TheStreet Roundtable

Ripple、XRP、XRPLを理解する（3:17）
9月9日、攻撃者がCoreumのクロスチェーンブリッジからわずか97分で約200,000 XRPを引き出した。これは、XRPレジャー自体の弱点ではなく、ブリッジが入金を確認する方法の不備を悪用したものだ。
クロスチェーンブリッジは、互いに直接通信できない2つの別々のブロックチェーンを接続し、ユーザーがネットワーク間で資産を移動できるようにする。
Coreumのブリッジは、ユーザーがXRPレジャー上でXRPをロックし、Coreumのネットワーク上で同等の数のトークンを受け取れるようにした。

‘People are putting money behind the outcome’ — Polygon CEO on Polymarket (4:35)
Italy's heat waves have put the country's "cheese banks" at risk, which store wheels as collateral to grant loans, Euro News reported on Aug. 11.
Italy has the largest variety of cheeses of any nation in the world, with over 2,500 traditional varieties. The Mediterranean country's economy is also deeply tied to its cheese industry.
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The country has a long tradition of "cheese banks," the climate-controlled vaults in the Emilia-Romagna region where enormous quantities of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese are kept as collateral for farm loans.
Parmigiano Reggiano or Parmesan is a hard and granular cheese produced from cow's milk and aged at least 12 months. The variety is named after the Italian provinces of Parma and Reggio Emilia where it is produced. Parmigiano is the Italian adjective for the city and province of Parma and Reggiano is the adjective for the province of Reggio Emilia.
The logo of Parmigiano Reggiano is pictured on a wheel of cheese at the Casearia Castelli, member of Lactalis Group, at the Caseificio Tricolore in Reggio Emilia, Northern Italy, on April 19, 2023.
Getty Images
Blockchain technology digitizes cheese loan process
Credito Emiliano is an Italian bank well-known for storing wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese as collateral for loans since 1953.
Its subsidiary, Magazzini Generali delle Tagliate, matures the cheese in Reggio Emilia and Modena, holding more than half a million wheels worth well over €300 million. Cheese producers can secure 60%-80% of a wheel's value upfront when they collateralize it.
The industry is also using blockchain technology to digitize the loan process, the Euro News report said.
Blockchain technology is a decentralized digital ledger that stores data across a network of computers. Information is grouped into blocks and linked together in a chronological chain. Once recorded, the data cannot be changed without the network consensus, making it safe from tampering.
Thanks to this technology, farmers can even pledge wheels onchain while the cheese stays in their own stores.
However, "cheese banks," which store wheels in vaults as collateral, are still prevalent.
Related: What is blockchain? Explained
Italy's extreme heat puts 'cheese banks' at risk
But the extreme heat in the region this summer is making it risky to keep the inventory at the right temperature, the report said.
Daily power consumption at the cheese vaults rose roughly 30% at the peak of this summer, which forced the bank to upgrade cooling and other systems.
As wheels sometimes mature for three years, every hot summer compounds the cost long before the cheese can be sold, as per the report.
This year's summer is turning out to be one of the hottest in the country's recorded history.
Here is how things get worse. As the temperature hits 40°C, cows rest more and eat less, due to which milk yields reduce by as much as 10%.
"Extreme heat impacts milk's quality and quantity," said the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium's president Nicola Bertinelli.
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Polymarket traders bet on temperature
Launched in 2020, Polymarket is the world’s largest prediction market. It is built on Polygon, the Ethereum-based layer-2 blockchain network.
The prediction market lets traders predict events like future Bitcoin (BTC) prices, election results, temperature, etc., by paying with cryptocurrency.
Users can deposit Circle's USDC stablecoin, a type of digital dollar, and trade shares that represent the likelihood of specific future outcomes.
As Italy put all 27 of its major cities on the highest heat alert last week, Polymarket traders are betting on the highest temperature in Milan.
Milan is not only Italy's economic capital, it is also a global fashion capital and an international tourist destination. Tourists flocking to the city seek famed Italian cheeses, and the delicacies are a major part of the food tours.
As the tourist city, like other parts of the country, sees its temperature soaring, authorities have warned people to avoid direct sunlight between peak daytime hours, to stay indoors where possible, and to drink at least 1.5 liters of water a day. Tourists could also rethink their Milan plans due to the heatwave.
Highest temperature in Milan on August 13, Source: Polymarket
Amidst these conditions, Polymarket traders are betting on the highest temperature in Milan on Aug. 13.
41% of the Polymarket traders think the city's temperature will go as high as 35°C, 37% of them think 34°C, and 16% of them are betting it will be as high as 36°C.
Less than 1% of the traders think Milan's temperature on Aug. 13 will reach 39°C or higher.
As per the World Meteorological Organization, Milan's temperature stood at 34°C at the time of writing on Aug. 11.
Milan, Italy temperature, WMO
Weather-related markets face criticism
However, such weather-related markets have also faced criticism.
For instance, some U.S. senators recently urged a ban on wildfire-related bets in the wake of Oregon wildfires because they incentivize traders to commit arson or act mischievous to make sure their bets are successful.
"When tragedy unfolds, people turn to the news for commentary and they come to Polymarket for information," A Polymarket spokesperson then told TheStreet Roundtable. "While we are not blind to the risks, removing these markets does not prevent a tragedy but makes the most accurate information less accessible to the people who need it most.”
As reported earlier, a trader betting on Paris temperature in April was found to be manipulating a sensor device to ensure they win the related market.
So, Polymarket trades are highly sensitive and aren't immune to unfair practices.
Related: U.S. senators seek ban on wildfire betting

How Elon Musk became important for crypto (2:59)
Elon Musk made a statement in April that most people filed under AI policy and moved on. Reading it again in August, with Bitcoin trading near $64,000 and AI eliminating jobs at a rate of 27,000 cuts per quarter, it lands differently.
"If AI and robots increase output," Musk wrote on X, "then you must issue dollars to people or there will be massive disinflation."
His core argument is straightforward, automation could expand production so dramatically that prices collapse unless purchasing power is distributed to match the new supply.
More goods, same number of dollars, means each dollar buys more. That sounds good. For an economy built on debt and consumption, it is destabilizing.
The problem with issuing more dollars
Musk's proposed fix, a form of universal high income funded by government, immediately runs into the problem every monetary economist flags.
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Shankar Sanyal, who pushed back directly on X, called the plan likely to "bankrupt any government that attempts it."
The IMF, in its latest World Economic Outlook, has separately warned that elevated public debt and declining institutional trust are increasing fragility across economies.
More dollars, regardless of what productivity is doing, erodes the purchasing power of the dollars already in circulation.
That is not a theory. It is the documented history of every currency that has been printed to solve a structural economic problem.
Where Bitcoin enters the equation
This is precisely the scenario Bitcoin was designed for. While governments debate whether to print more currency to distribute, Bitcoin has already answered the question, its supply is fixed at 21 million coins.
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No AI productivity surge changes that number. No government can issue more of it to smooth over a disinflation problem. No political consensus is required to protect it.
Musk's dilemma, print dollars and risk inflation, or do not print and risk disinflation, is a fiat currency problem, not a Bitcoin problem. The 21 million cap does not flex to accommodate either outcome. That inflexibility is the point.
According to data, employers cut more than 27,000 jobs linked to AI in Q1 2026 alone, up 40 percent year over year.
The pace of displacement is accelerating. Musk is right that the economy will need a response. Whether that response is government-issued dollars or a fixed-supply asset that governments cannot dilute is the most important monetary question of the next decade.
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Inside Tether: How the USDT issuer works and why it is questioned (4:10)
Tether has given the last users of its gold-backed lending platform just weeks to pull their assets out before it closes for good.
The company is best known for USDT, the world's largest stablecoin, a digital token designed to trade at a fixed value, in this case one U.S. dollar.
Related: Popular gold holder shuts down dollar experiment
That peg is maintained by a large reserve portfolio. As of Tether's second-quarter 2026 attestation, reviewed by accounting firm BDO, the reserves totaled about $187.8 billion and were held mostly in U.S. Treasury bills and cash-equivalents (roughly 80%), alongside about $18.8 billion in gold, roughly $7 billion in Bitcoin, and a smaller pool of secured loans and other investments.
That gold pile is what makes Tether unusual. The company reported holding more than 146 metric tons of physical bullion at the end of the second quarter — worth roughly $18.8 billion and stored in a private Swiss vault — after adding 14 tons during the quarter.
That makes Tether the largest known private holder of physical gold outside of central banks and sovereign governments, with more bullion than many national reserves.
What Tether is shutting down
In June, Tether said it would wind down Alloy, a separate platform it launched in 2024 that let users mint a dollar-pegged token called aUSDT. New minting has already closed.
Unlike USDT, aUSDT was not backed by dollars or Treasuries. It was backed by Tether Gold (XAUT), Tether's token that represents ownership of physical gold, with each XAUT standing for one troy ounce of a London Good Delivery bar held in a vault.
Alloy's design was unusual. Rather than holding cash reserves, it let users lock up their Tether Gold tokens as collateral and mint aUSDT against them — an "overcollateralized" model, meaning the gold backing was always worth more than the dollars issued, to cushion against gold's price swings.
The countdown to Sep. 17
Alloy users now have until Sep. 17 to return their aUSDT and reclaim their underlying XAUT tokens representing gold ownership.
As of Aug. 11, that leaves 37 days on the clock.
After the deadline, anyone who has not returned their aUSDT will lose the ability to recover their XAUT gold from the platform, making the coming weeks the last window to act.
For all the finality, the data shows how small the experiment stayed.
Alloy's statistics page lists just five open positions remaining, with about 399,089 aUSDT still owed against 194.41 units of Tether Gold, worth roughly $836,000, held as collateral.
The platform has drawn 209 addresses holding aUSDT over its lifespan.
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Nearly all the outstanding balance sits with three holders: one owes about 300,750 aUSDT, another 95,308, and a third 3,008.
Set against Tether Gold as a whole, the amount locked in Alloy is tiny. By one illustration from when the wind-down was announced, for every $10,000 of Tether Gold in circulation, only around $3 sat inside Alloy, leaving the vast majority of the token untouched.
Tether Alloy Statistics
Gold stays, the experiment goes
Tether has been clear that it is not stepping away from gold. Tether Gold (XAUT) remains one of the products the company says it wants to focus on. What is ending is Alloy and the aUSDT token built on top of it.
Tether called the decision as a way to "focus resources on areas where it is seeing stronger user demand, deeper liquidity, and broader long-term market opportunity, including XAUT and other core products across its ecosystem."
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リップル（Ripple）、XRP、そしてXRPLの理解（3:17）
カナダのナショナル・バンク（National Bank of Canada）は、カナダで6番目に大きい商業銀行であり、米国の証券取引委員会（SEC）に提出した13Fの届出で、ポートフォリオ内のETFを通じてXRPにエクスポージャーがあることを明らかにしました。
同銀行は、ETFおよび人気の暗号資産株の株式を通じて、ビットコイン（BTC）、イーサリアム（ETH）、ソラナ（SOL）も保有しています。
関連：別の主要ETFが大量のXRP売却を開示
XRP
時価総額が630億ドルのXRPは、6番目に大きい暗号資産です。

Crypto hacks drain out $3.4B in just one year (3:33)
BTCPay Server, the free, self-hosted software many merchants use to accept Bitcoin, disclosed on Aug. 7 that a critical vulnerability was being actively exploited against live servers — and that some users had already lost funds.
The project said the vulnerability allowed an attacker to obtain LND admin macaroon credentials from affected instances and gain access to connected Lightning Network wallets.
In simple terms, the flaw handed attackers the keys to the Lightning node behind a merchant's payment server, letting them move the money out. The bug affects every version before 2.4.2, and confirmed victims include the maker of the Passport hardware wallet, Foundation, and the publication Citadel21, whose nodes were swept before the public warning went live. BTCPay has not said how much was stolen or how many servers were hit.
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Technical details and remediation steps have been published in a security advisory on X.
Users who have not updated are urged to move immediately to version 2.4.2, which also refreshes LND and regenerates the admin macaroon. Crucially, the project warns that updating alone is not enough: the patch stops new access but does not invalidate credentials already stolen, so operators must also revoke their LND macaroons and move funds out of any BTCPay-generated hot wallet.
"To the users who lost funds: we are sorry. We will examine our mistakes, but regret alone will not help affected users or secure the project. There is no time to waste. We have to learn, improve, and act quickly."
Recovery bounty details
Friends and supporters of the project have committed funds for a bounty equal to 10% of any amount recovered, capped at a maximum of 3 BTC — roughly $190,000 at recent prices — if the full sum is returned.
The offer is open to anyone with actionable information that could lead to recovery, including the attacker. Secure channels such as Signal can be arranged on request. If multiple tips contribute, the bounty will be split based on usefulness of the information, amounts lost and recovered, and other factors, in coordination with the victims.
Separately, the BTCPay Server Foundation is donating 0.21 BTC to Sparrow Wallet developer Craig Raw and another 0.21 BTC to the Bitcoin Red Team for their responsible disclosure of the flaw. Raw discovered the issue and reported it privately, giving developers time to prepare a fix before details became public.
"The BTCPay Server Foundation will donate 0.21 BTC to Craig Raw and 0.21 BTC to the Bitcoin Red Team fund for their responsible security disclosure of the vulnerability. These are modest contributions."
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Next steps for affected users
Impacted users who have not yet reported are asked to email the project's security address with on-chain addresses and transaction details. The project also advises filing reports with local authorities and contacting any exchanges or services where the stolen funds may appear; individual reports help build a clearer evidence trail and raise the chance of freezes.
BTCPay Server said it is working with exchange security teams, blockchain analytics firms and law enforcement. Going forward, the project will prioritize security patches and hardening over new features, and it recommended keeping excess funds in cold storage rather than in hot wallets connected to a payment server.
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The team said the incident underscores the growing challenge of defending open-source Bitcoin software as AI tools make vulnerability hunting faster and cheaper. It also lands during a rough stretch for Bitcoin infrastructure, coming just days after a separate exploit tied to a firmware flaw drained tens of millions of dollars from Coldcard hardware-wallet users.
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What is a stablecoin? Explained (3:33)
KAST, a financial platform built on stablecoin technology, has appointed Connor Fitzgerald as its U.S. general manager, tapping a payments-industry veteran to drive its expansion in the world's largest financial market.
KAST is a company that lets people and businesses send, receive, and convert money across borders using stablecoins, digital tokens pegged to a currency like the U.S. dollar, rather than traditional banking networks.
Founded in July 2024 by former Circle executive Raagulan Pathy, it offers dollar-denominated accounts and payments across more than 170 countries.
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What Fitzgerald will take on
In the new role, Fitzgerald will lead KAST's U.S. operations, scaling its core platform, launching a business-focused product called KAST Business, building a local team, and bringing new consumer and business offerings to the market.
The company said it has grown to about 250 full-time employees across engineering, product, and compliance, reached more than one million users, and is processing roughly $5 billion in annualized transaction volume.
"We're excited to have Connor as part of our exceptional KAST team to scale in the world's biggest financial market," said Pathy, KAST's founder and CEO, adding that Fitzgerald knows how to drive growth across fintech.
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A résumé built in payments and crypto
Fitzgerald joins from Bridge, now part of Stripe, where he was head of partnerships for cards and helped build its global stablecoin card program from scratch, expanding it to more than 100 markets.
Earlier, he led business development and product strategy at Coinstar and was an early employee at the fintech app Dave, helping scale it through its 2022 public listing.
Fitzgerald said stablecoins require rebuilding finance "from first principles," and that KAST stood out for investing early in hard areas like licensing and compliance, real infrastructure, and greater ownership of the underlying rails.
The hire follows KAST's $80 million Series A round, which the company said is funding expansion across North America, Latin America, and the Middle East.
KAST also noted that global stablecoin volume hit a record $33 trillion in 2025, exceeding Visa and Mastercard combined, citing Bloomberg and Artemis Analytics.

暗号資産の取引方法（4:26）
先週、ロシアのウラジーミル・プーチン大統領は、同国内で初めて暗号資産を包括的に規制するための法律に署名した。
うなずいた後、同国の中央銀行は、ビットコイン（BTC）、イーサリアム（ETH）、テザーのUSDTステーブルコインの3つの暗号資産の取引所での取引を提案した。
関連：プーチン、ロシアがウクライナの新たな財務目標を主張する中で稀な一手
最新の法律がロシアの暗号資産トレーダーに意味すること
8月4日にプーチンが署名した画期的な法律により、個人（適格でない）投資家は、仲介業者1社あたり年30万ルーブル（3,700ドル）に上限された、最も流動性の高い暗号資産を購入できるが、適格投資家にはそのような制限は設けられていない。

Missing Jobs data sends markets reeling (1:57)
Bullish, the institutional-focused cryptocurrency exchange backed by billionaire investor Peter Thiel, heads into its second-quarter earnings report with Wall Street seeing significant upside despite a difficult quarter for crypto trading businesses.
The company is scheduled to report results before the U.S. market opens on Aug. 13, exactly one year after its blockbuster stock-market debut.
Wall Street analysts expect Bullish to report adjusted earnings of $0.09 per share and roughly $87.4 million in revenue, according to Yahoo Finance data.
Revenue is projected to rise about 53% from a year earlier, though the consensus earnings estimate has slipped from $0.15 about three months ago.
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Analysts remain relatively optimistic
FactSet data cited by The Wall Street Journal shows five analysts with "Buy" ratings and six at "Hold," with an average price target of $40.75, roughly 66% above the recent share price of about $24.60.
Citi's Peter Christiansen reiterated a "Buy" on July 28, though he cut his target to $50 from $65. Clear Street's Owen Lau initiated coverage with a "Buy" and a $40 target on July 24, and Deutsche Bank's Brian Bedell holds the most bullish target among recent calls, maintaining a "Buy" on May 15 while trimming his to $61 from $63.
Supporters point to Bullish's institutional client base, its fast-growing derivatives business, and an early push into tokenization and stablecoins.
However, JPMorgan has stayed on the sidelines with a "Neutral" rating and cut its price target this year.
For context, Bullish is a digital-asset exchange aimed largely at institutional traders, offering both spot and derivatives trading. It is led by CEO Tom Farley, a former president of the New York Stock Exchange, and is backed by Thiel's venture firm Founders Fund, BlackRock and Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management also bought into its IPO.
It also owns CoinDesk, the long-running crypto news publication.
Bullish acquired CoinDesk in November 2023 from Digital Currency Group — which had put the publication up for sale after the bear market battered its parent — in an all-cash deal reported at around $75 million. CoinDesk continues to operate as an independent subsidiary.
Bullish's Aug. 13, 2025 IPO was one of the year's hottest. It priced at $37 a share — above its expected range, then opened at $90, spiked as high as $118 (triggering a volatility halt), and closed its first day up more than 80% near $68. A year later, the stock sits around $24.60, well below both its IPO price and its debut close, as the crypto downturn cooled the frenzy around newly public digital-asset names.
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A brutal quarter for crypto firms
Bullish reports after a punishing stretch for the industry, as falling digital-asset prices squeezed both trading activity and balance sheets.
The exchange handled $130.7 billion in total spot and derivatives volume in the quarter ended June 30, down 33% from the prior quarter.
Coinbase reported a $359.5 million net loss for the second quarter as softer markets weighed on its business. And Strategy, the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder, booked an $8.32 billion unrealized loss on its Bitcoin as prices fell, driving an $8.22 billion net loss for the quarter.
Bullish itself entered Q2 on the back foot, having missed Wall Street expectations in the first quarter: its adjusted earnings of $0.13 per share came in below the $0.17 estimate.
Bullish shares were trading around $24.47 at the time of writing, down roughly 0.5% on the day.
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清算できない利息ゼロの融資を提案する仮想通貨スタートアップ（6:25）
いまビットコインを取材している多くのアナリストは、底打ちと回復について語っています。アレッシオ・ラスタニは“跳ね返りの後に何が来るか”を語っており、彼が描くシナリオは、コンセンサスよりもかなり暗いものになっています。
ベテラントレーダーで市場アナリストの彼は、ビットコインが今後3〜6か月の短期〜中期で反発する局面に入ると見ています。ですが、その後は物事が難しくなると彼は考えています。
まずは跳ね返り、そして本当の下落
ラスタニのフレームワークは、いま起きていることと、彼が2027年に起きると予想していることを切り分けます。

Explained: What is Bitcoin mining? (6:23)
Riot Platforms (Nasdaq: RIOT), the data infrastructure company well-known for its Bitcoin (BTC) mining and artificial intelligence (AI) operations, signed a 20-year lease with a leading AI lab on Aug. 10. Bloomberg identified the AI lab as Anthropic.
Riot announced the data center lease with Anthropic for 191 MW of critical IT capacity at its Rockdale campus. The deal is expected to generate approximately $9.1 billion in total contract revenue over the initial 20-year term, the firm said.
Related: What is Bitcoin mining? Explained
The lease also includes two five-year extension options at the tenant’s election, representing a total potential contract value of approximately $16.1 billion if both extensions are fully exercised.
In January, Riot also signed a lease with another AI giant, Advanced Micro Devices, for its Rockdale facility.
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Needham raises Riot stock's price target on Anthropic deal
Needham raised its price target on the Riot stock from $28.50 to $30 on Aug. 10.
The firm cited the 191-MW lease agreement Riot signed with Anthropic for its decision to hike the price target. Meanwhile, it reiterated a buy rating on the stock.
As the Riot stock closed at $19.40 on Aug. 10, Needham's price target of $30 represents an upside of 54.6%.
What Q2 financials reveal
During the second quarter of 2026, Riot generated a revenue of $174.2 million, including $23.2 million from data centers.
However, its Bitcoin mining revenue fell to $113.7 million due to the market downturn and growing network competition.
The company also reduced its Bitcoin holdings by 4,300 BTC during the quarter, with the figure now standing at 11,380 BTC.
Related: Analysts reveal investors are underestimating Bitcoin miners

ソラナ財団幹部が語る、「ソラナは“オンチェーンのNASDAQ”になりつつある」（2:25）
マネーグラムは、ソラナ上で暗号資産のオン・オフランプサービスを開始し、ネットワーク上の人々が決済会社のグローバルなネットワークを通じて、デジタル資産と現金を行き来できるようにしました。
マネーグラムは、85年以上の経験を持つ決済企業で、世界中で約50万の小売拠点を通じて6,000万人以上の顧客にサービスを提供しています。
同社のプロダクト「MoneyGram Ramps」は、アプリが利用者を現金から暗号資産、暗号資産から現金のサービスへつなぐためのツールです。「ランプ（ramp）」とは、従来の資金とデジタル資産の架け橋のことです。

‘Crypto must earn trust’: Crystal Intelligence CEO on scams and security (5:25)
Russell Wilson is the billionaire founder of CoinSpot, one of Australia’s largest cryptocurrency trading exchanges. Founded in 2013, CoinSpot reported a $270 million net profit in the 2025 financial year.
On Aug. 10, a local media outlet reported that he has sued an ex-employee for allegedly stealing around $500,000 from the exchange.
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The court documents filed by CoinSpot’s parent company, Casey Block Services, claim that customer support team member Iresh Pawan Perera moved $478,932 out of the company into his personal bank account across 76 transactions in the two years to March.
The lawsuit claims Perera converted CoinSpot’s digital currency for “his own use by exchanging it” into cash. His job was terminated immediately on March 9 because the alleged misappropriation of funds amounted to “material breaches” of his employment agreement. Perera is yet to file a defence.
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Wilson’s company is seeking damages worth $478,932, in addition to interest. The case will resume in September.
A CoinSpot spokeswoman told the publication that she could not reveal more details about the crypto exchange’s legal battle with its ex-employee while the matter is sub judice.
“CoinSpot enforces robust safeguards to ensure operations and assets remain secure,” she said. “We take the security of our customers’ holdings extremely seriously and have not had customer funds impacted on our platform. CoinSpot has zero tolerance for fraud and will always work closely with law enforcement to protect our users."
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Solana Policy Institute president on stablecoin rules (3:13)
Solana has become one of the busiest homes for stablecoins, with the value of these tokens on the network climbing sharply over the past three years.
Solana is a blockchain built for fast, low-cost transactions, qualities that make it well suited to stablecoins, digital tokens pegged to a currency like the U.S. dollar and used to move money or trade without the swings of other crypto.
According to data from analytics firm Artemis, the total stablecoin supply on Solana grew from about $1.5 billion three years ago to roughly $16.7 billion today.
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Outpacing the wider market
That is an 11-fold increase. Over the same stretch, the overall stablecoin market grew about 2.5 times, meaning Solana expanded several times faster than the sector as a whole.
The network now ranks third among all blockchains by stablecoin supply, behind only Ethereum and Tron, according to Artemis. Its data shows Solana handled more than $500 billion in gross transfer volume in July alone, a sign the tokens are not just sitting on the network but actively moving through it.
On-chain analysis shared on X by blockchain researcher @solana_sailor citing Artemis data.
A market still early in its growth
Solana's surge comes as stablecoins draw growing attention as a payments technology. Investment research firm Morningstar estimates the global stablecoin market could swell to $1.45 trillion by 2035, up from around $300 billion today.
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It points to crypto trading, business-to-business payments, deposits in emerging markets, and cross-border remittances as the uses most likely to drive that growth.
If that forecast holds, the networks that can move stablecoins cheaply and quickly stand to benefit most, and Solana's low fees and fast settlement have positioned it as one of the venues capturing that demand. Its rise up the rankings suggests issuers and users are increasingly choosing it as a place to hold and transfer dollar-pegged tokens, even as far larger growth in the overall market may still lie ahead.
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Book Review: Changpeng Zhao's 'Freedom of Money' (2:34)
How much money does a person actually need? Changpeng Zhao, the crypto billionaire better known as CZ, has a number in mind, and it is a lot smaller than his own fortune.
In a May 9 interview on the show Crypto Banter with host Ran Neuner, Zhao argued that wealth stops buying happiness far earlier than most people assume.
"You don't need that much money to have a decent life," he said, "and also having luxury watches doesn't make you happy."
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The number that counts as 'enough'
Pressed on where "enough" begins, Zhao put a figure on it.
"I think USD 10 million is enough for financial freedom if you live a normal life," he said. Above that, he argued, the benefits fade fast: a jump from $10 million to $20 million might still make a small difference, but "beyond 50 million? Zero difference."
He set $100 million as the ceiling where money stops mattering entirely.
"If you have 100 million dollars and you say, 'oh, I am not happy, 200 million dollars would make me happier,' that is just craziness," he said.
Why chasing more backfires
Zhao's larger point was that treating money as the source of happiness is a trap.
"I don't think you should make it your goal to enjoy your money," he told Neuner, "and then you're working for the money. And then your money controls you."
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The billionaire offered himself as proof. Asked what his wealth actually buys him that he enjoys, Zhao pointed to a collection of camera gadgets he rarely touches.
"I use them once, I put them away, but it doesn't make me happy," he said, adding that once someone has enough, "you shouldn't rely on having more money to make you happy. That doesn't work."
Changpeng Zhao, famously known as CZ, attends the 'CZ meets Italy' at Palazzo Brancaccio on May 10, 2022, in Rome, Italy.
Antonio Masiello/Getty Images
His personal style backs up the philosophy. Despite his fortune, Zhao is known for dressing simply, usually in Binance-branded hoodies and T-shirts rather than the luxury trappings his wealth could easily afford.
What matters more, he said, is family and health.
The advice is striking coming from its source. Zhao founded Binance in 2017 and built it into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, and Forbes pegs his real-time net worth at $109.7 billion as of August 10, the 17th-largest fortune in the world, and by his own math, more than 1,000 times what a person needs.
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Crypto Startup Pitches Interest-Free Loans That Can't Be Liquidated (6:25)
Every loan in history has come with an interest rate, a due date, and someone who can take your collateral.
"When you say credit or debt, it's a loaded term and people assume certain things," Colin Sinclair, chief business officer at Mayflower said to TheStreet Roundtable. "You're gonna have to repay somebody by this point in time. Until you repay them, there's gonna be interest payments. And if the value of your collateral goes down, they're gonna liquidate you so they don't lose money."
None of that is malice, it's what lending between humans requires. His answer is to remove the human. The Assured Value Machine, or AVM, is what he calls "the core innovation of our whole stack."
"It charges a one-time borrow fee. There's buy, sell and borrow fees, but there is no ongoing interest," he said.
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A vending machine with a floor
"Think of it like a vending machine," Sinclair said. "I put my dollars in, I get my token out."
Every dollar that buys in stays inside the machine, creating a bonding curve that is itself the entire market for the token.
"Now it has a full view of the supply. So using math, some calculus and code, it can establish a floor price. If everyone who just bought their tokens decided to turn and sell, the last one sold would still fetch that floor price," he said.
Because the machine knows the minimum every token can be redeemed for, it can lend against that minimum with no fear of a shortfall.
"There's no need for a liquidation engine. It doesn't even have one. This is trustless. You could leave and go to Mexico and spend your money on the beach, and your tokens are locked until you repay that debt. But if you don't repay that debt, everything else functions as normal," Sinclair said. "Think of it like a perpetual loan where no other holder of those tokens cares or relies on anyone else to be a good steward of that debt."
It's worth being precise about what the borrower gives up. The loan is capped at the floor value, which sits below market price, and the tokens stay locked until repayment.
In practice, "obligation-free credit" resembles a partial redemption with an option to buy back in. The obligation hasn't vanished so much as been prepaid in collateral.
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'Tell that to the guy who bought Nakamoto'
To explain what the AVM actually fixes, Sinclair pointed to one of crypto’s biggest trades in 2025: digital asset treasuries.
More specifically, he pointed to Nakamoto ($NAKA), the Bitcoin treasury formed through a merger with KindlyMD. Nakamoto’s stock has fallen roughly 95% from its May 2025 peak, and its market cap sits at around 25-30% of the value of its Bitcoin holdings.
Many would use this extraordinarily low multiple of net asset value (mNAV) to argue that NAKA was undervalued and a good investment. Sinclair doesn’t see any reason to think that.
"There's zero actual connection between the NAV and what the shares are worth," Sinclair said. "Tell that to the guy who bought Nakamoto 40% below."
The AVM, he argues, is what a treasury company would look like if the discount were impossible.
"Think of it like an on-chain reserve, a digital asset treasury, where it cannot trade below the NAV. It can trade above it, and there's an area of volatility above this floor price. But that floor price is a hard stop. Math and code doesn't care what anyone thinks or says," he said. "If you think you could sell one of these AVM assets below the floor, that would be the equivalent of saying: watch this, I'm going to take my calculator and type in 4 plus 4 and it's not going to equal 8. Good luck with that.”

SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX) made its public-market debut on June 12, 2026, after pricing shares at $135 in what became the largest initial public offering in history.
Shares surged as high as $225.64 during their first session before closing at $184.
Less than two months later, Elon Musk’s space company delivered its first quarterly results as a public company. SpaceX reported Q2 revenue of $7.81 billion on Aug. 4, up 92% from a year earlier, while its net loss narrowed to $541 million from about $1 billion. Adjusted EBITDA jumped 191% to $3.5 billion.
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The earnings call largely focused on Starlink, Starship and SpaceX’s expanding artificial intelligence business, with management pointing to $47.5 billion in backlog and $100 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.
However, the public investor Q&A accompanying SpaceX’s first earnings cycle attracted another audience entirely: memecoin enthusiasts.
SpaceX investor Q&A flooded with memecoin questions
SpaceX allowed investors to submit and upvote questions for management, but the page was quickly flooded with submissions promoting “Baby Asteroid” and “Asteroid Shiba,” memecoins attempting to associate themselves with SpaceX’s Asteroid mascot.
Memecoins are cryptocurrencies inspired by internet memes, jokes or cultural trends, often driven largely by online communities and speculation rather than utility.
One of the most popular submissions, receiving about 1,100 upvotes, said: “Baby Asteroid is already making a difference through charity around the world,” before asking whether SpaceX could expand its role.
This story was first reported by Business Insider.
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Another, with 338 votes, described Asteroid as SpaceX’s “official mascot” and asked about its future.
Other submissions were less subtle. One asked Musk when he would announce that “Asteroid Shiba is the Mascot of Space X” and urged him to support the Ethereum-based memecoin.
The flood eventually prompted another participant to ask: “Can we get downvotes on this Q&A. We got crypto bros pumping up asteroid mascot coin in the questions instead of real investor questions.”
SpaceX already has unusually strong ties to crypto for an aerospace company.
It holds 18,712 Bitcoin (BTC), worth about $1.1 billion, making it the 8th largest corporate Bitcoin holder as per data by Bitcoin Treasuries.
The company did not sell any Bitcoin during the quarter, despite the value of its holdings falling by about $539 million during the first half of 2026.
At the time of writing, SpaceX shares traded at $133.19, up 0.06% on the day but still about 11.3% below their all-time high.
Related: Cathie Wood has strong words about Cloudflare's earnings call

How Cathie Wood became one of crypto’s earliest believers (3:41)
Cathie Wood, the founder of investment firm Ark Invest, has flagged what she sees as a blind spot in how Wall Street is covering Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure company.
Writing on X on August 9, Wood said she found it striking that Cloudflare's latest earnings call included no mention of, or questions about, stablecoins, which she called the "monetization enabler of this new world order."
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to hold a steady value, usually pegged to the U.S. dollar.
Wood argued that research teams divided by sector, such as those covering software and cybersecurity separately from financial services, need to work together as these technologies increasingly overlap.
Fascinating about the Cloudflare call was no mention or question about stablecoins, the monetization enabler of this new world order! Research teams siloed by sectors or industries, like software/cybersecurity and financial services need to collaborate as technologies converge. https://t.co/gAsiQADMJv
— Cathie Wood (@CathieDWood) August 9, 2026
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Why the stablecoin angle matters here
Her point lands because Cloudflare, best known for speeding up and protecting websites, has been slowly moving deeper into stablecoin-powered payments.
On July 1, the company announced its Monetization Gateway, a tool that lets Cloudflare customers charge for access to web pages, datasets, APIs, or other digital assets. At launch, those payments settle in stablecoins using x402, an open payment protocol Cloudflare is building with a coalition of more than 25 industry partners.
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The company went further on August 4, unveiling programmable stablecoin wallets for AI agents, which let autonomous software hold funds and pay for online services on their own.
Even Cloudflare's earnings framing pointed that way. Announcing results on August 6, co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said the web is being rewritten for machine-to-machine traffic and described Cloudflare as building "the payment rails for the Agentic Internet," without tying that vision explicitly to stablecoins.
That gap is what caught Wood's attention. Despite Cloudflare's steady push into stablecoin-powered payments, the topic went unmentioned on the call itself, an omission she found hard to square with where the company appears to be heading.
A strong quarter, then a fundraise
Meanwhile, Ark itself bought Cloudflare shares on August 7, adding roughly 114,000 shares through its flagship Ark Innovation ETF, as per data shared on X by Ark Invest Tracker.
The stock had surged to a 52-week high of $324.73 last Friday after a strong second quarter, in which revenue rose 36% year-over-year to $696.1 million and the company lifted its full-year outlook to between $2.86 billion and $2.87 billion.
Cloudflare traded around $302 on Monday, up 0.33%, after announcing plans to raise about $2.175 billion through convertible notes, a move that raised some concern about share dilution.
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General view of the Ricardo Brugada neighbourhood in Asuncion, Paraguay, taken on April 26, 2023.
Getty Images
Cryptocurrency investor Harry Chun Tak Yeh was found dead in Paraguay after falling from his luxury 30th floor apartment in the Trinidad district of Asunción last week, a local media outlet reported on Aug. 9.
Yeh entered Bitcoin (BTC) investment as early as 2013 and founded the crypto hedge fund Quantum Fintech Group. He was also a seed investor in crypto platforms, LIF3 and L3 Reserve.
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Police claims to have found Yeh's apartment ransacked
Yeh fell from his apartment, and his naked body was found under a black plastic bag. When the local police reached his apartment, they found it ransacked with the door wide open and nobody else present.
Forensic personnel carried out a photographic survey and the collection of traces both on the public road and in Yeh's 30th floor apartment. Homicide agents also gathered testimonies from neighbors and staff to collect details about the victim's movements before the incident.
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The investor's body finally got transferred to the forensic morgue, where an autopsy will be performed to determine the cause and exact circumstances of his death.
The Prosecutor's Office is open to all hypotheses, including an accident, a possible suicide, or the involvement of third parties, and doesn't rule out further investigations as the case progresses.
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Exclusive: SEC sees crypto as 'economic growth engine' says Chainlink co-founder (9:00)
Standard Chartered initiated coverage of Chainlink's native token, LINK, with an extremely bullish price target on Aug. 10.
Chainlink is a decentralized blockchain oracle network that is used to facilitate the transfer of data from off-chain sources to on-chain smart contracts.
LINK is a utility and governance token of Chainlink, which is used to pay node operators for retrieving data from smart contracts and also for deposits by node operators as required by contract creators.
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Standard Chartered bullish on Chainlink, thanks to tokenization
Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, said Chainlink is the only end-to-end platform capable of supporting the full lifecycle of tokenized assets across both decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi).
While DeFi refers to financial activities like lending, staking, settlements, etc. over blockchain networks without centralized intermediaries, TradFi refers to traditional financial infrastructure like banks, asset managers, stock exchanges, the Fed, etc.
As TradFi moves further toward DeFi, the assets will need trusted external data, secure cross-network transfers, and compliance tools, and Chainlink is currently the only platform that can facilitate it, as per Standard Chartered.
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The bank's thesis is based on a bullish outlook on tokenized assets.
Tokenization is the process of converting ownership rights of a real-world or digital asset into a digital token on a blockchain. Each token acts as a secure, programmable digital certificate of ownership that can be bought, sold, or transferred instantly without traditional middlemen.
Standard Chartered estimated that the value of tokenized assets onchain will rise to $4 trillion by end-2028. Currently, the figure stands at $340 billion.
The bank also anticipates the share of tokenized and crypto-native assets deployed in DeFi to rise to hit $2.7 trillion by end-2030, a 37-fold surge.
Assets getting tokenized and migrating onchain need a reliable platform to relay the relevant financial data to the blockchain, the analyst underlined. Funds require net asset value and share-class information, bonds require rates and payment schedules, and stablecoins require reserve attestations.
Chainlink already secures much of that value, the analyst underlined. With the total value secured above $110 billion, it accounts for roughly 70% of oracle-dependent value across DeFi globally and more than 80% on Ethereum, he added.
The blockchain network has enabled over $32 trillion in transaction value to date, the note said.
Standard Chartered predicts $200 target for LINK
Standard Chartered anticipates Chainlink's fee generation to surge about 25 times by the end of 2030, which is currently split across its dominant oracle business, cross-chain, and interoperability lines.
Kendrick said if fees grow 25 times as activity increases, LINK’s price could also rise 25 times, outpacing Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) over the same period.
Despite being bullish on Chainlink, the analyst highlighted three risks to the view, including a slower-than-expected pace of institutional tokenization, more competition, and technical or configuration failures in the network.
Kendrick has a price target of $200 for LINK and as the cryptocurrency's current price is $8.30, the analyst's target represents an upside of more than 2,300%.
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