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Phygitals sealed and tokenized the 1997 magazine where One Piece began. Solana promoted the launch on Friday, and the first tokenized One Piece manga now trades onchain.
The issue carries the main characters’ debut appearance, which arrived before the first collected volume reached shops. Grading firms count only 118 copies worldwide.
Why the Tokenized One Piece Manga Is So Scarce
The manga One Piece, written by Eiichiro Oda, was initially published in the Shonen Jump magazine No. 34 of 1997. Readers treated the magazine as cheap, throwaway newsprint. Most copies, therefore, went straight to the bin.
Almost nobody expected a record. One Piece passed 600 million published copies worldwide in March. The publisher Shueisha announced the milestone on the jacket band of volume 114.
Scarcity then attracted forgers. Reprints and outright fakes of the issue flood resale sites, and an official 2017 reprint edition adds more confusion. Dealers now treat authentication as the main hurdle for buyers.
Authentication carries real money. Reference guides put ungraded first prints in the low hundreds, while graded slabs trade in a separate market. Heritage Auctions ran a Beckett-graded copy of the issue in March. Graders slab originals and reprints separately, which remains the only dependable tell.
That backdrop matters here. Phygitals, a Solana marketplace for vaulted physical collectibles, sealed one of the 118 graded copies inside a digital pack. Buyers skip the guesswork because the token points to an authenticated slab rather than a photo listing.
Solana amplified the drop from its own account on Friday. Phygitals called the release the first tokenized manga in history.
The magazine that started One Piece, sealed, graded, and tokenized on Solana. @Phygitals https://t.co/NHt3KkdJ2P
— Solana (@solana) August 28, 2026
Solana Builds Out Its Collectibles Market
Phygitals backs every token with one graded item held in vault custody. Holders can request shipment at any point, and the platform then retires the digital copy. Trading cards built that model first, and manga now tests it.
Critics still flag the obvious weak point. A token only holds value while the custodian keeps the item safe and honors redemption. Provenance moves onchain, yet the paper never does.
Momentum sits on the other side of that argument. The RWA market cap jumped to $71 billion this month, while Ondo added tokenized stocks as collateral for leveraged trades. Solana itself posted a record onchain activity in August.
Japan sits close to this story, too. The Solana Foundation signed an SBI partnership in Japan in July to build yen-based onchain markets. Consumer apps have expanded as well, including a Solana prediction market launch inside Phantom.
Solana Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
SOL trades near $107.21, up 5.9% on the day and 46.3% over the past month.
Manga has never had an onchain venue like this one. Trading cards took years to build real liquidity, and a single 1997 issue proves nothing yet. Anime fandom does, however, dwarf the sports card audience in raw size.
The next signal comes from bidders rather than from the announcement.

Bitcoin options worth $6.4 billion settled Friday morning at $79,682, effectively removing the hedging flows that had held BTC near $80,000 all week.
Now that the pin is gone, what replaces it arrives in stages, starting with Kevin Warsh at 10 a.m. Eastern time.
What the $6.4 Billion Bitcoin Options Expiry Cleared
Approximately 81,700 contracts settled at 8 a.m. UTC on Deribit, with the official settlement price at $79,682.33. Calls at the $80,000 strike expired worthless, missing by just $318. Calls at $75,000 paid out.
Those two strikes held the most money in the batch. They also explain the week’s trading range.
Bitcoin has rallied from ~$62K to ~$80K in a week. Now Friday’s options expiry puts that move directly against some of the market’s largest strike concentrations.~$6.4B in BTC options expire on Friday, with:→ $236M in call notional at $75K→ $157M in calls at $80K→ Max… pic.twitter.com/BUZOciyj5w
— Coinbase Markets 🛡️ (@CoinbaseMarkets) August 28, 2026
When traders sell options, market makers hedge by trading the underlying asset. They sell BTC as price rises toward a heavy strike. They buy as it falls away.
That creates an invisible magnet, and Bitcoin sat inside it for three days, much as it did during previous large options expiries.
With today’s options expiry, the magnet switched off at 08:00 UTC on Deribit.
The Ceiling Moved to $82,000
Analyst Ted Pillows flags a sell wall of roughly 1,052 BTC at $80,500 seen across four venues.
$BTC has a huge sell order at $80,500.Looks like a correction is coming next. pic.twitter.com/YIz2DKmMoF
— Ted (@TedPillows) August 27, 2026
As of 11:24 a.m. UTC, only 101 BTC now rests at $80,500 on Kraken and Coinbase combined. The wall has largely gone.
Bitcoin sell orders cluster at $82,000, more than three times the depth left at $80,500. Kraken’s API returns only 500 price levels, so it has no data above $81,338. Source: Coinbase and Kraken order books, 28 August 2026, 11:24 UTC.
The offers moved higher, such that at $82,000, the two exchanges hold 173 BTC, the largest cluster anywhere above spot.
Options data points to the same level. On the September 4 expiry, the $82,000 strike holds 5,931 contracts. That is 22% of everything open for that date, by far the heaviest concentration.
September 4 Expiry. Source: Deribit
Therefore, two separate datasets now agree that the ceiling that mattered this week has shifted about $1,500 higher.
$6.4 BILLION OF BITCOIN OPTIONS JUST EXPIRED.BTC has gone from roughly $62K to $80K while those positions were open.Now that they're cleared, traders are rebuilding around a completely different price range.The next few sessions could be very interesting.$80K is the level… pic.twitter.com/pXc2uWpyYN
— That Martini Guy ₿ (@MartiniGuyYT) August 28, 2026
Why the Fed Matters More Than Usual This Year
Warsh delivers his first keynote as Federal Reserve chair on Friday morning. The theme of this year’s symposium is financial innovation, and the agenda names cryptocurrencies and stablecoins directly.
Considering crypto is not a side topic at the Fed’s biggest annual gathering this year, that is unusual. It is the subject.
“…cryptocurrencies, and stablecoins. This year’s symposium will explore how the rapid evolution of the payments system has implications for the future of currency, banking, monetary policy implementation, and global financial integration,” read an excerpt in the release.
The rate backdrop is also tense, because in July the Fed held its target range at 3.50% to 3.75%. Three officials dissented, and all three wanted a hike.
Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan pushed for a quarter point increase. Traders now put roughly a one-in-three chance on a rise at the September 16 meeting.
Risk assets rarely price a hike well. Yet past Jackson Hole reactions have been mild. Across eight years, Bitcoin’s median move was about 1%.
The exception was 2022. Jerome Powell turned hawkish and BTC fell 6% in a day. Warsh has no record at this podium, and his long policy silence leaves economists guessing.
Frank Hepworth, chief executive of New Market Trading, urged calm on the expiry itself.
“expiry weeks always sound scarier than they are.”
The Next Anchor Is Already Forming
Bitcoin’s current spot price sat near $79,699 on Friday, up by 0.2% in the last 24 hours. The options market has stopped setting its boundaries.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
The September 25 expiry already holds 155,393 contracts, roughly 40% of all open Bitcoin options on Deribit. It is nearly twice the size of the batch that just cleared.
It also settles nine days after the Fed decides. The heaviest strike sits at $70,000, and calls outnumber puts two to one. So the anchor has not disappeared. It has moved to a date that sits on the other side of the Fed.

The UK tax authority recorded 240 people who each declared over £1 million ($1.35 million) in cryptoasset gains in the 2024 to 2025 tax year. It is the first breakdown of its kind.
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) released the numbers in its yearly Capital Gains Tax (CGT) publication.
Where the Crypto Gains Were Concentrated
Those 240 crypto millionaires reported £717 million ($974 million) between them. This works out to just over half of all crypto gains declared to the department that year, according to the statistics.
The wider pool ran to 17,600, who made cryptoasset disposals liable for CGT that year. Their disposal proceeds totaled £13.8 billion ($18.8 billion).
Taxable profit on those disposals came to £1.38 billion ($1.88 billion), or roughly an average gain of £78,000 each. Men accounted for about 87% of filers and women about 13%.
“Taxes are due on cryptoasset gains just like any other gains,” James Murray, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said.
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What the Blockchain Data Adds
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis measured UK taxable crypto activity at $19.4 billion in 2025. Only the United States, Germany, and China ranked higher. That total splits into $6.0 billion of gains, $3.3 billion of income, and $10.1 billion of payments.
Chainalysis also called its approach conservative and its total a lower boundary. It covered six blockchains. Nonetheless, the report did not account for activity on centralized exchanges, across all blockchains, or across all transaction types or venues.
HMRC has its own fix coming. The Cryptoasset Reporting Framework (CARF) took effect in January 2026. Providers that fail to comply risk a £300 fine for each customer.
“Under CARF, cryptoasset service providers will be required to report customer information to tax authorities. HMRC will receive data from 2027, helping to identify cryptoasset gains and income that have not been declared,” the press release said.
Yet, that framework has limits too. Chainalysis found that CARF covers 14% of on-chain taxable activity worldwide. Decentralized exchange trades, peer-to-peer transfers, on-chain income, and payments make up the other 86%.
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PayPal stock has crashed nearly 18% in pre-market trading after payment giants Stripe and Advent have reportedly walked away from acquiring the company, as per Bloomberg.
This was one of the largest buyout attempts in fintech history. Advent and Stripe previously offered PayPal over $50 billion. It is no longer pursuing a transaction.
Pre-market price now trades at $50.61, roughly 18% below the $62.73 swing high set only days ago.
BREAKING: PayPal crashes -12.5% in after-hours trading after Stripe and Advent abandon their pursuit of the company in a potential $50+ billion deal, per Bloomberg.PayPal surged over +40% this quarter on takeover speculation and stronger Q2 earnings. pic.twitter.com/DrvayC3PLo
— Bull Theory (@BullTheoryio) August 28, 2026
Why the Bid Collapse Guts PayPal’s Rally
The scale of the drop makes sense once you look at what was holding the stock up.
PayPal shares had jumped more than 40% this quarter, lifting the company’s market value to about $52.6 billion. That rally rested on two pillars: second-quarter earnings that topped analyst estimates, and relentless takeover speculation.
Bloomberg first revealed in February that Stripe was weighing an acquisition of parts or all of PayPal, after a stock slump had wiped out a large chunk of its value.
One of those pillars just disappeared, and the market is repricing PYPL without a buyer in the picture.
The negotiation history adds a sting. The Wall Street Journal reported in August that PayPal had found the initial Advent-Stripe bid insufficient, and that the two sides were negotiating a potentially higher price. Holding out for more ended with no deal at all.
PYPL 12-hour chart. Source: TradingView
With PayPal’s market capitalization of roughly $52.6 billion sitting close to the withdrawn offer, there is little left to anchor the valuation here.
Nothing about the underlying business has improved, either. PayPal was an early mover in digital payments after its founding in the late 1990s, but it has struggled to modernize its payment technologies as rivals such as Apple and Alphabet seized market share.
The company also ousted former CEO Alex Chriss earlier in 2026 and replaced him with Enrique Lores in March. Lores has said he will set specific financial goals, change how the company reports earnings, and assign a revenue target to each business line. Those are fixes measured in quarters, not days.

How big is the tokenization market? Well, it’s big enough that the grand machinery of capital markets is now flooding in. Some of the key stats from 2026 show the shocking scale of growth in tokenized assets.
Tokenized RWAs reached $37.29 billion on public blockchains as of August 3, excluding stablecoins.
Treasury and money-market products accounted for $16.16 billion, roughly 43% of the total.
Commodities stood at $4.60 billion, while equities and ETFs reached $2.16 billion.
Types of Tokenized Real-World Assets By Category. Source: On-Chain Finance
What’s more, US regulators are beginning to draw firmer lines. In January, SEC staff divided tokenized securities into issuer-sponsored products and third-party-created versions.
An issuer can integrate distributed-ledger technology into its “master securityholder file,” allowing an on-chain transfer to move the security on the official register, while third-party structures can leave legal ownership recorded elsewhere and give the token holder a separate entitlement.
BeInCrypto spoke to Eva Meng, Head of Matrixdock, Myles Harrison, Chief Product Officer at AMINA Bank, Billy Miller, COO of Securitize, and Roshan Robert, CEO of OKX US, about tokenization’s real battleground.
Ownership Begins with Settlement
Eva Meng, Head of Matrixdock, places settlement at the center of the ownership question.
“An on-chain ledger can accurately record token ownership without establishing whether the underlying asset is available for settlement. The real test comes when the claim is exercised: can recorded ownership actually be carried through to settlement?”
Matrixdock’s tokenized gold (XAUm) asset shows how such rights pass from an onchain balance into physical delivery.
In April 2025, a holder burned 32.148 XAUm and received a one-kilogram LBMA gold bar within T+3 of the redemption request, linking the token burn to a corresponding release from custody.
How a Holder Received a Physical Gold Bar for Burning His Tokenized Gold Coins. Source: Matrixdock
The stakes rise as tokenization reaches securities, where ownership determines access to dividends, voting rights and corporate actions.
Myles Harrison, Chief Product Officer at AMINA Bank, argues institutional investors tend to begin from those legal and economic rights rather than from blockchain selection.
“The token isn’t the asset. It’s a representation of a claim, and that claim only means something if a regulated institution stands behind it and is legally obliged to honor it. When I speak to institutional clients, their questions are never about which chain an asset sits on. They want to know who owes them what, under which law, and what happens if something goes wrong. Those answers live in the record of ownership, not in the token itself.”
Securitize COO Billy Miller draws a similar line between tokens created around securities held elsewhere and issuer-sponsored tokens incorporated into the ownership record itself.
“In an issuer-sponsored model, the issuer authorizes tokenization with the token representing the actual security and ownership, akin to how book-entry is a digital representation of shares held at the transfer agent.”
Securitize put the model into use when its common stock began trading on the NYSE under SECZ on July 2. Eligible US investors are also able to access tokenized SECZ through Securitize.
The tokens launched on Avalanche and Solana while representing the same common stock trading on the NYSE, giving one security both conventional and on-chain forms of ownership.
Securitize is now officially a public company, listed on the @NYSE under the ticker SECZ.Our focus is unchanged: building the regulated infrastructure for the next generation of capital markets.To everyone who helped us get here, thank you.Tokenize the World. pic.twitter.com/XVhjA5udA9
— Securitize (@Securitize) July 2, 2026
💡 Did you know? Robinhood’s 2025 “SpaceX stock tokens” gave investors derivative exposure rather than direct ownership of SpaceX shares. The controversy exposed a central risk in tokenization: owning a token does not necessarily put the holder on the company’s share register or grant the rights attached to the underlying equity.
Transfer Agents
Transfer agents have long maintained security-holder records, processed changes in ownership, and administered distributions. With tokenized securities, recordkeeping becomes more closely tied to the trade because an on-chain transfer can feed into the official register, making the quality and speed of recordkeeping part of the trading experience itself.
Traditional exchanges are already building around this role.
In March, the NYSE named Securitize as the first digital transfer agent eligible to mint blockchain-native securities for corporate and ETF issuers on its planned digital trading platform, while the two companies also agreed to work on standards covering digital transfer agents and tokenization agents.
Roshan Robert, CEO of OKX US, sees the transfer agent and blockchain as complementary components.
“Tokenization works best when the asset is tied directly to the official ownership record. A digital transfer agent maintains that record and manages transfers, distributions and corporate actions. Blockchain infrastructure provides the speed, transparency and global reach that make these assets more useful. Strong tokenized markets need both trusted ownership records and high-performance blockchain infrastructure. Together, they can allow tokenized assets to move securely and, ultimately, trade around the clock.”
The institutional footprint around regulated tokenization is growing alongside those market plans. Securitize reported $3.4 billion in assets under management at the end of March 2026 and $1.9 billion of aggregate transaction volume during the first quarter, figures published shortly before its July NYSE listing.
Around-the-Clock Trading Reaches the Old Market Clock
The NYSE is developing a regulated digital venue designed for 24/7 tokenized securities trading, instant settlement and stablecoin-based funding, pairing its Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based post-trade systems.
Harrison sees the difficult work arriving beyond the trading venue, where counterparties, compliance teams and settlement systems still operate according to schedules refined over decades.
“At AMINA Bank, we settle 24/7, 365. We’re always online. But try clearing something on a Saturday evening through a traditional institution; it just doesn’t happen. And that’s not a technology problem. The entire financial system – from the processes and the staffing models to the compliance infrastructure – was built around market opening hours and optimized over decades. Unwinding is like turning an oil tanker. It will happen, but anyone telling you it’s 12 months away is underestimating the challenge.”
Meng sees the same tension in gold, an asset whose price can respond to geopolitical events and macroeconomic releases while key elements of the conventional market remain bound to established operating hours.
“The challenge is that only part of the stack is always on. Secondary trading and transfers can continue on-chain, while underlying markets, banking, custody, hedging, and primary-market activity still follow traditional operating hours.”
Tokenized gold can therefore continue forming a price while conventional routes are closed, giving onchain markets an early read on new information.
“The harder test comes when the tokenized price moves away from the underlying market while the mechanisms that normally bring them back into alignment, such as arbitrage, hedging, minting and redemption, are unavailable. Liquidity providers then have to carry more inventory, basis and gap risk until those markets reopen,” Meng said.
Continuous trading becomes economically durable when liquidity providers can manage exposure across those uneven schedules, with enough cash settlement, custody and redemption capacity to support prices through weekends and overnight sessions.
The Registry Outranks the Chain
Blockchain selection still affects transaction costs, execution speed and access, although Harrison sees legal and operational design carrying greater importance for institutions deciding whether an asset can enter portfolios.
“The chain matters far less than people assume. I see institutions spending months evaluating which blockchain to use when the real question is whether the legal and operational infrastructure around their asset is in place. Can they settle? Can they comply across jurisdictions? Can their counterparties access it? The industry spent almost two years getting lost in the semantic between tokenized deposit, a CBDC and a stablecoin when technologically they’re identical. The infrastructure around the token is what determines whether institutional clients can use it,” said Harrison from AMINA Bank.
SECZ provides one illustration. The same issuer-sponsored common stock launched across Avalanche and Solana, leaving the economic rights attached to the share while blockchain choice governs where an eligible investor can hold and transfer the tokenized form.
The SEC’s January guidance gives the registry similar prominence from a regulatory perspective, centring issuer-sponsored tokenization on the master securityholder file and the relationship between an onchain transfer and the legally recognized ownership record.
Where Tokenization Breaks Down
Continuous trading becomes more complicated when a token keeps changing hands while its reference market has closed, leaving price discovery concentrated in the tokenized asset until conventional trading resumes.
Harrison points to tokenized equities.
“You can trade the token at any hour, but the underlying security doesn’t reprice outside traditional market hours. You’re buying a wrapper whose reference value is frozen until the market reopens.”
Tokenized Treasuries raise a different issue. They are already the largest real-world asset category tracked by RWA.xyz, with $16.16 billion distributed across 85 products as of August 3, yet AMINA’s clients can already buy conventional T-bills through the bank’s securities dealer license.
In their case, wrapping the same exposure in a token offers limited extra utility unless it improves access, settlement or use elsewhere onchain.
“The tokenized version solves a distribution problem that doesn’t exist for them.”
Tokenization earns its economic value where a blockchain representation improves access, settlement, portability or use as collateral, while the ownership record preserves a holder’s enforceable rights throughout the process.
The market is already large enough for this distinction to become commercially important, especially as tokenized securities begin entering regulated public-market venues.

Jim Cramer called Marvell’s latest quarter solid, then warned that Marvell stock could hand back part of its 2026 gain. He sees the same risk across data center names.
The chipmaker beat Wall Street estimates on Thursday. Even so, shares slid more than 8% before Friday’s open.
Why Marvell Stock Fell After Beating Estimates
Marvell reported revenue of $2.74 billion for its second fiscal quarter. That figure climbed 37% from a year earlier and topped the $2.72 billion consensus.
Data center sales carried the quarter. The unit delivered $2.17 billion, up 46% year over year, and made up 79% of total revenue.
Profit growth looked just as strong. Net income reached $308 million, up from $194.8 million a year earlier. Adjusted earnings landed at 94 cents per share.
Management guided higher as well. Marvell pointed to about $3.15 billion for the current quarter, above the $3.04 billion analysts expected. It also raised its fiscal 2028 revenue target to $18 billion from $16.5 billion.
Nevertheless, sellers took over. Shares closed at $241.45 on Thursday, then traded near $222 in Friday’s pre-market session. That marked a drop of 8.05%.
Marvell Technology Stock Chart. Source: TradingView
Buyers had already banked a 178% gain this year. Therefore, the bar for another leg higher sat well above a narrow earnings beat.
That reaction rhymes with Broadcom’s record quarter selloff in June, when strong AI numbers still triggered a double-digit slide.
Expectations Now Drive the Data Center Trade
Cramer framed the drop as a valuation issue rather than an execution issue. Chief Executive Matt Murphy delivered, in his reading, but the bar sat too high.
He shared that view in a post on X shortly after the results landed.
Matt Murphy with a solid Marvell Q. The issue is, as is the case with so many of these, the monster run. We see this with so many data center stocks…
— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) August 28, 2026
He has followed this group all year and named his AI spending cycle winners in July. Chip suppliers dominated that list.
According to Cramer, the pattern now repeats across the sector. Investors reward beats less and punish anything short of perfection.
Meanwhile, Nvidia drew a similar response one day earlier. Its Q2 earnings beat estimates, and its guidance cleared forecasts, yet the stock swung hard before recovering.
Marvell’s October 6 investor day becomes the next test. Murphy said custom silicon revenue should more than double next year. He also flagged upside bias to a $10 billion target for fiscal 2029.
The rally left little room for error. Marvell has still gained more than 225% over the past 12 months.
Risk also sits outside the income statement. A political data center backlash has entered the 2026 midterm debate. Traders, meanwhile, watch semiconductor chart setups for the next signal.
Marvell’s growth engine still runs hot. The coming weeks will show whether buyers return at these levels. Otherwise, the data center trade may need a deeper cooldown first.

Gold mining stocks are on track to deliver their strongest month on record in August, outpacing the best month semiconductor stocks posted in April.
The MSCI Inc. global gold miners index gained 43% this month. Bitcoin (BTC) rose roughly 26% over the same stretch, tying both assets to a single macro trade.
Treasury Buyback Plan Revived the Debasement Trade
The rally accelerated after the US Treasury said it would double its buyback cap for longer-dated debt to at least $4 billion and push borrowing costs lower.
This move revived the debasement trade. The “debasement trade” refers to moving out of fiat currencies, particularly the dollar, and into scarce assets such as gold, silver, and Bitcoin.
It is based on the idea that persistent fiscal deficits, rising debt, and accommodative monetary policy can erode a currency’s purchasing power over time.
Gold miners have emerged as one of the clearest beneficiaries of that shift in investor positioning this month. Semiconductors have had a strong 2026, yet nothing close to this.
The MSCI world semiconductor gauge peaked in April with a 27% monthly gain, while the Philadelphia semiconductor index rose 38% that month.
Nonetheless, technology stocks have since faced pressure from higher global bond yields and growing concerns about massive AI spending.
However, Nvidia’s bullish sales outlook this week helped ease some concerns about the sustainability of AI-driven growth.
Gold and Bitcoin Extend the Rally
The broader gold market has also benefited from the same shift toward scarce assets and concerns about currency debasement.
Spot gold traded near $4,583 an ounce Friday, gaining roughly 13% this month and about 33% over the past year.
Gold Price Performance. Source: TradingView
Holdings in gold-backed exchange-traded funds have climbed at their fastest rate since September. BeInCrypto reported earlier that the ETFs saw $3 billion in inflows in July, reversing two consecutive months of outflows.
Gold is not the only metal responding. Copper set a record close this month as the same Treasury announcement rippled through commodity markets.
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DEBASER: Gold and Bitcoin ETFs have combined for +$7b in flows in past week, by far a record for a 5-day period as debasement trade steals spotlight from AI. GLD, IBIT leading, in Top 10 for week. Also notable $IBIT YTD flows are now positive, completely dug out of sizable hole. pic.twitter.com/q3LmPxnzfi
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) August 26, 2026
Bitcoin has followed the same broader trend, gaining more than 26% in August as its price reached multi-month highs. The simultaneous strength across gold, mining stocks, copper, and Bitcoin points toward a broader demand for scarce assets.
Attention now turns to Jackson Hole. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh speaks on Friday, and economists want his read on inflation.
A hawkish tone would lift real yields and test the case for holding assets that pay nothing. A softer message would leave the debasement trade intact heading into September.
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Kevin Warsh is preparing to deliver his first Jackson Hole speech as Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair on Friday, and expectations extend well beyond whether interest rates will be raised or left unchanged in September.
The Jackson Hole symposium, held from August 27 to 29, has the official theme “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy.” However, investors are likely to pay much closer attention to what Warsh says, or does not say, about inflation, interest rates, and the recent heightened volatility in the US bond market.
Since taking over at the Fed in May, Warsh has sought to reduce markets’ dependence on forward guidance. His objective is to allow economic data and markets to play a greater role in shaping interest-rate expectations rather than speeches from policymakers.
This strategy, however, comes at a cost: Investors struggle to understand precisely how the new Fed’s reaction function works. Jackson Hole could therefore become less about the next rate hike and more about Warsh’s credibility.
Why Warsh’s Jackson Hole Speech Matters So Much
Jackson Hole does not always produce a change in monetary policy. However, several Fed chairs have used the symposium to deliver messages that profoundly influenced financial markets.
Ben Bernanke opened the door to further quantitative easing measures in 2010 and 2012. Jerome Powell used his 2022 speech to firmly reaffirm the priority of fighting inflation, before preparing markets for the beginning of the monetary easing cycle two years later.
Source: Moomoo
Kevin Warsh arrives in Wyoming with a different philosophy. At his July press conference, he said he had not yet decided whether his speech would focus on broader structural questions or take a more traditional approach centered on monetary policy decisions expected between September and December.
Deutsche Bank believes the first option could see Warsh discuss the five task forces created by the Fed or the economic implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Under a more traditional format, he could instead revisit some of the ambiguities left by his July press conference and clarify his assessment of inflation and financial conditions.
The stakes are high as markets remain divided over the Fed’s next decision. Futures currently imply a chance of around 38% that the central bank will raise interest rates in September, according to the FedWatch tool.
Source: CME Group FedWatch Tool Warsh’s Communication Strategy Is Becoming a Market Risk
The paradox is that Warsh’s attempt to make markets less dependent on the Fed could, at least in the short term, make monetary policy more difficult to understand. Forward guidance traditionally allows investors to anticipate central-bank decisions, thereby reducing the risk of abrupt changes in expectations.
Warsh instead believes that an overly communicative Fed can prevent markets from fully playing their role. That break with the past is now at the heart of the debate. DBS Bank strategist Philip Wee sees Jackson Hole as an important test for the new chair:
“The market needs a coherent policy framework.” He adds: “Without one, reduced forward guidance risks becoming less a return to market price discovery and more a source of uncertainty.”
Warsh does not need to tell markets what the Fed will do in September. But he may need to explain more clearly what would cause the central bank to act.
Can Warsh Reassure Markets Without Promising a Rate Hike?
The main test will probably concern inflation. The Fed maintains a 2% inflation target, but price pressures remain elevated enough to sustain the debate over another rate hike.
Several policymakers are also concerned that inflation remaining above target for too long could eventually undermine inflation expectations among households and businesses.
The problem for Warsh is that simply reaffirming the 2% target may no longer be enough. Standard Chartered believes the Fed Chair needs, among other things, to restore confidence in the central bank’s determination to lower inflation and convince investors that a less interventionist Fed does not threaten macroeconomic stability.
An explicit message about the possibility of raising rates could help restore credibility. Warsh will probably need to make clear that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is prepared to raise interest rates if inflation fails to slow sufficiently.
However, MUFG argues that the inflation outlook does not justify the increasingly hawkish rhetoric coming from some FOMC members. While core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation accelerated during the first half of the year, price pressures are expected to ease over the coming quarters as supply shocks fade.
MUFG notes that inflation forecasts in the Philadelphia Fed’s Survey of Professional Forecasters have changed very little in recent months.
The bank also highlights that alternative inflation measures favored by Warsh, including Trimmed-Mean and Median PCE, show inflation running much closer to the Fed’s 2% target, suggesting that the current Federal Funds Rate (FFR) remains restrictive.
The US Bond Market Makes Warsh’s Task More Complicated
Warsh’s challenge is no longer limited to policy rates. Heightened volatility in US Treasury bonds, particularly at the long end of the curve, has created a new source of tension. The 30-year Treasury yield recently reached its highest level since 2007 amid concerns about inflation, the trajectory of public debt, and the scale of US government financing needs.
US 30-Year Government Bonds Yield. Source: TradingView
The Fed directly controls very short-term interest rates. It does not, however, control the additional premium investors demand to lend to the US government for ten, twenty, or thirty years.
This is precisely where the problem becomes as much political as monetary. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently announced an increase in buybacks of longer-dated securities to improve market liquidity. This intervention contrasts with Warsh’s desire to let markets play a greater role in determining yields themselves.
The Fed’s response to the Treasury’s actions is one of the key issues to watch on Friday. BNY strategist Geoff Yu writes:
“For rates, the key question is simple: Does Warsh support, challenge, or avoid the Treasury’s recent buyback push and its impact on the curve?”
The question goes beyond the buybacks themselves. If investors begin to believe the Fed is adjusting monetary policy to limit the government’s borrowing costs, its inflation-fighting credibility could be undermined.
Conversely, ignoring tensions in long-term yields could increase volatility and tighten financial conditions independently of decisions taken by the FOMC.
Warsh Could Ultimately Say a Lot Without Giving a September Signal
Despite the considerable attention surrounding Jackson Hole, several banks warn that investors could be disappointed if they expect a clear signal about the September meeting.
“Warsh has refrained from laying out his near-term reaction function, a tactic we do not think he’ll abandon only a few months into his tenure,” Wells Fargo says.
Société Générale also expects the Fed Chair to prioritize his reform agenda and the work of the five task forces rather than provide an explicit indication of the interest-rate path.
MUFG, meanwhile, sees three broad possibilities: A speech focused primarily on digital finance, a balanced message combining structural themes with macroeconomic comments, or a much more ambitious presentation of Warsh’s new monetary policy framework.
The middle scenario seems most particularly consistent with his strategy so far, sharing enough information to avoid another surge in volatility, but not enough to turn Jackson Hole into a pre-announcement of the September decision.
What Markets Really Need to Listen for on Friday
The central question will probably not be whether Warsh is simply hawkish or dovish. Investors will instead need to determine whether the Fed Chair can replace forward guidance with something clear enough to keep expectations anchored.
Three elements could be particularly important. First, Warsh could clarify the conditions that would justify another rate hike without committing to a specific date. A clear statement that the FOMC remains prepared to tighten policy if inflation fails to converge toward 2% could reassure markets about the Fed’s credibility.
Second, investors will monitor his assessment of the rise in long-term yields. Presenting the move as a normal example of market price discovery would be consistent with his philosophy, but could disappoint investors looking for a response to recent tensions.
Finally, any reference to relations between the Fed and the Treasury will be closely scrutinized to determine whether the two institutions are pursuing complementary objectives or whether a divergence is emerging over how financial conditions should be managed.
TD Securities believes the consequences could be asymmetric for the US Dollar.
“USD risks are skewed modestly to the downside. Any hawkish clarification on inflation credibility may provide only limited USD support. Alternatively, failure to address inflation credibility could weigh more materially on the dollar.”
That may be where the real stakes of Jackson Hole lie. A strongly hawkish speech could push yields and expectations of further rate hikes higher. A more dovish message could weigh on the US Dollar and support rate-sensitive assets.
But an overly vague speech could increase uncertainty over monetary policy and a persistently higher risk premium on US government bonds.
Warsh wants a less predictable Fed. On Friday, markets will mainly be looking to see whether he can make it less predictable without making it less credible.

XRP’s (XRP) price has gained 11% over the past week as a broader rally lifts major cryptocurrencies. Only Solana (SOL) and Hyperliquid (HYPE) have posted stronger gains among the 10 largest coins.
However, the market is sending opposite signals. Whales are moving coins off exchanges while futures data shows traders positioning against the rally.
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XRP (XRP) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets XRP Whale Outflows Hit a Six-Month High
Darkfost reported that whales withdrew 231 million XRP from Binance. This marked the largest whale withdrawal recorded in six months.
Those outflows exceeded $335 million in a single day. The 90-day average sits closer to $40 million, based on his figures.
Whale withdrawals reduce the supply sitting on exchanges and available for immediate sale. They do not confirm a purchase on their own, since coins can move into custody for other reasons.
Notably, the withdrawals landed during a sharp recovery in the token. Darkfost put XRP’s gain over the period at roughly 70%.
“Should this accumulation dynamic continue, XRP could test the $2 mark…” he said.
Derivatives Traders Lean Against the Rally
The same analyst pointed to a contrasting signal in the derivatives market, where traders appeared to increase bearish exposure.
Binance’s net taker volume recorded its strongest sell-side imbalance of 2026, reaching -$96 million. The reading indicates that aggressive sellers significantly outpaced buyers, even as XRP climbed back above $1.
XRP Net Taker Volume. Source: X/Darkfost
At the same time, XRP’s open interest on Binance increased by approximately 14.8%. The combination of heavy selling and rising open interest suggests that new short positions may have been entering the market. If the selling had primarily come from traders closing existing long positions, open interest would generally have fallen instead.
Taken together, the data point to a buildup of bearish positioning in the derivatives market, although they do not conclusively establish that every new position was a short.
“A real tug-of-war is now underway between spot demand and derivatives selling pressure. For now, XRP is holding above $1.40, but the outcome of this struggle will be decisive for its next price move,” the post read.
That leaves the two sides of the market pulling against each other. Spot holders absorb supply while leveraged traders position for a decline.
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Incoming Apple CEO John Ternus met The Pokémon Company team and Pikachu at Apple Park on Thursday. Tim Cook shared the visit on X ahead of the September 1 handover.
Cook gives up day-to-day control next week. The meeting, therefore, introduced Apple’s next chief to one of the biggest franchises in gaming.
Apple CEO John Ternus Talks Gaming Before the Handover
Cook kept the tone light. He set out a three-item agenda for the day, namely introducing Ternus to the Pokémon team, discussing gaming, and keeping Pikachu away from the Apple Park pond. Two of the three worked, he joked.
The video he posted follows Pikachu across the campus. The mascot dances under the rainbow arch and helps itself to fruit in the orchard. The pond, judging by Cook’s punchline, won in the end.
Today’s agenda at Apple Park: Introduce the @Pokemon team to John, talk gaming, and politely ask Pikachu to stay out of the pond. Two out of three were accomplished. pic.twitter.com/KzirV3VX8U
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) August 27, 2026
Ternus arrives with a low public profile after two decades inside Apple’s hardware engineering group. Apple named him chief executive in April. Cook has led the company since 2011 and keeps his board seat as executive chairman.
Tsunekazu Ishihara, president and chief executive of The Pokémon Company, joined the visit. Pokémon has shipped mobile titles on iOS for a decade. Apple, meanwhile, keeps treating games as a services growth engine.
Apple shares closed at $314.58 on Thursday, up 0.36% on the day. The stock has added 37.6% over the past year. It has slipped 7.5% in the past month, however, after the Q3 earnings reaction in late July.
Apple Inc. Stock Chart. Source: TradingView
Ternus also takes the job eight days before Apple’s September 9 iPhone keynote. Apple has billed the event with the line “Surprise and shine,” and the iPhone 18 Pro, plus a first foldable iPhone lead expectations.
Nintendo Stock Climbs as Pokémon Worlds Opens in San Francisco
Nintendo gained 3.5% to ¥9,032 in Tokyo on Friday, or about $57 at current rates. The stock still trades roughly 38% under its ¥14,630 record from last year, worth close to $92.
Nintendo co-owns The Pokémon Company with Game Freak and Creatures. Pokémon revenue therefore reaches Nintendo indirectly, on top of Switch software sales.
Nintendo’s fiscal 2026 revenue nearly doubled to ¥2.31 trillion, around $14.5 billion, as Switch 2 shipped. Management has since reaffirmed guidance of 16.5 million Switch 2 units for the current year.
The timing helps. The Pokémon World Championships open at San Francisco’s Moscone Center on Friday and run through Sunday. Gaming has moved markets repeatedly this month. Take-Two lost billions in value after a GTA 6 leak, then answered with a Netflix reveal.
For crypto readers, the Apple CEO handover matters less for games than for App Store policy. Ternus inherits the rules that decide how wallets and payment apps reach iPhone users, an overlooked crypto angle of the transition.
Apple CEO John Ternus starts on September 1. Cook stays on as executive chairman, however, so his influence does not disappear overnight. The September keynote should show how much of Apple’s gaming talk turns into product.

Solana (SOL) drew $60.91 million into US spot crypto ETFs on August 27, nearly seven times the previous session and the third-largest day since these funds launched. It was the strongest reading since November 3, 2025.
History gives that milestone an awkward edge. The only two days that ever beat it both arrived just before Solana fell hard.
The Record, and What It Is Not
Cumulative net inflows grew 4.83% in one session (between August 26 and August 27).It is the fastest one-day increase of 2026, lifting the running total to $1.322 billion, per SoSoValue data. Traded value more than doubled to $196.82 million.
Precision matters, though. August 27 was neither the largest inflow day nor the largest percentage jump, and Bitwise’s BSOL supplied about 66% of the total. Five of nine funds saw money arrive, so the day was broad but concentrated.
Solana ETF Record: BeInCrypto
Access keeps widening around those flows. Morgan Stanley listed its MSOL trust in July, Grayscale added staking distributions in August, and Charles Schwab said on August 27 it would add SOL to its crypto accounts, though that plan is not live yet.
Solana Access Ladder: BeInCrypto The Two Bigger Days Both Marked Tops
Here is the part worth pausing on. SOL took in $69.45 million on October 28, 2025, then fell 20.1% within seven days and 27.5% within a month. It took in $70.05 million on November 3, 2025, then dropped 21.1% over the next fortnight.
Solana ETF Precedent: BeInCrypto
Two cases prove nothing, and the entire market slid through late 2025. Still, record ETF demand has so far arrived near local highs rather than launching new legs.
Why This Time Has More Under It
Unlike those episodes, Solana’s fundamentals are moving with price. Tokenized real-world assets hit an all-time high of $4.167 billion on August 25, with holders up 12.12% in 30 days, per RWA.xyz.
The network earns more too. Fees rose 37.29% against the prior month and DeFi deposits climbed 24.36% to $5.96 billion, per DeFiLlama. Solana’s share of all decentralized exchange volume hit 31.16%, above its 27.65% average.
Solana Confirmation Stack: BeInCrypto
Capacity expanded ahead of the demand. The maximum block size rose 66% in July and MoneyGram cash rails now reach over 170 countries.
Solana Network Buildout: BeInCrypto
Bigger blocks mean more transactions fit without fees climbing, and MoneyGram lets people convert cash to crypto over a counter, so Solana is expanding both its capacity and its on-ramps.
What the Solana Price Rally Has Not Proved
Two rails still lag. Stablecoin supply rose just 0.59% in 30 days while SOL gained 46.3%, and it sits 4.15% below July’s peak.
Weekly active addresses fell 7.23% even as transactions rose 3.31%, so fewer wallets are doing more, which can mean bots rather than adoption.
What Has Solana Not Confirmed: BeInCrypto
Leverage looks deceptive as well. Open interest jumped 62.19% in dollars but only 10.34% in SOL units, meaning most of that build is the token’s own price.
Binance’s taker buy-sell ratio sat at 0.907, below neutral.
Solana Leverage Illusion: BeInCrypto
Put simply, the crowd has added fewer bets. Also, a ratio under 1 means more traders are hitting sell orders than buy orders. This means that the rally is running without fresh conviction behind it.
Solana Price Levels Into September
SOL trades near $107 after climbing 49.35% since August 16, down 1.66% today. Four moving average crossovers drove that run, ending with the 20-day line clearing the 200-day around August 28.
Solana Price Trend: TradingView
No fresh crossover is queued. The pullback resembles a bullish pole and flag, where a steep rally pauses before another push. SOL failed at $109.39, and a daily close above it opens $112.80, then $123.83 and $141.68.
Solana Price Analysis: TradingView
Selling volume stays lighter than the August 25 profit-taking, which favours bulls. Below, $105.98 and $101.77 catch a slide, while losing $94.95 breaks the bullish thesis.
Analyst’s View: The difference between now and those 2025 record days is what sits underneath. Back then the flows arrived with nothing but price behind them, while today fees, tokenized assets and DEX share are all rising with SOL. That is the case for treating this record differently.

OpenAI published an open letter signed by more than 100 companies. The letter warns that AI-enabled cyberattacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated in the coming months.
Signatories stretch across technology, banking, insurance, and semiconductors. Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), CrowdStrike, Cloudflare, and Palo Alto Networks all added their names.
What the OpenAI Letter Asks For
The letter identifies four groups that need to act. Every organization should treat cyber defense as a leadership priority and fix its highest-risk weaknesses.
Cybersecurity vendors should make AI-powered defense deployable for critical infrastructure operators. Governments should coordinate response and support defense for hospitals, water utilities, and local authorities.
Frontier AI companies should provide model access, funding, and training to under-resourced defenders.
“Today’s AI advances are already giving defenders new ways to fix weaknesses that have accumulated for years. If we act decisively, we can use the defenders’ window to make our digital world much more secure,” the letter reads.
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this is a critically important moment for cyber defense with AI; there is not much time to act.we are happy if you want to work with us or any of our competitors or partners, but please take this moment seriously.only an urgent and intense collective response will work.
— Sam Altman (@sama) August 27, 2026
What the Current Threat Landscape Looks Like
Evidence behind the tech giant’s forecast has already arrived this year. Taiwanese threat intelligence firm TeamT5 found Chinese state-affiliated groups doubled their attack volume after adopting DeepSeek and other open-source models.
Cost drove that choice rather than capability. Anthropic reached a broader conclusion in June. Its study of 832 banned accounts found the share of medium-risk or higher attackers rose from 33% to 56% within a year.
The firm also found that AI now handles privilege escalation and lateral movement, work that previously required technical skill. That erodes the link between an attacker’s expertise and the damage they can cause.
South Korean firm Genians found Kimsuky, a unit under North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, testing local AI tools.
TRM Labs scored criminal AI adoption at 54 out of 100 this year, up from 28 in 2024. The firm logged 201 crypto hacks in the first half of 2026, up from 83 a year earlier.
These are some of the many incidents researchers logged in 2026. The letter argues that today’s AI advances can still be turned into lasting security improvements that benefit everyone.
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CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD) stock jumped 20.5% after the cybersecurity firm posted record fiscal second-quarter results, with its CEO tying the surge in demand directly to rising artificial intelligence (AI) driven cyberattacks.
The company beat Wall Street’s revenue and profit targets and raised its full-year guidance following the report.
Record Quarter Driven by AI Threat Demand
CrowdStrike reported $1.47 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 26% year over year and above the $1.44 billion analysts expected. Adjusted earnings came in at $0.31 per share, topping the $0.29 consensus estimate.
CrowdStrike is up over 20%. Image Source: Trading View
Net new annual recurring revenue (ARR), a measure of new subscription commitments added during the quarter, hit a record $332.8 million, up 51% from a year earlier. Total ARR climbed 25% to $5.84 billion.
Founder and CEO George Kurtz tied the results to what he called the “Mythos moment.” This is a reference to Anthropic’s Mythos model launch. Reports say it is capable of exploiting previously unknown software flaws and has pushed AI security up enterprise priority lists.
“The Mythos moment translated into mass-market acceptance that AI adoption needs security, and that’s CrowdStrike. Every enterprise will run on AI, and securing it is the largest market opportunity in our history.”George Kurtz, CrowdStrike Founder and CEO
On the earnings call, Kurtz described an “arms race” in which AI is simultaneously driving more attacks and more security spending.
CrowdStrike raised its full-year net new ARR growth forecast by 630 basis points to roughly 34% at the midpoint. It also lifted full-year revenue guidance to between $5.99 billion and $6.01 billion.
The results echo CrowdStrike’s own prior research flagging AI-driven threats, and follow Jim Cramer’s stock picks naming cybersecurity as a top 2026 theme.
The results position CrowdStrike as one of several cybersecurity vendors benefiting from mounting enterprise anxiety over AI-enabled threats, a trend likely to shape spending priorities into the next earnings cycle.

Grayscale Research says Zcash (ZEC) has a real chance of capturing Bitcoin’s (BTC) market share, citing three features that the largest digital currency lacks.
The note landed as the asset manager launched the first spot ZEC exchange-traded product (ETP), and the token hit its highest price since 2018.
Bitcoin Controls 93% of the Currencies Sector
Grayscale sorts crypto assets by use case through its Crypto Sectors framework. Bitcoin accounts for 93% of the Currencies category by market capitalization.
Head of Research Zach Pandl wrote that earlier rivals such as Litecoin (LTC) did not mount a serious challenge. He added that deep network effects have kept rivals small. Many investors never diversify past Bitcoin inside the category, he added.
The gap remains wide today. Bitcoin trades near $78,645, with a market cap of roughly $1.58 trillion.
Zcash sits far behind, with ZEC trading near $790 and a market value of about $13.3 billion. That ranks it 12th overall.
The token is therefore worth less than 1% of Bitcoin. It reached that level after rising roughly 19-fold over the past year.
Grayscale reads that distance as room for competition rather than evidence against it.
The 3 Features Grayscale Says Bitcoin Lacks
Pandl framed Zcash as a second mover with advantages that Bitcoin could not adopt at launch. Financial privacy tops the list, which he tied to the spread of AI-powered surveillance.
Second, Zcash developers continue to work on cybersecurity risks, including future quantum threats to classical cryptography. The third feature is the “intents” technology in modern wallets.
“Zcash does not require widespread merchant adoption—you (or your AI agent) can use it as a private asset hub with universal connectivity through intents,” Pandl said.
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Grayscale Research believes Zcash $ZEC has a real shot at capturing Bitcoin $BTC market share. @Zcash has second mover advantages Bitcoin doesn't:↳ Financial privacy in an era of AI-powered surveillance ↳ Cross-chain reach through $NEAR Intents↳ Active development against… pic.twitter.com/EezUCAdUET
— Grayscale (@Grayscale) August 27, 2026
Grayscale Models ZEC at $8,109 on a 10% Bitcoin Share
Grayscale modeled what those features could be worth. Using a five-year supply estimate, the firm put ZEC at $1,622 if it reaches 2% of Bitcoin’s market share, and at $8,109 if it reaches 10%.
Zcash (ZEC) Price Implied by Potential Share of Bitcoin Market Capitalization. Source: Grayscale Investments
ZEC traded near $790 on Friday, so those scenarios imply gains of roughly 105% and 927%. Grayscale called the projections hypothetical and illustrative.
The firm still labeled the asset high-risk and warned that any gains would not be linear. Pandl acknowledged that transparency, simplicity, and liquidity support Bitcoin’s position.
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Spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) added $242.30 million in net inflows on Aug. 27. The gain extended their streak to nine consecutive trading days.
Spot Ethereum (ETH) ETFs matched the pace. The category added $235 million on the same day, marking its own ninth straight inflow session.
Bitcoin And Ether Funds Move In Lockstep
The parallel streaks follow a stretch of heavy institutional buying. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) contributed $209 million of a $338 million Bitcoin ETF inflow on Aug. 24. Its Ethereum fund, ETHA, added $90.92 million of that day’s $116 million Ethereum ETF haul.
Bitcoin Spot ETFs See $242 Million in Net Inflows, Extending 9-Day Inflow StreakOn Aug. 27 (ET), U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $242 million in net inflows, extending their streak to nine consecutive days. Spot Ethereum ETFs saw $235 million in net inflows, also marking nine… pic.twitter.com/JLJpZ8CGyy
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 28, 2026
Bitcoin traded near $80,000 on Thursday, up 2.12% over 24 hours. Ether changed hands near $2,480 over the same period.
Total net assets across spot Bitcoin ETFs stood at $79.16 billion. Trading volume across the category reached $8.23 billion, according to CoinGlass data.
The two categories also posted their biggest combined week since October last week, drawing $2.3 billion between them. That run suggests institutions are building positions across both assets rather than rotating between them.
The current streak traces back to Aug. 17, when both categories began a run that reached four days by Aug. 20. It has continued uninterrupted through Aug. 27.
Bitcoin’s price is hovering around $80,000. Image Source: BeInCrypto
Smaller crypto funds joined the advance. Spot Solana (SOL) ETFs added $60.91 million, and spot Hyperliquid (HYPE) ETFs drew $24.42 million, both on Aug. 27.
Both smaller funds remain far behind Bitcoin and Ether in scale. The same-day gains suggest institutional demand extends beyond the two largest crypto assets.
Sustained ETF demand can matter beyond the daily headline. Steady inflows reduce available supply on spot exchanges, a dynamic that has historically supported price during past accumulation phases.
Nine straight days of buying across both major categories signals broad, not narrow, institutional appetite. Whether that appetite holds into next week may depend on whether Bitcoin and Ether can extend their recent price gains.

Netflix released Grand Theft Auto VI’s Extended Look trailer on August 27, sparking global fan frenzy just hours after the leaker behind the game’s stolen footage quietly cashed out.
The 26-minute preview, produced by Rockstar Games, showed the protagonists, Jason and Lucia, navigating Leonida’s open world through chases, shootouts, and everyday scenes at home.
Netflix’s Trailer Capped Months of Leaks and Speculation
The special showed Jason and Lucia working through missions across Leonida, including a trap house drug bust and a job for nightclub owner Boobie Ike, with players able to switch between both protagonists mid-mission.
Netflix held an exclusive six-hour window before Rockstar released the same footage for free on YouTube and the official GTA VI site at 9 p.m. ET. Rockstar also issued guidance to creators on X, allowing reaction content and livestreams from the moment the special aired, but asking fans not to simply repost the raw video without commentary.
The stakes around viewership were unusually high. GTA VI’s second trailer, released in May 2025, pulled in 475 million views across platforms within 24 hours, a launch-day record that beat Deadpool & Wolverine.
The first trailer alone drew 93 million YouTube views on its opening day. GTA VI remains set for a November 19 launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, priced at $79.99, capping more than 13 years of anticipation since GTA V’s release.
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See the next evolution in the groundbreaking Grand Theft Auto series.Watch Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look. Now on Netflix: https://t.co/VCJ6pfo51M pic.twitter.com/KqpCjOSgDF
— Netflix (@netflix) August 27, 2026
That long wait fueled an unauthorized leak campaign that dominated headlines for over a week. An anonymous figure known as CyberLeek posted 15 clips watermarked with a Solana token called CYBERLEEK, urging viewers to buy in with messages like higher market cap means more leaks.
The Leaker Dumped Tokens Hours Before the Official Reveal
On-chain investigators, including a GTAForums researcher known as Vice Cit, tracked roughly $268,000 moving out of CYBERLEEK’s transaction-fee pool in the hours leading up to Netflix’s premiere.
“The money was then divided up between 4 transactions and sent to various wallets that ultimately ended up in three different places; KuCoin, CCE.Cash, and there are some still sitting in various wallets that haven’t moved yet,” Vice Cit reported.
CYBERLEEK’s price collapsed as the withdrawals surfaced. The token now trades at $0.004595, down 54% over the past 24 hours, with a market cap of roughly $3.33 million, according to CoinGecko data.
That leaves it 86.8% below its all-time high of $0.03436, reached on August 23. The leaker had earlier burned 270 million unsold tokens, a move researchers say was meant to build trust before the final cash-out.
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CyberLeek (CYBERLEEK) Price Performance. Source: CoinGecko
Rockstar addressed the saga directly in a statement, calling the leaks heartbreaking for the team and asking fans to wait for the official launch rather than let stolen footage shape their expectations. Take-Two has separately secured subpoenas against Discord, Microsoft, and X, seeking to identify whoever operated the CyberLeek persona.
Analysts project GTA VI could generate between $3.3 billion and $5.2 billion in global sales during its launch week, according to CyberScoop, with Take-Two guiding toward $8 billion to $8.2 billion in fiscal 2027 bookings tied largely to the title.

Bitcoin (BTC) gained $14,775 in a single week, the largest one-week dollar increase in its history. Galaxy Research says the rally also drove the strongest US spot Bitcoin ETF inflow week since October 2025.
The weekly close jumped from $62,818 to $77,593, a 23.5% move ranked 41st by percentage increase since 2010. By percentage increase, it was Bitcoin’s best week since March 2023.
What Drove Bitcoin’s Record Week
Galaxy Research linked the rally to two catalysts. The US Treasury said it would double its long-bond buyback operations, used to ease pressure on Treasury yields.
Last week's BTCUSD weekly candle was the single largest weekly gain by dollar amount in Bitcoin history. By percentage, it was the 41st biggest weekly gain in history (+23.5%) and the biggest since March 2023. pic.twitter.com/tF17RTM0mA
— Galaxy Research (@glxyresearch) August 27, 2026
President Trump also urged Congress to pass the CLARITY Act. The bill would set federal rules for classifying digital assets as securities or commodities.
The move also triggered a short squeeze. Traders who had bet against Bitcoin were forced to close positions, accelerating Bitcoin’s fastest bull flip in a year.
Roughly $2.7 billion in short positions were liquidated across crypto markets that week, according to CNBC.
Sentiment also swung sharply. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index reached 74 on August 25, its highest level since October 2025.
ETF Inflows Confirm the Rebound
Spot Bitcoin ETF demand returned at the same time. Weekly inflows reached their strongest level since October 2025, Galaxy Research data shows.
Last week was the biggest Bitcoin ETF inflow since October 2025. pic.twitter.com/vGXwJa0DT9
— Galaxy Research (@glxyresearch) August 27, 2026
August is on track to post the biggest monthly net inflow since Bitcoin’s prior all-time high. That would reverse months of ETF outflows that left the funds as net sellers in 2026.
ETF holders remain about 6% underwater even after the rebound. Their average cost basis sits at $84,029, against a $78,955 spot price, Galaxy Research data shows.
Bitcoin’s spot price traded above $80,000 on Thursday.
Whether the rebound continues may depend on ETF inflows holding into September. Traders will also watch if last week’s short squeeze proves lasting or temporary.

Crypto protocols that completed independent security audits accounted for 88.44% of all funds stolen since January 2025, according to CoinGecko’s 2026 state of crypto security report.
The study tracked 245 incidents and $3.63 billion in losses through July 2026. Independent auditors had cleared 147 of the breached platforms before attackers reached them.
Security Audits Did Not Stop 147 of 245 Crypto Hacks
CoinGecko said that only 11% of exploits involved in-scope smart contract flaws, though those cases still drained $396 million.
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Audited Vs Unaudited Crypto Protocol Exploits. Source: CoinGecko
The damage came from everywhere else. Attackers went after external infrastructure, code shipped after the audit closed, and systemic features that could be manipulated through governance.
Supply chain and infrastructure breaches took more than $1.8 billion, the largest single category in the report. Overall, smart contract exploit-driven losses across decentralized applications (dApps) reached $546 million.
May’s Stake DAO breach showed the limit. An attacker compromised a deployer key rather than exploiting contract logic. On centralized exchanges, stolen private keys remained the most common point of failure.
“Infrastructure and supply chain vulnerabilities have proven to be the most devastating for both CEXes and DEXes,” the report read.
The losses also cluster tightly. The 10 largest attacks alone produced 72.5% of everything taken across the 19-month window.
Cover against those losses is thinning too. Active on-chain insurance fell 20.2% to $130.2 million, and five of nine insurance protocols went inactive or changed direction.
2026 Brings More Hacks and Smaller Losses
Meanwhile, DefiLlama has logged 233 separate incidents so far in 2026, worth roughly $1.31 billion. The same stretch of 2025 saw 92 incidents and $2.37 billion in losses.
Incident volume more than doubled while total losses fell about 45%. Average loss per incident dropped from $25.8 million to $5.6 million. The $1.5 billion Bybit theft inflated the 2025 total.
Three cases carried most of this year’s total. Kelp DAO lost $292 million, and Drift Protocol lost $285 million in April 2026. These two also rank among the top three hacks since 2025, following Bybit
Smaller attacks now arrive pretty frequently, adding to the long list of 2026 crypto breaches. August alone brought an $8.5 million Term Labs governance exploit.
Overall, the pattern raises a scoping question rather than a competence one. Contract reviews remain narrow while deployment keys and governance parameters carry growing value.
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Software stocks lagged the broader market for much of 2026, even as fears that artificial intelligence would gut the sector’s fundamentals largely failed to materialize.
Nuveen chief investment officer Saira Malik argues the sector’s earnings tell a different story than its stock charts, and that a rebound may be closer than the price action suggests. The comments arrive a day after Nvidia’s earnings eased fears about AI spending, and hours before Workday, Autodesk, and Marvell rounded out a heavy week of technology results.
Why Software Stocks Got Punished for No Reason
Malik said investors spent much of 2026 worrying that generative AI would gut software company headcounts and revenue growth, a fear that hit the sector broadly and indiscriminately.
She argued the numbers never backed up the panic.
“When you separate the signal from the noise, it didn’t show up in software companies fundamentals. Revenue growth rates for software companies remained fairly stable.”
Saira Malik, Bloomberg
Margins and earnings held up too, she said, and the wave of job cuts many expected AI to trigger across the sector has not materialized to the degree feared.
Real Names, Real Declines
Workday beat second-quarter revenue and profit estimates this week. Shares still slipped afterward, but then spiked again after hours trading.
Workday beat earnings estimates then fell, then spiked. Image Source: Trading View
Autodesk dropped roughly 5% in after-hours trading despite raising its full-year revenue outlook. Investors instead focused on a lower free-cash-flow forecast tied to a recent acquisition.
Adobe and Workday have also drawn cautious coverage from some Wall Street analysts this year, who flagged slowing growth and business-model transitions as key risks for both stocks.
Marvell Is the Next Signal to Watch
Malik said Marvell’s results, due after Thursday’s close, would show whether the AI trade extends beyond Nvidia into the broader chip and software ecosystem. A strong report, she said, would confirm the rally Nvidia’s earnings ignited this week, when the chipmaker lifted its fiscal 2027 revenue growth outlook to 70%, well above the roughly 45% Wall Street had expected.
Marvell went on to beat estimates on both revenue and profit, though its stock dipped slightly as investors weighed compressing margins against the growth.
Long-term Treasury yields above 5% and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech on Friday remain wildcards for how equities trade next. But the read from Nuveen is that software’s earnings, not its share prices, are telling the more accurate story right now.

Peter Schiff renewed his “death spiral” warning on Strategy (MSTR), even as the stock jumped to $137.40 during a broader Bitcoin (BTC) rally. Michael Saylor answered with an AI-generated video of himself riding a bull in Spain.
Strategy’s stock has surged since early August, echoing a rebound in Bitcoin that lifted the cryptocurrency back above $80,000 this week. Schiff attributes Thursday’s jump largely to short sellers closing positions rather than genuine buying conviction.
Schiff Won’t Budge on His Bear Case
Schiff, a longtime Bitcoin critic, has spent months arguing that Strategy’s preferred stock dividend obligations leave the company exposed if Bitcoin turns lower again. He linked Thursday’s rally to a short squeeze rather than fresh conviction behind the stock.
Not sure what’s behind today’s sharp $MSTR rally, though I suspect short-covering has a lot to do with it. Nonetheless, I stand by my “death spiral” thesis, even if Strategy’s life expectancy has been extended a bit by the temporary Bitcoin rally.
Not sure what's behind today's sharp $MSTR rally, though I suspect short-covering has a lot to do with it. Nonetheless, I stand by my "death spiral" thesis, even if Strategy's life expectancy has been extended a bit by the temporary Bitcoin rally.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) August 27, 2026
Schiff has called MSTR a scam before, and he previously warned of a death spiral tied to the same preferred stock structure, which pays a variable dividend that Strategy funds partly by issuing new shares.
Saylor Answers With Bravado
Strategy’s executive chairman posted a short AI-generated clip of himself atop a bull, captioned simply.
Ride the ₿ull.
Ride the ₿ull. pic.twitter.com/NQpGefFkAO
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) August 27, 2026
Michael Saylor shared the clip on X. It landed the same day BeInCrypto covered Strategy’s stock rally, which has coincided with easing fears the company would need to sell Bitcoin to cover its obligations.
Bitcoin is back above $80,000. Image Source: BeInCrypto
The split reaction captures the divide around Strategy’s model. Schiff sees the same balance sheet risk he has flagged for over a year. Saylor, leaning on Bitcoin’s momentum, seems happy to broadcast his confidence publicly.
Whether Schiff’s warning ages any better this time may depend on how long Bitcoin’s rally holds.