加密城市 Crypto City

The New York Times: The SEC is investigating Situational Awareness
Situational Awareness, a hedge fund that once quickly rose to fame on Wall Street, has recently reportedly been investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The agency has recently issued subpoenas to multiple investment banks that handle well-known trades, demanding records of the fund’s transaction timings and borrowing leverage and other related correspondence, and requiring the mandatory preservation of relevant documents.
According to a report by (The New York Times), those subpoenaed include Wall Street’s four major financial giants such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America.

The U.S. Treasury expands its buyback program, potentially mobilizing trillions of yuan in TGA.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently announced an expansion of the government bond buyback program, raising the per-transaction buyback caps for off-the-run Treasuries in the 10-year, 20-year, and 30-year tenors from $2 billion to at least $4 billion.
With yields on long-dated U.S. Treasuries at their highest level since 2007, the Treasury hopes to ease market liquidity pressures. In an interview, Bessent described the Treasury’s debt management approach of buying back long-dated Treasuries while also increasing short-term Treasury issuance as the Treasury’s “twist operation.”

Japan-listed company Metaplanet announced on August 18 that it has reached a final agreement with American electronic gaming media company Super League in Santa Monica, California. Metaplanet will invest 2,100 bitcoins (BTC) and $2.5 million in cash to acquire approximately 95.7% of Super League’s controlling stake. The company plans to rename itself Superplanet. The transaction will be conducted as a private securities offering and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year, at which time a parallel operating platform spanning the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Capital Markets will be established.
Metaplanet invests 2,100 bitcoins to acquire Super League

As AI chip packaging density continues to rise, yield management for advanced packaging has become a key pain point for TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) and major professional OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) firms, driving an急 rapid surge in demand for optical inspection equipment. A recent report from well-known semiconductor research institute Semi Analysis states that BeRico (7822), as an AI-driven optical inspection platform, has not only become a major beneficiary in the CoWoS supply chain, but also positioned itself early for the next-generation CoPoS process. It was highlighted as one of the “most undervalued targets in the AI packaging supply chain.”
When yield becomes the biggest pain point in advanced packaging: “inspecting defects” becomes a critical step

Coldcard releases an emergency update; the old mnemonic phrases still pose a risk
Bitcoin hardware wallet Coldcard developer Coinkite has recently released a major security update, patching the previously exposed mnemonic phrase generation vulnerability.
An official warning: some mnemonic phrases generated by earlier firmware versions may lack sufficient randomness. Even if the device has been upgraded to the latest version, the existing mnemonic phrases remain at security risk. Affected users must create a brand-new wallet and move their Bitcoin to a new address.
Coinkite has released firmware version 5.6.1 for Coldcard Mk4 and Q, as well as firmware version 1.5.1Q for the Q1. The new version redesigns the mnemonic phrase generation process; in addition to improving the device’s own random number generation mechanism, it also requires the use of extra entropy provided by the user. This reduces the risk that private keys could be predicted if a single source of randomness fails.

South Korea plans to amend laws to regulate crypto KOLs; the bill will be submitted to the committee for review on August 26
According to a report by (Digital Asset), South Korea is preparing to further tighten regulations on crypto KOLs and financial influencers. The South Korean National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee is expected to hold a plenary meeting at 10:00 a.m. on August 26 to formally deliberate on amendments to the (Virtual Asset User Protection Act). If the bill passes, influencers who frequently provide crypto investment advice to the general public, or who promote specific tokens in exchange for compensation, may in the future be required to disclose their own holdings and related remuneration.
This amendment is being driven by Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Seung-won (김승원) and mainly targets “finfluencers” who provide investment information through social media platforms, online articles, live streams, podcasts, and radio. The bill aims to bring under regulation those influencers who are currently more difficult to constrain with financial regulations, reducing the impact of conflicts of interest and undisclosed paid promotions on retail investors.

MicroStrategy sells shares to raise funds, continuing to suspend buying Bitcoin
MicroStrategy, the world’s largest Bitcoin holding company (Strategy, MSTR), announced yesterday (8/24) that it sold about 18.26 million shares of MSTR common stock via its at-the-market (ATM) offering plan last week between August 17 and August 23, raising approximately $2 billion in total. However, during the same period, it did not purchase any Bitcoin.
Documents filed by MicroStrategy show that of this fund-raising, $136.4 million is used to repurchase approximately 1.43 million shares of STRC preferred stock, while $300 million is allocated to the company’s U.S. dollar reserves. The remaining funds are used to establish a brand-new liquidity pool named USD Cash.

The U.S. Treasury Department has expanded its long-dated bond repurchase operations, sparking market discussions about liquidity and the dollar’s purchasing power. Robert Kiyosaki, author of the best-selling personal finance book “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” has sharply criticized the move, calling it “an indirect form of quantitative easing (QE).” He condemned the U.S. government for massively printing “fake money (fiat currency)” and urged investors to shift toward scarce assets such as gold, silver, and Bitcoin, arguing that this is the only way to preserve the value of assets amid the United States’ looming debt crisis.
Ministry of Finance: This is not quantitative easing
The so-called “quantitative easing (QE)” refers to central banks expanding the money supply by purchasing financial assets, usually with the aim of lowering long-term interest rates and stimulating the economy. However, U.S. authorities have a completely different interpretation of this latest operation.

Prologue
On August 19, Bessent doubled the buyback limit on long-term debt at the Treasury. The yield on 30-year U.S. Treasuries fell from 5.31 to 5.18—essentially a disguised injection of liquidity. Bitcoin saw three big bullish candles, jumping from 64,000 to 78,000, up about 20% in just a few days. In the group chats, people started chanting that the bull is back again.
The money really has come back. In the third week of August, U.S. spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF net inflows totaled $2.61 billion for the week—its strongest week since October last year. Bitcoin ETF total assets have returned to $96 billion, while Ethereum ETFs are at $14.3 billion.
The people didn’t all come back. In the same period, the number of addresses on the global monthly active chain fell year over year by 18%, while passive holders rose by 16% year over year. The “people” mentioned here are not those who bought and then just sit on their holdings, but rather active participants such as developers, traders, and governance participants—these are the true “users” of the industry. More and more people hold crypto assets, while fewer and fewer people actually use blockchain. The industry’s monthly active open-source developers number about 28,000, down from a peak of 45,000 in 2022—less than the engineering team of a mid-sized internet company.

Crypto card monthly spending tops $750 million; stablecoins make up over 70%
Stablecoins are increasingly being used for on-chain transfers and asset storage tools, gradually becoming part of consumers’ everyday payment scenarios. According to Paymentscan data, the spending of crypto payment cards within the tracking scope reached about $759 million in July, up more than threefold from a year earlier. The number of transactions that month surpassed 10 million.
Image source: a16z Crypto payment card spending reached about $759 million in July
Among them, USD stablecoins have become the primary payment source. $USDC accounted for about 50.8% of July’s spending, while $USDT accounted for 20.3%, and together they make up more than 70%. Compared with a year earlier, the shares of $USDC and $USDT were approximately 48% and 7%, respectively, indicating that the dominance of USD stablecoins in the crypto card market continues to expand.

Bitcoin surges more than 20% in a single week—$80,000 becomes the key level for both bulls and bears
Bitcoin ($BTC) continues its recent strong rebound, breaking above $79,000 at one point. Over the past week, it has gained more than 20%, marking one of the strongest weekly performances in recent years. The market is currently focused on the $80,000 whole-number level, as well as the Jackson Hole Global Central Bankers Conference debuting this week.
Source: TradingView Bitcoin records one of the strongest weekly performances in recent years. The market is currently focused on the $80,000 psychological whole-number level
This rally is driven by multiple factors. The U.S. Treasury announced an expansion of its long-dated Treasury bond buyback program, boosting expectations for improved liquidity; U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF funds have resumed inflows, and the Trump administration’s continued push for a bill to reform the structure of the crypto market has also improved overall risk appetite.

A new wave of capital frenzy has swept back into the crypto market! According to SoSoValue data, U.S. Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs combined to draw in $2.6 billion last week. Not only did this reverse the bleeding trend from the previous week, it also marked the strongest single-week performance since October 2025, with trading volume seeing a surge as well. This capital surge, sparked by institutional buying, is helping boost overall bullish sentiment across the broader cryptocurrency market.
Further breaking down the data: last week, Bitcoin spot ETFs attracted $1.9 billion, while Ethereum spot ETFs saw inflows of $697 million—both setting the best single-week inflow records this year.

2.86 hundred million $BB moved away, BounceBit immediately stops block production
Bitcoin re-staking and yield agreement BounceBit recently suffered a major security incident. The attacker exploited an authorization vulnerability at the protocol level to transfer about 286.5 million $BB from 9 core accounts on the mainnet. Based on the token price at the time of the incident, the value of the related tokens exceeded $3 million. About 40 minutes after the incident occurred, the BounceBit team urgently stopped block production to prevent the attack from continuing to expand.
BounceBit said that an initial investigation shows that users’ private keys, wallets, and hardware devices were not compromised; the issue came from the authorization mechanism at the protocol level. After the attacker obtained abnormal permissions, they were able to execute unauthorized $BB transfers from multiple core accounts, ultimately prompting the team to suspend the entire blockchain’s operation.

FANZA’s adult-oriented AI creation platform launches on 8/24 for early access
Japan’s adult entertainment platform FANZA announced in a recent press release that it has officially launched an adult-oriented AI content creation platform, “FANZA Studio” (FANZA スタジオ). It will open the beta version on August 24 for early access.
FANZA’s adult-oriented AI content production service will provide an all-in-one environment from generation to publishing and linking with fans. It aims to effectively address the pain point that most mainstream AI services do not accept generating adult content, leaving creators without a platform to publish their work.
Who can use FANZA’s adult AI creation platform? Taiwan IP can’t access it

Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio recently issued a warning, saying that if the United States does not adjust its fiscal policy, it may face a potential debt crisis in roughly the next three years.
Dalio advised investors to re-evaluate their asset allocation, reduce their bond exposure somewhat, and allocate 10% to 15% of their funds to gold, while also allocating a small amount to bitcoin to diversify risk. He noted that the current U.S. government fiscal spending and interest burden continue to expand; if an imbalance between supply and demand emerges in the bond market, it could force policymakers to increase the money supply, thereby intensifying currency depreciation and inflationary pressures.

Jiang Zhuoer’s bearish call fell short—he admitted that Ethereum has become the engine itself of the bull market
Jiang Zhuoer, founder of the Bitcoin mining pool BTC.TOP, recently posted on the X platform, admitting that his earlier assessment of the market while bearish was “hilariously wrong.” Missing out on this rally was simply a matter of luck.
He revealed that earlier, due to the narrowing of Bitcoin’s price increase, he switched to swing trading starting in February of this year. Only when Ethereum ( $ETH ) broke above $2,000 did he realize that the market momentum had kicked in.
Jiang Zhuoer also pointed out that the ETH/BTC exchange rate saw a second wave of strong surge, indicating that Ethereum has become the “engine itself” of this bull market, rather than merely being driven by Bitcoin. With roughly a 90% certainty that the bear market has ended, he is also optimistic that Ethereum’s performance will surpass Bitcoin.

Cross-chain bridge vulnerability exploited; the attacker massively minted uncollateralized $SAND
The metaverse and blockchain gaming platform The Sandbox has recently suffered a cross-chain bridge security incident. The attacker exploited cross-chain deployment vulnerabilities on Base and BNB Smart Chain to massively mint $SAND that lacks underlying asset support. The Sandbox then urgently shut down cross-chain functionality on the two networks, isolating the abnormal tokens, and emphasized that $SAND on Ethereum and Polygon was unaffected.
Security firm Blockaid said the attacker likely hijacked LayerZero’s delegate permissions through the approveAndCall feature, thereby gaining privileged operational capabilities over cross-chain contracts. Without the corresponding Ethereum $SAND being locked, they directly minted tokens on other chains.

Rumors about the new Trump coin are spreading like wildfire, with Eric Trump personally stepping forward to refute them
The Trump family, again, has been drawn into a meme coin controversy. On the social platform X, a large number of posts have recently circulated claiming that Trump is about to release a brand-new cryptocurrency, and some accounts even claim that the new token will be officially released soon, quickly drawing market attention. However, Trump’s son Eric Trump immediately denied the rumors in person, stressing that the Trump family currently has no plan to launch any new token.
Eric directly responded to the related posts, describing the rumors as a “joke,” and emphasizing that the relevant information is completely untrue. He further warned that no one is currently preparing to launch any form of a new Trump coin, and that any claims that members of the Trump family are about to issue new tokens are fraudulent.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was recently invited to appear on CNBC’s business program “Squawk Box,” where he provided an in-depth explanation of how “Trump Accounts” work, future trends in asset tokenization, and their impact on the overall structure of capital markets. Tenev was also invited to attend a crypto summit hosted by the White House. As the founder of a technology company committed to promoting retail-customer economics, he stood at the key C position to endorse Trump, and his views have attracted widespread attention.
Users of Trump’s account can invest in a low-cost S&P 500 index ETF starting from birth.
Tenev explained that the operating framework of Trump’s account focuses on lowering the barriers for the public to participate in financial markets. The policy uses the low-cost index ETF State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF (SPYM), managed by State Street Investment Management, as the default target. This allows users to connect to tracking the S&P 500 index; through a diversified investment portfolio covering major publicly listed U.S. companies and the use of low-cost asset management tools, every American can accumulate assets from birth onward through the effects of long-term reinvestment, achieving long-term compound interest growth.

Bitcoin surges toward $80,000; the shuttered BitMart suddenly announces a restructuring
Recently, the cryptocurrency market has seen a surge, with Bitcoin briefly climbing to around $80,000 and setting a new high in nearly three months. Just as market sentiment began to heat up, BitMart, a crypto exchange that had only recently announced it was stopping operations, issued a notice on August 21 stating that it is drafting a potential restructuring plan as an alternative to full closure and liquidation.
In the announcement, BitMart said that after further consultations with users, relevant stakeholders, and professional advisors, the restructuring plan may include a structured, phased resumption of some business operations, along with distributing assets to creditors. The related arrangements still require further evaluation from legal, financial, operational, and compliance perspectives.