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SanDisk's recent surge is not about a product launch event the market is buying into
It's about its attempt to "tame" the storage cycle for investors to see
The most critical points in Investor Day are not high-growth slogans, but long-term agreements, capacity coverage, gross margin targets, and cash returns. The most tormenting aspect of the storage industry in the past was that confidence soared during price hikes, but profits plummeted like the floor being pulled out during price drops
This time SanDisk wants to prove it is different
Locking demand with multi-year customer agreements, supporting long-term potential with AI storage narratives, and soothing the market with shareholder returns. It sounds comprehensive, but I will still remain cautiously vigilant: cyclical industries are best at talking about structural changes when the wind is at their back, but when supply truly ramps up, only then will we know who holds pricing power
Investor Day can ignite the spark
The real test is in the next inventory cycle
#闪迪投资者日后股价大涨，长期目标待验证 Institutions are increasing their holdings of crypto assets. $BTC is digital gold. Will $ETH become an on-chain income-generating asset?
Many people used to think
that when institutions enter the crypto market,
most likely they would just buy some $BTC
as an alternative asset allocation,
like buying gold,
just holding it without moving it.
But now the situation has changed a bit.
After these large institutions come in,
they might want more than just buying coins;
they want to package crypto assets into products that traditional finance can understand.
$BTC is very suitable for this
because its story is very clear:
limited supply,
simple rules,
not dependent on a company,
not dependent on founders,
and no overly complex business model.
When you tell traditional investors
this is digital gold,
they might not immediately believe it,
but at least they can understand it.
So $BTC is like a ticket for institutions to enter the crypto world.
Buy it first,
it’s easiest to convince yourself
and also easiest to convince clients.
But $ETH’s story is more subtle.
It’s not just sitting there waiting to appreciate.
Behind it are on-chain applications,
DeFi,
stablecoins,
Layer 2 solutions,
and staking mechanisms.
This means $ETH is not just an asset;
it’s more like a functioning financial network.
If in the future ETFs can clearly explain staking rewards,
then in the eyes of institutions,
$ETH might not just be a highly volatile tech asset,
but an on-chain asset with some income attributes.
That’s very interesting.
$BTC is like gold in a vault,
quiet,
scarce,
and everyone believes it’s valuable The BTC daily chart confirms price action is locked in the $62,000–$65,000 range within a broader downtrend of lower highs and lower lows. Existing Short holders should trail stop-losses lower to secure profits. Traders awaiting new positions should monitor two setups: a prime Short above $65,000 near the dynamic MA100 line with a tight stop-loss, or a trend-following Short triggered upon a confirmed daily close below $58,000. $BTC #WeakConsumptionFedSplit #BTCETFsVsLeverage Why are BTC and ETH not moving for so long? The real answer is: there is support, but no sustained buying pressure.
The most typical state of mainstream coins now is not simply bullish or bearish, but a stalemate between capital and price.
BTC is currently around $63,000, with a persistent lack of breakthrough power above $64,000–$65,000.
More importantly, the ETF. From August 3 to 7, the US BTC spot ETF had a net inflow of about $865 million, but from August 10 to 14, it quickly reversed to a net outflow of about $385 million; the ETH ETF also shifted from a clear inflow to basically flat during the same period. Institutions are not completely withdrawing, but their allocation willingness lacks continuity.
This forms the current structure:
There is support below, but no chase above.
ETH is still consolidating repeatedly below $1,900, showing some resilience relative to BTC, but without volume and sustained capital cooperation, this resistance to decline cannot be directly defined as a reversal.
So what is really worth waiting for at this stage:
BTC breaking out above $65,000 with volume, or effectively losing $62,000.
Before that, the market is not without opportunity, but the odds are not clear enough.
The biggest advantage during a consolidation period has never been guessing the next candlestick, but waiting until the balance between bulls and bears is truly broken before taking action. $BTC $ETH #ETF买盘反转，BTC杠杆仓位回升 $BTC S&P Earnings Exceed Expectations, Why Wall Street Only Sees 7894 Points
In Q2, S&P earnings significantly exceeded market expectations, with the AI industry chain driving margin expansion and earnings forecasts continuously being revised upward. However, Wall Street strategists' consensus target has only been raised to 7894 points, leaving very limited upside. The core contradiction lies in: **Earnings resilience is sufficient, but valuation expansion space is firmly locked by high interest rates, and the market is no longer willing to grant a sustained valuation premium.**
The current market has entered a phase where "earnings alone carry the flag," with stock price increases heavily reliant on EPS growth, making it difficult to expect further expansion in the price-to-earnings ratio. Institutional estimates indicate that the 7894 point level already fully prices in the current round of earnings improvement. In an environment where inflation risks rebounding and the Federal Reserve retains the option to raise rates, strategists remain generally cautious and refuse to further raise valuation assumptions.
Structural risks within the market should not be overlooked either. This round of earnings is highly concentrated among leading AI tech giants, while many small and mid-cap companies show weaker earnings improvement, resulting in extreme market divergence. If AI capital expenditure growth slows and order guidance declines, the momentum for earnings upgrades will quickly fade. Meanwhile, consumer spending is gradually weakening, putting pressure on demand for mid- and downstream companies, with long-term concerns about breaks in earnings transmission.
Geopolitical disturbances have pushed up oil prices, continuously sowing inflation risks, and the "high interest rates lasting longer" scenario remains the baseline. In a high interest rate environment, equity risk premiums are unlikely to decline. #标普盈利超预期，华尔街为何仅看7894点 3.56 million BTC are gone forever, and you still complain the market is too big
CryptoQuant analyst Darkfrost dropped a number today: over 3.56 million BTC that haven’t moved in more than 10 years, hitting a historic high and accounting for 17.7% of the circulating supply.
In the past 30 days, more than 14,000 BTC have joined this group.
What does “not moved for 10 years” mean? In the industry, this is commonly called lost supply. It could be that the private keys are lost, the owners are no longer around, or early believers simply never intended to move them. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: these coins no longer exert selling pressure on the market—they are silently locked away in a safe with the keys thrown away.
Let’s do a rough calculation to understand how big this number is. CZ mentioned a few days ago that over 20.07 million BTC have been mined, with some portion lost or unrecoverable. If you subtract 3.56 million from that, the amount truly circulating in the market instantly shrinks significantly. Add to that the reserves locked by ETFs and publicly listed companies, and the actual chips available to sell on the market are much thinner than the total supply suggests.
Here’s the interesting part: supply is continuously tightening, yet the price has been stuck in place for over two months.
BTC is still stuck around 62,000 to 63,000, the fear and greed index is 35, Coinbase’s negative premium hasn’t turned positive for 90 consecutive days. Miner holdings have dropped to 1.1919 million BTC, the lowest since May 31. Even Saylor himself said BTC has dropped 47% in the past year.
Scarcity is increasing, but the price isn’t reacting. This isn’t a contradiction; it just means short-term pricing doesn’t look at the supply table but only at who has money and is willing to buy. Supply is a slow variable, moving only tens of thousands per year; liquidity is a fast variable, changing daily. Slow variables win over ten years, fast variables decide whether your account is green or red this week.
That’s why I’ve always opposed using lost supply data as a basis for short-term trades. Seeing 17.7% permanently locked easily leads to imagining a supply shortage scenario and then adding leverage during sideways trading, waiting for an explosion that may never come. This kind of narrative is best at making people go all-in at the wrong time.
If you really want to watch, I’d rather watch if money is coming back with these three numbers: stablecoin total supply bottoming and rising, ETF net inflows turning positive for several days indicating institutions are genuinely buying, and Coinbase premium flipping from negative to positive. Only when two of these happen can you talk about supply scarcity having a foothold. Right now, none of these have happened.
The long-term trend is getting clearer. Every month, thousands of coins disappear into long-term dormancy, and the tradable chips decrease year by year. There’s no turning back on this path. It won’t give you a big green candle, but it gives you a bottom for ten years from now. Those willing to hold for ten years make money; those trading contracts daily do not.
Here’s a question for you: among these 3.56 million BTC, how many do you think are truly lost, and how many are just owners who never want to move them? If one day a large batch suddenly wakes up, how would you interpret that?Burning $271 worth of this coin led to a 65x increase in 24 hours
Let's first look at the numbers, which are absurdly amusing.
CZ's public donation address showed activity this afternoon, burning 4444 MarsCoin. At the time, this amount was worth $271. Just $271, less than 2000 RMB, enough for two people to have a decent meal.
Yet the coin's market cap briefly surged past $6 million, hitting new highs, with a 24-hour increase of 6596.2%, roughly 65 times. It has now pulled back to $4.65 million.
The same address also burned 4444 Binance Life tokens, worth $2130. Binance Life briefly rose over 8%, peaking above $0.52 before settling near $0.497. Previously, it also burned 4444 NiuLai tokens.
$271 leveraged a market cap of several million dollars—this is the real pricing mechanism in today's meme market.
Let's break down the logic. Burning simply means destroying tokens permanently, removing them from circulation, theoretically making the remainder scarcer. But 4444 tokens is negligible for a pool worth millions, so the scarcity effect is basically insignificant. What the market is really buying is endorsement—the fact that the owner of that address might be paying attention to this coin.
In other words, this round's surge isn't about the project itself, but the probability that CZ will click again.
The most dangerous aspect of this pricing method is that it has no floor. You can't calculate its intrinsic value; you can only guess how much the next buyer is willing to pay. There are counterexamples in the same market: NiuLai's market cap briefly fell below $14 million, down over 51% from its peak. A few days ago, rumors circulated that someone turned $120 into over $200,000 with NiuLai, an 822x return. The story is about 822x, but the moment you enter might be just catching the last leg before a 50% crash.
Something that can rise 65x can just as easily fall back in the same timeframe; both follow the same mechanism, no exceptions.
Looking at the broader market clarifies why money is so frenzied. BTC has been stuck around $62,000 to $63,000 for a long time, the fear and greed index is 35, still in the fear zone, and Coinbase has had a negative premium for 90 consecutive days. Mainstream assets have weak profit momentum, stablecoin supply is shrinking, so money flows into the most volatile places. Meme tokens rising tens of times on-chain is not a sign of a healthy market; it actually shows a lack of patient capital, with only money chasing overnight results left.
My own rule is simple: for coins whose price depends entirely on one person's actions, treat your position like a lottery ticket—accept that your money might vanish overnight before entering. It's not about looking down on memes; if you can't even say which indicators to watch, you have no exit strategy, so you might get in but can't get out.
One more reminder: these coins mostly lack real use cases, their volatility is tens of times that of mainstream coins, and those chasing highs are already underwater when the market cap drops from $6 million to $4.65 million—don't just look at the percentage.
A sincere question: if that address burns another batch of different tokens tomorrow, would you really chase it? Or will you just watch others chase?凌晨三点，我盯着那根四小时K线，蜡烛芯在63K附近抖了一下，像犹豫着要不要敲门的人。 你有没有发现，市场最安静的时候，往往正在偷偷换剧本？ 我昨晚重新翻了翻仓位记录，发现自己犯了个老毛病——总想等一个完美的确认点，结果眼睁睁看着反弹从指缝里溜走。BTC在63K上方站住，ETH的相对强度悄悄爬升，BTC主导率开始退潮。这些信号单个看都不算决定性，但叠在一起，像三块拼图严丝合缝地咬合上了。DXY走软给风险资产递了把梯子，SPY贴着历史高位喘气，黄金涨了5%——这个组合很微妙，它既像是避险情绪在退烧，又像是市场在为某种更深的不安定价。 大家都在争论这是反弹还是反转，但我觉得问题问错了。更重要的其实是：这轮反弹在交易什么预期？我倾向认为，市场在提前定价美联储政策转向的尾部风险，同时AI竞赛的叙事真空期给了资金短暂的喘息空间。BTC要冲64.5K甚至66.9K，需要看到ETH继续接棒，以及DXY不再反弹。如果61.8K失守，那整个结构就要重新画线。 - 偏多路径：ETH补涨带动山寨活跃度，资金从大饼溢出，反弹从单腿走路变成双腿跑。 - 偏空风险：VIX若再度抬头，SPY高位回调，加密的beta属Retail investors spent 27 billion buying chip stocks in a year but didn’t touch the crypto circle at all
It’s not that retail investors ran out of money, it’s that their money went elsewhere.
The Kobeissi Letter compiled retail buying data over the past year, showing that Nvidia alone absorbed over $27 billion, ranking first among the seven major tech giants. Even more striking is the pace: since October 2025, this buying volume has more than quadrupled. Tesla is second, with retail investors buying over $15 billion in a year, and Microsoft over $9 billion.
In the same data set, only one company was net sold by retail investors—Apple, with $5 billion sold in a year.
My first reaction to these numbers wasn’t to marvel at how attractive chips are, but to recall what I’ve heard in chat groups over the past six months. Complaints about low market volume, about the market grinding down, about wallets turning increasingly red are everywhere. Yet retail money is clearly still flowing; throwing $27 billion into a single stock in a year doesn’t mean no money—it means the money has switched plates.
What’s the situation on our side during the same period? The total stablecoin supply has been shrinking continuously; USDT and USDC combined have decreased by tens of billions of dollars monthly, with on-chain cash flowing out. Coinbase’s negative premium has persisted for 90 consecutive days, indicating that funds in the U.S. haven’t returned. Net inflows into ETFs—which basically means institutions buying crypto with real money—have been fluctuating recently, with several days showing net outflows. Miner holdings have dropped to 1,191,900 coins, the lowest since May 31, showing even the production side is selling to raise cash.
On one hand, $27 billion queues up to flow into chips; on the other, tens of billions quietly exit the stablecoin pool. This is the most glaring contradiction right now and explains why the market can’t produce a decent bullish candle. It’s not a lack of news; it’s a lack of buyers.
My view is that this round of capital diversion is different from before. Previously, retail investors fled crypto to trade stocks mostly out of fear of a falling market, a form of risk aversion. This time it’s different: something with a louder narrative, faster gains, and a better story than crypto stands beside it, drawing attention and money away. BTC tells a long-term monetary story; AI chips offer orders visible next quarter. When ordinary people place orders, which will they choose? The answer is clear.
So what use are these data for our swing trading? I usually treat them as a thermometer, not a starting gun. Retail capital flow reflects where risk appetite is moving; it can’t tell you when to enter or exit. To really judge if funds are returning, I watch three things: stablecoin total supply stopping its decline and rising, ETFs showing several consecutive days of net inflows turning positive, and Coinbase premium flipping back to positive. Only when two of these appear can we say money is starting to flow back. Right now, none have appeared.
We need to separate short and long term. In the short term, money is being attracted by other sectors, crypto lacks new inflows, so the market can only grind within a narrow range until someone can’t take it anymore. In the long term, AI hot money and crypto follow two different valuation logics—one relies on industry orders, the other on monetary attributes, intersecting only at the level of risk appetite. Don’t treat Nvidia’s stock price as a leading indicator for crypto; they are two different charts.
I want to ask: over the past year, have you moved some of your money out of crypto to chase other things? If you did, do you regret it now? If you didn’t, what has kept you holding?In one month, he hoarded 2.41 million tokens and quietly moved 984,600 to sell
Around 4:30 PM, on-chain monitoring caught a transfer. An address sent 984,600 LINK to Coinbase, which was worth about $9.23 million at the time.
This address is not new. Over the past month, it has been gradually buying about 2.41 million LINK from Binance, accumulating bit by bit without any flashy moves. It still holds 1.43 million tokens, valued at $13.43 million, with an unrealized profit of about $1.42 million.
In other words, after buying for a whole month, it moved more than 40% of its holdings in one go today.
Depositing to an exchange doesn’t mean immediate selling, that’s true. But if you move your assets from your own warehouse to the marketplace entrance, it’s not just a casual stroll. If you really want to hold long-term, the easiest way is to keep them in your own wallet without moving them around; transferring only leaves more traces. Addresses moving assets into major exchanges usually have only one purpose: to be ready to sell at any time.
What concerns me more is the rhythm. This person has been buying slowly for a month but sells quickly. Slowly accumulating shows he doesn’t want to push the price up, moving 40% at once shows he doesn’t want to wait any longer. The same person’s attitude changed direction after a month.
This is the most frustrating gap between us and whales. You see them quietly buying for a month and think it’s a long-term bullish signal, so you follow in; when they have $1.42 million unrealized profit on the books, they can turn around and cash out part of it, while you’re still wondering why they’re selling.
Looking at the market broadly, this transfer is not isolated. BTC has been stuck between 62,000 and 63,000, with Swissblock watching the 62,300 to 62,500 range closely, which hasn’t broken or moved far. The Fear & Greed Index is 35, still in the fear zone. Coinbase’s negative premium has lasted 90 days, indicating that buying demand in the US hasn’t truly returned. Miner holdings dropped to 1.1919 million, the lowest since May 31, showing miners are also offloading.
All these data points tell the same story: liquidity on exchanges is tight now, and anyone wanting to cash out has to consider if they’ll hurt themselves. So whales don’t dare to dump all at once; they move assets to exchanges in batches, a few million dollars at a time, testing if the order book can absorb it.
From a trading perspective, I usually treat this kind of news as a counter, not a starting gun. A single address moving assets once is just noise; hundreds of such transfers happen daily on-chain. The real reference is continuity—if the same group of addresses moves in the same direction over three or four days, that shows the capital’s stance. Reacting to just one transfer is likely being led by others’ moves.
Looking further, for established coins like LINK with real use cases, price logic isn’t controlled by a single whale but by how many protocols are actually paying and using it. Whales taking profits is human nature, not a verdict. Short-term selling pressure is short-term selling pressure; the long-term ledger is a different matter. Don’t mix the two.
My own view is straightforward: the biggest danger during sideways markets isn’t direction but leverage. You can endure a wrong direction, but high leverage can kick you out with just one wick. The market is thin now; a whale moving assets can shake the price, and the higher the leverage, the easier you get wiped out by this noise.
One question: when you see whales transferring coins to exchanges, is your first reaction to reduce your position, or do you treat it as a fake move deliberately staged for you?A $2,000 burn action pushed a coin into a $15 million market cap.
This afternoon, Arkham caught an on-chain move: CZ's public donation address sent 4,444 "Binance Life" tokens to the burn address, which at the time was worth a total of $2,130. This isn't a large amount of money—it's cheaper than a nice meal in a first-tier city.
But the market's reaction was completely disproportionate to the amount. Ten minutes after the burn, Binance Life briefly surged over 7% to $0.513, then pushed up another 8%, breaking $0.52 at one point, before retreating to hover around $0.497.
Even more dramatic was the other side. At the same time, CZ's wallet also burned 4,444 MarsCoin tokens. According to GMGN's market data, this meme coin on the BSC chain briefly surged past a $15 million market cap, hitting an all-time high and rallying over 14 times. The same $2,000-level action leveraged a market cap increase thousands of times its own value.
The number 4,444 is not chosen randomly. Those familiar with him know he favors the number 4. Early on Twitter, when questioned, he often replied with just a "4," meaning to ignore the FUD. This habit has now moved on-chain, even the burn amount is made up of four fours.
The most thought-provoking part of this is that he didn't say a word. No announcement, no retweet, no calls to action—just a wallet move that blockchain explorers uncovered and shared in groups. The rest was all market-driven. Buyers weren't paying for $2,130 worth of deflation; they were paying because he noticed this coin.
What we are seeing is actually two demonstrations of the same logic. Both coins are on BSC, both names are riding trends, and the burned supply is negligible in terms of total supply, but the emotional amplification is exponential. The value anchor isn't in the code or circulating supply, but in one person's wallet action.
Here's the problem: this model is fragile. If the same move repeats a second or third time, will the market respond the same way, or will it quickly tire? Even more troubling is the possibility that if that address stops moving for a long time, what will support the current market cap of these coins priced by signal?
What I can't understand is the group taking the orders. Do they really care about deflation, or do they just care that someone is watching? What do you think? Is this market driven by consensus or by dependency on a single address?In this live broadcast, we will connect and review the core themes from the past three days in the US stock market, major financial markets, and the crypto space. Many seemingly scattered pieces of news, when viewed together, can actually help us grasp the current market rhythm. By the way, there is a direction worth paying attention to recently that we haven't had time to discuss in detail, which is related to RWA — the Hong Kong stock market's 2x leveraged ETF on SK Hynix has already launched on Binance Futures. In fact, RWA is very close to our trading activities, and interested friends can look into it themselves. Now, let's get back to the main topic, starting with the most watched inflation data this week. First is the July CPI data, released at 8:30 PM Beijing time on August 12. The final data basically matched market expectations: annual rate 3.4%, monthly rate 0.1%, core CPI annual rate 2.5%, monthly rate 0.2%. After the data was released, the market reaction was generally calm, with no major single-direction swings, which can be seen as a semi-reassuring sign for the market. Some friends may have heard about CPI often but never fully understood it. Actually, it can be summed up in one sentence: it measures how much the overall prices of everyday goods and services that people buy have increased. A single data point cannot explain the entire macro trend, but when several core indicators are combined, the direction becomes clear: inflation is cooling, employment is weakening, consumption is slowing, and GDP is decelerating. This often means the economy is cooling down, and the probability of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates rises accordingly. This is the fundamental reference for all our major asset investments. Don't just focus on one number The clone version of Ethena suddenly shut down, trapping $50 million
On the evening of August 13, a protocol called Neutrl suddenly issued an announcement stating that due to the impact on its reserves, the minting and redemption functions would be suspended. It sounded like routine maintenance, but the scariest parts only gradually emerged after the announcement.
This protocol had always marketed itself as a clone version of Ethena. Most are probably familiar with Ethena, which used stablecoins to hedge and earn funding rates—a popular yield-generating legend during the last bull market. Neutrl followed the same model but replaced the underlying assets from stablecoins to discounted locked clone coins, then used perpetual contracts for inverse hedging, feeding the price difference and fees into its own liquidity pool. The story they told externally was simple: clone coins are more volatile, so the returns are higher. At its peak, it attracted over $200 million in deposits and raised $5 million in a seed round led by well-known institutions, gaining tremendous attention. Many invested money driven by this high-yield narrative and the impressive investor background.
However, just 14 minutes before the shutdown announcement, an address suspected to belong to the team quietly withdrew about $3.5 million from Curve’s liquidity pool. Immediately after, the official Twitter comments were disabled, and the community channels were completely wiped. Experienced players instantly recognized what this combination meant.
Currently, over $50 million remains stuck in the protocol. Its locked assets have shrunk from over $200 million at peak to about $53.3 million. Ironically, it had previously integrated a solvency verification tool, aiming to prove on-chain that the funds were safe. But after the incident, that verification page also became inaccessible.
The community is now in chaos. One theory is that an over-the-counter counterparty defaulted, leaving the protocol only with hedging positions and no matching spot positions. But this explanation has a glaring flaw: clone coins have been declining for the past year, so theoretically, a naked short should have been profitable, not depleted the reserves. Some directly suspect the team of running off with the funds.
What’s even more alarming is that in the past three months, three similar basis trading protocols have successively suspended withdrawals. We always say on-chain is verifiable and transparent, but once core assets lie in off-chain OTC accounts and locked tokens, can those beautiful solvency proofs still be trusted? Next time you see a high-yield yield-generating protocol, will you first open its verification page or ask: where exactly is my money placed? BTC还在6.3万美元附近磨，但矿工端出现了一个值得关注的变化。 截至8月15日，矿工持仓降至约 119.19万枚BTC，一周减少 885枚，为5月31日以来最低。按当前价格计算，减少部分价值约5500万美元。与此同时，全网算力7日均值降至约 895 EH/s，较一周前减少约25.5 EH/s、降幅接近3%。 乍一看，这是典型利空： 矿工减仓 + 算力回落 = 矿业现金流压力上升。 但不能简单理解成“矿工正在砸盘”。 矿工余额下降可能来自现货出售，也可能是抵押融资、托管迁移或企业资金调度；只有BTC真正流入交易所并被成交，才会转化成直接卖压。 算力同样如此。Blockchain.com明确指出，短期算力会受到出块随机性影响，因此7日均值比单日数据更有参考价值。当前回落值得观察，但距离“网络安全危机”还很远。 再看Puell Multiple。 最新读数约 0.75，这个指标衡量的是BTC每日新增发行价值相对于过去365日均值的水平。0.75意味着矿工新增产出的美元价值低于一年均值，但还没有进入历史上常见的极端投降区域；Glassnode过去通常把 0.6—1.0视为矿工收入承压区，而真American consumers are starting to hit the brakes.$BTC Retail sales in July fell by 0.6% month-over-month, far below the expected growth of 0.1%; the consumer confidence index in August also dropped from 55.2 to 51.0. Along with cooling CPI and PPI, the necessity for the Federal Reserve to continue raising rates in September is decreasing. But stopping rate hikes does not mean immediate rate cuts. #WeakConsumptionFedSplit #SP500EarningsGap #BTCETFsVsLeverage The Trump family's crypto business is about to open a bank
The family that called cryptocurrency a national strategy now wants to expand their business into banking. On August 16, it was reported that World Liberty Financial, a crypto project associated with the Trump family, received conditional approval to establish a trust bank. In other words, this company, which has grown from meme coins and stablecoins, is moving toward becoming a licensed financial institution.
Many people still associate World Liberty Financial with selling tokens and issuing stablecoins. Indeed, it gained significant attention through its WLFI token and USD1 stablecoin, further tying the Trump family to the crypto space. It previously raised considerable funds through a public sale of WLFI tokens, and the USD1 stablecoin has rapidly expanded under the family's endorsement. So far, the project's revenue sources have been primarily on-chain: token sales, stablecoin reserve yields, and the attention brought by the presidential family identity. But now, applying for a banking license means something entirely different. Banks are regulated entities that can accept custodial funds and participate in the traditional financial system, which is a completely different world from the previously free-growing on-chain projects.
What's interesting is the contrast. One of the original narratives of the crypto industry was to bypass banks and return financial power to individuals. When Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the whitepaper, it was in response to the distrust following the 2008 banking system collapse. Those early believers in decentralization probably never imagined that one day the most proactive license seeker would be a presidential family. The big players who entered the space shouting this rhetoric are now turning around to seek the most traditional banking license. Whether they truly distrust traditional finance or realize that to grow big, they can't avoid that table, the answer is already written in their actions.
This license is currently only conditionally approved, which does not mean they can open for business immediately. What regulators will focus on next and what conditions need to be met remain unknown. But for the Trump family, adding banking to their crypto empire means holding a stronger entry point beyond policy influence, tokens, and stablecoins. Once this trust bank is established, it can access a much larger pool of funds as a licensed entity and connect on-chain and off-chain businesses more tightly. For a family already holding tokens and stablecoins, securing this banking license effectively pushes their crypto business from the fringes into the core of the financial system.
What’s even more intriguing is the timing. In the same week, the market was still discussing whether Trump would attend the White House cryptocurrency meeting and the Federal Reserve was about to release its monetary policy minutes. A family deeply tied to crypto policy while pushing their business toward a licensed bank creates a picture where politics, business, and crypto are increasingly intertwined. Once this banking license is fully realized, the wall between crypto and Wall Street will likely be pushed down even further.
What do you think about this shift from anti-bank to obtaining a banking license? “我们不看好港元稳定币。” 一位接近监管层的业内人士直言： 看好稳定币，不代表看好港元稳定币——这是两件完全不同的事。 港元稳定币正在经历一个微妙的转折： 牌照已经发了，但市场热情却没有跟上。 2025年申请时，36家机构蜂拥而至；一年后，真正积极推动发行的机构屈指可数。 问题似乎并不在于“有没有人想做稳定币”，而在于： 最有动力做的人进不来，最有资格做的人又未必愿意做。 01 一张牌照，折射出两种态度 2026年4月10日，香港金管局向首批两家机构发放港元稳定币牌照： 碇点金融科技有限公司：由渣打银行（香港）、香港电讯及 Animoca Brands 合资 香港上海汇丰银行 两家机构获得牌照后，却呈现出截然不同的态度。 渣打：积极布局。 2026年7月，渣打与Circle合作推出机构级USDC接入服务。 8月，碇点金融启动港元稳定币 HKDAP 首阶段发行，目前主要面向机构分销商和专业投资者，并计划根据市场情况进一步扩大用户范围。 汇丰：明显更谨慎。 业内人士认为，汇丰更倾向于发展代币化存款，而不是大规模推动稳定币。 原因并不复杂： 稳定币可能分流传统银行存款，而存款本身正是银行赚取Saylor, who was once a die-hard Bitcoin supporter, has now praised financial engineering.
The man who renamed his company to a Bitcoin synonym and repeatedly said in front of the world over the past few years that long-term holding is the only correct answer has changed his tone today. On August 16, Michael Saylor released a statement saying that Bitcoin dropped 47% over the past year, but the digital credit tools created by Strategy performed within a range of -27% to +9%, with STRC even rising 9% against the trend.
In plain terms, on his own report card, financial engineering outperformed spot Bitcoin. Coming from Saylor, this contrast is striking. After all, his most famous label is a die-hard bull, always talking in interviews about never selling, Bitcoin as digital gold, and that time rewards those who hold. He specifically chose the past year as the window, which coincides with Bitcoin’s steady decline from its peak, making the conclusion naturally look good. Now he turns around and tells you that packaging highly volatile digital capital into yield-bearing financial instruments that can reduce drawdowns is actually more stable.
He uses STRC as an example. This is a preferred stock product launched by Strategy last year, designed to use dividends and absorb volatility as a safety net. It doesn’t directly bet on Bitcoin’s price movements but breaks down the company’s holdings and credit into layers of notes, prioritizing dividend payments to holders. Over the year, Bitcoin retraced nearly half from its high, but STRC ended with positive returns. For those holding spot Bitcoin with underwater accounts, this comparison is indeed eye-catching, and it’s no wonder he’s willing to talk about it.
The background is that Strategy has long since moved beyond simply hoarding coins. It has issued several rounds of preferred stock and perpetual bonds, using the raised funds to buy more Bitcoin, and backing these structured products with Bitcoin as collateral. In other words, the company has transformed from a holder of coins into an issuer of financial products. Saylor’s remarks today seem more like publicly explaining this approach to the market.
But the story isn’t as smooth as it appears. Financial engineering smooths out accounting volatility, not the risk itself. STRC’s 9% rise is underpinned by Strategy’s own holdings and credit backing it. If Bitcoin continues to plunge, whether these structured products’ buffer layers will be breached is a stress test the market hasn’t truly experienced yet. Saylor talks about taming the downside, but taming doesn’t mean eliminating it. To be precise, these products’ stable gains rely on Strategy continuously issuing new debt to take over. Once fundraising stops, the other side of the story will emerge.
More subtly, there’s a shift in stance. A few years ago, he advised ordinary people to hold tight; now he seems to stand on the issuer’s side, selling tools rather than pure faith. The market remembers his old phrase about time preference, but now what he’s handing over is a product prospectus. When the biggest bull starts seriously saying financial engineering beats spot Bitcoin, do you think he’s truly found a better solution, or is it that this round of spot price drops hurt too much and a new story is needed to catch confidence? $BTC does have cash flow; it just refuses to tell its story using traditional cash flow metrics.
Traditional finance looks at assets and likes to ask about cash flow. Stocks have profits, bonds have interest, real estate has rent. $BTC doesn't have these things, so many say it has no intrinsic value. This criticism is common, but it overlooks one point: not all store-of-value assets are priced based on cash flow.
Gold has no cash flow, art has no cash flow, and even US dollar cash itself has no cash flow. They rely on scarcity, consensus, liquidity, trust, and long-term purchasing power expectations. $BTC follows the same path, except it encodes these elements into its code and network.
This is also why using stock valuation models for $BTC often feels awkward. You can't ask about its profit growth next year, nor can you ask for management guidance. It has no CEO, no financial reports, and it doesn't pay dividends. Its core question is only one: will more and more people in the future be willing to treat it as a non-sovereign store-of-value asset?
If the answer is no, then no amount of narrative can sustain $BTC; if the answer is yes, then cash flow models are not the most suitable framework for it. It is not a company, it does not generate profits, it produces a verifiable scarce consensus.
Of course, this does not mean the price is always reasonable. Assets without cash flow are more susceptible to emotional influence and harder to value. $BTC's risk comes from this: it is priced by consensus, with huge premiums when consensus is strong and steep drops when consensus is weak. But this is not "no value," it is a "different form of value."
The biggest misconception in the market is insisting that all assets must look like stocks.
$BTC just doesn't look like that, which is why it is controversial and why it presents opportunities. Top funds quietly hoarded 100 million HYPE
On-chain data reveals a rather quiet move. Three wallets related to Multicoin currently hold about 1.777 million HYPE in total, valued at approximately $102 million at market price—real, solid money.
No need to explain what Multicoin is; it's a leading fund well-known in the crypto circle and famously bearish on Solana. Some of the HYPE they held were previously transferred to Coinbase Prime and Galaxy's OTC desks, leading to market speculation about potential sell-offs.
But so far, no one can confirm if those coins were actually sold. Moving into custody and OTC might just be shifting storage or gradually reducing positions—outsiders can't see through it. On-chain data only shows address activity, not the owner's intentions, which is easy to misinterpret.
HYPE itself is the native token of Hyperliquid, one of the more recognizable altcoins in this cycle. Hyperliquid is currently one of the few on-chain perpetual exchanges generating real revenue. As the platform token, HYPE is not exactly the same as those altcoins purely pumped by hype. Institutions willing to bet heavily are partly attracted by this solid trading volume.
Interestingly, there's a contrast in attitudes. On one side, retail investors in the community chase pumps and dumps, getting repeatedly harvested by fees and spikes; on the other, institutions hold their positions tightly. The big money plays patience, not speed.
From another perspective, this $102 million on the market is itself a potential selling pressure hanging overhead. If dumped all at once, whether the market can absorb it is uncertain. But Multicoin's choice to keep holding at least shows that, in the eyes of these top funds, HYPE hasn't reached a price worth cashing out yet.
Looking deeper, Multicoin has always favored high-performance public chains and derivatives narratives. From Solana to now heavy positions in HYPE, the logic is consistent. They are not short-term traders; their positions are often measured in quarters or even years.
The holdings of such top funds serve as an alternative thermometer of market sentiment. Their inactivity means the current price hasn't hit the threshold to make smart money let go; their moves often precede any candlestick pattern. Retail watches minute charts, they watch quarterly charts.
Some worry this is the calm before the storm. Multicoin's relationship with Hyperliquid is deeply intertwined, with holdings and ecosystem interests entangled. If they were to reduce positions, it wouldn't be with fanfare. Watching on-chain flows is more reliable than any trading signal.
What small investors should really learn is not to copy anyone blindly but to clearly see who is genuinely holding and who is just making noise. Whether this 100 million is faith or a trap will be revealed by future unlocks and on-chain flows. Are you still holding HYPE now? Harvard Stops Selling Crypto While SpaceX Keeps Buying
Harvard Management Company's latest 13F filing reveals a rather counterintuitive signal. Their holding of BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) hasn't decreased at all, remaining steady at 3,044,600 shares, valued at about $101.4 million at market price—exactly the same as at the end of Q1. Previously, the market widely expected this top university to continue reducing its position, but instead, it paused.
It's worth noting that Harvard had cut its IBIT holdings for two consecutive quarters before. In Q4 2025, they reduced IBIT by 21%, and at the start of 2026, they cut another 43%, clearly signaling a retreat. This time, however, they suddenly hit the pause button, effectively acknowledging that they don't intend to sell off their Bitcoin position further, at least for now.
Interestingly, the money hasn't been idle; it's all flowing into SpaceX. Harvard's largest single holding is SpaceX, with 12,935,100 shares valued at $2.21 billion, making up a solid 52% of their entire U.S. stock portfolio. Buying heavily into aerospace stocks while holding Bitcoin steady without selling off shows a kind of shifting strategy that speaks volumes.
Looking closer, in the same 13F, Harvard completely cleared out its BlackRock Ethereum ETF position, wiping out an $86.8 million stake. Even their gold holdings outweigh crypto, with IAU and GLD combined at $171.2 million, slightly more than the $101 million in IBIT. So, to be precise, they aren't broadly bullish; they just stopped selling Bitcoin but are more decisive in exiting Ethereum.
Zooming out, institutional attitudes are quite divided. This quarter, JPMorgan increased its IBIT holdings from 8.3 million to 10.4 million shares, while Morgan Stanley cut theirs from 17.3 million to 16.5 million, a 4.5% reduction. Some are buying, some are selling, indicating no consensus among big players, and no one dares to call the bottom.
Currently, IBIT accounts for only 2.4% of Harvard's $4.26 billion U.S. stock portfolio, so it's not a heavy weight, but the signal is clear. The top university stopping sales is completely opposite to the trend of selling more as prices fall in the previous two quarters. Two sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi also maintained their IBIT positions, totaling about $764 million, showing a surprisingly consistent long-term stance.
Many in the market treat institutional holdings as a barometer. Harvard's ultra-long-term fund pausing its sell-off may not be a buy-the-dip signal, but at least it shows that at the 63,000 level, even the most conservative university endowment isn't rushing to exit. After all, university endowments are among the least cash-needy market participants, so their pause often carries more weight than retail investors rushing to buy. Do you think this is a sign of smart money stabilizing, or just a simple standstill?Looking at the data from these past few days combined, it's quite alarming
In the first week of the month, ETF net inflow was 1.1 billion, the whole network was shouting that institutions were back, but in the second week, they ran for three consecutive days, on the 13th withdrawing 131 million in one day—basically cycling the funds in and out, finding the scene cold, and leaving without a second thought
The bulls are still stubbornly holding on, open interest once reached 765,000 contracts with positive funding rates, paying protection fees to the shorts out of their own pockets, yet the coin price just won't move. The 24-hour amplitude is less than a few hundred dollars, ETH drawing a straight line above 1800, volatility quickly suppressed, options call volatility at 23%, the lowest in history, even those betting on a rise are gone
The smart money left early; CME institutions net long only 2,100 contracts, just for show. Strategy holds 840,000 contracts at an average price of 75,400, stuck inside with unrealized losses over 10 billion, even the most steadfast believers can't get out. Above are all trapped positions; any slight pull-up triggers selling. Open interest piles at 63,000; a push below triggers a chain reaction of liquidations
Max pain is nailed between 63,000 and 64,000, with market makers grinding it down. But liquidation data is unusually quiet; on the 15th, BTC total liquidations across the network were less than 5 million USD, only 10% of the seven-day average. It's not that nothing is happening, but everyone is holding on tight, the tension is still high
The most heartbreaking part is the money hasn't disappeared; it has flowed into US stocks. SanDisk surged 14% in one day, nearly 6x this year; Micron broke the trillion mark; Hynix rose over 7%, all funds rushing to grab AI chips. BTC is just playing dead here—who still looks at you as "digital gold"?
The longer the sideways movement, the higher the leverage; it's not that it won't explode, just that the time hasn't come. The harder the squeeze, the more painful the rebound
$BTC #ETF买盘反转，BTC杠杆仓位回升 The stablecoin leader publicly states it will not follow the trend to build its own blockchain
Recently, there has been a rumor circulating in the community: the giants of stablecoins are all starting to build their own public blockchains. CoinMarketCap recently released an analysis naming Stripe, Circle, and Tether, saying that each is building its own dedicated blockchain. It sounds reasonable because whoever controls the chain controls the true flow gateway of stablecoins, and everyone can do the math on that. After all, in the stablecoin business, the chain is the territory.
However, today, this claim was publicly denied by Tether's head, Paolo Ardoino. On August 16, he clearly stated that Tether is not currently building any blockchain, nor does it have plans to do so. The company will continue to maintain chain neutrality, deploying USDT across multiple public chains as a transmission network, rather than building its own separate chain.
This statement is quite thought-provoking. On one hand, the market generally expects stablecoins to go their separate ways; on the other hand, the largest player directly douses cold water on that idea. This year, there has indeed been a wave of chain-building in the community, with many projects busy tying their stablecoins to their own public chains, but Tether is going the opposite way. It is already deployed on dozens of chains like Ethereum, Tron, and Solana, and doesn’t need its own chain to prove its presence because the token has long been embedded in others’ infrastructure and cannot be moved.
More subtly, there is a divergence in strategy. If Stripe and Circle are indeed building their own chains while Tether chooses not to follow, the logic of the three diverges completely. Building a chain means controlling the ecosystem, developers, and liquidity, effectively transforming from a water seller to a land grabber; not building a chain means continuing to be the ubiquitous, indispensable utility provider. These two different stances reflect completely different visions for the stablecoin endgame.
Interestingly, for Tether, not building a chain might actually be the most ruthless move. USDT is already the default stablecoin on the vast majority of chains. If it built its own chain, it might tear apart the liquidity that is currently dispersed everywhere. Continuing as a neutral pipeline is more stable than being a landlord, and this confidence comes from the position it has built over more than a decade—something others cannot easily copy.
In fact, Ardoino’s denial only extinguishes speculation that Tether will enter the chain-building arena. What really matters is another issue: as other stablecoins start locking users into their own public chains, is USDT’s chain-neutral strategy more stable, or is it gradually losing its moat? The rumors about whether those two companies are building chains and how far they have progressed remain uncertain, leaving the market to speculate.
So the question comes full circle. The market bets that stablecoins will eventually fence off their own territories, but Tether says it won’t play this game. Has the largest player truly seen through the industry, or does it simply not need its own chain? We will probably only see clearly how this stablecoin game is played once the next move is made.Retail investors are moving Nvidia into their own wallets
A number that almost no one was paying attention to has quietly changed these days. Statistics from RWA.xyz show that in the past month, the number of addresses holding US stocks tokenized and directly on-chain has doubled from less than 660,000 to 1.31 million.
Even more striking is the transfer volume. During the same period, the monthly on-chain transfer amount surged 179%, directly hitting $23.13 billion. Active addresses also increased by 34.62%, approaching 572,000. This indicates it’s not just institutions hyping themselves up; a large number of retail investors are genuinely starting to hold stocks like Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla as tokens in their wallets.
Leading the charge is Ondo, which alone accounts for about $872 million. Following closely are Kraken’s xStocks with $557.8 million, and Binance’s bStocks with $521.8 million. Together, these three have basically captured more than half of this emerging market. The total market cap of tokenized stocks also rose 5.9%, reaching $2.38 billion. Although this is still a tiny fraction compared to the tens of trillions in US stock market value, the upward slope is quite intimidating.
An interesting contrast emerges. On one side, traditional brokers are still concerned with trading hours, settlement cycles, and account opening thresholds. On the other, crypto exchanges have broken US stocks into tokens that trade 24/7, even on weekends. Binance recently leveraged bStocks plus perpetual contracts to directly compete for US stock weekend pricing power. Robinhood hasn’t been idle either; its on-chain DEX daily volume surged to rank fifth across all chains. If you want to catch Nvidia’s bottom early Saturday morning, you used to have to wait for Monday’s open, but now there’s always someone on-chain ready to take your order.
I’ve always thought the most powerful part of this RWA wave isn’t stablecoins, but tokenized stocks. Stablecoins solve payment issues, while tokenized stocks bring the entire Wall Street asset system on-chain. The fact that holders doubled in a month shows the demand isn’t just hype; real people are using it.
But the pitfalls are obvious. Behind the 1:1 peg of tokenized stocks, who is the custodian, who do you turn to if something goes wrong, and how do you redeem across jurisdictions? There’s still no unified answer. Ondo has its own custody and redemption mechanisms, but once you encounter cross-timezone liquidity and regulatory conflicts, there are many potential issues. Not to mention some platforms don’t even issue tokens, keeping governance and dividends tightly controlled.
While we’re still debating whether Bitcoin will break 65,000, another group has already moved US stocks on-chain. Whether this wave will dismantle Wall Street’s bones to make broth, or just another pretty new bottle holding old wine or plain water, we might only know by this time next year.
If you could turn the US stocks in your hand into tokens to hold, would you be willing or hesitant? Institutions that obtained licenses actually don't want to do this business at all.
Last September, thirty-six institutions crowded to submit materials to apply for the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin license, and the scene was quite lively. By August this year, almost no one actively mentioned the four words "Hong Kong dollar stablecoin" anymore.
The licenses were issued on April 10, with a total of two. One was given to Anchor Financial Technology, backed by a joint venture of Standard Chartered Hong Kong, Hong Kong Telecom, and Animoca, and the other was given to HSBC. Thirty-six came in, two went out, and the rest dispersed.
After obtaining the licenses, the performances of the two were very different. Standard Chartered kept making moves; on July 2, it launched an institutional-level USDC one-stop access service together with Circle, and on August 12, Anchor started the first phase issuance of the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin HKDAP, currently only limitedly open to institutional distributors and professional investors like HashKey and OSL, with retail access possibly not until the end of the year. The other party's schedule is directly pushed to the second half of this year. According to people close to the bank, internally they prefer to promote tokenized deposits rather than stablecoins.
The math is actually easy to calculate. About 85% of this bank's payment business income comes from net interest income based on deposits, and payment business accounts for about 22% of its total revenue in 2025. Its way of making money is to attract low-cost deposits and earn the spread through loans and investments, while stablecoins precisely pull deposits out of the banking system. For an institution that relies on deposits to survive to actively engage in a business that diverts its own deposits, while bearing the costs of issuance, custody, and distribution, and with income highly dependent on the interest rate environment, how strong can the motivation be?
The downstream is even more subtle. Issuance is the bank's responsibility, while distribution and custody rely on the thirteen licensed crypto exchanges, whose attitudes roughly fall into three categories. The first category has no expectations; some exchange people directly say they see no profit opportunity from a business perspective, especially since licensed exchanges in Hong Kong are still losing money themselves. The second category is retreating while observing; originally at least three were testing with Anchor, but now some are unwilling to invest manpower anymore. The third category is the most interesting: tactically cooperating actively in testing, but strategically clear that this is not a profitable business.
The group with real willingness is actually outside the door. Companies like Ant, JD Technology, and Circle, which have scenarios and resources, either have not truly entered the game or cannot obtain the leading role. Those most eager to do it are marginalized, and those with the least motivation are pushed to the forefront. This mismatch may be the real reason for the cold start.
Looking globally, this is not just a problem for Hong Kong. The euro is the world's second-largest payment currency, accounting for 21.88% of global payment share in June, but the total market value of euro stablecoins is only $674 million, accounting for 0.3% of the global stablecoin market, of which about 64% is taken by Circle's EURC, a single American company. Europe has formed an alliance of 37 banks covering 15 countries with considerable momentum, but implementation still awaits.
The Japanese yen is constrained by the system. The issuer must be a trust bank, reserves must be held in trust banks, and redemptions also go through trust banks, resulting in an electronic certificate of deposit with little relation to on-chain programmability. The Korean won is stuck in disputes; nine card-issuing institutions have completed pilots, Busan Bank's on-chain pilot has a 100% success rate with processing time under 1 second, but the central bank insists that banks must hold more than half the shares, while local banking law limits banks' holdings in other companies to 15%. To reach a majority, four or five banks must cooperate. The bill has been pushed from Q1 to the second half of the year multiple times, resulting in Korean stablecoins experiencing net outflows for 18 consecutive months, totaling over $1 billion. Unable to issue locally, users switch to US dollar stablecoins to transfer out.
The global stablecoin market is approaching $308.3 billion, with the US dollar accounting for 98%. The US dollar's strength is one reason; others are just too slow.
So I really want to ask, should this business be handed over to banks that are most unwilling to divert their own deposits, or to those companies that truly have payment scenarios but cannot get in? What do you think, will the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin just keep dragging on with licenses but no enthusiasm?Tokenized stocks have quietly surged to $1 billion
There’s a data point that’s been pretty quiet these past couple of days but carries significant weight: Ondo Finance’s tokenized stock platform Ondo Stocks has reached a total value locked (TVL) of $1.01 billion. TVL basically means the total amount of money locked in this protocol. Since its launch last September, in less than a year, it surged to become the tokenized stock service with the highest global TVL within the first 48 hours, now offering over 440 assets on the platform. Each token corresponds to a real stock or ETF, held by licensed US custodial brokers, not just issued out of thin air.
Just looking at this $1 billion isn’t enough to impress; the accompanying part is even more impressive. Ondo’s perpetual contract platform Ondo Perps, launched only in July, has already surpassed $8 billion in cumulative trading volume, with over $5 billion traded in nearly 30 days since its public launch. This means it’s simultaneously bringing stocks like Microsoft on-chain while running an on-chain derivatives platform—both legs moving forward. Ondo has long been a veteran player in RWA (Real World Assets), and this time it’s effectively integrating stocks and derivatives into DeFi.
For us crypto players, it’s important to understand the signal behind this. Tokenized stocks essentially move the liquidity of US stocks onto the blockchain. You don’t need a US brokerage account; just a blockchain wallet lets you participate in Microsoft’s price movements. This is a real incremental boost to DeFi TVL, no longer just numbers pumped by a few liquidity pools stepping on each other’s toes, but real custodial assets circulating on-chain.
However, there’s a contradiction here. Ondo leads with $872 million, Kraken’s xStocks has $557.8 million, and Binance’s bStocks has $521.8 million; these three dominate the majority. The top is becoming more concentrated, squeezing out smaller platforms. Also, these assets strictly depend on custodial and regulatory compliance. Redemptions require custodial brokers to actually sell stocks on exchanges. If US regulatory winds shift, TVL could retract overnight.
In the long run, I see this as an irreversible trend. On-chain US stocks will become the next artery of DeFi. Ondo’s TVL alone matches the annual locked value of many established DeFi protocols; the nature of the money has changed. But don’t get carried away in the short term—this is a different game from the altcoins we trade. These are shadow assets, not native tokens; their prices follow US stocks, not crypto market sentiment. You’re buying a custodial certificate, not the actual stock, so redemptions might not be smooth if a black swan event occurs.
Would you buy this kind of tokenized stock on-chain, or would you rather just open a brokerage account the old-fashioned way? It's often said that stablecoins are mainly for cross-border use, but the real bulk is domestic.
When people talk about stablecoins, the first reaction is usually cross-border remittances—sending money to relatives in Africa, paying suppliers in Southeast Asia, saving on intermediary bank fees. But a recent analysis flips this idea, saying the real volume of stablecoins isn't between countries but within the same country.
Thinking about it, that makes sense. Many emerging market currencies depreciate daily; the money people hold can buy a bag of rice in the morning but only half a bag by evening. What they want isn't to send money abroad but to preserve purchasing power domestically first. Using USDT or USDC to price salaries, stockpile daily expenses, and pay local merchants—that's the high-frequency essential demand. For currencies like the Turkish lira or Argentine peso, which halve in value year after year, people voluntarily convert their wages into on-chain dollars. Cross-border use is just a bonus; domestic value preservation is the baseline.
This also relates to market trends we care about. If stablecoins mainly serve domestic payments, then their issuance and active address growth reflect real, solid demand, not pure speculative trading. On the RWA side, tokenized stock holders increased from 650,000 to 1.31 million in a month—doubling—and transfer volume hit 23.1 billion, showing on-chain dollars are expanding beyond just crypto trading.
For example, people in the Philippines and Nigeria who rely on remittances often don't immediately send the money onward once it arrives; they first convert it into on-chain dollars stored in their wallets, waiting to spend. The turnover of on-chain dollars far exceeds their actual cross-border transfers. This precisely shows that domestic retention is the main battlefield; cross-border is just a side journey.
But don't get too optimistic yet. Regulatory hurdles remain. The Hong Kong dollar stablecoin license has been out for a year; Standard Chartered is active, HSBC is passive, and the market is as cold as ice. The U.S. framework is still in debate; everyone fears issuing coins only to be restricted by future rules. So, the real penetration of stablecoins is technically sufficient in the short term but stuck long-term on licensing and banking cooperation willingness. This is the biggest temperature difference between stablecoins and the cross-border narrative.
My personal judgment is that the winning move for stablecoins isn't who first cracks cross-border but who first nails the local payment network for daily life. In the short term, this won't affect BTC's price, but in the long term, every USDC truly spent at the local market is real demand underpinning the entire crypto market.
What do you think will be the first scenario where stablecoins land in your life?Recently, the general market expectation is that BTC will head towards 50,000, while the US stock market keeps hitting new highs week after week, rising sharply. In contrast, ETH is still hovering around 1900, creating a stark contrast. So let's officially start.
The US July CPI recorded 3.4%, in line with market expectations and lower than the previous 3.5%. After the data release, the Fed had neither reason to raise rates nor motivation to cut rates in September. BTC actually dropped sharply in the short term, triggering a liquidation peak that night.
There are actually three layers of logic behind this: First, the cooling of rate hike expectations has already been partially priced in by the market, so this time it’s more of a confirmation with no new expectation gap created; second and most crucial — BTC is not lacking news but real incremental capital. The easing of interest rate pressure only means the weight on risk assets has lightened a bit, not that funds will immediately enter to boost prices. Especially at the end of a bear market, participation in chips decreases, and the cost curve gradually flattens from initially steep.
I mentioned on Tuesday to avoid random short-term participation and wait for the real bottom to appear before buying in; waiting a bit longer won’t hurt.
The US stock market is also extreme, with stocks like SpaceX and SanDisk showing huge volatility. When we last talked, they were very hot, but many who chased them are probably stuck now. Yushu Technology is similar—I bought some around 80 last week, and its price jumps around wildly like a stray dog. For those with diversified funds, you can look at US stocks short-term, but the volatility is really high, so avoid using too much leverage.
In a rebound market, when prices return near the average cost line of the public, it easily triggers concentrated selling pressure, so this position naturally acts as strong resistance. For example, BTC’s cost line is around 67,900 USD. Since the rebound started on June 20, the price has been suppressed below this line for almost two months.
Lately, I’ve mainly been focusing on BTC, and I suggest everyone hold off on altcoins for now.
Looking back at historical data, at the end of the bear markets in 2018 and 2022, almost identical situations occurred. The altcoin season everyone eagerly awaits has actually been ongoing, just in a different form.
From August to November 2018, BTC was continuously suppressed by the March realized price for a full three months; the same happened in 2022 during the same period. Later, the BCH hash war in 2018 and the FTX crash in 2022 caused prices to break support instantly, resulting in extreme volatility. Both events happened at the bear market’s end, indicating that long-term suppression by the cost line essentially reflects structural fragility, and any external push can easily break the weak balance.
Looking at the current market structure:
On the four-hour chart, the price has broken below the lower bound of the consolidation range at 63,000, with increased bearish volume, preliminarily establishing a short-term downtrend. This morning we also discussed the airdrop army adding a billion in volume, which is quite intimidating.
The daily volume-price divergence continues, with price stuck around 63,000 and volume consistently lagging, making the rebound foundation very weak. Now the price has dropped to the 0.618 Fibonacci level just above 63,000, and bears are still exerting pressure. Before the CPI release, everyone was watching 67,000, but now the focus has shifted down to testing 55,000.
Wait for the right opportunity to enter; don’t fear missing out. Especially for altcoin positions, reduce leverage as much as possible.
In the past two weeks, while creating content, I’ve been reviewing on-chain data and various KOL opinions. The overall sentiment is bearish, with most seeing the 50,000 level. On Tuesday, someone said they wanted to short ETH, but I think it’s better to wait for the bottom before opening shorts; otherwise, you’ll just get slapped back and forth, which is exhausting. If you really want to trade, always use stop-loss.
Gold previously surged to 4,400 and has now fallen back to around 4,300. Personally, I plan to consider positioning near 4,000. There are generally a few ways to participate in gold: one is to directly leverage gold itself, which is the most straightforward; two is to buy gold mining stocks or related assets; three is to trade spot contracts, which can be done on Aster or other exchanges.
After the CPI release, the market actually feels less stimulated. I wonder if others feel the same.
Finally, I want to share an industry observation from a recent article I read that I found very insightful. This trend actually started at the end of 2024 and into 2025.
Previously, the crypto information chain was short: someone discovers a new project on Twitter → KOLs spread it → funds enter → price rises. If you scroll Twitter fast enough, you could catch Alpha. Many copy-trading logics are similar, researching early and then gaming the community together.
But now it’s different. The market is becoming more professionalized, with bots, market makers, on-chain monitoring, and internal circles improving efficiency rapidly. Many small studios and Alpha players have monopolized previous playstyles through technology.
My understanding is that true Alpha is the ability to dig out the essence from a pile of projects and get in early to profit when a project just emerges.
Every large-scale coin-stock Meme born is equivalent to adding a new demand side to the corresponding stock. So the development direction we discussed before is not wrong, just lacking a gust of wind.
If 100 Memes use GME as a pool, then 100 pools need GME; if 1,000 Memes use GME, TSLA, NVDA, AAPL as pools, the entire Meme market helps coin-stocks absorb liquidity.
This also shows that what’s really lacking now is not “stock on-chain” itself, but the usage scenarios and liquidity demand of stocks on-chain.
Simply moving GME to BSC without anyone using it for LP, collateral, lending, or dividends means it’s just a tradable token.
The current playstyle leverages what Crypto excels at — speculation, trading volume, and liquidity — to create on-chain demand for real-world assets. Once coin-stock TVL truly rises, lending, collateral, derivatives, dividends, vaults, and other features will naturally emerge.
If your main information source is still just public timelines, you’re actually getting closer to the downstream of the information chain.
That’s why Crypto’s future competitive advantage may no longer be “who follows more KOLs,” but who can capture capital behavior earlier and enter higher-quality information networks.#加密估值转向收入，BTC如何定价？ Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin Fund Lost $66.8 Million but Was Snapped Up Frenziedly
Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin trust MSBT released a performance report after 85 days of listing, and the numbers are somewhat counterintuitive. On paper, it lost $66.8 million, almost entirely due to the unrealized depreciation of the Bitcoin it holds, about $66.17 million. However, during the same period, the fund received subscriptions totaling $371.1 million, including approximately $200.3 million in cash and about $170.8 million in Bitcoin. Redemptions accounted for only about 1.42% of total subscriptions, with almost no one exiting. This MSBT is Morgan Stanley's own spot BTC trust, comparable to BlackRock's IBIT and Grayscale's GBTC.
The accounting seems off but also makes sense. The fund's loss is due to market value fluctuations, not investors actually losing money. Bitcoin fell from its peak, so the holdings' market value on paper turned negative, but the shares kept increasing—from 17.65 million shares at the end of June to 21.74 million shares at the end of July, a roughly 23% increase. Simply put, buyers don't care about the ugly net asset value over these 85 days; they want Beta exposure and fear missing out on the next rally.
Looking at the institutional level makes it even more interesting. Morgan Stanley itself reduced its IBIT holdings from 17.3 million shares to 16.5 million shares in Q2, a 4.5% decrease, yet its own product was being aggressively bought. This contrast—cutting positions internally while issuing products for others to buy—is very common in asset management circles. For us, the key point isn't whether Morgan Stanley is bullish or not, but that ordinary people entering through such trusts already bear management fees and spread losses in their cost, so their gains are naturally less than holding spot Bitcoin.
In the short term, this isn't directly related to market movements, but the long-term logic is clear. The ETF channel continuously channels retail and pension money from US stocks into BTC, and this structural buying underpins the slow bull market in recent years. The cost is that in every correction, the fund's net asset value gets cut first, and those chasing highs must endure unrealized losses before subsequent subscriptions push the NAV back up. This 85-day report shows losses are almost entirely due to coin price fluctuations, with very few redemptions, indicating most trust holders are long-term holders who hold through losses.
I think the greatest value of this report is to let ordinary people clearly see what they are actually buying. You are buying shares that fluctuate with the coin price, not a coin securely stored in a cold wallet. Institutions have created a convenient gateway for you, but behind the door, volatility still exists, and you still need to cut losses when necessary.
Would you buy this kind of Bitcoin trust for convenience, or would you rather hold the spot yourself? After two months of sideways trading, Cboe submits a triple leverage proposal
There was something at noon that didn’t get much attention. The Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) submitted an application to regulators to launch a batch of 3x leveraged ETFs, with underlying assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, as well as traditional commodities like gold, crude oil, and natural gas all bundled together. Once approved, ordinary investors could gain triple exposure to Bitcoin by buying just one fund, without needing to open a futures account.
This might have gone unnoticed two months ago. But now Bitcoin has been hovering around 63,000 for nearly two months with thinning trading volume. Coinbase’s negative premium has persisted for ninety days, setting a record for the longest duration ever, indicating weak buying pressure in the US market. Everyone is waiting for direction, but money is reluctant to flow in.
At this very moment, institutional players quietly pushed leverage tools a step further. After spot ETFs were approved, traditional exchanges have been making crypto products more sophisticated—from simple holding to leveraged, and now directly triple leverage. Cboe submitted crypto assets and commodities in the same batch, sending a clear signal: they recognize demand for these products and are willing to provide tools for those who want more than just holding. According to Cointelegraph, these products cover both crypto assets and traditional commodities, and if approved, will further enrich the ETF product line in related markets. Interestingly, leveraged ETFs are already well-established in US stocks; now they are being applied to crypto, with the core mechanics unchanged, only the underlying assets swapped for more volatile Bitcoin and Ethereum.
For us, triple leveraged ETFs sound tempting—one day’s gain equals three days. But they reset positions daily and are most vulnerable to choppy swings. Suppose Bitcoin drops 5% in one day, the 3x product theoretically falls 15%. Even if it rebounds 5% the next day, you won’t return to the original point; volatility decay alone can wear you down. Korean retail investors previously holding leveraged ETFs on Samsung and SK Hynix at high levels had to see prices double or triple just to break even—this is a ready example.
The contrast is even more interesting. On one side, spot ETFs barely attracted about $1.1 billion last week, ending most of the year’s net outflows; on the other, old buyers like Strategy have started selling coins. The sentiment isn’t truly heating up yet, but exchanges have already brought the leverage ladder.
Who will ultimately use this ladder, and who will fail to stand firm on it, might be the key points to watch next. The more complete the tools, the more volatility might quietly amplify. We’ll watch as we go.💡 $BTC $ETH — IDEA OF THE DAY
Long positions account for around 60% of liquidations ($14.9M), but the imbalance isn’t extreme. This looks more like moderate leverage stress than full capitulation.
With Fear & Greed at 34 and momentum remaining flat, leveraged retail traders are being squeezed, but the market hasn’t experienced a complete flush. For now, it looks more like a cautious standoff than a decisive directional move.
Similar conditions on August 15 and July 25, when Fear & Greed stood at 34 and 27, saw long liquidations at 69% and 63%. Those setups were followed by either a local bottom or extended sideways trading.
Institutional activity could provide additional support, while speculation around UBS’s ETF activity and Hyperliquid’s potential IPO adds another layer to the narrative.
📌 Watch the reaction around key support. If short liquidations suddenly exceed 50%, it could signal that positioning is shifting and create a potential opportunity for a rebound.
⚠️ Risk: 5/10 — Signals remain mixed: institutional interest is supportive, but retail conviction is weak. A break below recent lows could trigger a larger long squeeze.
📊 Key Levels:
• $BTC : $62,000 support / $64,000 resistance
• ETH: $1,900 key level
DYOR | Not financial advice
#WeakConsumptionFedSplit #SP500EarningsGap Although major U.S. companies are making far more money than everyone expected, everyone on Wall Street unanimously believes the market could rise to at most 7,894 points, for four reasons: 1. The good news has already finished rising early. In the first half of this year, the stock market surged all the way up. Everyone had already guessed that companies would make big profits this quarter, so they entered early to buy and push prices up. Now that the earnings report is officially released, no new buyers are willing to chase the high. Those who previously bought at low prices to make money have instead sold off and exited on positive days, just like SanDisk $SNDK's strong earnings report but then surged and then retreated. 2. The stock price itself is no longer cheap Although companies are making more profits, the overall market price is currently relatively high. Institutions have a bottom line: after rising to 7,894, if it surges higher, the price will become ridiculously high. No one dares to buy in big, so everyone collectively sets the highest target at this level and doesn't dare to go higher. 3. The cost of borrowing money has always been high, making it difficult to sustain a significant rise. In the US, interest rates on borrowing money remain high, and ordinary people and institutions have little spare cash, so they can't keep bringing in money to push the stock market higher. Even if companies can make money, without a large influx of new funds, it will be difficult for the market to experience consecutive strong gains. 4. This wave of profits is only a short-term phenomenon. This quarter's profit surge was just a good result made up of the booming AI demand and poor business in the same period last year. In the future, major companies will compete for business, and the days of making big money won't last long. Institutions have already predicted that companies' earnings will slow in the second half of the year, so naturally they are not optimistic about a sharp rise in the market. 5. The market is supported by only a handful of tech companies Morgan Stanley Bought Another 111 BTC, Total Holdings Surpass 6,600
While you panic sell, a long-established institution is doing the opposite. On-chain monitoring shows that yesterday Morgan Stanley added about 111.762 BTC by spending $7.03 million through its own spot Bitcoin ETF code MSBT. Including this purchase, its total Bitcoin holdings have surpassed 6,600 for the first time, now reaching 6,675 BTC, valued at over $420 million.
This company's move is worth analyzing. It doesn't buy coins to store directly in its own vault but uses the MSBT ETF to buy on the secondary market. Simply put, it leverages the product channel to convert both client and proprietary funds into BTC exposure. This approach is completely different from retail investors manually trading; it is institutionalized, continuous, and non-speculative buying.
Zooming out, Morgan Stanley is not an isolated case. In this cycle, traditional asset managers and investment banks have openly included BTC in their allocation lists. Products like BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC see real money flowing in and out daily. The way institutions enter the market has also changed—from secretly buying mining machines and hoarding spot coins to now directly onboarding clients through compliant ETFs.
Another detail worth noting: MSBT has been listed for only 85 days. Despite a paper loss of $66.8 million due to price drops, subscription funds have still poured in, exceeding $370 million. Losses haven't deterred investors, indicating that those taking positions are not retail gamblers but people treating it as a long-term holding. Institutions' attitude toward drawdowns is completely different from our retail experience of chasing highs and selling lows.
Regarding swing trading, here is my view. Large institutions continuously increase holdings via ETFs, providing mid-to-long-term support for BTC, showing that smart money treats every deep dip as a buying opportunity. But this doesn't mean you should rush to chase now; institutions' cost structures and holding periods are on a different scale than ours. For the short term, watch if BTC stabilizes near key average cost lines; for the long term, focus on whether ETF net inflows remain positive—that is the real strength of the trend.
What you really need to consider now is whether your position is moving with the trend as giants slowly accumulate BTC for long-term allocation or if you are being left behind by emotions.The Fear and Greed Index has dropped to 35—are your positions still stable?
Put aside whether your account was in the red or green this week; there’s a data point more glaring than your profit and loss. On-chain monitoring shows that the crypto market’s Fear and Greed Index has fallen to 35, clearly hanging in the panic zone. Last week, this number was still swinging on the greed side; this week it’s plunged straight back into fear, indicating that investors’ risk appetite can change in an instant.
Looking back in time is even more alarming. This round of the index dropping from greed took less than two weeks. At the end of July, it was still around 62, when a big bullish candle from ETH ignited market sentiment. But August brought one negative event after another, and the index slid all the way down to 35. This kind of sharp U-turn is most punishing for those who chased the highs; many people’s account profits were wiped out in these two weeks.
When we usually watch the market, we focus on whether BTC can hold certain round numbers, but we tend to overlook that this index is actually a mirror of sentiment. It combines signals like volatility, trading volume, social media buzz, and BTC dominance into a reading from 0 to 100. Below 50 basically means panic is spreading; now at 35, it’s just a breath away from extreme panic at 25.
Don’t just look at the overall index; breaking it down is clearer. Volatility and momentum sub-indices have recently dropped the hardest, indicating prices are jumping wildly but with very poor directional sense. Conversely, BTC dominance has quietly climbed, meaning money is hiding in Bitcoin while liquidity is being drained from altcoins. This is also a reminder for us when choosing targets: during panic periods, funds favor Bitcoin more, and altcoin rebounds often come late and fade fast.
Here’s an interesting contrast. Despite the index being so panicked, there hasn’t been a stampede of funds fleeing BTC spot ETFs, and institutional buying with real money hasn’t stopped. On one side, retail investors are scared out of their wits; on the other, institutions are slowly accumulating. This kind of split often appears during market bottoming or shakeout phases.
For swing trading, my reference approach is this: the index being in the panic zone means some leverage and emotion have been squeezed out, so the downward momentum might weaken, but that’s definitely not a reason to rush in. The truly prudent approach is to see if BTC is stabilizing near key average cost lines, combined with changes in trading volume to confirm. In the short term, such extreme sentiment values often lead to rebounds; long-term logic still depends on macro liquidity and sustained ETF net inflows.
What’s most puzzling now isn’t how much it’s dropped, but that everyone is waiting for one direction. Are you planning to hold through this panic with your positions, or lighten your load first to sleep peacefully?Morgan Stanley lost $66 million but attracted $371 million in inflows
Morgan Stanley's spot Bitcoin ETF, with the ticker MSBT, launched at the end of May and ran for exactly 85 days until the end of July. During these 85 days, it showed an unrealized loss of about $66.8 million on paper, yet investors poured in a fresh $371 million during the same period.
Losing money while still attracting capital is itself quite unusual. Regulatory filings show that the fund's net assets only decreased by about $6.68 million over these 85 days, almost entirely due to an unrealized depreciation of Bitcoin of approximately $66.17 million, with the remainder being about $618,000 in realized losses and $72,300 in sponsorship fees. In other words, the money was not drained by investor redemptions.
Redemptions accounted for a meager 1.42%, while the number of issued shares actually rose from 17.65 million to 21.74 million, an increase of over 23%. Someone kept adding money, with authorized participants subscribing and redeeming in baskets of 10,000 shares each; 1,790 new baskets were created versus only 25 redeemed.
Even more interestingly, the manager itself was buying. On-chain monitoring shows that Morgan Stanley bought the dip again yesterday through MSBT, spending $7.03 million to add about 111.7 Bitcoin, bringing total holdings above 6,600 BTC for the first time. On one hand, the fund's book value is in the red, but on the other, both the manager and clients keep putting money in.
Breaking down the $371 million of new money is also interesting: about $200.3 million was cash, and about $170.8 million was direct Bitcoin physical subscriptions. This means some investors are not using dollars to buy the rebound but are instead putting their coins into the ETF shell, more like a long-term placement rather than short-term speculation.
Doing the math clearly shows that the $66.8 million unrealized loss is actually small compared to the $371 million of new money; the fund's total size did not shrink but grew. A product with a book loss that is still expanding in size is almost impossible in traditional funds. As a veteran brokerage, Morgan Stanley treats its wealth clients as a natural outlet, and the product was launched with channels to put Bitcoin into familiar portfolios, which is the foundation for why it can keep attracting money despite losses.
Zooming out a bit: Bitcoin is hovering around $63,000, and MSBT's cost basis is obviously higher, so the unrealized loss is not surprising. The real question is why subscription funds keep flowing in despite the losses. One explanation is that institutions see the ETF as a compliant entry point and don't care about short-term volatility, focusing on long-term allocation; another is that dollar-cost averaging investors treat the loss as a discount and buy more as prices fall. Either way, the $371 million of new money and 1.42% redemption rate show this group does not plan to leave in the short term.
Why would a fund that is still losing money have people lining up to put money in? Is it because they see the long-term clearly or have turned bottom-fishing into a belief? What do you think?Bitcoin Four-Year Replication: Mean Reversion Index! Is the Bitcoin Bear Market About to End?
Current Status: When the gray shadow starts to rise back above the zero line and thickens, it means: the short-term anchor points are beginning to strengthen relatively.
The price is reverting to the long-term mean, and the bottom structure is shifting from "pure oversold" to "actual recovery."
Historically, every time the Index_Spread "re-emerges" in this way, it almost corresponds to the end of the most panic-stricken phase of the bear market and the moment when mean reversion forces begin to dominate.
When the gray shadow remains below the zero line (negative value) for a long time, it indicates that short-term anchor points are consistently weaker than long-term anchor points, and the market is in a deep oversold, panic, and capitulation phase.
Indicator Explanation:
Index_Spread = Fast Index − Slow Index (fast mean reversion index minus slow mean reversion index).
Slow Index: Composed of long-term anchor points (Powerlaw, 200WMA, Realized Price, True Market Mean, 365d VWAP, etc.) — representing "long-term fair value."
Fast Index: Composed of short-term anchor points (STH Cost Basis, 90d VWAP, 200DMA, etc.) — representing "recent cost and sentiment."
Contributed by Not Financial Advice DYOR SEC Reviewing Triple-Leveraged BTC ETFs
Are you still trading 20x contracts head-to-head with market makers? Regulators have just introduced an even more intense play, where the leverage ordinary people hold might become a toy overnight.
The SEC is reviewing six triple-leveraged commodity ETF listing applications submitted by Cboe, explicitly covering Bitcoin and Ethereum. A triple-leveraged ETF means if the underlying asset rises by 1 point, the product’s net asset value fluctuates nearly 3 points, amplifying both direction and magnitude. If approved, traditional brokerage accounts will be able to directly buy BTC and ETH with triple exposure, no need to touch contracts, worry about margin, or fear forced liquidation at midnight.
The contrast here is stark: on one side, retail traders get liquidated and educated in the contract market; on the other, the pros are turning leverage into a mainstream product accessible to everyone. These six Cboe applications are still under review, with no certainty on approval or timing, but the direction is clear: traditional finance is packaging crypto’s speculative nature into standard products on shelves, placing them where retirement accounts and mutual funds can buy.
The impact on us is direct. Once launched, more off-exchange money can flow in through brokerage channels, redistributing liquidity for BTC and ETH. But triple-leveraged ETFs come with inherent decay—they rebalance daily, and in volatile markets, this friction erodes your principal. The longer you hold and the more fragmented the volatility, the more pronounced the decay, making long-term holding potentially less attractive than spot.
Ultimately, the most direct effect of these products is moving the speculative nature, previously confined to contract circles, into the hands of ordinary people. Previously, to access 3x leverage, you had to open contracts, understand margin, and withstand liquidation; now, it’s just a tap on a brokerage app. The lower the threshold, the more uninformed participants enter, and in the end, retail traders pay the tuition. Historically, most leveraged crypto products cause losses in volatility—not because the direction was wrong, but because holders couldn’t endure.
The logic of short-term bearish and long-term bullish also applies here. In the short term, these products will divert some contract funds, possibly causing more fragmented price swings, scaring novices into chasing highs and selling lows due to triple volatility; in the long term, they bring crypto assets into the ordinary investor’s view, representing incremental inflow rather than a negative, effectively opening another floodgate for the market.
The question is, when leverage becomes bottled water on supermarket shelves, easily grabbed, can you still control your own hands? Are you ready to face a BTC with triple volatility? Funding rates turn negative, protocol reserves are being drained in reverse: Is Ethena synthetic dollar facing a fatal test?
At the peak of the bull market frenzy, Ethena's synthetic dollar USDe once achieved an astronomical annualized yield of 20% to over 30%, rapidly scaling up to tens of billions of dollars within just a few months, becoming the most lucrative wealth machine in the entire DeFi space.
But as the market recently entered a frustrating consolidation phase, a Damocles sword hanging over all USDe holders finally revealed its edge.
Funding rates for Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual contracts on major exchanges are broadly falling back near zero, with some tokens frequently sliding into deeply negative funding rates ranging from -5% to -10% annualized.
This directly hits the most fatal weakness of synthetic dollars.
Let's first clarify the underlying profit logic of USDe: it buys spot assets as collateral while establishing an equal one-times short position in the futures market to hedge price volatility. In a unilaterally bullish market driven by fervent longs, shorts receive extremely generous funding payments from longs daily, which is the sole source of its ultra-high annualized yield.
However, once the market turns into a slow decline or bearish sentiment dominates, the funding rate on contracts turns negative.
At this point, the entire logic reverses 180 degrees: Ethena's one-times short position is no longer a landlord collecting rent daily but becomes a liability that must pay interest to longs every day.
Although Ethena has set up tens of millions of dollars in a Reserve Fund to cover negative funding rates during extreme market conditions, if the market remains sideways at the bottom for two to three months, the reserve fund will be continuously drained like opening floodgates.
More realistic run pressure comes from stakers reallocating positions. When the real yield of sUSDe falls below 4.5% or even approaches zero, large holders have no reason to continue bearing the risks of smart contracts and centralized exchange custody. Whales will choose to mass unstake and dump USDe on secondary markets to swap back into USDC or U.S. Treasuries.
Once liquidity pools on Curve or Uniswap experience severe one-sided skew, the risks of depegging and liquidity discounts will instantly amplify.
Synthetic dollars have never been a risk-free free lunch; their essence is a floating check that uses the speculative longs in the entire crypto derivatives market as profit fuel. During prolonged periods of low funding rates, stubbornly clinging to the illusion of high yields often places principal at the volcanic mouth of reflexive spirals.
In the current environment of sharply narrowed funding rates, do you still hold USDe-related interest-bearing assets? Will you choose to continue earning thin spreads, or have you already switched back to purely fiat-compliant stablecoins?
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The above content represents personal views only and does not constitute any investment advice. DYOR, NFA.
#ETF买盘反转，BTC杠杆仓位回升 Coinbase Negative Premium Lasts 90 Days, Your Coins Are Shrinking
Has your account turned green this week? Don’t rush to watch the K-line just yet; a signal has quietly been running for 90 days, and most people still haven’t realized it.
The Coinbase Bitcoin premium index has been stuck in negative territory from May 19 to August 16, staying negative for 90 consecutive days, currently at -0.1066%. This index measures the price difference between Coinbase Pro and Binance in the US. Simply put, for the same BTC, US buyers have consistently been willing to pay a lower price than elsewhere.
The longest previous negative premium lasted 40 days from January to February this year, and even during the 1011 crash last year, it only lasted about 30 days. This time, 90 days has more than doubled the historical record, marking the first time since this index was launched. What’s more painful is that during this period, the coin price didn’t really crash, indicating it’s not panic selling but rather that the US buy-side simply can’t pick up.
The persistent negative premium is usually interpreted as weak US buy-side demand or continuous selling pressure from that side. CoinGlass data clearly shows institutional real-money buying interest visibly cooling down. Those of us who follow trends know that structural signals like this are more important than a single upper shadow candle; it reflects whether money is truly coming in, not just fake moves on the chart.
In practical trading terms, BTC is still grinding around 64,000, just breaking above the 200-week moving average but without volume support. The negative premium is like a quietly tightened faucet; no new inflows from outside, and the market is just slicing up the existing supply. Don’t expect a big bullish candle to solve everything in the short term; watch if volume supports the move. Until the premium turns positive, treat every rebound as a chance to reduce positions.
Back to us. The negative premium index isn’t commonly watched by ordinary people, but it’s actually much more reliable than the many trade calls in chat groups. It doesn’t predict price ups or downs; it coldly tells you whether money is flowing in or out from the US side. If you’re fully invested now, at least know the faucet is closed—don’t think it’s about to take off when no one is stepping in to catch the fall. Without understanding this, all the technical analysis in the world is useless.
Long-term logic is another matter. US buyers being temporarily passive doesn’t mean the coin has lost value; it just means pricing power isn’t in their hands for now. When rate cut expectations truly materialize and the ETF channel reopens with volume, this negative premium has a chance to turn positive. Historically, the longer the negative premium lasts, the greater the rebound elasticity tends to be when it reverses.
What’s most intriguing is that during these 90 days, the price didn’t crash but quietly changed hands. Do you think this negative premium phase means institutions are taking a break, or retail investors are catching the last baton?AI Coin Founders' Feud Sparks a 6 Million Dollar Rashomon
This morning, the hottest drama in the AI agent sector wasn't the market but a public spat between two founders. Shaw, the founder of ElizaOS, suddenly posted, naming baoskee, the founder of daos.fun, accusing him of using insider information—known only to the project team—during the ai16z project’s renaming and migration to trade and sell an entire execution wallet’s worth of ai16z tokens, making about 6.6 million USD.
Shaw’s claims are very specific. He said that in June 2025, the project team clearly promised to launch a Snapshot vote to let the community decide whether to rename, since a16z had long requested a name change to avoid trademark disputes. However, the vote was delayed, and baoskee, already aware of the renaming pressure and migration plans, emptied his tokens and kept dumping before the tokens migrated to ElizaOS, directly crashing the price. Shaw’s logic is that only the project team had this information at the time; ordinary holders were completely unaware.
The situation quickly reversed. Baoskee almost immediately denied the accusations, saying the Snapshot vote had actually been launched, and daos.fun even paid out of pocket to add and lock over 1 million USD worth of ai16z liquidity. He turned the blame on Shaw, accusing him of numerous issues in project operations, token migration, and use of development funds. Both sides’ stories are completely different, and it’s impossible to conclude who’s telling the truth. Shaw said he would post Solscan on-chain records, but on-chain data can usually only prove how money moved, not what was in someone’s mind.
To understand the weight of this drama, one must know ai16z is no minor player. It’s the flagship token launched on daos.fun, an AI agent platform, which soared last year riding the agent narrative and was once one of the hottest tokens in the community. Now the halo has faded, and even the founders are blaming each other. Token renaming and migration happen almost monthly in crypto, always accompanied by major reshuffles of holdings. Accusations of insiders knowing arrangements in advance are common, but this is the first time founders publicly feud and throw on-chain evidence.
What’s more worth pondering is whether so-called community governance votes truly hand power to holders or if the project team can act whenever they want. When founders no longer trust each other, on-chain records become the sole judge, but these records only recognize money, not people. The most ironic part of this drama is that both sides were once exalted figures in the AI agent narrative. When the project team itself is torn apart like this, those still holding related tokens—are they holding faith, or just a script written by others? Do you think anyone will come out with solid proof in this Rashomon in the end? $BTC $ETH 💡 Idea of the Day
Longs dominate **liquidations** at 60% ($14.9M), but the split is far from extreme—this is mild pain, not capitulation. With Fear & Greed at 34 and flat momentum, leveraged retail is getting squeezed but not wiped out, suggesting a cautious standoff rather than a directional flush.
Similar setups on August 15 and July 25 (FNG 34 and 27) saw longs at 69% and 63% respectively, which often preceded a local bottom or a sideways grind. With UBS’s 24-fold ETF call surge and Hyperliquid’s IPO speculation, institutional interest provides a floor—look for long entries near key support if short liquidations spike above 50%.
⚠️ **Risk: 5/10** — Mixed signals: bullish institutional flows vs. weak retail conviction; a break below recent lows could trigger a cascading long squeeze.
📊 Key levels:
• BTC: $62,000 / $64,000
• ETH: $1,900 / $1,900
DYOR | Not financial advice7月非农 -2.3万人，CPI同比从3.5%降至 3.4%，核心CPI降至2.5%；随后PPI环比 0增长、同比回落至4.7%。就业、消费端通胀、生产端价格同时降温，按过去的交易逻辑，BTC至少应该明显受益。(bls.gov) (bls.gov) (reuters.com) 结果呢？ BTC最新仍只有约 62,936美元，重新回到6.3万美元附近。 这不是数据失效，而是市场进入了一个更值得警惕的阶段： 宏观利空正在减少，但新增买盘没有回来。 第一，利好已经从“催化剂”变成“市场共识” CPI公布后，市场对9月加息的定价已经明显下降；到8月13—14日，加息概率进一步降到大约三成。也就是说，“通胀降温、美联储暂停加息”已经越来越接近市场基准情景。(reuters.com) 当所有人都知道的利好真正落地，它对价格的边际推动力自然下降。 市场现在需要的不是再次证明“通胀降了0.1个百分点”，而是一个能够让资金重新提高风险敞口的新变量。 第二，比宏观更诚实的是ETF——机构没有追 8月10—14日，美国BTC现货ETF分别录得： -1.446亿、+780万、-6110万、-1.311亿、-56By selling Bitcoin and issuing common stock to fund $STRC purchases, Strategy is creating short-term support for $STRC , but the trade-off is a lower amount of Bitcoin per MSTR share.
Strategy paid $189.8M for $206.4M of stated value, reducing annual dividend obligations by roughly $24.8M at a 12% rate.
Notably, 84.8% of the purchase was funded through Bitcoin sales, highlighting the trade-off between supporting $STRC and maintaining MSTR’s Bitcoin exposure.
#WeakConsumptionFedSplit #SP500EarningsGap BTC wants to break 65,000, but what it really lacks is not bulls, but "real money"
The most worrisome thing about BTC right now is the misalignment between spot and leverage.
From August 3 to 7, the US BTC spot ETF net inflow was about $865 million, with IBIT contributing about $694 million, accounting for 80%; but from August 10 to 14, it quickly reversed, with a weekly net outflow of about $385 million. Institutional funds have not disappeared, but they lack sustainability.
On the other hand, on August 14, BTC futures open interest increased by about $1.2 billion within 8 hours, with the increase mainly concentrated in offshore perpetual markets such as Binance, Bybit, and OKX.
CryptoQuant data shows that the market leverage ratio once exceeded 0.5, and although it has now dropped to about 0.3, it is still higher than the level before the ETF launch.
This means that to truly break through $65,000, the price cannot be pushed up by leverage alone.
Price increase + continuous ETF inflow + moderate OI expansion is a healthy structure.
Conversely, if the price stagnates, spot withdraws, and OI continues to surge, leverage is not fuel but may become the powder keg for the next round of liquidation.
Spot determines the trend, leverage only amplifies the result. $BTC #ETF买盘反转，BTC杠杆仓位回升 Cross-layer interaction between the testnet public ledger and the privacy dark pool is pushing $DUSK into a tug-of-war between retail friction and institutional compliance.
Transferring tokens on-chain into the privacy layer requires locally generating zero-knowledge proofs, with gas consumption per transaction tripling compared to ordinary transfers.
Institutional large funds, represented by private placement securities, are leveraging underlying isolation features to build low-exposure liquidity channels between the audit public layer and the pricing dark pool.
This high computational threshold directly blocks high-frequency small transactions but naturally protects against slippage for larger compliant fund deposits per transaction.
If the asset scale handled by institutional dark pools continues to expand, the demand for token staking and proof verification will absorb cross-layer friction costs, opening up space for network utility revaluation.
If the progress of compliant asset on-chain integration lags, the high proof costs will continue to suppress daily turnover willingness, leading to further depletion of public liquidity.
When cross-layer fees cannot be effectively covered by large net inflows, the current premium pricing for compliant dark pools will quickly become invalid.
In the next seven days, focus on observing changes in the number of calls for testnet cross-layer shielded transactions and the distribution of funds deposited per transaction.
#海力士扩产提速，资本开支能否兑现回报 #Tether首次完整审计：透明度成焦点① BTC (Bitcoin) Current Market: On August 16, Bitcoin continued its recent low-level oscillation pattern, with the price repeatedly tugging around $63,000. As of Beijing time, BTC was quoted at approximately $63,050-$63,075, with a 24-hour slight fluctuation of about +0.26% to -0.05%. Over the past week, Bitcoin briefly rose to around $65,000 but quickly fell back to the $62,500-$63,000 range. Year-to-date, Bitcoin has dropped about 29%, falling steadily from around $88,800. The global cryptocurrency total market capitalization is about $2.26 trillion, with Bitcoin's market cap accounting for approximately 56.5%. Driving Factors—Funds Present, No Trend: ETF inflows and miner sell-offs offset each other. In early August, the US Bitcoin spot ETF saw a significant capital inflow, with a net weekly inflow of about $1.1 billion, but Bitcoin only briefly tested $65,000 before falling back again. Although ETF purchases provide incremental demand, miners, early holders, and corporate holders may also reduce positions during the rebound. Funds are highly concentrated in Bitcoin and stablecoins. Stablecoins account for about 13.4% of the total crypto market cap, and funds have not broadly spread to mid- and small-cap tokens. This is neither the start of a new bull market nor a final panic sell-off, but closer to a low-level oscillation phase in the mid-to-late bear market. Macro data weakens but price reaction is muted. US inflation cooling should have boosted risk assets, but Bitcoin's reaction to the softer economic data is muted, indicating market confidence remains fragile #WeakConsumptionFedSplit #SP500EarningsGap This weekend there is a variable I think crypto traders should not overlook: the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and Oman are discussing temporary maritime routes through Hormuz, but the important point is that Iran emphasizes: This is not yet a full opening. Meanwhile, bigger issues related to sanctions, blockades, control over maritime routes, and ceasefire conditions remain unresolved. The problem is: The oil market is closing at the end of t The long-term supply logic of $SNDK and $META is the most attractive part of storage stocks.
The biggest problem in the storage industry in the past was price transparency, severe cycles, very hot restocking by customers, and very painful destocking. But the long-term supply agreements with AI customers are changing the most disliked aspects of this industry. $SNDK is highly favored by the market largely not because it sells a few more SSDs today, but because large tech companies are starting to lock in future flash memory supply in advance.
This is very critical. Long-term agreements mean higher revenue visibility, more stable capacity planning, and price fluctuations may not be as extreme as before. For storage manufacturers, this is equivalent to turning part of the "casino cycle" into an "infrastructure contract." What the market is most willing to pay a premium for is not a one-time price increase, but demand that can be seen for the next several years.
Why do companies like $META want to lock in supply? Because AI infrastructure is not as simple as buying a few cards. Model inference, user data, caching, retrieval, training datasets, video content—all require massive storage. The more AI moves from the lab to real products, the more important storage becomes. Computing power determines how fast the model runs; storage determines whether data can be continuously accessed.
But long-term agreements also have another side. If future AI capital expenditures cool down, or customers find the return on investment is not so fast, suppliers will also face expectation adjustments. After $SNDK's valuation is pushed up by AI contracts, the market will watch more closely: Are orders really turning into profits? Can gross margins be maintained? Will NAND price increases slow down?
Currently, the most attention-grabbing aspect of this trend is that it repositions "flash memory" from an old cyclical stock to AI infrastructure. Once this shift is accepted by capital, $SNDK will no longer be just a storage stock, but the data foundation of the AI inference era. The default setting for altcoins is a decline, and most new projects continuously lose value after their listing peak. Is the long-term decline of altcoins not just a coincidence but closer to a structural probability? Based on the cases presented in the original text, SOLS formed a peak immediately after listing and subsequently set new lows with each rebound; RNDR showed significantly low recovery resilience even during BTC's uptrend, which can be interpreted as distribution already completed. AGIX and FET lost price support after the exhaustion of catalysts such as the AI theme cooling and token merge, respectively; PYTH, as a new entrant in the oracle sector, failed to translate the narrative of replacing Chainlink into actual valuation. PORTAL fell from the $4 range to the level of several cents without creating any meaningful rebound in between, and WLD exhibited a typical news decay pattern where selling pressure intensified whenever positive news emerged. What these cases commonly imply is that the price decline of altcoins is not simply due to psychological factors but rather due to an increase in circulating supply1. Review of Bitcoin's Historical Price Trends (Core Cycle Characteristics)
$BTC price has long fluctuated around the four-year halving cycle, but after the launch of the US spot ETF in 2024, market leadership shifted from retail investors to institutional funds, weakening the traditional cycle patterns.
1. Complete Historical Bull and Bear Rhythm
- 2020 halving → 2021 peak at $69,000 → bear market decline to around $15,000
- April 2024 fourth block reward halving; combined with spot ETF approval, a new round of rally begins
- October 2025 hits historical high around $126,000
- From October 2025 to present, entered an adjustment channel; as of August 2026, price oscillates around $63,000, with a maximum drawdown close to 50% from the peak
Historical pattern: The first three halving cycles generally followed [pre-halving rise → continued bull market 12~18 months post-halving → peak followed by sharp decline]. However, this cycle's bull market peaked early after halving, indicating that US dollar liquidity and ETF capital flows have surpassed the halving itself in influence.
2. A Very Key Feature: Bitcoin is Highly Tied to US Dollar Liquidity
The Federal Reserve's rate hike cycles generally pressure Bitcoin downward; rate cuts and liquidity easing phases are more conducive to bull markets.
In recent years, Bitcoin's movement has been highly correlated with Nasdaq growth stocks and is not a stable safe-haven asset: during global panic sell-offs, it often crashes simultaneously.
2. Current (2026) Price Landscape
Short-term (weeks to 3 months)
- Market characteristics: range-bound with high volatility. Current core range approximately $58,000 ~ $68,000
✅ Key support: $58,000~$60,000; if broken decisively, likely to test around $53,000
✅ Short-term resistance: $67,000~$70,000; to restart an uptrend, sustained ETF inflows plus Fed easing expectations are needed
- Suppressing factors:
① Ongoing market concerns over US inflation persistence and delayed Fed rate cuts;
② Slow progress on US crypto regulatory legislation, ongoing policy uncertainty;
③ Prior large-scale ETF redemptions have damaged bullish confidence;
- Potential catalysts: clear Fed rate cut signals, progress in US crypto legislation, ETF returning to sustained large net inflows.
Medium-term (6~18 months, large bullish and bearish divergence)
Optimistic scenario
Fed continues cutting rates, global liquidity eases; long-term institutional Bitcoin ETF allocations continue; regulatory clarity improves.
Institutions optimistically expect the market to challenge the previous high of $126,000 or even higher.
Pessimistic scenario
Inflation rebounds, Fed maintains high rates; restrictive regulatory policies introduced; institutions continue to reduce holdings.
Bearish pressure zone: price tests $42,000~$50,000 range.
Key point: No one can precisely predict tops or bottoms; all institutional price forecasts are scenario simulations, and historically many predictions have significantly deviated from actual market movements.
Long-term (3~5 year perspective)
Support logic: fixed total supply of 21 million coins, global alternative asset allocation demand;
Long-term major risks:
1. No cash flow; value entirely depends on market consensus; once consensus weakens, there is no price floor;
2. Regulatory tightening possible anytime worldwide;
3. Each bear market cycle has seen massive drawdowns of 50%~80%, causing strong psychological pressure during holding.
3. Four Core Variables Determining Future Trends (Most Critical)
1. Federal Reserve Monetary Policy (Primary Driver)
US Treasury real rates, inflation data, rate cut timetable. As long as the market expects high rates to persist longer, large-scale Bitcoin bull markets are unlikely.
2. US Spot Bitcoin ETF Capital Flows
ETF is currently the largest incremental capital source. Sustained net inflows are bullish; sustained redemptions continuously suppress prices.
3. US Crypto Regulatory Policies
Legislative progress such as the "Digital Asset Clarity Act," SEC policy stance; short-term can easily trigger sharp rallies or crashes.
4. Global Risk Appetite
Geopolitical conflicts and major US stock market volatility will cause Bitcoin to experience synchronized intense fluctuations.
4. Common Misconceptions Clarified
❌ Misconception 1: "The four-year halving will definitely cause a big rally"
Effective in the first three cycles, but this cycle peaked and declined only 18 months after halving. Halving only changes supply; demand (capital) is the core price determinant. Halving ≠ bull market guarantee.
❌ Misconception 2: "After a big drop, it won't fall further"
Bitcoin's historical bear markets commonly see 70%~85% drawdowns from highs; a 50% drawdown does not mean the correction is over.
❌ Misconception 3: "Holding long-term guarantees profit"
Entry timing is extremely critical; entering at cycle peaks may require years to break even or may never return to cost price. #消费动能转弱，9月政策仍受通胀制约 #ETF买盘反转，BTC杠杆仓位回升