Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Bitcoin breaks all time highs sending alt coins running wit it, a crypto and former investment banker exec is in hot water, banks demand to close loopholes in GENIUS ACT, The White House's crypto group will apparently be led again by an ex-college football star-turned-politician, Bernstein is still bullish on Circle, North Korean hackers keep applying to Binance, ODIN gets hacked for millions, and much more

Happy Thursday - Let’s dive in

Market Snapshot

• Bitcoin has mounted another attempt for a fresh all-time record climbing to $123,500 - a four-week high during the Wednesday U.S. session

• Ether was also climbing and just +3% from its late 2021 peak.

  • Ether continued its recent outperformance, ahead +4.5% over the past 24 hours against 2.3% for BTC

• "The conditions for a sustained rally are falling into place," said 10X Research

Market Predictions

• Bettors on Kalshi are predicting how low will Bitcoin get this year?

• Trade your predictions on a range of events, only on Kalshi

• Sign up with code LIT and get a $20 bonus when you trade $100

Headline Roundup
^{_{The major headlines driving crypto markets}}

• A former exec at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs charged after he admitted to gambling away his crypto casino firm’s seed round funding (DC)

• Crypto exchange Bullish raises $1.1B in upsized NYSE IPO, also jumping 80% in share price on the day (TD)

• Google confirms non-custodial wallets exempt From new crypto app rules on play store (DC)

• US bank groups ask to close GENIUS Act’s stablecoin yield ‘loophole’ (CT)

• Justin Sun sues Bloomberg over plans to publish 'Confidential' crypto holdings (DC)

• Grayscale registers Cardano, Hedera Trust ETF entities in Delaware (TB)

• Pump.fun is back to being the dominant token launchpad on Solana (DC)

• Analysts at research and brokerage firm Bernstein, reiterating their $230 price target for Circle stock (TB)

• Donald Trump Jr. was listed as one of the largest selling shareholders in another DAT company, LA based social media firm Thumzup (ticker TZUP) (TB)

• Treasury Sec, Scott Bessent urged the Fed to consider a 50bps cut in September after weak job revisions and soft inflation data (DC)

• Whale holding $5.6B in ETH is selling, dumps $88M in 15 hours (CT)

• DeFi lending market hits $100B (TD)

• Norway’s indirect Bitcoin exposure via its sovereign wealth fund has risen to 7,161 BTC (TB)

• OKX to Burn 65 Million OKB and Cap Supply at 21M (TD)

• Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick lifted his ether (ETH) target to $7,500 by end-2025 and $25,000 by 2028 (CD)

• Metaplanet triples assets in Q2 with Bitcoin-Backed preferred shares (BM)

• Estonian banker's lost ETH wallet now holds over $1B in ETH (DC)

• Solana Treasury holder Upexi names BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes as adviser (TD)

Venture Capital

• Pacific Northwest craft distillery Heritage Distilling has announced a $220M private investment to create a treasury focused on IP, the native token of the Story network (TD)

• VC firm Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang to lead Stripe’s blockchain project Tempo (FT)

M&A Announcements

• MARA holdings to acquire 64% stake in EDF’s Exaion for $168M in AI and HPC deal (TD)

Launches

• Coinbase Global Inc. on 12 Aug. relaunched its stablecoin bootstrap fund (TD)

• Decentralized data foundry Sapien announces token generation event on Base (CD)

• Maple Finance, an on-chain asset manager overseeing more than $3.1B, launches a Drift earn yield on collateral for perpetual futures trading (TD)

Regulation

• A16z and DeFi Education Fund propose ‘safe harbor’ policies for DeFi apps (BW)

• Trump admin silent as Tornado Cash verdict threatens Bitcoin privacy (BM)

Cybersecurity

• Two Estonian men sentenced to 16 months for running HashFlare, a $577M cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme (DC)

• $7M crypto hack hits Bitcoin DeFi project ODIN (CP)

• North Korean hackers try to get hired at Binance every day (DC)

Extra Reads

• Georgia County Put Its Election Results on Bitcoin — Why It Will Transform Election Security

• USDC issuer Circle plans layer-1 blockchain launch in bid to “underpin all stablecoin finance” - Key takeaways from Circle’s first post-IPO earnings call

• The White House's crypto group will apparently be led again by an ex-college football star-turned-politician - Who is Patrick Witt?

Chart of the Day

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