Category: Business

Ethereum [$ETH] was trading at $1,876.89 at press time, following a slight increase over the previous day but a 2.16% decline over the previous week. Meanwhile, Solana was trading at $75.16 at press time, following a slight increase over the previous week and a slight decline over the previous day.

These contradictory price movements imply that there is no clear bullish or bearish momentum dominating the cryptocurrency market, which is extremely erratic.

In fact, there were no clear indications of bulls or bears on the RSI for either $ETH or $SOL as well.

Grayscale paints a concerning picture for $ETH and $SOL

At the same time, Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale, presented his analysis indicating that Ethereum and Solana may become more scarce assets due to their respective networks’ consideration of lowering the annual production of new tokens.

Currently, issuing new $ETH and $SOL, which expands the total supply, helps to fund staking rewards on Ethereum and Solana.

This inflation would be decreased by the suggested modifications. Comparable to lowering the production of a commodity, the value of the current tokens may rise if demand remains constant or rises and fewer new tokens are introduced to the market.

According to Pandl, by 2031, the annual supply growth of $ETH and $SOL may drop to about 0.4% and 1.1%, respectively, bringing them closer to Bitcoin’s supply growth and below gold’s estimated 1.8% annual supply growth.

What about stakers?

For stakers, there is a trade-off, though. People who stake their tokens will get fewer tokens as rewards if there are fewer new $ETH and $SOL created.

After a decrease in inflation, for instance, a staker who earns 5 $SOL might only receive 3 $SOL. Yet, the value of those three $SOL might still surpass the value of the initial five $SOL if the decreased supply makes $SOL more scarce and its price increases noticeably.

Therefore, while stakers must weigh the potential for higher token prices against the possibility of lower token rewards, unstaked holders may directly profit from increased scarcity.

s up for debate and do not guarantee changes.

This was consistent with an earlier report from AMBCrypto that stated that Solana’s ecosystem provides more than just trading and DeFi, which is why it is drawing in more users and money.

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Final Summary

• Both Ethereum’s and Solana’s price actions are not that strong, with RSI supporting this narrative.
• Garyscale suggests that Ethereum and Solana may become more scarce assets due to their respective networks’ consideration.

Binance Sets Three Deadlines for Transaction Restrictions

Transactions involving 16 crypto-asset service providers will no longer be processed through Binance under restrictions announced Aug. 14. The exchange instructed users not to send funds to, receive assets from, or otherwise engage directly or indirectly with the named entities after their respective effective dates.

Restrictions took effect Aug. 7 for Shelbit, operated by Shelbit General Trading LLC, and Aban Tether Exchange. Binance applied a second deadline on Aug. 13 to A7 Nigeria, A7 Africa and Pilotfinance Ltd., followed by an Aug. 23 cutoff covering 11 more platforms, including HTX, EXMO, Rapira, Aifory Pro, ABCeX, and WhiteBird.

The remaining Aug. 23 entities are Noonecrypto Inc., Tradex, Monease Ltd., Bitpapa and Exnode, including Exnode Pay. Binance cautioned:

“Any transactions attempted on or after these dates, may be held and subject to a compliance review. Restrictions may be applied to the impacted wallet(s) while the review is ongoing and such activity may also constitute a breach of Binance Terms of Use.”

Sanctions Target Iranian and Russian Crypto Networks

U.S. authorities imposed sanctions on Shelbit and Aban Tether through an Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) action on Aug. 7. The Treasury Department alleged that Shelbit addresses exchanged more than $3 million with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps addresses, while Aban Tether processed transactions involving previously designated Iranian exchanges.

Earlier enforcement against Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex increased screening requirements surrounding Iranian exchange exposure. The June 2 sanctions action involving four Iranian platforms covered businesses that OFAC later identified among Aban Tether’s transaction counterparties, connecting the August restrictions to a broader campaign targeting Iran-linked digital asset flows.

U.K. authorities separately targeted cryptocurrency exchanges and the Kremlin-backed A7 network through 18 sanctions designations announced May 26. Officials alleged that A7 supported sanctions evasion, military procurement and oil-related payments, while the network claimed it moved more than $90 billion during the previous year.

The U.K. package included several entities appearing on Binance’s list, such as EXMO Exchange Ltd., Rapira Group LLC, Sooty Ltd., Bitpapa, Nueva Cryptologia and Huobi Global. The sanctions also reached exchanges and payment providers associated with Russia-facing settlement routes, stablecoin infrastructure and cross-border liquidity channels.

A7 Expands Alternative Payments as Compliance Pressure Rises

A7 has promoted alternative cross-border settlement systems as Western governments tighten access to established financial channels. A7 says it serves more than 10,000 trade partners and intermediates nearly one-fifth of Russia’s international settlements market. Its A7A5 ruble-backed stablecoin has reportedly surpassed $100 billion in aggregate transaction volume.

Binance has expanded compliance operations while responding to scrutiny over transactions involving restricted parties. The company previously reported a 96.8% decline in sanctions-related transaction exposure between January 2024 and July 2025. Its compliance operation includes more than 1,500 workers, representing about 25% of its global workforce.

Users remain responsible for confirming the destination, network, and counterparty before initiating an irreversible blockchain transfer. A small test transaction can expose address or network errors, although it would not eliminate the compliance risks associated with transferring assets to a restricted platform or wallet connected to one.

Centralized exchanges retain custody over customer assets and can delay, review, or prevent withdrawals under applicable rules. A self-custodial wallet gives its owner control of the private keys, but it does not remove sanctions obligations or protect users who transact with restricted counterparties. Binance’s final group of platform restrictions takes effect Aug. 23.

Crypto mining was banned in Moscow, the surrounding Moscow Region and parts of Kursk, with the restrictions set to run through Dec. 31, 2032.

The measure, established under government decree No. 936, also prohibits participation in crypto mining pools. The decree was signed on July 25 and published on July 31, local media reports.

Russia as a whole accounted for an estimated 175 exahashes per second, or 16.4% of Bitcoin’s global computing power, in the first quarter, according to Luxor’s Hashrate Index. That placed it second behind the U.S., although it’s unclear what capacity was located in the newly restricted region.

The country’s Energy Ministry said a year-round restriction was needed to reduce the risk of power-capacity shortages as energy-intensive mining facilities connect to regional grids. Mining currently consumes roughly 1 gigawatt in the Moscow power system, while the region’s target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Interfax reported after the decree was first signed.

Mining is also linked to the country’s Western sanctions.

Russian companies had been using domestically mined bitcoin in international payments after legal changes designed to counter Western restrictions, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in December 2024.

Crypto traders are betting that Unitree Robotics will be worth more than four times its IPO valuation when the Chinese robot maker debuts on the public markets.

Unitree priced its Shanghai STAR Market offering at 150.80 yuan ($22.37) per share, valuing the company at roughly $9 billion. Pre-IPO perpetual contracts trading through Hyperliquid, however, were between $92 and $94 on Friday, equivalent to a valuation of about $38 billion, blockchain analytics firm Allium said in a report.

The premium reflects lofty expectations for one of China’s closely watched robotics companies. Founded in Hangzhou in 2016, Unitree makes four-legged and humanoid robots for research, industrial and consumer applications. Revenue reached $253 million last year, up 335%, while humanoid robot shipments topped 5,500, according to Allium’s report.

The firm’s IPO was reportedly 8000 times oversubscribed by retail traders, with trading expected to begin between Aug. 17 and Aug. 21.

Pre-IPO perps

Unitree’s public-market debut is also shaping up to be the latest in a corner of crypto derivatives that has recently expanded rapidly: pre-IPO perpetual futures.

Banking giant UBS, with over $7 trillion in assets under management, has reported a more than 24-fold quarterly increase in call option exposure tied to BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) in the second quarter.

That increase, which gives it the right to acquire IBIT shares at a later date at a set price, came as its outright IBIT holdings rose about 12%, according to a regulatory filing this week.

The Swiss banking group reported calls representing 1.95 million underlying IBIT shares as of June 30, up from 80,000 three months earlier. UBS separately held 407,890 IBIT shares worth about $13.6 million, compared with 364,371 shares at the end of the first quarter, according to its Q1 filing.

Put option exposure, giving UBS the right but not the obligation to sell IBIT at a set date and price, moved in the opposite direction. UBS reported puts representing 143,300 underlying shares, down about 53% from 303,300 at the end of March.

Its direct IBIT position also remained below the 548,614 shares reported at the end of 2025, according to its fourth-quarter filing.

The disclosure also does not include strike prices or expirations, making it difficult to determine UBS’s net directional exposure from the filing alone.

For a company that runs a corporate treasury around bitcoin, the most important gatekeeper is no longer a bank or a securities regulator. It may be the committee that decides which public companies belong in benchmarks watched by trillions of dollars in passive capital. Strategy, the bitcoin treasury company, is now pressing that point in public: index providers should reflect markets, not police corporate balance sheets.

According to the CoinDesk report, Strategy said index providers should measure markets rather than determine which assets public companies are allowed to own.

The statement speaks to a structural tension that gets little attention in ordinary market coverage. MSCI and other index creators have become de facto regulators of corporate behavior. Inclusion decisions shape passive fund flows, cheap index-tracking capital, and sometimes access to certain investor bases. When that power extends into what a company can keep on its balance sheet, the index provider stops being a neutral yardstick and starts making allocative choices.

The Benchmark Gatekeeper Problem

Benchmark methodology is usually framed as a technical exercise. Sector classifications, liquidity screens, and investability rules determine whether a stock enters a major index. For corporate treasuries holding bitcoin, that framing creates a practical risk. A company could meet every conventional test but still face scrutiny because a committee views treasury assets as outside the normal course of a public company’s business.

Strategy’s position is that this is backwards. The company has made bitcoin the central reserve asset on its balance sheet, a model that some investors treat as a leveraged bitcoin proxy and others view as a structural anomaly. From Strategy’s perspective, the market should price that choice. Index providers should then measure the resulting company, not validate or reject the treasury strategy.

The distinction matters because passive investment has grown enough to make index inclusion a funding channel. When a decision about eligibility changes, it can alter demand for that stock before the company changes anything about its operations. That is exactly the kind of market impact that normally belongs to investors, not to a committee publishing a rulebook.

The specific asset class matters less than the broader principle. If an index provider can label certain treasury holdings as disqualifying, it creates two classes of public companies: those whose assets are considered ordinary and those whose assets require special permission. That is a strange role for a company whose main product is a ranking system.

Why This Flares Up Now

The pushback arrives while institutional exposure to crypto has been migrating from private funds into more visible public markets. Tokenized real-world assets have moved past milestone levels on-chain, and even non-bitcoin sectors have been absorbing institutional flows, as recent tokenization data showed. In that environment, more public companies are likely to hold digital assets directly, making benchmark treatment a live question rather than a hypothetical one.

There is also a Washington thread. Crypto market structure remains unsettled in the United States, and banking interests are already fighting landmark legislation before a Senate vote. If lawmakers and bank lobbyists are still negotiating what crypto participation looks like, it is not surprising that index providers are being watched as another layer of gatekeeping.

Institutional demand has also broadened beyond a single asset. Some platforms are pulling in capital through institutional staking and payments integrations, suggesting that corporate and fund-level exposure will keep expanding. The more that expansion reaches public company treasuries, the more index methodology will affect actual issuance and balance sheet decisions.

The Risk of a Quiet Precedent

There is no public sign that MSCI has proposed a specific rule against bitcoin treasury companies. The danger is not necessarily an explicit ban, but a slow drift in which methodology language treats certain assets as abnormal, forcing companies to justify their reserves to a committee rather than to their shareholders.

That drift would be hard to reverse. Benchmark rules are sticky by design. Investors want stable classification systems, but stability can turn into orthodoxy when committees become reluctant to adapt. Strategy’s complaint is essentially that market participants should own that adaptation, not subcontract it to a small group of index researchers.

What remains uncertain is whether index providers signal any willingness to explicitly exclude or constrain companies with large crypto treasury positions. Without that signal, Strategy’s statement reads as an early warning rather than a response to an announced change. For investors, the key question is whether that warning becomes a broader corporate campaign or remains a single company defending its balance sheet.

ABFinance, the U.S. finance startup founded by former Bybit co-CEO Helen Liu, has announced that it will begin winding down.

17 major crypto businesses and about 95 total projects have already closed so far in 2026.

Why is ABFinance closing down?

Helen Liu unveiled ABFinance in mid-March, days after Bybit confirmed her exit. Liu was building the platform in the United States with full U.S. licensing in place from day one. The idea behind the product was to create a single platform that would handle deposits, trading, earning, and payments while linking fiat currency to crypto.

ABFinance announced on August 14, about four months after its initial unveiling, that it will not move forward with its launch and said it is “winding down in an orderly manner” on its X (formerly Twitter) account.

The company thanked its community, partners, and people who “built” alongside it.

No specific reason was given for the shutdown, and the company also did not say what would happen to its education program.

The program, ABF Learn, was ABFinance’s only export, designed for students and people early in their careers to help them understand how banking, AI, and digital assets work together.

How bad has 2026 been for crypto companies?

ABFinance is just one of many crypto companies that closed in 2026. By late July, Cryptopolitan counted 17 major crypto ventures that had closed. In total, about 95 projects shut down during the year. Industry experts blame the shutdowns on a long bear market and on the fact that businesses are merging into fewer big platforms.

Other companies that shut down this year include Bitmart, which said in July that it would close its worldwide operations. The exchange had been running for nine years.

BitMEX ended its 11-year run around the same time while Bitwise cut about 14% of its staff in August. The company’s main index fund lost a lot of value. Its net assets fell 48.27% to $532.8 million in the first half of the year.

In May, Syndicate Labs, Everclear and ZERO Network closed within hours of each other.

XAO DAO is preparing a series of governance changes for the $XRP Ledger over the next two to three months, according to Fabio Marzella, the organization’s co-founder.

The planned changes would let members delegate voting power, adjust quorum rules, and access community mini-grants, as the DAO looks to make participation easier and more representative, at a moment when several XRPL projects have already scaled back or shut down.

XAO DAO Targets Broader Participation

Marzella said the first change would introduce wallet delegation, allowing members to hand their voting power to others when they lack the time or expertise to vote on individual proposals.

The DAO is also reviewing its quorum requirements, including how inactive wallets count toward proposal thresholds. The stated aim is to prevent inactive participation from blocking decisions while keeping governance tied to the active community.

Community mini grants are another planned addition. Under the proposal, members would be able to submit smaller initiatives and seek funding for projects that contribute to the XRPL ecosystem.

“These aren’t changes for the sake of change,” Marzella wrote. He said the broader goal is to create a DAO where the community has “the ability to act” rather than simply having a vote.

The timing comes as questions around developer support have grown within the XRPL community. On August 13, Marzella said the shutdown of Gen3’s retail platforms showed that funding developers alone does not solve the problem of building lasting businesses.

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Gen3, an XRPL infrastructure team, said on August 12 it would spin down two of its retail products, aigent.run and AxiomProtocol, citing weak user demand and rising infrastructure costs. Gen3 said the platforms will stay live for another month, until September 13, so users can withdraw remaining funds, and that it will keep running its core XRPL infrastructure and take part in the ledger’s amendment process.

Marzella pointed to the Gen3 news as evidence of a bigger problem, arguing that funding developers only solves half the issue if there’s no path from a funded project to a sustainable business. Builder Handy Andy, replying in the same thread, described colleagues quietly calculating how much longer they can keep funding their own work without support, calling it “the last roll of the dice” for some.

Activity Is Up

The reshuffle comes as $XRP closed near a 21-month low this week, and Santiment data shows daily active addresses averaging 35,700 in August, up from 26,400 in July, even though the number of new wallets has stayed almost flat.

That distinction may matter for XAO DAO’s participation plans. More activity among existing users does not automatically mean a larger pool of people taking part in governance.

As it stands, Marzella has not provided a final timetable or detailed voting mechanics for the proposed changes, instead promising that more information will follow as each initiative progresses, leaving the community to see how delegation, quorum changes and mini grants are eventually implemented.

The Hedera [$HBAR] token price has slipped below a local low at $0.065 and continued its bearish descent. Throughout 2026, the token has only seen a bearish side to its price action.

Bounces, such as the 34.2% move toward the end of May, were quickly sold off. It appeared likely that the price would plunge another 35% in the coming weeks.

In other news, Hedera highlighted the Web3 platform Kabila built for content creators, natively on Hedera. This will help target a problem in Web3, which is creators generating value while platforms control monetization.

The long-term $HBAR price woes

Interestingly, the Hedera token had rallied from $0.0417 to $0.4015 in November 2024 to January 2025. It has been retracing the move since then and has fallen below the 78.6% retracement level of this bullish move.

This meant that, despite the persistent 18 months of bearish price action, the $HBAR long-term bias was bullish.

That would be little solace to underwater investors and swing traders, though. As things stand, they can maintain a bearish bias for the coming weeks.

The price has slipped below the July low at $0.0653. The Stochastic RSI was in the bearish depths even on the daily timeframe, and the RSI was well below neutral 50. The RSI has been below neutral 50 for the majority of 2026, highlighting persistent downward momentum.

The OBV was also in a slow decline, showing sellers have the upper hand.

Seller dominance is evident on the price charts, too. As the daily timeframe highlighted, the $0.118 level, the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement on the HTF, was ceded very early in the year.

Hence, a 35% move down to the $0.0417 area can be anticipated.

Traders’ call to action- Sell

The $HBAR price has slipped below July’s low, and further drawdown is likely, the technical indicators showed.

The 1-month liquidation map showed that the cluster of long liquidations around $0.065 has been hunted down for the most part. This can set up a potential price bounce toward a magnetic zone to the north.

In this case, the $0.070-$0.073 area would be a target in case of a bounce.

Yet, from a $HBAR price action perspective, the $0.0665-$0.0685 area represented a challenging supply zone. A bounce to either of these two regions would represent a selling opportunity.

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Final Summary

• The $HBAR price action has been bearish throughout 2026.
• The recent drop below the July swing low meant that a 35% slide can be expected in the coming weeks and months.

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