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Kalshi has issued former congressman George Santos its first-ever lifetime trading ban. The platform fined him more than $70,000 for manipulating a market tied to his own State of the Union attendance.
The ban lands less than a year after Trump commuted Santos’s seven-year prison sentence. He walked free after serving less than three months.
A Congressman Undone by His Own Story
Santos won New York’s third congressional district in 2022. Reporters then found he had fabricated his education and employment history.
He also lied about parts of his family background. Federal prosecutors later charged him with misusing campaign funds and stealing identities.
The House expelled him in December 2023. He became only the sixth member ever removed from Congress.
He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. A judge sentenced him to 87 months in prison. Trump commuted that sentence in October, wiping out the remaining term along with fines and probation.
“George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison.”
Trump wrote that in a Truth Social post announcing the commutation. However, Trump had never endorsed Santos’s 2022 campaign for Congress. In that same post, he praised Santos’s party loyalty as reason enough for clemency.
Lifetime Trading Ban Follows Insider Trading Allegations
Kalshi is a federally regulated prediction market. It flagged unusual activity in Santos’s account on a contract betting on his own State of the Union attendance.
Between February 2 and 25, Santos placed large bets on that contract.
He also made public statements that misstated his plans. Those statements moved the contract’s price.
Santos ultimately profited nearly $17,840. He wagered against his own attendance, then skipped the event.
Kalshi gave him a permanent ban, in contrast to the temporary suspensions given four other recent cases. He had refused to cooperate with its investigation.
Meanwhile, Santos had already agreed in July to pay $35,000. That settled a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) probe into the same trades, detailed in Santos’s earlier CFTC fine.
Santos thanked Kalshi for the ban on social media. He also mocked the platform’s own longevity.
Hey @Kalshi thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform.Let’s see how much longer you guys are around for. 💋
— George Santos (@Georgesantos) August 31, 2026
The case follows Kalshi’s earlier staffer penalty for similar Trump speech bets. That signals prediction markets are tightening their oversight.

Brazil’s top electoral court, the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), suspended presidential candidate Renan Santos’s digital campaign and froze R$3.3 million (roughly $640,000 USD) in public funds on August 31, weeks after he became the only contender to publicly back a national Bitcoin reserve.
Justice Dias Toffoli barred Santos and running mate Aroldo Medina from debates and ruled that 16 campaign social media profiles, declared 12 days after the campaign’s registration filing, cannot carry paid political ads.
The Bitcoin pledge behind the ruling
Santos, 42, made the Bitcoin reserve pledge on August 13 at Blockchain Rio 2026. He also promised to make Rio de Janeiro “crypto friendly” and to scrap the Tax on Financial Operations (IOF). He called Brazil’s crypto rules outdated and overly centralized.
The pitch puts him in company with Bukele’s Bitcoin-reserve model in El Salvador and Milei’s crypto embrace in Argentina. It also echoes Colombia’s recent election of a pro-crypto president, part of a broader rightward, crypto-friendly shift across Latin America.
Santos called the ruling against his campaign censorship and said his lawyers would seek an injunction from TSE president Nunes Marques.
The suspension landed the same morning The Economist profiled his candidacy as a possible Milei-style moment for Brazil.
What the ruling blocks
The order, signed Sunday and released Monday, halts new disbursements from the Special Campaign Financing Fund (FEFC), Brazil’s public election-financing pool, and bars the ticket from radio, television, and podcast debates.
Violations carry a R$50,000 (just under $ 10,000 USD) fine per ad or debate appearance. Toffoli also ordered platforms to pull the 16 profiles from recommendation algorithms or pay R$10,000 ($2,000 USD) per hour, per profile.
Officially declared digital campaign accounts are excluded from recommendation algorithms during the race, but his party’s (Missão’s) undeclared profiles remained eligible. One account with 2.4 million followers kept appearing in suggested-profile feeds alongside other candidates, Toffoli said.
Street campaigning continues, and the single website and X account Santos originally registered remain active. The candidacy itself was not thrown out.
Nós somos um grupo destinado à glória. pic.twitter.com/DPuyL0UM1K
— Renan Santos⬛️🟨⬜️ (@RenanSantosMBL) August 31, 2026
The Mission Party, formed in 2025, is also fielding 57 congressional candidates alongside Santos.
Brazilians vote on October 4.

Dell Technologies reports fiscal second quarter results Tuesday after the close, and the options market is braced for a large reaction. Contracts expiring September 4 imply a swing of roughly 11% in either direction.
The at-the-money straddle, a paired call and put at the same strike, cost about $52 against Dell’s $456.01 close on Monday. Buyers profit only if the stock travels further.
Dell earnings options open interest by strike. Source: Option Charts What Dell Guided For, and What Analysts Expect
Dell guided to revenue of $44 billion to $45 billion for the quarter, adjusted earnings of about $4.80 a share, and roughly $15.5 billion of AI server revenue. It expected its Infrastructure Solutions Group, the server and storage division, to grow about 75%.
Zacks Investment Research puts the consensus at $4.72 a share across five forecasts. Dell earned $2.10 in the year-ago quarter.
The bar is high because the previous quarter reset it. Revenue reached $43.8 billion in Dell’s record first quarter beat, up 88% year over year, and adjusted earnings of $4.86 landed far above Wall Street’s estimate.
Management then raised the full-year revenue outlook to $167 billion at the midpoint and lifted its AI server target to $60 billion. Shares have climbed roughly 260% in 2026 on that artificial intelligence demand.
“We booked $24.4 billion in AI orders and recognized $16.1 billion of AI server revenue. We’re increasing our AI server revenue expectations for FY27 to $60 billion, which only goes to show the AI opportunity shows no signs of slowing,” said Jeff Clarke, Dell vice chairman and chief operating officer, in the quarterly release.
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The Numbers That Will Move Dell Stock
Orders and backlog now matter more than the headline figure. Dell booked $24.4 billion of AI orders last quarter and closed with a record $51.3 billion AI backlog.
Margins are the second test. AI servers earn thinner margins than storage, and Chief Financial Officer David Kennedy has flagged memory chips, processors and hard drives as supply bottlenecks.
Dell has also described an inflationary parts market that forces frequent repricing, so a revenue beat paired with weaker margins would land badly. Data center names have already drawn profit-taking after big rallies.
Wall Street still leans positive. Of 15 analysts covering the stock, 11 rate it a buy and four a hold, with an average target of $523.54 and a low of $434.
Dell Technologies (DELL) Stock Forecast & Price Target. Source: TipRanks
Nvidia’s own quarterly beat drew only a modest reaction last week. Whether Dell raises its full-year guide again, and what it says about second-half supply, will decide which side of the straddle pays.

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee is treating September’s crash fear as a contrarian signal. He says a market this braced for weakness could rally instead, carrying Bitcoin (BTC) toward $150,000.
Lee has not dropped his correction call. He has moved it, pointing to the September 15 Federal Reserve (Fed) meeting as the moment that decides direction.
The September Fear Lee Is Betting Against
The fear has an evidence base, because across 10 US midterm election years since 1986, the average stock market low landed on September 2.
Those lows followed an average slide of 16.77% from the prior high. That history is what makes the current dangerous September pattern worth watching.
This year adds a hawkish twist. Three Fed presidents voted for a rate hike in July, not a cut. Chair Kevin Warsh then used his first Jackson Hole speech to put inflation first. Six-month PCE inflation was running at 4.1%.
Bonds tell the same story, with the 30-year Treasury yield has held above 5%, well clear of an effective fed funds rate near 3.63%.
US Treasuries and Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: TradingView
“I’m actually now thinking because of all this mounting concern, the market might surprise us to the upside,” Lee said, suggesting he sees a crowd leaning too far one way.
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Why September 15 Decides Direction
Lee spent August expecting those worries to converge and cost equities roughly 10%. Weak seasonality, hike talk and the AI data center backlash all pointed the same way.
His base case now is that policymakers neither hike nor cut.
“If the Fed doesn’t cut, doesn’t hike, which is our base case, I think actually the markets could rally very strongly,” he added in a CNBC interview.
Should the pullback slip into October, Lee thinks it could start above 8,000 on the S&P 500. The low might land near 7,300.
Bitcoin Could Reach $150,000, Tom Lee Says
Bitcoin’s current price level sits near $78,875, up only 0.3% over 24 hours. BTC still trades about 37% below its record from October 2025.
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Lee calls the past year a shallow crypto winter caused by forced selling, not broken fundamentals. Very few investors still hold crypto, he argues.
He counts four catalysts.
Crypto led all macro assets in the third quarter
The four-year crypto cycle ends next month
Korean traders are rotating back from AI stocks
The CLARITY Act, a US market structure bill setting which regulator oversees digital assets, could pass this year
Rising institutional crypto ETF inflows reinforce his view that larger buyers are positioning for a strong fourth quarter.
Lee still treats $150,000 as possible for Bitcoin, alongside an S&P 500 above 8,200. For Bitcoin, that constitutes a 1.9 times gain, or about 2x. Both rest on earnings estimates that keep climbing.
Bitcoin and S&P500 Performance. Source: TradingView
Fresh jobs and inflation prints land before the meeting. Lee says weak readings on both would stop traders pricing a hike at all.

Stablecoins could make borrowing more expensive. That was the warning from Bank for International Settlements chief Pablo Hernández de Cos on August 28, as banks expand into digital money.
These digital assets are becoming an awkward asset class for banks. Because it’s almost killing their business model and forcing them to introduce new products.
The stablecoin market now holds roughly $304 billion, including about $183 billion in Tether and $74 billion in USDC. Federal Reserve researchers describe these tokens as potential competitors to traditional transaction accounts.
Arthur Firstov, Chief Business Officer at Mercuryo, told BeInCrypto why that matters.
“Stablecoins stopped being a crypto product and became a payments product. For years banks could wave it off as ‘crypto infrastructure’ – that’s a much harder line to hold when stablecoins are being used for payments, treasury, cross-border settlement, cards, merchant payouts, and institutional settlement. At that point they’re competing directly with one of the most valuable products a bank has: the transaction account.”
Banks are responding. A Federal Reserve survey in September 2025 found roughly half of respondents were prioritizing growth in at least one stablecoin or digital-asset area over the following three years.
What Happens to the Deposit?
J.P. Morgan’s JPM Coin represents a bank deposit on a blockchain. Société Générale-FORGE’s CoinVertible is a MiCA-regulated stablecoin backed by segregated collateral. Similar technology carries different promises to customers.
Nitin Gaur, Head of Institutions at Nethermind, explains the distinction.
“The interesting question stopped being whether a bank can issue and became what a bank is issuing. A tokenized deposit and a bank-issued stablecoin are two different liabilities with different legal character, different capital treatment, different insurance status and different settlement properties.”
A tokenized deposit remains bank funding. Under the US GENIUS Act, payment stablecoins require at least one-to-one backing with eligible reserves, such as cash or short-dated Treasuries. Treasury proposed implementation rules on August 17.
Gaur describes what that can mean for a bank’s balance sheet.
“A stablecoin issued under a GENIUS pathway is not a deposit. It is a payment instrument backed by segregated reserves the issuer cannot lend against. When a treasurer moves a hundred million from a demand deposit into the bank’s own coin, the bank has converted a funding source into a matched, non-lendable reserve pool,” Gaur said.
The wider effect depends on where reserves end up. Money deposited back at banks can still provide funding, although it may be more concentrated and quicker to leave.
Adrian Wall, Managing Director of the Digital Sovereignty Alliance, identifies the risk.
“If stablecoin adoption ultimately shifts funding away from bank deposits rather than recycling those funds back into the banking system, banks could face higher funding costs and potentially less capacity to extend credit.”
Payments Beyond Banking Hours
Customers already have reasons to use these products. In July, Citi reported a dollar payment from London to Thailand over a US holiday weekend, using its tokenized-deposit service alongside round-the-clock clearing.
Western Union launched USDPT in May, with Anchorage Digital Bank issuing the stablecoin on Solana.
The models are growing at different scales. J.P. Morgan reports around $7 billion in daily activity across Kinexys products. CoinVertible reported €156.6 million of euro tokens and $12.55 million of dollar tokens outstanding on August 31.
Those figures measure transaction volume and circulating supply respectively, so they cannot establish which model is winning.
37 Banks, One Coin
As more banks enter, separate coins could leave money scattered across smaller pools, with users having to exchange one bank’s token for another. Connecting the technology does not guarantee conversion at face value during market stress.
Europe’s Qivalis has assembled 37 banks across 15 countries around a planned euro stablecoin. It targets a launch in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory authorization.
Ernesto Olmedo Pereira, Head of Strategy & DeFi at Qivalis, says sharing the currency is deliberate.
“If every bank launches its own token, you get dozens of thin, incompatible pools instead of one deep, liquid euro instrument. Qivalis, an independent company backed by 37 banks, exists precisely because the banks behind it decided to build one shared, interoperable euro rail together rather than compete with 37 separate ones.”
European payments have made real progress. But global reach is still missing.Qivalis: 37 banks across 15 countries unifying on a single on-chain euro payments rail. Near-instant. Cross-border. No detours.DNB authorisation in progress. Launching H2 2026.#Qivalis… pic.twitter.com/NMUiZzGWkS
— qivalis (@qivaliseu) July 16, 2026
Banks could then compete through services surrounding that money, such as foreign exchange and corporate lending. The shared coin would carry payments between them.
Qivalis’s launch will test whether that cooperation can attract regular business beyond its founding banks.
Customers need money they can use across banking relationships. Banks will have to show that the services sold around those payments justify any higher cost of funding their loans.

Strive, BitMine and MicroStrategy each disclosed fresh crypto purchases on Monday. The two Bitcoin buyers alone spent more than $500 million in a single week.
Buying high is the business model, not a failure of it. These firms turn share sales into coins, and shares sell best when coins are rising.
What the Three Firms Bought
Strive, run by chief executive Matt Cole, added 1,800 bitcoin (BTC) at an average of $79,431. Its stack reached 23,156 BTC, worth about $1.83 billion on Monday.
Strive acquired an additional 1,800 BTC for $143M at an average cost of $79,431 per bitcoin, bringing total holdings to ₿23,156.$ASST $SATA pic.twitter.com/6ztKhC4PFF
— Matt Cole (@ColeMacro) August 31, 2026
The filing shows the mechanism plainly, after Strive issued 3,579,147 new Class A shares that week, and its cash still climbed $11.6 million to $183.5 million.
BitMine is playing a different game. Its 53,501 ether (ETH) marked a 65th consecutive week of buying, a streak running back to June 2025.
Yield is the distinction, given BitMine has staked 5,067,309 ETH, or 86% of the pile, through MAVAN, its American validator network.
Chairman Tom Lee projects $335 million to $390 million a year from that. The company now holds 4.9% of ether supply, leaving it 133,888 tokens short of the 5% target Lee set.
Congrats on reaching 5.9 million $ETH… ➡️ just 100k away from ‘alchemy of 5%’👏👏👏👏 https://t.co/h25esmoJVm
— Thomas (Tom) Lee (not drummer) FundstratDirect.com (@fundstrat) August 31, 2026
MicroStrategy was the third buyer. Its 4,603 coins ended a 10-week pause, and unlike BitMine it publishes an average cost per coin, currently $75,412.
ETF Money Turned Before the Treasuries Did
So why now? The answer starts with fund flows. US spot bitcoin funds absorbed more than $3.3 billion in August, according to SoSoValue data. In June they bled $4.5 billion.
Bitcoin ETF Flows. Source: SoSoValue
Ether funds traced the same arc, adding roughly $1.75 billion after two months of withdrawals. Prices answered, and Bitcoin climbed 25.7% over the month and ether rose 33.3%.
That sequence is the engine, seeing as fund demand lifts coins, coins lift the treasury stocks, and selling those stocks buys more coins.
What Else Changed in August
Crypto funds drew $3.2 billion in inflows last week, marking their largest weekly intake since October 2025, according to Bank of America. This suggests growing optimism in the market.
BREAKING: Crypto funds attracted +$3.2 billion in inflows last week, their largest weekly intake since October 2025.The largest crypto ETF, $IBIT, attracted +$928 million last week, following +$1.3 billion in the prior week, its biggest 2-week inflow since October 2025.As a… pic.twitter.com/RMRQVwZotK
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) August 31, 2026
One popular story says money fled a wobbling AI bubble, but the calendar disagrees. July did that damage, where the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 20.6% and Korea’s KOSPI shed 22%. August was kinder, with the Nasdaq 100 up 4.2%.
SOX, KOSPI, and NASDAQ Price Performance. Source: TradingView
The rotation shows elsewhere, as foreign investors pulled 10.17 trillion won from Korean equities in August. Volumes on Upbit, the country’s largest exchange, jumped roughly eightfold.
America also helped, after President Donald Trump pressed Congress on August 19 to pass the CLARITY Act, and a Senate vote is expected on September 15.
In tandem, the Treasury also widened long-dated bond buybacks that day, from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. That relief proved thin. The 30-year yield dipped to 5.19% before settling back at 5.25%.
Bitcoin traded near $78,818 on Monday. What halts these companies is not a falling coin price. It is a closed financing window.

Years of lost savings taught Argentines to buy dollars. Economist Martín Tetaz says rebuilding trust in the peso could take years after inflation is tamed.
An Argentine saver could spend a decade earning interest at a bank and still lose more than half their purchasing power. That is a difficult experience to forget when the government announces another improvement in inflation.
BeInCrypto Intelligence’s The Exodus Economy found that a peso term deposit retained just 44% of its starting purchasing power between June 2016 and June 2026. Someone keeping the equivalent of $10,000 in peso cash ended with about $114 in dollar value.
Speaking to BeInCrypto, Martín Tetaz, an Argentine economist and former national deputy, described the resulting attachment to dollars.
“Demand for dollars is, in practice, the purchase of insurance. It’s like buying car insurance. And it’s a habit that is learned, and that takes time to unlearn.”
Argentina Inflation Rate Over the Last 3 Years. Source: Trading Economics
The report’s ten-year comparison shows why savers looked elsewhere. Dollar cash preserved 74% of purchasing power in Argentina.
Dollars earning short-term US Treasury yields preserved 94%. A Brazilian CDI-linked deposit, meanwhile, increased local purchasing power by 50%.
Dollar cash also lost purchasing power over the decade. In Argentina, the report’s peso options performed considerably worse.
Purchasing power retained, June 2016–June 2026. Start = 100. Source: BeInCrypto The Peso Has a Better Case
Under President Javier Milei, annual inflation has fallen far below its roughly 289% peak in April 2024. INDEC’s latest figures put it at 33.8% in July 2026. Monthly inflation edged up to 2.1%, from 1.9% in June, a reminder that prices are still rising appreciably.
Tetaz expects the preference to survive well beyond the immediate recovery.
“First it has to eliminate inflation, and then, once inflation is gone, for at least seven or eight years it will keep seeing significant dollar demand until that stability consolidates,” Tetaz said.
That is his estimate of how long confidence takes to recover. Savers have to believe today’s improvement will survive a change of government before committing money for years.
Dollars are Easier to Buy
The report charts another substantial change. The extra cost of buying dollars on the parallel market, compared with the official rate, fell from above 150% in 2023 to around 2% by July 2026.
A narrower gap makes dollar access less expensive. By itself, it reveals little about whether people want to hold fewer dollars.
Official and parallel dollar rates through July 2026. Original report, Figure 16.
There are signs that some crisis-driven demand is easing. Deel payroll data published by a16z crypto on August 30 show the share of Argentine contractors paid in USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, fell as inflation eased, then levelled off. The sample covers contractors using Deel; it cannot establish a nationwide return to peso savings.
The report also shows how accessible digital dollars have become. On Argentine wallet Lemon, tracked withdrawals averaged $544 in the first half of 2026, with monthly medians around $150–$270. These are amounts within reach of ordinary earners.
Tetaz believes a more stable peso could recover some everyday uses.
“If stability returns, short- and medium-term contracts will all be in pesos, and many of the economy’s dollar contracts will unwind.”
He expects longer commitments, such as mortgages, could retain inflation-linked arrangements. Dollar earners may still prefer dollar rents.
Argentina could therefore regain confidence in the peso without persuading everyone to abandon dollars. For a household, trusting pesos for next month’s bills is a much smaller commitment than trusting them with ten years of savings.
Read The Exodus Economy for the full analysis.

Hyperliquid Labs is in advanced talks with Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, over a route into the US market, Bloomberg reported Monday. The plan would avoid buying a licensed exchange outright.
Bitnomial, Payward’s US-regulated derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, would let registered American traders reach a subset of crypto perpetual futures tied to Hyperliquid. Payward has already sent the structure to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
What US Traders Would Actually Get
Less than the headlines suggest, as Hyperliquid’s own app stays geoblocked for Americans, and nothing in the reported structure changes that.
Registered users would trade on Bitnomial under US rules, with identity checks and a limited menu. Bloomberg described a subset of crypto perpetual futures, not the full offshore order book.
The exotic markets built through Hyperliquid’s third-party framework, covering commodities and pre-IPO names, sit outside the reported plan. So does the leverage available offshore today.
For traders already using the offshore venue, nothing changes.
Why Hyperliquid Is Renting Instead of Buying
Payward closed its takeover of Bitnomial on May 1, a $550 million deal that delivered three CFTC licenses at once. Prediction market Polymarket instead paid $112 million for a licensed venue of its own.
Renting costs Hyperliquid far less upfront. The trade is control, because Payward would own the licensed venue and the registered customer.
What It Means for HYPE
Being shut out of America has not visibly cost holders. HYPE set a record of $86.71 on August 27 without a single registered US trader on the venue.
Hyperliquid (HYPE) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Hyperliquid routes 99% of protocol and trading fees into repurchasing HYPE tokens, an engine that has retired $1.3 billion of supply since December 2024. Whether volume cleared on Bitnomial ever reaches that buyback has not been described.
That gap matters more than the headline number. A flat licensing fee and a share of US trading revenue are very different outcomes for the token.
The HYPE price sat at $83.57 on Monday, up 7.1% over the week, after President Donald Trump said on Aug. 19 that regulators were working to bring Hyperliquid onshore. A filing with the CFTC is not a clearance, and both companies declined to comment.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans to sue Amazon on Monday, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal. Officials say the company quietly raised the minimum price sellers paid for ads on its store. The practice earned Amazon tens of billions of dollars over seven years.
More than 20 state attorneys general are joining. Investors did not wait for the complaint. Amazon shares fell over 3% on Monday afternoon, erasing roughly $86 billion in market value.
Amazon (AMZN) Stock Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance How the Alleged Ad Price Manipulation Worked
Sellers bid against each other every time a shopper searches. Amazon once ran an auction built to stop winners from overpaying. That design kept bids low.
In 2018, officials say, Amazon began placing a bid of its own. It sat just above the runner-up, so the winner paid more. Insiders called it a soft reserve.
Amazon could see every rival bid. It never told sellers about the change. Executives tracked the extra revenue and kept the details tightly held.
The tactic first appeared on busy shopping days, when sellers would blame heavy competition. Amazon now lifts the minimum in 70% to 80% of auctions. On peak days, the FTC says click prices climbed 50%.
Amazon’s seller guidance, updated in April, does mention reserve pricing.
“Some reserves help allocate ad space by setting a bid threshold,” Amazon advertising guidance, via WSJ.
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How Amazon Stock Could React Once the Case Is Filed
Amazon (AMZN) traded at $257.87 early Monday afternoon, down from a $266.43 close. The stock had held near record highs through August.
Monday’s selloff already dwarfs past fines. Amazon paid a $1 billion civil penalty last September over Prime sign-ups. The market erased about 86 times that figure in a single afternoon.
So the fine is not the real risk. Ads brought in $69.6 billion in 2025, close to a tenth of Amazon’s $716.9 billion in sales. Those dollars carry high margins that help fund heavy AI capital spending.
A judge who rewrites the auction rules would hit that engine directly. Watch the remedy section of the complaint, not the dollar figure.
Google shows how slowly this plays out. A judge ruled against its ad business in 2025. The remedy is still unsettled.

The European Commission on Monday placed ChatGPT in the strictest tier of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Union’s rulebook for online platforms. Anthropic’s Claude was left out.
Regulators classed ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine, with Reddit and Roblox named Very Large Online Platforms. Claude escaped because its declared European user base sits below the legal cut-off.
Why the DSA Designation Turns on Raw User Counts
Designation is a size test, not a safety verdict. The trigger is 45 million average monthly users in the European Union, and companies declare their own figures before the Commission acts.
ChatGPT’s search function reported 159.1 million, roughly 3.5 times the threshold. Reddit declared 57.2 million. Roblox cleared the bar by 1.6 million, the narrowest margin of the three.
The meter runs both ways. The Commission stripped Stripchat of its designation in May 2025, after the adult platform’s audience fell back under the line.
“…will not hesitate to designate any platform that meets the threshold for enhanced supervision under the Digital Services Act,” said Henna Virkkunen, the European Union’s Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy.
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Why Anthropic’s Claude Stayed Below the 45 Million Line
Anthropic publishes its own count, a disclosure the DSA demands at least twice a year. For the six months ending 31 October 2025, it concluded that Claude’s European recipients fell well below the threshold.
The exact figure stayed private, and that snapshot is now ten months old. A newer one is already due, and Anthropic has since pitched investors on a record public listing.
The designated three have four months to comply, putting the deadline in January 2027. They must then assess systemic risks covering illegal content, minors, mental well-being and elections, and open their systems to audits.
We have designated ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine and Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms under the Digital Services Act.They now have four months to comply with additional DSA obligations.More: https://t.co/gIR8vTolmB#DSA pic.twitter.com/luusxUd3i4
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) August 31, 2026
Enforcement is no longer theoretical, considering the Commission fined X (formerly Twittter) 120 million euros in December 2025. This was the first non-compliance decision under the law, which allows penalties up to 6% of global turnover.
Claude’s exemption rests on scale alone. Anthropic already faces a suit over training data, and its next European filing decides whether the heaviest DSA chapter follows.

Bitcoin gained about 26% in a month. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh just told the world’s finance chiefs why that run may be ending.
Cheap money is over, he argues. Growth is picking up, and cash is chasing new projects. That pushes interest rates up, not down.
Warsh Says the Easy Money is Gone
Warsh has run the Fed for 100 days. He spoke on Monday at the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in Asheville, North Carolina. It gathers finance ministers and central bankers.
For years, economists blamed too much idle cash and too few good projects. That kept borrowing cheap. Warsh says that world is finished. He made the same case at Jackson Hole on Friday.
“It wasn’t so long ago … when economists and policymakers were speaking of secular stagnation and a global saving glut,” said Warsh.
Money is now pouring into artificial intelligence, he said. He cannot call today’s conditions tight. Inflation still runs at 3.7% a year.
Bessent Says He Cannot Fight It
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sat beside him on Monday in Asheville. On August 19, Bessent doubled the size of Treasury’s bond buybacks to at least $4 billion each. A buyback means the government buys back its own long-term debt.
Critics said the real goal was to push borrowing costs down. Bessent denies it.
Treasury Secretary Bessent and Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh speak at G20 meeting. Source: CNBC
“I don’t think I can change the equilibrium price. My job is to slow things down … and make sure that the market doesn’t get disorderly,” he said on Monday’s panel.
However, the market is not listening, with the 30-year Treasury yield reaching about 5.26% the same day, to mark a 19-year high. The 10-year yield also surged to 4.76%.
10-year and 30-year US Yields and Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: TradingView
Stanley Druckenmiller has seen this film before. He ran the 1992 bet that broke the Bank of England. Britain was defending a price it could not hold. Bessent worked at Soros Fund Management then. Druckenmiller says he is repeating the mistake.
Bessent addressed the row directly on Monday. He said he has spoken with Druckenmiller since the op-ed ran, and suggested the timing cost his former mentor money in the market.
*BESSENT: THINK DRUCKENMILLER LOST MONEY DAY HE SENT EDITORIAL
— tradfi news (@tradfi) August 31, 2026
Why Bitcoin Holders Should Care
Investors bought hard assets in August because they expected the dollar to keep losing value. Warsh describes the opposite world. Stronger growth lifts interest rates. Savers then get paid to wait. Bitcoin pays nothing.
Both gold and Bitcoin retreated after his Jackson Hole speech. The bigger risk is Warsh, not Bessent, as a risky September market pattern sits ahead too.

The US Marshals Service sold Anthropic shares seized from two FTX executives during 2025. Anthropic tripled in value that same year.
Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh invested $50 million in the company in 2022. Both of them directly helped FTX funnel customer funds through a backdoor and into private investments. A judge stripped them of the stake after they pleaded guilty.
The Year Anthropic Tripled
Ellison paid $10 million while Singh paid $40 million, and both ended up holding Series B preferred stock. A federal judge signed Ellison’s final forfeiture order on February 18, 2025, court records show.
Singh’s followed in April, and the Marshals then sold both blocks to investors already on Anthropic’s cap table.
Timing mattered enormously, because Anthropic closed a round at a $61.5 billion valuation on March 3, 2025. Six months later, it closed another round at $183 billion.
Anthropic's valuation timeline: • 2021: Founded • 2023: $4.1 billion • 2024: $18.5 billion • Mar 2025: $61.5 billion • Sep 2025: $183 billion • Nov 2025: $350 billion • Feb 2026: $380 billion • May 2026: $965 billion https://t.co/N4Uandb6Cb
— Polymarket Money (@PolymarketMoney) June 9, 2026
Nobody outside government knows which side of that jump the sale landed on. The price, the buyers, and the date all remain secret.
The US government’s move to sell Anthropic shares saw them miss out on significant gains, much like what SBF did with several shares of multiple companies, including Anthropic itself.
SBF Sold Too Early: These Exited Bets Later Turned Into Multi-Billion Winners
“Sam Bankman-Fried is the greatest investor of all time…That means if he weren’t in jail today and still owned all this equity, he’d be worth ~$100 billion… He’d be top 20 richest people in the world,” stated Alex Finn, Founder/CEO of Henry Intelligent Machines PBC.
What FTX Victims Know and What They Do Not
Anthropic raised again in May 2026 at a $965 billion valuation. Four days later, it confidentially submitted a draft IPO registration to the SEC. Analysts at PitchBook and UCLA now value the forfeited stake between $2.6 billion and $5 billion.
The FTX estate made a comparable exit first. Its lawyers sold two-thirds of the company’s Anthropic position in March 2024. The price was $884 million, one of several bets they exited early.
That deal was public, with a court filing naming every buyer, from Jane Street to an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth unit. No such list exists for the Marshals sale.
“It’s a very opaque process… It’s completely at the discretion, by law, of the attorney general of the United States,” Duncan Levin, a white-collar defense attorney who teaches forfeiture at Harvard Law School, reportedly told Business Insider.
Nevertheless, seized money can still be recovered, as seen when Robinhood bought Sam Bankman-Fried’s confiscated shares from the government for $605.7 million in 2023.
Robinhood, $HOOD, to buy back Sam Bankman-Fried's stake in the company from the US government for $605.7 million.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) September 1, 2023
The estate has since kept paying creditors down. No Anthropic entry had surfaced by the end of June 2026.
The Justice Department calls victim compensation a priority and the sale details confidential. For now, only the buyers know what they got.

BeInCrypto is attending TOKEN2049 Singapore as an official media partner, and this year we are bringing The NewsDesk to the main venue. Our team will be at Marina Bay Sands for both days of the conference, October 7-8, interviewing executives and industry leaders from across digital assets and finance.
About TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026
TOKEN2049 Singapore is expected to bring together more than 25,000 attendees, 7,000 companies, 300 speakers and 500 exhibitors across 160+ countries, with more than 60% of attendees holding C-level positions.
Alongside the broader Singapore programme, 1,000 side events will be featured throughout the week. Other major gatherings taking place in Singapore that week include Digital Asset Summit Asia, Sui Basecamp, the Network State Conference, the Milken Institute Asia Summit, and the Forbes Global CEO Conference, all against the backdrop of the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.
This year’s agenda features tracks on institutional capital integration, with traditional financial leaders such as Nasdaq’s Adena Friedman and Franklin Templeton’s Jenny Johnson discussing capital flows and regulatory developments. At the same time, industry leaders including Binance CEO Richard Teng, Hyperliquid Labs CEO Jeff Yan, and Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan will explore exchange liquidity, on-chain derivatives, and decentralised prediction markets.
The speaker’s lineup also features other financial heavyweights such as Joseph Lubin, Co-founder of Consensys, Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, and Amy Oldenburg from Morgan Stanley, among others.
BeInCrypto NewsDesk at TOKEN2049 Singapore
Our NewsDesk will be located at the main venue in Marina Bay Sands where our journalists will be speaking to industry leaders and covering all the latest announcements and product launches as it happens.
Follow BeInCrypto for coverage across both days, and check token2049.com for the full speaker lineup and agenda as more of the programme is announced.
BeInCrypto is part of the BeInNews Group, an independent media group covering the convergence of finance and digital assets. We help professionals act with confidence in a complex and fast-changing industry through our newsroom, research reports, events, expert councils and multimedia studio.

Japan’s two-year government bond yield climbed to 1.746% on Monday, its highest level in more than 31 years. The move raises the cost of the yen carry trade that has helped fund global risk assets, including Bitcoin (BTC).
Two-year yields track what traders expect from the Bank of Japan (BOJ). Swap markets now price roughly 88% odds of a rate increase in September.
Japan’s 2-Year Yield / Source: CNBC Japan Spent $97 Billion And The Yen Still Fell
The BOJ lifted its policy rate to 1% in June, the highest since 1995. Longer maturities followed. The 10-year Japanese government bond (JGB) yield now sits near 2.93%.
Higher rates would normally support a currency. Instead, the yen weakened. It traded at 160.16 per dollar on Friday and touched 160.20 again on Monday.
USD/JPY daily chart / Source: Tradingview
Tokyo deployed 15.4 trillion yen, close to $97 billion, between July 30 and August 26. That included a rare joint intervention with the United States on July 31. However, the currency has already surrendered more than half of those gains.
The Rate Gap Is Shrinking, Yet The Yen Keeps Sliding
The spread between US and Japanese two-year yields has narrowed to 2.64%. At its 2023 and 2024 peak, that gap ran close to 5%. Half the carry incentive has vanished.
For four decades, the yen tracked that spread closely. Now the two have separated. The currency keeps weakening while the reward for borrowing yen shrinks.
US/Japan 2Y Bond Yield Spread / Source: MacroMicro
That divergence points away from interest rates as the main driver. Mounting Japanese bond losses and heavy debt issuance suggest a confidence problem that higher rates alone cannot solve.
What The Yen Carry Trade Means For Bitcoin Now
Investors borrow yen cheaply, then buy higher-yielding assets abroad. Sharp yen appreciation makes those loans costlier to repay. Forced selling can follow.
August 2024 demonstrated the mechanism. Bitcoin and Ethereum lost as much as 20% as yen-funded positions closed.
Bitcoin trades at $79,087, up 1.3% over 24 hours. The token slipped below $77,000 last week on hawkish remarks from Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh.
Therefore, the September BOJ decision matters less as a shock than as a marker. A move priced at 88% odds is largely absorbed. Meanwhile, the position that has yet to unwind keeps building.

GameStop stock climbed about 4% on Monday. The company paid $358.4 million in cash to stop a share count that could have continued to grow.
The payment freezes the deal at roughly 55.5 million new shares. That equals about 12% of GameStop’s 448.7 million shares outstanding.
GameStop (GME) Stock Performance. Source: Yahoo Finance Why GameStop Stock Rallied After the Dilution Fix
On August 3, GameStop agreed to swap $1.4 billion of zero-coupon convertible debt for stock. The company would hand over shares and pay nothing.
The catch sat in the pricing, as the share count depended on an average of GME’s price over 35 trading days. A cheaper stock meant more shares.
Traders spotted the loop at once, and GME fell 12.25% that day to $19.06, down from $21.72 on July 31.
$GME – GAMESTOP SHARES DOWN 3.1% PREMARKET AFTER CO ANNOUNCES PRIVATE EXCHANGE OF $1.4 BLN OF CONVERTIBLE NOTES FOR EQUITY
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) August 3, 2026
GameStop has now killed the rest of that window. Noteholders take 73% of the deal in shares and 27% in cash. No further shares can be issued.
The Warning Buried in the Filing
Monday’s amendment added a clause the August 3 release did not carry.
“GameStop expects that participating noteholders may purchase or sell shares of Common Stock or enter into or unwind derivative transactions to adjust their positions, including purchases of Common Stock to close out short positions,” read an excerpt in the filing.
Those last five words matter because convertible investors usually short the stock to hedge. A frozen share count and a cash payout can leave those hedges mis-sized.
GameStop also pulled the closing date forward by 20 days, to about September 3. That compresses the window for any unwinding.
BREAKING🚨 GAMESTOP SAYS NOTEHOLDERS MAY CLOSE OUT THEIR SHORT POSITIONS, WHICH COULD INCREASE THE STOCK PRICE.THEY SAY “THE EFFECT MAY BE MATERIAL.” $GME pic.twitter.com/2im8Ya9zDg
— X Market News🚨 (@xMarketNews) August 31, 2026
What the Fix Does Not Solve
The exchange retires only a third of the debt. Roughly $2.8 billion of the original $4.2 billion convertible stack stays on the books.
The cash came from a shrinking pile, too. Holdings fell to about $5.06 billion from $8.694 billion, mostly because GameStop converted its proposed eBay takeover bid into 43.4 million eBay shares.
The quarter itself read better. Sales slipped to between $780 million and $800 million from $972.2 million. Yet operating margin jumped to roughly 20% from 6.8%, even after a $75 million loss on GameStop’s Bitcoin holdings and other digital assets.
At $18.65, GME still trades 14% below its July 31 close. The dilution clock has stopped. The rest of the risk has not.

Five altcoins broke out during mid-August, and four of them now carry dated September catalysts that could extend or end the move.
The turn rolled through the market in stages. Uniswap bottomed on August 14, and Solana volume spiked on August 19. Zcash, Monero, and Hyperliquid then broke out together on August 22.
Zcash (ZEC) Broke Out 3 Days Before Its ETF Launched
Rank: 10Price: $838.78Market Cap: $14.18 billion
Grayscale listed the first US spot Zcash product on NYSE Arca on August 25 under the ticker ZCSH. The debut was quiet, drawing roughly $14.8 million in first-session volume. Notably, the breakout preceded the listing by three days.
ZEC cleared its November 2025 cycle high near $750 on August 22. It then reached $888, just under the 1.272 Fibonacci extension at $903. The next extension sits at $1,099. This is an eight-year high rather than a record, since ZEC peaked above $3,190 in October 2016.
ZEC daily chart / Source: Tradingview
Meanwhile, a coinholder poll on the NU7 upgrade closes September 14. One question asks whether to replace the halving schedule with a smooth issuance curve. Rejection at $903 could return the price to the $750 breakout level, which held on August 25.
Monero (XMR) Closes In on a Record Above $800
Rank: 13Price: $536.77Market Cap: $10.13 billion
THORChain enabled native Monero swaps on August 25, allowing direct trades against Bitcoin and stablecoins without wrapping. That partly routes around the exchange delistings that hit the asset through 2025. However, XMR carries no dated September catalyst.
The chart broke above the May swing high on August 22 and added 26.5% in seven days. XMR now tests the 0.5 Fibonacci retracement at $538. Above it sits the 0.618 golden pocket at $600, then the record high of $799.89 set on January 14.
XMR daily chart / Source: Tradingview
In contrast to Zcash, this move looks derivatives-led. Open interest roughly doubled in two weeks to about $278 million, and futures volume runs far above spot. A squeeze that builds this fast can unwind just as fast. Earlier privacy coin positioning showed the same pattern.
The immediate support for XMR sits at $476.53.
Hyperliquid (HYPE) Faces a $1.2 Billion Unlock on September 29
Rank: 9Price: $81.78Market Cap: $18.18 billion
Hyperliquid routes 99% of order-book fees into buybacks, currently worth roughly $58 million to $80 million a month. A release of about 14.2 million HYPE, near $1.2 billion, lands on September 29. Roughly 47% goes to insiders.
HYPE cleared its prior record at $77 on August 22 and reached $86.71 five days later. The first target is the 1.272 extension at $92.37, followed by $111.93.
HYPE daily chart / Source: Tradingview
Historically, monthly releases moved price 14.1% lower in May, 1% higher in June, and 7% lower in July. From $81.78, that range maps to roughly $70 to $76, which brackets the $77 breakout level. Below that, support sits at $64.91, then $55.41, where the 0.618 retracement meets the trendline from January.
Uniswap (UNI) Burn Doubled to a Record in August
Rank: 29Price: $5.12Market Cap: $3.19 billion
Uniswap activated v4 protocol fees and Robinhood Chain fees in late July. August was the first full month with both running, and burn funding hit a record $8.9 million. That is roughly double the pace held since January.
UNI set a higher low on August 14, then cleared swing highs at $3.99 and $4.43. It now tests the 0.618 retracement near $4.94. Above that sit $5.66 and the January high at $6.57.
UNI daily chart / Source: Tradingview
The Senate cloture vote on the CLARITY Act falls in mid-September and needs 60 votes. Failure could stall the breakout. Therefore, the burn story needs a caveat, since a 20 million UNI annual growth budget keeps supply closer to neutral than deflationary.
Solana (SOL) Chart Improves While Network Fees Fall
Rank: 7Price: $103.33Market Cap: $60.44 billion
Validators approved SIMD-0550 on August 28, doubling annual disinflation from 15% to 30%. Bitwise crossed $1 billion in Solana ETF assets the same day. Transaction V1 then activates on September 9, raising the maximum transaction size more than threefold.
SOL broke the 0.382 retracement at $93.98 and is now confirming the 0.5 level at $104.44 as support. Volume expanded from August 19. The next target is the 0.618 retracement at $114.89.
SOL daily chart / Source: Tradingview
However, the fundamentals disagree with the chart. Network fees fell 44% quarter over quarter, and Solana’s share of global fees dropped to 17.3% from 26.6%. That divergence makes $104 the level that matters most.
What to Watch Next
The September calendar is tight. Transaction V1 lands on the 9th, the Zcash poll closes on the 14th, the CLARITY vote follows in mid-month, and Hyperliquid’s unlock arrives on the 29th.
Four of these five carry a dated event, and the leaders are extended after an eight-day breakout. Monero is the exception, so its path depends on flow rather than a catalyst.

Bitcoin (BTC) and gold have both given back much of last week’s gains. The two assets had climbed in step through August as investors piled into the debasement trade.
However, Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech on Friday broke that run.
Debasement Trade Powered the August Rally
The rally in both assets began in the bond market. The US Treasury said it will double its buyback cap for longer-dated debt to at least $4 billion.
Investors responded by crowding into alternative assets and moving out of fiat currencies. The MSCI global gold miners index gained 43% in August, its strongest month on record.
Fund flows told the same story. Gold and Bitcoin exchange-traded funds together drew $7 billion across five trading days, a record for that window.
That combination pushed gold to its highest level since mid-May. Price hit an intra-day high of $4,697 an ounce on Tuesday.
Bitcoin rode the same trade. The asset touched $81,354 on Binance last week, its highest level in about 3 months.
Both have since reversed. Gold traded around $4,432 on Monday, down 5.6% from Tuesday’s peak.
Bitcoin and Gold Price Performance. Source: TradingView
BTC has taken a similar hit. The asset changed hands near $77,411, down almost 5% from last week’s high. The drop follows Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech.
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Warsh Turns Hawkish and Hike Odds Jump
The Fed Chair used his first Jackson Hole speech on Friday to sharpen his inflation message. He gave a more hawkish reading of the economy.
“Inflation is running above our 2 percent target. So the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices,” he said.
Rate markets repriced within hours, lifting the odds of a September increase. CME FedWatch data now puts the probability of a September 16 move to a 3.75%-4.00% target range at 62.6%. That is up from 57% a day earlier and 39.9% a week ago.
Fed Rate Probabilities For September. Source: CME FedWatch
Higher policy rates raise the opportunity cost of holding assets that generate no yield. Gold and Bitcoin both fit that description, which explains why the two fell in step.
Does the Gold-Bitcoin Link Still Hold?
The pullback has not broken the pattern. Both assets declined together, which is what a shared macro driver looks like in practice.
Grayscale flagged the shift days before the selloff. Its research found that Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation with gold climbed above 50% this year, while its correlation with the Nasdaq 100 fell from over 60% to roughly 33%.
Zach Pandl, the asset manager’s Head of Research, argued the move reflects investors treating Bitcoin as a monetary hedge rather than a leveraged bet on technology stocks.
That new identity cuts both ways. An asset that trades as a monetary hedge rallies on debasement fears — and sells off when the Fed turns hawkish, regardless of what tech stocks do.
Meanwhile, some of the retreat may also be ordinary profit-taking after a steep run. Both assets remain far above where they started the month.
The September 16 meeting is now the test. If Warsh delivers the hike traders are pricing, the debasement trade will face its first genuine headwind since the bond selloff set it in motion.
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Shenzhen Longsys Electronics, a Chinese semiconductor company, is seeking up to HK$6.28 billion, or about $800 million, from a Hong Kong share sale.
The company set out the terms in a listing document on Monday. The memory chipmaker already trades in Shenzhen. Its Hong Kong offer price sits well below where the mainland stock trades.
Longsys Sells at a 45% Discount to Shenzhen
Longsys is offering about 26 million shares at a maximum price of HK$240.60 per share. That sits 45% below the 376.88 yuan close in Shenzhen on Friday, Bloomberg reported. The stock has gained nearly 33% in 2026.
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Shenzhen Longsys Electronics Stock Performance. Source: Google Finance
The company expects to set the final offer price on September 4 and publish the allocation results by September 7. Trading of its H shares is expected to begin on September 8.
Upsize options could lift the deal to $1.06 billion. The terms indicate a market value of up to $24.9 billion.
The timing favors the company. Longsys reported half-year net profit growth above 71,000% earlier this month, a jump built on soaring memory prices. Its revenue surged to 24.1 billion yuan.
Contract prices have climbed as data center operators compete for supply. The resulting AI memory shortage has lifted valuations across the sector.
About 78.3% of net proceeds will fund research and development. Cornerstone investors have agreed to take 18.89% of the shares. They include Lenovo, Transsion International, CITIC Securities Asset Management, and Lens Technology.
Memory Makers Are Absorbing Enormous Capital
Longsys is the smaller deal in a much larger run on memory. CXMT raised 66.6 billion yuan, or about $9.9 billion, last month. That ranked as China’s second-largest listing ever, and the stock passed Tencent to make CXMT the country’s most valuable listed company.
Others have already sold new stock instead. SK Hynix issued 17.79 million new shares as Nasdaq receipts in July, raising roughly $26 billion.
The appetite has limits, though. SK Hynix fell sharply in July, with KOSPI dropping 22% that month, as investors questioned AI capital spending.
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MicroStrategy resumed Bitcoin (BTC) accumulation after a 10-week hiatus, buying 4,603 BTC for $369.7 million at an average price of $80,318 per coin.
The purchase is the company’s first major acquisition since late June. It follows weeks of speculation sparked by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor’s “We’re ₿ack” post on X.
MicroStrategy Restarts Bitcoin Buying
Strategy acquired the coins between August 24 and August 30, according to a filing published Monday. Share sales paid for every dollar of it.
The company sold 4,531,421 Class A shares across the week and raised $602.8 million in net proceeds. Bitcoin claimed $369.7 million. Another $151.8 million repurchased 1,557,177 STRC preferred shares, while $50.7 million covered STRC dividends and $30 million went to cash.
Saylor had signaled a return to buying over the weekend. Monday’s numbers confirmed it.
Strategy has acquired 4,603 BTC for $370M, increased USD Cash by $29M, and repurchased $152M of $STRC. As of 8/30/26, we hold 845,050 bitcoin:native and $6.71B of USD Assets, bringing Net Leverage to 0.0%. $MSTR https://t.co/XAAEZV5Gil
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) August 31, 2026
A Shift From Capital Preservation
Through July and August, MicroStrategy acted as a net seller of Bitcoin. It shed coins, expanded dollar reserves, and serviced obligations tied to its preferred stock rather than adding to holdings.
Monday reverses the direction, though not the priority. The $151.8 million buyback extends a pattern set when the firm sold coins to support STRC in early August.
Dollar reserves finished the week at $5.10 billion, with $1.61 billion in cash and net leverage at zero.
Why Investors Are Watching
MicroStrategy now holds 845,050 BTC bought for $63.73 billion, an average of $75,412 each. Against Monday’s Bitcoin market price near $79,087, the treasury sits 4.9% above cost.
The new tranche does not. At $80,318 per coin, last week’s buy is already roughly 1.5% underwater, a $5.7 million paper loss inside seven days.
Investors will watch whether share sales keep funding purchases at this pace. Every tranche dilutes existing holders, and MSTR must trade above net asset value for the mechanism to pay off.
The next filing will reveal whether last week opened a cycle or stood alone.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said onchain reputation will soon replace traditional credit scores. He named the FICO score, the three-digit rating behind 90% of top United States lending decisions.
Armstrong was replying to Base creator Jesse Pollak, who had highlighted the rapid progress of undercollateralized onchain credit. Base is Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network.
Why Onchain Reputation Could Replace Credit Scores
FICO scores run from 300 to 850. Payment history and total debt drive 65% of the number. Credit bureaus own the inputs, and borrowers see little of the method.
Onchain reputation will be the new FICO score https://t.co/NMG56Ymv9k
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) August 31, 2026
Brian Armstrong. Source: X
Onchain reputation inverts that setup. Public ledgers already log repayment history, wallet age, and counterparty behavior. Therefore, any lender can read the same record.
Collateral still rules crypto credit, however. Galaxy Research found crypto lending fell 17% to $56.16 billion in the second quarter of this year.
Coinbase kept building anyway. The exchange expanded its Coinbase crypto lending push in February, with collateral behind every loan.
Meanwhile, DeFi has shifted toward curated risk, with DeFi lending strategy layers packaging exposure into managed vaults.
What a Wallet’s History Can and Cannot Prove
Bitcoin (BTC) shows both sides of the idea. Its ledger has logged every transaction since 2009. Anyone can trace wallet age, balances, and counterparties.
That openness stops short of identity, however. Bitcoin addresses carry no name and cost nothing to create. A borrower can drop one wallet and fund a fresh one the same day.
Scoring systems patch the gap with social data. Ethos Network, named in the post Pollak quoted, ranks wallets partly on vouches from other users. Ethos calls the output a summary of sentiment rather than proof of creditworthiness.
Credifi, the app Pollak quoted, sits on top of that number. It lends up to $3,000 against a score of 1,800, with nothing pledged behind the loan.
Armstrong has pushed this theme all year. In May he listed eight areas where he says the financial system needs updating. Institutional and public credit have drifted since, leaving the onchain economy splitting apart.
A $3,000 unsecured loan sits far from a working credit market. Default rates over the coming months will show whether onchain reputation can price real risk.