Contact Energy reported full-year results with net profit up 27.8% year on year to $423.4 million, even as total revenue fell 5.7% to $3.2425 billion. The company declared a final dividend of 24.0 NZ cents per share, fully imputed at 24%. It continued accelerating renewable investment and completed a major hydro acquisition, lifting net tangible assets per share to $4.12 from $2.87.

Timely rain across Australia’s eastern growing belt has sharply improved prospects for the 2026 wheat crop. Rabobank lifted its estimate from an initial low of 21.3 million tons to as high as 30 million tons, still below last year’s 35.8 million tons but above the 10-year average, according to the bank. Bendigo Bank Agribusiness put the crop at about 30 million tons, with potential for an upgrade to 33 million tons.

Ethereum improvement proposal EIP-8363 would dynamically burn consensus rewards as total staking rises, potentially taking net staking yield to zero as staked ETH approaches 50% of supply. As of Aug. 8, about 41.18 million ETH was staked out of a total supply of 120.68 million ETH, or roughly 34.13%. SharpLink has disclosed plans to stake $100 million in ETH and pair it with $25 million in outside capital for DeFi liquidity protocols and other onchain strategies, according to a May SEC filing.

Circle reported fiscal Q2 2026 total revenue and reserve income of $701 million, up 7% year over year, missing Street expectations while earnings came in above estimates. USDC in circulation rose 19% from a year earlier to $73.3 billion. The company’s market cap stands at about $15.7 billion, and CRCL shares are down 14% on a yeartodate basis. Circle also said Arc’s public testnet processed more than 150 million transactions in its first 90 days and drew nearly 1.5 million transacting wallets.

Caterpillar reported second-quarter 2026 sales and revenue of $20.5 billion, up 24% year over year and the first time it has exceeded $20 billion in a single quarter. Its order backlog climbed to a record $72 billion, up $9 billion from the prior quarter and 92% from the second quarter of 2025. Operating margin rose to 20.9% and the adjusted margin improved to 21.9%. The stock has gained 101.8% over the past 52 weeks and trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 35.25 times versus 21.49 times for the broader industrials sector.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency has established a dedicated crypto and stablecoin division, upgrading oversight from an office-level structure to a standalone unit. The new division will include three subunits covering exchange monitoring, innovation and digital payments. The move follows reforms to Japan’s Financial Instruments and Exchange Act that reclassified $BTC, $ETH and 103 other tokens as financial instruments.

Solana futures open interest is close to $1.8 billion, representing about 23.1 million SOL in notional exposure. Funding rates on major exchanges’ perpetual contracts have risen to around 0.01% every eight hours, the highest in nearly 11 months, indicating traders are paying up to keep leveraged long positions. The last time funding was at similar levels, SOL traded above $200, while it is now above $70 and roughly 2.6% away from the $80 resistance level. Traders are watching whether SOL can break through $80.

NEAR Protocol is considering a sovereign wealth fund-style model that would use investment income, rather than inflation, to support long-term operations. The proposal calls for an initial fund of about 30 million NEAR tokens, valued at roughly $53 million. Co-founder Illia Polosukhin said investing protocol revenue and holding NEAR tokens would offset inflation more sustainably than burning tokens. NEAR was trading around $1.76, up about 3.5% over 24 hours, but down roughly 29% over the past year.