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The Big Story
Bitcoin Bull Market May Have Just Begun — Bitcoin briefly touched $81,000 before pulling back to around $78,000, marking its highest level since mid-May and forcing roughly $566 million in liquidations over 24 hours. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes argues that Treasury policy—not Bitcoin's price—is the real lever, and a new bull market may have already started. Ethereum posted a 30% gain in the past week, its largest weekly advance since May 2025, with Tom Lee calling it just the beginning of a broader move higher driven by macro tailwinds and historical precedent.
Breaking News
BNB Chain Joins Mastercard Crypto Partner Program — BNB Chain has officially joined Mastercard's Crypto Partner Program, marking a convergence of decentralized infrastructure with traditional payment rails across more than 200 countries.
Grayscale Debuts First-Ever Zcash ETF — Grayscale listed its Zcash ETF on NYSE Arca under ticker $ZCSH on August 25, making it the first exchange-traded product for the privacy-focused cryptocurrency in the United States.
Revolut Launches Euro-Backed Stablecoin — The London-based neobank entered the stablecoin market with $EURR, a euro-backed digital token that Revolut says meets regulatory standards and targets both retail and institutional use cases.
US Treasury Expands Crypto Sanctions Against Iran — The Treasury Department broadened its sanctions framework to cover Iran's entire digital asset sector, escalating Washington's campaign to restrict Tehran's access to international financial networks.
Top Stories
XRP Spot ETFs Posted Their Busiest Three-Day Stretch — US spot XRP ETFs drew more than $45 million in net inflows and generated over $200 million in combined trading volume across the three sessions ending August 24, the strongest run since launch. XRP's leverage ratio on Binance has climbed to approximately 0.213, the token's highest reading since January, signaling that derivatives traders are taking on more risk as the asset rallies.
Cardano Governance Could Face A Major Roadblock — Cardano's on-chain vote to seat four newly elected Constitutional Committee members is entering its final week with support well below required thresholds. DRep support stood at 41.7% against a 67% threshold, while stake pool operator backing was at 41.1% against a 51% requirement as of August 25. Failure to pass would leave Cardano without a functioning committee and could stall on-chain governance for months.
Strategy Stock Sale Leaves Billions Ready For Future Bitcoin Buying — Strategy raised roughly $2 billion through common stock sales last week without making any new Bitcoin purchases, leaving the company with substantial dry powder. The move contrasts with Strategy's usual pattern of immediately deploying capital into BTC, suggesting the company may be timing its next entry point carefully as Bitcoin consolidates near recent highs.
Deep Dive of the Week
Aptos vs. Sui: Same Language, Different Architecture — Both Aptos and Sui run on the Move programming language, but they process transactions in fundamentally different ways. One uses parallel execution with global state ordering, the other skips consensus entirely for single-owner transactions. This week's deep dive breaks down why architectural choices matter more than shared code when throughput and finality are on the line.
By the Numbers
$80,000 — Bitcoin's intraday high on August 25 before pulling back, marking the first time BTC touched that level since mid-May and triggering over half a billion in liquidations.
700%+ — Surge in DEX volume on Core blockchain over the past week, according to DefiLlama data, as the network's native token posted a 40% rally and ecosystem TVL climbed nearly 25% in 30 days.
260% — Weekly gain for YOLO memecoin on Robinhood Chain, with the token hitting an all-time high of $0.01292 and a market cap near $11.7 million before pulling back.
$314.1B — Canton Network's share of represented tokenized real-world asset value, giving the institutional blockchain network roughly 89% of the $353.1B total tracked by rwa.xyz.
$2B+ — Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin market cap milestone, reached approximately 20 months after its December 2024 launch, positioning it among the top tier of dollar-pegged tokens.
16,500% — Spike in Polkadot network activity over a single 24-hour period, with on-chain revenue jumping more than 7,000% in the same window according to blockchain analytics platforms.
On Our Radar
Cardano ADA rally — ADA is trading at $0.2104 with a 21.8% seven-day gain as markets price in the upcoming Dijkstra upgrade, though execution risk remains high if the roadmap slips.
Pi Network Protocol 27 testnet — Pi Core Team confirmed Protocol 26 mainnet upgrade completion and started deploying Protocol 27 on Testnet 1 on August 21, signaling continued technical progression for the controversial mobile-mining project.
Japan blockchain settlement push — Japan is preparing payment infrastructure to enable instantaneous settlement of stock and government bond transactions using blockchain technology, with coordinated government backing from multiple agencies.
BitGo CEO regulatory warning — BitGo CEO Mike Belshe cautioned that US regulators may not wait for Congress to pass the CLARITY Act, warning that agencies could shape digital asset policy well before legislation reaches the President's desk.
Until Friday.