BeInCrypto Global

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.

Bitcoin (BTC) is rallying again, and VanEck’s Matthew Sigel says it is finally acting like the hedge it was built to be.
Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, ties the move to fears over US fiscal policy rather than pending crypto legislation.
All Eyes on the US Treasury
The US Treasury doubled its long-dated bond buyback ceiling, from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. The move compressed yields and fed a broader risk-on rally tied to the Treasury’s bond buyback expansion.
Roughly $3 billion in forced short liquidations amplified the move. bitcoin climbed to $72,757, part of what one report called Bitcoin’s short squeeze cascade.
Sigel downplays the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill working through Congress, as the driver. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has voiced optimism the bill clears 60 Senate votes, though prediction markets price a slim chance it becomes law this year, a gap Sigel says explains why the rally isn’t about CLARITY Act’s Senate odds.
“Bitcoin is one of the best hedges you can find on that dynamic.”
— Matthew Sigel, Head of Digital Asset Research, VanEck, via CNBC
That hedge framing carries a mixed record
Bitcoin’s correlation with US equities spiked, not fell, during the 2020 COVID crash and the 2022 rate-hiking cycle. Academic research shows that pattern, not decoupling, is what typically happens under market stress.
Bitcoin has soared to above $70,000. Image Source: BeInCrypto
That tension traces back to Bitcoin’s origin. Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 whitepaper proposed Bitcoin as a fixed-supply alternative to a financial system reliant on central bank money printing.
Sigel’s dollar-debasement argument revives that same case, just aimed at Treasury debt management instead of the printing press directly.
Whether Bitcoin keeps behaving like that hedge, or snaps back into a risk-on trade if equities wobble, will show which version of the story markets are actually pricing.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Thursday that the government’s bond buyback program could grow.
He noted that there is every indication that the buybacks could exceed the $4 billion per operation ceiling it set just a day earlier, a signal that helped drive Bitcoin (BTC) toward its highest level since June.
Bessent Leaves the Door Open on Size
Treasury doubled its buyback cap for longer-dated debt from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation on Wednesday, targeting securities maturing in 10 to 30 years starting September 9.
Speaking a day later, Bessent made clear that figure was a floor, not a ceiling.
“I would note that it could be more than the 4 billion per issue.”
Bessent declined to attach a specific number, saying the eventual size will depend on market conditions. He framed the move as an effort to restore trading depth in a market he called thinly traded, pointing to heavy corporate bond issuance and what he described as poor liquidity in the 30-year sector.
Why Bond Buybacks Moved Crypto
Bitcoin’s link to Treasury buybacks runs through yields and liquidity, not direct policy. The 30-year yield had touched its highest level since 2007 before Wednesday’s announcement pulled it sharply lower, and Treasury’s buyback move eased broader financial conditions just as risk appetite was already improving.
Lower long-duration yields reduce competition for investor capital, a dynamic that tends to support assets like Bitcoin and gold alike, as gold’s own rally this week showed.
Bessent also pointed to the U.S.-Iran conflict as a temporary distortion on yields, saying markets would normalize once that situation resolves. His comments on Thursday briefly pulled yields lower again, though the effect faded and the 10-year yield ended the session higher.
Bitcoin trades near $72,712 at the time of writing, up 5% over the past 24 hours, according to BeInCrypto data. That places it near its highest level since June, part of a rally that also drew on a wave of short-position liquidations and renewed optimism around crypto market momentum.
Bitcoin has broken free of the $60,000 to $65,000 range it was held in. Image Source: BeInCrypto
Bessent’s broader message centered on U.S. fiscal trajectory. He argued that record government debt does not by itself signal distress, pointing to fiscal consolidation through 2025 and expected tariff revenue holding steady into 2026.
Whether the buyback expansion keeps supporting Bitcoin past the initial reaction will likely hinge on how large future operations get, and whether yields stay contained once the enlarged buybacks begin on September 9.

Justin Sun won a key procedural battle against Trump-backed World Liberty Financial on Thursday, keeping his personal claims against the crypto venture in public federal court rather than private arbitration.
The California judge rejected World Liberty’s attempt to force all of Sun’s claims behind closed doors. The court also ordered both sides to determine which claims involving Sun-controlled companies should remain in court and which should move to arbitration.
“The judge ruled that all of my individual claims will remain in the public courtroom,” Sun said after the hearing.
The ruling does not decide whether World Liberty acted illegally. It does, however, keep the most personal part of Sun’s dispute in a public forum, where future filings and evidence could face greater scrutiny.
Justin Sun Keeps the Pressure on World Liberty Financial
Sun sued World Liberty in April after the company froze WLFI tokens linked to him. He alleges World Liberty secretly added controls that allowed it to restrict or destroy tokens and later used those powers against him.
World Liberty denies wrongdoing and says Sun violated agreements governing his holdings.
The cleanest way to understand the Justin Sun–World Liberty Financial fight is that it started as one of the closest alliances in Trump crypto and has turned into a fight over hundreds of millions of dollars.
Justin Sun’s Latest Statement on X
Sun invested $45 million in WLFI during its early token sale and became one of the project’s largest backers.
World Liberty has since accused Sun of improperly moving tokens and participating in activity designed to pressure WLFI’s price. Sun denies those claims.
WLFI has remained volatile as the legal battle has intensified, adding another layer of uncertainty around a token already facing questions over governance, unlock schedules and issuer control.
WLFI Lost Nearly 80% of Its Value Since Launch. Source: CoinGecko
The fight now moves back toward the substance of Sun’s claims. World Liberty still has avenues to seek dismissal, meaning Thursday’s ruling keeps the case alive in public without deciding who ultimately wins.

Polymarket pays a former FBI staffer to watch its traders full time. Chief executive Shayne Coplan revealed the role to US regulators on Thursday.
He spoke at the first meeting of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Innovation Advisory Committee. His message was blunt. Polymarket users have almost no privacy.
Polymarket Surveillance Goes Further Than the Company Says
Coplan described the hire while defending his platform in Washington.
“We have someone here right now who… is ex-FBI who works full-time at Polymarket.”
That staffer built custom surveillance software in-house, he said. Outside firms were impressed it was not outsourced.
The detail is new. Polymarket’s public integrity page names Chainalysis and Palantir as partners. It never mentions building tools of its own.
Coplan knew the news would sting. He said some users would be upset to hear it.
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The Numbers Behind the Monitoring
Polymarket reports handing 315 or more wallet records to authorities. It also claims 90 or more account referrals and two arrests. The company gives no date for those totals.
Two traders learned what that means this year. In April, the CFTC charged Army Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke over the Nicolas Maduro market.
He bought more than 436,000 “Yes” shares in four days. He made roughly $404,000. His handle, Burdensome-Mix, sat in public view the whole time.
In May, regulators charged Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo over 23 contracts on the firm’s Year in Search list. He allegedly cleared about $1.2 million as AlphaRaccoon.
Why Anonymity Was Never Real
Coplan argues the openness is the point.
“It’s all public. It’s all on chain. It’s the least anonymous financial market of all time.”
Anyone can open a market and read a trader’s full history. Therefore the tool that catches cheats also exposes everyone else.
The walls are rising elsewhere too. Polymarket bars 39 countries and bans VPNs outright under its terms. It began blocking VPN access and demanding documents from big accounts this year. South Korea cut access entirely in August.
Not everyone thinks self-policing works. CME Group chief Terry Duffy told the same meeting that regulators wave through manipulable contracts. Chairman Michael Selig rejected that.
For traders, the lesson is simpler. A Polymarket wallet is not a disguise. It is a permanent record, and a former FBI staffer is reading it.

CME Group CEO Terry Duffy told the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) it clears contracts that traders can rig. Chairman Michael Selig cut him off and called the claim fake news.
The exchange happened Thursday in Washington, at the first meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee. Duffy runs the largest futures exchange in the world. Selig regulates it.
2,500 Filings and Zero Objections
Selig built the 35-member committee in February. Its roster includes the chief executives of Kalshi, Polymarket and DraftKings. Thursday’s agenda covered crypto, artificial intelligence and event contracts.
Duffy used his turn to attack the last one.
Roughly 2,500 self-certifications have landed at the agency since January 2025, he said. None were opposed.
Self-certification is the fast lane. An exchange files a contract, attests that it follows the law, and lists it. Nobody has to approve it.
Duffy said some of those filings break core principle 3. That rule bars any contract that traders can readily manipulate.
There is a structural reason few filings get challenged. Selig is the only sitting commissioner at the CFTC. Four of the agency’s five seats are empty.
“We’re not a bunch of carnival barkers at a circus. We are running the most envious markets in the world in the United States of America.”
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Selig Calls It Fake News, But The Record Is Messier
Duffy raised two cases.
In the first, a Fort Bragg soldier named Gannon Van Dyke turned $33,034 into $409,881 on Polymarket. He bet on whether US forces would enter Venezuela. He also held classified details of the raid that captured Nicolás Maduro. Prosecutors charged him in April.
In the second, Trump’s teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez cleared more than $100,000 on Kalshi. He traded on what the president would say. Investigators found bets on more than a dozen speeches.
Selig cut in before Duffy finished.
“…those products are not listed in the United States. They never were. This occurred offshore, and that’s fake news.”
Duffy called that a cute comment. He granted that the Maduro market was Polymarket’s, which trades offshore.
The teleprompter case is different. Those trades ran on Kalshi, an exchange the CFTC itself designates and oversees. Kalshi’s own surveillance team flagged the activity and reported it to the agency.
So one example landed offshore. The other did not.
Kalshi Trades Compute Today. CME Waits for October.
Duffy then moved to timing, and the complaint got sharper.
Kalshi already runs markets on the cost of renting Nvidia chips. It launched them in July.
CME wants in on the same trade. On August 11 it said it would list rental futures for Nvidia H100 and B200 chips. Its partner is Silicon Data, a firm backed by trading house DRW. Target date, October 5, pending review.
Then the agency opened a consultation. On August 19 it asked the public to comment on compute derivatives for 60 days.
Count the days. A 60-day window starting from Federal Register publication closes after October 5.
DRW founder Don Wilson, also on the committee, asked why compute needed 60 days at all.
Duffy added a second detail. Cantor Fitzgerald had opened institutional trading in Kalshi contracts hours earlier. “Let’s call that a coincidence,” he said.
Cantor Fitzgerald plans to give investment funds access to Kalshi’s prediction markets, arranging block trades on everything from weather forecasts to iPhone sales https://t.co/kb4dzux7m1
— WSJ Markets (@WSJmarkets) August 19, 2026
Cantor’s announcement covered event contracts broadly and never mentioned compute.
The Man Attacking Self-Certification Once Used It
Duffy’s frustration is not abstract. His own filings keep stalling.
In July the agency froze CME’s 24-hour crude oil contract while a rulemaking ran. Selig called the timing wholly inappropriate. That comment period closes on August 26.
CME has already gone to court. On June 18 it sued the CFTC over Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual contract, arguing the agency rubberstamped Kalshi’s reasoning. Those perps cleared $1 billion in volume in their first week.
Duffy also pressed on offshore venues. Traders in the US cannot legally touch them, he said, yet they get there anyway. He asked what the commission is doing to “police everybody’s VPN.”
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He named Hyperliquid. President Donald Trump had floated bringing Hyperliquid onshore at a White House crypto summit the previous day.
One point cuts against Duffy. CME self-certified its own Bitcoin futures in December 2017, using the same fast lane he now calls dangerous. Duffy signed the announcement.
He closed on 2008. Bad behavior in finance does not cost the industry one step, he said. It costs 20, and the rebuild takes years.
Duffy hands the CEO job to Lynne Fitzpatrick in March 2027. The committee he was addressing cannot write rules. Selig can, alone, and two of his clocks run out within weeks.

Strategy, the company once called MicroStrategy (MSTR), rose 6.9% to $111.14 on Thursday afternoon. That is its best price since June 18, which wipes out a two-month slide.
The stock market has forgiven the company. The balance sheet has not. MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin is still worth billions less than it paid.
MicroStrategy (MSTR) Stock Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance How MicroStrategy Clawed Back Two Months
MSTR traded at $111.45 as of 3.05 p.m. ET, up 6.91% from Wednesday’s $104.25 close. The shares had bottomed at $81.81 in late June.
That is a 35.9% climb off the floor. July never produced a close above $101.95, so Thursday’s move clears the whole summer.
The fuel came from Bitcoin topping $70,000, marking the first time in 78 days. The token had not held that level since early June.
Two decisions in Washington did the heavy lifting. On Wednesday the Treasury doubled the size of its long-end bond buybacks. Each operation will now buy at least $4 billion from Sept. 9.
A day earlier, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed Regulation Crypto Assets. The rule would let crypto firms raise up to $75 million a year without full registration.
Short sellers were caught out. Traders covered roughly $1.5 billion of bearish bets, including $700 million inside one minute.
“…a quiet form of quantitative easing, a move that weakens the dollar and sends scarce, debasement-hedge assets like Bitcoin higher,” Matt Mena, crypto research strategist at 21Shares, on the Treasury move.
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The Bitcoin Stack is Still Underwater
Strategy holds 840,447 bitcoin. It paid an average $75,385 per coin, or $63.36 billion in total, according to its own ledger.
At $69,803 that pile is worth $58.67 billion. So the company sits about $4.69 billion in the red. Bitcoin has to rise another 8% before the treasury breaks even.
The gap already forced a change of habit. Strategy bought its first 21,454 coins on August 10, 2020, paying $11,652 each. The ledger records no sales at all until this year.
Then came four of them. The company sold 6,916 bitcoin between June 30 and August 10, at prices from $59,256 to $64,262. Measured against its average cost, that booked roughly $92 million in real losses on less than 1% of the stack.
The paper damage is far larger. Strategy reported an $8.22 billion second quarter net loss in July. It has also paused new bitcoin buying, raising $333.7 million last week without adding a single coin. In February, management spelled out its own breaking point in a deep bitcoin crash.
Which Crypto Stocks Really Got Back to June
The rebound was broad, but it was not equal.
BitMine, an ether treasury company, leads the group by a wide margin. Circle has climbed back above its June 18 level.
Coinbase beat every June close, yet it trails its July 21 peak of $175.85. Bitdeer is the outlier. The miner rose 8.57% and stays 41.7% below June.
The split is telling. Money returned to the treasury companies and the exchanges, which move with bitcoin most directly. It has not returned to the miners.
Big investors were already positioned. Twelve of the 15 largest MSTR institutional holders added shares in the second quarter, while the stock was falling.
COIN, CRCL, BMNR, and BTDR Stock Performances. Source: TradingView
“it’s a compelling time for investors with longer-term horizons to be allocating to Bitcoin and the crypto asset class,” said Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale.
One number decides whether this holds. Bitcoin must reach $75,385 for Strategy’s treasury to turn green again, and for Michael Saylor to start buying without booking a loss.

Binance runs its global exchange under Abu Dhabi’s regulator. Emirati police still detained two of its employees over financial crime inquiries, the New York Times reported.
All have been released. A third staff member, who leads the company’s Dubai arm, answered questions at a police station in July.
A Foothold Built on Licenses and State Money
The Emirates is not a side market for Binance. It is the base.
Abu Dhabi’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority granted the exchange three licenses on December 8. No other crypto exchange had won a global license under that framework. The permissions went live on January 5.
The money runs just as deep. State-backed fund MGX invested $2 billion in March 2025. It paid in USD1, a stablecoin from World Liberty Financial, a venture the Trump family part-owns.
The relationship even shapes policy. Binance has cited its Abu Dhabi licensing rules to explain why it now handles some foreign police requests differently.
Airport Stops and an Overnight Hold
Two workers were pulled aside at Emirati airports, people familiar with the inquiries said. One midlevel employee passed through Sharjah this month. Officers took him to a station and held him overnight.
What police are chasing is unclear. Binance told the Emirati government that its staff were swept into fraud cases centered on customers. None were tied to the offenses, the company said.
The link may be mundane. Some employees’ names sit on a corporate bank account Binance keeps in the country. That account processes customer deposits and withdrawals.
“A small number of our personnel were recently asked to provide standard statements to local authorities as part of routine inquiries relating to third-party fund flows… all who provided statements were promptly cleared and released,” A Binance spokesman, speaking to the New York Times.
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A Familiar Pattern for Binance Staff
Emirati authorities were already tracing money around the exchange. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority fined an unlicensed local firm, Shelbit, on July 24. Reuters tracked about $4 billion through Shelbit, and roughly $676 million reached Binance.
Binance’s record invites that attention. The company pleaded guilty in the United States in November 2023 and paid $4.32 billion. Prosecutors found it had let more than $898 million in trades pass between US and Iranian users.
That deal placed an independent compliance monitor over the company for three years. The term still has months left to run.
Staff have been caught in national cases before. Compliance executive Tigran Gambaryan spent months held in Nigerian custody in 2024. US diplomatic pressure secured his release.
The detentions have rattled the workforce. Binance approached Emirati officials this month, seeking help and raising concerns about employee safety.
Whether the questioning stays limited to customer fraud will test how much protection those licenses actually buy.

Meme coin market added close to $3 billion on Thursday. The sector is now worth $29.3 billion, up almost 10% today. Three blockchains are fighting over that money.
Solana, BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain each claim a share of it. Thursday’s trading data says only one of them is really winning.
Most of the $3 Billion Never Touched These Three Chains
The headline number flatters all three. Meme tokens traded $3.6 billion on Thursday, and three coins accounted for 59% of it.
Dogecoin (DOGE) led with $1.24 billion, and it runs on its own network. DOGE price rose 12.3%. Pepe (PEPE) followed with $514 million, and it sits on Ethereum. Official Trump (TRUMP) took $421 million.
Top Meme Coins by Market Cap. Source: Coingecko
So the contested pool is far smaller than the headline suggests. Market cap shows what a token is worth, not where traders went.
Two numbers show that. Volume records where money moved. Fees record what the chain kept.
Solana Wins Thursday’s Volume Test
Solana processed $3.01 billion in decentralized exchange trades over 24 hours, DefiLlama data show. BNB Chain handled $1.25 billion.
Robinhood Chain managed $510.8 million. It is the newest of the three, launched in July as a network for tokenized stocks.
Chains Ranked by DEX Volume. Source: DefiLlama
Solana therefore out-traded both rivals combined. It took 63% of the three chains’ total flow.
Its launchpad token drew much of that. Pump.fun (PUMP) traded $286 million, fourth among all meme tokens.
One caveat applies to every figure here. These totals cover all tokens on each chain, not meme coins alone.
Fees Show Whose Volume Is Worth Something
Volume is the easier number to grow. Blockspace is cheap, and a dollar can change hands many times in a day.
Fees are harder. Solana earned $925,809 in chain fees on Thursday. BNB Chain took $689,745. Robinhood Chain collected $59,275.
Chains Ranked by Fees. Source: DefiLlama
The distance is stark. Solana moved 5.9 times Robinhood’s volume but earned 15.6 times its fees.
Now measure fees per dollar traded. BNB Chain converted 0.055% of its volume. Solana managed 0.031%. Robinhood Chain kept 0.012%.
That reorders the podium. Solana wins on scale, but BNB Chain extracts nearly twice as much value from each dollar.
The effect shows in the totals. Solana takes 63% of the three chains’ volume but only 55% of their fees.
Chains with no meme scene still earned more. Ethereum collected $1.22 million and Tron took $876,853.
Robinhood Chain ranked tenth among all chains, behind Polygon.
Who is Winning Meme Coin Season
Solana, on both measures. It leads on volume traded and on total fees earned, and no rival is close on either.
BNB Chain is the credible number two and the sharpest earner per dollar. Its flagship token lagged, with the Chinese-language meme BinanceLife up 4.7% against a sector up 10.1%.
Robinhood Chain runs third on everything. It can still produce a mover, and its flagship Cash Cat (CASHCAT) gained 30.3% on $32.27 million of volume.
Cashcat Trading Volume. Source: Coingecko
One rival sits outside the three-way frame. Base matched BNB Chain on volume at $1.255 billion.
Its economics resemble Robinhood’s, however. Base earned $189,724, converting 0.015% of volume into fees.
The clash may already have four sides. Whether Solana keeps the crown rests on a number few traders watch.
Not how much volume it attracts, but how much of that volume it converts.

Anthropic expects its initial public offering to match or beat the size of SpaceX’s record-setting listing, according to people familiar with the matter, as preparations for the Claude developer’s market debut speed up.
The artificial intelligence (AI) company could file publicly for the offering as soon as the end of August. Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao sidestepped valuation questions during recent investor briefings, the people said.
Anthropic IPO Faces a $75 Billion Benchmark
SpaceX sold 555.56 million shares at $135 each in June, raising $75 billion. That valued Elon Musk’s rocket company near $1.77 trillion and set the record for the largest US listing. The stock closed its first Nasdaq session at $161.
Bloomberg first reported the size expectation on Thursday. Matching that raise would force Anthropic to sell tens of billions in stock, and the company has already borrowed one part of the SpaceX blueprint by planning supervoting shares for founders.
*ANTHROPIC SAID TO PREPARE IPO FILING AS SOON AS END OF AUGUST
— tradfi news (@tradfi) August 20, 2026
Revenue Growth Anchors the Pitch
Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate reached $65 billion in July, up from more than $47 billion earlier in the year and roughly $10 billion across all of 2025. A May funding round valued the firm at $965 billion, ahead of OpenAI’s $852 billion.
That trajectory has pushed some backers toward a $2 trillion IPO valuation, although Rao has endorsed no figure. Anthropic filed its prospectus confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June.
Crypto Traders Already Hold a Position
Synthetic markets have priced Anthropic exposure for months. PreStocks, which issues pre-IPO tokens on Solana, controls 78% of volume in OpenAI and Anthropic pre-IPO tokens, out of $532.1 million traded across venues since launch.
Interest has cooled, however, with roughly $15.2 million changing hands over the past 30 days. A public filing would swap those estimates for audited numbers, and it would arrive well ahead of OpenAI’s own listing timeline of 2027.

Kinetics Internet Portfolio, a mutual fund with $248 million in assets, disclosed a direct equity stake in Ripple Labs itself rather than in XRP, according to a newly filed SEC report.
The distinction matters. Institutional money is choosing Ripple, the company, over XRP, the token.
What the SEC Filing Actually Shows
Form NPORT-P is the quarterly report registered investment funds file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), disclosing portfolio holdings. Kinetics filed its version as part of Kinetics Portfolios Trust.
The fund acquired Class A common shares issued directly by Ripple Labs. That structure gives Kinetics ownership of the company itself, not exposure to the cryptocurrency that bears its name.
According to the SEC filing, the stake is valued at roughly $246,000, representing a small fraction (about 0.1%) of the fund’s approximately $248 million in net assets.
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Kinetics Internet Portfolio disclosed a direct equity stake in Ripple Labs. Source: SEC
The filing reflects holdings as of June 30, but regulatory reporting delays kept the information private until August.
Since Ripple remains a private company, Kinetics acquired the securities through specialized over-the-counter platforms built for accredited investors trading pre-IPO stock. Those venues let institutions buy shares well before any public listing occurs.
Why Institutions are Rushing Toward Ripple Now
The purchase landed alongside a notable shift in tone from Ripple’s own leadership. Speaking at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium 2026, Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse said the company now takes a more neutral stance on going public.
Garlinghouse said "we've been very happily private for a long time" when asked about an IPO. Not a no. After billions in acquisitions and a $3B shareholder tender offer, @Ripple's tone has quietly shifted from resistant to neutral. Watch this space.https://t.co/y68SnDif2p
— Ripple Bull Winkle | Crypto Researcher 🚀🚨 (@RipBullWinkle) August 19, 2026
That marks a clear departure from earlier messaging. President Monica Long had previously ruled out an IPO altogether, citing the company’s strong balance sheet and the lack of a defined timeline.
The transaction also arrives during Ripple’s own $750 million tender offer to repurchase shares, a buyback that valued the company at $50 billion.
Regulatory momentum runs in parallel with the investment activity. The SEC opened its proposed Regulation Crypto Assets framework for public comment, while the US administration held closed-door meetings with Ripple executives at the White House.
Against that backdrop, institutional investors appear to be racing for exposure to Ripple through private markets rather than waiting for a formal public offering.
XRP itself moved sharply in a separate spotlight altogether. The token traded near $1.11, up 10.6% over the past 24 hours, according to BeInCrypto data, as a White House crypto summit and positive ETF inflows lifted sentiment across the broader market.
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Moderna (MRNA) jumped 177% on Wednesday, and the strangest part is how little news it took. A $200 million estimate change moved $30 billion on the stock market.
Moderna became famous for its COVID vaccine five years ago, and its stock price is now at its highest since mid-2024. So, investors wasted no time taking profits after such a massive rally.
But can the stock price climb further? Or will the rally stop here?
What Actually Made Moderna Jump 130%?
The drug did not do it alone. Leerink’s revised estimate raised its 2032 sales estimate by roughly $200 million. Yet, the stock moved 150 times that amount in a market already at record highs.
The 150x Gap: BeInCrypto
Five loaded conditions did the rest. Moderna had collapsed 95% from $484 to $22. The recovery was already running, up 357% in 2026 on a flu approval before the cancer news.
Moderna’s Collapse Came First: BeInCrypto
The price sat above all six moving averages while analysts refused to believe with a $52.95 average target under the current price.
Bearish MRNA Analysts: TipRanks
And short sellers, traders who borrow shares and sell them betting on a fall, held 13.37% short interest in the freely traded shares, losing $4.8 billion when the readout forced them to buy back.
$MRNA Moderna carried a 13.5% short interest into today, among the most-shorted large caps. One trial readout later, shorts are sitting on roughly $4.8 billion in mark-to-market losses, near $100 a share. That is what a real binary catalyst does to a crowded book.
— Alpha🐺 (@Market_Alpha_) August 19, 2026
The Five Conditions Behind the Moderna Rally: BeInCrypto Moderna Stock Price Prediction: What Wall Street Giants Think
The Moderna move is one of those rare biotech events where the fundamental story genuinely changed overnight. The stock still overshot the immediate fundamentals, and today’s pullback is already showing that.
Ignore the old consensus target of roughly $50. Most of those targets were published before the Phase 3 result and are effectively obsolete.
The post-announcement calls are much more useful.
Bank of America upgraded Moderna from Underperform to Neutral and increased its price target enormously, from $40 to $170. BofA described the result as a watershed event because it gives Moderna a credible route away from dependence on infectious-disease vaccines.
Morgan Stanley raised its target from $39 to $89, while keeping Equal Weight. Morgan Stanley now sees much greater value in Moderna’s scalable mRNA platform, but remains much more conservative on share price.
Brookline Capital: sets a target around $135, with a Buy rating.
William Blair upgraded Moderna from Market Perform to Outperform, arguing that the Phase 3 result puts Moderna and Merck in position to seek regulatory approval and meaningfully changes Moderna’s diversification prospects.
So the fresh Street debate has suddenly become something like:
ViewApprox. valuationMorgan Stanley / conservative$89Brookline / middle$135BofA / bullish$170Yesterday’s close$174.38Current price~$140
That shows something important – even BofA’s extremely aggressive $170 target was below yesterday’s closing price.
How Long Will the Moderna Stock Rally Last?
There are really two rallies. The short-squeeze/momentum rally probably peaked yesterday. Today’s roughly 20% drop is consistent with that. Once shorts have covered and momentum traders start taking profits, that mechanical buying disappears.
The fundamental revaluation could last much longer. The next major event will likely be publication of the detailed Phase 3 numbers.
So far Moderna and Merck have announced that the endpoints were achieved, without releasing the actual hazard ratios and detailed clinical data.
Analysts still want to see magnitude of benefit, overall-survival trends, safety details and manufacturing economics.
Those detailed results are expected around the ESMO Congress in Madrid, October 23-27. That creates a natural trading window.
Between now and October, Moderna stock is likely to remain extremely volatile, with investors continuously repricing what the full data might show.
If the detailed results are excellent, another leg upward is possible. If they’re statistically positive but clinically less spectacular than investors currently imagine, the stock could fall substantially.
Based on what the market shows today, most analysts put Moderna’s reasonable near-to-medium-term fundamental range around $120-$150.

Bitcoin (BTC) has traded through two US market interventions in under three weeks. It moved the opposite way each time. Support for the yen pushed it down. An attack on long yields lifted it 8.8%.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went further on Thursday. He said buybacks could exceed $4 billion per issue and would become routine, while denying that rates drove the decision.
🇺🇸 US TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT JUST NOW:1. The Treasury will do buybacks routinely.2. Buybacks could be more than $4 billion, and part of this is about sending a signal to the market.3. He will probably announce a bigger push to cut the deficit.4. There is nothing…
— Bull Theory (@BullTheoryio) August 20, 2026
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Two Interventions, Two Opposite Bitcoin Reactions
The pattern is narrower than it looks. Bitcoin does not reward intervention itself. It rewards the intervention that lowers long-dated US borrowing costs.
The first landed at the start of August. Japan bought its own currency with an estimated $53 billion. The New York Fed then bought yen for the Treasury on August 1.
Washington had not bought yen since 1998. Bitcoin still slipped toward $63,000, down 1.25%, while US stocks closed higher.
Leverage explains why Bitcoin absorbed the yen shock alone. Traders borrow cheaply in yen to buy higher-returning assets, a strategy called the carry trade.
When the yen jumps, those positions cost more to hold. Crypto sits at the riskiest end of that chain, so it sells first.
The decisive detail sits in the bond market. Long yields never fell that week. The 10-year finished near 4.74%, its highest since January 2025, while the 30-year held near post-2007 highs.
One reading is that the operation spared Japan from selling US Treasuries. It protected the currency, not the long end, so Bitcoin had nothing to reward.
The second intervention arrived on August 19 and hit the bond market directly. The Treasury doubled its long-end buybacks, raising the maximum size of each operation to at least $4 billion.
That came one day after the 30-year yield touched 5.337%, the highest reading since 2007.
Bitcoin answered within the hour. Roughly $1.23 billion in crypto short positions was liquidated in 60 minutes. BTC traded near $69,803 on Thursday, up 8.8% over 24 hours.
Why Long Yields Matter More Than the Yen
Long-dated yields set the return available for taking almost no risk. A 30-year bond paying more than 5% is hard competition.
Push that yield lower and the calculation flips. Borrowing gets cheaper, the dollar softens, and money travels further out the risk curve.
“When yields drop and the dollar weakens, risk assets tend to rally,” said Jeff Mei. He is chief operating officer at the exchange BTSE.
The two episodes differ on compulsion. Yen strength forces traders out of positions. Falling yields invite them in. The invitation produced the bigger move.
One objection deserves an answer. The 8.8% jump was amplified by traders caught short, not fresh buyers. That is fair, but a squeeze needs a trigger, and the trigger was the yield drop.
What Could Kill the Rally
The threat is the yields themselves. Both interventions have already lost their grip.
USD/JPY changed hands near 158.79 on Thursday, almost back where it started. Two governments spent tens of billions, and the yen intervention has faded.
Bonds unwound faster. TradingView data put the 10-year at 4.692% on Thursday, just shy of the 4.710% it held before the announcement. The 30-year climbed to 5.237% after falling to 5.192%.
USD/JPY alongside US 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields, showing both interventions fading. Source: TradingView
Scale explains the fade. The increase adds roughly $14 billion against a market worth more than $30 trillion. None of it starts until September 9.
“While increasing liquidity buy-back operations by $2 billion might seem like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic given the U.S. national debt of $40 trillion, yesterday’s intervention by the U.S. Treasury has been warmly greeted by investors around the world,” Chris Turner of ING wrote on Thursday.
It captures the gap between flow and signal.
Bessent then moved to close that gap. He said on Thursday that buybacks could top $4 billion per issue, Bloomberg reported. He also said the Treasury would run them routinely, turning a one-off surprise into standing policy.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said buybacks of Treasury securities could be more than $4 billion per issue. https://t.co/WAUC3OGZGB
— Bloomberg (@business) August 20, 2026
The treasury executive also called 30-year liquidity particularly poor and said yields do not reflect underlying fundamentals. Both are unusual admissions from a sitting Treasury Secretary.
Yet he denied that rates drove the decision. That sits awkwardly beside the rest, since the market traded it as exactly that.
He added that the deficit has probably peaked under this administration. If so, that weakens the supply pressure behind the $40 trillion US debt load.
Two things would still end the move:
One is a clean break above 5.34% on the 30-year.
The other is a hawkish Fed, after minutes showed three officials wanted a hike.
That is the tension now. The flow keeps fading while the commitment keeps growing. Bitcoin’s current price works as a live scoreboard on which one wins.

President Donald Trump has made eight crypto endorsements since taking office. Every one trades below its pre-endorsement price, down 60% on average. On Wednesday, he made his ninth by naming Hyperliquid (HYPE) at the White House.
The token jumped 14% within two hours. Whether HYPE escapes the Trump-endorsed crypto pattern depends on something no earlier pick had. A regulator is actually working on the promise.
What Trump Actually Promised Hyperliquid
Trump name-dropped Hyperliquid on Wednesday while hosting executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Nasdaq, and other firms at the White House.
“I understand that Mike is also working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion,” Donald Trump, remarks at the White House, August 19, 2026.
“Mike” is Michael Selig, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the agency that oversees US derivatives markets.
Minutes after the comment, HYPE spiked from $62.23 to nearly $71. Hyperliquid Strategies, a Nasdaq-listed company that holds HYPE in its treasury, closed 30% higher on its best day on record.
HYPE trades near $71.45 at press time, up 21.3% over 24 hours. The token now ranks tenth by market cap at $15.9 billion.
Hyperliquid (HYPE) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Notably, Trump had never mentioned Hyperliquid before, in any post or speech. Meanwhile, Selig chairs the first session of the CFTC’s new Innovation Advisory Committee later Thursday. He says details will follow there.
How Every Trump-Endorsed Crypto Played Out
History gives HYPE holders a clear warning. BeInCrypto scored every coin endorsement he has made in office, eight in total.
The first was quiet. On February 18, 2025, he shared two articles praising Ripple on Truth Social, with no comment attached. XRP still climbed about 7% within 24 hours.
The loudest came on March 2, 2025. He promised a crypto reserve that would include XRP, Solana, and Cardano (ADA).
“A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration, which is why my Executive Order on Digital Assets directed the Presidential Working Group to move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOL, and ADA,” Donald Trump, Truth Social post, March 2, 2025.
ADA surged 75% within hours, while XRP added 31% and SOL 26%. The whole market gained over $500 billion that afternoon. About an hour later, a follow-up post added that Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) would be the reserve’s heart. ETH peaked just 3.3% higher. He has never mentioned it again.
The promise itself died within four days. An executive order made the reserve Bitcoin-only and barred the government from buying altcoins at all. The White House later confirmed that no purchases of XRP, SOL, or ADA ever happened.
Trump has not spoken about those three tickers in 535 days. ADA never printed a higher daily price again and now trades 73% below its pre-post level.
Politico later reported that a Ripple-linked lobbyist fed Trump the reserve post’s language, which may explain the long silence.
His own Official Trump (TRUMP) token got three separate pushes. He declared his love for it on March 23, 2025, worth an 11% pop and his last ticker mention ever.
One month later, the token’s issuer offered a private dinner with the president to the top 220 holders. Qualifying buyers spent about $148 million, and the token peaked 48% higher before fading. A Mar-a-Lago gala contest repeated the formula in March 2026, with a similar peak that turned negative within a month.
Nearly 1 million TRUMP wallets lost a combined $3.81 billion.
The scoreboard is uniform. The eight endorsements peaked 31% higher within 24 hours on average. They turned negative within 30 days and sit 60% lower today.
Trump Crypto Endorsement Scoreboard. Source: BeInCrypto Will Trump Keep His Hyperliquid Promise?
Every earlier pump failed the same way. The words never came with follow-through.
Hyperliquid is the first endorsement that arrives with the machinery already running. Selig’s CFTC has spent 2026 clearing a path for perpetual futures onshore. It approved US perps in May and called decentralized platforms candidates to follow.
Hyperliquid itself petitioned the CFTC in July, alongside wallet firm Phantom, for DeFi-fit rules.
Therefore, the test is unusually concrete. Thursday’s advisory meeting shows whether “compliant and legal fashion” becomes an actual docket item. The 30-day mark on September 18 shows whether HYPE can hold above $62.23, something only one prior endorsement briefly managed.
A registration pathway or exemption before the 90-day mark in November would separate this from the reserve episode entirely.
Caution still applies, because the remark was not formal approval.
Price Trajectory of Average Trump Crypto Endorsement. Source: BeInCrypto
The base rate says fade the pump. The regulatory calendar says this endorsement gets tested in public, starting with what Selig puts on the table today. HYPE either breaks the pattern or joins it.

Someone wants Elon Musk to pay $1 million for a web address. The anonymous owner of the Grok Bot domain grok.bot has turned it into an open letter to xAI, days after Musk’s company launched a product with the same name.
The pitch went viral on X on Thursday. However, one public record undercuts the seller’s story. He claims luck put him one month ahead of xAI. The domain’s own paper trail says seven.
A $1 Million Ask Framed as Dumb Luck
The landing page opens with a greeting aimed straight at xAI. A neon ticket graphic brands the address as a lottery win. A disclaimer notes the owner has no ties to Musk’s company.
The seller says pure chance drove the purchase. He simply likes .bot addresses, and he offers Space.bot as a bonus.
“I bought grok.bot one month before you launched Grok bot on X. Total dumb luck—I just like .bot domains,” the alleged owner wrote on the page.
Then the pitch turns personal. The seller says he lost heavily trading crypto and has a baby on the way. He promises to quit meme coins if xAI pays. He calls the $1 million a marketing spend and lists only a Gmail address.
The confession fits a familiar pattern. Musk’s own posts have repeatedly set off meme coin rallies, the corner of crypto the seller says he wants to escape.
someone bought https://t.co/veJugmkLLb and is now asking elon musk to pay $1m for it pic.twitter.com/BV2UOSNz8P
— Abhijit (@abhijitwt) August 20, 2026
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WHOIS Records Challenge the Grok Bot Domain Timeline
The luck story fails one simple check. WHOIS records, the public logbook behind every domain, date the purchase to January 20, 2026.
grok.bot domain information. Source: WHOIS
xAI announced Grok Bot, its always-on artificial intelligence (AI) agents, on August 11. The gap is seven months, not one.
Introducing Grok Bot, now in early beta.Bots are AI teammates that do real work for you. They sign in to your tools, use them just like you do, and come back with finished work. pic.twitter.com/uyfA97yo98
— Grok Bot (@bot) August 11, 2026
The record reveals little else. The name sits with registrar Spaceship, and its owner hides behind a privacy service in Iceland.
The seller also has a leverage problem. xAI already runs its chatbot at grok.com, the address that matters most.
A .bot ending is a nice extra, not a need.
Still, big domain deals happen. MicroStrategy sold Voice.com for $30 million in 2019 to Block.one, the company behind EOS.
Record breaker: https://t.co/wRMNtpUpNa domain name sells for staggering $30 million – Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff https://t.co/dtsO5TA2pl
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) June 20, 2019
Musk himself bought back x.com from PayPal in 2017 for sentimental reasons.
Thanks PayPal for allowing me to buy back https://t.co/bOUOejO16Y! No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2017
Buyers usually hold stronger cards, though. Trademark owners can fight back under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). A complaint starts at $1,500 in fees. That is 0.15% of the seller’s ask.
Musk’s company has bigger numbers in play, too. SpaceX disclosed this month that its AI unit lost $1.26 billion in one quarter. Meanwhile, Grok 4.5 recently topped an agent benchmark, part of the push that made the Grok Bot name valuable.
Neither Musk nor xAI has responded.
The seller may never see a dollar. However, he has already won what every domain flipper chases. The right buyer now knows his page exists.