CHAIN news

The CFTC holds its first Innovation Committee meeting, strengthening certainty on regulatory implementation: The CFTC convened its inaugural innovation advisory meeting today, focusing on the regulation of crypto, AI, and prediction markets. The attending delegation includes top executives from leading companies in the crypto space at a White House crypto meeting. The CFTC Chair explicitly stated that even if a congressional bill is not passed, the agency will implement crypto regulatory rules in accordance with existing laws, and an industry compliance framework will inevitably be put in place. The agency is also continuing to advance detailed rules for futures on computing power and for event contract regulation.
Citigroup to roll out institutional bitcoin custody services within the year: Citigroup confirmed that it will launch BTC custody operations later this year via its Custody+ platform, enabling integrated custody and settlement for bitcoin alongside traditional assets such as stocks and bonds. This will significantly improve institutional asset processing efficiency, as traditional large banks continue to increase investment in the compliant crypto segment.

This round of encryption saw a big surge, and the SEC’s new regulatory proposal is one of the core drivers. A lot of the hype says “the U.S. has completely lifted crypto regulation,” but that’s not actually the case. These rules are just a transitional framework the SEC put forward while congressional legislation is stalled, and they have major limitations.
To put it simply, translate the proposal into plain language:
Two financing exemption pathways
Small projects: over a four-year period, the maximum total financing is up to $5 million. Disclosure is simple, and there’s no need for mandatory audited financial statements—suitable for early-stage startup teams. Medium-to-large projects: over a 12-month period, the maximum financing is up to $75 million. For this tier, you need to do full financial statement audits and continuously disclose operating conditions to the public, and compliance costs will rise significantly.

On August 19–20, the crypto market saw a strong rebound. BTC broke above $72,000, with a daily gain of over 11%. ETH and SOL also surged in tandem, and crypto-related stocks rose across the board. Voices claiming that “the bear market is over” are growing louder, but this upswing is not driven by a single factor. Instead, multiple events collided together—macroeconomic liquidity, U.S. policy, short-covering, and ETF capital inflows.
Many people mistakenly believe that this round was caused by a large influx of new users buying coins and pushing prices up. In reality, the surge has two forces: one part is from real institutional capital—Bitcoin spot ETFs have recorded large net inflows for three straight days, with BlackRock’s IBIT accounting for more than half of the total inflow, indicating that institutions are indeed returning; the other part comes from short liquidations. Earlier, market sentiment was bearish, and many traders opened short positions. After the price broke through key levels, shorts were forced to cover by buying, which further boosted the rally and amplified the short-term upswing.

Trump personally took the stage and pushed for the rollout of the Clarity Act: Today, Trump convened top crypto companies including Coinbase, Ripple, and Chainlink, along with senior officials from the SEC and CFTC, to urge Congress to pass the **Fair version of the Clarity Act**. The goal is to finalize the SEC and CFTC’s regulatory jurisdictions, retain domestic crypto innovation companies, and prevent the industry from moving overseas. The bill will return for a vote in the Senate in September; it currently still needs a small number of Democratic votes to pass. Meanwhile, the White House continues to advance a series of crypto policies, including strategic Bitcoin reserves and a ban on CBDC.
Trump stated: pushing for Hyperliquid’s compliance to enter the US. The US side confirmed that the SEC is working to implement Hyperliquid’s compliance for the US market. If it goes smoothly, it will become a landmark case for bringing an on-chain decentralized derivatives platform into compliance in the US, opening a pathway for overseas DEXs to enter the mainstream US market.

One of the biggest misconceptions of many retail traders: taking “sideways with no rise” as “it still has a lot more to fall.”
In the past two months, Bitcoin has completely worn everyone’s patience down.
Stuck around the $60,000 mark, repeatedly tug-of-warring: trying to push up toward the $70,000 level each time hits resistance and falls back; probing down to $58,000 finds support that it never breaks. No crash, no surge—just extreme low-volume consolidation and day-by-day torment.
Market sentiment has slowly shifted from early panic and bargain-hunting to deep anxiety and widespread confusion: is this bear market not over yet—just a continuation of the decline? Or has the bottom already quietly arrived, with the market building up energy and waiting to break out?

SEC unveils new proposal for regulating crypto assets, easing small-issuance restrictions: The U.S. SEC, by conducting non-public, split voting, passed a (crypto-asset regulation) proposal. Previously planned public hearings were temporarily canceled due to scheduling issues. The new rule establishes a crypto-asset financing exemption mechanism, allowing qualifying small offerings of up to $5 million over four years and offering caps of up to $75 million per year to be exempt from SEC registration. It also includes supporting obligations such as financial disclosure and ongoing information-publication requirements. In addition, new safe-harbor rules were introduced: after a project completes its core operational construction, it may no longer be subject to equivalent securities regulatory constraints. The SEC chair said that for long-term, standardized industry development, congressional legislation is still needed to be implemented.

Coinbase launches a Nasdaq 500 index perpetual contract: The platform officially introduces the US500 perpetual contract, allowing users to go long or short exposure to 500 leading publicly listed companies across the United States with a single contract, further expanding the on-chain traditional financial derivatives space.
Countdown to U.S. stablecoin regulation becomes clear: The U.S. Department of the Treasury has publicly released the GENIUS bill’s detailed rules and solicited public input, confirming a compliance timeline. From 2027 onward, domestically issued stablecoins must hold compliant licenses; from 2028 onward, stablecoins without licenses will be prohibited from circulation. The industry’s compliance framework will be rolled out step by step.
Hyperliquid supports SEC amendments to trading rules: Hyperliquid, together with Pyth, calls for the abolition of traditional equity market look-through rules, arguing that conventional regulatory rules do not apply to on-chain AMMs and on-chain order book models. It hopes regulators will adapt to the characteristics of on-chain markets and introduce dedicated enforcement standards. The platform’s open interest currently stands at $4.3 billion, a historical high.

Vitalik proposes a new Ethereum scaling approach, combining the UTXO and account models. In his latest post, Vitalik says that Ethereum scaling should combine Bitcoin’s advantages in UTXO state management and light-node verification with Ethereum’s account model and smart contract capabilities. The goal is to achieve ultra-large-scale scaling while keeping three bottom lines: decentralization, easy-to-run nodes, and resistance to censorship. The roadmap places more emphasis on balancing scalability and decentralization.
A project linked to the Trump family receives conditional approval from a trust bank: World Liberty Financial has obtained conditional approval from the U.S. OCC to establish a nationwide trust bank dedicated to issuing and redeeming the stablecoin USD1, reserve management, and institutional custody. The project is deeply tied to the Trump family.

Long and short both liquidated across the entire network 24/7—total liquidations of $77.1 million: In recent days, market volatility has led to choppy consolidation. Over the past 24 hours, total liquidations across the network were about $77.1 million, including $40.15 million from long liquidations and $36.95 million from short liquidations. This is a typical two-way “washout” pattern, with significant losses for smaller contract positions.
Coinbase rolls out the groundbreaking AiFi system and builds AI agent financial infrastructure: Coinbase officially enters the AI agent economy with the launch of a new AiFi financial system. Building a “trading of everything” platform that enables AI to autonomously complete research report analysis, asset planning, and trading across all categories—covering crypto, US stocks, and derivatives. It also launches AI investment advisory tools, along with an enterprise-grade AI automated payment standard. Idle USDC can earn an annualized return of 3.35%, and Coinbase is comprehensively positioning itself in a new track for machine-automated trading.

Tether completes a full KPMG audit with an excess reserve of $6.814 billion: USDT officially passes four major KPMG’s full-year independent audit, receiving the highest level of unqualified opinion with no reservations. The audit involved on-site verification of gold bars throughout, along with complete verification of all assets and liabilities, confirming that the reserve funds exceed total liabilities by $6.814 billion. This fully dispels long-standing market doubts about audits and significantly improves transparency.
More than 1.4 billion USD worth of crypto options expiring this Friday; BTC’s key resistance levels are clear. On this coming Friday, large-lot options are set to expire in clusters, with the total notional value exceeding $1.4 billion. BTC’s biggest “pain point” is at $64,000, with a heavy sell-pressure zone above it between $68,000 and $72,000; for ETH, the pain point is $1,900 as short-term range trading battles intensify.

Regulatory standoff between the U.S. and China: The CFTC ensures predictions market operations—New York state prosecutors have indicted and moved to shut down prediction platform Kalshi, prompting the CFTC to urgently use its authority to require the platform to continue operating. Disagreements between federal and state regulators are intensifying. The CFTC insists that derivatives trading is not subject to state gambling regulations.
Key timeline for the CLARITY Act takes shape: Coinbase executives confirm that a procedural vote in the Senate will be held on September 15. During the recess, lawmakers will continue negotiating the disputed provisions—this is the final critical window for the bill to be enacted within the year.
Iran sets hardline conditions for opening the straits: Senior Iranian officials state that the U.S. will not accept Iran’s terms, will not end the regional conflict, and will not unfreeze Iranian funds—otherwise the Strait of Hormuz will not open fully. Pakistan also reveals that the U.S. and Iran are nearing an agreement on a reconciliation arrangement.

Vitalik updates the latest Ethereum roadmap: Ethereum’s R&D priorities have been comprehensively adjusted, adding four major core directions: native privacy, scaling with post-quantum security, native Rollup, and a streamlined EVM design. The scaling approach shifts from broad expansion to specialized scaling for high-load scenarios, with a focus on STARK proofs and AI-assisted security verification.
Microsoft releases its next-generation AI chip MAIA 300 in September: officially announced that it will launch next month, continuing to intensify its push in the compute-power and self-developed chip space.
Meta releases a lightweight local AI model: launches the Glimmer lightweight model, which can run locally on standard PCs and Macs, focusing on AI intelligent agent tasks. Zuckerberg calls for loosening U.S. AI training regulations, giving open-source models more room to grow.