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The city of Baltimore has sued prediction-market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, arguing that the sports event contracts they offer amount to unlicensed illegal gambling, The Block reported. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said the companies appear to believe they can avoid the law by operating a sports betting business without a license under a different name.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has fallen below $63,000. BTC is trading at $62,969.67 on the Binance USDT market.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said its Innovation Advisory Committee will hold its first meeting on Aug. 20 to discuss regulatory issues tied to cryptocurrencies and prediction markets. Committee members and participants will also explore a regulatory framework for crypto and the development of prediction markets. The Innovation Advisory Committee aims to provide recommendations to the CFTC on trends in emerging technology, financial products and market innovation. Topics on the agenda include cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence, which could affect the future structure of financial markets.

Tether’s Hadron adds SUI support for broader tokenized asset issuance Tether announced support for SUI on its in-house real-world asset platform Hadron, expanding the foundation for tokenized asset issuance. The company said SUI offers finality of under 400 milliseconds and an object-centric architecture suited to real-world asset management. With the integration, institutions can use infrastructure on the SUI network to issue compliant tokenized stocks, bonds and commodities.

Stock token market cap is concentrated on Ethereum, Solana and BNB Chain, Sentora says About 94% of the stock token market’s capitalization is concentrated on three blockchains: Ethereum, Solana and BNB Chain, according to Sentora. Ethereum accounted for the largest share at 49%, followed by Solana at 23% and BNB Chain at 22%.

The Ethereum Foundation said it will shift away from using the Poseidon hash function, which is specialized for SNARKs, on Ethereum’s layer-one network and instead use existing hash functions such as SHA2 and BLAKE2s. The change comes as advances in SNARK technology have sharply improved proof performance for traditional hash functions. The foundation said the focus had previously been on designing hash functions to suit SNARKs, but is now moving toward designing SNARKs themselves to work efficiently with existing hash functions. It added that SNARK proof performance for traditional hash functions has risen to around 1 million operations per second.

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said he remains bullish on BTC, arguing that rising U.S. government debt and spending will ultimately support Bitcoin’s value. In a post on X, Novogratz said, "미국의 재정 상황이 갈수록 우려스럽다. 전쟁도 도움이 되지 않는다. 정부의 기조에 반대하지 않는 의회도 도움이 되지 않는다. 어느 시점에는 채권시장의 압박으로 정부가 재정 건전성 확보에 나설 수밖에 없을 것이다. 지난 10년 동안 여러 부문에서 나타난 인플레이션은 막대한 부채 증가와 직접적인 상관관계가 있다. 중간선거에서는 양당 현역 의원 모두가 이에 따른 영향을 체감하게 될 것이다. 암호화폐 시장 활력이 낮지만 여전히 BTC를 낙관적으로 보는 이유는 정부가 지출 중독을 해결하지 못하고 있기 때문".

A hacking incident exploiting Google search ads for Hyperliquid lured users to a phishing site and caused about $550,000 in losses, Wu Blockchain reported. Security researchers urged users to closely check URLs and avoid accessing sites through links labeled "Sponsored" or "Ad" in search results.

Bitcoin miners have transferred more than 50,000 BTC to Binance since the start of August, according to on-chain analyst Arab Chain. Arab Chain said some miners may have moved Bitcoin holdings to the exchange to cover operating costs, adjust liquidity, or prepare for potential sales. The analyst added that daily transfers surged over the past three days, with one day exceeding 8,000 BTC, an unusually high level compared with normal periods. Arab Chain also said miners hold significant amounts of Bitcoin, so their movements draw close market attention, and increased transfers from miner wallets to exchanges are often seen by market participants as a sign that potential sell-side supply is rising.

Ethena said it has entered into an institutional lending partnership with crypto prime broker FalconX. Under the partnership, Ethena will provide overcollateralized stablecoin loans to FalconX using part of its institutional lending capital.

Saturn announced plans to work with Ondo Finance (ONDO) to use institutional-grade tokenized assets in structured products based on Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock STRC. As part of the partnership, Ondo also made a strategic investment in Saturn, although the size of the investment was not disclosed.

An anonymous whale bought an additional 40,000 HYPE worth about $2.3 million on Coinbase, Onchain Lens said. The whale has accumulated a total of 260,000 HYPE worth about $15.1 million over the past two months on Coinbase, Bybit and other platforms.

An anonymous whale transferred 213,810 LINK worth about $1.87 million to a Gnosis Safe wallet, according to Onchain Lens. The whale withdrew the same amount of LINK from Binance two weeks ago.

Nakamoto posts $149.1M operating loss in Q2

Crypto industry revenue fell 23% year over year to $47 billion in the first half, according to crypto investment firm 1kx. Exchange, derivatives and market-maker revenue declined by $5.2 billion, while on-chain DeFi revenue fell by $1.8 billion, down 32%. ETF and fund management fees also dropped by $1.1 billion. Staking and mining rewards decreased by $6.2 billion, and transaction fee and maximal extractable value revenue was cut in half. Blockchain’s share of total industry revenue fell to a record low of 25%, the firm said.

Commodity-backed tokens’ market cap rises to $5.9B, up 481% on year The market capitalization of commodity-backed tokens has reached $5.87 billion, up 481% over the past year. Gold-backed tokens are leading the market, with XAUT at around $3.7 billion and PAXG at around $2.4 billion, accounting for about 95% of the total, according to Sentora. Sentora said "onchain gold is no longer experimental. It is functioning as a real trading and collateral asset."

Ether.fi, an Ethereum staking-based decentralized finance platform, has expanded the capabilities of its self-custody app, Decrypt reported. Users can trade tokenized assets, borrow against their portfolios as collateral, and use fiat accounts. The app allows users to trade stock tokens, metals and cryptocurrencies directly. It also offers an integrated market based on Aave on Optimism, the Ethereum scaling network, where users can lend assets or borrow funds against their holdings without selling them.

Riot Platforms sold 4,300 BTC to raise funds for operating expenses and data center expansion, BitcoinTreasuries reported. The publicly listed Bitcoin miner now holds a total of 11,380 BTC.

Swissquote (SQN) cut its full-year net revenue and profit outlook after weak cryptocurrency trading results in the first half, and the stock fell about 14% after the earnings release. According to Swissquote’s earnings report, net revenue from its crypto segment fell 66.2% from a year earlier to 14.6 million Swiss francs ($18.0 million) in the first half, while crypto trading volume dropped 63.5% to 2.58 billion Swiss francs. The company lowered its full-year net revenue forecast by about 30 million francs to 730 million Swiss francs and said the revised outlook reflects a weaker-than-expected crypto market environment. Swissquote also booked an additional 5.3 million-franc loss from marking down crypto inventory held to support its in-house exchange, SQX. Overall revenue was flat from a year earlier on growth in other business segments, while client assets rose about 20% to 96.3 billion francs.

Figure’s second-quarter revenue more than doubled from a year earlier to $226 million, while net income jumped 192% to $87 million, driven by rapid growth in its blockchain-based lending marketplace. Consumer loan volume rose 132% year over year to $4.3 billion in the second quarter, with Figure Connect, which links capital providers and loan originators, accounting for about 65% of the total. CEO Michael Tannenbaum said weekly loan applications topped $1 billion in July. Issuance of the yield-bearing stablecoin YLDS also increased sharply to $556 million, while the company’s acquisition of real estate lender Kiavi is proceeding smoothly with completion targeted for the second half of 2026.

The three major U.S. stock indices opened higher today. - S&P 500: +0.29% - Nasdaq: +0.12% - Dow Jones: +0.26%

Hardware wallet maker Trezor said on X that a security incident at a shipping provider exposed the personal data of 13,689 customers. Of that total, 11,742 had names, email addresses, phone numbers and shipping addresses exposed, while 1,947 had names, cities and email addresses disclosed. The affected users were new customers who received products in the United States, the UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy and Portugal during the 90 days before Aug. 8. Trezor said its own systems and devices remain secure and urged users to watch for phishing attempts that may misuse the leaked personal data.

CryptoInsightUK warned XRP could face further losses, with key downside targets at $0.88-$0.925 and a potential drop to $0.77 if selling pressure intensifies, according to The Crypto Basic. The analyst said XRP is showing a bearish structure with consistently lower highs and lower lows, while $0.93 remains the first key price level to watch.

On-chain data visualization platform Bubblemaps warned of risks tied to memecoin XST, which has been heavily promoted on TikTok. According to Bubblemaps, 74% of the token’s total supply is concentrated in a small number of addresses, pointing to very high centralization risk and characteristics typical of a rug-pull project. The token’s market capitalization currently stands at around $70 million, and Bubblemaps strongly urged investors to avoid the project and ignore related content even if it appears in TikTok recommendation feeds.

Lombard announced it will shift LBTC’s yield-generation model from Babylon Bitcoin staking to a covered-call options strategy managed by Bitwise, targeting a 2.5% annual net APY in BTC terms. Up to 60% of LBTC collateral assets will be allocated to the strategy, while the related Bitcoin will be held in custody by Anchorage Digital Bank and Kraken Institutional. Lombard plans to begin with a $10 million pilot allocation during the week of Aug. 17 and complete the full allocation in September. Existing LBTC holders do not need to take any action.