加密城市 Crypto City

Has the bear run gone? Coinbase CEO: Bitcoin could rise above $400,000 by 2030
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, a U.S.-listed crypto exchange executive, recently made an optimistic prediction in an interview on the (Fox Business) program, saying that by 2030 Bitcoin is «very likely» to reach the $300,000 to $400,000 range.
Armstrong pointed out that after roughly a year of a bear market in the Bitcoin spot trading market, the timing is now quite close to the historical bear market average correction cycle of 370 to 380 days. The market broadly expects the bear market is entering its final phase and that a new bull market is about to begin.

Stablecoins and the Agents business have been discussed the most over the past two years, but the ones who truly have to make trade-offs for them on the balance sheet are not the group that issues stablecoins, nor the group that builds agents—they’re the card networks. Others may treat both of these as business opportunities, but before card networks can commercialize them, they must first answer a harder question: if money no longer moves along my rails, what do I have left?
On the same day, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach answered three questions: how money moves, who is buying, and how to make decisions.
On the stablecoin question, he said that daily spending has “no issues needing to be resolved.” On the Agents business question, he said the cards will win. On the AI question, he said the winners are the companies that hold proprietary data. The three answers sound unrelated, but they all involve the same move: settlement can be multi-track, and trust and security must be won.

The CLARITY Act remains stuck; the CFTC is preparing to initiate backup plans.
The U.S. (the CLARITY Act) continues to stall in Congress. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has begun preparing regulatory drafts. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said on August 20 that if Congress ultimately fails to pass the (CLARITY Act), the CFTC will use existing legal authority to independently advance structural rules for the crypto-asset market.
Selig said at the first meeting of the CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee that he has asked staff to begin researching relevant rules, with the aim of using the CFTC’s existing authority to build a regulatory framework applicable to the crypto-asset market.

Bitcoin briefly broke through $75,000, rising more than 7% over 24 hours.
Bitcoin rebounded strongly this week. On the morning of August 21, it briefly surpassed $75,000, reaching a high of about $75,528. According to CoinGecko data, as of around 10 a.m., Bitcoin was trading at about $74,784; over the past 24 hours, it was up about 7.3%. During the period, the price ranged from $68,898 to $75,528. In a short time, it surged by more than $6,000, setting the highest level since June.
Source: CoinGecko. Bitcoin briefly broke through $75,000 in the morning, reaching a high of about $75,528.

Recently, an old video featuring U.S. Vice President Vance—before he became vice president—has gone viral again. In the video, Vance raises a question that few people in Washington dare to ask: if the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, does it truly benefit the United States only?
Vance said that when the U.S. dollar is strong, American consumers can indeed find imported goods cheaper; but at the same time, American factories and products are not as competitive in the international market. The privileged status of reserve currency looks glamorous, but the costs behind it are not small.
More than 60 years ago, economist Triffin pointed out a fundamental contradiction: a country’s own currency must both serve the domestic economy and also serve the whole world as a reserve currency—and sooner or later, this will cause problems. In 1971, the United States was forced to delink the dollar from gold because it had printed too many dollars and didn’t have enough gold to redeem them. But after the decoupling, the contradiction did not disappear. Now, the whole world depends on buying U.S. Treasury bonds to obtain dollars, while the U.S. relies on taking on debt to buy back goods—essentially still the same old problem.

Bitcoin breaks above $73,000, and crypto concept stocks move higher in tandem
Bitcoin’s strong rebound lifted U.S.-listed crypto concept stocks broadly higher. Bitcoin ($BTC) rose from around $64,000 at the start of this week, breaking through $68,000, $70,000, and $72,000 in sequence. As of August 21, it has climbed further to above $73,000. Over the past 7 days, it has gained more than 15%.
As Bitcoin prices surged rapidly, publicly traded companies holding large amounts of crypto assets, trading platforms, and stablecoin-related businesses were also pulled in by fresh inflows. Stocks such as Strategy (MSTR), Coinbase (COIN), Circle (CRCL), American Bitcoin (ABTC), BitMine (BMNR), and Nakamoto (NAKA) all climbed one after another, with the rally in crypto assets quickly spreading to the U.S. stock market.

Bitcoin breaks through $75,000, hitting a new three-month high
Driven by strong buying in the derivatives market, the cryptocurrency market saw a sharp rebound. This morning (8/21), Bitcoin ($BTC) once briefly surged back above the $75,000 mark. During the session, it peaked at $75,720, setting a new high in nearly three months.
According to statistics, Bitcoin’s 24-hour rise reached 7.44%, while its overall market cap climbed to $1.49 trillion. Meanwhile, Ethereum and Ripple also rose by 4.8% and 16%, respectively, with weekly gains proving especially impressive.
Of note, Bitcoin has for the first time since last November reclaimed the 200-day moving average (200 MA), seen as the bullish/bearish dividing line. This suggests the prior downward correction trend is gradually weakening, and the technical picture is showing signals of structural strengthening.

MediaTek shares have fallen 10% over five days, at one point losing support at the monthly moving average line
MediaTek (2454) shares have fallen for three consecutive trading days. As of intraday on Aug. 20, the stock briefly dropped 4.42% to 3,675, losing support at the monthly moving average line. Over the past five trading days, the cumulative decline has reached 15.91%, with its market capitalization eroding by more than NT$70 billion. However, on today (8/21) at the open, the stock rebounded slightly, once climbing back to 3,795. It is currently quoted at 3,775, and the five-day decline has narrowed to about 10%.
Market participants linked this wave of the downturn with news about the massive cooperation between Marvell and Google, as well as rumors that AMD has secured orders for Google’s TPU designs.

Under the leadership of Elon Musk, the social media platform X is taking another key step toward the cryptocurrency space. To address cross-border payment pain points for global content creators, X is actively exploring the introduction of stablecoins as a new channel for revenue sharing and distribution.
(CoinDesk) cited an insider as saying that X is evaluating how to use stablecoins such as USDC to pay content creators and users who publish content on the platform in exchange for revenue-sharing compensation.
This insider also said they are currently helping other social media platforms test stablecoin payment features. They noted that discussions within X regarding stablecoin payment functionality are still ongoing.

Crypto ETFs attracted $706 million in net inflows in a single day, and institutional funds re-entered the market
The crypto market continues a strong rebound, with institutional funds returning as well. According to data from Farside Investors, U.S. spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs combined recorded net inflows of approximately $706 million on the day, becoming an important source of momentum behind this market uptrend.
Source: Farside Investors. The U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF saw a net inflow of about $517 million on the day, the highest single-day net inflow in over 3 months.
Among them, the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF saw net inflows of about $517 million on the day, setting a record for the highest single-day net inflow in more than three months. Out of 12 products, 8 saw capital inflows. BlackRock’s IBIT led with about $285 million, ARK 21Shares’ ARKB attracted approximately $77.7 million, and Fidelity’s FBTC drew about $62.4 million.

A well-known YouTuber, “Yi Jia Yi” (壹加壹), has announced that it invested 200,000 NTD and spent nearly half a year developing a subtitle tool, “What’Sub,” specifically for users of Traditional Chinese in Taiwan. It has officially launched, addressing the most troublesome subtitle editing work faced by video creators. The tool focuses on high-accuracy AI language recognition, intelligent sentence splitting, and an intuitive editing experience, improving the efficiency of video creators when producing subtitles.
What Sub solves the challenge of Traditional Chinese subtitles
When making videos, the stage that consumes the most time for content creators is often typing and adding subtitles. Due to the lack of Traditional Chinese tools on the market, Lean has incorporated years of post-production experience into the underlying technological framework to solve creators’ pain points.

【The following content is provided by ETHTaipei】
ETHTaipei 2026, Taiwan’s annual Ethereum developer conference, will be held September 13–14 at the PopoP Taipei (Nangang Bottle Cap Factory) in Taipei. Now entering its fourth year, this year the event is curated as a two-day program for the first time: on September 13, Cryptonative Day is aimed at Ethereum developers and the technical community; on September 14, Institution Day is designed specifically for banks and financial institutions, extending from core protocol research and on-chain finance all the way to custody, real-world assets (RWA), and institutional-grade applications.
“Encrypted technology and the real world are intersecting, and making all of this real is the research and engineering behind it. This is the core of ETHTaipei 2026.” said the ETHTaipei main organizing team Martinet.

OCC pushes to finalize rules in November, as stablecoin regulation moves into the implementation stage
The U.S. stablecoin regulatory framework is accelerating toward practical implementation. On August 19, Jonathan Gould, Comptroller of the Currency (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, OCC), said that the OCC aims to complete the main final rules for the (GENIUS Act) by November this year, establishing a more comprehensive federal regulatory regime for payment-type stablecoins.
At the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Gould said that the OCC has already begun drafting the relevant rules in advance. It is currently compiling industry feedback on the proposals, with the goal of completing the final version according to the established schedule.

FTX case wraps up: Ellison and Wang hit with CFTC trading bans
Two former core senior executives who previously assisted U.S. prosecutors in bringing down FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) have now reached an important regulatory development. On August 19, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) completed its civil enforcement proceedings against Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX. Both face multi-year trading and registration bans.
Pursuant to a supplemental consent order approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, both Allison and Wang Zixiao are prohibited from trading commodities and related products under the CFTC’s jurisdiction for five years. Allison also faces a 10-year CFTC registration ban, while Wang Zixiao faces an eight-year ban.

Stablecoins are seeping into everyday card payments in a way you “probably won’t even notice.” According to an August 19 report by The Block, Rain’s CEO, Farooq Malik, said that stablecoin payments supported by Rain have already reached over 100,000 merchants—and most of these merchants don’t realize that stablecoins are being used for settlement behind the scenes.
Merchants only see a regular card swipe and don’t know the funds come from stablecoins.
This kind of “invisible” experience is down to Rain’s product model. Rain issues Visa and Mastercard cards that settle using stablecoin balances. When the cardholder makes a purchase, what the merchant receives is just an ordinary credit card charge—processed through the existing card-organization clearing network. As a result, merchants don’t need to, and won’t even realize, that the source of the money is a stablecoin on-chain. Rain’s CEO previously shared a similar view: the most successful stablecoin stories may be the ones where neither consumers nor merchants notice. This “hidden behind the card” design allows stablecoins to bypass merchants’ acceptance thresholds, directly leveraging the networks of Visa and Mastercard to reach more than 150 million merchants worldwide.

Crypto-asset market liquidity continues to shrink. According to CryptoQuant data, the stablecoin reserves parked at centralized exchanges (CEXs) have now fallen to about $64 billion, down roughly $16 billion from the peak of nearly $80 billion at the end of 2025, a decline of 20%.
This means that idle funds in the market—ready to be deployed for trading and to absorb buy orders at any time—are decreasing, and the remaining liquidity is also accelerating toward concentration in a small number of exchanges. Even just Binance accounts for as much as 68.5% of stablecoin liquidity across the entire network of exchanges.
CryptoQuant’s research team points out that, compared with peers facing a significant capital outflow wave, Binance’s liquidity performance is clearly “more resilient.” The stablecoin balances of major platforms such as Coinbase, Bybit, and OKX have all seen sharp contractions.

Stripe confirms the acquisition of OpenRouter, which was a co-founding spinout from OpenSea.
Digital payments giant Stripe issued a press release on August 19, confirming that it has agreed to acquire the AI model gateway and routing platform OpenRouter. The transaction is expected to be officially completed within a few weeks. Reports of the acquisition between the two parties were recently first disclosed by (Bloomberg) and (The Wall Street Journal).
OpenRouter is often referred to as an AI relay station. Its function is to help businesses optimize Token usage efficiency and request routing among more than 80 providers and over 400 AI models.
In an official statement, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said that Tokens are the core currency businesses use for AI. After Stripe and OpenRouter partner up, they will help businesses intelligently allocate requests and effectively manage Token spending.

Two of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb, have released their first-half results. Revenue at both firms plunged by nearly half compared with the same period last year, while operating profit collapsed by more than 80%. Even Bithumb swung from profit to loss. As retail investors rapidly pull funds out, these two industry giants are accelerating equity reorganization and strategic transformation, seeking a way to break the deadlock.
According to publicly available data from South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), Upbit’s parent company, Dunamu, saw a dramatic 49.1% year-on-year drop in consolidated operating revenue in the first half, falling sharply from KRW 801.9 billion to KRW 408.1 billion. Operating profit also fell sharply by 79.7% from KRW 549.1 billion to KRW 111.5 billion. Net profit shrank 74.1% to KRW 108.4 billion as well.

Trump confirms that the CFTC is pushing for Hyperliquid’s compliance to be rolled out in the U.S.
As the crypto bill hits a stalemate, U.S. President Trump publicly stated yesterday (8/19) after meeting with senior leaders from the crypto and technology industries that CFTC Chair Mike Selig is working tirelessly to develop a way for the decentralized sustainable contracts & tokenized asset exchange Hyperliquid to enter the U.S. market in a fully compliant, legal manner.
This high-level meeting invited not only the Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Paul Atkins, but also the CEOs of multiple major financial and crypto firms, including Coinbase, Ripple, Nasdaq, Robinhood, Kraken, and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), all attended in person.

Trump summons crypto giants to the White House, urging Congress to move forward with the (CLARITY Act)
U.S. President Donald Trump held a meeting at the White House on August 19 with senior executives from the cryptocurrency and financial sectors. He also publicly urged Congress to pass the “fair version” of the (CLARITY Act), hoping to establish a clearer and more durable regulatory framework for the U.S. digital asset market.
This meeting brings together multiple key figures from the cryptocurrency and finance industries, including the CEOs of companies such as Coinbase, Robinhood, and Kraken, as well as senior executives from traditional financial institutions like Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). Relevant officials from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also took part in the meeting.