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Strangers on the internet minted a token about fat mountain rodents. It has since raised more than $120,000 and rescued a 64-year science project that federal grants abandoned.
The token is OnlyMarms (ONLYMARMS). It trades on Solana, and its fees flow to a field lab in Colorado. The scientists did not create it. They just claimed the money.
Why a 64-Year Study Ran Out of Money
Kenneth Armitage started counting yellow-bellied marmots in 1962 and ran the project until 2001. UCLA has kept it alive since.
The lab needs $75,000 to $100,000 a year. That pays graduate students and a five-month field season near Crested Butte. Almost none of it is skimmed, because UCLA takes only 6% overhead on gifts.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded decades of that work. Then the renewals stopped coming.
The squeeze is national, not personal. NSF had issued 5,684 new grants by Aug. 19, Nature reported this week. That is 46% below its 2021 to 2024 average, and the lowest count in over 40 years.
Under the Trump administration, roughly $1 billion of the NSF’s $8.8 billion budget sits unspent in a holding account.
Trump's attacks on science continue: US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.https://t.co/4UJez6vSVe pic.twitter.com/pgGsOUw5A9
— Daniel P. Aldrich urbanists.social/web/@dpaldrich (@DanielPAldrich) August 21, 2026
So UCLA professor Daniel Blumstein put the marmots on OnlyFans in June. The account cleared roughly $6,000. Nowhere near enough.
How OnlyMarms Memecoin Fees Pay for Marmot Science
Fans then minted a token with the same name. On-chain records show the first pool opened on July 25.
Supporters told the scientists to register as the creator. That registration is the whole trick. Pump.fun pays trading fees straight to whoever holds it.
Under its Pump.fun creator fee model, small tokens earn up to 0.95% of every trade. The rate slides toward 0.05% as a coin nears a $20 million valuation.
So every buy and every panic sell paid the lab. Fees hit $88,000 in two weeks, then passed $120,000. The coin was already outraising the OnlyFans account by early August.
Julien Martin, a University of Ottawa professor who co-leads the study, assumed the token was a scam at first.
“I’m completely amazed that this internet culture that I barely know of has raised so much money,” Julien Martin, University of Ottawa, via the Guardian.
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HELLO??????a scientist was just live on national news saying that a pumpfun coin $OnlyMarms is single handedly keeping their organization afloat (which researches and helps preserve protected animals) after having all their funding cut off by the Trump administration???WHAT… pic.twitter.com/3hMBZf7glO
— Jack Duval🌊 (@jackduval) August 20, 2026
The Hard Part Is Making It Last
The hype has already cooled. ONLYMARMS peaked at $0.0036 on August 4. It is now trading near $0.0014, down about 61%, at a $1.24 million valuation.
ONLYMARMS Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Volume is the paycheck here, so volume is the number to watch. The token turned over $503,623 in 24 hours. At the rates above, that is a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a day. Sellers also outnumbered buyers in the main pool.
History is unkind too. Moo Deng, the pygmy hippo coin of 2024, now trades 93% below its peak. Moo Deng’s 2024 crash shows how quickly animal tokens lose their crowd.
Galaxy Research analyst Will Owens put the median Solana meme coin hold time at 100 seconds. A year earlier it was 300. His work on who profits from meme coins argues launchpads and bots take the real cut.
That is the awkward math. A charity funded by churn needs the churn to keep going.
Martin wants a broader token that funds science beyond marmots. He also knows the trick may not work twice.
“It worked for us because we were the first. But it has been nice to see crypto be used for good,” Julien Martin, University of Ottawa, via the Guardian.
A doctoral student costs about $300,000 over four years. The marmots are $180,000 short. Whether strangers keep trading long enough to close that gap is the next test.

Bitcoin (BTC) gained more than 20% in five days, delivering the stock market’s average annual return about 140 times faster. The run then stalled at $79,500, just 0.6% short of $80,000.
BTC traded near $76,750 on Friday, up 6.6% on the day. That leaves $80,000 about 4% away. The daily relative strength index (RSI) sits at 84.64, its highest reading of 2026.
How Bitcoin Outran the Stock Market by 140 Times
The math is simple. Since 1928 the S&P 500 has compounded at 10.02% a year, dividends included, per New York University’s Stern School dataset.
Spread across five days, that yearly gain works out to 0.137%. Bitcoin did 20% in the same window. Call it 140 times the pace.
Low to high, the run reached 27%. BTC is heading for its strongest weekly close in two years.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Speed is not recovery. BTC still trades 39% below its record $126,080, set in October 2025.
Washington lit the fuse. The Treasury said on August 19 it would at least double its long-end bond buybacks, from $2 billion per operation to $4 billion.
The purchases cover 10-year to 30-year debt and run from September 9 through November 4. Long yields had just touched 20-year highs. Bond desks read it as a backstop.
Leverage did the rest. Bearish traders lost $1.06 billion in a day as short positions unwound.
Spot buyers showed up too. US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) took $517.2 million on August 19, then $606.3 million on August 20. That was August’s biggest day, per Farside Investors.
Three Resistance Layers Block Bitcoin’s Path to $80,000
Friday’s candle opened at $73,027 and ran to $79,500. Then sellers took over. That high hit the rising trendline drawn off February’s lows. Bitcoin climbed it all spring. June’s slide to $58,000 broke it.
Friday’s rally returned to the line from below and failed. Old support now works as resistance.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: TradingView
Two more walls sit in the same pocket. A shelf at $79,427 capped May’s high. The round $80,000 sits just above.
Bitcoin’s current price has to clear all three. Support starts at Friday’s $73,027 open.
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Weekend Odds Favor Digestion Over a Breakout
Jamie Coutts of Helios Analytics weighed the jump against how calm the market had been. It ranks fifth since 2018.
What is the medium- to long-term read on this week's $BTC rally? Firstly, anyone drawing a trend line will notice a break in the downtrend on the daily chart. But what does the magnitude of the move tell us? Once you volatility-adjust the move (Bitcoin has been in a structural… pic.twitter.com/gVU7X0TxOc
— Jamie Coutts CMT (@Jamie1Coutts) August 21, 2026
He found 14 comparable moves. Bitcoin sat higher 71% of the time 30 and 90 days later. The median gain was near 10%. A random day since 2018 returned 1.2%.
The extremes run wide. A similar jump in April 2019 led to a 118.7% gain over 90 days. One in October 2019 led to a 23% drop in 30.
Coutts calls 14 examples a thin sample. His own significance tests came back short of proof.
His table prices the pain too. In the median case BTC dipped 8.4% below entry within 90 days.
Medium- to long-term read on this week’s BTC rally. Source: Jamie Coutts
“There is a wall of overhead supply at the low $80k range it needs to work through,” wrote Coutts, chartered market technician at Helios Analytics.
On-chain data leans the other way. CryptoQuant shows spot and futures demand positive together for the first time since October 2025.
A separate quicktake ties the bounce to MVRV, which compares price with what holders paid.
Analyst Darkfost put net new demand at a 2026 high of 25,000 BTC. That weighs new coins against coins idle over a year.
Bitcoin MVRV Ratio. Source: CryptoQuant
“BTC looking strong here. Rallies like this in bear markets usually signal the bottom is in. Might see a dip, but the bear phase is pretty much done imo,” said Ki Young Ju, founder and chief executive of CryptoQuant.
So can Bitcoin reach $80,000 this weekend? Possible, but not likely.
Weekend books run thin. Fewer large buyers trade Saturday and Sunday. Clearing three walls with RSI at 84.64 (overbought) takes size.
A slide back toward $73,000 would cool that reading without wrecking the week. Bitcoin’s longer-term outlook now rests on whether the low $80,000s give way.

An investor can sell a share in Morgan Stanley’s new Ethereum Trust during market hours. The trust may need weeks, or months during a stressed queue, to free some of the Ether (ETH) behind it.
Why such a large timing gap? The crypto exchange-traded product, or ETP, holds ETH behind shares that trade on NYSE Arca. Under normal market conditions, 50% to 80% of that ETH is expected to sit in Ethereum’s validator system, earning rewards while exposed to protocol penalties and withdrawal delays.
Morgan Stanley launched the trust, ticker MSSE, on July 28 alongside a Solana product. Its annual sponsor fee is 0.14%. Figment, Galaxy Blockchain Infrastructure and Coinbase Canada operate as staking providers. The custodians and staking providers are expected to receive 5% of gross staking rewards, leaving 95% in the trust.
The wrapper makes the investment easier to buy and hold. It also converts validator performance, key security and Ethereum’s withdrawal mechanics into fund-level financial risks. The useful question is therefore wider than the quoted APR. Which balance sheet stands between a protocol loss and the shareholder?
There is a legal distinction worth keeping in view. The offering is registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Act of 1933. The trust is not an investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, and its investors do not receive the protections attached to funds governed by that law. “ETP” is the more precise label.
BeInCrypto spoke with Eva Lawrence, Head of Revenue at Figment; Nitin Gaur, Head of Institutions at Nethermind; Benjamin Sarquis Peillard, Founder and CEO of Cap; and Edward Wu, Head of BloFin Research, about how the risk moves through the structure.
When a Validator Error Hits the Share Price
Ethereum pays validators for checking the network and following its rules. It can destroy part of their staked Ether and force them out after certain violations, including signing conflicting messages. A correlation penalty raises the cost when many validators are slashed around the same period. One faulty process repeated across a large validator fleet can therefore be more damaging than a series of isolated mistakes.
Slashing remains rare compared with the size of Ethereum’s validator set. Its distribution through time still matters because the largest spikes have tended to come from shared operational failures.
Figure 1. Ethereum slashing events recorded by month, January 2021–February 2026. Source: Rated Network
For an ETP investor, the protocol does not send a separate bill. The trust holds less Ether and its net asset value reflects the loss. Eva Lawrence, Head of Revenue at Figment, explains:
“In an ETP structure, slashing penalties (for misbehavior, downtime or misconfiguring) would hit the fund’s asset base and reduce NAV. Investors see this as a share price impact rather than a direct asset loss. But slashing on institutional-grade validators is rare and for a provider like Figment, we have never had a double signing slashing event on Ethereum. The best staking providers also carry slashing coverage.”
Morgan Stanley’s custody arrangement limits one obvious danger. Its staking providers receive validator keys used to perform validation duties. The custodians retain the private keys that control the trust’s assets and withdrawal addresses. A validator operator cannot transfer the principal to another wallet.
That protection does not settle the economic liability. The trust can retain ownership of its ETH and still lose assets through a penalty caused by the operator. Its prospectus says compensation may be subject to conditions, exclusions and evidentiary requirements. It may exclude protocol-wide events or software failures and may arrive late, cover only part of the loss or never become available.
Nitin Gaur, Head of Institutions at Nethermind, puts the issue in financial terms:
“A staking ETP is a yield product inside a fund vehicle sitting on an operational risk the fund documents may not have priced. The questions worth asking are not about the protocol: who absorbs a slashing event, is the indemnity backed by a balance sheet that could pay it, and what happens when the exit queue is longer than the settlement cycle.”
The result is a loss waterfall. Protocol code acts first. The trust then looks to the relevant provider agreement, its liability limits and any available coverage. NAV carries whatever remains.
The Provider’s Balance Sheet Becomes Part of the Product
Staking providers are often assessed like technology vendors: uptime, security controls and commission rates. An ETP makes their contractual liability and financial capacity part of the investment structure.
Benjamin Sarquis Peillard, Founder and CEO of Cap, said:
“Asset managers should judge providers on incident history, key management architecture, and what the legal contract says happens in the worst case: who gets made whole first and who’s left holding the bag for the loss. These asset managers should be underwriting the provider almost like any other critical piece of financial infrastructure. A high advertised staking yield means very little if the provider doesn’t have the operational controls, security architecture, and financial capacity to manage an incident when something goes wrong.”
The same scrutiny applies to diversification. Three provider names do not necessarily create three independent risk pools. They may run the same validator client, depend on the same cloud region or use similar key-management processes.
Lawrence said:
“When all validators for a provider run on the same cloud region or software stack, a single outage affects the full position simultaneously. Operators with concentrated infrastructure can fail synchronously, while providers with multi-cloud, multi-geography architecture remain operational. Note that diversifying across multiple providers does not guarantee resiliency: if those providers rely on the same cloud vendors, client software, or geographic regions, they share the same failure points.”
This turns provider selection into a correlation exercise. An asset manager needs to map the underlying client software and hosting footprint, then test how key-management and anti-slashing systems behave during maintenance or failover.
Gaur argues that the apparent provider count can obscure a common dependency:
“Concentration, meaning their share of network stake and whether their infrastructure correlates with everyone else’s: if your provider and half the network sit in the same cloud region running the same client, you do not have independent risks, you have one. Key management and anti-slashing architecture, and whether your stake is segregated or commingled.”
The September 2025 SSV Labs post-mortem shows how this can happen. Two incidents affected one validator and then a cluster of 39. SSV said its protocol had not been compromised. The larger event came from a maintenance mistake that ran the same validator keys simultaneously in two infrastructures. The code behaved as designed; duplicated operations created the loss.
A Liquid Share Sits over a Withdrawal Queue
Staking changes the liquidity profile of the asset held by the trust. Ethereum limits how many validators can enter or leave over a given period. That protects network stability and prevents a large set of validators from moving at once.
For a fund, the constraint appears on both sides of the trade. Ether waiting to enter the validator set earns no staking rewards. Ether waiting to exit cannot be sold to meet redemptions. Morgan Stanley’s prospectus says unstaking may take days in quiet conditions and multiple weeks or months when exit demand rises.
The queue can move sharply. On July 6, the prospectus recorded roughly 2.71 million ETH waiting to enter and an estimated activation delay of 47 days. On August 21, Rated Network showed an activation queue of about 38 days, an exit queue below one hour and a withdrawal queue close to ten days. A liquidity policy built around one observation can age quickly.
Lawrence describes the issuer-level risk as follows:
“Staking may require assets to be locked for a period of time and in the case of Ethereum, queued for exit during an “unbonding” period, creating potential liquidity mismatches, particularly if redemptions exceed available unstaked assets.”
The trust manages that mismatch by leaving part of its ETH unstaked. More liquidity gives it a larger pool for redemptions. It also reduces the share of the portfolio earning rewards. The expected 50% to 80% staking range is therefore one of the product’s most important economic variables.
Galaxy has been selected by @MorganStanley Investment Management as an approved validator to power staking for two new digital asset ETPs: Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust (MSSE) and Morgan Stanley Solana Trust (MSOL). Both products aim to track the performance of ETH and SOL,… pic.twitter.com/z65FCvKCQi
— Galaxy (@galaxyhq) August 18, 2026
The Math Behind the 95% Reward Pass-Through
Morgan Stanley’s 0.14% sponsor fee sits below several large US crypto ETPs. The existing comparison is straightforward: investors can see the annual fee charged against NAV.
Figure 2. Morgan Stanley’s 14-basis-point launch fees compared with selected US crypto ETPs. Sources: Morgan Stanley, Grayscale, Franklin Templeton, Bitwise and BlackRock.
The staking charge uses another denominator. Custodians and staking providers receive 5% of gross staking rewards. They do not receive 5% of the trust’s assets. The trust retains 95% of rewards earned on the portion of ETH that is actually staked.
So, a 3% protocol yield does not create 3% of gross income across the trust when only 50% to 80% of its Ether is working. It creates a gross portfolio yield of 1.5% to 2.4% before the reward charge and sponsor fee.
The current network rate offers a useful illustration. Rated Network showed a 2.81% Ethereum network APR on August 21. Rounding that to 2.8%, a 50% staking allocation would produce gross rewards equal to 1.4% of NAV.
After the 5% staking charge and 0.14% sponsor fee, the estimated contribution falls to about 1.19%. At an 80% allocation, the equivalent estimate is about 1.99%.
Figure 3. Estimated annual staking contribution to NAV across Morgan Stanley’s planned 50%–80% staking range.
These figures are illustrations, not forecasts. They assume a constant protocol APR and exclude activation delays, penalties, taxes and extraordinary expenses. They show why “95% of rewards” is incomplete without the staking ratio and the fixed fee.
The fixed sponsor fee also takes a larger share of income as protocol rewards fall. Scale matters because the issuer still has to pay for custody, monitoring and operational controls when the yield pool shrinks.
Sarquis Peillard sees an important commercial test here:
“A fee like a 0.14%-with-95%-pass-through only works at scale when the economics of the fee make sense; a smaller issuer copying that fee without the volume to cover secure custody and slashing coverage should raise some suspicion. That’s the part of the economics investors should pay attention to. Low fees and high reward pass-through look attractive, but staking still requires secure infrastructure, custody, monitoring, and risk management. If the economics don’t appear to pay for those things, investors should be asking what is actually being sacrificed to make the numbers work.”
Who Pays When Staking Goes Wrong?
Disclosure tells investors where a loss may land. A funded protection mechanism changes the order in which capital absorbs it.
Edward Wu, Head of BloFin Research, argues that regulated staking products could create a first-loss layer between provider failure and investor capital:
“Asset managers could require providers to post funded bonds, maintain dedicated slashing reserves, or contribute a portion of staking revenue to a pooled protection fund. These mechanisms would give regulated products a more explicit loss-absorption layer and reduce the immediate impact of smaller staking penalties on investors.”
That would make the promise measurable. A reserve has a disclosed size. A funded bond can be compared with the value at risk. Contractual compensation without ring-fenced capital depends on exclusions, the provider’s solvency and the time required to enforce a claim.
Legal design can fail independently of validator performance. In February 2023, Kraken agreed to end its US staking-as-a-service programme and pay $30 million to settle SEC charges. Its validators did not need to malfunction for the product to become unworkable. Regulatory treatment changed the business around them.
Staking ETPs give investors a listed share and familiar brokerage settlement. Their financial architecture sits in the staking ratio, exit policy, provider agreements and the balance sheets standing behind compensation promises. The APR can be compared in seconds. The loss waterfall still has to be read line by line.

Two Solana meme coins climbed on Friday after a viral X (Twitter) post pulled a flood of token pitches into its replies. Jimothy The Raccoon (JIMOTHY) rose 41% in 24 hours.
Bullshit Coin (BULLSHIT), a Solana token built on self-aware jokes about meme coin culture, gained 21% over the same window. Neither move followed a project announcement.
How One X Post Moved Two Solana Meme Coins
Nate Esparza, a senior technical product manager for ads at SpaceXAI, wrote on Friday morning that the crypto community on X is “insane.”
the crypto community on 𝕏 is insane
— Nate Esparza (@Nate_Esparza) August 21, 2026
SpaceXAI is the company Elon Musk formed in February by folding his artificial intelligence venture xAI into SpaceX.
The viral post saw traders answer with raccoon images, green bull graphics and direct pitches for their tokens.
JIMOTHY trades near $0.0096 with a market cap of about $9.7 million, according to Coingecko data. BULLSHIT sits near $0.0038.
Jimothy the Raccoon (JIMOTHY) Price Performance. Source: Coingecko
Volume told the sharper story. BULLSHIT turned over roughly $4.7 million in 24 hours, more than its entire market value. Thin Solana meme coin markets often trade that way.
Meanwhile, the wider sector has leaned on the same loop all year. Attention arrives first and liquidity follows. Neither token carries a roadmap, a treasury or a product, which leaves social reach as the only visible driver.
Why the Jimothy Meme Keeps Pulling Bids
Jimothy is a real raccoon in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood with short spine syndrome, a congenital condition that leaves him short and rounded. Marketing specialist Kiana Hall filmed him in July, and the clip drew millions of views.
An unusually round raccoon in Seattle nicknamed “Jimothy” has gone viral, inspiring murals, tattoos, and even a city proclamation.Marketing specialist Kiana Hall recorded him on July 14 waddling through Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. She initially mistook the compact creature,… pic.twitter.com/6EMIVzqjY1
— Mosheh Oinounou (@Mosheh) July 20, 2026
City recognition, a mural and a token followed. The Solana token launch rode that fame to a 186% gain in July.
Musk has amplified the theme before. On August 8, he posted a raccoon video that sent JIMOTHY up 331% within hours. He has not posted about Friday’s exchange.
Friday’s move was smaller and arrived without him. That gap matters, because it suggests the reply machine now moves the Jimothy price chart without a headline account attached. Whether these gains survive the weekend will show how much of the bid was attention and how much was conviction.

Bitcoin and XRP are surging toward their strongest weekly closes since 2024, powered by a historic short squeeze and a wave of supportive policy signals from Washington.
On-chain data now adds another layer, hinting this rally could mark more than a temporary bounce.
Bitcoin & XRP Prices Performance. Source: CoinGecko Bitcoin and XRP Surge as On-Chain Data Flashes a Rare Bottom Signal
The MVRV ratio compares Bitcoin’s current market value to its realized value, the average price at which coins last moved. Sharp vertical rises in this metric have historically preceded major cycle bottoms.
Bitcoin trades above $79,000, up roughly 25% over the past seven days and more than 13% in the last 24 hours, according to BeInCrypto data. Analysts called this the biggest weekly gain since February 2024, adding approximately $280 billion to market capitalization in under five days.
CryptoQuant analyst Crypto Dan flagged the MVRV signal as notable. He described the rebound as the first powerful signal in this bear cycle, echoing patterns seen at the end of previous downcycles.
“Bitcoin’s recent rebound is a signal that has emerged for the first time in this Bear cycle. The MVRV indicator, which measures Bitcoin’s present valuation, is showing a vertical rise. This signal is the very movement that appeared as the bottom range came to an end in every past downcycle. suggesting that the possibility of the market turning from decline to ascent is growing,” Crypto Dan said. Bitcoin (BTC).
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Price Analysis. Source: Crypto Dan/CryptoQuant
XRP outperformed even more dramatically. The token changed hands near $1.40, up about 31% on the week and more than 18% for the day, after hovering near or below $1 just days earlier. Analysts called this XRP’s strongest week since November 2024.
Strong $XRP comeback breaching the YEARLY downtrend resistance and triggering the BULLISH reversal pic.twitter.com/sxxaqwlDdC
— Rand Group (@randgroup) August 20, 2026
A historic short squeeze drove most of the move. Billions in leveraged bearish positions were liquidated as prices broke higher, forcing sellers to buy back coins and accelerating the rally.
The US Treasury doubled long-term bond buybacks, while President Trump voiced support for the CLARITY Act at a White House meeting.
Crypto Market Liquidations – 24 Hours. Source: Coinglass What Comes Next for Bitcoin and XRP?
Technical analysts are watching key levels closely. Trader Ted pointed to Bitcoin’s powerful weekly candle, which has smashed through multiple resistance zones.
The next major test lies between $78,000 and $80,000, and a successful reclaim could signal the end of the bearish structure that has dominated since late 2025.
$BTC weekly candle is just insane.Breaking above every resistance level like it's nothing.Now, Bitcoin is moving towards its $78,000-$80,000 resistance zone.A reclaim of this will confirm the end of this bear market. pic.twitter.com/lxvivlLMkb
— Ted (@TedPillows) August 21, 2026
For XRP, analyst ChartNerdTA emphasizes the weekly 20 and 50 EMAs, which are currently trading between roughly $1.20 and $1.50.
A sustained reclaim of those moving averages would mark a genuine macro bullish shift, while failure to hold above them could trigger consolidation or a deeper pullback toward longer-term support.
For $XRP to witness a true bullish shift, both the weekly 20/50 EMAs must be reclaimed. These averages have guided the macro downtrend: currently resting between the $1.20-$1.50 range. Anything beneath warrants potential compression to the 400 WSMA, which was a 2024 launchpad 👇 pic.twitter.com/ZuQeVOaw6g
— 🇬🇧 ChartNerd 📊 (@ChartNerdTA) August 20, 2026
The short-term momentum looks undeniable, though the market remains volatile. Traders will watch whether the rally transitions from squeeze-driven gains into sustained organic demand, particularly through ETF flows and continued on-chain activity.
A healthy consolidation after such a sharp move would not be unusual and could set the stage for the next leg higher.
Both assets have reminded the market how quickly sentiment can reverse when catalysts align. The coming days will reveal whether this breakout marks the start of a durable recovery or a temporary relief rally.
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Take-Two Interactive shed roughly $2.83 billion in market value in under two days after new GTA 6 footage suggested the leaker Cyberleek is playing a live build of Rockstar’s unreleased game.
Shares have since clawed back part of that loss. Meanwhile, malware disguised as the leaked build now circulates on piracy sites.
What the New GTA 6 Footage Actually Shows
Cyberleek has posted clips and images across several days. One video shows the character Jason spraying the word LEEK onto a wall with bullets. Therefore, the account appears to control a playable build rather than leftover test material.
Other clips show a plane flight across Vice City and a cutscene about VPN use. Forbes reported that the build likely dates from 2025. Rockstar and Take-Two have stayed silent, however.
The group ties the leaks to three demands. It wants a disc release, no paywalled solo DLC, and full offline access. Those terms work as conditions for stopping the drops. One report framed the campaign as an attempt to extort Rockstar over its all-digital plan. Sony met a similar revolt during its PlayStation disc backlash in July.
That consumer-rights posture carries a commercial edge. Cyberleek stamps its releases with cryptocurrency advertisements and recently ran a paid poll. Reporters tracking the drops also flagged links pointing to an apparent crypto scam. The pattern reads less like protest and more like a monetized leak operation.
Rockstar still targets Nov. 19 for launch. Take-Two confirmed that release date in a July filing. An extended GTA 6 look also premieres on Netflix on Aug. 27 at 3 p.m. ET, six days from now.
Why Shares Slid, Then Steadied
TTWO traded at $248.13 before the leaks spread on Aug. 18. The stock then slid to $232.84, a drop of $15.29 a share. That move cut about $2.83 billion from Take-Two’s market value, by one tally.
The stock later closed at $240.15, up 1.31%, and TTWO trades 6.81% lower this year. Roughly $1.5 billion of the loss is still outstanding. Shares also fell as pre-orders opened in June.
GTA 6 publisher Take-Two stock chart. Source: TradingView
Investors have seen this film before. A 2022 breach pushed roughly 90 Rockstar clips online, yet sales never suffered.
Fans face the sharper risk. No playable GTA 6 build sits on piracy sites, despite the download links now spreading there.
Malware disguised as leaked GTA 6 copies are popping up on piracy sites. https://t.co/egYtxyAML7 pic.twitter.com/wcXWva3g2P
— IGN (@IGN) August 20, 2026
Those files are malware. NordVPN told IGN the fake downloads have circulated all year and surged alongside the new leaks.
Skipping the download links is the only safe move. Similarly, a fake app drained a wallet last week after reaching Apple’s store.
Rockstar’s silence leaves the true scope of the breach unclear. Next week’s Netflix reveal gives the studio a chance to reset the story.

Ethereum (ETH) climbed above $2,430 on Friday, its highest price in roughly four months, as US spot ETFs absorbed their largest daily inflow since October, and whales pulled fresh supply off Binance.
The altcoin has gained 29% over the past week. At press time, it traded at $2,422. Despite the price gain, not every large holder is buying.
Ethereum (ETH) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
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Ethereum ETF Demand Hits a 10-Month Peak
US-listed Ethereum ETFs took in $220.77 million on August 20, per SoSoValue data. This is the strongest daily haul since October 28, 2025.
The inflow capped a four-day run of positive flows worth $512.25 million. Demand accelerated through the stretch, climbing from $30.85 million on August 17.
Total net assets across the funds reached $13.58 billion, the highest since May 11. Cumulative net inflows now stand at $11.97 billion.
The strength extends beyond Ethereum. Bitcoin also surged to $79,000 for the first time since mid-May
Whales Split as Ethereum Rallies
On-chain data shows large holders moving in both directions. Lookonchain flagged wallet 0x2d59 as withdrawing 30,000 ETH, worth $67.42 million, from Binance.
This wallet has now taken 120,000 ETH off the exchange over three weeks, valued at $237.7 million. Abraxas Capital withdrew another 18,000 ETH worth $39.56 million.
A newly created wallet, 0x2261, moved out 6,704 ETH worth $14 million from the same exchange.
A hacker is buying $ETH as the price rises!As the market rallied, an unknown hacker spent $38.53M to buy 18,272 $ETH at an average price of $2,109.https://t.co/q5r3UhR9vl pic.twitter.com/p8ejs1SSvE
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) August 20, 2026
On the other hand, sellers are just as active. According to Lookonchain, 7 Siblings offloaded 14,000 ETH for $32.85 million at an average price of $2,346.
Wallet 0xFD10 swapped 11,252 Lido Staked Ether (stETH) and 1,824 ETH into 30.78 million Tether (USDT). Whale 0x4cee booked a $1.76 million profit on 5,250 ETH.
Exchange outflows point to accumulation, yet the selling shows conviction is far from uniform above $2,400.
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Bitcoin Infinity Day arrives on Friday, August 21, and the ritual comes with one rule. Holders either buy Bitcoin or sit on their hands, because the day forbids selling.
The date hides a code. Rotate the 8, and it becomes the infinity symbol, while 21 points at Bitcoin’s fixed cap of 21 million coins.
How Bitcoin Infinity Day Started
Swedish author Knut Svanholm floated the idea on August 10, 2021. He framed it as a coordinated pause in selling, and the hashtag spread across X within days.
Ok, here's the first idea for #BitcoinInfinityDay on Aug 21 (♾/21M)On the 21st of August you either buy or #HODL . Selling #bitcoin for any reason on this day is not allowedIf we can get enough people to do this, the price will be almost guaranteed to go up on that day! pic.twitter.com/4iUIOLGnYT
— Knut Svanholm ∞/21M (@knutsvanholm) August 10, 2021
Knut Svanholm. Source: X
Svanholm built his work around one line of arithmetic, everything divided by 21 million. Put every asset on Earth over a fixed denominator, and the answer carries no ceiling.
That thought produced the ∞ / 21M symbol, which he still keeps in his display name. In practice, the rules stay simple. Buy any amount, or do nothing at all. Sellers get no exemption, not for rent money, not for profit taking.
Five years on, the day has become a fixture on the Bitcoin calendar. The community reposts the infinity tag every August, so the ritual now outlives the tweet that started it.
The argument rests on scarcity. Value can climb toward infinity because the supply schedule never bends, however the coin count stays frozen at 21 million. Adam Back rejected a push to lift Bitcoin’s supply cap earlier this month, calling the case a false narrative.
HODL Rules Meet a Market That Just Flipped to Greed
This year, the timing looks kinder. Bitcoin trades near $75,360 after a 8.37% daily jump, and its market value has climbed back above $1.51 trillion.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
Sentiment turned with it. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index flipped fear into greed overnight on Thursday, climbing from 46 to 62.
Short sellers paid for the swing. Exchanges wiped out short positions worth roughly $1.06 billion in a single day, and the squeeze then fed on itself.
Even so, the record stays distant. Bitcoin peaked at $126,080 on October 6, 2025, so the price still sits about 40% lower.
Scarcity talk survived that drawdown. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao warned last week that millionaires soon cannot afford one full Bitcoin. Dormant and lost coins, he argued, keep shrinking the tradable float.
Conversion stories still surface as well. Entrepreneur Jeff Booth spent 15,000 hours of research at breaking Bitcoin, never managed it, and changed how he invests.
Supporters argue that a synchronized bid, however small, shows the market what fixed supply looks like when demand refuses to blink. Critics counter that one Friday of restraint barely registers against global spot volume.
Nobody has proven that a single coordinated day moves the price. Still, the ritual hands holders a shared script, and this year the market shows up in a better mood.

Most Americans view President Donald Trump’s crypto earnings as improper, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in which 63% of respondents called the profits his family drew from digital assets inappropriate.
The same survey found that 69% believe his private business interests shape his presidential decisions. Half of Republican respondents shared that view.
Poll Puts Trump’s $1.4 Billion Crypto Income Under Scrutiny
The online survey covered 1,166 US adults between August 14 and August 17. It carried a margin of error of 3 percentage points for all Americans and 5 points for each party group.
About 32% of respondents defended the family’s crypto earnings. Among Republicans, roughly 69% described it as appropriate, while 27% did not.
Americans’ View on Trump’s Crypto Profit. Source: Reuters
The sums involved are large. Trump reported more than $1.4 billion last year from family crypto ventures, according to his financial filings. Those ventures included World Liberty Financial (WLFI) and his self-branded meme coin.
Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, noted that the mix of business and office has no modern parallel.
“We have seen nothing like this before, even the first Trump administration did not have as many complex business interests as the second,” he said.
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White House Rejects Conflict Claims as Midterms Near
White House has repeatedly dismissed the criticism, affirming that independent financial institutions manage the President’s investments and that no conflicts exist.
“There are no conflicts of interest…The President only acts in the best interests of the American public,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement.
Congressional pressure has grown regardless. Senate Democrats requested committee hearings in July into the national security implications of the President’s crypto holdings.
Token performance complicates the political argument. Official Trump (TRUMP) trades near $1.7, down about 81% over the past year, and Trump-endorsed tokens sit below their pre-endorsement prices.
Official Trump (TRUMP) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
Public dissatisfaction stretches beyond his digital asset ventures. A separate Financial Times poll this month found 53% of registered voters said their finances had worsened under his presidency.
Democrats led Republicans 44% to 39% in that survey. Whether that translates into seats will be settled in November.
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Benjamin Cowen’s call that Bitcoin (BTC) would bottom in the back half of 2026 and accumulation would follow is holding up so far, with the asset’s July 1 low still standing more than seven weeks later.
The call mattered because Cowen made it in public, in real time, rather than in hindsight. He had spent the first half of 2026 telling followers to sit out Bitcoin entirely, a stance that drew plenty of skepticism as the asset ground lower through the spring.
From Call to Confirmation
With Bitcoin’s price climbing rapidly now, rather than retesting that low, Cowen’s midterm cycle thesis has now moved past its call stage and into confirmation. Cowan notes that he called Bitcoin accumulating as of July 1, and that this recent rally seems to have erased fears of a further low in the minds of most; but not necessarily Cowan.
For those that feel the need to dunk once again, I will remind you that I stated on July 1st (the current low) that the accumulation period for Bitcoin had begun.There is still a decent chance that something happens in Q4 like in prior midterm years that forces one final… https://t.co/ZFyOqLy0Zg
— Benjamin Cowen (@benjamincowen) August 20, 2026
The accumulation phase he flagged on July 1 is the phase Bitcoin appears to be rapidly reveling in today, not a forecast still waiting on price action to catch up. However, there is still speculation that this could be a bull trap, even from Cowan.
A Floating Warning, Not a Forecast Change
Cowen has not dropped his caution entirely. He still puts a “decent chance” on one more leg down in the fourth quarter, with a floor near $44,000 if prior midterm years repeat.
That pattern comes from 2014, 2018, and 2022, the three prior cycles where Bitcoin ground through a rough first half before finding its footing later in the year.
Cowen has put a rough timeline on that scenario too, pointing to a window that stretches into late October.
But he does not treat the Q4 scenario as make-or-break for his outlook. Asked directly what happens if nothing bad materializes in the fourth quarter, Cowen answered in three words.
“life goes on”
Attribution: Benjamin Cowen
The reply captures how he is framing the risk, as a possible dip to watch for rather than a condition his broader thesis depends on.
Whether or not the fourth quarter delivers a fresh low, Cowen maintains Bitcoin should perform well heading into 2027, and his accumulation call already has price action behind it.

MANTRA (MANTRA) slid to an all-time low of $0.0041 as the project froze its blockchain and said an attacker was targeting a vulnerability in an upstream dependency.
The record low came as the rest of the market climbed, extending a rally that accelerated on Wednesday.
Why MANTRA Halted Its Chain
MANTRA Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain built for tokenizing real-world assets, was halted earlier today. Its initial notice said all endpoints and transactions were frozen.
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We're aware of an incident affecting MANTRA Chain and have halted the chain as a precaution while we investigate. All endpoints and transactions are currently frozen.This means deposits and withdrawals to/from MANTRA Chain are temporarily affected. If you're unsure how this…
— MANTRA | The EVM L1 for RWAs (@MANTRA_Chain) August 21, 2026
A later update named the cause. The team pointed to an attacker exploiting a vulnerability in an upstream dependency, meaning third-party code the chain relies on rather than software it wrote itself.
“Earlier today, we detected an attacker exploiting a vulnerability in an upstream dependency used by the chain and halted the network as a precaution,” the update read.
MANTRA said it has identified the vulnerability and is now preparing a patch. Its validators and infrastructure remain offline until the upgrade is ready.
“Resuming the network will require a coordinated restart with the wider validator set — we will not resume until the patch is verified and that coordination is in place,” it added.
The team is also tracing where funds moved and has contacted exchange partners. Deposits and withdrawals remain paused at affected venues, and the total scope of the impact remains unconfirmed. The team also warned holders to ignore anyone offering recovery help.
MANTRA Misses a Market-Wide Rally
The incident has also impacted the token. MANTRA changed hands at $0.0044 at press time, down 8.5% on the day.
MANTRA Token Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
That slide ran against the broader market. Bitcoin (BTC) topped $75,000 earlier today as short liquidations reached $1.06 billion. Other major cryptocurrencies also traded higher, lifting the total crypto market capitalization by nearly 4% over the past day.
The incident marks the network’s second major crisis in 16 months. Its token, then known as OM, lost nearly 90% of its value in April 2025, wiping out about $5.5 billion in market value in less than an hour.
The project retired the OM ticker this March. A non-dilutive 1:4 split at block 13,000,000 converted each OM into four MANTRA, and the token posted a 37% launch-day rally.
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Japan’s headline inflation rate reached 1.9% in July, its highest level this year, as the Iran conflict pushed energy costs higher and the yen drifted back toward 159 per dollar.
Both readings now point the Bank of Japan toward the same decision in September, when its board next meets to set the policy rate.
Energy Costs Lift Japan’s Inflation to a 2026 High
Core inflation, which excludes fresh food but keeps energy, matched forecasts at 1.8%. The so-called core-core rate, stripping out both, came in at 1.9%.
Energy prices climbed for the first time since November 2025 despite government support. That fed into wholesale inflation, which reached 7.2% in July.
Electricity charges were the largest contributor. Fresh food prices climbed 7%, a sharp acceleration from the 3.9% increase recorded in June.
Analysts have said subsidies from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s administration are holding down consumer prices. The measures shield households from energy costs.
Meanwhile, the BOJ warned last month that core inflation would clearly move above 2% starting in the second half of its 2026 fiscal year, which runs from September to March. It cited wage increases feeding into selling prices, higher crude oil prices, and the recent depreciation of the yen.
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Intervention Gave Carry Traders a Cheaper Entry
The joint US-Japan operation lifted the yen from roughly 164 per dollar to about 155 per dollar. Most of that move has since unwound, even though Japan’s intervention firepower remains substantial.
USD/JPY Performance. Source: Google Finance
Nonetheless, Japanese investors treated the stronger yen as an opportunity to double down on the carry trade. They net bought more than 5 trillion yen of foreign equities and long-term bonds in the two weeks to August 15, reversing net sales of more than 300 billion yen.
“Intervention has ‘turbo charged’ the carry trade for fundamental & long-term investors,” Jesper Koll, expert director at Monex Group, told CNBC.
The US-Japan 10-year yield spread stood near 1.8 percentage points on August 20. The wide gap continues to support the carry trade by preserving the incentive to fund investments in higher-yielding overseas assets with relatively low-yielding yen.
That dynamic is unlikely to change materially unless the Bank of Japan raises rates enough to narrow the yield differential.
Both Pressures Point the BOJ the Same Way
This leaves the BOJ facing pressure from two directions at once. July’s inflation print argues for tightening, and so does a currency the market keeps selling back down.
Traders have already moved. Polymarket now assigns 84% odds to a 25-basis-point increase at the September 17-18 meeting, against 15% for no change. Those odds sat near 21% earlier.
Polymarket odds chart for the Bank of Japan September decision showing a 25 bps increase at 84%. Source: Polymarket
The BOJ lifted its policy rate to 1% in June, the highest level since 1995. Whether one more quarter-point move does anything to a 1.8 point yield gap is the question September leaves open.
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Spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $606.29 million in net inflows on August 20, marking a fourth consecutive day of inflows. The total is the largest single-day haul the funds have seen since May 1.
Spot Ethereum (ETH) ETFs added $221 million the same day, also extending a four-day inflow streak. The dual demand landed as bitcoin traded at $75,524, continuing a market-wide rally that has run through the week.
Bitcoin ETFs Extend a Four-Day Run
Thursday’s inflow followed $517.19 million on August 19, $189.30 million on August 18, and $297.56 million on August 17. Combined, the four-day run has pushed cumulative net inflows for the category to $53.40 billion.
Inflows have been growing as BTC’s price rallied. Image Source: SoSo Value
The last time Bitcoin ETFs booked a bigger single day was May 1. That day, the funds pulled in $629.73 million, and total net assets crossed $100 billion for the first time.
BlackRock’s IBIT led the day’s inflows with $502.99 million, more than 80% of the day’s total. The broader crypto market rally that has lifted Bitcoin this week has coincided with a wave of short liquidations squeezing bearish positions across the market.
Ethereum Demand Builds Alongside Bitcoin
Ethereum ETFs have moved in step with their Bitcoin counterparts. The category booked $189.15 million on August 19, its largest single-day inflow in 10 months, before adding a further $221 million on August 20.
The simultaneous four-day streaks in both categories suggest institutions are building positions across both assets rather than rotating between them. Total value traded across Bitcoin ETFs reached $5.41 billion on August 20, and total net assets stood at $90.16 billion.
Whether the pace holds into next week may depend on the rally itself. Four straight days of buying could give way to profit-taking if momentum stalls.

Solana started halving its block time, taking the first step from 400 milliseconds down toward 200. The first cut lands at epoch 1020, one of the roughly two-day windows the network uses to schedule changes.
Anza’s Agave software carries all four steps, and each one switches on separately. Solana will end up producing a new block every fifth of a second.
Solana Doubles Its Blocks Per Second
Today Solana makes about 144 blocks per minute, or roughly two and a half every second. At 200ms that rate doubles to 300 blocks a minute.
Faster does not mean bigger. Each block shrinks in step with the clock, so the network carries the same total load. Blocks simply arrive twice as often in smaller pieces.
The rollout runs in four steps of 50 milliseconds each. Validators can pause the sequence at any point if too many blocks start getting skipped. Anza has called its timetable tentative for that reason.
The live tracker at solana.com/200ms showed 96.7% of stake already running the required software. Meanwhile, 690 validators and 435 million SOL in active stake sat behind the upgrade.
Solana block time dashboard. Source: Tracker solana.com/200ms
Reliability stays the open question. Solana came within reach of a network halt in August after a routing fault knocked 28.83% of staked SOL offline. Validators were also slow to adopt an urgent patch earlier in 2026.
400ms → 350ms → 300ms → 250ms → 200msMonitor the speed up live: https://t.co/tS8xMp5yW9
— Solana (@solana) August 20, 2026
How Solana Stacks Up Against Bitcoin and Ethereum
Bitcoin produces one block every 10 minutes. Solana at 200ms would turn out 3,000 blocks in that same window.
Ethereum runs closer to 12 seconds per block. Solana already ticks roughly 29 times faster, and the gap widens to 60 times at the final stage.
Those numbers flatter Solana, yet finality tells a different story. Solana needs about 13 seconds to settle a transaction for good. Ethereum takes closer to 13 minutes, while Bitcoin asks for about an hour.
Alpenglow, a consensus overhaul targeting 150ms finality, attacks that second gap. Anza has penciled in the third quarter for its first phase, carried by the Agave 4.3 release. Shorter blocks and faster settlement therefore solve different halves of the same problem.
Traders Reward the Speed Push
Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, who posts as toly, framed the pace against an earlier cut.
It took 2 days to go from 800ms to 400ms
toly
That comparison sets a rough expectation for the remaining stages. However, Anza has committed to no firm dates.
SOL traded near $89 after a 5.8% daily gain. The move holds the token seventh by market cap at $52.3 billion. A dormant whale that banked $20 million in 2023 also returned to buy SOL on Tuesday.
The token rode a wider meme coin rally worth $3 billion in a single day. Grayscale separately named the network among altcoins positioned to benefit from new US token rules. Faster blocks strengthen that pitch, provided Solana keeps its skip rate steady.

Bearish crypto traders absorbed $1.06 billion in short liquidations over 24 hours as the total crypto market capitalization rose 3.7%.
Liquidations across the market reached $1.24 billion. The wipeout caught 141,191 traders, while long positions gave up only $174.41 million.
Bitcoin Drove the Bulk of Short Liquidations
Bitcoin (BTC) alone drove $789.68 million of the losses after climbing 8.4% to $74,998. The cryptocurrency touched an intraday high of $75,744 early Friday, its strongest print since May 27.
That peak stopped narrowly below the True Market Mean of $75,800. Ethereum (ETH), followed by $206.88 million in liquidations, while XRP (XRP) added $41.94 million.
Crypto Liquidations on August 21. Soure: Coinglass
According to BeInCrypto Markets data, XRP led the large caps with a 16.2% daily gain to $1.26. Ethereum climbed 10.1% to $2,315, comfortably ahead of Bitcoin’s move.
The XRP price rally extends one of the token’s strongest stretches since 2020. Meanwhile, sentiment has swung from fear to greed in a matter of days. Perspective still matters.
Despite an 18.4% weekly gain, Bitcoin trades roughly 40% below its $126,080 record set on October 6, 2025. Whether spot buyers replace the liquidated shorts will decide if this holds.
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Bears Keep Paying for a Rally That Started in Washington
The latest rally traces back to the bond market. The Treasury doubled its long-end debt buybacks on August 19, raising each operation to at least $4 billion.
That initial move caught bearish traders off guard. As Bitcoin rose, short positions hit liquidation levels, forcing exchanges to buy BTC to close them. Those forced purchases pushed prices higher, triggering more liquidations and creating a self-reinforcing squeeze.
The loop has now run for three sessions. BeInCrypto reported that shorts lost $1.3 billion in 60 minutes as BTC climbed 2.5%. Yesterday, short liquidations reached $2.74 billion as 172,202 traders got wiped out.
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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said tokenization could help countries raise money and attract foreign investment, while acknowledging that putting assets on multiple blockchains could fragment liquidity.
His comments come as the tokenization market continues to expand, with the total value of distributed assets now at $38.40 billion.
CZ Pushes For Global Tokenization
Zhao framed tokenization as a funding tool for states. In a Thursday post, he named foreign direct investment (FDI) as one benefit, asking which country or company would not want to sell tokenized stocks globally.
“Tokenization is one of the best ways for countries to ‘raise money,’ or attract FDI (Foreign Direct Investment),” he said.
Zhao advises Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan on digital asset policy. He made a similar pitch to governments in June.
The market he describes keeps expanding. Distributed asset value across tokenized real-world assets reached $38.40 billion, up 2.16% in 30 days, according to RWA.xyz.
Holders grew far faster than value. The count rose 79.74% to 2,379,918. However, the represented asset value declined 4.66% to $342.63 billion.
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The Fragmentation Problem
CZ said he supports tokenization across all blockchains. He also added that a multi-chain approach can fragment liquidity.
Financial market infrastructure firms have already flagged the risk of fragmentation. Clearstream, DTCC, and Euroclear released a joint paper with Boston Consulting Group.
They warned that fragmentation across distributed ledger networks leaves assets trapped in isolated pools and raises operating costs.
Still, Zhao argued that having multiple players build the market could accelerate the sector’s growth. He said greater interoperability between issuers could eventually help address the liquidity problem.
“Fragmentation can be somewhat addressed if there is high interchangeability amongst different issuers, which is important,” he wrote.
Zhao is not the only executive making the argument for tokenization. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev called it the best path to modernizing US finance this week.
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Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said memory has become the strategic infrastructure of the artificial intelligence era, a shift he argues has permanently reset the economics of a cyclical industry.
He made the comments on Thursday at a semiconductor fabrication site near the company’s headquarters in Boise, Idaho. The firm is building two fabs as part of a planned $250 billion investment in US manufacturing and research.
Why Mehrotra Calls Memory Infrastructure
Memory has long moved in cycles. Strong demand pulls in new capacity. Excess supply then pushes prices back down.
Mehrotra argues that AI has created a more durable source of demand. This is also changing how customers value memory, according to him. Customers can no longer treat memory as a commodity bought mainly on price.
Instead, memory increasingly needs to work alongside the processors and systems using it. That shift makes memory more important to overall system performance.
“That’s why I call it the strategic infrastructure of the AI era,” he said. “Today, there is no AI without memory. AI systems need more memory,” he said.
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What the Numbers Show
Micron’s results give the claim numbers. Fiscal third-quarter revenue reached $41.46 billion, against $9.30 billion a year earlier.
Gross margin reached 84.6% of revenue, up from 37.7% a year earlier. The company guided to a fiscal fourth-quarter margin of roughly 86%.
Supply remains the constraint. The CEO revealed that Micron still cannot produce enough memory to meet demand, with data-center customers seeking roughly 50% more supply than the company can commit.
Mehrotra expects demand to widen further. He named autonomous vehicles, robots, and AI-enabled consumer devices as future buyers.
However, the framing has critics. A June lawsuit accuses Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix of inflating dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) prices.
Meanwhile, Chinese producers such as CXMT are also scaling output, which could reopen the price competition Mehrotra says AI impacted.
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Most Asian share indices are headed for weekly losses as bond market stress persists. However, Bitcoin (BTC) and gold both rallied as investors reached for safe havens instead.
The moves reflect a broader flight from risk. Rising Treasury yields have hit stocks in Asia and the US this week. Traders are turning to assets seen as stores of value.
Asian Markets Buckle on Bond Stress
Japan’s Nikkei dropped 0.8% to open Friday’s trading. That extended its weekly loss to 4.4% before clawing a little back.
The Nikkei is down, mirroring US indexes. Image Source: Trading View
South Korea and Taiwan edged higher Friday. Both still finished the week lower, after a sharp Kospi sidecar halt earlier in the week. The broader MSCI Asia-Pacific index outside Japan managed only a 0.5% gain.
The sell-off traces back to US Treasury yields. They resumed climbing this week after a brief pause. The 30-year yield rose to 5.25%, and the 10-year hit 4.71%.
Secretary Scott Bessent said the government could expand bond repurchases. He also floated fiscal consolidation. Analysts doubt Washington can find enough spending cuts to narrow the deficit.
The deficit is running above 6% of GDP. Interest payments alone are set to top $1.2 trillion this year.
“Historically, markets have pushed back when they believe fundamentals, like record debt level and historically large deficits, are on their side, and further interventions could become too costly to bear.”
Deutsche Bank strategist Steven Zeng said.
Brent crude added to the regional pressure. It touched a one-month high of $94.71 a barrel. Prices eased to $93.12 after toughened US sanctions threats against Iran.
Bitcoin and Gold Rally as Safe Havens
While Asian equities struggled, Bitcoin and gold moved the other way. Bitcoin traded near $74,300 Friday, after touching an intraday high of $75,500.
Bitcoin is aligning with gold as a safe haven asset currently. Image Source: BeInCrypto
Gold held near $4,513 an ounce, up 3.1% for the week. Treasury’s expanded buyback plans fed a debasement narrative. That has already pushed JPMorgan’s $5,000 gold target into view.
That backdrop has revived the case for Bitcoin as a weaker-dollar hedge. VanEck strategists are among those pointing to the recent strength as evidence.
Wall Street felt the same bond stress. US stocks fell hard on Thursday once the buyback relief faded. The Dow dropped 703 points, and Walmart fell 9% on soft US sales.
The S&P 500 was down 1.9% for the week through Thursday. The Nasdaq fell 2.5%. Futures pointed modestly higher Friday.
Nvidia’s results next week stand as the next test for the AI trade. The same risk appetite has also lifted Bitcoin’s price rally this month.
The dollar index is down almost 0.9% for the week, near a three-month low. The question for Asian investors is whether Bitcoin and gold keep working as a hedge. Or whether a Nvidia-driven swing on Wall Street drags every asset down together.

Jim Cramer said he sold his entire Bitcoin (BTC) position over quantum computing fears less than a month ago, then turned around and told a caller on the latest episode of Mad Money to buy the same asset.
The reversal has traders once again invoking “Inverse Cramer,” the running theory that fading the CNBC host’s calls beats following them.
The Sale
Cramer’s exit traces back to a July 31 Mad Money interview with IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, who warned that quantum computers could eventually crack the cryptography protecting Bitcoin.
“I think that you should give yourself three or four years, and at that point, I would get rather paranoid about it.”
Arvind Krishna, IBM chief executive, on the quantum timeline.
Days later, Cramer said on air that he would sell his Bitcoin. No wallet address, filing, or position size has confirmed the trade actually happened though.
Then a Caller Asks
On a later episode, a viewer named Sanjay called into the show’s lightning round asking about Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), an Ethereum treasury stock he had bought before. Cramer waved him off the derivative play entirely, telling him to skip it and buy Bitcoin directly instead, warning that crypto-linked derivatives carry too much risk.
JJim Cramer dumped his Bitcoin on July 31 over quantum fears.It's already up $9,000 since 😂 pic.twitter.com/aeXrd6iAuG
— Bitcoin Archive (@BitcoinArchive) August 20, 2026
The advice landed awkwardly given Cramer’s own stated exit from Bitcoin weeks earlier. The so-called Inverse Cramer trade treats his calls as a contrarian signal rather than a forecast, a reputation built over years of flip-flopping on the asset.
Tuttle Capital once listed an ETF betting against his picks; the fund lost 15.7% against a 25.4% gain for the S&P 500 before it closed in February 2024, proof that fading any single pundit consistently carries its own risk.
Price Action Since
Bitcoin has climbed since Cramer’s original sell call, when it traded near $63,700. It now trades near $74,300 and touched an intraday high of $75,500, a run that has continued regardless of his stated exit.
Bitcoin has reached as high as $75,500 during this rally. Image Source: BeInCrypto
Whether Cramer actually holds, sold, or has quietly bought back into Bitcoin remains unverified. What is clear is that his on-air signals now contradict each other within weeks, leaving viewers to decide which Cramer to listen to, if either.

Bill Dudley, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, says the US stock market is in bubble territory, pointing to stretched valuations and a slowing artificial intelligence (AI) investment cycle.
Dudley made the comments on Bloomberg Television this week, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent moves to contain a sharp rise in long-term bond yields.
Stretched Valuations Underpin the Bubble Call
Dudley pointed to the Shiller CAPE ratio, the Shiller cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio, which sits near 41. That compares with a 25 to 30-year average of about 17, and a record of 44 set in December 1999. In simple terms, investors are paying far more for each dollar of company earnings than history suggests is safe.
He also cited the Buffett Indicator, the ratio of stock market value to gross domestic product (GDP), which stands around 240%. Warren Buffett has said readings above 100% signal an overvalued market. This indicator is suggesting the stock market is strongly overvalued.
The Buffet Indicator is pointing to a severely overvalued stock market. Image Source: Long Term Trends AI Spending Faces a Slowdown
Dudley expects capital expenditure (capex) growth among AI hyperscalers, the large cloud providers building AI infrastructure, to decelerate in 2027. That would squeeze profit margins across the sector and its suppliers.
He also questioned whether the industry can generate the estimated $2 trillion in revenue needed to justify current investment levels. Historically, he noted, excess returns from major technological booms tend to get competed away as rivals pile in.
Broadcom is reportedly negotiating a chip-financing package that could reach $100 billion. The deal would support Anthropic’s IPO plans, with the AI firm targeting a stock market debut as soon as October.
Treasury Moves Add to the Pressure
The 30-year Treasury yield surged above 5.3% this week, its highest level since 2007. The Treasury Department responded with a long-bond buyback increase, doubling the size of its debt repurchases.
However, Dudley said the fiscal backdrop complicates the Federal Reserve’s task regardless of the bond-market intervention.
“The Fed has to take the world as it is.”
— Bill Dudley, Bloomberg
The coming months may show whether AI capex growth slows fast enough to avoid a sharper market correction.