Author: rb809rb

Charles Schwab’s director of global equity research, Adam Lynch, laid out the firm’s crypto allocation thinking in a recent appearance, distinguishing between five digital assets the firm views as serving fundamentally different roles in a portfolio: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, $XRP and Hyperliquid.

Not All Crypto Is the Same Trade, Schwab Says

Lynch described Bitcoin as the “classic” debasement hedge, the asset investors turn to when concerned about fiat currency devaluation. Ethereum, he said, carries more functional utility than Bitcoin while still fitting into that broader debasement narrative. Beyond the two majors, Lynch grouped Solana, $XRP and Hyperliquid as higher-volatility, higher-risk allocations he suggested pairing with a core position in the larger assets, rather than replacing them.

Goldman Sachs’ Solana Bet Comes Into Focus

Goldman Sachs has become the largest disclosed holder of spot Solana ETFs, with $88 million in exposure, according to disclosure filings referenced in the discussion. Because not all institutional holders are required to disclose positions, the real scale of Wall Street’s Solana exposure could be considerably larger than what’s currently visible in public filings.

Separately, Schwab confirmed it is adding Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink to its crypto trading platform, expanding beyond the Bitcoin and Ethereum access it already offered. Grayscale Research has pointed to Bitcoin, Ethereum and Zcash specifically as the assets most likely to benefit from what it calls the “debasement trade,” tied to U.S. national debt surpassing $40 trillion and continued fiscal deficits.

Solana’s Supply Squeeze Just Got Bigger

In a separate development, Solana validators passed a proposal to double the network’s disinflation rate to 30%, with yes votes clearing 66.6% in the final hour of voting. The change is projected to reduce planned SOL issuance by close to 20 million tokens, worth an estimated $1.4 billion, over the next six years. Reducing new supply entering circulation is widely viewed as a structurally bullish shift for the token’s long-term valuation.

Bitcoin Drops Below $77,000 as Fed’s Warsh Turns Hawkish

The bullish setup collided with macro reality Friday, when Bitcoin fell below $77,000 after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh signaled the possibility of a rate hike during his Jackson Hole keynote. Warsh has now delivered a hawkish tone in each of his public appearances since taking the role.

U.S. inflation has now remained above the Fed’s 2% target for 65 consecutive months, according to the discussion, a backdrop that continues to complicate the path toward rate cuts.

What It Means

Between Schwab’s differentiated allocation strategy, Goldman’s growing Solana exposure, Solana’s reduced token issuance and a bipartisan regulatory bill gaining bank support, institutional infrastructure around crypto is building even as short-term price action reacts to Fed commentary.

Whether that structural momentum translates into sustained price strength may depend less on any single Fed speech and more on how quickly the CLARITY Act moves through Congress from here.

Kraken users were briefly locked out after the exchange dealt with a flood of sanctioned crypto transactions, according to CoinDesk. The incident links an access disruption to compliance activity, highlighting the operational strain that can arise when an exchange must process a large volume of transactions associated with restricted entities or addresses.

A Compliance-Driven Disruption

A temporary lockout is different from a confirmed loss of customer funds, and the available report does not establish that user balances were permanently affected. The immediate issue was access while Kraken handled the transaction flow and its associated sanctions controls.

Why Sanctions Screening Affects Availability

Crypto exchanges screen deposits and withdrawals against sanctions lists and other risk signals. A sudden burst of flagged activity can require manual review, system throttling or account restrictions. Those controls are designed to limit prohibited activity, but they can also interrupt legitimate users when systems are under pressure.

The Questions for Kraken

The important follow-up points are how long the disruption lasted, how many accounts were affected, and what controls Kraken will change to prevent a repeat. Exchanges must balance rapid access with legal obligations, and a short incident can still expose weaknesses in monitoring, communication or capacity planning.

For context, BlockchainReporter has previously examined how institutional financial systems are testing blockchain settlement in earlier coverage. The new development remains specific to this event and does not establish a broader market outcome.

Deribit will remove its public Proof of Reserves page on Sept. 1, ending a daily check customers could use to verify balance inclusion and compare aggregate liabilities with published wallet holdings. Regulator-required reserve, reconciliation and audit controls will remain, but they do not provide the same daily public visibility.

The exchange said the change reflects a wallet infrastructure overhaul during its integration with Coinbase. Deribit said roughly 90% of client assets have moved into Coinbase custody arrangements since Coinbase acquired the derivatives platform in August 2025. Its disclosures name Coinbase at the brand level but do not identify the specific Coinbase legal entity holding the migrated assets.

Deribit’s existing system uses a privacy-preserving binary Merkle tree and a daily snapshot. Each client can use a unique proof identifier to find the hashed entries representing their balances, while anyone can sum the file’s liabilities and compare the total with wallet balances published by Deribit.

The public snapshot was already narrower than Deribit’s full custody footprint. Its methodology says assets held with third-party custodians are excluded because they are outside Deribit’s direct control, naming Copper ClearLoop as an example. It

The removal does not cancel the obligations applying to Deribit FZE. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority requires covered virtual asset service providers to maintain reserves equal to 100% of client liabilities, hold them one-to-one in the same asset, reconcile them daily and obtain an independent third-party reserve audit at least every six months.

Deribit’s notice refers both to annual and twice-yearly Proof of Reserves audits. The VARA rule sets the reserve-audit minimum at once every six months. A separate VARA provision requires an annual financial-statement audit and says the annual report must be available to clients and the regulator on request.

Other evidence is regulator-facing rather than public. Covered firms must submit wallet addresses monthly and statements demonstrating compliance with financial requirements, including reserve assets, quarterly to VARA.

VARA’s register lists Deribit FZE as an active exchange and broker-dealer VASP. Its membership terms allow assets to be held directly or through third-party custodians while requiring segregation from company assets and preserving clients’ legal title. A separate service-provider list names Coinbase for custody and self-custody technology without specifying the Coinbase entity.

The page’s removal is not evidence of a reserve shortfall. It is a reduction in what customers can test for themselves each day, leaving controls and reports that are less public, less frequent or available only on request.

A vulnerability in an outdated Rain card contract drained roughly $1.1 million across several Solana-based programs, including $500,800 from 1,685 Avici users, sending the neobank’s AVICI token down as much as 49%.

AVICI — a self-custodial neobank that enables users to spend their crypto via a Visa-integrated credit card — fell from a 24-hour high of $0.43 to a record low of $0.217 before recovering to around $0.378 at the time of writing.

Tria, another crypto neobank, reported that 636 users were affected, resulting in losses totaling more than $430,000. It vowed to repay users in full, even as its token plunged by more than 10% at one point.

Avici said the attack was confined to a Solana contract holding funds after customers topped up their cards. Its self-custodial wallets on Solana and Ethereum-compatible networks were not affected, and the company said every affected card balance would be refunded.

Rain said its monitoring identified the vulnerability in an outdated contract version used by Avici and a small number of other programs. It upgraded every program running that version and reported no further unauthorized activity.