SergioBanani

Ethereum staking share reached a record 34%
On August 13, the total amount of Ethereum locked in staking exceeded 34% of the coin’s total supply (41.9 million ETH), an all-time record. At the time of writing, the average annual yield stands at 2.6%.

Delio CEO sentenced to 15 years in prison for crypto fraud
A South Korean court sentenced Delio crypto lender head Jeong Sang-ho to 15 years in prison in a $49 million fraud case. The project attracted clients’ cryptocurrency by offering high interest rates, but halted withdrawals in June 2023. Prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison sentence for Jeong.

Solana narrowly avoided a halt in transaction finalization
Due to an outage at provider Teraswitch, 28.83% of staked SOL went offline. A little more, and the network would have crossed the critical threshold of 33.34%.
The outage affected around 90 validators and lasted 33 minutes. During that time, they missed out on approximately 333 SOL in rewards.

Wintermute is preparing $1 billion for AI and trading infrastructure. Over the next five years, the market maker will invest in data centers, computing power, and high-frequency trading systems.
The goal is to compete not only in crypto, but also in traditional markets.
By the end of 2027, Wintermute aims to generate more than half of its revenue outside cryptocurrencies and gradually become a trading firm on the level of Jane Street or Citadel Securities.

Two traders bet more than $200 million on Bitcoin’s decline
On Hyperliquid, they opened 40x leveraged short positions worth $114 million and $100 million — currently the two largest positions on the platform.
Their margin for error is small: liquidation will occur at approximately $64,104 and $64,579. The traders used around $5.4 million of their own funds each to open the positions.

Goldman Sachs acquired NEOS Investments for $2.25 billion. As part of the deal, the bank gained control of the BTCI bitcoin ETF, with approximately $1.1 billion in assets under management.
An options-based exchange platform with a turnover of $30 billion will also come under the financial giant’s control.

Glassnode warned of the risk of Bitcoin pulling back to $58,500
The market for the leading cryptocurrency is in a “compressed” state: the price is stuck between the median realized price ($63,000) and the cost basis of short-term holders ($68,700), analysts noted.
According to the researchers’ forecast, a return above the resistance zone would bring recent buyers back into profit and mark the first signal of an improving market structure. 
At the same time, a break below the support zone could lead to a pullback to the June low near $58,500. As the next lower boundary, analysts identified the

The New York City Council has launched an investigation into the marketing practices of operators of major prediction markets. The inquiry includes Polymarket, Kalshi, as well as Coinbase and Gemini Titan, which are associated with their products.
Lawmakers suspect the platforms of using misleading advertising, undisclosed payments to influencers, and promoting betting among young people and potentially underage users.

Gold and the S&P 500 are hitting new highs, while bitcoin is declining for the third consecutive quarter. Institutional adoption was supposed to turn the first cryptocurrency into a mature safe-haven asset, but funds and crypto treasuries themselves have become sources of selling.

🔥 ETH at a dangerous boundary
Ethereum is holding near $1850 ahead of the US CPI release on August 12.
📊 Spot ETH ETFs in the US recorded their second consecutive day of outflows.
A break below $1850 could open the way for ETH to $1700.

💸 Decided to sell the “free” coins after the fork — accidentally sold the real bitcoins.
Developer Kevin Loak warned of the risk posed by BIP-110: a transaction with fork tokens can be copied to the mainnet, deducting an equivalent amount of BTC from the same address.
BIP-110 has no protection against this scenario. The most reliable strategy is to not touch anything at all, Loak believes.

On August 6, the U.S. Senate declined to hold a procedural vote on the crypto market structure bill, the CLARITY Act, until the end of the August recess, Republican Majority Leader John Thune confirmed to Politico.

Optimists on Twitter (X) believe DOGE will go to the moon soon — allegedly, a sharp rise in the memecoin usually begins ~1,000 days after the previous low.

Founder of NFT startup charged with $10 million fraud
Taj Tarsha, founder of Few and Far — a startup that promised an NFT marketplace — raised over $10 million from 67 investors through SAFT agreements, then spent the funds on online casinos, speculative cryptocurrencies, an apartment in Miami, and his DJ hobby, disguising this as bonuses and salary.
An audit in 2023 uncovered the fraud, but Tarsha convinced investors to continue funding the company, even though by that point he had already fired nearly all of the staff.
Tarsha faces up to 20 years in prison on each of the two charges

An AI company will challenge in court a ban on building a data center near a national park
The Kentucky Industrial Alliance filed two lawsuits against Cave City (Kentucky) over an annual moratorium on building new data centers. The authorities introduced it a few days after the company submitted a campus plan for AI and cloud computing on 243 hectares with a capacity of 1.2 GW. In a second lawsuit, the developer challenges the 2024 annexation of the site to the city—outside the city limits, the moratorium does not apply. The $4.8 billion project is planned to be located near the “Mammoth Cave”

28 leading banks tested tokenized payments via BIS
The Bank for International Settlements, together with JPMorgan, Citi, UBS, and another 25 banks, conducted a live test of cross-border payments on the blockchain
As part of the pilot, participants transferred tokenized assets across borders totaling $1 million
The experiment showed that this kind of technology can already be used by large financial institutions to make international payments faster and cheaper

Strategy reported a loss of $8.2 billion in the second quarter. In the same period a year earlier, net profit was $10 billion.
According to the report, since the beginning of the year the company has sold BTC worth about $218 million to fund dividends on preferred shares.
Strategy CEO Phong Le said the company reduced its convertible debt by 18% to $6.7 billion, while increasing its dollar reserves by 12% to $2.4 billion.

BTC liquidity distribution
The largest liquidity cluster is located below the current price — in the $61,750 area. Its volume is estimated at about $1.02 billion
Above the current trading level, the main liquidity level is formed around $67,000. The cluster volume is about $740 million

📈 Ethereum ETFs again outpaced Bitcoin ETFs by net inflows
On July 27, spot Ethereum ETFs in the US attracted $9.23 million. The main source of inflows was BlackRock’s ETHA fund, which received $11.75 million. At the same time, $2.52 million was withdrawn from Invesco’s QETH fund.
Bitcoin ETFs finished with outflows for the third trading day in a row. During the session, investors pulled out $11.64 million: BlackRock’s IBIT lost $8.82 million, while Fidelity’s FBTC lost $2.82 million.
Funds for Solana and XRP also recorded modest inflows—$1.03 million and $592 thousand, respectively. HYPE ETF

KOSPI fell 45% over the month.
According to Goldman Sachs, more than 1.2 million retail investors were margin-called, while between 320,000 and 360,000 accounts were fully liquidated.
Margin calls affected about 3.4% of South Korea’s entire adult population.