Cointelegraph

HYPE treasury company Hyperliquid Strategies increased its equity facility with Chardan Capital Markets from $1 billion to $2.5 billion, giving the company additional capacity to raise capital through share sales.
In a Tuesday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Hyperliquid Strategies said it amended its October 2025 Chardan Equity Facility purchase agreement to increase the aggregate gross purchase price of newly issued common shares.
The agreement allows Hyperliquid Strategies to periodically direct Chardan, a New York-based investment bank and broker-dealer, to purchase shares subject to pricing, trading volume, and other conditions. Chardan can subsequently resell the shares in the public market.
The increased facility gives the company more potential funding for its HYPE-focused treasury strategy, but drawing on it would issue additional shares and could dilute existing shareholders. The $2.5 billion represents the maximum capacity rather than funds already raised.
Hyperliquid Strategies previously reported raising $647 million through the facility and expanding its treasury to about 29.3 million HYPE tokens.
The expansion follows renewed market interest in Hyperliquid. HYPE jumped more than 20% in August after US President Donald Trump said Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig was working to bring the decentralized trading platform into the US “in a fully compliant and legal fashion.”
Hyperliquid Strategies shares rose 30.4% following Trump’s remarks. Despite sharing the protocol’s name and holding its native token, the company says it is independent and not affiliated with Hyperliquid.

Core DAO is coordinating an emergency hard fork after validators claimed more CORE rewards than the blockchain intended to issue.
In an update, Core said the incident had been contained and that “malicious validators” could no longer draw excess rewards. It said the fork would be a forward upgrade and would not roll back the network or reverse any previously confirmed transactions.
This followed an earlier status update on Monday, in which Core said a small number of validators had accrued rewards significantly above the protocol’s intended issuance. It said the incident was limited to reward issuance and that user assets remained safe, adding that it would publish a technical postmortem.
Several exchanges restricted CORE transfers around the time of the incident. Coinbase paused sends and receives on the Core network, while Bithumb and Coinone suspended deposits and withdrawals, citing suspected or confirmed security concerns.
Bitget also suspended CORE deposits and withdrawals, citing wallet maintenance, while LBank suspended deposits because of what it described as the project’s requirements.
Core has not disclosed how much CORE was issued, how long the activity continued, or whether any of the additional tokens entered circulation. It also has not explained the vulnerability that enabled the validators to obtain the rewards. However, Core said it would publish a technical postmortem.
Cointelegraph contacted Core for further information but had not received a response by publication.

Sentiment in crypto has dived lower than a snailfish in the Mariana Trench in recent months.
Miners are capitulating to AI, cold wallets are getting exploited, and you can hardly fire up LinkedIn without reading another message from a newly unemployed crypto journalist searching for new opportunities. Even for an industry that’s endured nation-state bans, exchange blowups, and years of regulatory pressure, morale has rarely felt this low.
With business models failing and public interest dropping, many long-term crypto fans have begun to question whether we’ve all wasted a decade of our lives on a pipe dream.
Source: Ash Crypto
Until the price went up, that is.
Bitcoin has just seen its best August in years with a 26% return, while Ethereum gained 34%. President Trump even sang the praises of a decentralized offshore perpetual futures venue at the White House. Crypto’s finally getting interesting again.
But a short-term price rise doesn’t mean all our dreams have come true. For anyone who spent years advocating for sovereign F-you money outside the control of the state and centralized entities, a custodial ETF is not exactly a version of BTC that sticks it to the man.
And there’s another problem with calling this a victory lap: many of the companies that helped build crypto’s foundations are no longer around to enjoy the latest pump.
Take BitMEX, one of the industry’s first Bitcoin futures exchanges that pioneered the perpetual swap and 100x leverage for degens. It’s shutting down operations in September after 11 years.
Former chief executive Stephan Lutz tells Magazine that BitMEX was a victim of its own success.
“Every legitimate crypto exchange is using the perpetual swap... every legitimate crypto exchange uses the funding mechanism to bring longs and shorts together that the founders invented originally… That isn’t going away… It’s just not a differentiating factor anymore.”
So what if crypto won — just not in the way we thought it would?
Crypto’s impact means it wasn’t a waste of time
Lutz doesn’t think crypto can simply disappear anymore because the technology has become too deeply embedded in traditional finance to be unwound.
“From my point of view, we passed the point of no return,” he says.
Utkarsh Ahuja, founder of Moon Pursuit Capital, agrees that crypto proponents have not wasted their lives, and points to the industry’s impact on payment rails, settlement and tokenization.
Stablecoins, he says, can have a “very, very lasting impact” as they become integrated into financial payment infrastructure, and “you can literally tokenize anything.”
He points to crypto’s spillover into energy, healthcare and AI, arguing that the technology is being widely used beyond the industry that created it.
Decentralized finance has also made a meaningful impact on the world and is now closer to infrastructure, than an experiment. Wanja Oberhof, chief executive of Subsquid Labs, tells Magazine:
“DeFi built the first financial system where you don’t have to trust the operator’s word: you can verify the ledger yourself, in real time, down to every transaction.”
Settlement happens in minutes rather than days, he says, while markets run 24/7 and lending protocols can clear billions transparently:
“No bank consortium ever shipped anything like it. DeFi removed the intermediary and kept the market.”
But while DeFi’s infrastructure has greatly improved, Oberhof concedes the industry “over-promised on timelines and under-delivered on user experience.”
He says the real win will come when the technology “disappears into products people use without thinking about it.”
Institutions are adopting blockchain technology like crazy, and tokenized funds, stablecoins and blockchain-based settlement are no longer ideas confined to the hallways of crypto conferences.
But crypto isn’t so much replacing the financial system as being absorbed by it.
The crypto industry’s success is a key reason it no longer feels as exciting or impactful. The more TradFi becomes involved, the more boring crypto seems, especially when compared to the days when the Long Island Iced Tea Corp changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp back in December 2017 and the stock price surged 500%. (It was delisted two months later for misleading the market).
Ether printed a God candle on Aug. 22. Source: Lark Davis
Regulation has also made crypto much more legitimate but duller at the same time.
The EU has implemented its Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA). The US has gone from treating crypto largely as a regulatory headache to building a framework around it. Senators may even pass the CLARITY act one day.
What did we lose along the way?
Despite increasing legitimacy, the crypto industry has failed to deliver on many things it promised. Dentacoin failed to revolutionize the dental industry. Bitcoin did not stop all wars. Ethereum is not the default home for global finance (at least, not yet.) Ahuja says:
“Has it delivered enough? Not yet, in my opinion. But has it changed our perception completely? Yes, it has.”
The audience has changed too.
Crypto is no longer some fringe hobby for a tiny band of libertarian cypherpunks and meme-weilding frog armies on Crypto Twitter.
Around one in five American adults, or 19%, now says they have invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency, according to Pew Research Center.
Broader ownership hasn’t made crypto easier to use. In fact, the explosion of assets and platforms has made the market harder to navigate. Users have to contemplate multiple networks, wallets, exchanges, bridges and onramps, creating the extra layers of friction that crypto was supposed to eliminate.
One in five Americans has used crypto. Source: Pew Research Center
Ahuja points to another irony: an asset class designed to be borderless is increasingly being shaped by national regulatory regimes, making it harder to move seamlessly across jurisdictions.
One Dubai-based crypto user Magazine spoke with receives their salary every month into a large centralized crypto exchange. They say they lose money when converting USDT into local currency, and then have to pay a flat 75 AED fee (roughly 20 USD) just to withdraw. They say:
“I wish I could receive a bank transfer instead.”
And then there’s the most basic promise of all: self-custody, arguably the biggest paradox the industry faces because the more valuable Bitcoin becomes, the more dangerous it is to hold your own private keys — whether for fear of being bludgeoned to death by a wrench or having your cold wallet exploited by an AI agent.
Arguably it’s this failure to deliver the future crypto once promised, that has made the bear market shutdowns and closures hit even harder.
Layoffs are rampant throughout the industry. Projects that survived even the grizzly 2022 bear market have been shutting down this year, or being forced to reinvent themselves as the money and users pivot to AI — which is newer but has seen adoption crypto can only dream of so far.
Lutz doesn’t see BitMEX’s fate as evidence that the technology failed; quite the opposite: the technology worked so well that everyone copied it, and the industry has moved from a race to invent the infrastructure to a brutal fight over market share. He says:
“Now the differentiating factor is your aggressiveness in the competition, which is a completely different game. Some play that very well, others don’t.”
Perhaps the companies and projects that built crypto were never going to be the ones that ultimately benefited most from its adoption.
So have we wasted our lives?
Well, the purists may not have gotten their sovereign money, the early companies may not have survived, and the average user may still be waiting to catch a break.
But the technology is here, the infrastructure is becoming the rails, and the 20% daily candles sure are fun to watch.
And one thing that’s always been true, when the price starts going up, the narratives change quickly to explain why it may keep going up forever.
Magazine: Do the Coldcard attacks mean all hardware wallets are now insecure?

An affiliate of the political action committee (PAC) Fairshake, which was responsible for pouring more than $130 million in ads and media in the 2024 election cycle, is supporting at least one candidate in Tuesday’s primary in Massachusetts.
According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records as of Tuesday, the Protect Progress PAC, a Fairshake affiliate, spent just over $189,000 on media to support Representative Jake Auchincloss running for reelection in Massachusetts’ 4th congressional district. Some of the funds, according to Democratic candidate Jason Poulos, were used to create “AI-generated slop mailers” supporting Auchincloss ahead of the Massachusetts primary, scheduled for Tuesday.
In an Aug. 16 letter, Poulos called on the Democratic lawmaker to “publicly renounce” Protect Progress’ efforts to potentially influence the primary and general election. The candidate claimed Auchincloss had accepted $77,500 directly from “crypto-industry sources” since 2020, pointing to the Massachusetts lawmaker’s record in voting for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in July 2025 — a market structure bill not signed into law as it awaits consideration in the Senate.
Protect Progress PAC mailer supporting Jake Auchincloss. Source: Jason Poulos
The $189,000 in spending marked Fairshake’s latest attempt to influence the 2026 elections through media and ads unrelated to candidates’ positions on crypto and blockchain. After the PAC and its affiliates spent about $3.6 million on House and Senate races in Alaska, Florida and Wyoming in August, Fairshake reported having $122 million cash on hand ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“With dozens of wins in House and Senate races across the country, and $122 million ready for the fall, we’re not slowing down heading into November,“ Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter said in August.
Massachusetts will be one of the last US states to hold primaries, with just over two months until the general election. New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware are all scheduled to hold primaries in September.

Binance is expanding further into traditional finance by launching options trading on more than 1,000 US stocks and exchange-traded funds for eligible users outside the United States.
The options will be offered through Binance’s Abu Dhabi-regulated broker-dealer, Nest Trading, with orders routed to US-registered Alpaca Securities for execution, clearing, settlement and custody.
The launch builds on Binance’s existing equities offering of more than 7,000 US stocks and ETFs and adds to a growing lineup of traditional financial products available through the platform.
Unlike equity-linked perpetual futures, the options are physically settled, meaning users who exercise them receive or deliver the underlying shares.
According to Binance, the expansion comes as trading in traditional financial products on the platform has accelerated, with TradFi perpetual futures volume reaching about $433 billion in August, roughly 15 times January’s total.
Tokenized stock market surges as exchanges expand offerings
As crypto exchanges and traditional brokerages expand into tokenized equities, the onchain stock market has expanded sharply over the past year.
Tokenized stocks now have about $2.6 billion in distributed value, up from roughly $346 million at the same time last year, according to RWA.xyz data. Monthly transfer volume has also climbed 93% over the past 30 days to $25.1 billion, while the number of holders has surged 157% to nearly 2.5 million.
The value of tokenized stocks. Source: RWA.xyz
Last week, Coinbase brought its B20 tokenized equities to Base, giving eligible non-US users 24/7 access to onchain versions of stocks including Apple, Nvidia, Meta and Alphabet. The assets can also be integrated into DeFi protocols for uses such as trading and collateralized borrowing.
Kraken also pushed deeper into equities in August, opening access to more than 7,000 US-listed stocks for eligible European customers and placing them alongside its growing lineup of tokenized xStocks.
In July, US online brokerage Robinhood launched Robinhood Chain alongside a new generation of Stock Tokens available to eligible users in more than 120 countries.
Magazine: Mystery surrounds why an OG burned $1M in Bitcoin

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has reportedly frozen 10 million pounds, or about $13.5 million, as part of an investigation into online sports company Sorare.
According to a Monday report from UK news outlet The Sun, the NCA was conducting a probe into Sorare over claims of unlicensed gambling. The company is behind digital trading cards on the blockchain and signed a four-year, $162-million partnership deal with the Premier League in 2023, which was terminated at the end of last season.
The Sun reported that the NCA froze $13.5 million in cash following a January 2025 order from the Westminster magistrates’ court. A spokesperson reportedly said that the order was intended “to prevent dissipation of the funds while the NCA investigates any potential links between those funds and alleged third-party criminality.”
In June, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it had sent letters to clubs in the Premier League, warning about “questionable sponsorship deals” with companies not authorized to operate in the country, including those involved with crypto.
Some of the Premier League clubs have crypto-related sponsors for the upcoming season, including stablecoin issuer Circle for Chelsea and the OKX exchange for Manchester City. However, the number of sponsorship deals between crypto companies and sports teams globally has reportedly declined since 2022 following the market downturn and concerns over public ties to the industry.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed overhauling decades-old rules governing transfer agents as blockchain-based recordkeeping and tokenized securities become more prominent in US markets.
The proposal would update requirements covering registration, recordkeeping, safeguarding and securities transfers, while introducing new rules aimed at risks emerging from increasingly digital and automated market infrastructure.
“Market participants are actively seeking to bring blockchain-native, or ‘onchain’ transfer agents into the U.S. market,” the SEC said, pointing to models for blockchain-based recordkeeping, tokenized fund administration and cross-chain interoperability.
The agency said its existing framework does not adequately address those developments, particularly risks involving cybersecurity, operational resilience and the safeguarding of securities and investor records.
Under the proposal, transfer agents would face expanded reporting requirements and new compliance standards, including rules governing restrictive legends on securities and the use of third-party service providers.
SEC’s proposed Transfer Agent Rules. Source: SEC
The SEC said its transfer agent rules have not been substantively updated since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the industry still relied heavily on paper certificates and manual recordkeeping.
The regulatory agency is seeking public comment on the proposed changes, with comments due 60 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register.
Related: CFTC chair says agency will move forward on crypto regulation if CLARITY fails
SEC pursues broader securities rule changes
The SEC is “on a mission to simplify its rules,” according to analysis from law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel sent to clients on Tuesday.
In May, the SEC proposed three major changes to public-company rules. The proposals would allow companies to opt for semiannual reporting, simplify the existing filer classification system and expand access to streamlined registered securities offerings.
Last week, the SEC sent a proposed overhaul of custody rules for investment advisers and investment companies to the White House for review, with potential changes covering how firms hold crypto assets for clients. The changes could provide clearer standards for how investment advisers and funds custody digital assets while complying with federal securities rules.
Magazine: Does the Bitcoin rally mean we haven’t wasted our lives in crypto?

Prediction market platform Kalshi announced action against US House of Representatives candidate Laurie Buckhout and ousted Republican lawmaker George Santos over using insider information for trading on event contracts, in one of the first lifetime bans the company has imposed since its launch in 2021.
In separate notices of settlement of disciplinary action announced on Friday, Kalshi’s compliance department said it had permanently suspended Santos from trading on the prediction markets platform and imposed a $71,356 penalty. Buckhout received a three-year suspension and a $2,590 penalty.
Both restrictions by Kalshi were made in response to investigations into Santos and Buckhout trading using event contracts that could be manipulated by their own actions. According to the platform, Buckhout, running in North Carolina’s 1st congressional district, “announced her candidacy for public office and was added as a market option for a contract on a North Carolina Congressional election,” while Santos “engaged in trading activity in certain markets related to his attendance at the State of the Union address” in February 2026.
“If a Trader is a decision maker, either directly or indirectly, or has any influence, directly or indirectly, no matter the scale and importance of the influence, on the outcome of the Underlying event of any Contract, that Trader is prohibited from attempting to enter into any trade, either directly or indirectly, on the market in such Contracts,” state Kalshi’s rules.
The actions by the company represented a significant crackdown at a time when prediction market platforms are under scrutiny by state and federal lawmakers over claims that many of the event contracts are susceptible to manipulation. President Donald Trump’s teleprompter operator, Gabriel Perez, was fined $172,000 by federal regulators after trading event contracts on Kalshi related to Trump’s speeches.
While Kalshi’s compliance department reported that Buckhout “cooperated with the inquiry” and agreed to the three-year trading ban and penalty, the platform made no such statement in Santos’ case suggesting that the former US lawmaker had cooperated with its investigation.
Buckhout remains the Republican candidate for North Carolina’s 1st congressional district in the 2026 midterm elections, while Santos, formerly a representative for New York’s 3rd congressional district, was expelled from Congress in December 2023 amid fraud allegations.
In response to the settlement, Santos said in a Monday X post that Kalshi was an “unserious company.” Buckhout reportedly called her actions betting on her own congressional race a “dumb mistake.”
As of Tuesday, Kalshi still listed event contracts related to the outcome of Buckhout’s North Carolina race, giving Democratic incumbent Don Davis a 63% chance over the Republican’s 41%.
Event contract for Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina House race. Source: Kalshi
CFTC taps emergency authority in fed-state prediction markets legal battle
Kalshi and other prediction market platforms like Polymarket face several lawsuits filed by individual US state gaming authorities over allegations the companies are facilitating illegal bets on sporting events. At the same time, the sole commissioner and chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Michael Selig, claims that the agency has “exclusive jurisdiction” over prediction markets and vowed to take legal action against any state authority challenging this position.
Last month, the CFTC, in a rare move, invoked emergency authority opposing the state of New York attempting to bar Kalshi from offering contracts tied to sports, elections and other events.
Magazine: Does the Bitcoin rally mean we haven’t wasted our lives in crypto?

A group of 21 major financial institutions plans to establish a new company to develop and issue stablecoins, offering another sign of traditional finance’s push into digital dollars as regulatory frameworks take shape.
The consortium, announced Tuesday, includes Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Santander, MUFG and Fidelity Investments. It plans to launch a US dollar-denominated stablecoin in the first half of 2027, subject to the company’s formation and other conditions.
According to the announcement, the group ultimately plans to expand into stablecoins denominated in other G7 currencies, with a euro offering identified as its next priority.
The consortium said its stablecoin will target wholesale, institutional and retail markets, including use cases such as cross-border payments and digital asset settlement. The initiative is intended to comply with both the US GENIUS Act and the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), where applicable.
The venture builds on an initiative announced last October, when an initial group of 10 banks said they were exploring a 1:1 reserve-backed form of digital money available on public blockchains. The consortium has since more than doubled in size, bringing together financial institutions across North America, Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Banks deepen push into stablecoins
The move comes as stablecoins have grown considerably in recent years, with the passage of the GENIUS Act and MiCA creating clearer regulatory pathways for adoption.
Elsewhere, Singapore is considering allowing jointly issued cross-border stablecoins into its regulatory regime, according to a Tuesday announcement, revisiting its earlier decision to restrict the framework to domestic issuance.
Institutional interest was already taking shape in early 2025, when a Fireblocks survey of 295 executives found that 90% of respondents were using or planning to use stablecoins.
Since then, major financial institutions have expanded their presence in the sector. Societe Generale’s crypto subsidiary has issued euro- and dollar-denominated stablecoins, while Fidelity recently launched its US dollar-pegged FIDD stablecoin.
SocGens crypto subsidiary has issued euro- and dollar-denominated stablecoins, as has Fidelity, with its FIDD US dollar-denominated entry. Last month, Standard Chartered backed a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin venture.

Ethena has launched a global money app built around its USDe synthetic dollar, expanding the crypto-native asset into everyday payments, savings and cross-border transfers.
According to Tuesday’s announcement, the self-custodial Ethena Pay app allows users to hold USDe through a dollar-denominated balance, earn as much as 6% in annualized rewards and spend funds through a payment card, while supporting fiat onramps.
The beta rollout includes 48 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and other regions, though the initial rollout is limited to 400 users, with access set to expand weekly, Ethena said in a Tuesday thread on X. Avalanche will serve as the exclusive settlement layer for payments and transfers.
Source: Ethena
Users can deposit fiat or crypto, with funds converted into USDe (USDe). The app enables using IBAN details to move money to and from external bank accounts into local currencies. MoonPay-owned Iron provides backend infrastructure.
Ethena Pay is not initially available in the US, EU, Canada, Taiwan or South Korea, though Ethena expects to expand into those markets during the beta, subject to regulatory approval.
Ethena’s USDe grows as ENA rallies
Ethena is an Ethereum-based protocol behind USDe, a synthetic dollar designed to maintain its value near $1 without relying on traditional banking infrastructure.
USDe uses crypto collateral alongside hedging strategies, including derivatives positions, to help maintain its peg. The asset has grown to a market capitalization of about $4.1 billion, making it the sixth-largest stablecoin, according to DefiLlama data.
USDe market cap. Source: DefiLlama
Ethena also operates ENA, the protocol’s governance token, which has a market capitalization of roughly $1.5 billion. The token has rallied sharply over the past month, gaining about 68%, but remains well below its previous highs.
On Friday, the Ethena Foundation proposed directing 95% of the net revenue it receives from Ethena’s core businesses toward ENA buybacks once USDe’s circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. ENA rose more than 10% following the proposal and gained 27% over the week.
The token recorded about $595 million in trading volume over the past 24 hours, up 16% from the previous day, and was trading around $0.16 on Tuesday, according to CoinGecko.
Magazine: Does the Bitcoin rally mean we haven’t wasted our lives in crypto?

Japan’s JGB yield now at 30-year high
Global long-term bond yields are now at the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis as major long-dated sovereign bonds continued to sell off into trading on Tuesday.
The sell off comes only days after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made headlines by announcing that the maximum size of debt buyback transactions would be increased to $4 billion from September.
While the Treasury does not conduct monetary policy, some commentators have compared this to a form of yield curve control. This has brought the debasement narrative, keenly followed by Bitcoin and precious metal investors, back into the spotlight.
https://x.com/TFTC21/status/2094786021401493831
Japan’s 10-year government bond yield surged to 3% for the first time since 1996 on Tuesday, while the 30-year JGB yield topped a record 4.18%. The 10-year US bond yield also surged to a new multi-year high and stands at 4.78% at the time of writing.
10-Year Japanese government bond. Source: TradingView
Officials in both countries face a mutual bind with respect to the Japanese yen: Tokyo can neither raise policy rates without incurring an operating loss that ultimately hits the Finance ministry, nor repatriate capital without divesting the Treasury securities on which Washington’s financing depends.
Industry commentators such as Arthur Hayes have argued for years that the Fed will eventually use its Foreign and International Monetary Authorities (FIMA) repo facility. Through this swap line, Japan’s Finance ministry could borrow dollars against its Treasury holdings and sell them for yen, strengthening the currency without causing an imminent sovereign bond crisis.
This mechanism would create new dollar liquidity, which is why Hayes recommends positioning in Bitcoin (BTC), gold and crypto. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hinted at the future use of the FIMA facility in August.
Rising long-term yields may be the first sign that Hayes’s scenario is being priced in. Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution commented on X: “For the past two years, Japan has been in a “Liz Truss” bond market crisis whereby its currency falls even as government bond yields go ever higher. We’ve never had a major G10 sovereign experience something like this and it’s deeply destabilizing…”
10-year interest swap rate and trade-weighted JPY.
Source: Robin Brooks on X.com
Bitcoin continues sideways movement
In the face of Tuesday’s bond sell-off, Bitcoin has been trading sideways near the $78,000 mark, following a minor corrective decline from its morning high close to $79,000.
Cointelegraph previously reported on a thick patch of resistance between the current spot price and $86,000. This has slowed Bitcoin’s upside momentum despite positive news and renewed interest in the debasement trade.
Overall sentiment across recent reports remains mixed to cautiously optimistic in the short term after the strong August recovery, with the $76,000-$82,000 range as the key battleground for the coming weeks.
S&P 500 index futures sold off by 0.3% on Tuesday and the gauge now hovers around 7,660, the lowest level since Aug. 4. This comes as tensions in the Iran war flare up once more. Oil prices rose more than 2%, with WTI around $88 per barrel and Brent above $92, fueled by renewed US-Iran fighting, including strikes, tanker incidents in the Strait of Hormuz, and comments from President Donald Trump.
S&P 500 out-of-hours futures. Source: X.com

A fake Claude desktop application is being used to distribute RevStealer, a Windows malware strain built to steal crypto, password and browser data.
According to a Monday report by cybersecurity company Morphisec, RevStealer was previously distributed through GitHub repositories and game-cheat-themed sites but the most notable is a fake “Claude Opus 5 Free Desktop” project that impersonates AI developer Anthropic and promises free access to Claude. The researchers noted that the malware is designed to leave few traces and searches browser databases, cookies, password-manager records, VPN and remote-access settings, messaging data, screenshots and selected documents. RevStealer also targets over 50 cryptocurrency wallets.
The malware checks whether the machine looks like a real user device before unlocking its malicious payload, looking at available memory, the number of processor cores, hostname, username and graphics hardware. It also monitors for the debugging delays typical of malware analysis environment.
If RevStealer detects anything out of the ordinary, it does not move on to the next stages of infection and malicious activity. If the system passes those checks, the payload is decrypted, stored under a random name and covertly executed.
The report follows the discovery by Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky of a new malware framework targeting cryptocurrency investors called OkoBot, which can harvest crypto wallet files, browser data and user credentials, inject malicious extensions and capture wallet application windows to steal assets.

Blockchain enterprise solutions provider Ripple has partnered with digital asset infrastructure company SettleMint to offer financial institutions solutions for custody, issuance and management of tokenized assets across their full lifecycle.
The strategic partnership will integrate Ripple’s institutional digital asset custody infrastructure, Ripple Custody, and SettleMint’s Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform (DALP) to offer institutions a less complex way to secure digital assets, Ripple announced on Tuesday.
A day earlier, digital asset service provider Coincheck Group partnered with wallet infrastructure provider DFNS to build digital asset wallet technology and custody services in Japan.
DFNS’s wallet-as-a-service offers institutions full transaction lifecycle management, including workflow orchestration and governance controls, under a single platform that supports more than 100 blockchain networks.
Both partnerships are seeking to build more institutional digital asset services to address the infrastructure gap hindering the entry of regulated financial institutions.
The Asia-Pacific region ranked as the fastest-growing area for onchain crypto activity and experienced a 69% year-over-year increase in value received, according to Chainalysis’ 2025 global adoption index.
Many countries in the region are developing their own cryptocurrency regulatory frameworks. In July, Japan’s parliament passed revisions that classify crypto assets as financial assets under Japan’s Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.
Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama signaled the intent to bring crypto under the same umbrella as traditional finance assets in January, to ensure that citizens will “benefit from digital and blockchain-based assets.”

Stablecoin payments company Kast has launched a platform combining business accounts, payment cards, cross-border transfers and yield-bearing balances on stablecoin rails.
Kast said its KAST Business platform allows companies to receive funds through fiat virtual accounts provided by regulated partners, deposit supported stablecoins and crypto, issue virtual cards and make local payouts in more than 20 currencies. The company said it serves more than 170 countries, although availability varies by jurisdiction.
The platform offers up to 8% annual percentage yield on idle balances, which Kast says is generated through short-term US Treasurys and stablecoin yield, alongside up to 3% cashback on purchases.
Kast is a financial technology company rather than a bank, with regulated services provided through licensed partner institutions.
The launch comes after Kast raised $80 million at a reported $600 million valuation in March. The company said it would use the funding to develop products, secure licenses and expand across North America, Latin America and the Middle East.
Kast subsequently hired former US Securities and Exchange Commission adviser Stephanie Allen to lead policy communications as it prepared the business-platform rollout.
Kast claims more than 1 million users and aims to onboard between 1,000 and 5,000 active businesses by the end of 2026.

Crypto wallet addresses linked to the North Korean state-affiliated hacker collective Lazarus Group moved $30 million in digital assets through the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid.
The Lazarus-tagged wallets sent funds to Hyperliquid and HyperUnit via Bitcoin (BTC), traded them into Ether (ETH) or Solana (SOL) and bridged them out to Tron, Solana or the Ethereum network, according to blockchain data shared by Arkham analyst Emmett Gallic in a Monday X post.
https://x.com/emmettgallic/status/2094529501493383311
Ultimately, the deposits were sent to crypto exchanges KuCoin and Kraken, as well as Lbank, along with several unlabeled services based on the Tron network.
The transfers occurred weeks after US President Donald Trump said that Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig was working on a regulatory pathway to introduce Hyperliquid into US markets, according to a speech during a White House event on Aug. 16.
The Lazarus Group is the main suspect in some of the largest-ever cryptocurrency hacks, including the $1.4 billion hack of Bybit exchange in 2025, the industry’s largest so far.
North Korea-linked threat actors were tied to at least $578 million of the $634 million stolen in crypto-related incidents in April.

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) and cryptocurrency exchange Kraken are reportedly launching tokenized stock trading on the stock market operator’s new night-time trading venue.
The LSE has partnered with Kraken’s parent company, Payward, to launch access to tokenized stocks tracking the value of leading UK equity products starting in 2027, Payward’s chief commercial officer, Mark Greenberg, told the Financial Times according to a Tuesday report.
The tokenized stocks will be listed on LSE’s new night-time trading venue, LSE 24, that will offer 24/5 trading, operating from Mondays to Fridays, the company announced on July 21.
The initiative makes the London bourse the latest traditional exchange operator to explore blockchain-based stock offerings that can be traded 24 hours a day with fractional ownership. Other traditional finance (TradFi) institutions exploring tokenized equity products include the Nasdaq, CME Group and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
In August, Nasdaq agreed to acquire LeveL Markets, the third-largest alternative trading system in the US by trading volume, as part of its push into tokenized markets with round-the-clock trading.
TradFi companies deepen tokenization push
Some of the world’s largest TradFi institutions have been exploring tokenized stock offerings.
In March, Nasdaq, the world’s second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization, partnered with Payward and its Backed subsidiary, the issuer behind xStocks, to develop an equities transformation gateway. The plan builds on Nasdaq’s tokenization proposal filed with US securities regulators in September 2025.
A week earlier, ICE invested in crypto exchange OKX to bring NYSE-listed tokenized stocks to the exchange starting from the second quarter of 2026.
In April, Deutsche Börse invested $200 million in Payward, as part of the German exchange operator’s plans to offer access to a wider array of blockchain-based securities and tokenized investment products and build on its prior partnership with Kraken.
In January, CME Group, the largest derivatives exchange by volume, announced plans to launch crypto futures contracts tied to Cardano (ADA), Chainlink LINK and Stellar (XLM). Three months later, CME announced plans to add Avalanche AVAX and Sui SUI futures contracts starting May 4, subject to regulatory approval.
Tokenized stocks, total value onchain, all-time chart. Source: RWA.xyz
The value of tokenized stocks increased by 15% in the past 30 days to $2.53 billion, while the number of tokenized equity holders grew by 153% to 2.45 million, according to data provider RWA.xyz.
Magazine: What NYSE’s exploration of onchain systems means for financial markets

Bitfinex Securities, the tokenized investment platform associated with crypto exchange Bitfinex, has listed five tokenized notes giving eligible investors exposure to Strategy, Metaplanet and other publicly traded Bitcoin treasury companies.
The trading platform announced that the products track the economic performance of shares in Strategy, Metaplanet, Sweden’s H100 Group and France’s Capital B. Bitfinex Securities also listed Strategy’s variable-rate perpetual preferred stock, STRC.
Bitfinex Securities described the launch as the first time such products have been made available for secondary trading on a regulated tokenized securities exchange.
The notes were issued through ORO (II), a Luxembourg umbrella securitization fund managed by SICOS Securities. According to Bitfinex Securities, they are backed by the underlying securities, which are held with regulated financial institutions, but do not give investors direct ownership of the corresponding company shares.
Bitfinex Securities said fractional exposure is available from about $1, with the products trading against the US dollar, Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Bitcoin (BTC). However, availability is limited to eligible investors and excludes US persons.
The listings follow Bitfinex Securities’ record $50 million tokenized capital raise for metals company Alkemya in August. The platform said its listed assets now exceed $500 million.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is reconsidering its earlier restriction on stablecoins issued across multiple jurisdictions, proposing a route for some jointly issued tokens to qualify under its regulatory framework.
MAS opened a public consultation on Tuesday, covering legislative amendments to implement its stablecoin framework and additional policy proposals reflecting developments since 2023.
Under one proposal, stablecoins jointly issued by a Singapore issuer and a foreign issuer could be regulated under the framework and labeled “MAS-regulated stablecoins,” provided that the associated risks are sufficiently mitigated.
MAS is also considering recognizing a limited number of foreign-issued stablecoins regulated under comparable overseas frameworks, citing their potential use in cross-border wholesale transactions.
The proposals revisit MAS’s 2023 position that qualifying stablecoins must be issued solely in Singapore. The regulator finalized a framework that year covering single-currency stablecoins issued in Singapore and pegged to the Singapore dollar or a G10 currency.
At the time, MAS cited difficulties establishing regulatory equivalence and cooperation with other jurisdictions. It also noted technical challenges in tracing where commingled stablecoins originated and determining whether overseas reserves would be sufficient to meet redemption requests.
MAS proposes additional issuer safeguards
The broader consultation seeks to implement the 2023 stablecoin framework through amendments to the Payment Services Act (PSA), the primary law governing payment services and operators in Singapore.
The proposed requirements cover reserve-backed value stability, capital, redemption at par and issuer disclosures. Only issuers licensed under the framework would be permitted to market themselves as MAS-regulated stablecoin issuers and label their tokens “MAS-regulated stablecoins.”
MAS also proposed prohibiting issuers from paying interest on regulated stablecoins and requiring them to conduct stress tests and maintain recovery and orderly wind-down plans.
Additional consumer safeguards would require issuers to protect customer money received before the corresponding stablecoins are issued. Stablecoins outside the dedicated framework would continue to be treated as digital payment tokens under existing rules.
MAS is accepting public comments on the proposals until Oct. 16.
Magazine: How Hong Kong is turning tokenized bonds into real market infrastructure

Donald Trump Jr.-linked investment firm 1789 Capital is reportedly investing about $300 million in Polymarket, a blockchain-based prediction market.
1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, will make the $300 million investment as part of a $1 billion round that would value Polymarket at $21 billion, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
The investment would bring 1789 Capital’s total investment in Polymarket to about $500 million and make it one of the platform’s largest backers.
Cointelegraph has approached 1789 Capital and Polymarket for comment.
ICE remains Polymarket’s largest disclosed investor. In a July 30 10-Q filing, ICE said it had invested a combined $1.6 billion in Polymarket preferred shares. The holdings had a carrying value of approximately $2 billion as of June 30 and represented about 22% of outstanding shares, or 14% on a fully diluted basis.
Polymarket reportedly started talks to raise $400 million in fresh capital in April, when it was seeking to raise the funds at a potential $15 billion valuation, below the $22 billion valuation of its main competitor, Kalshi.
Prediction markets are facing increasing regulatory scrutiny in the US and worldwide. On Aug. 14, JPMorgan Chase reportedly ended a banking relationship with Polymarket over regulatory concerns but said it remains keen on a potential underwriting role should Polymarket attempt to go public.
More than a dozen US states have taken legal action against Polymarket, Kalshi, or both over sports event contracts, while authorities in several countries have also blocked or restricted access to Polymarket.

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) returned to inflows on Monday, led almost entirely by BlackRock, while Ether, XRP and Solana funds continued attracting capital.
SoSoValue data showed that Bitcoin ETFs recorded $216.7 million in net inflows on Monday, reversing the $201.8 million in withdrawals recorded on Friday.
The Friday outflows ended a nine-session run that brought more than $3 billion into the funds. Bitcoin (BTC) was trading near $78,700 at the time of writing, up about 1.5% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
Meanwhile, Ether ETFs extended their inflow streak to 11 trading sessions, while XRP and Solana funds each recorded a 10th consecutive positive session.
US spot Bitcoin ETF flows. Source: SoSoValue
BlackRock accounts for 95% of Bitcoin ETF inflows
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) led Monday’s Bitcoin ETF rebound with $205.9 million in net inflows, accounting for about 95% of the category’s daily total, according to Farside Investors.
Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) added $6.9 million, followed by the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) with $4.3 million. Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin Trust added $3.6 million, while Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust attracted $9.4 million.
VanEck’s Bitcoin ETF (HODL) was the only fund to record withdrawals, posting $13.4 million in net outflows. The remaining funds reported no flows.
US spot Bitcoin ETF flows per fund. Source: Farside Investors
Ether, XRP and Solana ETFs extend inflow runs
Spot Ether ETFs attracted $87.7 million on Monday, marking their 11th consecutive trading session of inflows.
BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA) led with $59.9 million, followed by Grayscale’s Ethereum Mini Trust with $13.5 million and Fidelity’s Ethereum Fund with $9.3 million, according to Farside.
XRP ETFs extended their positive run to 10 sessions with $5.64 million in net inflows, according to SoSoValue. The funds have attracted capital during every US trading session since Aug. 18.
Solana ETFs also posted a 10th consecutive positive session, though daily inflows slowed to $925,010 from $18.1 million on Friday. Monday’s figure was the category’s weakest inflow during its current run.
Magazine: Mystery surrounds why an OG burned $1M in Bitcoin