BeInCrypto Global

Bitcoin (BTC) is rallying again, and VanEck’s Matthew Sigel says it is finally acting like the hedge it was built to be.
Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, ties the move to fears over US fiscal policy rather than pending crypto legislation.
All Eyes on the US Treasury
The US Treasury doubled its long-dated bond buyback ceiling, from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. The move compressed yields and fed a broader risk-on rally tied to the Treasury’s bond buyback expansion.
Roughly $3 billion in forced short liquidations amplified the move. bitcoin climbed to $72,757, part of what one report called Bitcoin’s short squeeze cascade.
Sigel downplays the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill working through Congress, as the driver. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has voiced optimism the bill clears 60 Senate votes, though prediction markets price a slim chance it becomes law this year, a gap Sigel says explains why the rally isn’t about CLARITY Act’s Senate odds.
“Bitcoin is one of the best hedges you can find on that dynamic.”
— Matthew Sigel, Head of Digital Asset Research, VanEck, via CNBC
That hedge framing carries a mixed record
Bitcoin’s correlation with US equities spiked, not fell, during the 2020 COVID crash and the 2022 rate-hiking cycle. Academic research shows that pattern, not decoupling, is what typically happens under market stress.
Bitcoin has soared to above $70,000. Image Source: BeInCrypto
That tension traces back to Bitcoin’s origin. Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 whitepaper proposed Bitcoin as a fixed-supply alternative to a financial system reliant on central bank money printing.
Sigel’s dollar-debasement argument revives that same case, just aimed at Treasury debt management instead of the printing press directly.
Whether Bitcoin keeps behaving like that hedge, or snaps back into a risk-on trade if equities wobble, will show which version of the story markets are actually pricing.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Thursday that the government’s bond buyback program could grow.
He noted that there is every indication that the buybacks could exceed the $4 billion per operation ceiling it set just a day earlier, a signal that helped drive Bitcoin (BTC) toward its highest level since June.
Bessent Leaves the Door Open on Size
Treasury doubled its buyback cap for longer-dated debt from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation on Wednesday, targeting securities maturing in 10 to 30 years starting September 9.
Speaking a day later, Bessent made clear that figure was a floor, not a ceiling.
“I would note that it could be more than the 4 billion per issue.”
Bessent declined to attach a specific number, saying the eventual size will depend on market conditions. He framed the move as an effort to restore trading depth in a market he called thinly traded, pointing to heavy corporate bond issuance and what he described as poor liquidity in the 30-year sector.
Why Bond Buybacks Moved Crypto
Bitcoin’s link to Treasury buybacks runs through yields and liquidity, not direct policy. The 30-year yield had touched its highest level since 2007 before Wednesday’s announcement pulled it sharply lower, and Treasury’s buyback move eased broader financial conditions just as risk appetite was already improving.
Lower long-duration yields reduce competition for investor capital, a dynamic that tends to support assets like Bitcoin and gold alike, as gold’s own rally this week showed.
Bessent also pointed to the U.S.-Iran conflict as a temporary distortion on yields, saying markets would normalize once that situation resolves. His comments on Thursday briefly pulled yields lower again, though the effect faded and the 10-year yield ended the session higher.
Bitcoin trades near $72,712 at the time of writing, up 5% over the past 24 hours, according to BeInCrypto data. That places it near its highest level since June, part of a rally that also drew on a wave of short-position liquidations and renewed optimism around crypto market momentum.
Bitcoin has broken free of the $60,000 to $65,000 range it was held in. Image Source: BeInCrypto
Bessent’s broader message centered on U.S. fiscal trajectory. He argued that record government debt does not by itself signal distress, pointing to fiscal consolidation through 2025 and expected tariff revenue holding steady into 2026.
Whether the buyback expansion keeps supporting Bitcoin past the initial reaction will likely hinge on how large future operations get, and whether yields stay contained once the enlarged buybacks begin on September 9.

Justin Sun won a key procedural battle against Trump-backed World Liberty Financial on Thursday, keeping his personal claims against the crypto venture in public federal court rather than private arbitration.
The California judge rejected World Liberty’s attempt to force all of Sun’s claims behind closed doors. The court also ordered both sides to determine which claims involving Sun-controlled companies should remain in court and which should move to arbitration.
“The judge ruled that all of my individual claims will remain in the public courtroom,” Sun said after the hearing.
The ruling does not decide whether World Liberty acted illegally. It does, however, keep the most personal part of Sun’s dispute in a public forum, where future filings and evidence could face greater scrutiny.
Justin Sun Keeps the Pressure on World Liberty Financial
Sun sued World Liberty in April after the company froze WLFI tokens linked to him. He alleges World Liberty secretly added controls that allowed it to restrict or destroy tokens and later used those powers against him.
World Liberty denies wrongdoing and says Sun violated agreements governing his holdings.
The cleanest way to understand the Justin Sun–World Liberty Financial fight is that it started as one of the closest alliances in Trump crypto and has turned into a fight over hundreds of millions of dollars.
Justin Sun’s Latest Statement on X
Sun invested $45 million in WLFI during its early token sale and became one of the project’s largest backers.
World Liberty has since accused Sun of improperly moving tokens and participating in activity designed to pressure WLFI’s price. Sun denies those claims.
WLFI has remained volatile as the legal battle has intensified, adding another layer of uncertainty around a token already facing questions over governance, unlock schedules and issuer control.
WLFI Lost Nearly 80% of Its Value Since Launch. Source: CoinGecko
The fight now moves back toward the substance of Sun’s claims. World Liberty still has avenues to seek dismissal, meaning Thursday’s ruling keeps the case alive in public without deciding who ultimately wins.

Polymarket pays a former FBI staffer to watch its traders full time. Chief executive Shayne Coplan revealed the role to US regulators on Thursday.
He spoke at the first meeting of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Innovation Advisory Committee. His message was blunt. Polymarket users have almost no privacy.
Polymarket Surveillance Goes Further Than the Company Says
Coplan described the hire while defending his platform in Washington.
“We have someone here right now who… is ex-FBI who works full-time at Polymarket.”
That staffer built custom surveillance software in-house, he said. Outside firms were impressed it was not outsourced.
The detail is new. Polymarket’s public integrity page names Chainalysis and Palantir as partners. It never mentions building tools of its own.
Coplan knew the news would sting. He said some users would be upset to hear it.
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The Numbers Behind the Monitoring
Polymarket reports handing 315 or more wallet records to authorities. It also claims 90 or more account referrals and two arrests. The company gives no date for those totals.
Two traders learned what that means this year. In April, the CFTC charged Army Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke over the Nicolas Maduro market.
He bought more than 436,000 “Yes” shares in four days. He made roughly $404,000. His handle, Burdensome-Mix, sat in public view the whole time.
In May, regulators charged Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo over 23 contracts on the firm’s Year in Search list. He allegedly cleared about $1.2 million as AlphaRaccoon.
Why Anonymity Was Never Real
Coplan argues the openness is the point.
“It’s all public. It’s all on chain. It’s the least anonymous financial market of all time.”
Anyone can open a market and read a trader’s full history. Therefore the tool that catches cheats also exposes everyone else.
The walls are rising elsewhere too. Polymarket bars 39 countries and bans VPNs outright under its terms. It began blocking VPN access and demanding documents from big accounts this year. South Korea cut access entirely in August.
Not everyone thinks self-policing works. CME Group chief Terry Duffy told the same meeting that regulators wave through manipulable contracts. Chairman Michael Selig rejected that.
For traders, the lesson is simpler. A Polymarket wallet is not a disguise. It is a permanent record, and a former FBI staffer is reading it.

CME Group CEO Terry Duffy told the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) it clears contracts that traders can rig. Chairman Michael Selig cut him off and called the claim fake news.
The exchange happened Thursday in Washington, at the first meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee. Duffy runs the largest futures exchange in the world. Selig regulates it.
2,500 Filings and Zero Objections
Selig built the 35-member committee in February. Its roster includes the chief executives of Kalshi, Polymarket and DraftKings. Thursday’s agenda covered crypto, artificial intelligence and event contracts.
Duffy used his turn to attack the last one.
Roughly 2,500 self-certifications have landed at the agency since January 2025, he said. None were opposed.
Self-certification is the fast lane. An exchange files a contract, attests that it follows the law, and lists it. Nobody has to approve it.
Duffy said some of those filings break core principle 3. That rule bars any contract that traders can readily manipulate.
There is a structural reason few filings get challenged. Selig is the only sitting commissioner at the CFTC. Four of the agency’s five seats are empty.
“We’re not a bunch of carnival barkers at a circus. We are running the most envious markets in the world in the United States of America.”
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Selig Calls It Fake News, But The Record Is Messier
Duffy raised two cases.
In the first, a Fort Bragg soldier named Gannon Van Dyke turned $33,034 into $409,881 on Polymarket. He bet on whether US forces would enter Venezuela. He also held classified details of the raid that captured Nicolás Maduro. Prosecutors charged him in April.
In the second, Trump’s teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez cleared more than $100,000 on Kalshi. He traded on what the president would say. Investigators found bets on more than a dozen speeches.
Selig cut in before Duffy finished.
“…those products are not listed in the United States. They never were. This occurred offshore, and that’s fake news.”
Duffy called that a cute comment. He granted that the Maduro market was Polymarket’s, which trades offshore.
The teleprompter case is different. Those trades ran on Kalshi, an exchange the CFTC itself designates and oversees. Kalshi’s own surveillance team flagged the activity and reported it to the agency.
So one example landed offshore. The other did not.
Kalshi Trades Compute Today. CME Waits for October.
Duffy then moved to timing, and the complaint got sharper.
Kalshi already runs markets on the cost of renting Nvidia chips. It launched them in July.
CME wants in on the same trade. On August 11 it said it would list rental futures for Nvidia H100 and B200 chips. Its partner is Silicon Data, a firm backed by trading house DRW. Target date, October 5, pending review.
Then the agency opened a consultation. On August 19 it asked the public to comment on compute derivatives for 60 days.
Count the days. A 60-day window starting from Federal Register publication closes after October 5.
DRW founder Don Wilson, also on the committee, asked why compute needed 60 days at all.
Duffy added a second detail. Cantor Fitzgerald had opened institutional trading in Kalshi contracts hours earlier. “Let’s call that a coincidence,” he said.
Cantor Fitzgerald plans to give investment funds access to Kalshi’s prediction markets, arranging block trades on everything from weather forecasts to iPhone sales https://t.co/kb4dzux7m1
— WSJ Markets (@WSJmarkets) August 19, 2026
Cantor’s announcement covered event contracts broadly and never mentioned compute.
The Man Attacking Self-Certification Once Used It
Duffy’s frustration is not abstract. His own filings keep stalling.
In July the agency froze CME’s 24-hour crude oil contract while a rulemaking ran. Selig called the timing wholly inappropriate. That comment period closes on August 26.
CME has already gone to court. On June 18 it sued the CFTC over Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual contract, arguing the agency rubberstamped Kalshi’s reasoning. Those perps cleared $1 billion in volume in their first week.
Duffy also pressed on offshore venues. Traders in the US cannot legally touch them, he said, yet they get there anyway. He asked what the commission is doing to “police everybody’s VPN.”
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He named Hyperliquid. President Donald Trump had floated bringing Hyperliquid onshore at a White House crypto summit the previous day.
One point cuts against Duffy. CME self-certified its own Bitcoin futures in December 2017, using the same fast lane he now calls dangerous. Duffy signed the announcement.
He closed on 2008. Bad behavior in finance does not cost the industry one step, he said. It costs 20, and the rebuild takes years.
Duffy hands the CEO job to Lynne Fitzpatrick in March 2027. The committee he was addressing cannot write rules. Selig can, alone, and two of his clocks run out within weeks.

Strategy, the company once called MicroStrategy (MSTR), rose 6.9% to $111.14 on Thursday afternoon. That is its best price since June 18, which wipes out a two-month slide.
The stock market has forgiven the company. The balance sheet has not. MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin is still worth billions less than it paid.
MicroStrategy (MSTR) Stock Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance How MicroStrategy Clawed Back Two Months
MSTR traded at $111.45 as of 3.05 p.m. ET, up 6.91% from Wednesday’s $104.25 close. The shares had bottomed at $81.81 in late June.
That is a 35.9% climb off the floor. July never produced a close above $101.95, so Thursday’s move clears the whole summer.
The fuel came from Bitcoin topping $70,000, marking the first time in 78 days. The token had not held that level since early June.
Two decisions in Washington did the heavy lifting. On Wednesday the Treasury doubled the size of its long-end bond buybacks. Each operation will now buy at least $4 billion from Sept. 9.
A day earlier, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed Regulation Crypto Assets. The rule would let crypto firms raise up to $75 million a year without full registration.
Short sellers were caught out. Traders covered roughly $1.5 billion of bearish bets, including $700 million inside one minute.
“…a quiet form of quantitative easing, a move that weakens the dollar and sends scarce, debasement-hedge assets like Bitcoin higher,” Matt Mena, crypto research strategist at 21Shares, on the Treasury move.
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The Bitcoin Stack is Still Underwater
Strategy holds 840,447 bitcoin. It paid an average $75,385 per coin, or $63.36 billion in total, according to its own ledger.
At $69,803 that pile is worth $58.67 billion. So the company sits about $4.69 billion in the red. Bitcoin has to rise another 8% before the treasury breaks even.
The gap already forced a change of habit. Strategy bought its first 21,454 coins on August 10, 2020, paying $11,652 each. The ledger records no sales at all until this year.
Then came four of them. The company sold 6,916 bitcoin between June 30 and August 10, at prices from $59,256 to $64,262. Measured against its average cost, that booked roughly $92 million in real losses on less than 1% of the stack.
The paper damage is far larger. Strategy reported an $8.22 billion second quarter net loss in July. It has also paused new bitcoin buying, raising $333.7 million last week without adding a single coin. In February, management spelled out its own breaking point in a deep bitcoin crash.
Which Crypto Stocks Really Got Back to June
The rebound was broad, but it was not equal.
BitMine, an ether treasury company, leads the group by a wide margin. Circle has climbed back above its June 18 level.
Coinbase beat every June close, yet it trails its July 21 peak of $175.85. Bitdeer is the outlier. The miner rose 8.57% and stays 41.7% below June.
The split is telling. Money returned to the treasury companies and the exchanges, which move with bitcoin most directly. It has not returned to the miners.
Big investors were already positioned. Twelve of the 15 largest MSTR institutional holders added shares in the second quarter, while the stock was falling.
COIN, CRCL, BMNR, and BTDR Stock Performances. Source: TradingView
“it’s a compelling time for investors with longer-term horizons to be allocating to Bitcoin and the crypto asset class,” said Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale.
One number decides whether this holds. Bitcoin must reach $75,385 for Strategy’s treasury to turn green again, and for Michael Saylor to start buying without booking a loss.

Binance runs its global exchange under Abu Dhabi’s regulator. Emirati police still detained two of its employees over financial crime inquiries, the New York Times reported.
All have been released. A third staff member, who leads the company’s Dubai arm, answered questions at a police station in July.
A Foothold Built on Licenses and State Money
The Emirates is not a side market for Binance. It is the base.
Abu Dhabi’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority granted the exchange three licenses on December 8. No other crypto exchange had won a global license under that framework. The permissions went live on January 5.
The money runs just as deep. State-backed fund MGX invested $2 billion in March 2025. It paid in USD1, a stablecoin from World Liberty Financial, a venture the Trump family part-owns.
The relationship even shapes policy. Binance has cited its Abu Dhabi licensing rules to explain why it now handles some foreign police requests differently.
Airport Stops and an Overnight Hold
Two workers were pulled aside at Emirati airports, people familiar with the inquiries said. One midlevel employee passed through Sharjah this month. Officers took him to a station and held him overnight.
What police are chasing is unclear. Binance told the Emirati government that its staff were swept into fraud cases centered on customers. None were tied to the offenses, the company said.
The link may be mundane. Some employees’ names sit on a corporate bank account Binance keeps in the country. That account processes customer deposits and withdrawals.
“A small number of our personnel were recently asked to provide standard statements to local authorities as part of routine inquiries relating to third-party fund flows… all who provided statements were promptly cleared and released,” A Binance spokesman, speaking to the New York Times.
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A Familiar Pattern for Binance Staff
Emirati authorities were already tracing money around the exchange. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority fined an unlicensed local firm, Shelbit, on July 24. Reuters tracked about $4 billion through Shelbit, and roughly $676 million reached Binance.
Binance’s record invites that attention. The company pleaded guilty in the United States in November 2023 and paid $4.32 billion. Prosecutors found it had let more than $898 million in trades pass between US and Iranian users.
That deal placed an independent compliance monitor over the company for three years. The term still has months left to run.
Staff have been caught in national cases before. Compliance executive Tigran Gambaryan spent months held in Nigerian custody in 2024. US diplomatic pressure secured his release.
The detentions have rattled the workforce. Binance approached Emirati officials this month, seeking help and raising concerns about employee safety.
Whether the questioning stays limited to customer fraud will test how much protection those licenses actually buy.

Meme coin market added close to $3 billion on Thursday. The sector is now worth $29.3 billion, up almost 10% today. Three blockchains are fighting over that money.
Solana, BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain each claim a share of it. Thursday’s trading data says only one of them is really winning.
Most of the $3 Billion Never Touched These Three Chains
The headline number flatters all three. Meme tokens traded $3.6 billion on Thursday, and three coins accounted for 59% of it.
Dogecoin (DOGE) led with $1.24 billion, and it runs on its own network. DOGE price rose 12.3%. Pepe (PEPE) followed with $514 million, and it sits on Ethereum. Official Trump (TRUMP) took $421 million.
Top Meme Coins by Market Cap. Source: Coingecko
So the contested pool is far smaller than the headline suggests. Market cap shows what a token is worth, not where traders went.
Two numbers show that. Volume records where money moved. Fees record what the chain kept.
Solana Wins Thursday’s Volume Test
Solana processed $3.01 billion in decentralized exchange trades over 24 hours, DefiLlama data show. BNB Chain handled $1.25 billion.
Robinhood Chain managed $510.8 million. It is the newest of the three, launched in July as a network for tokenized stocks.
Chains Ranked by DEX Volume. Source: DefiLlama
Solana therefore out-traded both rivals combined. It took 63% of the three chains’ total flow.
Its launchpad token drew much of that. Pump.fun (PUMP) traded $286 million, fourth among all meme tokens.
One caveat applies to every figure here. These totals cover all tokens on each chain, not meme coins alone.
Fees Show Whose Volume Is Worth Something
Volume is the easier number to grow. Blockspace is cheap, and a dollar can change hands many times in a day.
Fees are harder. Solana earned $925,809 in chain fees on Thursday. BNB Chain took $689,745. Robinhood Chain collected $59,275.
Chains Ranked by Fees. Source: DefiLlama
The distance is stark. Solana moved 5.9 times Robinhood’s volume but earned 15.6 times its fees.
Now measure fees per dollar traded. BNB Chain converted 0.055% of its volume. Solana managed 0.031%. Robinhood Chain kept 0.012%.
That reorders the podium. Solana wins on scale, but BNB Chain extracts nearly twice as much value from each dollar.
The effect shows in the totals. Solana takes 63% of the three chains’ volume but only 55% of their fees.
Chains with no meme scene still earned more. Ethereum collected $1.22 million and Tron took $876,853.
Robinhood Chain ranked tenth among all chains, behind Polygon.
Who is Winning Meme Coin Season
Solana, on both measures. It leads on volume traded and on total fees earned, and no rival is close on either.
BNB Chain is the credible number two and the sharpest earner per dollar. Its flagship token lagged, with the Chinese-language meme BinanceLife up 4.7% against a sector up 10.1%.
Robinhood Chain runs third on everything. It can still produce a mover, and its flagship Cash Cat (CASHCAT) gained 30.3% on $32.27 million of volume.
Cashcat Trading Volume. Source: Coingecko
One rival sits outside the three-way frame. Base matched BNB Chain on volume at $1.255 billion.
Its economics resemble Robinhood’s, however. Base earned $189,724, converting 0.015% of volume into fees.
The clash may already have four sides. Whether Solana keeps the crown rests on a number few traders watch.
Not how much volume it attracts, but how much of that volume it converts.

Anthropic expects its initial public offering to match or beat the size of SpaceX’s record-setting listing, according to people familiar with the matter, as preparations for the Claude developer’s market debut speed up.
The artificial intelligence (AI) company could file publicly for the offering as soon as the end of August. Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao sidestepped valuation questions during recent investor briefings, the people said.
Anthropic IPO Faces a $75 Billion Benchmark
SpaceX sold 555.56 million shares at $135 each in June, raising $75 billion. That valued Elon Musk’s rocket company near $1.77 trillion and set the record for the largest US listing. The stock closed its first Nasdaq session at $161.
Bloomberg first reported the size expectation on Thursday. Matching that raise would force Anthropic to sell tens of billions in stock, and the company has already borrowed one part of the SpaceX blueprint by planning supervoting shares for founders.
*ANTHROPIC SAID TO PREPARE IPO FILING AS SOON AS END OF AUGUST
— tradfi news (@tradfi) August 20, 2026
Revenue Growth Anchors the Pitch
Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate reached $65 billion in July, up from more than $47 billion earlier in the year and roughly $10 billion across all of 2025. A May funding round valued the firm at $965 billion, ahead of OpenAI’s $852 billion.
That trajectory has pushed some backers toward a $2 trillion IPO valuation, although Rao has endorsed no figure. Anthropic filed its prospectus confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June.
Crypto Traders Already Hold a Position
Synthetic markets have priced Anthropic exposure for months. PreStocks, which issues pre-IPO tokens on Solana, controls 78% of volume in OpenAI and Anthropic pre-IPO tokens, out of $532.1 million traded across venues since launch.
Interest has cooled, however, with roughly $15.2 million changing hands over the past 30 days. A public filing would swap those estimates for audited numbers, and it would arrive well ahead of OpenAI’s own listing timeline of 2027.

Kinetics Internet Portfolio, a mutual fund with $248 million in assets, disclosed a direct equity stake in Ripple Labs itself rather than in XRP, according to a newly filed SEC report.
The distinction matters. Institutional money is choosing Ripple, the company, over XRP, the token.
What the SEC Filing Actually Shows
Form NPORT-P is the quarterly report registered investment funds file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), disclosing portfolio holdings. Kinetics filed its version as part of Kinetics Portfolios Trust.
The fund acquired Class A common shares issued directly by Ripple Labs. That structure gives Kinetics ownership of the company itself, not exposure to the cryptocurrency that bears its name.
According to the SEC filing, the stake is valued at roughly $246,000, representing a small fraction (about 0.1%) of the fund’s approximately $248 million in net assets.
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Kinetics Internet Portfolio disclosed a direct equity stake in Ripple Labs. Source: SEC
The filing reflects holdings as of June 30, but regulatory reporting delays kept the information private until August.
Since Ripple remains a private company, Kinetics acquired the securities through specialized over-the-counter platforms built for accredited investors trading pre-IPO stock. Those venues let institutions buy shares well before any public listing occurs.
Why Institutions are Rushing Toward Ripple Now
The purchase landed alongside a notable shift in tone from Ripple’s own leadership. Speaking at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium 2026, Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse said the company now takes a more neutral stance on going public.
Garlinghouse said "we've been very happily private for a long time" when asked about an IPO. Not a no. After billions in acquisitions and a $3B shareholder tender offer, @Ripple's tone has quietly shifted from resistant to neutral. Watch this space.https://t.co/y68SnDif2p
— Ripple Bull Winkle | Crypto Researcher 🚀🚨 (@RipBullWinkle) August 19, 2026
That marks a clear departure from earlier messaging. President Monica Long had previously ruled out an IPO altogether, citing the company’s strong balance sheet and the lack of a defined timeline.
The transaction also arrives during Ripple’s own $750 million tender offer to repurchase shares, a buyback that valued the company at $50 billion.
Regulatory momentum runs in parallel with the investment activity. The SEC opened its proposed Regulation Crypto Assets framework for public comment, while the US administration held closed-door meetings with Ripple executives at the White House.
Against that backdrop, institutional investors appear to be racing for exposure to Ripple through private markets rather than waiting for a formal public offering.
XRP itself moved sharply in a separate spotlight altogether. The token traded near $1.11, up 10.6% over the past 24 hours, according to BeInCrypto data, as a White House crypto summit and positive ETF inflows lifted sentiment across the broader market.
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Moderna (MRNA) jumped 177% on Wednesday, and the strangest part is how little news it took. A $200 million estimate change moved $30 billion on the stock market.
Moderna became famous for its COVID vaccine five years ago, and its stock price is now at its highest since mid-2024. So, investors wasted no time taking profits after such a massive rally.
But can the stock price climb further? Or will the rally stop here?
What Actually Made Moderna Jump 130%?
The drug did not do it alone. Leerink’s revised estimate raised its 2032 sales estimate by roughly $200 million. Yet, the stock moved 150 times that amount in a market already at record highs.
The 150x Gap: BeInCrypto
Five loaded conditions did the rest. Moderna had collapsed 95% from $484 to $22. The recovery was already running, up 357% in 2026 on a flu approval before the cancer news.
Moderna’s Collapse Came First: BeInCrypto
The price sat above all six moving averages while analysts refused to believe with a $52.95 average target under the current price.
Bearish MRNA Analysts: TipRanks
And short sellers, traders who borrow shares and sell them betting on a fall, held 13.37% short interest in the freely traded shares, losing $4.8 billion when the readout forced them to buy back.
$MRNA Moderna carried a 13.5% short interest into today, among the most-shorted large caps. One trial readout later, shorts are sitting on roughly $4.8 billion in mark-to-market losses, near $100 a share. That is what a real binary catalyst does to a crowded book.
— Alpha🐺 (@Market_Alpha_) August 19, 2026
The Five Conditions Behind the Moderna Rally: BeInCrypto Moderna Stock Price Prediction: What Wall Street Giants Think
The Moderna move is one of those rare biotech events where the fundamental story genuinely changed overnight. The stock still overshot the immediate fundamentals, and today’s pullback is already showing that.
Ignore the old consensus target of roughly $50. Most of those targets were published before the Phase 3 result and are effectively obsolete.
The post-announcement calls are much more useful.
Bank of America upgraded Moderna from Underperform to Neutral and increased its price target enormously, from $40 to $170. BofA described the result as a watershed event because it gives Moderna a credible route away from dependence on infectious-disease vaccines.
Morgan Stanley raised its target from $39 to $89, while keeping Equal Weight. Morgan Stanley now sees much greater value in Moderna’s scalable mRNA platform, but remains much more conservative on share price.
Brookline Capital: sets a target around $135, with a Buy rating.
William Blair upgraded Moderna from Market Perform to Outperform, arguing that the Phase 3 result puts Moderna and Merck in position to seek regulatory approval and meaningfully changes Moderna’s diversification prospects.
So the fresh Street debate has suddenly become something like:
ViewApprox. valuationMorgan Stanley / conservative$89Brookline / middle$135BofA / bullish$170Yesterday’s close$174.38Current price~$140
That shows something important – even BofA’s extremely aggressive $170 target was below yesterday’s closing price.
How Long Will the Moderna Stock Rally Last?
There are really two rallies. The short-squeeze/momentum rally probably peaked yesterday. Today’s roughly 20% drop is consistent with that. Once shorts have covered and momentum traders start taking profits, that mechanical buying disappears.
The fundamental revaluation could last much longer. The next major event will likely be publication of the detailed Phase 3 numbers.
So far Moderna and Merck have announced that the endpoints were achieved, without releasing the actual hazard ratios and detailed clinical data.
Analysts still want to see magnitude of benefit, overall-survival trends, safety details and manufacturing economics.
Those detailed results are expected around the ESMO Congress in Madrid, October 23-27. That creates a natural trading window.
Between now and October, Moderna stock is likely to remain extremely volatile, with investors continuously repricing what the full data might show.
If the detailed results are excellent, another leg upward is possible. If they’re statistically positive but clinically less spectacular than investors currently imagine, the stock could fall substantially.
Based on what the market shows today, most analysts put Moderna’s reasonable near-to-medium-term fundamental range around $120-$150.

Bitcoin (BTC) has traded through two US market interventions in under three weeks. It moved the opposite way each time. Support for the yen pushed it down. An attack on long yields lifted it 8.8%.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went further on Thursday. He said buybacks could exceed $4 billion per issue and would become routine, while denying that rates drove the decision.
🇺🇸 US TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT JUST NOW:1. The Treasury will do buybacks routinely.2. Buybacks could be more than $4 billion, and part of this is about sending a signal to the market.3. He will probably announce a bigger push to cut the deficit.4. There is nothing…
— Bull Theory (@BullTheoryio) August 20, 2026
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Two Interventions, Two Opposite Bitcoin Reactions
The pattern is narrower than it looks. Bitcoin does not reward intervention itself. It rewards the intervention that lowers long-dated US borrowing costs.
The first landed at the start of August. Japan bought its own currency with an estimated $53 billion. The New York Fed then bought yen for the Treasury on August 1.
Washington had not bought yen since 1998. Bitcoin still slipped toward $63,000, down 1.25%, while US stocks closed higher.
Leverage explains why Bitcoin absorbed the yen shock alone. Traders borrow cheaply in yen to buy higher-returning assets, a strategy called the carry trade.
When the yen jumps, those positions cost more to hold. Crypto sits at the riskiest end of that chain, so it sells first.
The decisive detail sits in the bond market. Long yields never fell that week. The 10-year finished near 4.74%, its highest since January 2025, while the 30-year held near post-2007 highs.
One reading is that the operation spared Japan from selling US Treasuries. It protected the currency, not the long end, so Bitcoin had nothing to reward.
The second intervention arrived on August 19 and hit the bond market directly. The Treasury doubled its long-end buybacks, raising the maximum size of each operation to at least $4 billion.
That came one day after the 30-year yield touched 5.337%, the highest reading since 2007.
Bitcoin answered within the hour. Roughly $1.23 billion in crypto short positions was liquidated in 60 minutes. BTC traded near $69,803 on Thursday, up 8.8% over 24 hours.
Why Long Yields Matter More Than the Yen
Long-dated yields set the return available for taking almost no risk. A 30-year bond paying more than 5% is hard competition.
Push that yield lower and the calculation flips. Borrowing gets cheaper, the dollar softens, and money travels further out the risk curve.
“When yields drop and the dollar weakens, risk assets tend to rally,” said Jeff Mei. He is chief operating officer at the exchange BTSE.
The two episodes differ on compulsion. Yen strength forces traders out of positions. Falling yields invite them in. The invitation produced the bigger move.
One objection deserves an answer. The 8.8% jump was amplified by traders caught short, not fresh buyers. That is fair, but a squeeze needs a trigger, and the trigger was the yield drop.
What Could Kill the Rally
The threat is the yields themselves. Both interventions have already lost their grip.
USD/JPY changed hands near 158.79 on Thursday, almost back where it started. Two governments spent tens of billions, and the yen intervention has faded.
Bonds unwound faster. TradingView data put the 10-year at 4.692% on Thursday, just shy of the 4.710% it held before the announcement. The 30-year climbed to 5.237% after falling to 5.192%.
USD/JPY alongside US 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields, showing both interventions fading. Source: TradingView
Scale explains the fade. The increase adds roughly $14 billion against a market worth more than $30 trillion. None of it starts until September 9.
“While increasing liquidity buy-back operations by $2 billion might seem like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic given the U.S. national debt of $40 trillion, yesterday’s intervention by the U.S. Treasury has been warmly greeted by investors around the world,” Chris Turner of ING wrote on Thursday.
It captures the gap between flow and signal.
Bessent then moved to close that gap. He said on Thursday that buybacks could top $4 billion per issue, Bloomberg reported. He also said the Treasury would run them routinely, turning a one-off surprise into standing policy.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said buybacks of Treasury securities could be more than $4 billion per issue. https://t.co/WAUC3OGZGB
— Bloomberg (@business) August 20, 2026
The treasury executive also called 30-year liquidity particularly poor and said yields do not reflect underlying fundamentals. Both are unusual admissions from a sitting Treasury Secretary.
Yet he denied that rates drove the decision. That sits awkwardly beside the rest, since the market traded it as exactly that.
He added that the deficit has probably peaked under this administration. If so, that weakens the supply pressure behind the $40 trillion US debt load.
Two things would still end the move:
One is a clean break above 5.34% on the 30-year.
The other is a hawkish Fed, after minutes showed three officials wanted a hike.
That is the tension now. The flow keeps fading while the commitment keeps growing. Bitcoin’s current price works as a live scoreboard on which one wins.

President Donald Trump has made eight crypto endorsements since taking office. Every one trades below its pre-endorsement price, down 60% on average. On Wednesday, he made his ninth by naming Hyperliquid (HYPE) at the White House.
The token jumped 14% within two hours. Whether HYPE escapes the Trump-endorsed crypto pattern depends on something no earlier pick had. A regulator is actually working on the promise.
What Trump Actually Promised Hyperliquid
Trump name-dropped Hyperliquid on Wednesday while hosting executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Nasdaq, and other firms at the White House.
“I understand that Mike is also working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion,” Donald Trump, remarks at the White House, August 19, 2026.
“Mike” is Michael Selig, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the agency that oversees US derivatives markets.
Minutes after the comment, HYPE spiked from $62.23 to nearly $71. Hyperliquid Strategies, a Nasdaq-listed company that holds HYPE in its treasury, closed 30% higher on its best day on record.
HYPE trades near $71.45 at press time, up 21.3% over 24 hours. The token now ranks tenth by market cap at $15.9 billion.
Hyperliquid (HYPE) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Notably, Trump had never mentioned Hyperliquid before, in any post or speech. Meanwhile, Selig chairs the first session of the CFTC’s new Innovation Advisory Committee later Thursday. He says details will follow there.
How Every Trump-Endorsed Crypto Played Out
History gives HYPE holders a clear warning. BeInCrypto scored every coin endorsement he has made in office, eight in total.
The first was quiet. On February 18, 2025, he shared two articles praising Ripple on Truth Social, with no comment attached. XRP still climbed about 7% within 24 hours.
The loudest came on March 2, 2025. He promised a crypto reserve that would include XRP, Solana, and Cardano (ADA).
“A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration, which is why my Executive Order on Digital Assets directed the Presidential Working Group to move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOL, and ADA,” Donald Trump, Truth Social post, March 2, 2025.
ADA surged 75% within hours, while XRP added 31% and SOL 26%. The whole market gained over $500 billion that afternoon. About an hour later, a follow-up post added that Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) would be the reserve’s heart. ETH peaked just 3.3% higher. He has never mentioned it again.
The promise itself died within four days. An executive order made the reserve Bitcoin-only and barred the government from buying altcoins at all. The White House later confirmed that no purchases of XRP, SOL, or ADA ever happened.
Trump has not spoken about those three tickers in 535 days. ADA never printed a higher daily price again and now trades 73% below its pre-post level.
Politico later reported that a Ripple-linked lobbyist fed Trump the reserve post’s language, which may explain the long silence.
His own Official Trump (TRUMP) token got three separate pushes. He declared his love for it on March 23, 2025, worth an 11% pop and his last ticker mention ever.
One month later, the token’s issuer offered a private dinner with the president to the top 220 holders. Qualifying buyers spent about $148 million, and the token peaked 48% higher before fading. A Mar-a-Lago gala contest repeated the formula in March 2026, with a similar peak that turned negative within a month.
Nearly 1 million TRUMP wallets lost a combined $3.81 billion.
The scoreboard is uniform. The eight endorsements peaked 31% higher within 24 hours on average. They turned negative within 30 days and sit 60% lower today.
Trump Crypto Endorsement Scoreboard. Source: BeInCrypto Will Trump Keep His Hyperliquid Promise?
Every earlier pump failed the same way. The words never came with follow-through.
Hyperliquid is the first endorsement that arrives with the machinery already running. Selig’s CFTC has spent 2026 clearing a path for perpetual futures onshore. It approved US perps in May and called decentralized platforms candidates to follow.
Hyperliquid itself petitioned the CFTC in July, alongside wallet firm Phantom, for DeFi-fit rules.
Therefore, the test is unusually concrete. Thursday’s advisory meeting shows whether “compliant and legal fashion” becomes an actual docket item. The 30-day mark on September 18 shows whether HYPE can hold above $62.23, something only one prior endorsement briefly managed.
A registration pathway or exemption before the 90-day mark in November would separate this from the reserve episode entirely.
Caution still applies, because the remark was not formal approval.
Price Trajectory of Average Trump Crypto Endorsement. Source: BeInCrypto
The base rate says fade the pump. The regulatory calendar says this endorsement gets tested in public, starting with what Selig puts on the table today. HYPE either breaks the pattern or joins it.

Someone wants Elon Musk to pay $1 million for a web address. The anonymous owner of the Grok Bot domain grok.bot has turned it into an open letter to xAI, days after Musk’s company launched a product with the same name.
The pitch went viral on X on Thursday. However, one public record undercuts the seller’s story. He claims luck put him one month ahead of xAI. The domain’s own paper trail says seven.
A $1 Million Ask Framed as Dumb Luck
The landing page opens with a greeting aimed straight at xAI. A neon ticket graphic brands the address as a lottery win. A disclaimer notes the owner has no ties to Musk’s company.
The seller says pure chance drove the purchase. He simply likes .bot addresses, and he offers Space.bot as a bonus.
“I bought grok.bot one month before you launched Grok bot on X. Total dumb luck—I just like .bot domains,” the alleged owner wrote on the page.
Then the pitch turns personal. The seller says he lost heavily trading crypto and has a baby on the way. He promises to quit meme coins if xAI pays. He calls the $1 million a marketing spend and lists only a Gmail address.
The confession fits a familiar pattern. Musk’s own posts have repeatedly set off meme coin rallies, the corner of crypto the seller says he wants to escape.
someone bought https://t.co/veJugmkLLb and is now asking elon musk to pay $1m for it pic.twitter.com/BV2UOSNz8P
— Abhijit (@abhijitwt) August 20, 2026
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WHOIS Records Challenge the Grok Bot Domain Timeline
The luck story fails one simple check. WHOIS records, the public logbook behind every domain, date the purchase to January 20, 2026.
grok.bot domain information. Source: WHOIS
xAI announced Grok Bot, its always-on artificial intelligence (AI) agents, on August 11. The gap is seven months, not one.
Introducing Grok Bot, now in early beta.Bots are AI teammates that do real work for you. They sign in to your tools, use them just like you do, and come back with finished work. pic.twitter.com/uyfA97yo98
— Grok Bot (@bot) August 11, 2026
The record reveals little else. The name sits with registrar Spaceship, and its owner hides behind a privacy service in Iceland.
The seller also has a leverage problem. xAI already runs its chatbot at grok.com, the address that matters most.
A .bot ending is a nice extra, not a need.
Still, big domain deals happen. MicroStrategy sold Voice.com for $30 million in 2019 to Block.one, the company behind EOS.
Record breaker: https://t.co/wRMNtpUpNa domain name sells for staggering $30 million – Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff https://t.co/dtsO5TA2pl
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) June 20, 2019
Musk himself bought back x.com from PayPal in 2017 for sentimental reasons.
Thanks PayPal for allowing me to buy back https://t.co/bOUOejO16Y! No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2017
Buyers usually hold stronger cards, though. Trademark owners can fight back under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). A complaint starts at $1,500 in fees. That is 0.15% of the seller’s ask.
Musk’s company has bigger numbers in play, too. SpaceX disclosed this month that its AI unit lost $1.26 billion in one quarter. Meanwhile, Grok 4.5 recently topped an agent benchmark, part of the push that made the Grok Bot name valuable.
Neither Musk nor xAI has responded.
The seller may never see a dollar. However, he has already won what every domain flipper chases. The right buyer now knows his page exists.

Unitree founder Wang Xingxing said humanoid robots will reach their “ChatGPT moment” in 2 to 10 years, a window spanning 2028 to 2036.
Wang spoke on Thursday at the World Robot Conference in Beijing, one day after his company went public. At the same event last year, he put the same breakthrough less than five years out.
Unitree CEO Says Robots Are Nearing Their ‘ChatGPT Moment’
Wang said the sector’s defining “ChatGPT moment” would come when a robot could enter an unfamiliar home and complete roughly 80% of everyday tasks based solely on text or voice instructions.
According to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language speech, Wang estimated that the milestone could arrive within two to three years if things move fast. However, a slower trajectory could push it out to five to 10 years.
“We are marching towards a ‘ChatGPT moment’ in embodied intelligence,” Wang said.
Wang He, founder of Chinese robotics startup Galbot, offered a closer timeline.
“With continued accumulation of data and further technological breakthroughs, we expect to reach the ‘ChatGPT moment’ for embodied intelligence by 2028,” he noted.
The commercial stakes are already visible. Morgan Stanley estimates that roughly 19,000 humanoid robots were shipped globally in the first half of 2026, a 272% increase from a year earlier. Chinese manufacturers accounted for 97% of those shipments.
The bank expects China’s humanoid shipments to reach 50,000 units this year, up sharply from 12,000 in 2025. Crypto capital is also watching that curve. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino called Unitree the company to watch in robotics.
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Unitree Stock Pulls Back After IPO Surge
The comments came a day after Unitree made its Shanghai stock market debut. The stock opened 629% above its IPO price on Wednesday, as previously reported by BeInCrypto.
The rally lost some momentum on Thursday. Unitree shares closed at 687 yuan, down 19%, according to LSEG data cited by CNBC.
Nomura initiated coverage on Wednesday with a buy rating and a 370-yuan price target. The target sits now well below Unitree’s market price.
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Walmart (WMT) stock fell nearly 6% before Thursday’s opening bell, a drop worth roughly $50 billion in market value. A rare sales miss revealed the retailer’s slowest US growth in six years.
Markets treated it like an Nvidia scare. Walmart serves about 280 million customers and members every week. When its shoppers slow down, the rest of the US economy usually follows.
Walmart (WMT) Stock Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance Why the Walmart Sales Miss Rattled Wall Street
US comparable sales, meaning sales at stores open at least a year, grew 2.6%. Wall Street expected more. Bloomberg noted it was Walmart’s weakest domestic pace since 2020.
BREAKING: Walmart stock, $WMT, falls over -8% after posting a rare quarterly sales miss, with US growth falling to a 6-year low.Are consumers running out of money? pic.twitter.com/zVJjIBmuUz
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) August 20, 2026
The company’s own filing shows where the pain sits. Customer visits rose 1.5%, yet spending per trip grew just 1.1%. People still show up. They simply buy less.
Fuel costs explain part of the squeeze. AAA data puts the national gas average at $4.09 per gallon, up almost $1 from a year ago. Reuters reported that shoppers cut back as pump prices climbed.
Not every register slowed. Sam’s Club, Walmart’s membership warehouse chain, posted 4.4% comparable growth. Bulk-buying value hunters keep spending.
The headline numbers actually beat. Revenue reached $187.9 billion and adjusted earnings hit $0.81 per share, per the official release. Traders sold anyway. The one figure tied directly to consumer demand had disappointed.
WALMART $WMT Q2’27 EARNINGS HIGHLIGHTS🔹 Revenue: $187.9B (Est. $186.7B) 🟢; +5.9% YoY🔹 Adj. EPS: $0.81 (Est. $0.74) 🟢; +19% YoY🔹 Net Income: $6.5B (Est. $5.91B) 🟢🔹 eCommerce Sales: +23% globallyRaises FY27 Guide:🔹 Adj. EPS: $2.80-$2.87 (Est. $2.8) 🟡🔹 Net Sales… pic.twitter.com/buFedi2MuZ
— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) August 20, 2026
The stakes reach far beyond one retailer. Consumer spending drives about two-thirds of US economic output. That makes Walmart a live feed on American wallets, much as Nvidia’s order book tracks the AI boom.
Tariff Refunds Flatter Profits While Masking the Pressure
Operating income jumped 28.8% to $9.4 billion. Tariff refunds did most of the lifting, adding 96 basis points to gross margin. Management plans to hand that money back through lower prices in the second half.
The outlook stays modest. Walmart guided third-quarter adjusted earnings of $0.62 to $0.64 per share, with constant-currency sales growth of 3% to 3.75%.
The macro backdrop makes the signal louder. Treasury yields sit near multi-decade highs as the $40 trillion US debt pile grows. That keeps credit cards and car loans expensive. Fresh signs of weak spending could shift Federal Reserve rate expectations before September.
Crypto traders are watching too. Falling yields helped power Thursday’s crypto market rally. Softer consumer data would add fuel to the easing trade.
Still, the consumer looks bent, not broken. Visits kept growing, eCommerce climbed 23%, and Walmart maintained its full-year outlook.
More retail earnings and the Fed’s September meeting will show whether shoppers are tapped out or just catching their breath.

Millions of EU citizens already send messages through systems that scan them. Vyara Savova, senior policy lead at the European Ethereum Institute, warns that end-to-end encryption sits next in line.
The current rules come from a derogation to the ePrivacy directive. Lawmakers extended that derogation in July 2026, and it now runs until April 2028.
EU Chat Control Already Reads Whole Messages
In an interview with BeInCrypto, Savova separated two files that critics often merge into one. The first lets providers scan voluntarily. The second would turn scanning into a legal duty.
Most large platforms already use the voluntary route. Therefore, EU message scanning is not a future risk for most users. It is a current default.
Savova explained how the mechanism works in practice.
“Basically what is happening is you have this possibility to scan voluntarily… messages for a specific type of content. But then in order for you to scan for a specific type of content, you still check the whole message.”
That distinction matters. A narrow legal purpose still requires broad technical access. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin made a similar point in July, when he called the revival a cybersecurity risk for everyone.
Why Encryption Sits Next in Line
Apps that use end-to-end encryption cannot comply with the same logic. Providers would first have to decrypt the traffic. As a result, the debate no longer stops at content moderation.
Savova framed the direction of travel bluntly.
“I would say people should already be worried, but it… has the potential to get much worse.”
Meanwhile, Brussels keeps widening its digital enforcement toolkit. Officials have also flagged VPNs as a loophole in age verification rules. Each file targets a different problem. Together, however, they point one way.
Crypto users face a specific exposure here. Wallet recovery flows, seed phrase backups, and trading group chats all travel over the same consumer apps. Savova noted that file storage falls inside the same scope, not just live chat.
Scale makes the difference. Voluntary scanning covers a narrow category of known material today. A mandate would apply the same machinery to every conversation, on every platform, without suspicion.
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The Legal Line Nobody Has Drawn Yet
Marina Markezic, co-founder and executive director of the European Ethereum Institute, argues that the constitutional test has not changed. Digital access simply feels lighter than a physical search.
“But the legal principles and the principles that we have adopted over the years in… our constitutions are still standing. So no matter if it’s the access to our apartments, if it’s access to our communications…”
Supporters of the rules make the opposite case. Child protection groups argue that platforms already hold the data, so targeted scanning adds little new intrusion. European Commission officials have repeatedly said the goal stays limited to abuse material.
Still, the technical answer decides the outcome. Encryption either holds for everyone or breaks for everyone. Consequently, the next negotiation rounds in autumn will matter more than the language on paper.
Users can act now. Choosing apps that publish their encryption model, and moving sensitive files off consumer chat, both reduce exposure well before any final vote. Savova and Markezic plan to keep tracking the negotiations through the autumn rounds.

A federal appeals court has ruled that crypto theft victims can sue Binance in US courts, rejecting the exchange’s attempt to push their claims into arbitration under terms they never signed.
The Eleventh Circuit granted a writ of mandamus on Wednesday, a rare remedy that forces a lower court to correct a clear error. The panel directed a Florida district court to vacate its arbitration order.
Court Says Victims Can Sue Binance Without Signing Its Terms
Eight theft victims filed proposed class actions against Binance Holdings, BAM Trading Services, which operates Binance.US, and founder Changpeng Zhao. None of them ever held a Binance account or accepted its Terms of Use.
They allege criminals drained their wallets, then laundered the proceeds through the exchange. The complaints cite the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, conversion, and consumer protection laws in California and Massachusetts.
The plaintiffs say Binance ran an unlicensed money transfer business and disregarded the Bank Secrecy Act. That US law requires financial firms to detect and report suspicious transactions.
A judge in the Southern District of Florida sent the dispute to arbitration anyway, relying on equitable estoppel. The doctrine can force non-signers into a contract’s arbitration clause when they benefit from the agreement.
The three-judge appeals panel called that a misreading of the complaints. According to the order, the claims rest on a “duty otherwise imposed by law” rather than on Binance’s terms.
David vs. Goliath. Today, David won.We're a small firm. @binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world.Our clients are innocent victims of crypto theft. Criminals drained their accounts, ran the money through @binance, and cashed out. Lives upended.Then they got…
— David Silver (@dcsilver) August 20, 2026
The procedural route matters. Federal law bars appeals of orders compelling arbitration, so mandamus was the victims’ only exit after two years of fighting over the forum. The panel also credited evidence they would forfeit claims and face unreasonable costs arbitrating abroad.
What the Ruling Means for Binance and Other Exchanges
David Silver founded Silver Miller, the firm representing the victims. He said Binance told his clients to arbitrate in Hong Kong, one case at a time.
“A contract you never signed shouldn’t keep you out of court,” Silver noted.
The compliance allegations track a record Binance has already admitted. The exchange pleaded guilty in November 2023 to Bank Secrecy Act violations and running an unlicensed money transmitting business.
It paid a $4.3 billion resolution, and prosecutors said it never filed a single suspicious activity report with FinCEN. Zhao admitted failing to maintain an anti-money laundering program and served a four-month prison sentence in 2024.
Laundering speed explains why victims target exchanges rather than thieves. Global Ledger’s review of 255 hacks worth $4.04 billion found stolen funds can move within two seconds of an attack.
Binance’s courtroom record remains mixed. It won dismissal of terror financing claims in March, yet investors filed a $200 million UK lawsuit in June over leveraged trading losses.
The case now returns to the Southern District of Florida, where the civil RICO count allows triple damages if the victims prevail. Other circuits may soon face the same question about non-customers and exchange arbitration clauses.

AI agents may not converge on public blockchains, Fidelity Digital Assets said, naming that outcome as one of the largest potential risks to the sector’s AI thesis.
The warning came days after Grayscale named 4 blockchain networks that could benefit from the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI).
Fidelity Flags Risks in Crypto’s AI Agent Thesis
Senior Research Analyst Max Wadington published the Fidelity report on August 19. He listed the scenario among six structural risks to the AI and digital assets thesis.
Wadington explained that closed systems run by large technology firms and fintech platforms could absorb the same activity. He cited advantages in performance, cost, user experience, and regulatory clarity.
“Even if AI drives a substantial increase in overall digital economic activity, there is no guarantee that public blockchains will capture a meaningful share of it,” he wrote.
This follows comments from Grayscale Head of Research Zach Pandl, who said the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) will generate demand that public blockchains are well-positioned to meet.
He named Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Worldcoin (WLD), and Bittensor (TAO) against three demand areas. Pandl grouped that demand into agentic finance, verifiable record-keeping, and decentralized AI. He argued that traditional systems were not built for what AI will generate.
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The Other Risks Fidelity Outlined
A second risk concerns payments. The report noted that payments can drive significant transaction volumes, but they generally generate relatively low fees and compete with established financial institutions and technology platforms.
As a result, higher payment activity could boost adoption and usage, particularly among stablecoin issuers, without necessarily translating into comparable value accrual for native tokens, especially at the base blockchain layer.
“The primary economic beneficiaries of payment-driven growth may be stablecoin issuers and adjacent service providers rather than the underlying blockchain networks themselves,” the report read.
The remaining risks cut across the same thesis. Wadington wrote that more software output does not guarantee more economic value.
He also stated that technical differentiation could weaken as AI commoditizes development. Liquidity, distribution, security, and trust become the durable advantages instead.
Security itself turns into a competitive differentiator. AI lowers the cost of finding vulnerabilities while also lowering the cost of writing code.
Compliance rounds out the list. Systems offering clearer identity and permissioning frameworks may suit institutional adoption.
Fidelity did not forecast any of these outcomes. The firm framed each as a risk that could reshape how much value public chains capture.
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OrdinalsBot, the first inscription service in the Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals ecosystem, has announced its shutdown. The project will sell its brand, intellectual property, and full technology stack.
It opened about a month after the Ordinals protocol went live in early 2023. The project said that sustaining the business is not viable.
OrdinalsBot Puts Brand, IP, and 90 Code Repositories Up for Sale
The team announced the decision in a post on X. OrdinalsBot said it had explored measures, including restructuring and a business pivot, but ultimately determined that continuing operations was no longer viable.
“Unfortunately, the Ordinals market has contracted sharply over the past year…In these 3 years, we have achieved many great things and met amazing, like-minded people looking to bring new use cases to the mother chain and create a robust fee market,” the post read.
Rather than allow the business and its technology to gradually lose value, the company has opted to sell its entire asset portfolio through an open, competitive bidding process. The package includes the OrdinalsBot brand, intellectual property, domains, social media accounts, Discord community, and GitHub presence.
It also includes more than three years of research and development spread across more than 90 code repositories. According to the company, the assets could give a prospective buyer an established foundation for building on Bitcoin without having to develop the underlying infrastructure from scratch.
OrdinalsBot said it has already informed investors about the wind-down and has begun receiving acquisition bids.
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Shutdowns Pile Up Across Crypto in 2026
OrdinalsBot joins a long queue. More than 120 crypto projects shut down, filed for bankruptcy, or went dark so far this year, according to RootData.
The closures span wallets, exchanges, NFT platforms, and DeFi tools, pointing to a broader shakeout across the industry. Crypto exchanges BitMEX and BitMart both announced shutdowns last month.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) portfolio tracker Zapper closed in August. OrdinalsBot differs in one respect. Its founders are trying to sell the pieces rather than switch off the servers.
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