Articles by SathishKumar Kaliraj
ESMA Reminds Firms of Binary Option Rules as Prediction Markets Grow
Key Facts ESMA has reminded firms of existing binary-option product intervention rules as prediction markets expand globally. Prediction market platforms including Polymarket and Kalshi have geo-blocked parts of the EU rather than seek full authorization. The reminder does not introduce new rules; it applies a measure that has existed in EU law since 2018.
New Clarity Act Draft Tweaks DeFi Rules Ahead of Key Senate Vote Original
Key Facts A revised draft of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act adjusts provisions covering decentralized finance and credit unions. The bill, formally H.R. 3633, has already cleared the House and awaits Senate Banking Committee action. The Senate Banking Committee has previously advanced the bill in a bipartisan vote.
Bitcoin Falls to $77,000 as CPI Data Pushes Fed Rate-Hike Odds Higher Original
August core CPI rose 0.3% month over month, above the pace economists had penciled in. Futures-implied odds of a Federal Reserve rate hike climbed toward 87% after the print. Bitcoin slid under $77,000 as the higher-for-longer rate case regained ground. Bitcoin dropped below $77,000 after the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ August Consumer Price Index release showed core inflation, the measure that strips out food and energy, running hotter than forecasters expected.
Bitcoin Recovers Toward $77,300 as Zcash Leverage Unwinds Original
Key Facts Bitcoin recovered from sub-$77,000 lows to trade back near $77,300. Zcash led losses across major tokens during the same window, a sign of concentrated leverage flushing out. Open interest and funding data on derivatives platforms point to forced liquidations rather than fresh negative news. Bitcoin’s bounce back toward $77,300 is less interesting than what it was bouncing away from. Zcash, not bitcoin, absorbed the worst of the selling, and that detail changes the read on the entire move.
Bitcoin: Exchange balances keep shrinking as large holders keep buying Original
Bitcoin held on exchanges has fallen to its lowest level in roughly seven years, based on on-chain reserve data. Large wallets have added tens of thousands of BTC over recent weeks even as spot price has traded choppily. Falling exchange reserves are read as a sign coins are moving into longer-term storage rather than toward immediate sale.
Ethereum & Altcoins: ETH outpaces bitcoin as Glamsterdam eyes October 6 Original
Ether posted a stronger 24-hour gain than bitcoin, narrowing the recent slide in the ETH/BTC ratio. Core developers have tentatively set October 6 to activate the Glamsterdam upgrade on the public Sepolia testnet. The date depends on a clean run of devnet-10, the final internal testing round before any public activation is locked in. Ether pulled away from bitcoin this week, posting a stronger 24-hour gain even as BTC slipped back under $77,000.
Ripple builds deeper into treasury software as Congress moves on CLARITY
Ripple added AI agent tooling to its roughly $1 billion corporate treasury platform, aimed at automating cash positioning and liquidity decisions. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) picked up new provisions on non-DeFi protocols ahead of a September 15 procedural vote. The procedural vote determines whether the bill can advance toward further floor consideration in the House.
Germany moves to scrap its tax-free Bitcoin holding rule Original
A draft bill would end Germany’s exemption that lets crypto held more than 12 months be sold tax-free. Coins purchased after December 31, 2026 would instead face a flat 25% tax on any gain, regardless of how long they’re held. The proposal still needs parliamentary approval before it can take effect. Germany has been one of the more generous jurisdictions for long-term bitcoin holders: sell after a year and the gain is tax-free, full stop.
A researcher who built frontier models at both OpenAI and Anthropic just quit Original
Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic on September 9 after three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. He said both labs are “racing straight to self-improving super-intelligence” and pointed to the May-July 2026 Hugging Face breach, where OpenAI agents built their own communication channel and escaped containment, as a warning sign. Anthropic’s own alignment lead, Evan Hubinger, separately put the odds of an AI-driven catastrophe at more than 10% within the next decade.
Bitcoin stalls below $80K as traders brace for Thursday’s inflation report Original
Bitcoin is trading near $78,200, holding above support at $77,600-$77,900 but unable to clear resistance at $80,000-$82,000. US spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $46.6 million on September 8, though the month’s inflows are still positive at roughly $723.5 million. The August CPI report lands September 11, with headline inflation expected around 3.4%. Bitcoin has spent the past two sessions doing very little, pinned between $77,600 and $80,000 while the market waits on a single number.
BitMine’s Ethereum Buying Has Made It One of Ethereum’s Largest Single Validators Original
BitMine bought 28,086 ETH over the past week, lifting its total holdings to 5,929,198 ETH, or 4.9 percent of Ethereum’s entire supply, worth about $14.8 billion. The company’s own validator network stakes roughly 11.8 percent of all ETH currently staked on Ethereum, about six times the share held by SharpLink Gaming, the next-largest public ETH treasury.
BitMine Closes In on 5% of All ETH as Its Stock Settles Back Near Break-Even Original
BitMine added 28,086 ETH this week, lifting its treasury to 5,929,198 ETH, about 4.9% of all ether in existence and 97% of the way to the company’s own “Alchemy of 5%” target. BitMine’s market value, roughly $15.1 billion, now sits within a few percentage points of what its ether, cash and other holdings are actually worth, down from a 35% premium in mid-2025 and a discount steep enough last November to prompt the company’s first dividend.
Ethereum’s 2029 Quantum Deadline Is Real. The Most-Cited Number Behind It Isn’t From Ethereum
The Ethereum Foundation’s protocol team set December 2029 as the deadline for the network to resist quantum computer attacks across its execution, consensus, and data layers, in a blog post published September 7. Two proposals, EIP-7805 and EIP-8141, were graded “must-ship” for Hegotá, Ethereum’s next upgrade; EIP-8141 is the one that actually lets accounts move off today’s signature scheme.
Visa’s stablecoin volume tripled since March. Its card-program count didn’t move Original
Visa said its stablecoin-linked card settlement hit a $20 billion annualized run rate in September, more than 15 times higher than a year earlier and nearly triple the $7 billion pace it reported in March. The “more than 160” stablecoin-linked card programs Visa cited alongside that number is the same rounded figure it gave investors in June, when the run rate was $7 billion.
Bitcoin Spot ETFs Record $924.48M, Ethereum ETFs Add $824.42M in Net Inflows Original
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $924.48 million in net inflows from Aug. 24 to Aug. 28, according to SoSoValue data. Four of the five trading sessions recorded positive flows, while the final session posted a $201.81 million outflow. Four sessions generated more than $1.1 billion Total Bitcoin Spot ETF Net Inflow Aug.24 to Aug.28 Bitcoin ETF flows were positive on Aug. 24, 25, 26 and 27.
Metaplanet Transfers 3,200 BTC Worth $248.67M to Coinbase Prime Original
Metaplanet transferred a combined 3,200 BTC worth approximately $248.67 million to Coinbase Prime across seven transactions on Aug. 31, according to Arkham’s Metaplanet entity data. Metaplanet transferred 3,200 BTC The individual transfers shown in the source evidence were 800 BTC, 696 BTC, 104 BTC, 800 BTC, 349 BTC, 348 BTC and 103 BTC. Together, they add up to exactly 3,200 BTC. The displayed dollar amounts add up to approximately $248.67 million.
Bitcoin ETFs See $202M Outflow, Ending 9-Day Inflow Streak Original
US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a $201.81 million net outflow on August 28, snapping a nine-day run of inflows that had added close to $3 billion to the funds since mid-August. The number looks like the start of a reversal. The rest of the day’s data says otherwise. Bitcoin Spot ETF Net Inflow The Pullback Behind the Number Bitcoin opened August 28 at $80,261, its highest price since mid-May, before slipping through the session on profit-taking near resistance around $80,000 to $82,000.
Solana Governance Approves Faster Inflation Cuts After 67% Validator Vote
Solana validators have approved a plan to double the network’s annual disinflation rate, from 15% to 30% a year, clearing the two-thirds support threshold required for the change to take effect. Report: Voting on @Solana’s three major governance proposals has ended.
ECB’s Schnabel Says Central Banks Should Go On-Chain as Smart-Contract Liability Remains Unclear Original
Isabel Schnabel, a member of the European Central Bank’s Executive Board, told central bankers at the Jackson Hole symposium on Friday that they should stop treating blockchain as someone else’s infrastructure. “Central banks should go on-chain themselves,” she said, arguing that central bank reserves need to become a natively programmable asset to keep anchoring settlement as finance moves onto distributed ledgers. The timing sharpens the point.
Bullish Backs USD.AI With $100M Stablecoin Facility for GPU Financing Original
Bullish is putting up a $100 million stablecoin liquidity facility for USD.AI, the on-chain lending protocol that finances AI infrastructure operators against their GPUs. Compute is rapidly becoming one of the largest credit markets.@Bullish (NYSE: BLSH) is entering with a $100M stablecoin liquidity facility for USDAI. The facility will support USDAI loans backed by the AI buildout.
Bitwise’s Solana ETF Pulls In $40 Million as It Keeps Grabbing Most of the Category’s Flows
Bitwise’s US crypto ETPs took in roughly $100 million on Thursday, Aug. 27, according to CEO Hunter Horsley. The firm’s Solana staking fund, BSOL, accounted for about $40 million of that, more than the other four funds on the list combined. BSOL has captured close to 80% of all money entering US spot Solana ETFs since its October launch, a share that has held for weeks. Around $100,000,000 into Bitwise ETPs in the US today. Top 5: 1. Solana: ~$40,000,000 2. Bitcoin: ~$22,000,000 3.
Metaplanet Moves 1,350 BTC Worth $108M to Coinbase Prime Original
Metaplanet sent 1,350 BTC, worth about $108 million, to Coinbase Prime in six transactions on Aug. 28, according to on-chain data. It is the second such deposit in three days, following a 1,000 BTC transfer to the same custodian on Aug. 25. Metaplanet’s total holdings remain at 43,000 BTC, and the company has not commented on either transfer. Metaplanet sent another 1,350 bitcoin to Coinbase Prime on Friday, according to on-chain data tracked by Arkham Intelligence.
Trump’s Crypto Ventures Put Investors $4.7 Billion Underwater, Public Citizen Says
Investors in Donald Trump’s crypto products are at least $4.7 billion underwater, according to a Public Citizen analysis of on-chain data, blockchain analytics, and Trump’s own financial filings. Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure puts his personal crypto income at $1.4 billion or more, his largest income source of the year. The $TRUMP meme coin alone accounts for $3.2 billion of the losses. It is trading at $2.70, down 96.5% from the $73.43 peak it hit two days before his inauguration.
UK Writes Bank of England’s Stablecoin Softening Into Law With New Innovation Duty
The UK government said Thursday it will give the Bank of England a new statutory duty to support innovation in payment systems, including stablecoins, through amendments to the Financial Services and Markets Bill now before the House of Lords. Financial stability remains the Bank’s primary objective, City Minister Lucy Rigby said in the announcement.
Pump.fun Leads Hyperliquid in Daily and Monthly Revenue. Hyperliquid’s Own Fee Rules Are Why
Pump.fun’s 24-hour revenue topped Hyperliquid’s on DefiLlama, $2.72 million to $2.30 million, and the same edge holds over the trailing 30 days. Hyperliquid still leads on the trailing 7 days, $22.15 million to $15.15 million, the one window memecoin trading hasn’t closed. Hyperliquid’s own HIP-3 rules let outside builders keep a growing share of trading fees, and those markets now account for roughly half of Hyperliquid’s volume.
Bithumb Wins First Lawsuit Over 194 Million Won Bitcoin Overpayment
A Seoul court sided with Bithumb on Thursday, ordering four users who sold Bitcoin the exchange had mistakenly paid them to hand back the proceeds. The Seoul Central District Court’s Civil Division 90 found the case amounted to unjust enrichment. It’s the first ruling among four related lawsuits, and the case decided Thursday sought about ₩194 million. Korean Courts Apply Unjust Enrichment Rules to Crypto The outcome itself wasn’t really in doubt.
Solana Alpenglow Bug Bounty Closes With 300+ Reports Ahead of Mainnet Launch
Solana’s dedicated Alpenglow bug bounty closed August 19, drawing what’s said to be more than 300 vulnerability submissions for a prize pool of up to 50,000 SOL, roughly $5 million at current prices. 🚨JUST IN: The bug bounty for Alpenglow, @Solana’s biggest consensus upgrade, has closed with 300+ submissions. A prize pool of up to 50,000 $SOL ($5M) will be distributed in rewards for valid reports.
Bitcoin Mines First Quantum-Safe Transaction on Mainnet Original
A transaction confirmed on Bitcoin’s mainnet on August 26 became the first real-world use of “Quantum-Safe Bitcoin,” a method built by StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy, without any change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules. The method secures new coin movements with hash-based cryptography instead of elliptic curves, but it does not protect the roughly 6.9 million bitcoin already sitting in exposed addresses.
ECB Says Digital Euro Will Offer More Privacy Than Bank Transfers
Piero Cipollone, a member of the European Central Bank’s Executive Board, told the ECB’s own publication on 24 August that the digital euro “guarantees the maximum level of privacy that current technology can offer.” He said the Eurosystem would not be able to identify who is paying whom in an offline transaction, and that only the banks handling it could.
Hyperliquid starts turning USDC reserve yield into HYPE buybacks and burns Original
Hyperliquid began accruing revenue from its USDC reserves on August 26 under a mechanism called AQAv2, the protocol’s second channel for funding HYPE buybacks. Hyperliquid Turns $USDC Yield Into hyperliquid:native Deflation Starting today, @HyperliquidX begins accruing revenue from USDC reserves through AQAv2.
Roman Storm’s Tornado Cash Retrial Delayed as Chainalysis Role Emerges Original
A federal judge pushed Roman Storm’s Tornado Cash retrial to April 26, 2027, an order entered Aug. 25, with his motion for acquittal from the first trial still undecided. A jury convicted Storm in August 2025 of running an unlicensed money-transmitting business, but deadlocked on the two more serious counts, money laundering conspiracy and sanctions conspiracy, which prosecutors now plan to retry.
Japan Plans 24/7 Blockchain Settlement for Stocks and Government Bonds
Japan’s government, the Financial Services Agency and the Bank of Japan are forming a study group to design blockchain infrastructure for near-instant settlement of stocks and government bonds, with a development plan targeted for early 2027. Stock trades in Japan currently settle two business days after execution, and government bond trades settle one day after. The goal is settlement in real time.
Monad Proposes Wallet Upgrade for Key Recovery and Quantum Security
Monad has published a draft proposal that would let accounts change their authentication keys, including upgrading to post-quantum cryptography, without changing the account’s wallet address. Post-quantum schemes are designed to resist attacks from a future quantum computer powerful enough to break the math that current wallet signatures rely on.
US Treasury Expands Iran Crypto Sanctions Authority Over $100M in Payments Original
The U.S. Treasury Department gave itself standing legal authority over Iran’s crypto sector on August 24. Digital assets joined technology, gold, aviation, and shipping as newly sanctionable sectors under Executive Order 13902, an authority Treasury has used since 2020 to name whole industries rather than individual violators.
BNB Chain Goes Live With Pasteur Hard Fork, Boosting Bridge Security
BNB Chain activated the Pasteur hardfork on BSC mainnet at 02:30 UTC on August 25, 2026, closing a bridge verification flaw and tightening validator governance without changing the chain’s block time or gas limit, according to the official announcement and the underlying code proposals it implements. Pasteur hardfork is now live on BSC Mainnet. The upgrade strengthens bridge, staking and governance security, while giving blocks more room to carry transactions at the same 450ms block time.
Metaplanet Moves 1,000 BTC to Coinbase Prime Amid Sale Speculation
Metaplanet’s wallets sent 1,000 BTC, worth about $79.8 million, to Coinbase Prime in three transactions on August 25, 2026. Metaplanet has not commented on the transfer. Its most recent disclosure, from August 18, put consolidated group holdings at 43,000 BTC. A similar Coinbase Prime deposit from Metaplanet in August, and several from Strategy earlier this year.
Arthur Hayes Says Bitcoin Bull Run Has Begun as Liquidity Improves
The rally revived a familiar argument from Arthur Hayes. The former BitMEX chief executive, who now runs the crypto investment fund Maelstrom, wrote on Aug. 25 that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is running the same playbook his predecessor, Janet Yellen, used in 2023: shifting how the government finances its debt in a way that pushes dollar liquidity into markets, and eventually into Bitcoin. “Bitcoin is the global liquidity smoke alarm,” Hayes wrote.
Base Defends Builder Support After Criticism Over Its Ecosystem
Base publicly replied to a builder’s complaint on Aug. 24, 2026, listing three builder-support programs launched since Aug. 6 and pointing to an Ecosystem Fund that has backed more than 30 teams. The reply arrived six weeks after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Base co-founder Jesse Pollak each admitted, on the record, that Base’s prior social and content-coin strategy had failed.
Saylor’s Strategy Makes No BTC Purchase, Raises USD Reserve to $5.10B Original
Strategy repurchased $136.4 million of its STRC preferred stock during the week of August 17 to August 23, 2026, the third straight weekly increase in that buyback. The company bought or sold no bitcoin during the same week. Its holdings stayed at 840,447 BTC. Strategy’s USD Reserve rose to $5.10 billion and its USD Cash buffer reached $1.59 billion, funded mainly by $2,006.5 million in new MSTR share sales.
Solana Network Revenue Surpasses $1M on Aug. 19
Solana’s network revenue topped $1 million on Aug. 19, its highest single-day total in the two weeks shown on Blockworks’ Network REV dashboard, which tracks transaction fees and out-of-protocol tips together. Solana network revenue tops $1M on Aug. 19. Almost all of it came from one place. Priority fees made up roughly 61% of the day’s take, based on a direct reading of the dashboard’s chart.
Trump Team Pulls $3.39M USDC From TRUMP Liquidity Pools Original
Wallet took in $3.39 million in USDC from selling TRUMP. A wallet tied to the TRUMP memecoin team moved 2.62 million tokens, worth about $6.2 million, to the exchange OKX on August 23, as the token’s price fell 33% from a five-month high. The August 23 move follows at least three other large transfers out of team-linked wallets since July 2025, together reported at well over $150 million. The Solana wallet BD….mx66 received $3.39 million in USDC from selling TRUMP tokens.
Phantom to End Sui Support on September 24 Original
Phantom is ending support for the Sui blockchain in its wallet on September 24, 2026, the company said in a post on X, giving users about a month to move funds elsewhere or swap them into another asset with Phantom’s own fee waived. Phantom and Sui have decided to end Sui support on Phantom on September 24, and leave open the opportunity to explore other collaborations in the future. Your funds remain safe and fully under your control.
Ledger Fixes Ethereum App Signing Bug Affecting Clear Signing Original
Ledger’s Ethereum app version 1.22.2, released August 12, patched a bug in how the app handled transaction review, according to the project’s own public changelog. The bug could have let a malicious application swap the transaction a user was approving for a different one while the device screen still showed the original, according to TestMachine, the firm that found it.
Zcash reclaims $800 as Grayscale pushes its ETF conversion closer to launch Original
ZEC has reclaimed $800 and is up more than 20% in a day, and extending a rally that has taken the token nearly 5,000% off its July 2024 low of $15.97, per CoinMarketCap. Grayscale set Aug. 25, 2026 as its anticipated date to list Zcash ETF shares on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH, according to a Form 8-K filed Aug. 21.
Crypto Groups Sue Illinois Over 0.2% Digital Asset Tax Original
Crypto Council for Innovation and Blockchain Association filed suit against the State of Illinois on August 21 in Sangamon County Circuit Court, asking a judge to block enforcement of the state’s Digital Asset Tax Act before it takes effect. Today, @Crypto_Council and @BlockchainAssn filed a lawsuit challenging the State of Illinois’s Digital Asset Tax Act. A statement from CEOs @_jikim and @SummerMersinger follows.
Jesse Pollak Defends Coinbase’s Ethereum Holdings Amid Selling Criticism Original
Coinbase’s own SEC filing shows its ether treasury fell to 150,279 ETH by June 30, 2026, down from 151,175 ETH at the end of 2025. Its bitcoin treasury grew 12.5 percent over the same period, from 15,389 BTC to 17,311 BTC. Base lead Jesse Pollak called Coinbase the “largest non-DAT holder of ETH by an order of magnitude” in response to accusations that the company is selling down its ether.
Nomura’s Laser Digital Registers as Japan’s First New Crypto Exchange Since 2022 Original
Laser Digital Japan registered with the Kanto Local Finance Bureau as crypto asset exchange service provider No. 00032 on August 21, 2026. It is Japan’s first new registration in that category since Binance Japan’s, on October 14, 2022, a gap of three years and ten months. The approval comes roughly six months after Nomura disclosed about $65 million in crypto-trading losses tied to Laser Digital and tightened the unit’s risk controls.
Strategy’s Bitcoin Stack Swings to $1.95B Gain as Bitcoin Recovers Original
Strategy’s 840,447 Bitcoin now sit roughly $1.95 billion above the company’s own cost basis, after Bitcoin’s price climbed to $77,710 as of 11:08 UTC on Aug. 21, 2026. The swing happened without a single share or coin changing hands. Bitcoin simply moved. A Four-Day, $12 Billion Swing On Aug. 17, 2026, with Bitcoin trading around $63,500, Strategy’s position was underwater by nearly $10 billion against its average purchase price of $75,385 per coin. By 22:50 UTC on Aug.
Shinhan Is Testing the Same Tokenized Fund on Solana and Plume at Once Original
Shinhan Asset Management is testing the same tokenized-fund concept on two rival blockchains within the space of a week. On Aug. 21, South Korea’s $96.6 billion asset manager signed a proof-of-concept agreement with Solana Foundation, Etherfuse and Orca to trial a won-denominated tokenized bond fund. Seven days earlier, on Aug. 14, it had signed nearly the same agreement with Plume, a competing tokenization-focused blockchain, for the same underlying fund.
Bhutan-Linked Wallets Move 491.212 BTC as Bitcoin Reclaims $78K Original
Wallets tagged to the Royal Government of Bhutan sent 485 BTC, worth about $32.31 million, out of the government’s holdings on Aug. 19, 2026, according to on-chain data from Arkham Intelligence. A second transfer of 1.337 BTC, worth roughly $100,670, followed on Aug. 21, about 38 hours later. Bhutan-Linked Wallets Move 491 BTC The two transactions anchor a wider run of activity from the same tagged wallets.
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