News linked to both this project and an event.
According to The Block, Bernstein analysts indicated that Senate Republicans' progress on the Clarity Act may surpass market consensus expectations. The Republican proposal has been finalized, incorporating 126 substantive amendments put forward by Democrats. President Trump has also endorsed most measures within the bipartisan ethics framework, including granting enforcement authority to state attorneys general. Bernstein pointed out that the crypto market currently holds a pessimistic view toward Tuesday’s procedural vote, with "any upside surprises not yet priced in." The probability of the bill's passage on prediction market platform Kalshi has climbed back above 30%. Analysts cautioned that a failure to pass the legislation, combined with hawkish remarks from the Federal Reserve, could trigger a "significant pullback" in markets. However, even if the bill fails, it will accelerate SEC and CFTC crypto regulatory rulemaking rather than derail broader regulatory efforts.
According to The Block, Jack Dorsey-founded payment company Block has submitted an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish an uninsured national trust bank named Builders Bank & Trust, N.A. If approved, the bank would provide custody and other trust services, covering Bitcoin and stablecoins. Block stated that this federal charter will establish a federal regulatory framework for some of its custody and related businesses.
According to The Block, the Ethereum Foundation Protocol Cluster has released a list of EIP ratings for the upcoming Hegotá upgrade, setting December 2029 as the target milestone for achieving full quantum resistance. The two S-tier (mandatory delivery) proposals for the upgrade are: FOCIL (EIP-7805) at the consensus layer, which enhances censorship resistance by requiring validator committees to enforce the inclusion of public mempool transactions; and framework transactions (EIP-8141) at the execution layer, which natively integrates account abstraction, supporting custom signatures, sponsored gas, and batch operations to improve security and quantum resistance. The Ethereum Foundation stated that this timeline aligns with the independent migration targets of Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft, and the December 2029 deadline will be considered non-negotiable prior to January 2027. Hegotá is not the final quantum-safe fork, but rather a critical milestone determining whether subsequent upgrades can proceed on schedule. From the Q4 2026 Glamsterdam upgrade to December 2029, the average fork cycle is only about 7.2 months, leaving extremely limited execution slack.
According to The Block, multiple crypto companies are actively lobbying the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to expedite the ETF review process and allow the submission of confidential draft filings. Among them, Grayscale has explicitly requested that SEC staff commit to responding within 45 days. However, Jane Street and Charles Schwab have expressed reservations regarding this, voicing concerns about rushing the listing process and the confidential filing mechanism.
According to The Block, the Wyoming Stable Token Committee announced the adoption of Chainlink Proof of Reserve to provide near-real-time on-chain reserve validation for its official stablecoin, Frontier Stable Token (FRNT). The Network Firm will audit FRNT reserves in accordance with AICPA standards, while Chainlink will post verification data on-chain in real time to bridge information gaps between reporting cycles. Previously, Wyoming fully migrated FRNT from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP last month as its sole cross-chain infrastructure. The committee is also advancing the Chainlink Proof of Reserve Secure Mint feature, which requires verifying that reserves do not fall below FRNT's total supply before minting new tokens to prevent infinite minting attacks. FRNT launched in January this year and is the United States' first government-issued stable token, backed by U.S. dollars and short-term U.S. Treasuries.
According to The Block, Ethena Labs has officially launched the beta version of its self-custody payment app, Ethena Pay, built on Avalanche, which is now available in 48 countries including Brazil, Japan, Singapore, and Kenya. Users can receive funds via IBAN or cryptocurrency, hold balances in USDe, and benefit from fee-free instant global transfers. The app features three membership tiers: Standard (free), Pro (requires locking $2,000 worth of ENA or inviting 10 users), and VIP (requires locking $10,000 worth of ENA or inviting 50 users), offering respective annual yields of 5%, 6%, and 6%, with balance caps of $5,000, $15,000, and $50,000. The Ethena Pay card provides a 4%–5% base cashback (settled in AVAX), while Pro and VIP users enjoy up to 10% exclusive cashback at brands such as Uber, Spotify, and Claude. The backend infrastructure is powered by Iron, a subsidiary of MoonPay. Markets including the United States and the European Union were not part of the initial launch and will be progressively rolled out once regulatory compliance is achieved.
According to The Block, prediction market platform Kalshi announced a permanent ban on former U.S. Representative George Santos, marking the first time the platform has imposed a permanent ban on an individual user. Kalshi's compliance department determined that Santos engaged in prohibited trading in markets related to the State of the Union Address (SOTU)—by publicly announcing whether he would attend two weeks prior to the event, he caused significant price volatility in the associated contracts, constituting suspected market manipulation. Santos was fined over $71,000. Previously, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had already filed charges against him regarding the same incident. Santos settled with the CFTC by paying $35,000, without admitting or denying the allegations.
According to The Block, Anatoly Popov, deputy chairman of Russia's largest bank Sberbank, stated that Russia's new cryptocurrency regulations will officially take effect on September 1, 2026, with the volume of regulated crypto transactions expected to reach 4 trillion rubles (approximately $46.4 billion) in the first year, and projected to grow to around 7.5 trillion rubles (approximately $87.1 billion) by 2029.
According to The Block, Evernorth Holdings, an XRP treasury company, announced that its S-4 Registration Statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has officially become effective. The registration covers Evernorth's business combination with SPAC Armada Acquisition Corp. II, after which it is expected to commence trading on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "XRPN". The S-4 document registers up to 34,499,992 shares of Class A common stock and 11,499,992 warrants. Positioned as a regulated digital asset treasury company, Evernorth focuses on XRP investment exposure and plans to actively deploy capital into XRP infrastructure projects. Its investors include institutional backers such as Ripple, Arrington Capital, SBI Group, Pantera Capital, Kraken, and GSR. The merger is anticipated to close in late Q3 or early Q4 of 2026, pending shareholder approval.
Odaily News Crypto exchange Coinbase and digital mortgage company Better Mortgage have announced the full rollout of token-backed conforming mortgages for Coinbase One members, allowing eligible borrowers to use crypto assets as collateral in the home buying process.The product became available to Coinbase One members on August 12. The two companies first announced their partnership in March of this year, with the first mortgage loan under this program designed within the framework of a Fannie Mae-compliant conforming mortgage. According to the announcement, Coinbase One members who qualify for Better's mortgage products can receive a lender credit equal to 1% of the loan amount, up to a maximum of $10,000. This credit can be applied toward mortgage closing costs and is available for standard mortgages, home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), and refinancing products. (The Block)
Odaily News Bitcoin has rebounded strongly recently. Analysts believe that record-breaking short squeeze activity, along with policy signals from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, may be pushing the market into a new phase of bull market cycle adjustment.Data shows that Bitcoin has risen approximately 23% over the past week, marking its largest weekly gain since the post-U.S. election rally in November 2024. Crypto market trading activity has also recovered in tandem, with spot and perpetual contract trading volume surging 188%. CME Bitcoin futures volume rose 152%, and the annualized futures basis climbed to 11.1%—the highest level since January 2025. Additionally, Bitcoin ETF products recorded net inflows of approximately 31,740 BTC over the week, the strongest capital inflow since the market peak in October 2025.Vetle Lunde, Head of Research at crypto research firm K33 Research, stated that the early phase of this rally was primarily driven by short covering. On August 19, Bitcoin short positions saw a single-day liquidation scale of $1.37 billion, a record high, followed by another $739 million in short liquidations on August 21. The massive short squeeze pushed open interest in perpetual contracts down to 284,000 BTC, the lowest level since May, while market funding rates also returned to neutral.On the macro front, policy signals from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent regarding increased long-term Treasury buybacks are also viewed by analysts as a market catalyst. K33 believes that the Treasury buyback program could lower long-term interest rates and boost demand for scarce assets. Meanwhile, Bitcoin's correlation with gold has risen, with the 90-day correlation coefficient reaching 0.52—the highest since October 2020—while its correlation with the Nasdaq index has declined to 0.38, a one-year low.Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at crypto investment firm Bitwise Asset Management, believes that Bessent's recent remarks on sanctions against Iran's financial network have further strengthened Bitcoin's investment thesis: as the global financial system becomes increasingly influenced by geopolitics, the value of assets that are decentralized and do not rely on any single nation's financial system may appreciate further. (The Block)
According to The Block, the Blockchain Association has submitted comments on the stablecoin issuer rules under the GENIUS Act, proposed jointly by U.S. Treasury agencies including the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve. The association supports limiting Customer Identification Program (CIP) obligations to direct customer transactions in the primary market, emphasizing that they should not extend to peer-to-peer transfers in the secondary market. It also calls on regulators to further clarify the definitions of "account," "customer," and "digital asset service provider," exempt one-time redemptions and other non-recurring activities, and avoid duplicative compliance burdens alongside anti-money laundering regulations. The association stated that the implementation of the rules must strike a balance between ensuring stablecoin security, maintaining operational feasibility, and preserving room for industry innovation.
According to The Block, South Korea's top financial regulator stated that it will accelerate discussions on cryptocurrency legislation and plans to introduce South Korea's version of the Basic Act on Digital Assets this fall. The bill is expected to establish relevant regulatory rules for areas such as stablecoin issuance, Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) licensing, and Bitcoin ETFs.
According to The Block, at a meeting of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) Innovation Advisory Committee, CME CEO Terrence Duffy publicly addressed the risks of manipulation in prediction market contracts, stating that "there are indeed people manipulating these contracts, which is extremely harmful to the industry," and expressing concern over the potential manipulation risks associated with numerous self-certified contracts, as well as those related to Trump's State of the Union address and Maduro's removal from office. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig promptly interrupted and rebutted this, noting that all the aforementioned contracts operate overseas and are not issues for the U.S. market. Subsequently, Kalshi COO Luana Lopes Lara challenged CME by asking whether it had also faced manipulation issues, leading to a heated exchange between both parties. Currently, the dispute over regulatory jurisdiction for prediction markets continues to escalate, with the CFTC asserting "exclusive jurisdiction" and having already filed lawsuits against several states, while pledging to advance revisions to consumer protection rules; meanwhile, some members of Congress have introduced legislation aimed at banning the listing and trading of prediction contracts tied to sports or gambling.
According to The Block, Securitize President Brett Redfearn stated that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission withdrew the crypto innovation exemption rules last Friday due to concerns over the voting progress of the Clarity Act. Redfearn expects the rules to be introduced following the Senate vote on September 15, likely in early October.
According to The Block, Curve founder Michael Egorov stated that regulatory pressure from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on decentralized finance (DeFi) may prompt protocols to remove privileged access, upgrade risks, and the ability to intervene with user funds, thereby improving DeFi security and enhancing decentralization.
According to The Block, Kraken has officially launched US stock trading services for eligible users in all member states of the European Economic Area (EEA). It is reported that the service was previously quietly launched in Germany, the Netherlands, and France, and is now officially fully open to the entire European Economic Area. Kraken stated that it is currently the only crypto-native platform capable of providing European Economic Area users with trading of both spot US stocks and their tokenized versions within the same regulated account.
According to The Block, the Blockchain Association filed an amicus curiae brief on August 13 supporting Custodia Bank's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting a review of the legality of the Federal Reserve Bank's refusal of its master account application. The Blockchain Association pointed out that this case concerns whether legitimate digital asset enterprises can compete in a fair environment, and warned that the lower court ruling provides a precedent for federal regulators "to debank unpopular industries in the future without the intervention of state regulators." Custodia Bank was founded by Wall Street veteran Caitlin Long, applied for a Fed master account in October 2020, was rejected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in January 2023 on the grounds that the crypto business model posed risks, subsequently lost twice in the district court and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and was denied rehearing by the full court in a 7 to 3 vote in March 2026. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City must respond to the Supreme Court application by September 11.
According to The Block, the New York City Council has launched an investigation into four prediction market platforms—Kalshi, Polymarket, Coinbase, and Gemini Titan—alleging they employed "false, deceptive, or abusive" marketing tactics targeting young users. Among them, Polymarket was accused of paying social media creators to film videos placing fake bets on counterfeit websites, an incident first disclosed by The Wall Street Journal in June this year. Additionally, prediction market platforms face insider trading allegations; New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order in April prohibiting state government employees from using confidential government information to place bets on prediction markets.
According to The Block, Anchorpoint, a subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, officially launched the first phase issuance of the HKD stablecoin HKDAP on Wednesday, opening test access to institutional distributors and professional investors. Anchorpoint, established as a joint venture by Standard Chartered Bank, HKT, and Animoca Brands, received a stablecoin issuer license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) in April this year, becoming one of the first licensed institutions.