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Trust in fiat currencies including the U.S. dollar is likely to weaken, bringing cryptocurrencies and gold into focus as alternative stores of value, according to a recent report from crypto asset manager Grayscale. Zach Pandl, Grayscale’s head of research, said expanded U.S. Treasury buybacks of long-term government bonds are only a stopgap measure that does not address the underlying problem of structural fiscal deficits. Pandl added that U.S. public debt surpassed $40 trillion for the first time on the day the buybacks were announced, while borrowing in the private sector has also risen sharply for AI infrastructure buildouts, adding to upward pressure on interest rates. He said unchecked growth in government debt is eroding confidence in fiat currencies and increasing investor demand for alternative stores of value, with cryptocurrencies including BTC, ETH and ZEC, as well as gold, likely to benefit.

The Bank of Korea raised its base rate by 25 basis points to 3.00% from 2.75%, marking a second straight increase after lifting it from 2.50% to 2.75% in July. The move brought the policy rate back into the 3% range for the first time since November 2024 after one year and nine months, while narrowing the gap with the U.S. base rate to 0.75 percentage point from one percentage point. This was only the fourth time the Bank of Korea has delivered consecutive rate hikes, following previous instances in July-August 2007, from November 2021 to January 2022, and from April 2022 to January 2023.

Havenex, an institutional crypto infrastructure platform, is in the final stages of closing its Series A funding round, Kostas Kryptos, co-founder of Sui developer Mysten Labs, said. The platform aims to build infrastructure that does not compete with existing exchanges and can offer both crypto and traditional financial assets while meeting regulatory and transparency standards for financial institutions. Havenex plans to support multichain environments, custody, and quantum-resistant security keys, and intends to use Sui technology where appropriate. Kryptos said Kryptos will serve in an advisory role for the launch of Havenex.

CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index rose two points from yesterday to 40. The index is calculated by comparing the price performance of Bitcoin with that of the top 100 coins by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins and wrapped coins. If 75% of the top 100 coins outperform Bitcoin over the past 90 days, the market is considered to be in altcoin season. The opposite is considered Bitcoin season. A reading closer to 100 indicates stronger altcoin season conditions.

Investors are buying both gold and Bitcoin as concerns mount over U.S. fiscal conditions and national debt, Bloomberg reported. According to Bloomberg data, a record $7 billion flowed into gold and Bitcoin ETFs over the past five trading days. About $3.4 billion went into State Street Investment Management’s SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), while $1.5 billion flowed into BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT). The two products ranked among the top 10 U.S.-listed ETFs by weekly inflows. Bloomberg said the simultaneous surge of funds into gold and Bitcoin stands out. It noted that during past bouts of market stress, gold drew attention as a safe-haven asset while Bitcoin was relatively overlooked. More recently, however, growing concerns over expanded U.S. government borrowing, the dollar’s value, and efforts to suppress long-term interest rates have lifted both scarce assets at the same time.

CoinMarketCap’s in-house crypto fear and greed index came in at 81, up one point from yesterday, with the market remaining in extreme greed territory. The index indicates extreme fear as it moves closer to zero and extreme optimism as it approaches 100. CoinMarketCap calculates the gauge based on price movements in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, market volatility, derivatives-market indicators including the put/call ratio, the stablecoin supply ratio (SSR), and CoinMarketCap’s own search data.

Spot CVD is an order-book analysis chart for the BTC/USDT spot trading pair. The upper panel shows the volume heatmap, while the lower panel represents cumulative volume delta, or CVD. - The volume heatmap tracks trading volume at each price level. The background becomes brighter when the price stays in a specific range for an extended period or moves sharply. Brighter zones may act as support or resistance levels. - The CVD indicator in the lower panel reflects buy and sell orders by capital size, with each colored line rising as buy orders increase in that category. The yellow line represents orders worth $100 to $1,000, while the brown line is based on large orders worth $1 million to $10 million.

Nasdaq-listed Ethereum treasury company SharpLink (SBET) received 586 ETH in staking rewards this week, bringing its total ETH holdings to 890,376, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET. The amount makes SharpLink the second-largest ETH holder among publicly listed companies.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has risen above $79,000. BTC is trading at $79,000 on the Binance USDT market.

StarkWare has completed what it described as the first transaction on the Bitcoin mainnet designed to defend against security threats from quantum computing. The quantum-resistant Bitcoin, or QSB, technology uses a hash-based cryptographic system resistant to quantum algorithms instead of conventional elliptic curve cryptography. A key feature is that it can be implemented immediately within Bitcoin’s current script standards, without changing the consensus algorithm or requiring a soft fork. Still, the transaction cost was said to run about $75 to $150 per transfer, and the transaction was processed through direct submission to miners because of its non-standard structure. StarkWare said the result opened a practical path for high-net-worth holders to protect assets immediately from quantum threats without waiting for a network-level protocol overhaul.

On-chain token issuance platform Doppler Finance said on Aug. 26 it will launch its native token, XDP. XDP will serve as the protocol’s utility and governance token for its coordination layer, and is designed to support user participation, decentralized governance and ecosystem growth. A total of 10 billion tokens will be issued, with more than half of the total supply allocated to ecosystem development, vaults, partnerships and community growth. Investor allocations will be subject to lock-up and vesting conditions. At the token generation event, 1.0% of the supply will be fully unlocked and distributed to early users, contributors and supporters through a genesis airdrop. Another 43% will be allocated to ecosystem incentives supporting future Doppler Points seasons, XDP staking and community programs.

Bitwise’s market-neutral crypto fund USCC posted a 5.9% annualized return over the past 30 days as futures basis, or the gap between futures and spot prices, widened. The fund uses a cash-and-carry strategy by buying major spot assets such as BTC and ETH while selling futures contracts to capture the premium spread without directional risk. It also adds liquid staking assets, including weETH and JitoSOL, to generate additional yield. The higher arbitrage return reflects a broader increase in futures premiums amid bullish sentiment in the crypto market. The fund currently manages about $137.7 million in assets. Bitwise acquired management rights to the tokenized fund from Superstate in June, and the product supports DeFi integration while offering higher returns than short-term Treasuries.

Thailand’s SEC has proposed a regulatory framework that would first allow passive funds tracking Bitcoin or Ethereum as single-asset ETFs, while giving structural advantages to domestic financial institutions. Under the proposal, newly created ETFs could be listed only on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, while custody would also need to be entrusted primarily to local custodians regulated by Thailand’s SEC. The framework is seen as setting local listed ETFs as the most direct investment route by partly limiting retail access to products linked to overseas ETFs. As a result, Thai licensed custodians and asset managers such as Rakka Digital and Orbix are expected to gain an early foothold in the market. Public comment will run through Sept. 20, and the rules are set to take effect in the second half of 2026.

Nvidia (NVDA) announced during an earnings release on Aug. 26 that second-quarter revenue came in at $96.2 billion, above the $92.2 billion estimate. The figure was up 106% from a year earlier.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission warned about the risks of using crypto ATMs, with key concerns including the irreversible nature of transactions and the potential to conceal counterparties’ identities, according to Crypto Briefing. The CFTC said crypto ATMs are spreading quietly across gas stations, convenience stores and shopping malls nationwide in the U.S. Separately, losses from scams involving crypto ATMs nearly doubled in just one year, according to FBI data.

A wallet estimated to be managed by the U.S. government moved a small amount of Bitcoin, according to Arkham. The tokens were seized three years ago from Alameda’s Binance US account. Arkham said the transfer was minor, while the market is watching whether the U.S. government will begin liquidating the rest of the Alameda-linked holdings.

BlackRock Head of Digital Assets Robbie Mitchnick said Bitcoin’s macroeconomic appeal is growing as regulatory concerns ease, CNBC reported.

Core Lightning has published a CVE vulnerability report and urged node operators to take their nodes offline immediately, Crypto Briefing reported. Technical details of the flaw were not disclosed, and a two-week embargo will apply. Crypto Briefing explained that embargoes are common for exploitable vulnerabilities and give operators time to apply patches. All nodes running CLN version 26.04 or earlier are affected, and support for those versions has ended. A patched version has not yet been released.

UK government officials are urging the Bank of England to speed up digital currency development, according to Crypto Briefing. The push includes faster progress on stablecoins, tokenization and a potential digital pound, while the UK is set to release a detailed design proposal and an official assessment later this year on whether to move forward with an actual rollout of a CBDC digital pound.

The three major U.S. stock indices closed lower today. - S&P 500: -0.02% - Nasdaq: -0.08% - Dow Jones: -0.21%

Injective (INJ) has joined the x402 Foundation as a core member, Crypto Briefing reported. Through the move, Injective plans to strengthen payment standards for AI-based commerce. x402 is a standard technology that allows AI agents and applications to make payments directly over HTTP.

Strategy director Jarrod Patten sold 71,400 shares of company stock across 31 transactions this year, worth about $10.4 million, Bitcoin Treasuries reported. All of the shares sold were acquired through the exercise of stock options granted in 2016 and 2017. Media coverage described the sales as Patten cashing in stock options awarded when Strategy was a software company and monetizing them after its transformation into a Bitcoin company.

Six Bitcoin wallets that had been dormant for more than a decade moved 553.59 BTC worth $40.15 million over the past week, according to Galaxy Research. The wallets had been inactive since 2011, 2012 and 2014. Two of them were said to be linked to Noah Doe, a plaintiff in litigation over ownership of long-dormant BTC wallets, including holdings tied to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

Global potentially taxable on-chain cryptocurrency activity in 2025 is expected to reach at least $457 billion, while only about 14% would fall under the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, Cointelegraph reported, citing blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. The remaining 86% includes decentralized exchanges, peer-to-peer transfers, various forms of on-chain income, and payments made using cryptocurrencies.

UAE digital bank Zand announced support for USDC payments as it moves to strengthen its stablecoin infrastructure. Zand also plans to use AEDZ, an AED-pegged stablecoin, with the aim of making global payments in the UAE faster, cheaper and simpler, according to Crypto Briefing.