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While stablecoin adoption has increased significantly in 2026, real payments still represent only a fraction of the trillions moving on-chain. In 2025, around 3.6% of adjusted stablecoin volume came from actual payments. Much of it has to do with something called the checkout problem.
Paying with a stablecoin can still mean a second screen, another identity check and a checkout run by a company the user did not choose. These extra steps are easy to overlook in transaction charts, but they are often where adoption stalls.
Some products are trying to address this gap with newer innovations. For instance, payments company Banxa launched Native on August 20. It gives wallets, exchanges and fintech apps a way to place fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat transactions inside their own interfaces.
Banxa handles the regulated rails underneath, including price quotes, compliance validation and settlement.
Banxa Native is live.Introducing our headless ramp infrastructure, powering partner flows from within. Banxa is named as the regulated provider at the point of payment, with:✅ No Banxa-branded screens, no redirects✅ Existing KYC carries through, so eligible users skip… pic.twitter.com/aKSzWZm2yq
— Banxa (@BanxaOfficial) August 20, 2026
A Checkout That Stays Put
Imagine buying $200 of USDC inside a wallet. The app requests a live price, checks whether the user and payment method are eligible, and then opens an Apple Pay sheet without sending the customer to a Banxa webpage.
The same flow works with cards and Google Pay. Bank transfers can run through the API.
Platforms that already verify customers can also pass the identity data to Banxa. A returning user may move directly to payment rather than complete KYC again.
So, the platform keeps its branding and customer relationship, and Banxa remains in the plumbing.
“The user experience across crypto remains fragmented and unnecessarily complex. Our goal is to simplify this and having Banxa onboard means users receive a seamless experience by embedding compliant fiat crypto access directly into the user journey,” Felix Fan, CEO at Trust Wallet, said.
Invisible Has a Boundary
Banxa’s Native does not make every payment method disappear into the app. Its documentation says PayPal, iDEAL, Klarna, PIX, and several other local options still move the customer into its hosted checkout for the payment step.
Partners also need user accounts, a backend, and their own KYC process. This is infrastructure for established platforms, rather than a plug-in for any app.
The regulatory layer matters as much as the interface. OSL completed its acquisition of Banxa in January, folding the company into a wider stablecoin payments push.
Banxa says it has more than 400 platform integrations, has served over 10 million users and has processed more than $10 billion in cumulative volume. Its Dutch entity also holds a MiCA licence covering 30 EEA countries.
But Native now faces a practical test. Do fewer users abandon a purchase when the crypto checkout stops looking like a detour?
The launch offers a credible technical answer to an old user-experience problem. Proof will come from how people behave at checkout.

Webull recorded a nearly 300% jump in buy-side orders for Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) over the past week and a half, Chief Executive Officer Anthony Denier said.
Denier linked the surge to June’s repeal of the pattern day trading (PDT) rule, which had limited frequent trading for accounts under $25,000. Bitcoin traded near $78,919 at the time of writing.
A Rule Change Reshapes Retail Trading
Speaking in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Denier said the rule change reshaped how Webull’s retail base trades. The average account on the platform holds roughly $5,500, well under the old PDT threshold.
That meant most users previously could not day trade unrestricted assets at all. The repeal, effective June 4, opened that activity to the bulk of Webull’s client base.
“We’re seeing over the past week and a half, we’re seeing almost a 300% increase in buy-side orders for the big cryptos, Bitcoin and ETH.”
— Anthony Denier, CNBC
Treasury Moves and a Revenue Jump
Denier also credited recent Treasury purchase operations with sparking the broader Bitcoin rally, a dynamic that lines up with Bitcoin’s record weekly gain even as critics challenge the Treasury’s buyback plan.
The rule change has already shown up in Webull’s financials. Revenue rose from $160 million in the first quarter to near $200 million in the second.
“We went from a $160 million top line revenue in Q1 to near $200 million basically on one month’s addition, which was June of Q2 that removed the PDT rule.”
— Anthony Denier, CNBC
Denier said only a small share of clients actively day trade Bitcoin and ether. This is well below the roughly 10% who day trade across all products, without giving an exact figure.
Most customers hold long-term positions, he said. And, they trade actively mainly during volatile stretches, including swings tied to artificial intelligence stocks.
Webull has never reported a quarter of declining client assets under management, Denier said, even with an active trading base.

Arthur Hayes argues Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is running the same money-printing playbook former Secretary Janet Yellen used in 2023. If the pattern holds, the math points to a six-figure Bitcoin target.
Bessent’s Treasury has already doubled long-term bond buyback operations this month. Hayes says the policy mirrors the liquidity mechanics that fueled Bitcoin’s 2023-2024 rally under Yellen.
Why Hayes Sees a Bessent-Yellen Repeat
Hayes, the BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom chief investment officer, made a similar case in a recent Hayes interview. He argues Bessent faces the same problem Yellen did in 2023. Both face a government that keeps spending. Historically, that has forced a Treasury Secretary to defend the 10-year yield below 5%.
Yellen’s fix was shifting issuance toward short-term bills. The move drained the Fed’s reverse repo facility from $2.5 trillion to about $100 billion. That drawdown ran from mid-2023 to January 2025, when Bessent took over. That cash flowed into bank reserves and, Hayes argues, into Bitcoin’s 2023-2024 rally.
A snap shot of Bitcoin’s price action from the start of 2023 – at around $16,000 – to the end of 2024 where it tipped over $100,000. Image Source: CoinGecko
Bessent’s version of the same trade is already underway. The Treasury doubled long-term bond buybacks from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation this month. Officials are also weighing whether to tap the roughly $950 billion Treasury General Account (TGA) to fund even larger purchases.
The move briefly pushed Bitcoin to $80,000 before it slipped back near $78,800. That mirrors how quickly the bond market clawed back August’s earlier buyback rally.
The Bitcoin Math Behind the $224,000 Target
Applying Hayes’ 2023 comparison literally produces a specific target. Bitcoin traded near $26,000 in mid-2023, when Yellen’s bill-heavy issuance began draining the reverse repo facility. It peaked near $73,750 in March 2024, before the halving and spot ETF approvals added their own momentum. That’s a 2.84x move.
Applying the same multiple to Bitcoin’s current price of roughly $78,800 produces a target near $224,000. That figure is a simple calculation based on Hayes’ framework, not a number Hayes stated himself.
But, the number does carry some caveats. The 2023-2024 rally wasn’t driven by reverse repo drainage alone. Spot Bitcoin ETF approval in January 2024 and April 2024’s halving both landed in the same window. Each moved price independently of Treasury issuance mechanics. However, implicit money printing has always been a big catalyst for Bitcoin growth
Citadel Securities has also pushed back on Bessent’s buyback strategy. The firm warns the approach resembles financial repression that could weaken the dollar and stoke inflation.
Whether Bitcoin gets anywhere near that math depends on one thing.
Can Bessent’s buybacks hold up better than August’s first attempt did? Or will they fade the way the bond market rally already has twice this month?

Trump Media’s interim CEO, Kevin McGurn, defended the company’s Truth API service on CNBC Monday. He said customer sign-ups have grown to the mid-teens since the product launched on August 1.
Truth API sells high-frequency trading firms early access to President Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts. Critics say the arrangement lets paying customers trade on the president’s statements before the public sees them.
Sign-Ups Grow For Trump’s Signals
McGurn told CNBC’s Squawk Box that demand for the service came directly from the market, not from the company itself. He compared it to APIs long used by social platforms to feed trading firms, news outlets, and prediction markets.
“We’re getting into the mid-teens now, and we’re climbing.”Kevin McGurn, CNBC
That is up from the more than 10 customer agreements McGurn cited on Trump Media’s earnings call two weeks earlier. Truth API costs up to $100,000 per month.
Congress Looking Into It
The service has drawn scrutiny from Congress and faces at least one lawsuit alleging it is unconstitutional. One federal complaint argues Trump cannot sell early access to posts the public effectively owns.
Trump holds his stake in Trump Media through a revocable trust. The structure lets him retain ownership without daily control. The company has already earned over $1 million from the service since its launch.
McGurn said Truth API also plans to expand into retail trading platforms, large language models, and prediction markets.
Whether the growing customer base outpaces the legal and political pressure remains the open question heading into the midterms.

BitMine Immersion Technologies owns 5,847,611 ether. That is 4.79% of every ether in existence, and a tighter grip on Ethereum than Michael Saylor has ever held on Bitcoin.
Chairman Tom Lee told the Bankless podcast the company could reach its 5% goal before the end of 2026. The math is harder than it looks.
BitMine Built Its Ethereum Stack in 14 Months
Saylor’s firm, MicroStrategy, took six years to gather 840,447 Bitcoin. That comes to 4.19% of the coins in circulation.
BitMine passed that share of ether in 14 months. It made its first purchase on June 30, 2025, and has bought every week since. Sixty weeks, no gaps.
Ethereum Treasury Holdings. Source: Coingecko
Lee credits a plain balance sheet. BitMine paid for the stack with common stock, not loans or convertible notes. Several rival treasuries leaned on those tools and did not survive the downturn.
Ether traded near $2,480 on Monday, up 1% on the day. It rose about 30% last week, its best week since May 2025. BitMine used the rally for its largest weekly ETH purchase since early July.
“It’s about $350 million worth of ETH that we need to acquire to reach 5%… we could reach it by the end of the year,” Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, speaking on Bankless.
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The 5% Finish Line Keeps Moving
Here is the catch. Ether supply is not fixed, and right now it is growing. The network has added 85,893 ether over the past 30 days.
Total supply now sits at 121.98 million. That is about 1.3 million higher than the figure BitMine’s own disclosures use.
Ethereum Supply. Source: Ultrasound Money
That gap matters because a true 5% means 6.1 million ether. BitMine is about 251,000 tokens short, worth roughly $620 million at Monday’s price. Lee’s $350 million estimate was made before ether’s rally.
What Comes After 5%
Lee rules out selling. BitMine has staked most of its ether, and those 5.07 million tokens generate about $330 million a year. That alone is roughly 12% of all staked ether on the network.
The yield covers the dividend on BMNP. That is a 9.5% preferred stock BitMine sold in June at $80, against a $100 liquidation value. Lee calls it a cheap three-year call option on ether.
The company is also turning into an Ethereum operator. Its validator arm MAVAN, short for Made in America Validator Network, launched in March.
BitMine then helped anchor three groups spun out of the Ethereum Foundation, alongside SharpLink and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.
Lee ties the long-term case to tokenization and artificial intelligence rather than stablecoins. On that Wall Street adoption thesis, he named a number.
“I think Ethereum could easily be over 10,000 in that time frame.”
No listed rival is close. SharpLink, the next largest ether treasury, holds 888,938 tokens, about one-seventh of BitMine’s pile. The real contest is not with them. It is with a supply schedule that keeps printing.

Jim Cramer told investors not to sell Meta Platforms (META) over the youth-safety trial in Oakland, California. He argued the legal pressure is temporary and the shares reward patience.
Meta stock trial risk has weighed on the shares all year. They closed Monday at $559.02, up 1.66%, valuing Meta near $1.42 trillion.
Meta Platforms (META) Stock Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance What the Meta Stock Trial Risk Actually Covers
Opening arguments in the case, brought by 29 state attorneys general, began on August 18. The states accuse Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to be habit-forming for minors, then downplaying the danger.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide the outcome, because the jury is advisory only. She has already discarded claims tied to infinite scroll and autoplay.
Meta leans on Section 230, the federal law shielding platforms from liability over user posts. The states attack design, not content.
Jim Cramer says don't sell Meta on litigation risk — the stock is worth the wait https://t.co/SQUpjALxes
— CNBC Tech (@CNBCtech) August 24, 2026
The $1.4 Trillion Figure Is a Ceiling, Not a Demand
No state has asked for $1.4 trillion. The number is a theoretical maximum, alleged violations multiplied by the fines written into state law.
Meta surfaced the calculation in a July 7 filing and asked the court to reject it. The states’ filings remain sealed, and they have never named a figure.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta accused Meta of promoting the number to make the case look unreasonable. Asked for a fair penalty, he pointed to revenue.
“They generated revenue of $200 billion last year, so, you know, maybe that amount would be appropriate. Maybe more. Maybe less,” Rob Bonta, quoted by NPR on Aug. 18.
New Mexico’s separate case ended in $942 million of penalties, a fraction of the number greeting the landmark youth-safety trial.
Cramer and Wall Street Split on Meta Stock
Cramer made his case on X six days ago, blaming the venue, not the merits.
“Meta trial in the worst possible district for corporate defendants, hence why the stock is being hammered. But the case, while strong enough, might not survive a supreme court review,” Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” in a post.
Bank of America kept its Buy rating and $810 price target, implying roughly 45% upside on 16 times estimated 2027 earnings.
Mizuho is warier, comparing the case to the Big Tobacco fights of the 1990s. Forced product changes would bruise sentiment faster than any fine.
The Inverse Cramer Trade Has a Losing Record
Fading Cramer is a standing market joke, and BeInCrypto covered the latest inverse Cramer episode days ago.
The record does not reward it. Tuttle Capital’s Inverse Cramer Tracker ETF (SJIM) ran from March 2023 to February 2024, losing 15% while the S&P 500 gained 25%.
Quiver Quantitative still tracks the trade, showing a 42.57% win rate and a 17.63% loss over the past year.
Selling Meta because Cramer said hold is therefore a weak thesis. Of 43 analysts tracked by TipRanks, 38 still rate the stock a Buy and none a Sell.
The consensus reads Strong Buy, with an average 12-month target of $752.38. That sits 34.59% above Monday’s close.
Targets run from $580 to $1,000, so even the lowest sits above where Meta trades today.
Meta Platforms (META) Stock Forecast & Price Target. Source: TipRanks
The stronger bear case sits with Mizuho and the remedies, not with the messenger. Meta’s bill for AI server hardware will test it long before the courtroom does.

Bitcoin (BTC) rose 23.58% last week, its best week since 2023. The move added $14,833, the largest dollar gain of any week in Bitcoin’s history.
BTC trades near $79,000 at the time of writing, up 1.8% over 24 hours. The weekly candle broke a descending trendline stretching back to the October 2025 record high.
Bitcoin’s Best Week Since 2023 Breaks a 10-Month Downtrend
Structurally, Bitcoin’s price bounced from the $63,000 to $66,000 support zone. It then cleared the descending resistance line drawn from the record high of $126,195. Price also pushed through the $74,000-$76,000 band, which should now serve as support.
Weekly volume expanded alongside the move, though it stayed below June’s peak. The BBWP indicator expanded from an extreme low to near-maximum volatility, and it continues to rise. Historically, such squeezes signal a large move without indicating its direction.
BTC weekly chart. Source: Tradingview
The daily chart carries the more durable signal. BTC reclaimed its 200-day moving average near $69,000. That level had capped every advance of the downtrend since last October.
Daily RSI now reads 82, its highest since 2024. However, momentum has stretched rather than reversed on its two most recent occurrences.
The nearest resistance sits at the $82,215 swing high, followed by the $85,000 to $87,000 zone. BTC remains roughly 38% below its record high.
BTC daily chart. Source: TradingView Funding Rates Hit a 2026 High While Open Interest Lags
Derivatives data complicates the bullish read. Roughly $2.7 billion of shorts liquidated on August 19, when the US Treasury doubled its long-dated bond buybacks.
Glassnode data shows aggregate perpetual funding reaching its highest level in 2026 during the squeeze. In contrast, April’s advance toward $79,000 was accompanied by persistently negative funding.
Traders paid to stay short then. They now pay to stay long, which suggests positioning has flipped rather than moderated.
BTC futures perpetual funding rate / Source: Glassnode
Open interest tells a different story. CoinGlass data puts exchange open interest near $57.5 billion, up from roughly $46.5 billion before the breakout.
That total still sits below the January peak near $65.3 billion and the May peak near $64 billion. Both readings preceded sharp corrections this year.
Leverage has therefore returned without reaching saturation. A climb toward $64 billion would indicate a crowded market again.
Exchange BTC open interest / Source: Coinglass
Meanwhile, a weekly hold above $74,000 keeps the breakout structure intact. Losing that band would shift the burden back to the $63,000 to $66,000 range.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sent subpoenas to major Wall Street banks over their dealings with Situational Awareness, the artificial intelligence (AI) hedge fund that nearly collapsed last month.
Three people briefed on the outreach described the requests to the New York Times. Regulators want trade timing data and lender communications. The fund has not been accused of wrongdoing.
SEC Investigation Targets the Leverage Paper Trail
The subpoenas went to banks that cleared the fund’s trades and financed its positions. Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase ranked among its largest counterparties, according to a regulatory filing.
Investigators asked for the timing of specific trades. They also requested messages the banks exchanged with the fund about borrowed money, and told them to preserve every record tied to the San Francisco firm.
All four banks declined to comment. So did the SEC. A Situational Awareness spokesman said scrutiny of this kind was predictable.
“It is to be expected that regulators would closely examine any funds that are high profile, produce significant returns or have particularly dramatic drawdowns,” Situational Awareness said in a statement.
The timing lands as bank executives flag hidden borrowing across markets. JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon warned this month that margin debt hit records.
A $30 Billion Book That Unwound in Days
At its peak the fund ran more than $30 billion and borrowed tens of billions more. Leopold Aschenbrenner, a 24-year-old former OpenAI researcher, founded it roughly two years ago.
Filings show the strategy turned far more aggressive before it broke. Protective put options worth $8.5 billion in March had largely disappeared by June 30, replaced by $12.5 billion in outright long positions.
AI names then dipped in late July while the traditional tech stocks the fund had shorted climbed. Margin calls followed, the portfolio fell about 67%, and Citadel bought the public book at a roughly 10% discount.
Bitcoin Miners Were Caught in the Middle
Crypto investors absorbed part of that unwind without knowing it. Mining stocks had grown to a quarter of the book, reaching $1.99 billion in the final 13F filing.
Core Scientific, Riot Platforms, and IREN led those positions. Ken Griffin’s firm has since cleared the miner overhang through nearly 100 block trades.
Any SEC investigation at this stage may never produce a case. The documents it gathers, however, could show how long the banks funded one concentrated AI bet before withdrawing credit.
Situational Awareness still holds a stake in Anthropic, which is weighing a public listing. That position now stands as the clearest measure of what survived July.

Elon Musk celebrated a new partnership between SpaceX and NVIDIA on Monday, confirming plans to launch an optimized Vera Rubin system into orbit as early as 2027.
Despite his enthusiasm, both companies’ stocks fell on the day of the announcement.
What Elon Musk Confirmed About the Deal
NVIDIA announced that SpaceXAI will deploy its new Vera CPU to power the next generation of agentic AI workloads, extending the chipmaker’s architecture from Earth-based data centers into orbital computing infrastructure. Musk responded directly on X.
SpaceX, in partnership with Nvidia, has designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system for launch to orbit in Q4 next year, with significant scale in 2028 https://t.co/qdDq8YBkzl
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2026
He described Vera as the first CPU built for agents, saying it would accelerate the orchestration, code execution, and data processing that keep SpaceX’s AI agents acting fast.
“Our design is significantly simpler, lower cost, denser and lighter than a traditional rack,” Musk said on X.
Vera itself packs 88 NVIDIA-designed Olympus cores and up to 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth, claiming task completion times up to 1.8 times faster than comparable x86 processors.
SpaceXAI will pair the chip with NVIDIA’s broader Vera Rubin platform to scale infrastructure behind Grok toward gigawatt-level computing capacity.
NVIDIA Vera CPU. Source: NVIDIA Why Both Stocks Fell Anyway
NVIDIA shares fell 2.91% to $208.48, extending a rough week that left the stock down 5.95% over five sessions, according to TradingView data. The pullback comes just two days ahead of NVIDIA’s next earnings report, scheduled for August 26.
SpaceX stock declined as well. Shares of Space Exploration Technologies Corp, trading under the ticker SPCX since its June IPO, closed down 1.44% to $135, then slipped a further 0.22% in after-hours trading to $134.70.
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SpaceX (SPCX) Price Performance. Source: TradingView
The joint decline suggests Musk’s endorsement was not enough to offset broader pressure on both names.
NVIDIA trades near its 52-week range amid ongoing concerns over memory costs and export uncertainty in China, while SpaceX shares remain well below their $135 IPO price and June peak of $225.64, still recovering from an all-time low of $104.83 hit on August 3.
Neither move appears large enough to be attributed directly to the Vera partnership alone, suggesting that NVIDIA’s upcoming earnings and SpaceX’s ongoing post-IPO volatility carried more weight with investors than Monday’s announcement or Musk’s public praise.

France’s Telegram case turned two years old on Monday. Founder Pavel Durov marked the date by accusing governments of punishing the app for refusing censorship demands.
The French criminal investigation opened in August 2024 remains active. Durov argues the case has weakened as evidence about Telegram’s moderation record has accumulated.
How France’s Telegram Case Began
French police held Durov for three days in 2024, the longest period allowed before charges. He describes the move as a first, with a platform executive accused over offenses committed by users.
Restrictions on him have since loosened. France lifted his travel restrictions in November 2025, ending a year of mandatory police check-ins.
However, the probe itself never closed. French prosecutors have examined whether Telegram enabled criminal activity by failing to cooperate with lawful requests. Durov now says two years of data undercut its premise. Telegram, he argues, neither moderated worse than rivals nor cooperated less with authorities.
A Pattern Durov Says Repeats Across Countries
Durov says officials in several countries quietly asked Telegram for political favors, including censorship and surveillance he considers illegal. Refusal, he argues, triggers campaigns from local media and advocacy groups.
🚨 Two years ago, I was detained in Paris by police for 3 days — the longest they can hold someone before charging them.In an unprecedented move, French authorities accused the head of a major platform of crimes committed by its users.That investigation is still ongoing,…
— Pavel Durov (@durov) August 24, 2026
He has previously described requests tied to elections in Romania and Moldova. He and Elon Musk have separately accused European regulators of using child safety as leverage.
Telegram’s safety page reports 23.6 million groups and channels blocked this year. Of those, 370,777 were tied to child abuse material and 164,099 to terrorist content.
Meanwhile, Durov points to platforms he says escape comparable scrutiny. The Tech Transparency Project, a corporate accountability watchdog, reviewed Meta’s ad library this month. It found more than 50 paid ads carrying AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
What Comes Next for the French Case
Durov expects the investigation to eventually face questions of its own. He points to domestic pushback against President Emmanuel Macron’s online rules.
That pushback is now visible in French courts. Judges have begun testing how far the government can restrict platforms before free expression protections apply.
France’s Constitutional Council struck down a ban on social media for children under 15. The August 14 decision cited freedom of expression.
Durov has made similar accusations against Russia, which charged him with terrorism offenses in July.
GRAM, the Telegram-linked token formerly known as Toncoin, traded around $1.47 on Monday, down roughly 3% in 24 hours.
Gram Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Whether French prosecutors move toward trial or quietly wind the case down may become clearer in the months ahead.

The real-world asset (RWA) market cap reached $71.02 billion on Monday, a gain of 48.7% in 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Meme coins fell 2.2% over the same day.
The sector added $23.26 billion. One token accounts for almost all of it, and it is not a tokenized stock.
Top Real World Assets (RWA) Coins by Market Cap. Source: Coingecko One Listing Explains the Whole Jump
Figure Heloc is the largest RWA holding at $22.81 billion. That is 32% of the sector. Take it out of Monday’s total and $48.21 billion remains. The sector was worth $47.75 billion a day earlier.
The difference between those two figures is 0.96%. In other words, the RWA sector without Figure Heloc is almost exactly where it stood the day before.
Top Real World Assets (RWA) Coins by Market Cap
Prices did not do this. Chainlink (LINK) rose 0.8% on the day, and Stellar (XLM) fell 3.3%. Figure Heloc itself gained 4.5% across the week.
A token added to a list can raise a sector total. Nobody has to buy anything.
What Figure Heloc Actually Is
The token is a pool of home equity credit lines. Figure, a Nevada lender, issues them on its own Provenance blockchain. Figure is not a fringe operation. It listed on Nasdaq in September 2025 and earned $191 million on $619 million of revenue over the past year.
The scale is the striking part. Figure’s shares are worth $8.66 billion. Its tokenized loan book is worth $22.81 billion, or roughly two and a half times the company itself.
Those tokens barely move. They turned over $14.9 million in 24 hours, about 0.065% of their value. CoinGecko’s own data returns no 24-hour price change for them at all.
So the largest asset in crypto’s RWA sector is a securitized mortgage book that almost never trades. Researchers have tracked this gap between value and liquidity for months.
Tokenized Stocks See Modest Gain in Crypto Rally
Tokenized equities sit in a separate pool worth $8.25 billion. That is roughly a third of the jump they are credited with causing.
They also cannot outrun the shares they copy. MicroStrategy xStock (MSTRX) trades at $122.69, while Strategy’s Nasdaq-listed shares sit at $122.63.
MicroStrategy xStock (MSTRX) Stock Performance. Source: Coingecko
It rose 27.9% over seven days because the stock did. The wrapper simply followed.
Meme Coins Fell While RWA Rose
Almost every large meme coin lost ground on Monday. Dogecoin (DOGE) fell 4.1%, Pump.fun (PUMP) dropped 7.9% and Official Trump (TRUMP) slid 9.9%.
The sector ended the day down 2.3% at $32.82 billion. Shiba Inu (SHIB), Bonk (BONK) and FLOKI all finished lower.
Top Meme Coins by Market Cap. Source: Coingecko
So Monday set a listing against a selloff. RWA gained on paper while meme coins lost real value. Turnover separates the two:
Meme coins traded 13.2% of their market cap in 24 hours.
The RWA sector managed 4%, and Figure Heloc just 0.065%.
Meme coins are the smaller market that actually changes hands. RWA is the larger one that mostly sits still.
The Seven-Day Picture Is Different
Widen the window, and meme coins lead on price. Official Trump gained 73.5% over seven days, Pump.fun 66.3% and Pepe (PEPE) 54.2%.
RWA tokens were steadier. Stellar climbed 22.1% and Chainlink 21.9% across the same week.
Meme coins also traded harder, turning over $4.35 billion against $2.82 billion. That extends the meme coin season rally.
BeInCrypto Intelligence research on the real state of tokenization tracked roughly $60 billion across 7,000 products. Most of it sits inactive on-chain.
The RWA sector grew by $23 billion on Monday. It grew by counting something new, not by anyone buying it.

Bitcoin’s 25% weekly rally has dragged a small group of altcoins sharply higher, with Zcash (ZEC), Aave (AAVE), and XRP printing the strongest weekly candles among large caps.
Bitcoin trades near $78,702 after reaching its highest level since May. Meanwhile, all three altcoins cleared long-standing technical resistance on rising volume, which suggests the move runs deeper than short-term momentum.
Zcash Clears Its November 2025 Peak and Tags the $903 Target
Zcash gained 75.5% last week, its largest weekly candle of the cycle. ZEC now trades at $846.51, down 1.19% over 24 hours.
The rally pushed ZEC above the November 2025 peak at $749. Price now sits inside the first target zone, which ends at the 1.272 Fibonacci extension at $903.
ZEC weekly chart. Source: TradingView
Above that level, the 1.618 extension at $1,099 becomes the next objective. Support sits at the 0.786 Fibonacci level near $628, with a deeper floor at $533.
However, the weekly RSI has reached 70, placing ZEC on the edge of overbought territory. Volume also stayed thin through the range before last week’s spike.
Aave Escapes a Seven-Month Descending Channel
Aave rose 64.5% and broke out of the descending parallel channel that had capped it since January. AAVE trades at $136.08, down 3.08% on the day.
The breakout cleared the $125 resistance band, which now flips to first support. Below that, the former channel floor near $90 marks the next line of defense.
AAVE weekly chart / Source: Tradingview
The next hurdle sits at $150, the zone AAVE broke down from in early January. Last week’s high of $144.68 already came within 4% of it.
A weekly RSI of 60 leaves room before overbought conditions appear, unlike ZEC. Institutional interest in Grayscale and other funds has also built up throughout the year.
XRP Breaks a 13-Month Descending Trendline
XRP climbed 53% and broke the descending trendline drawn from its July 2025 record near $3.66. That line has rejected four rally attempts since then.
XRP trades at $1.50, down 1.02% over 24 hours. Volume on the breakout candle reached its highest level since February, indicating genuine participation.
XRP weekly chart. Source: TradingView
Price also cleared the May swing high at $1.4735 and turned it into support. Resistance now sits at the 0.618 Fibonacci level at $1.70.
Weekly RSI at 57 remains neutral, leaving XRP with the most headroom of the three tokens.
Each setup rests on Bitcoin holding its gains. A rejection below $80,000 would likely stall these breakouts at their first resistance levels. Conversely, continued strength keeps $903 in ZEC, $150 in AAVE, and $1.70 in XRP in play.

Bitcoin (BTC) touched $80,000 on Monday, then handed the level straight back. Critics are lining up against the US Treasury plan that sparked the move.
The token traded near $78,835 at press time. The bond market had already run this exact play last week, and it did not hold.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto What Pushed Bitcoin to $80,000
The Treasury General Account (TGA) is the government’s checking account at the Federal Reserve. Tax receipts fill it. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has let it swell, with reports pegging the account near $950 billion.
U.S. Treasury Considers Using $950B TGA to Support Larger Long-Term Bond Buybacks According to CNBC, citing two senior Treasury officials, the U.S. Treasury is considering using funds from its roughly $950 billion Treasury General Account to help finance larger buybacks of… pic.twitter.com/p6LocZRfi7
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 24, 2026
Treasury’s own daily cash statement showed $935.1 billion on August 20, the latest official reading. Two senior Treasury officials told CNBC that money could fund bond buybacks.
Treasury doubled those buybacks on August 19. Long-end operations rose from $2 billion to at least $4 billion each. The first lands on September 9, per the department’s own announcement.
Traders liked the plumbing. Spending TGA cash does not grow the Fed’s balance sheet. It just moves money into bank reserves. That reads as liquidity, and liquidity has been Bitcoin’s fuel all month.
The Bond Market Already Round-Tripped This Trade
Treasury’s own yield data tells the story. The 30-year yield hit 5.31% on August 17, its highest reading since 2007.
The buyback news knocked it down to 5.19% two days later. By August 21 it sat at 5.27%. The entire rally vanished in two sessions.
Bitcoin tests $80,000 while US 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields slip. Source: TradingView
Monday delivered a second bounce. The 30-year eased to 5.21% and the 10-year to 4.69%. Bitcoin’s spot price rode that wave to $80,000, then slid.
Why Critics Say It Will Not Hold
Bessent calls the strategy a “Treasury Twist.” The name echoes Operation Twist, the 1961 attempt to bend long-term rates lower.
Citadel Securities calls it financial repression. The firm warns it could weaken the dollar and stoke inflation. The deficits behind the yield spike go untouched.
CITADEL WARNS BESSENT’S BUYBACKS COULD BACKFIRECitadel Securities calls Treasury’s expanded bond buybacks “financial repression,” warning they could weaken the dollar and fuel inflation.Bessent’s strategy aims to suppress long-term yields, potentially using Treasury’s cash… pic.twitter.com/IwrN1YJQm5
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) August 24, 2026
Peter Schiff, chief economist at Euro Pacific Asset Management, has long warned about bond markets.
“This reckless plan will substantially shorten the average maturity of the national debt, increasing our exposure to rising short-term rates… It’s a recipe for massive QE and runaway inflation. Got gold?” Schiff wrote.
Benjamin Chabot, a former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, asked the sharper question.
“Does it matter if Treasury uses the TGA to buy bonds? Probably not. TGA funds are mostly spoken for. What matters is how Treasury refills the TGA after purchases,” he stated.
Fundstrat’s Tom Lee took the other side. He says the shift favors long-duration assets, crypto included.
This is positive for long duration assets (anything that investors see a value beyond 7 years)Long duration assets:– equities– crypto– gold – real estate$BMNR $BMNP https://t.co/OLVhRFCHoy
— Thomas (Tom) Lee (not drummer) FundstratDirect.com (@fundstrat) August 24, 2026
Treasury has not spent a dollar of the account. September 9 is when the talk becomes numbers.

Ethereum price broke above $2,500 this week during a sharp market-wide rally, and BitMine Immersion Technologies used the moment to make its largest weekly purchase since early July.
The Tom Lee-chaired firm added 32,447 ETH, pushing its position closer to a stated “5% Alchemy” target.
Ethereum (ETH) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto BitMine’s Largest Purchase in Weeks
BitMine spent $81 million to buy the new tokens, bringing its total holdings to 5,847,611 ETH, valued at approximately $14.6 billion at current prices.
Including 210 Bitcoin (BTC), stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings, and $308 million in cash and marketable securities, the company reported a combined treasury of $14.9 billion, up from $11.4 billion the previous week.
The company has purchased ETH every single week since launching its treasury strategy on June 30, 2025, a run of roughly 14 months without interruption.
Its current holdings amount to roughly 4.8% of Ethereum’s total supply, putting the firm about 97% of the way toward the 5% threshold it has pursued publicly since the strategy began.
Tom Lee’s Bitmine has bought another $81M worth of Ethereum, marking its largest weekly ETH accumulation since early July.The purchase comes as ETH has surged around 30% over the past week, with Lee suggesting this move could be the beginning of a much larger trend.While many… pic.twitter.com/jm3h1cE42m
— That Martini Guy ₿ (@MartiniGuyYT) August 24, 2026
Roughly 5,067,309 ETH, or 87% of BitMine’s holdings, sits staked through its Made in America Validator Network.
The company projects that the position could generate around $330 million in annualized revenue, though actual returns depend on network conditions and validator performance rather than being guaranteed.
Why Tom Lee Sees This Rally as Different
ETH traded near $2,511 as of August 24, according to BeInCrypto data, after surging roughly 30% over the past week, its strongest gain since May 2025. That climb outpaced Bitcoin’s own advance of roughly 22% over the same period.
Lee framed the past week’s price action as historically significant. This marks the largest weekly gain since May 2025, and in the two prior instances of similar magnitude, such a move signaled the launch point of a much larger rally, one he noted was followed by gains exceeding 160% in earlier cycles.
The $ETH weekly gain of 30% historically signaled a larger upward move for @ethereum in weeks ahead https://t.co/QwdyLVb134
— Thomas (Tom) Lee (not drummer) FundstratDirect.com (@fundstrat) August 24, 2026
He pointed to several tailwinds behind the move: Wall Street’s growing tokenization efforts, expanding agentic AI applications built on blockchain infrastructure, supportive policy signals out of Washington, and easing broader financial conditions.
BitMine’s continued buying, even as ETH rallies rather than dips, signals institutional conviction rather than opportunistic bottom-fishing.
As the largest publicly traded Ethereum treasury company, it positions its steady accumulation and staking operations as a structural force behind the network’s growth, regardless of short-term price swings.
$ETH managed a weekly close above the $2,450 level.If this level holds, Ethereum is going to $3,000 in a few weeks. pic.twitter.com/MJh4OwSrfB
— Ted (@TedPillows) August 24, 2026
Whether this week’s breakout above $2,500 marks the start of the larger move Lee described will likely depend on whether the fundamental catalysts he cited continue building momentum in the weeks ahead.
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Josh Kushner, set to become the incoming owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, has ridden the AI wave to an eleven-digit fortune as his venture firm nearly tripled its assets this year.
Forbes now estimates his net worth at $16.7 billion, up from $5.2 billion just twelve months ago.
What Actually Drove the Fortune Surge
Kushner built much of that wealth through Thrive Capital, the venture firm he founded and still leads today. He grew the firm’s assets to more than $65 billion, nearly triple the $23 billion he managed in December 2024. Much of that surge traces to two specific wins this year.
He first invested in SpaceX at a $38 billion valuation, a bet that grew into a reported $10 billion stake when the rocket maker went public in June.
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Josh Kushner’s Real-Time Net Worth. Source: Forbes
Days later, SpaceX announced a $60 billion deal to acquire AI coding startup Cursor, doubling the value of his 7% stake in that company to $4.2 billion.
His position in OpenAI remains more indirect for now. Kushner holds a stake in the AI lab, last valued at $852 billion in March and expected to go public within the year, but that position has not yet converted into the kind of realized windfall SpaceX delivered.
Both bets drove his overall growth, though SpaceX produced the concrete, quantifiable gains so far.
SpaceX is the Seventh-Largest Company in the World. Source: CompaniesMarketCap The Lakers Deal Still Awaits NBA Approval
Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger agreed on August 12 to buy the Los Angeles Lakers from current owner Mark Walter for a record $12.5 billion, just months after Walter himself paid $10 billion for the team.
The deal has not closed. It still requires approval from the NBA’s Board of Governors, which is scheduled to meet in September, and industry outlets have described the transaction as still a long way from completion.
Jeanie Buss’s siblings have since agreed to sell their remaining stake in the team as well, expanding Kushner and Iger’s combined ownership to roughly 83%.
🇺🇸 New LA Lakers owner Josh Kushner’s net worth just tripled to $16.7 billion in ONE year…The younger brother of Jared Kushner runs Thrive Capital, a venture firm that has become one of the biggest winners of the AI boom.His early bets on OpenAI, and an AI coding startup… pic.twitter.com/Qkj0obtueE
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 23, 2026
Kushner’s own reaction to the Lakers news was notably muted. On the day the sale broke, he posted on X celebrating a different deal entirely, a $2 billion raise for Thrive Holdings at a $12.5 billion valuation, without mentioning basketball at all.
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We’ve raised over $2B in additional capital from investors including D1 Capital Partners and Altimeter Capital.Holdings now owns and operates 70+ businesses across accounting and IT services, where our engineers build and deploy AI products used every day to serve tens of…
— Thrive Holdings (@ThriveHoldings) August 12, 2026
Beyond SpaceX and OpenAI, his portfolio includes stakes in Databricks, Stripe and Anduril, alongside older wins like Instagram and Spotify. Kushner told investors his funds have averaged 33% annual returns after fees, roughly double the S&P 500’s pace over the same period.
Whether the Lakers deal ultimately closes, Kushner’s wealth now stands at nearly 17x that of his brother Jared, President Trump’s son-in-law, according to Forbes estimates.

Wall Street sees close to 40% upside in Bloom Energy. Nancy Pelosi’s household bought the stock in late July, two days before it jumped 26%.
A Periodic Transaction Report (PTR) filed Friday with the House Clerk revealed the trades. Her husband, Paul Pelosi, made all of them. Each carries the SP code for spouse.
Breaking: Nancy Pelosi just filed up to ~13.5M worth of new stock trades Including buying up to $12M of Bloom Energy $BE Major Buys Include: • Bought 15,000 shares of Bloom Energy $BE • Bought 10,000 shares of Intel $INTC She bought new call options: • Bought up to… pic.twitter.com/pwQkLSLJiG
— Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker ♟ (@pelositracker) August 24, 2026
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What Wall Street Sees in Bloom Energy
Bloom Energy (BE) builds fuel cells. They generate electricity on site, without waiting for the grid. That matters now, as Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers need power fast. Grid connections can take years.
Other big investors have made the same call this year, backing power over chips as the tighter bottleneck. Eighteen analysts rate Bloom a Moderate Buy. Nine say Buy. Nine say Hold. None say Sell.
Bloom Energy Stock Forecast & Price Target. Source: TipRanks
Their average target is $269. Bloom traded near $195.50 on Monday. The gap works out to about 38%, but the forecasts spread wide as the most bullish call is $350. The most bearish is $176.
The July Buys Landed Near the Low
Bloom peaked at $345.85 on June 22. Then it fell hard. On July 8, short seller Hunterbrook published a report titled “Bloom’s Big Lie.” It alleged Bloom depends on Chinese scandium. That rare metal goes into its fuel cells. Hunterbrook disclosed it was short the stock.
Bloom rejected the claims the next day in an SEC filing. It called them “false and misleading” and said its supply does not depend on China.
Shares kept sliding anyway.
Bloom Energy Corporation (BE) Stock Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance
Paul Pelosi stepped in on July 24. He bought 10,000 shares worth $1 million to $5 million. He added 100 call options struck at $100, expiring June 17, 2027. Bloom closed at $184.89.
He bought again on July 28. Another 5,000 shares. Another 100 calls. Bloom closed at $166.84 that session, 52% below its June peak.
Hours later, Bloom posted its best quarter on record. Revenue reached $1.07 billion, up 165% from a year earlier. Management raised full-year guidance to between $3.9 billion and $4.2 billion.
“Bloom is now a standard for AI onsite power,” KR Sridhar, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Bloom Energy, in the earnings release.
Shares surged 26.49% on July 30 to $207.12. The July 28 entry now sits about 17% ahead.
The Intel Side Lags
Intel (INTC) has not paid off the same way. Paul Pelosi bought 10,000 Intel shares on July 24, plus 50 calls struck at $50. Intel closed at $92.32 that day.
The stock traded near $85.60 on Monday. That is roughly 7% below his entry.
Intel Corporation (INTC) Stock Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance
Analysts are cooler here. Thirty cover Intel and 23 rate it Hold. The $116.84 average target still implies about 36% upside.
Intel (INTC) Stock Forecast & Price Target. Source: TipRanks
Congressional filings report dollar ranges, not exact amounts. The true cost basis stays hidden.
What Happens Next
The filing arrived 24 days after the final trade. The STOCK Act allows 45.
Scrutiny is not new. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna leveled insider trading accusations in April. The household’s decade of trade timing is measured against professional funds.
Risk has not gone away either, as Bloom now faces a securities class action tied to the scandium claims. Lead plaintiff filings close September 28.
Is it theoretically possible that $BE is lying about scandium and that Brookfield, Oracle and Nebius all failed to uncover a fatal supply constraint before committing to multibillion dollar projects? Yes. It’s also extraordinarily unlikely.Bloom has now stated in an SEC filing… pic.twitter.com/ozb5omEksB
— Chris Camillo (@ChrisCamillo) July 10, 2026
Both option positions expire June 17, 2027. Pelosi retires that January. The bet outlives the seat.

Kevin Warsh speaks at Jackson Hole on Friday, his first keynote as Federal Reserve Chair. Bitcoin traders have one question. Does this look like August 2022?
The answer sits in eight years of price data, which shows only one of those speeches actually hurt Bitcoin.
What Powell’s 2022 Speech Did to Bitcoin
Jerome Powell took the podium on August 26, 2022. He was blunt about fighting inflation and offered markets no relief.
Bitcoin fell from $21,518 to $20,230 that day. That is a drop of 6% in a single session. Likewise, the S&P 500 lost 3.4% in the same session.
By August 28, Bitcoin sat 9% below its pre-speech level. That is the version traders fear repeating.
Bitcoin (BTC) and S&P 500 (SPX) Performance Around Jerome Powell’s First Jackson Hole. Source: TradingView Eight Years of Data Show 2022 Was the Outlier
BeInCrypto measured Bitcoin’s move on every Fed chair keynote day since 2018.
Bitcoin Performance Around Different Jackson Hole Speech
The median reaction is a gain of 1%. Seven of the eight moves sit inside a 5% band. Only 2022 broke that range, to mark the single move worse than 2% in eight years.
Tone alone does not explain it. The 2023 speech was also hawkish, yet Bitcoin lost only 0.4%. What set 2022 apart was surprise. Traders arrived expecting relief and got a pledge of economic pain instead.
After all the Fed speakers were so hawkish the past few weeks, why would the market be surprised when Powell reiterated what every Fed speaker has said? Nobody expected a pivot at Jackson Hole.
— Gary Black (@garyblack00) August 26, 2022
Dovish years were not free money either. Bitcoin slipped 1.3% after Powell’s 2025 remarks, and that post-speech rally unwound within days.
Why Warsh Could Still Deliver the Hawkish Version
The hawkish path is live, as the Fed held rates at 3.50% to 3.75% in July, but three officials voted to hike.
August minutes kept that pressure in view, with hawkish rate risks back on the table.
Inflation is the reason, as it held at 3.4% in July, and a September Fed hike is still close to a coin flip.
Heading into the Jackson Hole Symposium this week, Warsh is the wildcard because he has said little about rates since taking the job in May. This means anything he does say lands harder.
He has framed Friday as a chance to widen the lens rather than signal a move.
“There is a tendency, especially with the proliferation of meetings and press conferences, to get caught up in the myopic … If I could, in the high mountain air in Jackson, Wyoming, I’d like to also frame the big questions,” Kevin Warsh, July 29 press conference transcript.
Bitcoin (BTC) trades near $79,093, roughly flat over the past 24 hours, after climbing 23% in the week to August 21. Traders can follow Bitcoin’s price action into Friday.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
The next policy meeting falls on September 15 and 16. History says the base case is a small move. 2022 says the tail is fat.

Money entering crypto ETFs over their first two years meant institutions were arriving, and institutions arriving meant more demand for crypto. However, mid-2026 has made that relationship considerably more complicated.
Digital asset investment products went through eight consecutive weeks of withdrawals totalling a record $8 billion before inflows returned in July and early August. By August 7, the same products had recorded five consecutive positive weeks, including around $1.05 billion during the first week of August.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs show the reversal particularly well. They attracted roughly $865 million between August 3 and August 7, followed by a combined net withdrawal of about $198 million from August 10 through August 12.
ETFs remain a major source of crypto demand. Their behaviour increasingly resembles other large investment vehicles, however: investors buy when risk looks attractive and redeem when it does not.
BeInCrypto asked executives from Wirex, Zoomex and Phemex what recent flows reveal about investor demand, how ETFs have affected crypto trading, and whether another generation of altcoin funds can reproduce Bitcoin’s success.
Selective Crypto Demand
ETF withdrawals are certainly a measure of changing investor behaviour, although ETF flows should not be treated as a census of institutional activity. Funds are available to many types of investors, and institutions can gain crypto exposure through several other instruments.
Even so, the change since late 2025 is substantial. The enthusiasm surrounding ETF access has encountered a prolonged crypto downturn and a more difficult macroeconomic environment.
Yves Renno, Head of Trading at Wirex, sees retrenchment rather than abandonment.
“Appetite is cooling, not necessarily fleeing. Although impressive, the ETF outflows are a healthy correction against a significant accumulation since 2024. This looks like the market shaking out weak investors before a steadier, more durable phase of allocation.”
Recent flows lend some support to this interpretation. Bitcoin ETF demand turned positive again in July, with approximately $403 million of monthly net inflows, while Ethereum products attracted around $359 million.
The recovery also shows why individual weeks can give a misleading picture. Strong buying returned in early August before another series of withdrawals appeared only days later. Institutional participation can remain substantial while allocations become much more price-sensitive.
This ETF market is different from the one investors watched during the early spot Bitcoin ETF boom. Access itself has largely been solved. Investors now need a reason to increase exposure.
More Liquidity, More Price Pressure
ETFs have connected crypto more closely with brokerage accounts, asset managers, advisers and portfolio allocation models. At the same time, large creations and redemptions can produce meaningful buying or selling pressure in the underlying market.
Renno believes both effects now coexist.
“Clearly both. There are moments where retail and institutional flows pull in opposite directions, especially around reversals, and this tension is exactly the bread and butter of the market makers and arbitrageurs who keep the market’s depth intact.”
Research increasingly supports the idea of ETF flows having measurable price effects.
An April 2026 study examining the five largest U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs found a $100 million net ETF inflow was associated with approximately 53 basis points of same-day Bitcoin returns. ETF flows explained around 21% of daily return variation across the sample, while the research also found feedback in both directions: flows affected prices and price movements subsequently influenced flows.
A separate 2026 study examining all U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs also found greater price effects when large fund flows encountered fragmented liquidity across crypto exchanges.
ETF demand therefore adds capital and liquidity while also creating another route through which changes in investor risk appetite reach Bitcoin.
ETF Buyers Need More Than Access
Fernando Lillo Aranda, CMO at Zoomex, argues renewed demand depends heavily on investors becoming comfortable with risk again.
“We are currently in a bear market, where investors are naturally more risk-averse and capital preservation takes priority over chasing returns. In this environment, even high-quality products such as crypto ETFs struggle to attract sustained inflows.”
He continued, “historically, ETF demand has accelerated when investors regain confidence a new growth cycle is beginning. That confidence is typically supported by improving macroeconomic conditions, greater regulatory clarity, stronger institutional participation and renewed momentum across digital assets.”
The past several weeks show how quickly this can affect flows.
Bitcoin’s early-August recovery can be linked partly to changing interest-rate expectations, softer U.S. economic data and reduced expectations of further monetary tightening. The same period produced more than $1 billion of weekly digital asset product inflows.
Lillo Aranda expects the eventual recovery in ETF demand to come from several developments occurring together rather than one announcement.
“ETFs continue to play an important role by providing regulated and familiar access to the crypto market, particularly for traditional investors. The infrastructure is already in place; what is missing is the appetite for risk.
He continued, “ultimately, ETF adoption is unlikely to be driven by a single catalyst. It will be the combination of improving market conditions, growing institutional confidence and a return of positive sentiment.”
Altcoin ETFs Face Diminishing Returns
The next test comes from the growing number of crypto assets available through exchange-traded products.
The SEC approved generic listing standards for commodity-based trust shares in September 2025, making it easier for qualifying crypto products to reach U.S. exchanges. The same decision accompanied approval of Grayscale’s multi-asset Digital Large Cap Fund.
Greater availability raises a separate problem: each additional ETF competes for investor capital.
Federico Variola, CEO of Phemex, believes Bitcoin’s experience will prove difficult to repeat further down the crypto market.
“The capital entering BTC through ETFs has not rotated into other tokens. Obviously, it is not as easy to move capital between regulated investment products as it is within the native crypto market. We have seen this even with Ethereum, which received its own ETF approval but has continued to lag far behind Bitcoin.” He continued, “this tells us ETF buyers are very different from crypto-native investors. Altcoin ETFs may therefore not benefit in the same way Bitcoin did, both because of the investor profile and because of the different value proposition.”
Current fund flows illustrate the difference in magnitude.
U.S. Bitcoin ETFs have accumulated roughly $52 billion of net inflows since launch. Solana ETFs have attracted about $1.13 billion. The products have very different trading histories, making a straight comparison imperfect, but the figures already demonstrate how uneven ETF demand can be between assets.
Variola expects this effect to become stronger as funds reach more speculative assets.
“My view is the marginal benefit a token receives from an ETF decreases as we move further down the risk curve. Investors who want to speculate on altcoins can already do so relatively easily without an ETF. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is viewed as belonging to a different category in terms of its risk profile.”
This reverses the ETF thesis. Scarcity helped make a U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF important. A market containing ETFs for numerous crypto assets makes approval itself far less distinctive.
Altcoin ETFs can still attract new buyers who require regulated brokerage access, and specialised funds may develop substantial investor bases. Yet every new listing also asks investors to make another allocation decision.
Final Thoughts
Crypto ETFs have entered a more mature phase of their development. Their importance remains considerable, but their existence provides no guarantee of persistent buying.
Mid-2026 has offered the clearest evidence yet. ETF investors can accumulate crypto aggressively, disappear for weeks, return during improving market conditions and sell again when risk deteriorates.
The bull-market aura surrounding ETFs has faded. What remains is a large, liquid and increasingly price-sensitive pool of capital capable of pushing crypto markets in either direction.

$544. That is the average withdrawal on Argentine retail crypto rails such as Lemon Wallet. The median transfer is between $150 and $270—closer to rent money than a portfolio shift.
That figure changes the familiar image of capital flight. Money once moved offshore through private bankers and complex accounts. Across Latin America, workers and small businesses can now do it from a phone.
BeInCrypto Intelligence’s 23-page report, The Exodus Economy, traced six routes money takes out of the region and audited 12 products marketed as dollar accounts. We shared the findings with five industry executives. Their responses point to a difficult question: once digital dollars remove the friction from leaving, what could persuade that money to return?
Why Locals are Sending Money Away from LATAM. Source: BeInCrypto Savers are Paying for an Exit
Brazil shows why returns alone cannot explain the movement. The report sets local savings and dollars to a starting value of 100 in 2016.
Money-earning Brazil’s benchmark CDI rate grew to about 150 over the next decade, while dollars held without yield ended at 99. Yet Brazilians’ declared offshore wealth reached an estimated $654 billion in 2024.
Argentina shows the risk they were trying to avoid. The same local-savings calculation ended at 44. From the starting line in 2016, nobody knew which country would deliver which outcome.
“I would call it an insurance premium rather than a fear premium. What those savers bought was not return, it was convertibility and jurisdictional optionality. A ten-year deposit returned 150 in Brazil and 44 in Argentina, and nobody in 2016 knew which column they were in.” Farhad Farhadi, CEO of Intelliwealth.
That insurance becomes harder for governments to counter when moving money takes seconds. Robin Nordnes, founder and CEO of Raiku, argues that economic stabilization does not immediately reverse habits formed through repeated crises.
“Friction used to do a lot of quiet retention work. If moving savings abroad required a private banker and a plane ticket, most people didn’t bother. Take that friction away and staying home stops being the default. Argentina fixed the price, but it hasn’t fixed the memory. Policy moves in months, and habits move in decades,” Robin Nordnes, Founder & CEO of Raiku
Lower inflation can repair a currency faster than it repairs public trust. Mobile access makes the old memory easier to act on.
How Inflation Destroyed Argentina’s Peso, While Brazil’s Purchasing Power Increased. Source: The Exodus Economy A Dollar Label Can Still Hide Risk
Digital dollars make the exit cheaper, though the exchange is rarely one-for-one. Research cited by Farhadi found that stablecoin flows often bypass capital controls, while the premium paid for those dollars tends to rise in high-inflation economies.
Of the 12 dollar-account products audited by BeInCrypto, only two placed customer balances in insured US bank deposits. Five relied directly on stablecoins, and 10 failed the report’s basic self-verification test.
This leaves savers exchanging familiar domestic risks for less visible questions about the issuer, custodian, legal claim, and reserves. A dollar sign inside an app does not answer those questions.
The Money Keeps Moving
The report also found that more than 99% of withdrawn volume moved onward within 30 days. These digital dollars cover payroll, invoices, supplier settlement, and daily expenses. They function as rails rather than vaults.
Keith Vander Leest, US managing director at BVNK, says transaction velocity makes that distinction visible.
“If you look at the global supply of stablecoins relative to their volume, and then you compare that to fiat, global GDP, and M1 money supply, you can compare those two ratios and talk about the velocity of money. And the velocity of on-chain dollars is, depending on exact metrics, around a hundred times faster,” Keith Vander Leest, US Managing Director at BVNK
Businesses then face a second problem: how to earn on digital dollars without making cash flow unpredictable. Most on-chain credit pays variable rates, making it difficult for a finance manager to plan.
“The missing piece for institutions to fully adopt on-chain infrastructure was predictability, because credit markets ran almost entirely on variable rates. When yield floats, you cannot plan cash flow around it, leading businesses to leave digital dollars idle,” Merlin Egalite, Co-Founder at Morpho
Households face a harsher liquidity problem. Their protection may be held in dollars, while rent and groceries remain payable in local currency.
Artem Ponomarev, founder and CEO of XPlace, sees collateralized borrowing as one way to access cash without repeatedly selling those reserves. He warns that a badly designed loan could erase the savings it was meant to preserve.
“When borrowed funds cover basic living expenses, products must prioritize downside protection over leverage. Platforms require clear LTV limits, real-time collateral monitoring, and conservative liquidation terms to prevent volatile drawdowns from wiping out essential savings,” Artem Ponomarev, Founder & CEO of XPlace
The warning matters when a typical withdrawal is $544. A liquidation could take away money set aside for food or housing.
Home Now Has to Earn the Money Back
The five responses describe a financial competition that local institutions can no longer avoid. Each improvement in offshore dollar products—from predictable yield to easier credit—makes money held abroad more useful and raises the standard for bringing it home.
Macroeconomic stability remains essential. Savers will also look for transparent exchange rates, legally clear ownership, independent custody, and proof of where their money sits. The report shows that many offshore apps still fall short of that standard.
Latin American governments once relied partly on friction to keep capital inside their borders. That friction has largely disappeared. Regaining the money will depend on financial products that people can verify and institutions they are prepared to trust again.

MicroStrategy raised $3.28 billion in August by selling its own stock. It spent none of that money on Bitcoin (BTC).
The company bought dollars instead, and is poised to close the month with more cash, fewer coins, and a heavier dividend bill.
What MicroStrategy Did With the Money Instead of Bitcoin
Four weekly filings show that MicroStrategy sold 31.3 million shares so far across August. Not one dollar became Bitcoin.
The cash went into two piles:
The USD Reserve grew from $4.0 billion to $5.10 billion.
A brand new pool called USD Cash holds another $1.59 billion.
That is $6.69 billion sitting in dollars. The reserve has one job, which is covering dividends and debt interest. USD Cash is far looser.
“a separately designated pool of U.S. dollar liquidity that the Company may retain for future deployment for general Bitcoin Treasury Company purposes, which may include acquiring Bitcoin…” the latest Strategy filing says.
So the option to buy is funded and written down. The company simply has not used it.
Strategy increased USD Reserve to $5.10B, established additional USD Cash of $1.59B, and repurchased $136M of $STRC. As of 8/23/26: Strategy holds ~4% of Total BTC Supply and has ~0% Net Leverage. $MSTR https://t.co/WZ9GFtJBXh
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) August 24, 2026
The Selling Started in June and Never Stopped
MicroStrategy last bought Bitcoin on June 22. It took 520 coins at $67,068 each.
Since that day it has sold 6,916 coins and bought none. Two of those sales fell in August, moving 3,328 BTC near $64,000 a piece.
Now check the timing. Bitcoin trades near $78,457 after a 22% climb in seven days, according to BeInCrypto data. Strategy’s average cost is $75,385 a coin.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
The company sold low, then sat out the bounce. Its nine-week buying pause is still running.
A 2025 Bitcoin Raise That Became a Bill
Here is the part that explains the rest. Strategy sold STRC preferred stock in July 2025 and raised $2.47 billion. The stated use of proceeds included buying Bitcoin.
STRC paid 9% a year at launch. It pays 12% now. The shares also trade under their $100 face value.
MicroStrategy STRC Dividends. Source: Strategy
So Strategy is buying them back at a discount. It spent $458.4 million on 4.88 million STRC shares in August, partly funded by selling Bitcoin.
Every share retired kills a future dividend. Saylor mapped these pressure points in a Bitcoin credit risk model published this month.
Raising more cash stays easy. Strategy’s shelf programs still hold $44.9 billion of unused capacity across five securities.
September asks a simpler question. With Bitcoin back above its cost basis, will Strategy finally spend some of that $6.69 billion on coins?