Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Kevin Spacey has a new movie working with an alleged crypto criminal, Anthropic reaches a $183B valuation after new raise, Kraken is getting ready to launch tokenized versions of U.S. stocks, hackers exploit a loophole in Trump’s crypto toke, and so much more.

It’s already Wednesday?? Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

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• Bitcoin's seven-day average hashrate broke the one zetahash per second milestone — a trillion trillion hashes — even as miners face slumping fees, rising difficulty, and shrinking revenues

  • BTC rose +1.7% over the past 24 hours to $110,684, leaving it up nearly +1% for the week

  • XRP increased +1.6% over 24 hours to $2.79, down -4.7% for the week, while SOL edged up +1.4% to around $201, gaining +5.3% over the last seven days

• Experts further attributed the recent uptick to a weakening U.S. dollar, Metaplanet’s 1,009 BTC acquisition, and rise in open interest

Market Predictions

• Bettors on Kalshi are predicting what will Trump Media invest in this year?

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

• London’s bullion market to trial digital gold (FT)

• Kevin Spacey's new film stars a Russian co-founder of an Ethereum DeFi project that was an alleged ponzi scheme (DC)

• Coinbase is launching futures trading for an index that combines exposure to both top stocks and crypto-based ETFs (TB)

• Bullish appoints David LaValle as president of CoinDesk Indices and Data (CD)

• Within hours of WLFI’s debut, 80% of its top holders rush to sell (CS)

• Gold-backed IRA provider SmartGold moves $1.6B of vaulted assets on-chain (CT)

• Swiss crypto bank Sygnum expands its strategies into Germany and Liechtenstein (BC)

• ETHZilla to deploy $100M worth of ETH with liquid restaking protocol EtherFi (TB)

• The Ether Machine raises another 150,000 ETH in August (TB)

• Metaplanet secures shareholder approval to overhaul its capital structure (CT)

• Ethereum Layer 2 Starknet resumes block production after network outage (TB)

• CME Bitcoin futures open interest drops from over 212,000 BTC to 130,000 BTC (CD)

• CleanCore Solutions announces a $175M private placement to establish a Dogecoin treasury (CD)

• Hyperliquid records its highest-ever revenue and trading volume in August (TB)

• The Solana community approves the Alpenglow consensus protocol in a governance vote (BW)

• World Liberty Financial proposes buyback program for long-term holders (TB)

• Trader receives 1% of WLFI’s supply, netting $250M (CD)

• Web3 companies experiment with hardware devices to merge crypto functions (CT)

• Jack Ma backed Yunfeng Financial scoops up 10,000 ETH (CS)

• South Korea to join 48 nations in data collection and full crypto transaction sharing (BC)

Venture Capital

• Ether Machine raises $654M in a private ether financing round (BW)

• Anthropic reaches a $183B valuation following its latest funding round (CT)

• SonicStrategy receives $40M in convertible funding from Sonic Labs (CD)

• Kite AI raises $18M in its Series A funding round led by PayPal Ventures (CT)

• Reflect Money announces a $3.75M seed round led by a16z crypto’s CSX accelerator (BW)

M&A Announcements

• Figure Technology Solutions seeks $526M from IPO, while Winklevoss-led Gemini eyes raising $361M (TB)

• Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck to acquire French digital asset prime brokerage Aplo (DC)

• BitMine Immersion Technologies acquires an additional 150,000 ETH (CD)

• Joseph Lubin’s SharpLink adds $177M worth of Ethereum (TB)

• Strategy purchases another 4,048 BTC (TB)

Launches

• Kraken will launch tokenized versions of U.S. stocks on Ethereum mainnet via xStocks (TD)

• Toyota and Avalanche to roll out blockchain infrastructure powering autonomous robotaxi fleets (CT)

• Crypto.com and Underdog partner to offer sports prediction markets (TB)

• Avalon Labs launches on Bitcoin Layer 2 Rootstock (TD)

• CleanCore Solutions and House of Doge launch 'official' Dogecoin treasury (TB)

Regulation

• European regulator calls for a balance between financial innovation and investor protection (DC)

• The SEC and CFTC announce a cross-agency initiative to coordinate crypto efforts (BW)

• The Uniswap Foundation leads an 18-org coalition urging U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent to adopt Wyoming’s DUNA framework (CS)

Cybersecurity

• Crypto thefts hit $163M in August (CT)

• DEX platform Bunni suffers an $8.4M exploit (TB)

• Venus Protocol gets exploited, losing an estimated $27M in assets (CD)

• A Binance Smart Chain user falls victim to a phishing scam, losses $13.5M worth of tokens (DC)

• Ukraine loses at least $10B to crypto crime (DC)

• Hackers exploit a loophole in Trump’s crypto token through phishing (CD)

• 31 North Korean ‘developers’ fool top crypto companies and steal $680K (CT)

Extra Reads

• September is here, marking the non-technical end of summer and the worst month (historically) for Bitcoin - Where crypto markets stand heading into historically-notorious September

• Everyone knows that crypto is psychological torture, but is World Liberty Financial good for crypto? - It doesn’t matter anymore

• Crypto isn’t limited to trading, it can be used to make some exciting purchases - 8 crazy things you can actually buy with crypto

Chart of the Day

DeFi and RWAs lead 2025 with YTD gains of 44.6% and 38.7%

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