The U.S. Department of the Treasury has set July 2028 as the deadline for cryptocurrency exchange platforms to stop selling unauthorized stablecoins to Americans.
Even promoting an unauthorized stablecoin among U.S. buyers, or helping them evade IP address controls, would be considered a violation under the proposed rules.
MICHAEL DELL: «AI is creating a better AI. This generates more use cases and a higher level of utilization, which in turn produces more data and feedback, helping to further improve the AI».
CZ has stopped officially using his public wallet, claiming it is «almost impossible to clean» due to the ongoing accumulation of unsolicited *meme coins*.
Several traders were still tracking CZ’s wallet for investment signals; one of them is said to have made $282,000—multiplying their investment by 29—after noticing the wallet was burning *tokens* $MARSCOIN and immediately buying, paying 100 times the usual network fees.
Binance’s founder has said he will donate the remaining *tokens* to Giggle Academy before leaving the address, as attempts to burn unsolicited *tokens* only generated more *token* *spam* and fueled speculation about his *on-chain* activity.
World Liberty Financial, a project backed by Trump, is partnering with WorldClaw, a platform that offers access to restricted Chinese AI models that have been flagged by the United States.
Reuters reports that this Hong Kong-based AI platform offers 90 AI models, including 43 from Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, Z.ai, DeepSeek, and Moonshot.
The platform also accepts the *stablecoin* WLFI (linked to the US dollar). The Trump family owns 38% of WLFI, while Ryan Fang, an executive at World Liberty, serves as an advisor to WorldClaw. $WLFI
The Ethereum Foundation launches the Platåberget testnet, kicking off preliminary public testing for the Glamsterdam upgrade ahead of its fork on August 20. $ETH
Glassnode states that low spot liquidity, capital outflows from ETFs, and high loss realization keep Bitcoin trading within a range with limited conviction. $BTC
President Trump reveals that he demanded $10 billion from South Korea in exchange for protection.
“South Korea has been protected by us for countless years, and during my first term, they agreed to pay nearly $3 billion a year for protection”.
“I asked for $10 billion, and they were very unhappy”.
“But we agreed that, for a short period, they would be $3 billion, and that next year it would increase…”.
Trump added that South Korea refused to cooperate with the operation in Iran, despite, as he put it, having “39,000 soldiers protecting them from Kim Jong-un”.
Tom Lee claims that the favorable momentum of $ETH in the coming years will surpass previous ICO and NFT cycles, and predicts that the ETH/BTC ratio will experience a significant rise. $ETH
Today, Bitcoin outperformed the stock market, according to @glassnode.
However, it has only outperformed the S&P 500 in one-third of trading days over the last three months, representing the longest worst performance streak in six years. $BTC
The U.S. emergency oil reserve drops to its lowest level in 40 years.
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to just 293.4 million barrels, sitting only about 41 million barrels above its legal minimum.
The figure is expected to fall further, to 243 million barrels, as Washington continues to release oil to manage supply disruptions stemming from the war with Iran.
Oil prices rise by more than $2 as the ceasefire between the United States and Iran ends, with Tehran indicating a shift toward a "fully offensive" military posture, bringing Brent crude near $91.
Bitdefender says hackers are using counterfeit pirated copies of "The Odyssey" to spread Lumma Stealer malware, designed to drain victims’ cryptocurrency wallets.
Matt Hougan, director of investments at Bitwise, says that Trump’s upcoming meeting with cryptocurrency industry executives is «largely positive for Bitcoin», and also notes that the main beneficiaries would be DeFi applications. $BTC
Ray Dalio warns that the current stock market bubble rivals that of 1929 and could become the biggest in U.S. history.
The founder of Bridgewater says that the euphoria around artificial intelligence has generated “classic signals” of a bubble, pointing to the record number of initial public offerings and valuations reaching one trillion dollars.
Currently, markets are trading at 41 times adjusted earnings, above the 32.6 level recorded before the 1929 crash.
Larry Fink’s prediction that Bitcoin will reach $700,000 continues to grab attention.
BlackRock’s CEO has said that Bitcoin could reach that number if investors gradually allocate between 2% and 5% of their portfolios to this cryptocurrency.
Wall Street’s thesis on Bitcoin is gaining momentum.
The financial market experienced a bearish session on Monday, August 17, driven by fears of inflation and geopolitical instability. The major Wall Street indexes closed in the red (Dow Jones -0.5%, S&P 500 -0.5%, and Nasdaq down), pressured by three key factors:
Bond Rally: 30-year Treasury yields reached their highest level since 2007 (5.31%), fueled by fears of persistent inflation.
Oil Upturn: Brent surpassed $90 per barrel amid fears of tensions between the United States and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
Global Weakness: China’s economy showed signs of weakening, adding to existing doubts about the strength of the global economy.
As for individual stocks, Nike had the worst performance of the day, falling 4.03% to $39.09 (its lowest level since 2014), representing a 78% drop from its all-time high. In contrast, SpaceX shares rose 4.45%, driven by the relevance of its technology investors (such as Elon Musk, Google, and Nvidia) and its focus on Artificial Intelligence.
Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate surpassed $65 billion by the end of July —an increase of more than seven times year over year— ahead of its planned IPO.
The OCC conditionally approved the grant of a national trust bank license to WLFI—an entity linked to Trump—to issue USD1 and to custody digital assets.