Cointelegraph

Zcash (ZEC) climbed to its highest price since 2016, extending a rally that has pushed the privacy-focused cryptocurrency’s market capitalization above $20 billion.
ZEC reached $1,249.28 before retreating to about $1,195 on Monday, according to CoinGecko data. The token gained about 45% over the past week and 138% over 30 days.
The rally leaves Zcash below its launch-era record. CoinGecko lists an all-time high of $3,191.93 on Oct. 28, 2016, when only a small supply of tokens was available.
Zcash allows users to choose between public and “shielded” transactions. The latter uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify payments without revealing the sender, recipient or transaction amount.
“For users that prioritize privacy, this could become a ‘must have’ feature,” Grayscale’s head of research, Zach Pandl, said in an Aug. 31 analysis.
Pandl said that AI could increase demand for financial privacy by making it easier to link public blockchain transactions to users’ identities.
Zcash has been on a tear since Grayscale converted its existing Zcash Trust into an exchange-traded fund. The product, trading under the ticker ZCSH, began trading on NYSE ARCA on Aug. 25, giving investors exposure to ZEC through brokerage accounts.
The ETF closed Friday at $83.77 a share, with $463.2 million in assets under management, according to the fund’s website. US markets are closed Monday for the Labor Day holiday.

Bitcoin (BTC) sees its first weekly close above $80,000 since early May as clouds gather over the US inflation outlook.
Key points:
US PPI and CPI inflation numbers are due this week prior to the Fed’s Sept. 16 decision on interest-rate changes.
Amid record currency interventions, analysis warns that Japan may not be able to sell US treasuries to help stabilize the yen in going forward.
Bitcoin’s supertrend indicator delivers its first “buy” signal since late 2025, copying the previous bear-market recovery.
CPI, PPI due as markets see 0.25% rate hike next
US inflation data returns to the forefront this week after surprise employment data pressured crypto and risk assets. The August prints of the Producer Price Index (PPI) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) are due for release on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
CPI matched market expectations at 0.1% month-on-month and 3.4% year-on-year last month, continuing on from softer-than-anticipated June results. Although the numbers paint a positive picture for inflation, Kevin Warsh, chair of the US Federal Reserve, stated that these data prints alone did not support the case for reassessing financial policy.
“Each of these broad inflation measures have fallen significantly from their highs of a few years ago, but progress through the past couple of years has been more modest, and while this summer’s PCE and CPI readings were better than expected, they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved,” he said at the Jackson Hole economic symposium in late August, referring to the Fed’s “preferred” inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index.
In response to the speech, markets priced in an increased likelihood of Federal Reserve rate hikes at its next meeting on Sept. 16. The latest data from the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool shows that consensus favors a 0.25% rate hike, with odds at 58.4%.
Fed target rate probability comparison for September FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
Fears of rate hikes were also spurred by last week’s nonfarm payrolls data, which came in far stronger than expected and included upward revisions of prior figures. The US economy added 162,000 jobs in August against a prior estimate of 56,000.
A stronger labor market reduces the need for the Fed to loosen policy, cementing the potential for rate hikes with core inflation still above its 2% target. Markets have maintained a hawkish outlook on rates. This is despite Fed governor Christopher Waller voicing support for an ongoing rate-hike pause and US president Donald Trump renewing pressure on the Fed to enact rate cuts last week.
“The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart - BE PATRIOTS for a change. High interest rates put the U.S.A. at a very unfair disadvantage, ⁠and I won’t allow that to happen!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Both PPI and CPI have the potential to alter the outlook prior to the meeting, with crypto market volatility often accompanying inflation-data prints.
Commenting, trading resource Mosaic Asset Company noted that the strong jobs numbers could still offer stocks a silver lining.
“While the knee-jerk reaction is centered around the rate outlook, it’s worth keeping in mind that good news for the economy should be good news for corporate earnings. The jobs report adds to recent data pointing to an economy expanding at solid pace, which should support the bull market looking ahead,” it wrote in analysis at the weekend.
Mosaic cautioned that seasonality could add an additional hurdle, with September traditionally equities’ worst-performing month, while November’s US midterm elections should make for more volatile conditions into Q4.
Japanese yen interventions hit record
Traders are focused on the Japanese yen as new government data reveals the extent of its record currency interventions.
On Monday, Japan’s Ministry of Finance reported that its foreign reserves had decreased by $79.57 billion from the end of July amid a record currency intervention in the yen. Japan’s currency strengthened to 155 against the US dollar as a result, still holding that area during Monday’s Asia trading session.
“Japan may have used both foreign securities and deposits, but it most likely sold U.S. Treasurys,” Atsushi Takeda, chief economist at Itochu Research Institute, told Bloomberg.
USD/JPY one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The move had potential implications beyond the yen, with US bond yields already facing pressure at the long end, prompting the Treasury to announce contingency measures set to begin on Sept. 9. Japan selling US Treasuries to fund future interventions may draw a negative response from Washington, leaving the Bank of Japan (BOJ) in a bind should yen weakness return.
“That would make it difficult for the ministry and the Bank of Japan to act going forward,” Akari Nishimura, economist at the Japan Research Institute, added.
Polymarket probabilities for BOJ rate decision on Sept. 18. Source: Polymarket
Traders now price in an interest-rate hike by the BOJ in September, with benchmark rates already at their highest since 1995 at 1.0%. Data from Polymarket currently sees 98% odds of a 0.25% increase.
Crypto markets remain highly sensitive to moves in USD/JPY and associated headlines due to the potential longer-term impact on the yen carry trade and liquidity trends.
Bitcoin spot market activity still lacking
Bitcoin still needs more spot-market participation to exit its current low-timeframe range centered around $80,000, analysis argues.
Onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant notes that upside volatility seen over the past week was accompanied by sharp upticks in open interest (OI) on derivatives exchanges. This points to derivatives traders dictating snap price moves.
“Aggregate Open Interest rose from $25.2B to $27.53B: +$2.3B (+9.24%) in a single session. On the hourly timeframe, price and OI began expanding almost simultaneously around 09:00 UTC, pointing to a strong influx of new positions,” CryptoQuant reported about a previous price move on Sept. 3, when BTC/USD last rose above $82,000.
CryptoQuant noted that Bitcoin’s realized cap — the aggregate value of the BTC supply measured by the price at which it last moved onchain — has not kept pace with moves in OI.
“The conclusion is clear: the rally had spot/on-chain participation, but the main driver was derivatives. OI expansion, aggressive buying, positive funding, and rising leverage created a structure far more dependent on futures than on realized on-chain capital,” it continued.
Cointelegraph previously reported that the lack of spot demand is a major hurdle to a sustained BTC price trend change. As BTC/USD returned investors to net profit last month, profit taking surged.
CryptoQuant warns that spot demand remains negative, with values increasingly diverging from futures on a 30-day rolling basis.
“While futures demand is driving the rise, spot demand continues to show a negative trend. This is not a good signal, as there can be no bullish rally without spot demand. Despite the rebound, the outflow of spot $BTC has increased further,” it commented.
Bitcoin demand growth comparison (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant
Last week, Cointelegraph reported on the return of negative apparent demand, which reflects that BTC’s dormant supply growth outpaced new issuance.
BTC price seals first weekly close above $80,000 in four months
Bitcoin narrowly touched $80,000 on Sunday, marking its highest weekly close since the week of May 11, per data from TradingView.
BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The $80,000 mark remains elusive support, however, with bulls unable to remain above it consistently as sell-side liquidity mounts immediately above this level. The latest data from CoinGlass shows liquidity concentrated around $80,560, forming a thick wall of resistance, which is keeping BTC/USD pinned in a narrow range.
BTC liquidation heatmap. Source: CoinGlass
Last month, onchain analytics platform Glassnode flagged large liquidity bands as key to shaping Bitcoin’s longer-term price action, highlighting a further band between $83,000 and $86,000 in particular.
“While the upward impulse consumed short orders in its path, it stopped short of the dense cluster of short liquidations situated between $83K and $86K,” it wrote in the latest edition of its regular newsletter, The Week Onchain.
“Below spot, the move left behind an intact band of long liquidation fuel between $60K and $63K. Price now trades between these two boundaries.”
Bitcoin futures liquidation heatmap. Source: Glassnode
Market participants, meanwhile, are considering where the current consolidation could resolve to fresh upside. Jesse Olson, developer of the Markets Sniper trading suite, sees BTC/USD repeating a bullish chart fractal from August 2023, with $76,000 now in sight as a local reversal point.
BTC/USD one-day chart. Source: Jesse Olson on X.com
Bitcoin supertrend bull signal copies early 2023 recovery
Sunday’s weekly close saw a classic BTC price trend indicator flip green for the first time since November 2025.
On weekly time frames, BTC/USD closed above its supertrend line, producing a “buy” signal. Supertrend employs average trend range (ATR) data and a multiplier to calculate a simple buy and sell signal, measured by its interaction with the supertrend line.
Weekly time frames draw particular attention from Bitcoin traders, as a close above the supertrend line has never occurred within a bear market. The last time that supertrend flipped from red to green was in mid-January 2023, with Bitcoin’s last bear-market bottom of $15,600 already two months behind it. Conversely, the indicator flipping from green to red has preceded the start of protracted downtrends.
BTC/USD one-week chart with supertrend data. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The signal joins a growing selection of cues that has instilled confidence in some that Bitcoin already saw its macro bottom at $57,000. In August, BTC/USD closed above its 50-week exponential moving average (EMA) for the first time since late 2025 — an event that has historically been crucial for a long-term bullish price-trend reversal.

Singapore-based financial services group DBS and American financial services giant Citi completed the first weekend tokenized cross-border payment between Singapore and the US on Saturday.
The two companies executed the transaction using tokenized deposits via the Swift Digital Ledger to bypass the constraints of traditional banking hours, DBS announced on Monday.
The deposit was finalized in minutes, which DBS called a “significant improvement” from the industry norm of as long as two business days for traditional cross-border transfers.
The transaction demonstrates how traditional banks are exploring blockchain rails for more efficient cross-border transactions while aiming to keep deposits inside banking channels. Standard Chartered and HSBC were the first to complete a tokenized cross-border transaction on Swift’s blockchain ledger in August.
In July, Swift, the world’s largest financial messaging network, said that its blockchain-based ledger was ready for initial use and that it was preparing to pilot tokenized cross-border payments with 17 major banks, including Citi and DBS, as well as HSBC, BNP Paribas, UBS, ANZ and Standard Chartered.
Citi is also one of a group of the largest US banks that plan to launch a separate tokenized deposit network in the first half of 2027 operated by The Clearing House, David Watson, CEO of the bank-owned payments operator, told The Wall Street Journal in June.
In November 2025, DBS and JPMorgan revealed plans to develop a blockchain-based tokenization framework to enable onchain transfers between their deposit token ecosystems, aiming to set an industry standard for cross-bank payments.

The Philippines’ central bank has proposed freezing new payment-system operator registrations for 12 months while imposing tighter controls on payment arrangements involving virtual asset service providers (VASPs).
Under a draft circular, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said it would suspend acceptance and processing of applications for operators of payment systems (OPS) to conduct a “holistic review” of its taxonomy and licensing framework.
Applications submitted before the suspension could continue to be evaluated, but the BSP would not approve or deny any until the pause ends. Entities would be barred from starting activities that require OPS registration unless the regulator authorizes them otherwise.
The proposal would require BSP-supervised institutions offering merchant acquisition services to handle regulated VASPs through direct merchant arrangements. Those relationships would be subject to enhanced due diligence and monitoring, transaction and settlement limits and other risk-based controls.
The requirement covers virtual asset firms that must be licensed, registered or authorized by the BSP, the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission, or another authority. VASPs are listed alongside gambling businesses, gaming providers, adult-oriented businesses and money service businesses.
The draft would take effect 15 days after publication if finalized, and the BSP is currently accepting feedback.
Cointelegraph reached out to the BSP for more information but did not receive a response before publication.

The exploiter behind the third wave of the Coldcard wallet hack has moved about 45% of their Bitcoin (BTC) haul, routing the funds through THORChain or into CoinJoin transactions, according to Galaxy Research.
In a Monday update, Galaxy said the exploiter began moving funds to Ethereum through THORChain on Sept. 2. The latest movements sent Bitcoin into CoinJoin rounds, which combine multiple users’ payments into a single transaction to make funds harder to trace.
Galaxy said the third-wave exploiter had created 293 two-of-two multisignature vaults to hold victims’ coins and was moving funds from the largest vaults in descending order of size. Funds from the 11 largest vaults have now been moved.
The transactions helped Galaxy identify a previously unknown vault that it said likely held another Coldcard victim’s funds, although the cause of that loss remained unconfirmed.
Across all waves of the Coldcard exploit, approximately 82% of the stolen Bitcoin remains in the original attacker-controlled addresses, while 18% has moved, apparently for laundering purposes, Galaxy said.
The Coldcard exploit ranks as the third-largest exploit so far in 2026, behind a $293 million Kelp DAO hack and the $280 million Drift protocol hack, according to DefiLlama.

Social trading platform Fomo generated more daily revenue than memecoin launchpad Pump.fun on Friday.
Fomo generated $1.76 million in daily revenue on Friday, compared with Pump.fun’s $1.1 million, according to DefiLlama data.
Pump.fun remains ahead over longer periods. It generated more than $57 million over the past 30 days, compared with $17.6 million for Fomo.
Fomo combines cryptocurrency trading with social features resembling a social media feed. The platform allows users to view other users’ trades.
In June, Fomo closed a $75 million Series B round led by Index Ventures, valuing the social trading app at $550 million.
The company said more than 68,000 users made their first cryptocurrency purchase on the platform using Apple Pay, accounting for about $25 million in transaction volume.
Fomo also expanded its offering beyond spot trading this year. On June 11, it launched perpetual futures contracts powered by Hyperliquid for users outside the US.
The company said on June 2 that it had paid users more than $2 million in referral fees.

Bitcoin sidechain Liquid paused operations after actors claiming to be white-hat hackers withdrew about 4,000 Bitcoin worth $320 million from its federation wallet.
On Sunday, Liquid said that bridge nodes were disabled, preventing new transactions, while exchanges had halted or were preparing to halt L-BTC deposits and withdrawals.
Blockstream, Liquid’s technology provider, started contacting the actors through signed onchain messages. Subsequent messages show the actors told Blockstream to patch the vulnerability and ensure every node was updated before they would return most of the Bitcoin.
They also sent encrypted technical details to Blockstream, according to Galaxy Digital research head Alex Thorn. At the time of writing, the funds had not been returned.
SideSwap said the withdrawal passed through its peg-out service as a customer order using its Peg-out Authorization Key (PAK), but that the key was not compromised. It said the L-BTC used in the transaction originated from a bug in Elements, the open-source software underpinning Liquid, rather than SideSwap’s systems.
Cointelegraph reached out to Liquid Network and Blockstream for comment.
The withdrawn Bitcoin represented roughly 95% of the wallet’s approximately 4,200 BTC balance before the incident. Liquid said other assets issued on the network, including USDT, DePix and real-world assets, were unaffected. The sidechain remained paused while federation members worked to fix the vulnerability.
This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

Ethereum-compatible layer-1 network Harmony proposed sunsetting its blockchain and migrating its native ONE token to Ethereum, seven years after launching its mainnet.
On Sunday, Harmony proposed taking a final network snapshot, issuing ERC-20 ONE tokens on Ethereum and migrating exchange listings. Validators would be offered options to stop their nodes, continue as governors, or join its new AI-video initiative.
Harmony described the proposal as non-binding and did not specify when the final block would be produced or whether the shutdown would be submitted to the network’s validator-led governance process.
Under Harmony’s published governance rules, elected validators can create proposals, while unelected validators may vote, with voting power based on total stake. Passage requires 51% of total stake weight to participate and 66.7% support after a seven-day introduction and 14-day vote.
Under the proposal, all ONE balances would be recorded at the network’s final block and new ERC-20 tokens airdropped to the same addresses on Ethereum. The snapshot would cover wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts and centralized exchanges, with no claims required.
However, Harmony said multisig safes, liquidity pools and onchain applications cannot be migrated, urging users to exit all smart contracts before Sept. 10. Validators may begin shutting down that day, with a $1.372 million pool set aside to compensate those that stop on time, retain their stakes and agree to serve as governors.
Harmony proposal comes weeks after an exploit
The proposal comes less than four weeks after an exploit created forged ONE tokens and led Harmony to plan a rollback that would wipe more than 109,000 transactions, marking a potential shift from repairing the network to ending it as an independent blockchain.
On Aug. 12, Harmony said it was considering a rollback after reports that an attacker had minted nearly 4 billion unauthorized ONE, equivalent to about 26% of the supply. An outside account claimed about 2.8 billion tokens reached exchanges, but Harmony had not confirmed the figures at the time.
On Aug. 17, Harmony said it planned to revert the blockchain to an Aug. 11 checkpoint, discarding 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions. It said investigators had traced nearly all the forged tokens to wallets or service boundaries and were working with exchanges, bridges and law enforcement.
Magazine: Hugging Face hack exposes the open-weight AI cybersecurity paradox

Bitcoin mined in 2010 moved from long-dormant addresses after more than 16 years, reigniting speculation over a possible link to Satoshi Nakamoto.
Twelve addresses holding a combined 600 Bitcoin (BTC), worth about $48 million, moved the coins on Saturday after more than 16 years of dormancy, according to onchain data reviewed by Cointelegraph.
Whale Alert, a blockchain transaction tracking platform, said the 600 BTC came from rewards mined across 12 Bitcoin blocks and that its research found no connection to Nakamoto.
“None of the blocks can be connected to Satoshi based on our research,” a spokesperson for Whale Alert told Cointelegraph, tempering speculation around the origins of coins mined while Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator was still active.
Whale Alert traces all 12 mining block rewards
Whale Alert traced all 12 rewards to Bitcoin blocks mined in March 2010, when each block paid a 50 BTC block subsidy. The subsidy has since been cut in half four times, most recently in April 2024, when it fell from 6.25 BTC to the current 3.125 BTC per block.
The findings expand on Whale Alert’s earlier analysis of seven of the rewards. It said in an X post on Sunday that those seven originated from blocks it had determined were not mined by Nakamoto.
The mining blocks and addresses for the 12 dormant Bitcoin rewards. Source: Whale Alert
Lookonchain, an onchain analytics platform, had also initially identified seven miner wallets that moved 350 BTC after 16.5 years of inactivity, saying the wallets earned the coins through mining in March 2010.
Satoshi-era doesn’t mean Satoshi’s Bitcoin
The movement attracted attention partly because the coins date to a period when Nakamoto was still actively involved with Bitcoin.
Nakamoto remained involved in Bitcoin development and communications through 2010 before gradually withdrawing from the project, with their last known communication dating to April 2011.
One of the 12 addresses received a 50 BTC mining reward on March 5, 2010, and moved the coins to a new address on Sept. 5, 2026. Source: Blockchain.com
Whale Alert noted that one reward moved several blocks before most of the others, saying the pattern was consistent with a test transaction before the remaining transfers.
Magazine: BTC will hit $1M by 2030... but Arthur Hayes is buying ETH instead

Orionx, a Chilean crypto exchange backed by USDt stablecoin issuer Tether, is shutting down after uncovering a multimillion-dollar issue linked to asset custody.
The exchange said it began a permanent closure process after a forensic audit found more than $7 million in custodial assets had moved to wallets it did not manage, according to a company announcement shared on X on Thursday.
“Our sole priority now is to return as much of our clients’ assets as possible,” Orionx said, adding that withdrawals are temporarily suspended.
The closure comes just 15 months after Tether led Orionx’s Series A as part of its push to expand digital asset adoption in Latin America.
Orionx leaves timing of $7 million transfers unclear
Orionx’s post did not specify when the more than $7 million in transfers occurred or how the discrepancy was initially uncovered.
As part of its efforts to comply with Chile’s Fintech Law, Orionx conducted a review of its operations in 2025 and brought in financial professionals, according to the major Chilean newspaper La Tercera, citing the company’s criminal complaint.
On Aug. 27, chief operating officer Thomas Mac Millan detected a “significant mismatch” between balances recorded in Orionx’s systems and assets actually held in custody, according to the complaint.
An internal review followed, and Orionx later commissioned an external forensic audit that compared its records with data verifiable onchain. The audit found that balances recorded in Orionx’s systems exceeded the assets held at its custody addresses for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP and Polygon (POL).
The criminal complaint reportedly alleges that assets were transferred out of Orionx’s custody between 2018 and 2021, including to accounts on other crypto platforms.
Orionx accuses co-founders, who deny wrongdoing
Orionx said it filed a criminal complaint on Wednesday against former executives Roberto Zibert and Joaquín Díaz, both co-founders who allegedly had access to the company’s crypto custody systems.
The complaint alleges that an account associated with Díaz received more than $1.5 million across 14 transfers, while another wallet allegedly received 187 Ether, more than 4.1 million USDt (USDT) and 200,000 USDC from Orionx, La Tercera reported.
Former executive and Orionx co-founder Roberto Zibert. Source: LinkedIn
Zibert and Díaz denied the allegations, saying they never acted against customers’ interests and that the cause of Orionx’s asset shortfall remains unclear.
Tether backed Orionx in 2025
Founded in Chile in 2017, Orionx grew from a retail crypto exchange into a platform offering crypto payment and financial services in Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico.
Tether invested in Orionx in June 2025, exclusively leading the exchange’s Series A funding round, according to an archived version of Tether’s announcement. The announcement is no longer available on Tether’s website.
Cointelegraph contacted Tether and Orionx for comment but had not received a response by publication.
Magazine: Tether sued over $42M in frozen coins, 6,600 students get crypto loans: Asia Express

Polish lawmakers have again failed to secure the three-fifths majority needed to overturn President Karol Nawrocki’s veto of legislation aimed at strengthening oversight of the country’s crypto market.
The Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, on Friday voted 241-198 in favor of overriding the veto, with three abstentions, falling 25 votes short of the 266 needed.
The vote was yet another attempt to advance Poland’s crypto market rules after President Karol Nawrocki vetoed crypto legislation three times, arguing that the proposed rules would overregulate the industry.
The regulatory dispute comes amid a deepening scandal involving defunct crypto exchange Zondacrypto, with its Estonian operator declared bankrupt and Prime Minister Donald Tusk citing an expanding criminal investigation to push for tighter crypto oversight.
Poland remains without MiCA crypto supervisor
The vetoed legislation was designed to establish Poland’s national framework for applying the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), including placing oversight of the crypto market under the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF).
KNF said Friday that the country still lacks a designated authority responsible for supervising the cryptoasset market, despite MiCA already applying across the European Union.
Nawrocki has said he supports crypto regulation but argues that Poland’s proposed rules go too far, citing concerns over regulatory costs and authorities’ powers to block websites.
Zondacrypto probe expands amid bankruptcy
Ahead of Friday’s vote, Tusk disclosed excerpts from what he said was testimony by a key witness in the Zondacrypto investigation, alleging payments and attempts to influence politicians linked to Poland’s previous government.
Tusk said the witness alleged a 2 million Polish zloty ($550,000) payment arrangement involving a foundation linked to former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. In separate testimony cited by Tusk, the witness alleged that an unnamed person had promised to secure a presidential pardon if the witness was convicted.
Polish prosecutors are investigating suspected fraud and money laundering connected to Zondacrypto. In July, they merged the case with a probe into the 2022 disappearance of Sylwester Suszek, founder of BitBay, which was later renamed Zondacrypto.
Prosecutors in April said losses linked to Zondacrypto were estimated at no less than 350 million Polish zlotys ($95 million).
Zondacrypto’s operator, BB Trade Estonia, was officially declared bankrupt by an Estonian court in August, with the first creditors’ meeting scheduled for Sept. 17.
Magazine: MiCA is coming for DeFi vaults, but regulation will be difficult

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have recorded their strongest three-week inflow stretch of 2026 as Bitcoin traded around $80,000.
The funds attracted $986.9 million in the week ending Friday, bringing net inflows over the past three weeks to $3.8 billion, according to SoSoValue data.
Total net assets across the funds stood at $101.3 billion on Friday after briefly rising to $103.3 billion a day earlier, while cumulative net inflows reached $55.6 billion.
ETF demand marks a sharp turnaround from heavy outflows earlier in 2026, though year-to-date net flows remain roughly $1 billion negative.
Bitcoin ETF inflows cool after Thursday surge
US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $174.6 million in net inflows on Friday, down sharply from the nearly $731 million recorded a day earlier.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the largest spot Bitcoin ETF by assets, drew $117.4 million on Friday, accounting for about 67% of the day’s total net inflows, according to Farside Investors data.
Daily spot Bitcoin ETF flows from Monday through Friday. Source: SoSoValue
Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) was the only other fund to record net inflows, attracting $57.2 million, while all other US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded no net flows for the day.
The slowdown came as Bitcoin fell from around $81,200 to briefly below $79,000 on Friday. Bitcoin traded at $79,716 at the time of publication, still up about 2.6% over the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.
Bitcoin ETF demand strengthens as Ether, XRP flows fade
Compared with the previous week, Bitcoin ETF inflows increased about 7%, while inflows into US spot Ether and XRP ETFs fell about 74% and 83%, respectively.
Spot Ether ETF inflows dropped to $218.4 million from $824.4 million, while XRP ETF inflows declined to $19 million from $110.5 million, according to SoSoValue.
Despite weaker inflows, Ether and XRP ETFs remain in positive territory for the year. US spot Ether ETFs have recorded about $863 million in net inflows year-to-date, while XRP ETFs have attracted roughly $515 million.
Magazine: BTC will hit $1M by 2030... but Arthur Hayes is buying ETH instead

Key points:
The US economy added 162,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in August, nearly triple economists’ consensus estimate of 56,000.
Bitcoin sold off from $81,300 to local lows of $78,600 following the data, before recovering to $79,500.
A rival Bitcoin fork using the Blake2b algorithm saw its first trading activity, with coins changing hands at $350 on exchange Neoxa.
Labor market beats expectations threefold
According to data released on Friday, the US economy added 162,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in August, significantly outperforming economists’ consensus expectations of roughly 56,000 jobs. In response to the announcement, Bitcoin (BTC) sold off from $81,300 to local lows of $78,600. At the time of writing it stands at $79,500.
Recent economic data carries added weight, given how divided rate outlooks remain ahead of the next Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on Sept. 15-16. Under previous Federal Reserve chairs, expectations ahead of the FOMC were mostly well-anchored. However, the lack of forward guidance from Chair Kevin Warsh, along with potential dissenters in the committee, has resulted in added uncertainty.
After Fed Governor Christopher Waller said on Thursday that he would favor a rate pause pending upcoming inflation data, Polymarket probabilities swung to 60% in favor of a pause and 40% for a 25 basis-point interest rate hike. Friday’s labor market data however, drove the implied probabilities back to a 50/50 split.
Implied Probabilities for the Sep. 16 FOMC rate decision. Source: Polymarket
In response to the strong labor market data, US President Donald Trump leveled new rate-cut demands. “The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart - BE PATRIOTS for a change,” he stated in a Truth Social post and continued: “High interest rates put the U.S.A. at a very unfair disadvantage, ⁠and I won’t allow that to happen!”
Trump had frequently criticized former Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting rates, but had held back from making similar statements toward Warsh until Friday.
Blake2b version of Bitcoin attracts first liquidity
When the BIP-110 soft fork activated on Aug. 7, the Bitcoin network briefly split into two competing chains: one enforcing BIP-110’s new rules and another continuing under the existing rules. The BIP-110 side largely stalled because miners did not devote enough computing power to extending that chain.
BIP-110 supporters viewed miners’ refusal to follow the user-activated soft fork (UASF) as evidence that Bitcoin’s mining layer has become too centralized. That criticism was sharpened by the absence of an organized counter-effort from the Bitcoin Core side, such as a user-rejected soft fork (URSF). Only five mining pools control the vast majority of Bitcoin’s hashrate, concentrating significant influence over which chain is extended and which transactions are included in blocks.
Bitcoin Network Hashrate Distribution. Source: Blockchain.com
In response, a subset of BIP-110 supporters, led by LukeDashjr, decided to continue the BIP-110 chain with a change in the proof-of-work algorithm to Blake2b to allow for a new, more decentralized set of miners to emerge using DATUM gateway technology. The corresponding hard fork was initiated on Aug. 30. Every address that held SHA-256 Bitcoin before Aug. 7 (and possibly after) will hold an equivalent amount on the Blake2b version of Bitcoin. So far, the only exchange listing Blake2b Bitcoin is Neoxa. While liquidity remains thin, Blake2b coins are currently trading at $350 against USDC with a 1.1% spread.
BTCB2/USDC orderbook. Source: Neoxa Exchange

Pineapple Financial has moved more than $1 billion in residential mortgage records onto Injective, a layer-1 blockchain focused on financial applications, as part of a broader effort to migrate its historical loan portfolio onchain.
Pineapple plans to eventually migrate more than 29,000 funded mortgages worth over $10 billion onto the network, Injective said Friday. Each mortgage is represented by an onchain record tied to the underlying loan file, rather than being repackaged as a new mortgage security.
The records contain more than 500 data points, including loan-level information designed to support verification, audit trails and risk analysis. Pineapple’s dashboard shows that the migration now includes 2,079 mortgage records, up from 1,259 when the initiative launched in December 2025.
PAPL0, which tracks the mortgage records onchain, has an asset market cap of about $1.1 billion, up 48.2% over the past nine months, according to Token Terminal data. The tokens represent mortgage records rather than ownership of the underlying loans.
PAPL0 market cap on Injective. Source: Token Terminal
The mortgage migration is part of Pineapple’s broader relationship with Injective, which includes a separate $100 million Injective (INJ) digital asset treasury. Pineapple stakes INJ from the treasury, with Kraken serving as a primary validator for the holdings.
Real estate tokenization gains momentum
Real estate has become a growing focus of the push to bring traditionally illiquid assets onchain, where tokenization can make property or investment interests easier to divide, transfer and access.
In June, Apex Group joined Goldman Sachs, Archax and LRC Group on a tokenized real estate fund whose shares are issued as digital tokens through Goldman Sachs’ Digital Asset Platform. The structure gives investors blockchain-based ownership of fund shares, rather than simply recording property data onchain.
Dubai has also expanded its real estate tokenization efforts. In February, the Dubai Land Department launched the second phase of a pilot after about $5 million in property had been tokenized, with transactions recorded on the XRP Ledger.
However, tokenized real estate still remains a small part of the broader real-world asset (RWA) market. The sector has about $226.5 million in distributed value, up 11.7% over the past 30 days, compared with $38.8 billion across tokenized RWAs tracked by RWA.xyz.
Tokenized real estate. Source: RWA.xyz
Magazine: Token buybacks are booming. But are they good for crypto projects?

An analysis from the US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) identified $12.7 billion in crypto transactions “perpetrated by overseas scam centers.”
According to a FinCEN report released on Thursday, an analysis of more than 33,000 reports filed between September 2023 and December 2025 of suspected crypto scams revealed about $13 billion in financial transactions. The digital asset-based scams included instances of pig butchering, romance scams and “cryptocurrency confidence schemes,” in which a victim is manipulated into investing in crypto with false promises of large returns.
“Digital asset investment scams pose one of the most significant fraud threats facing Americans today,” said Gene Lange, performing the duties of Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
FinCEN reported that the scams were largely the actions of “transnational criminal organizations” based in compounds in Southeast Asia.
Lawmakers in some of the affected countries have been attempting to crack down on the “scam centers.” Myanmar’s Parliament approved legislation in July that could impose up to life in prison for operators who used violence, torture, and unlawful arrest or detention to force people into participating, while lawmakers in Cambodia proposed a similar law in April, which included possible prison time.

Crypto’s August rally put corporate conviction to the test. Bitcoin (BTC) miners that spent much of the crypto downturn courting AI investors are once again trading like leveraged bets on BTC, while Strategy and Strive are adding thousands more Bitcoin to their balance sheets.
The same concentration is playing out elsewhere. Bitmine is closing in on owning 5% of Ether’s (ETH) circulating supply despite billions in unrealized losses, while 21 major financial institutions are taking a different approach by developing stablecoins for payments and settlement.
Bitcoin rally puts miners back in the spotlight
Bitcoin’s August rally lifted beaten-down mining stocks by as much as 67%, reversing a trend that had favored miners pivoting to AI and underscoring the sector’s continued sensitivity to BTC market conditions.
BlocksBridge Consulting reported in a recent newsletter that Bitcoin’s roughly 23% rally in late August outpaced most AI-linked infrastructure stocks. Canaan, American Bitcoin and Cango gained between 41% and 67%, compared with about 21% for CoreWeave, 17% for Nebius and 15% for IREN. Meanwhile, some miners with greater exposure to AI and high-performance computing were flat or declined.
BlocksBridge cited three catalysts for the rally: an expansion of US Treasury liquidity-supporting buybacks, renewed regulatory optimism following a White House crypto meeting and a sharp short squeeze that liquidated more than $1.6 billion in positions.
The outperformance suggests investors may once again be rewarding direct Bitcoin exposure, although the sector still faces risks from the high costs of building out AI data-center capacity.
Strive, Strategy add to Bitcoin holdings as BTC rallies
Strive and Strategy added billions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin to their corporate treasuries in the final week of August, with Strive buying 1,800 BTC for approximately $143 million and Strategy acquiring another 4,603 BTC.
Strive’s purchases between Aug. 24 and Aug. 28 lifted its holdings to 23,156 BTC, making it the fifth-largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holder. The company paid an average of $79,431 per BTC, including fees and expenses, after buying 1,110 BTC the prior week at an average price of $73,409.
Strategy, meanwhile, resumed buying, acquiring 4,603 BTC at an average price of $80,318 and lifting its holdings above 845,000 BTC after four sales since May.
The purchases coincided with a broader digital asset recovery that began Aug. 19, after the US Treasury announced plans to double certain long-term bond buybacks.
21 financial institutions plan a G7 stablecoin venture for 2027
A consortium of 21 major financial institutions, including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Citi, plans to establish a new company to develop and issue stablecoins, marking another sign of traditional finance’s push into digital dollars as regulatory frameworks take shape.
The group intends to launch a US dollar-denominated stablecoin in the first half of 2027 before expanding to other G7 currencies, with a euro offering next. The stablecoin will target wholesale, institutional and retail markets for cross-border payments and digital asset settlement.
The venture builds on an initiative announced last October by 10 banks exploring a 1:1 reserve-backed digital money on public blockchains. The consortium now spans North America, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and intends to comply with both the US GENIUS Act and the EU’s MiCA regulation.
Bitmine nears 5% of Ether supply after 65-week buying streak
Bitmine has extended its Ether buying streak to 65 consecutive weeks, adding 53,501 ETH last week as a broader crypto market recovery lifted the value of its digital asset portfolio.
The latest purchase brought Bitmain’s holdings to more than 5.9 million ETH, valued at roughly $14.8 billion based on an Ether price of $2,511 as of Sunday. The company now owns 4.9% of Ethereum’s 120.7 million circulating supply, putting it within striking distance of its stated 5% goal.
Bitmine chairman Tom Lee said Ether, Bitcoin and Solana have been the three best-performing major assets since June 30, with ETH leading gains.
“We believe this sets the stage for institutions to add to their crypto holdings given the substantial outperformance versus other macro assets,” Lee said.
Despite the accumulation, Bitmine is sitting on roughly $5.1 billion in unrealized losses on its Ether holdings, according to DropsTab data, reflecting sustained buying through the downturn that began in late 2022.
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Post-quantum infrastructure company QuFi Network has launched a verification platform designed to protect digital assets against future quantum computing threats without requiring changes to existing blockchain settlement networks.
The platform separates verification from settlement, using a decentralized network of nodes to validate transactions with post-quantum cryptography before they are settled on existing blockchain networks.
QuFi also launched uBTC, a proof-of-concept that applies the verification system to Bitcoin (BTC) and is currently operating on Bitcoin Testnet4. The uBTC system verifies BTC collateral and generates cryptographic proofs governing how value moves between settlement environments, while redemptions ultimately settle as standard Bitcoin transactions.
The platform uses three post-quantum cryptographic standards — ML-DSA-65, SLH-DSA and ML-KEM-1024 — for digital signatures and secure key exchange.
QuFi said the external verification layer is intended to avoid the added storage, bandwidth and computing demands that can come with adopting larger post-quantum signatures directly on individual blockchains.
Crypto ramps up quantum defenses
The platform arrives amid a series of recent efforts to prepare blockchain networks for potential quantum computing threats.
In August, StarkWare tested a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction on mainnet without requiring a fork. However, the transaction took hours of computation and cost roughly $150 to $200, and its nonstandard format required direct submission to a miner.
Jonas Nick announces the BIP SHRINCS proposal on Aug. 26. Source: Jonas Nick
The same month, banks and regulators across Europe, the Middle East and Asia joined a pilot testing post-quantum wallets and onchain transfers using ML-DSA-65, one of the same cryptographic standards incorporated into QuFi’s platform. Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation dropped the Poseidon hash function from its planned post-quantum architecture in favor of established alternatives such as SHA or BLAKE.
Bitcoin developers are also exploring protocol-level defenses. In August, Blockstream researchers published a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal for SHRINCS, an experimental post-quantum signature scheme designed to reduce the size and performance costs associated with quantum-resistant signatures.
The approach comes with trade-offs. SHRINCS uses stateful signatures to reduce their size, requiring wallets to track previously used signing keys. The scheme remains in an early stage without a completed security proof, and its design adds complexity and potential user failure modes.
Magazine: Bitcoin’s new quantum defenses, 18.9M SOL cancelled: Hodler’s Digest

The National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) has dropped its opposition to a cryptocurrency market structure bill scheduled for a vote later this month when the US Senate returns to session.
In a Thursday letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the US law enforcement group said that it was changing its position on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act to “neutral.” The NSA cited the “significant work undertaken by Congress, the Administration, and stakeholders to navigate the many legal, regulatory, and enforcement considerations involved” in addressing the bill.
“At this time, we believe the most appropriate course is to step back and allow the legislative process to proceed to establish a clear, effective, and much needed regulatory framework,” said NSA president Troy Wellman and CEO and executive director Justin Smith.
The NSA previously expressed opposition to provisions in the CLARITY Act, saying it had “significant concerns” about amendments to exempt crypto mixers from many registration requirements. According to the group, the provision could “[impair] law enforcement’s ability to trace transactions and digital assets, and recover victims’ money.”
“The CLARITY Act protects the crypto industry, not the public,” said Sheriff Jim Skinner in a July video from the NSA.
Passed by the US House of Representatives in July 2025, the CLARITY Act has faced several hurdles since it was sent to the Senate for consideration. Although the Senate agriculture and banking committees passed their versions of the bill in 2026, many interest groups and lawmakers continue to raise concerns about aspects of the legislation, including stablecoin rewards, tokenized equities and potential conflicts of interest from President Donald Trump and his family.
Before breaking in August, Thune filed a motion to hold a cloture vote on the bill on Sept. 15 after senators return from state work periods.
US regulators to move forward without CLARITY?
In August, Trump stood alongside the heads of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and several digital asset companies to push for passage of CLARITY. SEC Chair Paul Atkins and CFTC Chair Michael Selig — both nominated by Trump — have signaled that their agencies would address crypto regulation if Congress were unable to pass the market structure bill.
Magazine: Token buybacks are booming. But are they good for crypto projects?

As the industry matures and borrows more pages out of TradiFi’s playbook, crypto projects are starting to adopt some of the behaviors of public companies.
The latest craze rocking cryptoville is token buybacks: using revenue to buy back your own token.
So far in 2026, crypto projects have spent about $640 million on the practice, up around 17% from the same period the year prior, and an order of magnitude more than the $366,000 spent in 2024. Hyperliquid and Pump.fun accounting for almost 90% of the current spend.
So what’s the sudden appeal?
Buybacks can create demand for a token, while burns can reduce the supply making each token more valuable. That dynamic can cause upward pressure on the token price.
It also gives holders a more tangible connection to the economic activity on the underlying protocol. Orest Gavryliak, chief legal officer at decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch, tells Magazine:
“When projects implement revenue-funded buybacks and burns, they typically have one of two objectives in mind: either to decrease the token supply in circulation or to demonstrate the rationale for investing in protocol revenues.”
Gavryliak says that telling users a project has “bought and burned tokens” is “much more straightforward” than explaining how governance rights work, how fees are set, or how the protocol is used.
But there’s a flipside: every dollar a protocol spends buying its token is a dollar it could have spent hiring developers, expanding the business, strengthening its balance sheet or building the product.
So, as buybacks become one of crypto’s hottest tokenomics tools, are they actually good for the projects using them?
Why crypto projects are buying themselves
You might wonder if projects buying their own token is counterproductive. After all, projects typically sell tokens to raise funds to cover costs.
Almost, but with an important caveat. Using revenue generated to buy back tokens (and then to hold them or burn them) creates an implicit connection between the success of the protocol and the value of its token. That’s something crypto projects have long struggled with. As Max Shannon, senior research associate at Bitwise Europe, explains:
“Buybacks and burns remain an effective way to accrue value to tokenholders: they create a continuous bid in the open market for the token, directly tethering token success to the platform’s adoption.”
That marks a sea-change for an industry that has spent the past couple of years chasing narratives or speculating on the greater fool theory — users who bought Fartcoin or Peanut the Squirrel didn’t do so for their sound economic models.
Some protocols are taking the idea much further than others. Hyperliquid, for example, has used 99% of its revenue to buy back and burn HYPE and 50% of Pump.fun’s revenue goes toward buying and burning its token, with $446.65 million worth of PUMP already removed from circulation.
HYPE Burns. Source: Hyperliquid
DeFi infrastructure protocol Spark offers a slightly different model, acquiring over 143 million SPK through open-market buybacks funded by protocol surplus, according to co-founder and chief executive Sam MacPherson.
But those tokens were not burned, and instead remain in the Spark treasury to reward long-term participants in the ecosystem. MacPherson tells Magazine the point is not simply to reduce supply:
“Tokenholders should participate in the long-term economic success of the protocol, rather than simply receive a distribution every time it generates revenue.”
He says buybacks allow Spark to create that alignment while “retaining flexibility over how and when the acquired SPK is ultimately deployed,” allowing the protocol to make its token economically relevant rather than “a simple dividend mechanism.”
Token buybacks are also a highly tax effective way to return revenue to holders, because users don’t cop a hefty tax bill on dividends or rewards.
Is buying the token really the best use of the money?
While that all sounds perfectly rational, the bigger question is whether buying your own token is really the best use of a project’s funds?
Probably not in every case. MacPherson says:
“The question should be: what is the highest-value use of the next dollar of surplus?”
If a protocol can reinvest capital at attractive returns, he says, that can be “far more valuable” than simply distributing revenue as it arrives.
PUMP Burns. Source: Pump.fun
Buybacks can support token economics without actually improving the underlying business.
There is also no ironclad guarantee that buybacks will translate into higher token prices. Pump.fun has been aggressively buying and burning PUMP since July 2025, but the token is still hovering 50% below its September 2025 all-time high. UNI has also given back around half of the gains it made after Uniswap unveiled its UNIfication proposal in November 2025.
Shannon points out that “many factors” contributed to those price movements, so they don’t prove buybacks failed, but:
“They have prompted investors to debate whether these startup-like projects would be better served by reducing the share of revenue committed to buybacks and burns and reinvesting more in the team and the project itself.”
Investors should make a careful distinction between a buyback scheme that pumps prices, and a successful business model.
A sustainable protocol that generates genuine surplus may decide that buying its token is the best use of some of that money, but equally a project that’s limping along might simply attempt to buyback tokens to move the price. MacPherson notes:
“A buyback doesn’t make an unsustainable protocol sustainable.”
When a token starts looking like a stock
While token buybacks may superficially resemble share buyback program, that doesn’t mean tokens are becoming more like stocks.
UNI is down around 50% since it started buybacks and burns. Source: Coingecko
A shareholder owns part of a company and may have voting rights, dividends or a claim on its residual assets. Tokenholders generally do not have those same legal rights, and Orest says that distinction is critical. “This is a market mechanism, not a legally enforceable entitlement,” he says.
MacPherson describes SPK as a form of “pseudo-equity” for an onchain protocol. While there isn’t a legal ownership structure in the traditional corporate sense, economically Spark is “trying to create many of the same characteristics: participation in governance, long-term alignment, and a mechanism through which those most committed to the protocol can benefit from its success.”
When buybacks start looking like dividends
But as crypto starts to emulate TradFi buybacks, storm clouds may be gathering on the horizon, as regulators consider what those mechanisms actually amount to.
While the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act of 2025 remains a draft and should not be treated as settled law, Gavryliak says its proposed framework highlights the key question of where a token’s value comes from:
“If it stems from the functionality of the network itself, then the asset looks like a commodity. But if the value is based on the efforts of the project’s team in matters of shipping, marketing, or providing returns to token holders, then it is already a security. In the end, don’t put the clothes of a stock on the token and expect it to be a commodity.”
At the end of the day, crypto investors want to know what sits underneath a token — revenue, users, sustainable economics — and some credible way for the token to benefit from those things.
While buybacks may offer a solution, they can also be just another piece of financial engineering that makes a token look more valuable than it actually is without fixing the issues underneath, as Gavryliak points out:
“If the buybacks stopped, would there still be a reason to hold the token? If the answer is no, the problem runs deeper than tokenomics.”
Magazine: Mystery surrounds why an OG burned $1M in Bitcoin

Revolut and Andreessen Horowitz-backed crypto banking startup OpenReserve have received preliminary US regulatory approval to establish national banks, with both companies planning to offer cryptocurrency and stablecoin-related services.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted preliminary conditional approval for Revolut to move forward with a proposed bank in Connecticut and OpenReserve with one in Utah, according to separate decisions published Wednesday.
The OCC said Revolut wants its own US bank to provide services at lower cost and with greater efficiency than its current model, which relies on Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)-insured partner banks.
Revolut plans to offer digital asset custody and allow customers to use crypto assets, including stablecoins, for cross-border transfers. It also plans to offer Revolut-branded stablecoins issued by a third party.
Founded in 2025 by MoneyLion founder and former CEO Dee Choubey, OpenReserve is building a blockchain-based bank designed to offer traditional banking services alongside tokenized deposits and digital asset services.
OpenReserve plans tokenized deposits, digital asset custody and a subsidiary that would issue US dollar-backed stablecoins, though it has not yet filed an application for the subsidiary.
The banks cannot open until they meet the OCC’s preopening requirements and receive final approval.