​​Treasuries & ETFs Board. Crypto Accumulation & Capital Flows

It was a quiet, risk-off week. Bitcoin ETFs reversed the previous week's $850M+ inflows with roughly $390M in net outflows, while Ethereum ETFs were essentially flat, posting a marginal ~$3M outflow that ended their five-week inflow streak.

Corporate treasury activity was also muted. Strategy remained inactive on the Bitcoin front, focusing on cash management and share buybacks.

Notable treasury activity:

- H100 recorded the week's largest Bitcoin increase through an acquisition.
- Strive, Capital B, and OranjeBTC made smaller Bitcoin purchases.
- BitMine continued accumulating Ethereum, extending its long-running buying strategy.

US Treasury unveils first GENIUS Act stablecoin rule

The U.S. Treasury has released the first major proposal to implement the GENIUS Act, setting federal definitions for who counts as a US stablecoin issuer and which rules they must follow.

The proposal treats payment stablecoins as a new category rather than securities, arguing that forcing traditional investment rules onto them could undermine their use for payments and cross-border settlement. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed it as delivering regulatory certainty and keeping the US the crypto capital of the world. The public has 60 days to comment before a final rule.

The industry will watch closely how the rules handle foreign issuers such as Tether. The law's one-year implementation deadline already lapsed last month, and its effective date is set for January 18, with banking and markets regulators still to add their own rules.

👉 coindesk.com/policy/2026/08/17/u-s-treasury-department-proposes-genius-act-stablecoin-rule

Compound bets $52M and a new team on an institutional pivot

Compound, one of the oldest DeFi lending protocols, has overhauled its leadership and approved a record $52 million budget as it pivots to serving institutional clients.

The plan centers on real-world assets, partner integrations and credit infrastructure built to meet TradFi compliance and technical standards. It comes as Compound tries to revive growth after its total value locked slid to $1.2 billion from a $12 billion peak in 2021, leaving it far behind Aave's $14.8 billion. Compound says it has processed about $480 billion in volume since 2018.

The new bench pulls executives from Near, Maple Finance, Coinbase Custody, Anchorage and HSBC, part of a broader DeFi shift toward institutions as the sector leans on tokenized real-world assets for its next leg of growth.

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Farcaster seeks a new operator as protocol revenue collapses

Neynar is looking to hand off the Farcaster social protocol, its Clanker token-launch platform and its developer tools, less than seven months after acquiring them from Merkle Manufactory.

Co-founder Rish Mukherji said the search is on for a new team to run all three. It follows a steep revenue slide: Farcaster's gross protocol revenue fell from $35.43 million in the first quarter of 2026 to roughly $377,000 between July 1 and August 17, as the token-launch frenzy that drove Clanker's fees cooled off.

The Haun-backed Neynar took over in January, when Farcaster's founders moved to return the full $180 million they had raised from backers like a16z Crypto and Paradigm. Now one of crypto's best-known decentralized social projects is up for grabs again.

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Centrifuge floats converting CFG tokens into company equity

Centrifuge, a real-world-asset protocol, has proposed letting CFG token holders convert their tokens 1:1 into equity, or equity-like instruments, in the entity behind the protocol.

The proposal would also restructure Centrifuge's foundation and introduce a shareholder structure. For now it is only a Request for Comments, sitting in a 14-day feedback window on the governance forum, with no confirmed vote date or implementation timeline. The team frames it as a way to align token value with the underlying company.

If it moves forward, it would be a rare shift from a pure token model toward real equity ownership, and could influence how other DeFi projects think about linking value to the businesses behind them.

👉 x.com/centrifuge/status/2089445540459335808?s=20

Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade hits its first public testnet

The Ethereum Foundation has launched Plataberget, the first public testnet for the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, with a hard fork scheduled for August 20 and mainnet now targeted for Q4 2026.

Glamsterdam's headline changes are enshrined proposer-builder separation (EIP-7732), which bakes block-building separation into the protocol itself instead of relying on off-chain MEV tooling, and block-level access lists (EIP-7928), which set the stage to raise the gas limit from 60 million toward 200 million. The upgrade also lifts the max contract size from 24 to 64 KiB and reprices parts of gas.

Plataberget will run for several months before testing expands to the Sepolia and Hoodi testnets. The mainnet timeline has already slipped from the first half of 2026 to Q4, keeping pressure on Ethereum's broader 2027 roadmap.

👉 blog.ethereum.org/2026/08/17/plataberget-testnet

2026 is the year crypto stopped dying from blowups and started dying from starvation

Exchanges shutting down. Treasury companies dumping their own bags. Layoffs across the board. Even Strategy sold BTC for the first time since 2022.

100+ projects folded this year, and the pace is only picking up.

Jupiter DEX Aggregator Volume Share Drops Below 50%

For the first time, Jupiter no longer routes the majority of Solana's DEX aggregator volume. On Aug 17, Jupiter routed 48.9% of Solana volume. The three challengers combined took 51.1%, and OKX led them with a record 31.3%, ahead of DFlow and Titan.

For years Jupiter simply was Solana routing. Now the market is fragmenting, and OKX is the one taking the biggest bite out of the leader.

Five ways to earn yield onchain, side by side

Five models, one from each category: a curated app (Shyft), a DeFi protocol (Morpho), a CEX earn desk (Kraken), a consumer exchange (Coinbase), and an RWA platform (Ondo).

Each gives something up. CEX earn is simple but custodial. Morpho keeps your keys but leaves the work to you. Ondo is treasuries only. The corner that combines self-custody, simple access, and multi-asset breadth is still mostly empty.

That corner is exactly where Shyft is building: a curated app where you keep your keys, onboard with guidance, and reach crypto, RWA and mixed strategies. Onchain yield without giving up control.

Citi to launch bitcoin custody on its new Custody+ platform

Banking giant Citi plans to go live with bitcoin custody later this year, its first digital-asset service on the newly launched Custody+ platform for institutional clients.

Citi Investor Services says Custody+ brings traditional and crypto custody into one framework built on its common digital-asset architecture, alongside real-time settlement, cash and liquidity management, FX and AI-powered market intelligence. Citi says its Single Event Processing tech already handles more than 80% of its event volume in real time.

It is another step by Wall Street deeper into crypto, giving Citi's huge institutional client base a bank-grade way to hold bitcoin next to their traditional assets, with more digital assets likely to follow.

👉 theblock.co/news/business/2026-08-18-citi-bitcoin-custody-412090

Arthur Hayes Comes Out of Retirement to Lead Flop Labs, FLOP Airdrop Planned for Q4 2026

A. Hayes has announced that he is “coming out of retirement” to lead Flop Labs and build Flop Network, a proof-of-useful-inference protocol designed around the emerging AI agent economy.

The network’s native token, FLOP, is intended to serve as the currency for AI agents, allowing them to pay for compute, inference, memory storage and eventually agent-to-agent commerce. Flop Network aims to provide a decentralized infrastructure where agents can autonomously transact and access the resources they need.

The network will coordinate four key participants: miners provide compute and earn FLOP through block rewards and inference payments; validators verify miners’ work and secure the network while supporting agent memory storage; agents spend FLOP on compute and memory; and KOLs and community partners help grow network activity in exchange for rewards.

Hayes says FLOP will launch with no presale and no VC allocation, using a 100% fair-launch model

The project is positioning this structure as an attempt to create a native economic layer for an increasingly autonomous agentic economy rather than a traditional venture-backed crypto network.

Flop Network expects to conduct a large-scale FLOP airdrop in Q4 2026, with the genesis block planned for Q1 2027

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Kaito Launches Pulse and Aura to Bring Onchain Activity to X

Kaito has launched Kaito Pulse, a browser extension designed to bring users’ off-platform activity directly into the X timeline, starting with onchain trading and prediction-market activity.

Pulse allows users to see public positions on platforms such as Polymarket and Hyperliquid directly from X profiles, with additional integrations planned. The product is also designed to help traders build audiences around their live positions and conviction, while giving creators a way to verify the authenticity and quality of their reach.

Alongside Pulse, Kaito introduced Aura, a reputation score designed to measure meaningful attention across both what users post and what they do onchain.

Aura combines signals including content, verified onchain activity and Yaps to create a more comprehensive measure of reputation and influence.

Users can get a starting Aura score through their existing Yaps, verify creator or trading activity, install Kaito Pulse and earn additional Aura through referrals.

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Wispr Raises $280M at $2B Valuation to Expand Beyond AI Dictation

AI dictation startup Wispr has raised $280M in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures at a $2B valuation, bringing its total funding to $361M.

The new capital will help Wispr expand beyond dictation into AI meeting notes and broader human-computer interfaces, including its newly launched note-taker and partnerships with hardware makers.

Wispr is also launching Canto, a new speech-understanding model that the company says will reduce dictation error rates from 30% to below 10%, following recent user complaints about output quality.

The company is increasingly positioning itself as an AI interface platform rather than a simple voice-to-text tool, with products spanning dictation, meeting intelligence, hardware integrations, and new interaction models.

Wispr is now competing across multiple categories against AI dictation products such as Willow, Superwhisper and Monologue, while its meeting product enters the market alongside Granola, Fireflies, and Read AI.

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SEC proposes Regulation Crypto Assets, a tailored token offering regime

The SEC has proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, a tailored securities framework meant to give crypto projects clear, legal ways to raise capital in the US, building on its March 2026 interpretive guidance.

The proposal includes two registration exemptions: a one-time offering of up to $5 million over four years with whitepaper-style disclosures, and up to $75 million per 12 months with financial statements and ongoing reporting. A conditional safe harbor would let a crypto asset fall outside the "investment contract" definition of a security once the issuer has completed or permanently ceased the essential managerial efforts it promised. The rules would also preempt state securities registration.

Chairman Paul Atkins framed it as a move to onshore innovation and step away from regulation by enforcement. It is still only a proposal, with a 60-day public comment period once it is published in the Federal Register.

👉 sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026-76-sec-proposes-new-regulation-crypto-assets

Maya Protocol exploited as CACAO crashes and a pool loses $11M

A Maya Protocol exploit has drained bitcoin and other assets from the cross-chain trading network, sending its CACAO token down about 88% and cutting the affected pool’s value by roughly $11 million.

The attacker chained six bugs on MAYAChain to credit a pool with 48.87 million CACAO that were never funded, then withdrew real assets from the Asgard module in a single transaction. The confirmed haul reached about $1.7 million, mostly 20.83 BTC (~$1.34 million) moved off-chain. Maya's automated halt then paused trading for around an hour, freezing deposits and withdrawals.

It is Maya's first major breach since 2023. Co-founder Aaluxx said the team would patch the vulnerabilities and restore liquidity in full once the network was globally paused.

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Securitize and Neuberger bring a $230B bond platform onchain

Tokenization firm Securitize has partnered with Neuberger Berman, a global asset manager overseeing more than $230 billion, to launch HINC, a tokenized high-income fund.

The Neuberger Securitize High Income Tokenized Fund invests mainly in high-yield bonds, alongside CLOs and leveraged loans, and goes live across Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Sui. It marks Neuberger's first time acting as subadvisor to a tokenized fund, bringing its fixed-income research and portfolio management onchain.

It is the latest sign of large TradFi managers moving into tokenized real-world assets, giving onchain investors access to institutional credit strategies. Securitize now oversees around $5 billion in onchain assets.

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Cypherpunk builds the world's largest Zcash mining fleet

Nasdaq-listed Cypherpunk Technologies (CYPH) has switched on what it calls the world’s largest Zcash mining fleet, deploying about 4.2 GSol/s of Equihash hashrate across the US, roughly 18% of the entire network.

The rigs were acquired through a $33.33 million equity-based transaction with Winklevoss Capital, run through a new subsidiary, Cypherpunk Mining. Mining veteran Kevin Zhang, who has mined bitcoin since 2014 and Zcash since 2016 and built some of North America's largest bitcoin facilities, joins as head of mining. Cypherpunk is already the largest corporate holder of ZEC, with 323,394 ZEC (about 1.92% of circulating supply).

The company plans to keep mining and accumulating toward a goal of holding 5% of all ZEC, deepening its influence over both the supply and the security of the privacy coin at a time of renewed interest in Zcash.

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Ripple Prime raises $275M in its first-ever debt offering

Ripple Prime, the prime brokerage arm of Ripple, has closed an upsized $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes, its debut debt offering, to fund its expanding US business.

The notes are due in 2031 with an 8.25% coupon and were assigned an investment-grade BBB rating by KBRA, with Piper Sandler leading the placement. Ripple Prime is the rebranded Hidden Road, the prime broker Ripple acquired in 2025 for $1.25 billion. Proceeds will go toward working capital and general corporate purposes.

The deal takes Ripple's debt financing to about $475 million in roughly three months, including a $200 million facility in May, as it leans into demand for multi-asset clearing, prime brokerage and financing.

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The biggest rank climbers in crypto's top 100 this year

In a market where BTC fell 28%, these coins moved up the most. But climbing the ranks does not always mean growing.

Hyperliquid and Rain each added $6+B in market cap. JUST and Morpho more than doubled. Meanwhile Render, Sky and Pump fun rose in rank while losing value. They just fell slower than everyone else.