Live Feed

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has sold all financial assets he had previously pledged to divest, including cryptocurrency holdings, according to documents filed with the U.S. government ethics office. Some investment assets, including undisclosed underlying assets, are still understood to remain. According to Kevin Warsh’s asset disclosure released in April, Warsh had invested in cryptocurrencies including Compound, a DeFi lending protocol, Optimism and Blast, both Ethereum layer-two networks, and Solana. After taking office in May, Warsh divested most of those assets to meet ethics office requirements.

Vitalik Buterin has released an updated version of the Ethereum roadmap first published in 2023, with quantum security given higher priority and several new technical directions added. While the roadmap remains largely unchanged, some technology priorities were adjusted and multiple new technologies and design directions were added. In particular, quantum security was elevated, while VDFs, or verifiable delay functions, and some EVM improvement proposals were moved lower. New additions include privacy, post-quantum scalability improvements, simplified protocol specifications and native rollups. Buterin said Ethereum will become quantum-resistant and put user privacy first, while remaining secure and censorship-resistant and delivering high performance and scalability. Buterin added Ethereum will ultimately evolve into a simpler, more streamlined protocol.

Jupiter, a DEX in the Solana ecosystem, has launched V2 of its in-house lending platform Jupiter Lend, according to CoinDesk. Jupiter Lend V2 supports using deposited and borrowed assets simultaneously as trading liquidity, allowing users to earn lending interest and swap fee income on the same assets. DeFiLlama data shows Jupiter Lend holds $1.9 billion in deposits, while fees generated over the past 30 days totaled about $1.6 million.

A recent Bank of America survey of high-net-worth investors found that those aged 21 to 43 allocate 53% of their portfolios to assets outside traditional stocks and bonds. In related commentary, crypto asset manager Grayscale said more than $100 trillion in assets is expected to shift to younger generations over the coming years, and their strong preference for alternative investments could act as a tailwind for the crypto market.

Bithumb announced on its official website that it has temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals for Data Network (DATA) and ARIA Protocol (ARIAIP) starting at 2:40 p.m. UTC today for wallet system maintenance.

SharpLink (SBET), a Nasdaq-listed company pursuing an Ethereum treasury strategy, posted a second-quarter net loss of $394.3 million, the company announced on Aug. 10. Second-quarter revenue totaled $11.5 million, including $11.2 million from ETH staking. The net loss included $321 million in unrealized crypto losses and $76.1 million in impairment charges tied to LsETH and weETH. SharpLink held 886,881 ETH at the end of the second quarter, with holdings rising to about 888,938 ETH as of Aug. 3.

Analysts increasingly believe Bitcoin has already bottomed, according to CryptoPotato. The outlet said BTC rebounded after hitting a low near $58,000 in early July and was recently trading about 16% higher. Against that backdrop, several widely followed analysts, including Ali Martinez, Michaël van de Poppe and Merlijn The Trader, have suggested Bitcoin may already have found its bottom. Another analyst, TedCcrypto, said the uptrend is likely to continue as long as Bitcoin holds support at $63,000, while MaxCrypto said BTC has broken above a 10-month downtrend line and appears ready to shift into an uptrend. Rekt Fencer also projected Bitcoin could rise to $400,000.

Solstice Finance, a Solana-based DeFi protocol, has launched a product that offers indirect exposure to dividend income and price volatility tied to Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock STRC, CoinDesk reported. The product does not tokenize STRC shares or require users to hold STRC directly. Instead, users deposit Solstice’s dollar-pegged settlement token USX into a vault and receive one of two Solana tokens linked to the performance of a portfolio holding the Nasdaq-listed preferred shares.

Bitcoin has stabilized around $65,000 after rebounding from a late-June low near $58,000, but it remains unclear whether the move marks a full shift into an uptrend, according to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode. Glassnode said active market buying in the spot market has risen sharply, while overall exchange trading volumes remain subdued, suggesting some aggressive buying demand has returned but broad market demand has yet to expand. In derivatives, it said aggressive directional trading has also increased. Taker activity in perpetual futures has moved above its statistical upper range, but open interest and funding rates have not risen excessively. Leverage is increasing, Glassnode said, but not to overheated levels. In the options market, lower costs for downside protection indicate investors' near-term caution is easing. The firm added institutional demand is the most positive signal. On-chain data also shows a rising share of short-term capital, indicating price-sensitive investors are returning to the market. At the same time, activity on the Bitcoin network itself remains weak, with both active addresses and fee revenue still at low levels, suggesting underlying blockchain demand has not clearly recovered. The share of BTC in profit has increased, but realized losses on-chain still exceed realized gains. Glassnode said Bitcoin is moving beyond the initial stage of recovery, though it is too early to conclude the market has shifted into a strong bull phase. Institutional buying and aggressive market buying are positive signs, it said, but spot liquidity and on-chain activity also need to recover for the uptrend to spread across the broader market.

The three major U.S. stock indices opened lower today. - S&P 500: -0.06% - Nasdaq: -0.06% - Dow Jones: -0.1%

ETH institutional demand hits 2.8x daily new supply, analyst says Institutional demand for ETH has reached about 2.8 times its daily new issuance, significantly outpacing supply, Jamie Coutts, a crypto market analyst at Real Vision, said. By contrast, institutional demand for BTC was about 23% below new issuance. Most institutional inflows are currently being driven by spot ETFs, while buying activity from digital asset treasury companies has remained relatively muted. Coutts added that ETF flows move with price rather than serving as a leading indicator for future price moves, while demand is improving and ETH is currently showing clearer strength than BTC.

Ethereum Foundation deposits 566.27 ETH to unlabeled address

Bitmine said it bought an additional 7,391 ETH over the past week, bringing its total holdings to 5,805,238 ETH, or about 4.8% of total ETH supply. The company said 5,067,309 ETH, about 87% of its holdings, is currently staked, with expected annual staking revenue of about $257 million.

Strategy announced the sale of 1,690 BTC.

Bitcoin mining pool OCEAN acknowledged that some miners’ hash rate was unintentionally directed to the BIP-110 chain for about 18 hours and said it will compensate them, Bitcoin News reported. OCEAN plans to pay affected miners around 0.3 BTC based on the returns they were expected to earn from mining on the legacy Bitcoin chain during that period. Some miners sharply criticized the incident, arguing OCEAN had effectively diverted customer hash rate to support the struggling BIP-110 chain. OCEAN has now restored its default connection setting to the legacy chain, while miners can choose between the legacy chain and the BIP-110 chain. BIP-110 is a proposed temporary soft fork aimed at limiting non-payment data embedded in Bitcoin transactions, reducing the use of inscriptions and Runes, and easing the burden on nodes.

An anonymous whale has sold 7,513 BTC worth $486.9 million over the past three weeks, Bitcoin.com reported. Analysts said the selling likely came from short-term investors that are more sensitive to price swings, while long-term holders have raised their share of holdings to a record high.

Strive has purchased an additional 147 BTC, bringing its total Bitcoin holdings to 20,167 BTC, according to Bitcoin Treasuries.

Bitcoin’s volatility outlook in the options market has fallen sharply as BTC has traded in a narrow $62,000-$66,000 range since early last month, CoinDesk analyzed. CoinDesk said the Volmex BVIV Index, which shows annualized 30-day implied volatility for BTC options, fell to 35.59% over the weekend, the lowest level since September last year. That contrasted with February, when the index climbed above 90% as BTC plunged from $90,000 to around $60,000. Griffin Sears, head of derivatives at FalconX, said the main driver of lower volatility was a supply-demand imbalance in the options market. Sears said demand has evaporated for directional options, or bets on a large move in either direction, while supply has remained elevated. Although every options contract has both a buyer and a seller, Sears said the high supply means more investors are writing and selling options to market makers. Sears added that BTC miners and companies in particular are increasingly using a strategy of repeatedly selling call options on their BTC holdings to generate additional income, and that the steady supply of options selling has helped push implied volatility lower. He also pointed to weaker trading activity and a sluggish spot market, adding that as realized volatility based on actual BTC price moves declines, implied volatility, which reflects the market’s expectations for future swings, is also falling.

Decentralized futures exchange Aster burned an additional 2.85 million ASTER about three hours ago, worth around $1.74 million, according to Onchain Lens. The cumulative burn has reached 188.87 million ASTER, equal to 3.78% of the total reduction target aimed at cutting supply to 3 billion ASTER.

FalconX deposited 120 BTC worth $7.82 million to Coinbase 24 minutes ago, according to Onchain Lens. Exchange deposits are typically interpreted as being intended for a sale.

CryptoQuant said BTC is nearing a short-term peak and may face a deeper decline afterward. The firm said the downward “i~v” wave structure, referring to the five sub-waves used in Elliott Wave analysis, should still be viewed as intact within a broader bear-market trend. It identified an expected peak range of $66,317-$68,965, where the rebound could end and the final v-wave decline could begin. CryptoQuant added that if the rebound lasts longer than expected, a scenario in which BTC rises to $70,000 remains possible. It also said on-chain indicators support downside risk. While Bitcoin has been making higher highs, the MACD, or moving average convergence divergence indicator, has been trending lower, signaling bearish divergence. The RSI has also moved into overbought territory. CryptoQuant added that trading volume has declined over the past six weeks even as the price rose, indicating weakening buying momentum behind the advance. It identified the next major downside target as $51,336, the 61.8% Fibonacci level.

Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings sold a total of 23,093 BTC worth $1.6 billion in the first half of this year, according to Lookonchain. The company currently holds 35,577 BTC valued at $2.3 billion.

Standard Chartered said Chainlink’s LINK could reach $200 by 2030 as growth in the asset tokenization market to $4 trillion may benefit the token, according to Cointelegraph.

Tokenized stocks and bonds traded on blockchain-based capital markets are expanding rapidly worldwide, while South Korea has yet to begin legislative discussions on the issue and is falling further behind the global market, Digital Times reported. The global market capitalization of tokenized stocks stood at $2.51 billion as of Aug. 4, up 273.37% from $673.01 million at the start of this year, according to the report. In contrast, South Korea is set to implement amendments to the Capital Markets Act and the Electronic Securities Act in February next year, but discussions on the bills and detailed subordinate regulations by South Korean financial authorities remain entirely focused on issuance and distribution systems for non-standard assets, or fractional investments, such as real estate, art, music copyrights and patent rights, which have been difficult to securitize in traditional capital markets. The report added that South Korea’s domestic capital market remains in a legislative vacuum for the tokenization of standard securities such as stocks and bonds, with no related bill even introduced in the National Assembly to provide a legal basis for 24-hour trading and distributed-ledger settlement.

Cardano Foundation CTO Giorgio Zinetti will step down on Aug. 31, the foundation said. Meanwhile, under its current roadmap, the foundation’s board and management are continuing to work closely with technology and senior business development leaders to focus directly on corporate adoption.