Swiss National Bank Governing Board member Petra Tschudin said the Swiss franc's recent weakness is mainly driven by higher interest rate expectations abroad, widening the yield gap versus Swiss assets. The SNB kept its policy rate at 0% in June 2026 and said it may intervene in FX markets if moves become too rapid, while projecting inflation at 0.6% in 2026 and 2027 and 0.7% in 2028.

Wallets holding over 1,000 ETH reduced balances by about 1.7 million ETH from May 20 to Aug 20, a 2.9% drop, Santiment data shows. The shift largely moved into staking, smart contracts, bridges, and exchanges, while exchange balances fell about 530,000 ETH to 6.54 million and smaller holders increased their supply share.

Shinhan Asset Management signed a four party MoU on Aug. 21 with the Solana Foundation, Etherfuse and Orca to run a Solana proof of concept for a KRW denominated tokenized money market style fund. The test covers KYC and AML onboarding, regulated issuance, custody and onchain liquidity, with no fund size, yield or launch date disclosed.

Poolin, once a major name in Bitcoin mining infrastructure, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New Jersey, underscoring the continued consolidation and financial strain across the mining sector. Poolin Technology PTE. LTD., along with U.S. affiliates Lonestar Taproot LLC and Lonestar Dream, Inc., submitted voluntary Chapter 11 petitions on July 22 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey. The matters are jointly administered under Poolin's lead case (No. 26-18325) before Judge Eamonn J. O'Hagan; Lonestar Taproot is case No. 26-18326 and Lonestar Dream is No. 26-18327. The filings estimate assets of $1 million to $10 million and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million. Poolin reports 10,001 to 25,000 creditors and says funds are expected to be available for distribution to unsecured creditors. Poolin and its affiliates will continue operating as debtors in possession while pursuing what they describe as an orderly sale process intended to maximize value for creditors and other stakeholders. Chief restructuring officer Michael DuFrayne said in a first-day declaration that the Chapter 11 proceedings are intended to facilitate sales of the debtors' assets. On Aug. 17, the court approved bidding procedures covering substantially all assets, authorized the designation of a stalking-horse bidder, and established auction and contract/lease treatment protocols. Key dates include: qualified bids due Sept. 8; an auction set for Sept. 10 if competing qualified bids are received; and a sale hearing scheduled for Sept. 18 at 11 a.m. ET in Trenton before Judge O'Hagan. Operationally, Lonestar Dream had largely wound down activity at its mining sites before the filing, after discontinuing services for customer Elektron Energy and beginning removal of Elektron's equipment. The company retained a limited workforce to secure sites, support the asset sale, and handle bankruptcy administration. Lonestar Taproot holds equipment and physical property associated with the mining facilities, including power-related assets, buildings, improvements, and substation infrastructure. The filings also state Lonestar Taproot previously operated as a partnership with Bitmain from March 2022 through December 2023. Bitmain contributed about $34.4 million to the venture and withdrew roughly $24.1 million following significant losses. Creditors are scheduled to attend a remote Section 341 meeting on Aug. 28 at 9 a.m. ET. Proofs of claim may be filed with the Poolin Claims Processing Center (KCC dba Verita Global) in El Segundo, California, by U.S. mail or hand delivery only; fax and electronic submissions will not be accepted. The amended notice did not set a general claims bar date. Advisers and counsel listed in the filings include Archer & Greiner, P.C. as legal counsel (Stephen M. Packman, Alexander J. Andrews, Doug Leney, and Natasha Songonuga), DuFrayne LLC and Michael DuFrayne as CRO/crisis manager, Verita Global as administrative adviser, Oon & Bazul LLC as Singapore restructuring counsel, and McCarn, Weir & Sherwood P.C. for oil, gas, and mineral matters. Poolin's liquidity issues became widely visible in September 2022 when it suspended withdrawals from PoolinWallet amid a surge in redemption requests. At that time, it proposed issuing six IOU tokens pegged 1:1 to users' BTC, ETH, USDT, LTC, ZEC, and DOGE balances, while exploring new investment, debt-to-equity options, and asset sales. Earlier 2022 reports said Poolin had paused wallet withdrawals, flash trades, and internal transfers while keeping routine mining operations and direct mining-pool payouts running; certain swap services were also suspended. Financial stress in Bitcoin mining has persisted through 2026. Public miners sold a record amount of Bitcoin in Q1 2026—more than 32,000 BTC—after hashprice fell to post-halving lows. By mid-2026, hashprice had slid into the high-$20s per PH/day, below the roughly $35 breakeven often cited for older machines. The year has also brought other notable restructurings, including Nasdaq-listed crypto ATM operator Bitcoin Depot's Chapter 11 filing in May. With bidding procedures now approved, attention turns to the Sept. 8 bid deadline, the potential Sept. 10 auction, and the Sept. 18 sale hearing. Creditors and market participants will be watching for stalking-horse terms, competing bidders, and expected recoveries.

Ripple has joined a new institutional credit fund that will provide working-capital loans denominated in Ripple USD (RLUSD) to fintech and payments companies via the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Clearpool will deliver the on-ledger lending infrastructure, while Cicada Partners will oversee credit management, according to the firms. Cicada Partners will serve as general partner and credit pool manager, responsible for originating borrowers, setting loan terms and managing credit risk. Cicada said it has underwritten more than $860 million in credit. Clearpool is building the on-chain framework to create and administer pooled credit facilities; the company said its platform has facilitated more than $930 million in institutional loans since 2021. Ripple is participating as an investor and limited partner on the same terms as other backers. The company is not providing any loss guarantee, and underwriting decisions remain with Cicada and participating institutions. The fund will issue loans and require repayment in RLUSD, integrating the dollar-pegged stablecoin into the credit cycle. XRP will continue to be used for XRPL transaction fees and account reserve requirements. The initiative positions RLUSD for another institutional use case—dollar-denominated lending—without requiring loans to be collateralized in XRP. If deployed on XRPL mainnet, institutions could supply and borrow dollar liquidity natively on-ledger, extending RLUSD's role beyond settlement and trading. On adoption, a July Evernorth report cited in recent coverage said RLUSD trading exceeded $2.5 billion across XRPL pairs since its public launch. The RLUSD/XRP pair accounted for about $900 million over six months. Evernorth also reported RLUSD's on-chain trading share rising from under 1% to around 12% in 2026, and RLUSD supply on XRPL slightly surpassing its Ethereum supply at the time. Clearpool's integration is currently being tested on devnet as two XRPL upgrades await validator approval: XLS65 (Single Asset Vaults) to support pooled vault liquidity, and XLS66, a lending protocol for issuing, servicing and repaying fixed-term loans on-ledger. Under the planned structure, borrower underwriting remains off-chain (handled by institutions such as Cicada), while XRPL is used for fund transfers and accounting once loans are issued on-chain. The proposals entered validator consideration earlier this year. Mainnet activation requires the XRPL amendment approval process, so deployment is not yet available. The lending code has undergone formal verification by RippleX and Common Prefix, plus a re-audit by Halborn. Halborn reported no critical or high-risk findings and logged five issues in total (one medium, two low, two informational), all addressed or acknowledged. The medium-severity item involved a potential path for loan interest to bypass a vault's maximum-assets limit. The announcement lands amid a sharp market move in XRP. CoinDesk data showed XRP rising nearly 20% in 24 hours to about $1.30 and roughly 30% over seven days, alongside a broader crypto rally that followed an expansion of the U.S. Treasury's long-dated bond buyback program, which pushed long-term yields lower and weakened the dollar. Bitcoin climbed above $72,000 during the same move. During the rally, XRP ETF inflows eased to $2.35 million from $5.81 million, while Bitcoin ETFs attracted roughly $517 million. XRP futures open interest also retreated about 11% from peak levels. If the necessary XRPL amendments receive validator approval, the Clearpool–Cicada–Ripple fund could be a meaningful step toward native, dollar-denominated institutional lending on XRPL and a broader utility profile for RLUSD. For now, development and testing continue on devnet as the governance process runs its course.

Hungary has rolled back a national crypto “validation” framework and the related criminal provisions that had exposed users and service providers to prison sentences of up to eight years. The Hungarian Parliament on July 31 approved Act XXXVIII of 2026 on the Repeal of Certain Statutory Provisions Concerning CryptoAsset Conversion Services. The law entered into force on Aug. 7, scrapping the mandatory domestic validation process for crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto conversions and deleting two criminal offences linked to that system. Under the now-repealed regime, certain conversions were required to pass through licensed, state-approved validators. Validators were tasked with checking the origin of funds, wallet or device ownership, customer identity and profiles, and screening transactions against external databases. Lawyers had warned that conversions executed without a validator certificate could be deemed unauthorized and potentially criminal under Hungary's Criminal Code (Act C of 2012). Two offences removed - "Abuse of crypto assets": Covered exchanges of crypto of significant value carried out via an unauthorized exchange service. Penalties ran up to two years for basic cases, escalating with transaction size and reaching up to five years in particularly serious cases. - "Unauthorized cryptoasset exchange service provision": Targeted providers conducting high-value exchange activity without the national validation certificate. Basic cases carried up to three years' imprisonment, rising to as much as eight years in the most serious cases. Why the rules drew backlash Introduced in 2025, the regime added a separate national compliance layer on top of incoming EU rules and disrupted the market. Exchanges faced a state validation requirement even when authorized elsewhere in the EU, raising questions about compatibility with the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). The rules were followed by service pullbacks and exits: Revolut suspended crypto services in Hungary, and some firms weighed moving operations to other EU hubs such as Estonia or Lithuania. Local estimates at the time put Hungary's active crypto participants at roughly 500,000. Political and regulatory backdrop The repeal follows a political shift after Hungary's April 2026 parliamentary election and a government pledge to unwind measures viewed as excessive under the previous administration. Government spokeswoman Anita Kobol and newly appointed Minister of Innovation and Technology Zoltán Tanács said the earlier framework was excessive and politically motivated. Hungary also came under EU scrutiny. The European Commission opened an investigation into whether the validation requirement conflicted with MiCA and EU internal market rules. CMS Budapest partner Katalin Horváth said the Hungarian system duplicated protections already covered by MiCA and was incompatible with the single market. Impact on MiCA-authorized firms With the national validation layer removed, firms authorized under MiCA no longer need to route covered Hungarian conversions through separate Hungarian validators. András Gaál of Schoenherr noted that converting crypto without prior validation had previously been treated as an unauthorized transaction under criminal law. The shift comes after MiCA's transition period ended on July 1, 2026. ESMA has recently expanded its register, adding 57 firms to bring the total to about 300, which provides passporting rights across the EU. Newly listed or authorized firms cited include Standard Chartered, FalconX and BitPay, with BitPay receiving Dutch MiCA authorization to operate across eligible EU markets. EU-level oversight is also tightening. ESMA has begun reviewing the operational resilience of MiCA-authorized custodians, focusing on custody controls, key management and incident response. What operators are being advised to do Industry lawyers say payment institutions, crypto-asset service providers and intermediaries that had built workflows around Hungarian validators should unwind those processes and rely on EU MiCA-compliant authorization and passporting where applicable. Bottom line Hungary's repeal removes a national overlay that had criminalized certain crypto conversions and complicated compliance for providers serving Hungarian customers. The change restores reliance on the EU-wide MiCA framework and reduces legal uncertainty for exchanges and users, ending a period marked by domestic disruption and EU scrutiny.

Intchains Group is stepping back from additional Ethereum purchases after a steep first-half revenue slump, redirecting capital toward a next-generation mining chip and early-stage artificial intelligence initiatives. In an Aug. 20 update, the Nasdaq-listed maker of altcoin mining machines reported revenue of RMB11.1 million (about $1.6 million) for the first half, down 94% from RMB175.6 million a year earlier. The figure was largely driven by a RMB10.9 million sale of non-core chip inventory to a related party, highlighting weakness in the company's core hardware operations. Against that backdrop, Intchains said it no longer expects "material additional accumulation" of cryptocurrency as it prioritizes funding for the development and commercialization of its new ASIC and explores AI opportunities. The company plans to keep its existing crypto treasury and continue earning staking yield. The pause in crypto buying does not appear tied to near-term liquidity stress. Intchains ended June with RMB461.1 million (roughly $68 million) in cash and short-term investments, which it says is sufficient to fund the ASIC program internally and cover planned activities for at least 12 months. The change marks a clear departure from earlier guidance. In February, Intchains said it was using a dollar-cost-averaging approach to steadily build Ethereum exposure, and in April Chief Executive Officer Qiang Ding said the company would continue making prudent, opportunistic purchases. As of June 30, Intchains held about 9,176 units of ETH-based cryptocurrencies valued at RMB98.1 million. As of Aug. 20, 4,556 ETH were allocated to staking, including 3,556 deposited via its Goldshell platform awaiting validator activation and 1,000 through FalconX. Operational weakness and crypto mark-to-market losses also weighed on results. Cost of revenue totaled RMB22.1 million, double reported revenue, as the company recorded impairment on excess mining-machine inventory amid softer demand and lower selling prices. A decline in ETH drove an RMB89.5 million ($13.2 million) fair-value loss, contributing to a first-half net loss of RMB148.9 million ($21.9 million) versus a RMB4.3 million profit a year earlier. Regulatory pressure added to the headwinds. Following China's February restrictions on domestic mining-machine sales, Intchains stopped taking new orders from mainland China after regulators barred mining-machine manufacturers from providing sales and related services in the country. Intchains is now leaning on a next-generation mining ASIC as its recovery bet. The chip completed tape-out in July and still requires sample production and validation, with a commercial launch targeted for the fourth quarter. Ding said management expects the new ASIC to add modestly to revenue in the second half of 2026, becoming a more meaningful driver in 2027 as commercialization scales. "It is a core part of our strategy to build a more resilient, diversified revenue base," Ding said. He added that the platform is expected to strengthen Intchains' positioning in purpose-built mining hardware while improving operating efficiency for customers. Separately, the company is assessing AI initiatives, including potential acquisitions, as another path to longer-term growth and diversification. Ding said the effort remains at an early stage, with more detailed plans expected next year.

MANTRA tumbled on Aug. 21, 2026, after MANTRA Chain halted network activity while investigating an exploit, briefly printing a record low before a modest rebound. CoinGecko data showed the token dropping from $0.005060 to $0.004126 late Thursday, an 18.5% slide from earlier in the session. It later clawed back toward $0.0044 but stayed down on the day. Trading volume surged nearly 600% to roughly $24 million, signaling rapid repositioning once the incident became public. Price weakness, though, began minutes before the last recorded block, and MANTRA has not said the exploit directly triggered the initial selloff. The chain said it paused transactions as a precaution and suspended public endpoints as well as bridges, deposits, withdrawals, and other affected services. A subsequent status update said an attacker exploited a vulnerability in an upstream software dependency. MANTRA has not disclosed whether assets were stolen, named the software component involved, or quantified any financial impact. CoinMarketCap placed MANTRA's market capitalization near $27 million, with about 5.59 billion tokens in circulation—levels close to the token's lowest recorded valuation. The project's market structure had already been under pressure: network documentation shows a one-to-four token split completed in March 2026, lifting maximum supply to 10 billion MANTRA. The legacy OM token previously fell more than 90% in an April 2025 selloff that wiped out billions in value ahead of the 2026 rebrand. The outage also comes as MANTRA faces a pending corporate transition. Inveniam Capital Partners said on June 16 it planned to acquire MANTRA and affiliated entities, subject to customary closing conditions, targeting the third quarter of 2026. Inveniam invested $20 million in MANTRA in August 2025, raising the stakes for operational continuity because MANTRA Chain supports Inveniam-linked tokenized-asset infrastructure. Available information has not supported allegations of manipulation, insider selling, or scams as of Aug. 21. Derivatives activity remained elevated during the disruption. CoinGlass reported about $10.07 million in MANTRA futures volume on Aug. 21, with open interest around $7.84 million. Spot volume measured about $3.34 million. CoinGlass data placed MANTRA near $0.004799 during the observed session, above CoinGecko's intraday low, reflecting differences in venue aggregation and data snapshots. MANTRA's explorer indicated the network was unavailable during the outage window, with the public dashboard showing no connected height or validator statistics. The disruption extended beyond token transfers, affecting settlement infrastructure, bridge activity, and public chain access. MANTRA said validators will remain offline while developers prepare and test a patched release. Developers said they have identified the vulnerable dependency and are preparing a patch, while tracing fund movements and coordinating with exchanges. No restart time has been provided. Until MANTRA publishes a postmortem and exchanges reopen deposits and withdrawals, the full scope of the attack and any financial damage remain unresolved.

Blockchain data shows a transfer of 1,049 BTC worth USD 81,524,848 from Binance to Coinbase Institutional.