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Grayscale CEO Peter Mintzberg said in a Fortune op-ed that the crypto winter is entering a thawing phase and institutional investors are paying closer attention to digital assets. Mintzberg said this cycle, unlike those in 2014, 2018 and 2022, was supported by institutions, which helped keep the downturn relatively limited compared with past cycles. He added that 73% of institutional investors plan to increase their digital-asset allocations this year, while 60% of Fortune 500 executives are actively pursuing blockchain-related projects.

Dylan LeClair, Metaplanet’s head of Bitcoin strategy, said on X that just 10 weeks ago some people had argued the case for investing in Bitcoin was over, Strategy’s MSTR would eventually be fully liquidated, and macro capital would never return, adding that those views should no longer be taken seriously.

Whale Alert reported that 272,040,846 USDC has been transferred from Coinbase Institutional to Coinbase. The transaction is valued at about $272 million.

Call options delivered stronger returns than a high-leverage Bitcoin perpetual futures strategy during Bitcoin’s roughly 25% surge over the past week, according to Crypto Briefing. The outlet said Bitcoin jumped from about $62,000 to nearly $80,000 on Aug. 25, adding the move amounted to a stress test for virtually every trading product in the crypto ecosystem. In a simulated comparison between call options and a high-leverage strategy, buying call options generated a 582% return, while the same premium-based high-leverage strategy produced a 450% return, Crypto Briefing said. The 132 percentage point gap was significant and suggested a structural shift in how traders respond to sharp price swings, according to the outlet.

NFT marketplace OpenSea has partnered with AI search engine Perplexity to directly supply real-time transaction data from more than 25 blockchain networks to Perplexity’s AI engine. The integration means users searching crypto market trends now receive answers based on live marketplace trading signals rather than outdated price data. To support the partnership, OpenSea built an MCP server, a data access protocol designed for AI, and is expanding beyond a marketplace into an onchain data infrastructure company. The move is expected to sharply lower barriers to market analysis for traders and developers by addressing data fragmentation.

Taiwanese legislator Ko Ju-Chun is committed to pursuing the adoption of a Bitcoin strategic reserve, former Bitcoin Magazine editor Pete Rizzo said, citing remarks Ko made at the Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong on Aug. 27 local time. Ko stressed he would keep pushing the effort forward. In May, Ko submitted a report on introducing a Bitcoin strategic reserve to Taiwan’s prime minister and central bank governor during a Legislative Yuan meeting.

An anonymous hacker who had been leaking unreleased "GTA 6" footage sold all holdings of a self-issued memecoin just hours before Rockstar Games’ first official gameplay reveal, CoinDesk reported. Over the past nine days, the hacker promoted the Solana-based memecoin $CYBERLEEK by placing its watermark on leaked videos. The token, whose market capitalization had climbed as high as $25 million, fell about 46% in 24 hours after the hacker dumped tokens acquired through fees in a single move. The cash-out is estimated at more than $250,000, or about 330 million won. Meanwhile, parent company Take-Two has issued subpoenas to X, Microsoft, and Discord to identify the leaker. On-chain analysts said the traced fund flows were linked to a KuCoin account that had completed KYC verification.

Combined circulation of USDT and USDC rose by about $1.7 billion in August 2026, ending a three-month decline, according to data compiled by Web3-focused media outlet WuBlockchain. The combined supply had previously fallen by about $2.6 billion in May, $6 billion in June and $2.2 billion in July. Based on historical data, monthly stablecoin growth above $10 billion has marked a key inflection point for stronger liquidity expansion. Monthly increases exceeded $18 billion in 2021 and in late 2024, while they repeatedly reached $8 billion to $12 billion during the 2025 bull market. Against that backdrop, the current $1.7 billion increase remains modest. Despite Bitcoin rebounding from around $60,000 to nearly $80,000, stablecoin supply growth has yet to recover to levels seen in past bull-market phases, suggesting the current move reflects early-stage liquidity recovery rather than a new phase of broad liquidity expansion.

The UK tax authority, HMRC, released its first cryptocurrency capital gains data, showing 240 people reported gains of more than £1 million ($2.5 million) in the 2024-25 fiscal year. Their combined capital gains totaled £717 million ($953.6 million), CoinDesk reported. A total of 17,600 people reported £1.38 billion ($1.84 billion) in cryptocurrency gains during the period, with about 90% identified as men. HMRC also collected an additional £168 million ($223.4 million) in capital gains tax in 2024-25 as it stepped up regulatory enforcement.

ACT, New Zealand’s fourth-largest party and a member of the ruling coalition, has unveiled a tax policy pledge that would exempt individual investors from capital gains tax on cryptocurrency holdings such as Bitcoin if they are sold after being held for more than 12 months. The proposal would also exempt small capital gains taxes arising from everyday crypto payments for items such as groceries or coffee, in a move aimed at making digital assets more practical as a means of payment. Sales made in under one year and trading profits earned by professional traders would remain subject to existing income tax rates. ACT Deputy Leader Nicole McKee said the party plans to overhaul the system so the tax authority can focus on major taxable activities instead of policing small transactions that waste administrative costs. McKee also made clear ACT intends to pursue a fintech regulatory sandbox and legislation on stablecoins.

Radosław Piesiewicz, head of the Polish Olympic Committee, has been arrested by prosecutors on allegations he accepted bribes from crypto exchange Zondacrypto, CoinDesk reported. Prosecutors are focusing on whether Piesiewicz received valuables including a Patek Philippe watch worth about €40,000 ($46,000) from Zondacrypto CEO Przemysław Kral in exchange for helping resolve issues with regulators. Piesiewicz denied the allegations, saying he bought the watch himself with cash. The probe is part of a broader investigation into alleged fraud and money laundering at Zondacrypto, with estimated damages of at least 350 million zloty ($95 million). Zondacrypto had previously signed a main sponsorship deal with the Olympic committee.

According to a community post, Biconomy (BICO) is being displayed on South Korean exchange Bithumb with a total supply of 1 billion tokens and a circulating supply of 1,000,242,811 tokens, exceeding the stated total supply.

AI agents have processed more than 205 million transactions through the x402 protocol so far, with total transaction volume reaching $53 million, Coinbase said. By network, Coinbase accounted for the largest share at 67%. x402 is a standard technology that allows AI agents and applications to make payments directly over HTTP.

A flaw in cryptocurrency wallet software made some recovery phrases predictable, leading to an estimated at least $5.69 million in stolen funds since May, blockchain security firm Coinspect said, CryptoSlate reported. Coinspect said it was able to predict recovery phrases in at least five wallet apps by exploiting a vulnerability in the random number generator of the CryptoJS library. The firm said hackers exploited the flaw multiple times, with about $3.14 million drained on May 27, another roughly $2.55 million traced between May 30 and July 13, and a third attack between July 20 and 21 that caused about $40,000 in losses. The firm added that more than 2,000 seed phrases across five blockchain networks appear to have been affected, although the list of impacted apps and the full scale of the damage remain unclear.

Strategy shares rose by more than 10% and moved above $135.

Shares of Bitcoin strategic buyer Strive rose 110% from a month earlier to top $24, while gaining around 12% intraday.

Lagrange said via its official social media channel it has joined Hanwha STEP, a partner program run by Hanwha Vision that provides sales, marketing and technical support across its channel, technology, and A&E network. Lagrange added, "As an official STEP partner of Hanwha Vision, we can now make AI records technically provable."

RQD Clearing, which provides clearing and settlement infrastructure for U.S. stock and options trading, said it raised $74 million to expand its infrastructure into digital assets and on-chain finance markets. The equity investment was led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, the technology investing arm of Bain Capital, with participation from ABN AMRO Clearing Bank and Nyca Partners. RQD said it plans to use the funds to expand across North America, Asia, and the Middle East, while building out digital asset custody and tokenization products. RQD Clearing is a U.S.-licensed broker and is known to handle order execution for crypto exchange Bitget’s U.S. stock trading feature, Stock+.

Crypto-related stocks in the U.S. market are broadly higher. SharpLink (SBET) is up 4.09%, Bitmine (BMNR) 3.19%, Gemini (GEMI) 6.83%, Bullish (BLSH) 2.96%, Circle (CRCL) 4.48%, Strategy (MSTR) 8.17%, and Coinbase (COIN) 4.04%.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has risen above $80,000. BTC is trading at $80,000.22 on the Binance USDT market.

According to data from on-chain analytics platform Santiment, ETH balances on major centralized exchanges have fallen by about 1.4 million, or roughly 18%, to around 6.28 million from about 7.69 million since June 3. Santiment’s data showed an additional 275,000 ETH left exchanges since Aug. 19 alone, pushing exchange holdings to their lowest level in the period measured. Over the same period, BTC balances on exchanges rose about 0.25%. Crypto moved off exchanges to external wallets such as private wallets is generally seen as a sign holders have no near-term intention to sell, suggesting selling pressure in the market is easing.

AI-based education company Genius Group, which has added Bitcoin to its balance sheet, plans to buy $827 million worth of Bitcoin by 2031 through a preferred share issuance, BitcoinTreasuries reported. Earlier in the first quarter of this year, Genius Group sold all of its Bitcoin holdings to repay $8.5 million in debt.

Ethena announced four major ecosystem changes, including a buyout of locked tokens held by early investors, unification of its token and equity structure, the introduction of a revenue-based buyback mechanism, and the cancellation of monthly VC unlocks. The Ethena Foundation said it has completed a buyout of all locked tokens held by some large seed-round investors that had sold ENA over the past nine months. Separately, the foundation said it signed a master framework agreement with Ethena Labs, transferring the protocol’s intellectual property and all value it generates to the foundation. As a result, residual cash flows tied to the protocol’s growth will no longer go to equity investors in Ethena Labs and will instead be controlled through governance by ENA token holders. The foundation also said a "Fee Switch" governance proposal has been formally submitted to use net revenue generated across various business units under the Ethena brand for programmatic ENA buybacks. The proposal has passed approval by the risk committee. In addition, Ethena said it has fully removed concerns over persistent selling pressure from future monthly VC unlocks by releasing all unvested tokens at once. Tokens held by the core team will remain subject to the existing lockup and vesting schedule. The move is aimed at strengthening the link between the ENA token and the protocol’s value.

TermMax, a fixed-rate lending protocol developed by Term Structure Labs, announced on Aug. 26 that it has secured a strategic investment from YZi Labs, formerly Binance Labs. The company did not disclose the investment amount. TermMax was also selected for YZi Labs’ "E이지 레지던시 시즌 3" and has raised more than $8 million to date. Its key early investors include Cumberland DRW, which led its 2023 seed round, as well as HashKey Capital, Decima Fund, Longling Capital and MZ Web3 Fund.

According to Artemis data, stock token and other RWA perpetual futures accounted for 51% of Hyperliquid’s trading volume, up from 0.1% in July 2026. This marks the first time perpetual futures have made up more than 50% of the platform’s total monthly trading volume. Over the same period, total volume fell 30% from a year earlier, indicating RWA-based growth on the platform accelerated rapidly even as broader market activity contracted.