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Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov said pressure from the Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, to regulate DeFi could ultimately make the sector safer, according to The Block. Egorov said in an interview with The Block that FATF’s regulatory push could paradoxically have a positive effect on how DeFi protocols are designed. He said DeFi could evolve in ways that reduce privileged access, remove upgrade risks, and ensure no party can access user funds. At the same time, Egorov stressed that the mere existence of a development team should not make a protocol subject to regulation. Writing, maintaining, and managing code does not in itself grant authority to control a protocol, he said.

Bitcoin funding rates have climbed to their highest level in about 20 months, with long positions now heavily crowded, according to U.Today. The report said futures traders are strongly betting on further gains and are willing to pay higher costs to maintain long positions. The relative strength index, or RSI, has risen to around 52, indicating a modest improvement in momentum without entering overbought territory. At the same time, long positioning remains excessive before price confirmation is complete, leaving the market vulnerable to large-scale cascading liquidations if support breaks.

Uniswap to expand liquidity on Circle L1 Arc

A trader turned $121 into about $311,000, a gain of roughly 256,926%, as BNB Chain-based memecoin Niulai surged over the past few days, including a listing on Binance Alpha, drawing attention across the community. According to on-chain analyst EmberCN, the trader bought 19.1 million Niulai tokens for $121 in the on-chain market on Aug. 13. At the time, the memecoin’s market capitalization was just $6,340. As Niulai’s price later surged and its market capitalization climbed to between $1 million and $20 million on Aug. 15-16, the trader sold 14.1 million tokens, locking in $127,000 in profit. The trader still holds 5 million Niulai, currently valued at about $186,000.

South Korean exchange Upbit announced it will temporarily suspend MON deposits and withdrawals starting at 2:00 p.m. UTC on Aug. 25 due to Monad's hard fork.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) of Japan bought an additional 53,430 shares of Strategy, bringing its total holdings to 360,613 shares worth $35 million, according to BitcoinTreasuries.

The number of active addresses on Ripple’s layer-one blockchain XRP Ledger reached about 49,929 yesterday, the highest level in about two months. On-chain analytics platform Santiment said retail sentiment has inevitably worsened now that XRP has fallen below the $1 level, but on-chain activity is picking up. Santiment added this could be the contrarian bullish signal bulls had been waiting for, and if demand returns while on-chain activity remains strong, today’s negative sentiment could shift into tomorrow’s 'buy the dip' narrative.

South Korean exchange Bithumb announced on its official website that it will temporarily suspend ELF deposits and withdrawals starting at 9:20 a.m. UTC on Aug. 18 at the foundation’s request.

Pump.fun co-founder Noah Tweedale said he does not genuinely believe in decentralization and argued users choose Solana partly because it is relatively centralized, according to Wu Blockchain. Appearing on the YouTube channel Crypto Insider, Tweedale said he is personally deeply skeptical of decentralization and that the Pump Foundation focuses only on improving user experience, not on whether a network is decentralized. He added users pick Solana over Ethereum because Ethereum offers a poor user experience, while Solana is relatively more centralized, and said users do not care whether an underlying chain is decentralized as long as the user experience is optimized.

Circle’s euro stablecoin EURC has surpassed 400 million euros in circulation, The Block reported. The supply has increased by more than 100% over the past year.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Aug. 18 that Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the U.S. unfreezes Iranian assets, lifts oil sanctions, halts military threats and operations across all fronts, and other conditions in a memorandum of understanding are met. Ghalibaf said the memorandum created an opportunity through the easing of the blockade and a ceasefire to strengthen Iran’s economic resilience and rebuild its defense capabilities. He also said Iran is prepared to respond more forcefully to any provocation by hostile forces.

Ethereum Foundation core developer Sina Mahmoodi said on X that he is leaving the foundation after seven years. Mahmoodi said he joined the Ethereum Foundation right after graduating from college and had the chance to work with highly capable and deeply committed people. Mahmoodi added that belief in Ethereum’s importance has not changed, but decided to leave the foundation to explore and learn new things.

Robinhood plans to launch an AI agent cryptocurrency trading service for eligible users, Cointelegraph reported.

Upbit announced it will temporarily suspend ELF deposits and withdrawals starting from the time of this notice, citing a network upgrade for aelf.

An investor who held Bitcoin for 10 years ended up with a portfolio worth about $828,000 more than if the same amount had been invested in SPY, the S&P 500-tracking ETF, CryptoSlate reported. The outlet said BTC rose about 87-fold to $58,558.86 at the end of June 2026 from $673.34 at the end of June 2016. It added, citing Wells Fargo, that realizing those returns would not have been easy, as investors would have had to withstand drawdowns of 83% from the 2017 peak and 77% from the 2021 peak.

Binance announced the delisting of seven trading pairs on Aug. 21 Binance announced the delisting of F/USDC, HIVE/USDC, ILV/USDC, LTC/BNB, NMR/USDC, STEEM/USDC and SUI/BNB at 3:00 a.m. UTC on Aug. 21.

James Chanos, a well-known short seller, said an arbitrage trade based on the price gap between Strategy (MSTR) stock and Bitcoin was one of the biggest opportunities he has seen, according to U.Today. Chanos claimed the gap was worth $80 billion, though he did not disclose how he calculated it. Chanos had used a strategy of shorting Strategy shares, which he viewed as overvalued, while buying BTC, but exited the position in November after Strategy’s mNAV, or its market value multiple relative to the value of its Bitcoin holdings, narrowed from more than three at the end of 2024 to about 1.23 in November last year.

If BTC breaks above $64,984, about $474.15 million in short positions on major centralized exchanges would be liquidated, according to CoinGlass data. If BTC falls below $63,711, about $249.70 million in long positions would be liquidated.

Kraken has launched U.S. stock trading for eligible investors across Europe, The Block reported. After a limited rollout in Germany, the Netherlands and France, the crypto exchange has expanded the service across the region and said the phased expansion over the past few days makes it available across Europe starting today. According to Kraken, users can trade both U.S.-listed equities and tokenized stocks, or xStocks, through a single regulated account. Kraken said this makes it the only crypto-based platform in Europe offering both products at the same time.

South Korea’s Korea Communications Standards Commission has not received a review request for Kalshi and has not considered whether to block access to the service, Digital Asset reported, as overseas prediction market platform Polymarket faces a domestic access ban.

Bitcoin long-term holders are facing limited selling pressure, but demand signals strong enough to support a fresh uptrend have yet to emerge, according to on-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr. In a blog post, Adler said BTC was at $64,200, or 1.3 times the average acquisition cost of $49,400 for long-term holders, and had remained in a low-risk zone for 78 consecutive days. Adler added that long-term holder balances stood at 16.35 million BTC, 58,000 BTC below the all-time high. Over the past 15 days, long-term holder balances fell from the previous day on only two days, indicating sustained selling pressure has not appeared. Adler said the supply structure alone was not enough to conclude a new uptrend had begun, adding that further confirmation was needed from demand and price action.

HTX said it was not involved in recently flagged small transfers that appeared to have been sent by the exchange from certain addresses, after community reports raised questions about the transactions. Molly, HTX’s official spokesperson and an HTX DAO ambassador, said on X that the company is conducting further checks into the specific source and cause of the transfers and is not ruling out possibilities including address labeling issues or how the origin of on-chain transfers is identified. Molly added HTX will avoid drawing conclusions before the facts are confirmed and will share further details as soon as possible, given the issue relates to the safety of user accounts and assets. Separately, HTX was added to European Union sanctions targeting Russia in late July and was also placed on a UK government sanctions list in May.

NAVI Protocol, a DeFi project in the SUI ecosystem, has rolled out its biggest service overhaul in three years and launched NAVI Prime, a lending platform aimed at institutional investors. The company said NAVI Prime underwent more than four months of development and completed more than three security audits. Its core feature is an isolated risk vault structure that allows specialist curators to build independent liquidity markets for specific assets or strategies, rather than having multiple assets share a single liquidity pool as before. NAVI said this separates risk by market, allows different terms to be set for each market, and marks a key change in building financial infrastructure that institutional investors can use. Since its 2023 launch, NAVI Protocol has reached an all-time high TVL of $1 billion and more than 1.1 million cumulative users. Its market share within the SUI ecosystem once reached around 40%, establishing it as a major lending protocol in the ecosystem.

South Korean exchange Upbit announced on its website that it will temporarily suspend MED deposits and withdrawals at 3:00 a.m. UTC on Aug. 20 for Medibloc's network upgrade.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw about $137.3 million in net inflows on Aug. 17, according to Farside Investors, though BlackRock’s IBIT data has not yet been included. - Fidelity FBTC: +$111.9 million - ARK Invest ARKB: +$14.2 million - Morgan Stanley MSBT: +$11.2 million