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U.S. Sen. Tim Scott said at the SALT conference that lawmakers still have not narrowed differences over the CLARITY Act, including concerns about President Donald Trump’s crypto-related conflicts of interest and the issue of stablecoin rewards. Scott added the stablecoin rewards issue will need another round of intense coordination.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said tokenization is the next major market trend, according to Forbes. He said that after nearly a decade of hype, multiple launch setbacks and promising pilot projects, mainstream financial institutions are now moving real-world assets onto blockchains in earnest, adding that tokenization is a market trend.

U.S. senator says Senate procedural vote on Clarity bill remains set for Sept. 15

VanEck said stress in the BTC market has reached an extreme and may be signaling a rebound ahead. According to a recent report, eight of the 12 capitulation indicators tracked by VanEck have now been triggered. Based on past cases, that level of market stress has more often appeared ahead of price recoveries than before further sharp declines. VanEck’s analysis of the eight capitulation indicators showed worsening profitability for miners, rising realized losses for investors, and broader signs of sell-side exhaustion that typically emerge near the end of a bear market. Bitcoin’s current 30% to 45% decline from its peak also aligns with that historical pattern. VanEck said the simultaneous activation of two-thirds of its tracked capitulation indicators suggests the market has moved beyond a simple profit-taking phase and entered a broader stop-loss and panic-selling stretch. According to VanEck, markets have often posted positive returns after similar capitulation phases in the past. Through its ChainCheck report, VanEck has interpreted such capitulation less as a risk warning and more as a contrarian buy signal. The firm added that miner capitulation and bear markets are not signs of Bitcoin’s structural failure, but recurring features of its roughly four-year halving cycle. In an earlier report, VanEck also said a 4% drop in mining hash rate has historically acted as a bullish signal.

U.S. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig said anti-crypto forces, pessimists and groups seeking to slow technological progress had suppressed innovation for years, and the agency is now turning the page and working with innovators to forge a new path for the frontiers of finance, according to Watcher.Guru.

Blockchain Association backs proposed changes to U.S. SEC trade-through rule Blockchain Association said it submitted a comment letter to the U.S. SEC supporting proposed amendments to the trade-through rule, or Rule 611. According to AMB Crypto, the group argued the rule has led to higher costs, greater market-structure complexity, limits on order handling and execution choice, exchange proliferation, and fragmentation in exchange-based stock trading. It also said the proposed changes align with the administration’s intention to strengthen U.S. leadership in cryptocurrency and financial technology. Rule 611 is designed to prevent orders from being executed at worse prices by requiring venues to protect better-priced quotes posted on other exchanges and markets. Concerns have been raised that applying the rule directly to the crypto market may not fit the structure of DeFi, decentralized exchanges, and tokenized securities markets.

NoOnes said it is gradually winding down operations after sanctions-related efforts to resolve the issue failed. The P2P cryptocurrency trading platform said sanctions cost it key partners, while blockchain monitoring firms classified NoOnes-related transactions as high risk, making normal platform operations increasingly difficult. NoOnes had previously been added to the EU’s sanctions list related to Russia. The business drawdown began on Aug. 17, and the P2P marketplace is scheduled to shut down at 11:59 p.m. UTC on Aug. 21. Services including swaps, fiat withdrawals, gift card sales and the Bitcoin Lightning Network are also being phased out, after which the platform will transition to supporting withdrawals only. NoOnes advised users to withdraw their assets by Aug. 23.

Ripple has completed a private offering of $275 million in senior unsecured notes through Ripple Prime, its prime brokerage platform for institutional investors, with the proceeds set to be used for operations and expansion in the U.S., according to Wu Blockchain. The notes received an investment-grade BBB rating from credit rating agency KBRA. On that basis, Ripple Prime plans to expand its multi-asset clearing and settlement, financing, and prime brokerage services.

Cryptocurrency payment card spending reached $759 million in July, up 2.5 times from about $306 million a year earlier, according to Unfolded. The tally, based on on-chain data and card issuer data from PaymentsScan, showed RedotPay led the overall growth trend. The data suggests cryptocurrencies are spreading quickly as a means of payment for real-world goods and services. Even so, the crypto card market remains a niche segment compared with the traditional credit and debit card market.

CryptoQuant said Bitcoin spot demand is showing signs of turning positive for the first time since February. Based on past cases, BTC posted a median gain of 18.1% over the following 60 days after such a shift, with a 78% probability of extending its advance. CryptoQuant added that the probability rises to 87% when valuations are significantly depressed, as they are now.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the issuer of the USD1 stablecoin tied to the Trump family, said it does not own or operate Hong Kong AI platform WorldClaw and has no control over the AI models offered on the platform, while declining to provide details on any financial relationship between the two companies. Reuters had earlier reported on links between World Liberty and WorldClaw, and said WorldClaw could provide access to AI models from some Chinese companies that are under U.S. national security scrutiny. World Liberty said the two companies are separate businesses. Speaking to CoinDesk, World Liberty spokesperson David Wachsman said WorldClaw is an independent company not owned or operated by World Liberty and uses USD1 as a payment method, as do various other projects in the ecosystem. Wachsman did not answer whether World Liberty or related entities hold an equity stake in WorldClaw, have funded it, or receive licensing fees or a share of revenue.

Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s largest bank, has increased its stake in Strategy, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net. Recent filings show RBC bought an additional 46,001 MSTR shares worth about $4.45 million, bringing its total holdings to 385,002 shares valued at roughly $37.2 million. RBC had already expanded its position to 339,001 shares after buying 295,829 MSTR shares in the first quarter of this year, according to the data. Strategy is widely known as a major Bitcoin treasury company that holds large amounts of Bitcoin using corporate funds, and MSTR is used by institutions as one of the main ways to gain indirect Bitcoin exposure through the stock market.

HashKey plans to use the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin HKDAP for trade transactions between Hong Kong and the UAE, as well as for commercial insurance premium payments, according to CoinDesk. Trade between Hong Kong and the UAE totaled about $48.95 billion in 2025, roughly double the volume between Hong Kong and other Middle Eastern countries at about $24 billion, CoinDesk reported. The exchange also plans to use HKDAP for business insurance premium payments with OneDegree, a Hong Kong-based digital asset insurer.

Kalshi is seeking to launch perpetual futures tied to U.S. stock indexes, CNBC reported. On Aug. 18, Kalshi filed documents with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission requesting approval for the products. Unlike standard futures, perpetual futures have no expiration date and let traders bet on price moves without directly holding the underlying asset. The contracts are designed to track the underlying price through funding fees. Kalshi’s proposed US500 perpetual futures would use the MerQube U.S. Large Cap Index, which tracks 500 large-cap U.S.-listed stocks, as the underlying index. Kalshi also applied the same day for regulatory approval for perpetual futures linked to copper, an industrial metal. In July, the company also moved to launch products tied to precious metals such as gold and silver. Kalshi began expanding beyond prediction markets into the broader derivatives market after receiving regulatory approval for cryptocurrency-linked perpetual futures in late May.

Kaito AI launched Kaito Pulse, a browser extension that lets X users view actual trading positions, on Aug. 18. The tool integrates public trading data from Polymarket and HyperliquidX into X posts, showing users’ statements alongside their actual investment positions. Kaito also introduced Aura, a new metric that combines social activity and trading data to assess users’ influence and investment conviction. Users can build Aura by installing the extension, publishing posts, and verifying trading activity. Kaito plans to add more connected trading platforms and expand the service’s scope.

Assets protected by insurance-like coverage account for less than 2% of the DeFi market’s roughly $100 billion in total value locked, according to Firelight Chief Strategy Officer Conor Sullivan. Sullivan identified the core problem in DeFi insurance as not simply a lack of coverage, but the absence of verifiable insurance. Traditional coverage often does not publicly disclose policy limits, terms, premiums, or backing capital, making it difficult for users to independently assess whether protection can actually be honored. Sullivan added the on-chain market is especially difficult to cover under traditional insurance models, as risks such as smart contract vulnerabilities, oracle manipulation, and failures in key and signature management change rapidly while multiple protocols remain interconnected. Against that backdrop, on-chain insurance, which allows collateral and coverage terms to be verified on the blockchain in real time, is emerging as an alternative. Firelight and others are working to build verifiable insurance infrastructure that can be integrated directly into DeFi protocols.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has risen above $65,000. BTC is trading at $65,010.73 on the Binance USDT market.

Binance said it protected $1.2 million in DAO funds after detecting a potential governance attack targeting a specific project. The attempted attack sought to exploit a vulnerability in the project’s on-chain governance mechanism to bypass existing protocol requirements, Binance said. When the threat was identified, less than 48 hours remained before the hack could have succeeded. Binance’s security team immediately contacted the project and worked with other centralized exchanges listing the token to temporarily suspend token deposits, minimizing the risk of fund outflows.

The era of “Easy money” in crypto is over, Ryan Kirkley, CEO of blockchain financial infrastructure firm Global Settlement Network (GSN), said in an interview with CoinDesk. Kirkley said projects that raised excessive funding at unrealistic valuations without securing sustainable revenue have recently been shutting down in succession. He added token-based governance and fundraising structures worsened the problem, making it harder for projects to pivot their business direction while encouraging overly optimistic narratives and excessive incentives. In Kirkley’s view, those failures were a disaster foreshadowed during the 2020-2021 fundraising boom. He added the market is now going through a process of separating real crypto demand from hype. Promising areas include stablecoins, neobanks, institutional-grade crypto wallets, and payment and settlement infrastructure, while social tokens, memecoins, and some Web3 gaming segments are likely to face tougher market scrutiny.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said he has become the head of Flop Labs, the developer of Flop Network, while some in the crypto community raised the possibility that his account was compromised. Hayes said Flop is "food" for AI agents and has opted for a 100% fair launch with no presale or VC investment. He added that a large airdrop is scheduled for the fourth quarter and that the genesis block is planned for the first quarter of 2027. Separately, some community members questioned the announcement, pointing to the unusually low follower count on Flop Network's X account and the limited polish of its official website.

BlackRock said in a report by Robbie Mitchnick, its head of digital assets, and the firm’s research team that the core investment case for Bitcoin remains intact as an important emerging global alternative monetary asset and a unique portfolio diversifier. The report attributed Bitcoin’s roughly 50% decline from its peak to deleveraging within the crypto market and capital outflows, rather than to any structural flaw in Bitcoin itself. It added that a modest 1% to 2% Bitcoin allocation in a 60/40 portfolio is most effective at improving risk-adjusted returns.

U.S. President Trump said no negotiations or talks with Iran are underway or planned. Trump added the naval blockade remains fully in effect, while the Strait of Hormuz is open and operating normally, and all mines have been removed or destroyed.

Securitize (NYSE: SECZ) and U.S. asset manager Neuberger Berman have launched HINC, a tokenized high-yield bond investment fund, on Sui (SUI), Avalanche (AVAX), Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL). HINC is an actively managed bond strategy focused mainly on high-yield bonds and offered on-chain. Sui said the HINC launch expands the range of institutional financial products available on its blockchain. Sui added that HINC marks the first tokenized fund in which Neuberger, which manages more than $230 billion, is participating as a sub-adviser, while Securitize provides compliance-focused tokenization infrastructure.

Hyperliquid has urged the U.S. SEC to establish a regulatory framework for pre-IPO perpetual futures, according to Wu Blockchain. The company, described as the world’s largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange, said pre-IPO perpetual futures are derivatives that provide price exposure to a company’s expected share price before listing and support price discovery in the market. Hyperliquid Policy Center, or HPC, under Hyperliquid, and fellow perp DEX Trade[XYZ] submitted a joint comment letter to the SEC today. In the letter, the two argued investors, including U.S. retail investors, should ultimately be allowed to access pre-IPO products and said an urgent regulatory framework is needed to support that access.

On-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa said a LAB insider or market maker appears to have dispersed tokens across multiple addresses for additional selling. About three hours ago, the address transferred 9.1 million LAB, worth $720,000, to 10 new wallets. No further transfers or selling transactions, including DEX or CEX outflows, have yet occurred from the 10 recipient addresses.