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Kyrgyzstan’s investigative authorities are probing 90 criminal cases linked to the use of cryptocurrencies this year, local media outlet Akchabar reported. Interior Minister Ulan Niyazbekov said cryptocurrencies are being used in cyber fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, and the concealment and transfer of criminal proceeds, while funds are difficult to trace as they pass through multiple wallets and mixers. Niyazbekov added that during an investigation last year into an online fraud ring, authorities found information on a Tron (TRX) wallet holding assets worth more than $3 million. The Interior Ministry is also pushing to revise the criminal procedure code so authorities can track the flow of criminal proceeds while pursuing suspects.

South Korea’s Democratic Party, the Financial Services Commission, and the Ministry of Science and ICT will join industry participants to discuss legislative tasks including enacting a basic blockchain law to promote the blockchain industry, Edaily reported. The Korea Blockchain Industry Promotion Association said it will hold a parliamentary policy forum titled 'Building Digital Trust Infrastructure and Promoting the Blockchain Industry in the AI Era' at the National Assembly Members’ Office Building on Sept. 11. The event will be jointly hosted by Democratic Party lawmakers Kim Woo-young, Lee Ju-hee, and Hwang Jung-a, along with independent lawmaker Choi Hyuk-jin, and organized by the association.

Hong Kong lawmaker Duncan Chiu, who represents the technology and innovation sector in the Legislative Council, has proposed developing Hong Kong into an international digital-asset hub by 2032, Hong Kong Commercial Daily reported. The proposal includes creating early-stage investment channels for Web3 finance and a Hong Kong-style "Web3 Pink Sheets" platform for over-the-counter fundraising, while also promoting real-world asset tokenization and tokenized stocks. Chiu also proposed setting up an independent digital-asset division within Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission, expanding use cases for crypto ETFs and Hong Kong dollar stablecoins, and building an integrated regulatory and compliance infrastructure.

An anonymous trader spent 200,000 USDC to buy 919.4 LAPTOP at $217.5 per token about an hour ago, then saw the token’s price plunge to $4.4 within 50 minutes. The position’s estimated value fell to $4,045, marking a 98% drop. The unrealized loss stood at about $196,000 (260 million won), and the wallet was identified as the address with the largest loss in the LAPTOP token.

The Algorand Foundation has appointed William Herkelrath, formerly of Chainlink and Curv, as its new CEO as it pushes to strengthen institutional finance and quantum-resistant security. Herkelrath officially took office on Aug. 31 and succeeds Staci Warden, who led the foundation for about five years. Algorand said the appointment is aimed at expanding its institutional asset tokenization and payments business while preparing in advance for next-generation security issues tied to the threat from quantum computing. The network has already enabled quantum-resistant accounts on mainnet through its v42 consensus upgrade, which applied the lattice-based signature system Falcon-1024. Herkelrath said he plans to establish quantum-resistant technology as a new global standard across the blockchain industry and accelerate institutional inflows.

DeFi yield-trading protocol Pendle said it has launched products on Robinhood Chain that let users trade dividend yields tied to tokenized Nvidia (NVDA) and Pfizer (PFE) shares. Users can buy the underlying stocks at a discount through PT, or gain leveraged exposure to dividend yields without directly holding the shares through YT. The Nvidia product expires in October, while the Pfizer product expires in December.

MetaDAO, a Solana-based decentralized platform, is using a fundraising model that keeps all USDC raised from token sales in an onchain treasury rather than paying it directly to project teams, Crypto Briefing reported. Under the model, project teams can spend only a pre-set monthly budget, while additional fund disbursements or new token issuance must go through governance proposals and futarchy, a governance system that uses prediction markets to judge a proposal’s likely impact on token value. About 20% of the funds raised is deployed into an automated market maker liquidity pool alongside the token at launch, while the remaining roughly 80% stays in a treasury managed by token holders. Cumulative fundraising through MetaDAO has surpassed $100 million.

Bonk Guy (@theunipcs), a well-known trader, said Hunter Biden’s meme coin LAPTOP could become one of the fastest celebrity coin pump-and-dump cases in crypto industry history, adding in English, "those buying this deserve to lose all their money." LAPTOP’s fully diluted valuation hit $300 billion 40 minutes after trading began, then plunged to $4.3 billion. Trading volume reached $6.8 million during the first 40 minutes.

Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs’ valuation has doubled from $1 billion to $2 billion in less than six months, Fortune reported. TRM Labs said it was valued at $1 billion when it raised $70 million in a Series C round in September last year, and that a follow-on investment in the same round later lifted the valuation to $2 billion, reflecting rapid growth in its AI business.

Solana recorded about $6.56 million in application revenue over the past 24 hours, the highest among major blockchains, U.Today reported. BNB Chain followed with about $3.26 million, ahead of Robinhood Chain at about $3.22 million, while Solana’s total was more than double Robinhood Chain’s. Hyperliquid posted about $1.94 million, topping Ethereum’s $1.59 million, and Base was not included among the top five networks.

Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin USDT, said it will launch StableFund, a USDT-based private credit fund, with asset manager Fasanara Capital. The two firms plan to jointly commit an initial $400 million and raise up to an additional $3 billion from external institutional investors. Through its fintech lending network spanning more than 60 countries, Fasanara will provide short-term asset-backed loans to small and midsize businesses and other borrowers, while Tether will support payment and foreign-exchange infrastructure for cross-border fund transfers. The fund will operate as an evergreen structure with no fixed maturity.

An anonymous trader identified as address 0xa5019 spent 100 ETH, worth about $249,800, to buy 9,124 LAPTOP tokens early and realized gains just minutes later by selling 8,480 tokens for 472 ETH, or about $1.18 million, according to on-chain data analysis. The address still holds 644 tokens worth about $110,000, bringing total profit, including unrealized gains, to more than $1 million, or about 1.33 billion won.

Wintermute appears to have joined as a market maker for LAPTOP, Hunter Biden’s memecoin that began trading this evening, according to on-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa. Around 21 hours earlier, Wintermute received 2.5 million LAPTOP from a LAPTOP multisig address for market-making purposes and distributed the tokens across deposit addresses at multiple exchanges, ai_9684xtpa said. That brought the total token allocation for market makers to 23 million LAPTOP, including 15.5 million for GSR Market, 5 million for G20, and 2.5 million for Wintermute, equivalent to 2.3% of total supply. ai_9684xtpa added Wintermute may have been contracted recently, as it received the tokens several days later than the two existing firms.

The Top 100 altcoin index has formed a bullish divergence, according to Jamie Coutts, a crypto market analyst at Real Vision. In a post on X, Coutts said a multiyear bullish divergence had emerged in the weekly relative strength index, or RSI, comparing an equal-weighted index of the top 100 cryptocurrencies with a market cap-weighted index. Coutts said a full trend breakout has not yet occurred, but the weekly signal is drawing attention because it has accurately identified major global market tops and bottoms, including the 1998 LTCM crisis, the global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Coutts added the signal suggests the market structure may be shifting away from Bitcoin's dominance, raising the possibility of a rebound in smart contract platforms and DeFi ecosystems. As tokenization and AI agent technology accelerate, Coutts said liquidity that had been concentrated in Bitcoin could flow back into major altcoins.

Ethereum restaking platform Renzo Protocol (REZ) is rebranding as Renzo Finance and launching an onchain yield product called Renzo Basis, The Block reported. The product is designed to take a spot long position and a perpetual futures short position simultaneously on Hyperliquid, with both positions sized equally to reduce exposure to price swings and generate returns from perpetual futures funding rates. It will initially support BTC and HYPE. Renzo does not directly custody user funds and instead uses Hyperliquid’s API wallet to automate position construction and monitoring. The company plans to expand into other DeFi platforms and additional structured products.

The U.S. crypto industry has asked a court to halt Illinois’ 0.2% cryptocurrency transaction tax, scheduled to take effect in January 2027, until the underlying lawsuit is resolved. Crypto Council for Innovation and the Blockchain Association argued in a filing submitted on Sept. 8 that companies are already bearing system build-out costs worth millions of dollars to prepare for a tax they contend is potentially unconstitutional, CoinDesk reported. The groups said the burden amounts to irreparable harm. They also argue the tax conflicts with federal law and the U.S. Constitution while discriminating against cryptocurrency transactions versus other financial services. The industry sued Illinois last month to block implementation of the same tax.

Thomas Chow, Strategy’s executive vice president and legal chief, sold all 106 MSTR Class A common shares he held, CoinGape reported. According to a U.S. SEC filing, Chow sold the shares at $138.75 each after acquiring them a few days earlier through an employee stock purchase plan, for total proceeds of about $14,707. The filing also showed Chow still holds small amounts of Strategy preferred stock, including STRK and STRC.

The UK’s National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) has ranked cryptocurrency third among its nine priorities for tackling economic crime and is strengthening related investigative capabilities, Decrypt reported. The NECC said criminal organizations are using crypto to evade enforcement and move large amounts of illicit funds. In March, authorities identified 20,000 victims of address-poisoning scams and froze $12 million through international cooperation.

The U.S. Treasury is set to apply its expanded long-term Treasury buyback program from Sept. 9, and whether the actual purchase size exceeds expectations is drawing attention as a possible catalyst for Bitcoin, Forbes reported. The Treasury said in August it would more than double the per-operation cap for long-term Treasury buybacks to at least $4 billion from $2 billion, and BTC has since risen about 20%. The market expects the first purchase to reach $5 billion to $6 billion, while trader Mel Mattison said it could expand to as much as $8 billion. If the buyback size comes in above expectations, it could help curb further increases in long-term Treasury yields and create a more supportive environment for risk assets including BTC.

Strive (ASST) has surpassed Metaplanet in market capitalization among corporate Bitcoin holders, even though its Bitcoin holdings are 43% smaller than Metaplanet’s. The shift came as Metaplanet’s stock, $MPJPY, fell more than 13% over the past week.

Some shareholders of Japan-listed Bitcoin treasury firm Metaplanet are demanding the cancellation of an additional 273 million shares tied to executive stock options, Cointelegraph reported. The shareholders objected to a structure under which the option pool was set at 20% of fully diluted shares and automatically increased whenever new shares were issued. Although Metaplanet froze the allotment at 319.5 million shares on Aug. 18, the shareholders argued dilution worsened for existing investors as the total rose from 46 million shares to 319.5 million shares. A pseudonymous shareholder known as Bitcoin Pharaoh claimed David Bailey, CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, received 300,000 stock options with an exercise price of 105 yen, below the share price of 510 yen at the time, according to the report.

The yield on the U.S. two-year Treasury note rose to 4.42%, its highest level since July 2024.

Binance announced the addition of 牛来 for spot trading at 2:30 p.m. UTC today. The listing will carry a Seed Tag, which Binance uses for tokens that may have higher volatility and risk than other listed tokens.

Bank of America Securities upgraded its rating on blockchain-based online lending platform Figure to neutral from underperform and raised its price target to $49 from $31, Crypto Briefing reported. The move reflects rapid growth in Figure’s consumer lending transaction volume. Its second-quarter consumer lending marketplace volume reached $4.3 billion, up 132% from a year earlier, with Figure Connect, which links lenders and funding providers, accounting for $2.8 billion.

U.S. Bank said it completed a pilot cross-border transfer between its North American and European entities using its dollar-pegged stablecoin, USBDC. The transaction was carried out on the Stellar (XLM) blockchain, and the bank tested USBDC issuance and redemption, as well as freeze and clawback functions. U.S. Bank is also reviewing ways to expand its use of blockchain for institutional operations, including liquidity management, collateral transfers and cross-border treasury management.