Gate Crypto Flash News and Market Updates

According to Digital Asset, a team of four information security students from the National University of Singapore (NUS) named Youtiaos has advanced to the finals of SCAN 2026, the world's first virtual asset tracking competition. The finals will be held on September 28 at Monaco Space in Seoul. The competition, organized by Digital Asset with Chainalysis as the CTF (Capture The Flag) partner, attracted 416 teams during the preliminary round; the top 20 teams have qualified for the finals.

According to Axios citing White House sources on August 18, prediction market companies were excluded from a private meeting between President Trump and technology industry leaders scheduled for August 19. The White House confirmed the companies will not be invited and will not attend the event.

According to a petition filed with the South Korean National Assembly on August 17, a lawmaker requested postponing virtual asset taxation from 2027 to 2029, citing concerns that the policy could reduce overall government tax revenue. The petitioner noted that Dunamu, operator of Upbit exchange, saw its corporate tax obligations drop sharply from 432.6 billion won in 2025 to an expected 30 billion won in 2026, while Bithumb reported losses in the first half of 2026 and paid no corporate tax. The

On August 18, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed new regulations exempting certain digital asset investment contracts from registration requirements under the Securities Act of 1933. According to the SEC's proposal for "Regulation Crypto Assets," issuers meeting specific conditions can be exempt from registration through two alternative pathways: issuing up to $5 million over a four-year period, or up to $75 million per 12-month period. However, exempt issuers remain subject to

According to AWS, on August 18, Amazon introduced Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments, enabling AI agents to autonomously settle transactions using stablecoin infrastructure. The feature integrates wallet technology from Coinbase and Stripe, allowing developers to enable payment capabilities through their API keys. Users can fund agent wallets via credit card or USDC, with spending limits and expiration times configurable at the infrastructure layer rather than the model level. The service also su

According to SCAN 2026 official interview on August 19, 0xfun team advanced to the finals from a pool of 416 teams competing globally in the preliminary round. The finals will take place on September 28 in Seoul, organized by DigitalAsset with Chainalysis serving as CTF partner. 0xfun is a global CTF competitive team comprising four members from Latvia, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan. According to the team, their main strength is the diversity of technical backgrounds. Team members app

According to Bitget, Bitcoin broke above 67,000 USDT on August 19, reaching 67,088 USDT with a daily gain of 3.65%.

According to its amended interim report filed on August 19, Kakao added "other information services" to its business scope and is pursuing stablecoin and digital asset services in partnership with subsidiaries. The company said the initiative aims to support a multi-asset digital wallet and create synergies across its platform ecosystem as wallet economy expands globally. Specific investment scale and timeline have not been disclosed.

According to Singapore Police Force, on August 17, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok must establish systems to verify financial advertisers' licensing status and detect suspected scams before publishing ads targeting Singapore users by January 31, 2027. The requirement, issued under the new Code of Practice for Social Media Services, applies after the three platforms accounted for roughly 30% of scam cases in Singapore in 2025. Failure to comply carries a maximum fine of S$1 million, with further p

On Wednesday, Aug 19, the healthcare ETF surged 3.51%, while consumer discretionary ETF and solar energy ETF gained 1.92% and 1.18% respectively. Staples ETF rose 1.10%. Regional bank and KBW bank ETFs declined over 2%.

According to Trump on Wednesday, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig is working to bring perpetuals-focused platform Hyperliquid into the United States in a "fully compliant and legal fashion." Trump made the comments during a press conference with federal agency chairs and technology leaders. HYPE token surged 17% over the past 24 hours following the announcement, according to The Block's price data. Related ETF products also rose sharply: the 21Shares Hyperliquid ETF (THYP

According to Onchain Lens, a large whale has unstaked 300,660 HYPE tokens worth approximately $21.02 million and entered the unstaking queue this week. A total of 726,300 HYPE tokens, valued at around $50.4 million, are scheduled to be unstaked this week.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has formally launched its public comment period on computing power futures contracts. CME, Intercontinental Exchange, and fintech company Architect Financial Technologies are among institutions planning to launch related contracts upon regulatory approval. CFTC Chair Michael Selig stated that a strong computing power derivatives market is essential for the U.S. to win the AI race, noting this comment period is the first step in establishing cl

Chainlink's renewed focus on AI-agent infrastructure contributed to LINK rising 6%, driven by the network's oracle and interoperability services and integrations such as S&P Global's Stablecoin Stability Assessments on-chain. The protocol also converts revenue into LINK purchases through its reserve mechanism. Memento opened its trend-to-proposal pipeline under an MIT license, allowing end-to-end signal processing with preserved evidence and risk data. The project's validator rejects unverified

According to reports, Moderna and Merck's experimental mRNA cancer therapy demonstrated clinical success in trials Wednesday, sending Moderna shares up 177% and Merck shares up 12.6%. The customized treatment, called intismeran, was tested in combination with Merck's cancer drug Keytruda in over 1,100 patients with high-risk melanoma and showed a clinically meaningful improvement compared to Keytruda alone. The mRNA-based therapy works by training the immune system to target tumor mutations spec

According to Korea Exchange, Timefolio Asset Management's TIME U.S. Dividend Dow Jones Active ETF was delisted on August 19 for failing to maintain a correlation coefficient of 0.7 or higher with its benchmark index for three consecutive months. The product had delivered a 1-year return of 36.06% as of May 14, outperforming its benchmark by 9.42 percentage points. Industry participants questioned the regulatory framework, noting that South Korea's strict correlation coefficient requirement for a

According to The New York Times, Stripe agreed to acquire OpenRouter on Wednesday for approximately $7.5 billion, with about $1.5 billion allocated to OpenRouter's founders. OpenRouter, which helps developers access AI models including open-weight alternatives from Chinese labs like DeepSeek, raised $113 million at a $1.3 billion valuation less than three months ago. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said the combined entity will "help businesses maximize profitability by routing their requests intell

Chinese-listed stocks mostly rose today (August 19), with the Nasdaq China Golden Dragon Index up 1.52% and the WealthTech Index up 2.43%. Among major gainers, Kingsoft Cloud surged 14% and Astra Solar climbed over 7%. Beauty Semiconductor fell over 8% and ZTO Express dropped nearly 7%, leading declines.

According to ChainCatcher, citing Gate market data, U.S. stock indices closed higher on August 19. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 119.71 points, up 0.22%, closing at 53,463.11. The S&P 500 gained 16.5 points, up 0.21%, at 7,708.26. The Nasdaq Composite Index increased 41.38 points, up 0.16%, closing at 26,331.09.

According to Argentina's Minister of Economy, Argentina approved a $6.4 billion large-scale investment incentive program on August 19 for TECPETROL's Los Toldos II oil project in Vaca Muerta.