously, Cointelegraph reported that Bitcoin futures markets accounted for the majority of trading volume in the current range, with spot traders broadly uninterested.
In further analysis on Monday, CryptoQuant called the lack of spot demand the primary hurdle to sustained upside, alongside the lack of inflows to the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
“A break below $60K alongside rising exchange inflows would weaken the structure and increase downside risk toward $50K. Selling pressure is cooling, but demand still needs to return,” it commented.
Recent buyers who remain underwater on their BTC allocation have helped cement the current trading range. Short-term holders — wallets holding a UTXO for less than 155 days — have their cost basis at around $68,700, reinforcing that level as resistance.

China’s central bank has added eight banks to its digital yuan network, bringing the number of e-CNY operating institutions to 30.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) added Ping An Bank, Hengfeng Bank, China Bohai Bank, Bank of Shanghai, Bank of Hangzhou, Huishang Bank, Bank of Changsha and Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank, according to a Xinhua report published Monday on the government’s website.
The banks will be connected to the PBOC’s digital yuan system and begin offering services after completing operational and technical preparations.
The expansion follows the addition of 12 institutions in April, when city commercial banks joined the operator list. Before this year’s additions, only 10 banks were authorized operators, with Industrial Bank the last to join in 2022.
Dong Ximiao, chief researcher at Merchants Union Consumer Finance, said new operators could fill gaps in services for regional small and medium-sized enterprises and cross-border trade.
The PBOC began researching a digital currency in 2014 and launched pilots in late 2019. China has since expanded the e-CNY into merchant payments, public utilities and government services. The central bank said it would continue expanding the operator network to promote competition and broaden access.

South Korean authorities have ordered access to Polymarket to be blocked after determining that the crypto prediction market provides an illegal gambling environment to users in the country.
The country’s media and communications review commission said Tuesday that Polymarket falls under information that facilitates gambling or the opening of a gambling venue under the Criminal Act, as well as prohibited analogous betting activity under the National Sports Promotion Act.
The regulator said Polymarket’s winner-takes-all structure, where users can gain or lose money based on outcomes including politics, sports and weather, encourages speculative gambling behavior. It also cited Polymarket’s role in operating markets, setting trading rules, providing crypto deposit, withdrawal and settlement systems and collecting transaction fees.
In its statement to the commission, Polymarket argued that it had removed Korean-language services, does not support payments in Korean won and operates through noncustodial transactions and smart contracts rather than directly managing user funds.
The commission rejected those arguments, saying technical characteristics such as decentralization, trading interfaces and order books do not exempt a service from South Korean law.
France, Australia and Germany are among countries that have also blocked access to Polymarket on gambling-related grounds.

Hardware wallet maker BitBox has released a firmware update that fixes two vulnerabilities it described as “severe” that could have enabled the installation of malicious firmware or put user funds at risk.
In a security disclosure on Monday, BitBox said one involved memory corruption affecting Multi editions of BitBox02 and BitBox02 Nova that had not been configured with a wallet. A malicious host could exploit it to execute arbitrary code and potentially install malicious firmware, which could lead to lost funds.
The second affected BitBox’s Silent Payments implementation and could have allowed a malicious host to lock Bitcoin to an unintended address. Direct theft was not possible, but an attacker could potentially demand a ransom to cooperate in recovering the coins, according to BitBox. The company said it had received no reports of either vulnerability being exploited or causing users to lose funds.
The disclosure comes at a sensitive moment for self-custody, after a Coldcard firmware flaw was linked to more than $112 million in Bitcoin thefts, underscoring how weaknesses in devices designed to protect private keys can become points of failure.
Cointelegraph reached out to BitBox for more information but did not receive a response before publication.
BitBox patch follows Coldcard thefts, wallet data leaks
The BitBox security update follows a wave of hardware-wallet incidents involving devices and the services surrounding them.
The most damaging was the Coldcard flaw, which traced to a March 2021 firmware change that went undetected for more than five years. The vulnerability affected wallet-seed randomness, allowing attackers to brute-force impacted wallet seeds and derive their private keys without physical access.
Galaxy Research said Friday that Coldcard-related losses had exceeded $112 million, with about 1,778.6 BTC swept from more than 8,600 addresses.
More recently, separate data breaches involving Trezor and SafePal exposed customer and order information belonging to more than 53,000 customers. Trezor attributed the exposure of 13,689 customers’ data to shipping provider ShipMonk, while SafePal said an authorization flaw in an order-tracking plug-in exposed details belonging to 39,798 customers.
Neither incident compromised devices, private keys or recovery phrases, but both companies warned that the information could enable targeted phishing and impersonation attacks.
Magazine: Do the Coldcard attacks mean all hardware wallets are now insecure?

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has warned that some wallets, indexers and gas estimators may break because of gas-model changes in the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade.
On Monday, the EF’s Protocol DevOps team said any tool relying on a hardcoded maximum gas limit “will break” and must be updated. It urged developers to test their systems on Plataberget, a public testnet intended to operate for several months.
According to upgrade tracker Forkcast, Plataberget launched on Aug. 13. Meanwhile, the Glamsterdam fork is scheduled to activate on the network on Thursday, before its deployment on the Sepolia and Hoodi testnets.
The EF’s Protocol DevOps team said EIP-8037 would introduce a separate state-gas dimension for operations that create new state. Under the changes, a plain ETH transfer to an existing account would still cost 21,000 gas, while sending ETH to a new account would incur an additional state-gas charge.
The foundation said developers should revisit software that assumes 21,000 gas covers every ETH transfer or uses only one gas dimension when estimating transaction costs.
Glamsterdam also includes enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists and increased limits for contract and initialization-code sizes.

South Korea’s Jeonbuk Bank has partnered with blockchain payments company Ripple to deploy its cross-border payment system for business customers.
On Tuesday, Ripple said its Ripple Payments platform would let the bank’s customers settle overseas transfers in seconds to minutes, with operations around the clock. The service targets businesses including import-export companies, technology startups and online content creators.
Ripple said its system would provide the bank with faster, less expensive remittance capabilities than conventional transfers routed through intermediary banks via the SWIFT messaging network, which can take several days.
The companies did not disclose whether the service is already available to Jeonbuk Bank customers or identify the supported payment corridors, currencies, fees or expected transaction volumes. They also did not say whether transfers would use XRP, Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, another digital asset or fiat-based settlement rails.
The deal is Ripple’s third partnership with a South Korean financial institution this year. Ripple previously partnered with Kyobo Life Insurance to explore onchain government bond settlement and with internet-only Kbank on institutional wallet infrastructure.
Cointelegraph reached out to Ripple for more information but did not receive a response before publication.

Edward Zimbardi, the alleged mastermind of a $165 million crypto Ponzi scheme, was returned to the United States after being deported from Fiji to face federal fraud and money laundering charges.
On Monday, the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said that Fijian authorities deported Zimbardi on Friday in coordination with the FBI and State Department. He was scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate judge in Los Angeles, with prosecutors seeking his detention pending proceedings in Georgia.
Prosecutors allege Zimbardi promoted a scheme called “The Crypto Program” from June 2022 to August 2023 as an advertising-package investment promising guaranteed returns of 25% monthly. Thousands of investors allegedly sent over $165 million in crypto to wallets he secretly controlled.
Instead of purchasing advertising packages, Zimbardi allegedly placed more than $34 million in risky foreign currency trades, used later investments to pay off earlier investors and spent at least $10 million on personal expenses, including a house, luxury vehicles and alimony.
Zimbardi was indicted July 8 on 12 counts of wire fraud, 12 counts of money laundering and one money laundering conspiracy count. Prosecutors allege he fled to Fiji after learning of the FBI investigation and remained there for more than a year.

CLARITY odds narrow as bill enters the final straight
Galaxy Digital has lowered its estimate of the CLARITY Act’s chances of passing in 2026 to just 10%. In May it had estimated the chance of passage at 75%.
Multiple political issues remain unresolved and the Senate only has 14 days in session to pass the bill after it reconvenes on Sept. 14.
Unless an initial motion to proceed vote occurs immediately upon lawmakers’ return to Washington, there would only be enough time for the CLARITY Act to pass if it “dominates basically the entire working session,” wrote Galaxy head of research, Alex Thorn.
If the bill doesn’t pass, the SEC and CFTC plan to step into the breach by issuing their own rules for crypto markets. The SEC scheduled an open meeting on Friday to unveil its “clear rules of the road” but then cancelled it due to an “an unforeseen scheduling issue.” The White House was reportedly unhappy that the SEC going rogue on crypto rules could anger Democrats and scuttle the delicate negotiations underway to pass CLARITY.
SEC chair Paul Atkins, President Donald Trump and a series of big wigs from Coinbase, a16z, Ripple, Chainlink, NYSE and Nasdaq will meet at the White House on Wednesday to discuss crypto regulation and explore ways to get the bill over the line.
The following day the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s new Innovation Advisory Committee will meet to discuss regulation of crypto, AI and prediction markets.
Crypto companies seek access to frontier AI cybersecurity capabilities as fears of more hacks grow
Cryptocurrency companies including Anchorage Digital, BitGo, Bitwise, Blockstream, Ledger and Trezor have urged frontier artificial intelligence (AI) labs to give Bitcoin developers early access to their most capable models.
An open letter, published by the Bitcoin Policy Institute said Bitcoin Core devs and other crypto developers are being blocked by guardrails on publicly available frontier systems, leaving them to rely on less capable open-weight models.
“Without dedicated access programs, defenders may lack the tools needed to keep pace with evolving threats to the infrastructure they maintain.”
The threat from AI identified exploits has become a key focus after $116 million was stolen from Coldcard hardware wallets. The Bitcoin Red Team subsequently used AI to identify thousands of potential cybersecurity issues using open source Chinese models.
New threats to hardware wallet owners have continued to emerge over the past few days, with the personal details of more than 50,000 users leaked in two separate incidents. Trezor reported a breach of personal data affecting about 14,000 users through its shipping provider, ShipMonk. Users who received its products from the US, UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal between May 10 and Aug. 8 are now at high risk from potential phishing attacks using their personal information.
Cryptocurrency wallet provider SafePal has also just disclosed its own data breach that saw unauthorized access to almost 40,000 customers’ order information, including names, addresses and purchasing data. It has since identified and taken down more than 30 fraudulent websites and phishing links tied to the breach.
CFTC and states battle over who gets to regulate prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has ordered prediction market Kalshi to ignore New York’s restraining order and continue operating normally.
The CFTC said that New York’s enforcement action against Kalshi for operating an illegal gambling business constituted a market emergency as it would bar Kalshi from operating prediction markets nation-wide. It believes the Commodity Exchange Act requires the CFTC to provide a uniform national derivatives market. CFTC Chair Michael Selig said that Congress did not intend derivatives exchanges to face a “patchwork of state gaming laws.”
A few days later a Washington state judge ordered prediction market platform Kalshi to stop operating in the state and rejected its argument that federal commodities law preempts Washington gambling law. Kalshi has been ordered to implement IP-address and residency-based geofencing by Aug. 19 and a GeoComply multi-source geofencing system by Sept. 2.
Even the New York City Council wants to regulated prediction markets and it has launched an investigation into prediction market firms to examine if they are using “false and deceptive marketing” through influencers to target young adults.
Ethereum Foundation revamps post-quantum plan and narrows scope for Hegota hard fork
The Ethereum Foundation is moving away from the Poseidon hash function in its planned post-quantum architecture, according to researcher Justin Drake.
On Thursday, Drake said the foundation would instead rely on established and battle tested alternatives such as SHA or BLAKE.
Poseidon is a relatively new hash function tailored to work better with zero knowledge proofs, which will help compress large post quantum signatures sizes. However, Drake said new developments mean that SNARKS can be tailored to work better with existing hash functions.
A production-ready leanVM is targeted for 2027, followed by deployments across Ethereum’s consensus, data and execution layers in 2028.
Ethereum developers are also reviewing 66 proposals to narrow them down as part of scoping the next major Ethereum upgrade to follow Glamsterdam called Hegotá
Censorship resistance proposal FOCIL is currently the only Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) scheduled for inclusion. A number of other EIPs are focused on privacy.
Core developers aim to ship the Hegotá upgrade next year, while Glamsterdam is expected in the coming months.
Tether completes first full financial audit, receives clean KPMG opinion
Tether has finally completed the first full independent audit of its annual financial statements, with KPMG US issuing a clean opinion on the stablecoin issuer’s 2025 accounts.
The audit covered Tether’s balance sheet, income statement and cash flows for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, including the assets backing its issued tokens and the liabilities they represent. Tether said the audited statements showed reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion.
Unlike Tether’s quarterly reserve attestations, which it has published for years, the full audit subjected the company’s broader financial statements and underlying evidence to independent examination.
Winners and Losers
At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is down 3.3% to trade at $62,842, Ethereum (ETH) is down 2.3% to trade at $1,872 and XRP (XRP) is down 4.2% to 99 cents. The total market cap is at $2.16 trillion according to CoinMarketCap.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are Velvet (VELVET) with a 131% gain, Ether.fi (ETHFI) on 31%, and Chainlink (LINK) on 14%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are Uniswap (UNI) which was down 18%, Aptos (APT) down 12% and Pepe (PEPE) down 11%.
Top Prediction of the Week
Bitcoin could bottom in October, altcoins are ‘basically dead,’ Swan CEO says
Bitcoin could bottom in October before recovering to around $130,000 in 2028, according to Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten.
He argued that Bitcoin has so far bottomed about 12 months after each previous bull market peak, and the previous peak was in October last year.
He told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin could fall to $57,000, or even $53,000, before a quick recovery, and could reach around $130,000 ahead of the 2028 halving.
Top FUD of the Week
Bitcoin to $1M by 2030 is ‘mathematically impossible’ says Markus Thielen
The numbers behind the oft-cited prediction that Bitcoin will reach $1 million by 2030 simply don’t add up, according to Markus Thielen, head of research at 10x Research.
“It’s mathematically impossible,” Thielen told Trade Secrets, arguing that Bitcoin would need to attract another $15 trillion in capital to reach a per Bitcoin price of $1 million. This is equivalent to roughly 25% of the US stock market’s total value flowing into Bitcoin over the next four years.
“We have seen $1 trillion US dollars of inflow to bring the market cap really to $1 trillion. To $1 million [per] Bitcoin. It’s 15x, I think, from here.”
Bitcoin price-metric basket sees longest capitulation since FTX blow-up: Glassnode
Bitcoin is seeing its longest capitulation since the end of the 2022 bear market, onchain analytics platform Glassnode reported on Monday.
The firm said that forty-five Bitcoin (BTC) price metrics it tracks under the Bitcoin Cycle Position Heatmap show the longest “capitulation” phase since the collapse of FTX in late 2022. But it warned that aggregate readings will have to get even worse to match areas that marked previous bear-market bottoms, says creator Rafael Schultze-Kraft.
“Today it sits in its coldest stretch since FTX: late in the bear, but not yet the unanimous deep blue that previously marked a floor,” he commented.
Missouri trio charged over alleged Bitcoin kidnapping plot
Three Missouri men were charged over an alleged August 2024 plot to kidnap a Bitcoin holder and steal his holdings.
Sedric Louis, John Davis and Martel Williams were allegedly hired to kidnap and force a Bitcoin holder to transfer cryptocurrency to accounts controlled by organizers, according to a Tuesday press release by the US Attorney’s Office. They traveled from St. Louis to Connecticut, where they rented vehicles and obtained air rifles to stake out the victim.
After staking out the intended target for two days, they abandoned the plan for fear of being caught on home security cameras. Shortly afterward, another crew from Florida arrived to carry out the plan.
Top Magazine Features of the Week
El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment turns 5: ‘It was for us, not them’
Five years after El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender, the experiment has fallen short of its original promises for locals, but it’s been great for Bitcoin’s global profile.
Inside the fake crypto startup that fooled North Korean IT workers
Suspected North Korean IT workers joined a fake crypto startup — without realizing their every move was being tracked to extract valuable intel.
Solana’s fee overhaul increases burn and makes resource hogs pay
Solana’s proposed fee overhaul would make resource-heavy transactions more expensive while cutting costs for simpler activity, and it increases the amount of SOL burned.

Amid scrutiny and accusations of conflicts of interest from many lawmakers, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) gave conditional approval for World Liberty Financial’s application for a national trust bank.
In a Friday notice, the OCC said the conditional approval for World Liberty’s charter application, subject to certain regulatory and policy requirements, would allow the company to operate under the title World Liberty Trust Company, National Association. According to its application, the World Liberty bank proposed issuing US dollar-backed stablecoins and custodying digital assets related to the company’s USD1 token.
The OCC approval came amid concerns about potential conflicts of interest between World Liberty and US President Donald Trump’s family. The president and his three sons are affiliated with the company, and the head of the OCC, Jonathan Gould, was nominated by Trump in 2025. World Liberty’s website also said a Trump family entity controlled 38% of the company’s equity interests.
According to the agency, “the Comptroller and staff acted consistently with their statutory duties and ethical obligations with respect to the Application.” Gould previously said that the application would be reviewed in an “apolitical and nonpartisan process” following a letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren.
In response to the approval, Warren said on Friday that she had introduced legislation “to stop this kind of unprecedented corruption,” calling the OCC’s move “the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen.” She and nine senators introduced the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act following the approval.
Under the Trump administration and Gould, the OCC has approved or conditionally approved multiple applications from crypto companies seeking trust charters to expand their services in the US. In December, the agency approved applications from Circle, Ripple Labs, Crypto.com and Coinbase following passage of the GENIUS stablecoin bill in Congress.
World Liberty’s UAE ties under scrutiny in US Congress
Amid the OCC approval, many lawmakers are continuing to call for investigations into World Liberty’s ties to foreign entities potentially influencing US policy through Trump.
An Abu Dhabi investment company backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser, reportedly purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty in January 2025 for $500 million. Another UAE entity, MGX, used World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin to invest $2 billion in crypto exchange Binance. Trump later issued a presidential pardon for former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
A White House spokesperson has repeatedly said that there were “no conflicts of interest“ with Trump’s investments.
Magazine: El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment turns 5: ‘It was for us, not them’

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is reportedly planning to apply for a license with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in a move expected to relaunch certain services for residents in 2027.
According to a Saturday report from The Telegraph, Binance will apply for the UK license as new digital asset laws are set to take effect in the country. The FCA said in June 2021 that Binance’s UK arm, Binance Markets Limited, was “not permitted to undertake any regulated activity in the UK,” and the exchange announced in 2023 that it would halt onboarding of new users in response to the UK watchdog’s rules on financial promotions.
A Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the exchange “does not comment on speculation surrounding potential licence applications.” The company did not respond to questions on its existing operations in the UK.
Under the FCA’s crypto regulatory framework, announced in June, companies will have from September until Feb. 28, 2027, to submit applications before the regime goes live on Oct. 25, 2027. David Geale, executive director of payments and digital finance at the FCA, said the framework would hold crypto companies to “similar standards” as other UK financial service providers.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is preparing to solicit public comment on futures contracts tied to computing capacity, a critical resource for artificial intelligence development, as major exchanges move to launch products tied to the emerging asset class.
Bloomberg reported Monday that the regulator sent a request for comment to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review. The move could complicate the timeline for planned compute futures from CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange, whose products remain subject to regulatory approval.
Once the White House review is complete, the CFTC is expected to open a public comment period, typically lasting 30 or 60 days, according to Bloomberg. The review signals that regulators are still weighing questions around a market that would allow participants to trade and hedge the cost of computing power.
CME announced last week that it plans to launch two compute futures contracts on Oct. 5, pending regulatory approval, effectively turning AI computing capacity into a tradable commodity alongside oil and electricity. Market intelligence firm Silicon Data will provide the benchmarks used to price the contracts.
The products are being launched as artificial intelligence reshapes the economy and investment landscape, driving a historic buildout of data centers and computing infrastructure. Recent estimates from TD Lombard, Goldman Sachs and Bridgewater Associates put AI infrastructure spending at roughly 2% to 2.5% of US GDP this year.

The US Department of the Treasury issued a notice of proposed rulemaking related to the implementation of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, a bill to establish a framework for payment stablecoins signed into law last year.
In a Monday notice, the Treasury Department said that it was opening a proposed rule up to public comment ahead of the January 2027 implementation of the GENIUS Act. Under the terms of the bill, the stablecoin law had been scheduled to go into effect 120 days after agencies finalize rules, or 18 months after it was passed in July 2025, making its effective date Jan. 18, 2027.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the department “welcomes input from stakeholders as [it works] to provide the regulatory certainty businesses need to innovate and grow in America.”
Together with the Treasury Department, other US government agencies including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board have issued notices of proposed rules in 2026 related to the implementation of GENIUS. However, all departments reportedly missed the 120-day deadline in July to finalize regulations before January, signaling that GENIUS could go into effect without clear guidance.
According to Treasury, once the GENIUS Act goes into effect, an entity generally may not “issue a payment stablecoin” in the US without a related federal or state license. Public comment on the department’s proposed rules is open for 60 days following publication in the Federal Register.
US-UK regulators discuss GENIUS progress
In July, the UK-US Financial Regulatory Working Group met in London to discuss cooperation between the two country’s financial agencies, including implementation of the GENIUS Act.
Although UK authorities have taken steps to address stablecoin regulation, the pending implementation of GENIUS has some crypto industry insiders arguing the country is falling behind the US.
Magazine: Data of 54,000 wallet users leaked, CLARITY odds just 10%: Hodler’s Digest

Bitcoin (BTC) returned to $64,000 after Monday’s Wall Street open as US stocks gave way to gold.
Key points:
Bitcoin continues a rebound from Sunday’s weekly close, gaining 2% on Monday.
Oil stays steady after US president Donald Trump threatens to bomb Oman over the Strait of Hormuz.
Bitcoin funding rates hit 20-month highs of 0.022 last week, data reveals.
Bitcoin inches up as US-Iran rhetoric spreads to Oman
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD up by more than 2% on the day, rebounding from Sunday’s weekly close.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
US equities turned lower as an agreed 60-day ceasefire between the US and Iran was set to expire, with the S&P 500 index down 0.5% from Thursday’s all-time highs.
S&P 500 one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Speaking to Fox News, Trump threatened Oman with military action amid an ongoing dispute over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz oil route.
“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s*** out of them,” he told the network.
Oil markets appeared unfazed by the tensions, with WTI crude flat at $82.35 per barrel at the time of writing.
Safe haven gold was more volatile, gaining just over 1% to start the week to reach a daily high of $4,427 per ounce. Earlier, Cointelegraph reported on a combination of retail and government interest fueling gold’s multiweek highs.
XAU/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Data from investment research platform Bytetree tracking the 30-day change in inflows to gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) put the figure at nearly $12 billion through Aug. 13.
In a note on Monday quoted by Investing.com, Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett wrote that long gold remained the trade, describing it as “still [sic] best hedge against dollar debasement, bond collapse, asset inflation, capitalist populism vs socialist populism politics of 2020s.”
Funding rates hit levels not seen since late 2024
In its latest Market Color bulletin published on Monday, trading company QCP Capital noted Bitcoin’s continued ability to weather macro tailwinds without a major breakdown from its current range.
“Rather than treating individual price levels as directional signals, the more useful observation is that BTC remains close to the lower end of its recent range. A sustained move outside that range would provide more information about market positioning than the relatively contained moves seen within it,” it wrote.
Earlier, Cointelegraph reported on expectations that a return to $61,000 would trigger an unwinding of BTC long positions, adding to downside BTC price momentum.
The latest data from CoinGlass showed liquidations remaining muted as BTC/USD returned toward $64,000, with 24-hour cross-crypto liquidations at $180 million.
Crypto liquidation history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass
In a sign of long BTC becoming an increasingly crowded trade, derivatives market funding rates hit 20-month highs of 0.022 on Aug. 14, per data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant.
“The derivatives market sentiment is positive within the current BTC price range, indicating that most traders are taking long positions,” it commented on the readings.
CryptoQuant previously noted that futures trading volume on Binance was outweighing spot markets by almost eight times.
Bitcoin funding rates chart. Source: CryptoQuant

Tom Lee’s Bitmine Immersion Technologies, an Ethereum treasury company, resumed its Ether purchases last week, bringing it closer to a key business target of owning 5% of the second-biggest cryptocurrency’s supply despite challenging market conditions.
The company disclosed Monday that it acquired 9,926 Ether (ETH) during the week ending Aug. 16, bringing its total holdings to roughly 5.82 million ETH, or about 4.8% of Ethereum’s circulating supply. At an ETH reference price of $1,893, Bitmine’s Ether holdings were valued at roughly $11 billion. However, much of the company’s ETH was acquired at significantly higher prices.
Ether’s price was little changed on Monday, sitting just above $1,900.
The latest purchase puts Bitmine within striking distance of its long-term “Alchemy of 5%” target of holding 5% of the total ETH supply.
Bitmine’s conviction has been tested by a prolonged bear market for Ether, which has sharply eroded the value of its digital asset treasury. The company is sitting on more than $8.4 billion in unrealized losses on its ETH holdings, according to industry data.
With a portfolio value of more than $11 billion, BitMine’s unrealized losses are around 43%. Source: DropsTab
Still, Bitmine has continued accumulating Ether, making purchases every week since launching its ETH treasury strategy in June 2025.
Bitmine’s staked Ether approaches $10 billion in value
Although Bitmine is sitting on large unrealized losses on its Ether holdings, its staking operations continue to generate yield. The company said it is staking more than 5 million ETH, worth roughly $9.6 billion at current prices.
That staking has enabled Bitmine to earn protocol rewards for helping secure the Ethereum network, providing a predictable source of yield regardless of short-term ETH price movements. Based on a seven-day staking yield of 2.61%, Bitmine projects annualized staking rewards of roughly $287 million, according to Lee.
Related: Crypto Biz: Bitcoin’s $116M self-custody wake-up call