Bitcoin

Bitcoin fell on Sept. 1-2 as tensions escalated in the Middle East. Brent futures briefly reached $96.70, the S&P 500 declined and the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes rose to 4.8%.

The crypto market rebounded on Sept. 3, with bitcoin briefly reaching $82,300. Daily liquidations totaled $538.6 million and were concentrated in short positions. The move followed comments from Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller signaling support for keeping interest rates unchanged, after which the estimated probability of a September increase fell to 50.4% from 63.2%.

Bitcoin was trading at $79,922 at the time of writing. The daily BTC/USDT chart is available from TradingView.

Bitcoin gained 24.95% in August, its strongest monthly performance since November 2024. The largest advance came in the middle of the month after Donald Trump met representatives of the crypto industry and the U.S. Treasury decided to double long-term bond buybacks starting Sept. 9.

CryptoQuant said its Bitcoin Cycle Momentum indicator had returned to positive territory after eight months of bearish readings, potentially signaling an approaching reversal. Analysts said the indicator would need to reach 20-30 to confirm the trend. Apparent demand for bitcoin has again turned negative, while short-term holders continue to take substantial profits.

Analyst Darkfost said bitcoin’s rise of more than 30% in August had not been matched by a recovery in trading activity. Volumes on Binance, Gate and Bybit remained about 70% below October 2025 levels, and Darkfost said stronger liquidity would be needed to confirm a sustainable recovery.

André Dragosch, Bitwise’s head of research in Europe, said the three-month correlation between bitcoin and gold had reached its highest level in nearly six years. Bitcoin gained 22.4% during the week and gold rose about 5%, while bitcoin’s correlation with the stock market fell to a one-year low. Dragosch said the figures strengthened the case for bitcoin as a hedge against currency debasement.

Fidelity analysts said bitcoin could be nearing the end of its current bear market, citing four-year cycles, changing volatility and continued growth in digital-asset adoption. A historical model pointed to a possible bottom in November 2026, although Fidelity said it could have formed in July or could emerge later.

River forecast that bitcoin could reach $250,000-$840,000 over the next three to five years if its share of investment portfolios continues to rise. The company estimated that inflows of $1.3 trillion-$5.3 trillion could increase bitcoin’s market capitalization to $5.5 trillion-$17.5 trillion. River considers an allocation of at least 10% reasonable for long-term investors.

A British resident recovered 61 BTC that he believed had been lost after the Intersango exchange closed more than a decade ago. He bought the coins in 2011 for about £2.94 and contacted lawyers in January 2026. He recovered the full amount by the end of May, when it was valued at £3.33 million.

Strategy opposed an MSCI proposal to change the criteria for including “non-operating” companies in its Global Investable Market Indexes. Strategy described the initiative as an attempt to remove companies with crypto treasuries from the indexes, but said exclusion would not materially affect it because index-tracking funds hold only 3.1% of its shares.

Strategy CEO Phong Le defended the company’s sale of 3,328 BTC in early August for about $64,000 despite bitcoin’s subsequent rise. Le said the sale was needed to fund part of its dividend payments. Strategy resumed buying late in the month, purchasing 4,603 BTC at an average price of $80,318.

Altcoins

Ethereum followed a pattern similar to bitcoin, falling on Sept. 1-2 before climbing to $2,529 on Sept. 3 and remaining above $2,500 for a period. It was trading at $2,500 at the time of writing. The daily ETH/USDT chart is available from TradingView.

Most other altcoins also gained during the week, including privacy-focused Monero and Zcash. Ethereum rose 32.53% in August, outperforming bitcoin’s 24.95% gain. Its sharpest increase came in the middle of the month amid regulatory progress and U.S. Treasury bond buybacks.

VeChain led returns among the 100 largest crypto assets from Aug. 24-30, gaining 23.83%. Monero rose 23.64% and Uniswap gained 19.31%. SPX6900, Rain, Solana, Mantle, Lighter, PancakeSwap and Stacks also ranked among the 10 strongest performers.

Zcash rose above $1,000 and entered the 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, with its value exceeding $17 billion. ZEC gained more than 30% over the week, while 24-hour futures liquidations surpassed $36 million. Trader Garrett Jin lost more than $18.5 million on a short position.

Regulation

Finance ministers and central-bank governors from the Group of 20 recognized digital assets’ potential role in economic growth and agreed to advance regulatory frameworks intended to support innovation and financial stability. Participants called for more effective implementation of Financial Action Task Force standards for virtual assets and expressed concern about cryptocurrencies’ use in fraud and money laundering.

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission approved the Travel Rule for digital-asset operators. The measure requires companies to collect and transmit information about senders and recipients, verify counterparties and confirm control of noncustodial wallets. It takes effect on Feb. 27, 2027, and transaction data must be retained for at least five years.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission asked a federal court to dismiss CME Group’s lawsuit challenging the availability of crypto perpetual futures in the United States. The CFTC said CME had not demonstrated harm from competing with Kalshi and could launch similar products. The dispute followed the regulator’s decision to allow Kalshi’s BTCPERP to be classified as a futures contract; CME argues that such instruments should be treated as swaps.

Cybersecurity and alleged illegal activity

Lookonchain reported a suspected rug pull involving the GOLD token on Solana. Fifteen wallets linked to the team sold 224.5 million GOLD for about $330,000 and made an estimated profit of roughly $312,000. Before the sale, those addresses and the developer controlled 82.45% of the supply. Interest in GOLD had been fueled by an alleged connection to the Trump Organization, but Trump Coins representatives denied any involvement.

DeFi protocol Tectonic suffered an attack estimated at about $75 million. The attacker increased TONIC’s price by roughly 100 times within 20 minutes and used the tokens as inflated collateral for loans. About $6 million was moved from Cronos to Ethereum, while roughly $60 million remained on Cronos.

Fogo suspended its blockchain after detecting unauthorized activity and receiving reports that the Fogo Foundation had been compromised. An attacker obtained 400 million FOGO valued at about $3 million. The team said it halted the network as a precaution to prevent further movement of the affected assets.

Injective stopped processing blocks for three hours and 42 minutes during a possible attack that may have caused losses of as much as $4.9 million. Onchain analysts said an attacker may have exploited binary-options mechanics and trading between the attacker’s own subaccounts, causing the protocol to record more funds for repayment than remained in the system.

Two Thai entrepreneurs sued Tether in federal court in New York over the freezing of about 42.4 million USDT across 10 Ethereum addresses. The plaintiffs alleged that Tether blocked the assets after an informal request from Homeland Security Investigations, before authorities had obtained a warrant, court order or subpoena.

X said it was investigating a wave of unauthorized password-reset requests after users reported receiving repeated emails and verification codes. The company suggested attackers may be seeking account access as X Money expands, but said it had found no indication that its own systems were compromised.

U.S. and European authorities disrupted the peer-to-peer Sality botnet, which had been used since 2003 to distribute malware, conduct cyberattacks and steal crypto. More than 11 million unique IP addresses were associated with its infrastructure, and the operator could control as many as 1 million infected devices simultaneously at the botnet’s peak.

Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies shut down a network of fraudulent investment platforms that used an embedded drainer to steal cryptocurrencies. Investigators identified 62 victims in more than 20 countries and said more than 46 Ukrainian citizens may have helped organize the scheme.

Artificial intelligence

OpenAI and 155 other organizations urged companies and governments to strengthen cybersecurity as AI capabilities expand. The participants expect attacks to become more sophisticated in the coming months and proposed broader use of AI to identify vulnerabilities, tighter access controls, upgrades to legacy systems and increased sharing of threat intelligence.

U.S. federal authorities sold Anthropic shares seized from former Alameda Research and FTX executives Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh. The shares were reportedly sold to Anthropic’s existing investors in 2025. The buyers, transaction price and government proceeds were not disclosed, but experts estimated the stake was worth $250 million-$1.1 billion at the time.

Gal Gadot supported the use of AI in filmmaking on the condition that actors’ performances and likenesses remain protected. AI was used to create sets and lighting for the film Bitcoin, while Gadot insisted that the technology not be used to alter or reproduce her performance.

OpenAI classified Astra as its first model to reach a critical capability threshold in cybersecurity. In testing, the model independently identified previously unknown vulnerabilities, constructed exploit chains and found two zero-day vulnerabilities in the V8 engine. OpenAI responded by strengthening safeguards and initially restricting access to Astra’s most advanced features.

OpenAI is also developing mechanisms to halt AI systems automatically when dangerous behavior is detected following the Hugging Face hacking incident. The company plans to increase model monitoring and isolation. U.S. lawmakers requested details about the incident while considering the AI Kill Switch Act.

Google introduced Gemini 3.8 Flash for agentic tasks and Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber for cybersecurity work. Flash targets coding and autonomous workflows, while Flash Cyber is available to vetted specialists. In tests, Flash Cyber achieved a success rate of more than 70% in identifying vulnerabilities in Google’s internal codebases.

Companies, products and Robinhood Chain

Pavel Durov announced the launch of the noncustodial Gram Wallet on The Open Network within Telegram. The wallet is initially available to a limited group, with access expected to expand over the coming weeks to Telegram’s audience of more than 1 billion people.

Hyperliquid Labs is in talks with Kraken parent Payward about entering the U.S. market. Clients are expected to be able to trade perpetual crypto futures through Payward-controlled Bitnomial, and an infrastructure proposal has allegedly been submitted to the CFTC.

Payward delayed Kraken’s initial public offering until at least the second quarter of 2027 because of unfavorable market conditions. It was the second postponement in 2026 after the company paused its plans amid a crypto-market downturn, weak trading volumes and pressure on company valuations.

Shares of China-based Farmmi rose more than 320% at one point amid interest in the Money Mushroom, or JINQIAN, memecoin on Robinhood Chain. The token’s market capitalization reached about $60 million, and the trading volume of Farmmi shares on Nasdaq increased roughly 150-fold. The FAMI token used in the crypto trading pair is not an official Robinhood Stock Token and has no direct connection to Farmmi’s shares.

PONS gained more than 360% in seven days as activity on Robinhood Chain increased, lifting its market capitalization above $500 million. The launchpad carrying the same name generated a record $5.95 million in fees over 24 hours and processed about $400 million in volume, representing more than 63% of the network’s launchpad market.

AMC CEO Adam Aron criticized Robinhood over tokenized AMC shares and said AMC had no involvement in their issuance. During the dispute, an AMC-linked tokenized memecoin called MEME appeared on Robinhood Chain. Its fully diluted valuation rose 206,400% in 24 hours to $131.7 million on trading volume of $41.5 million.

Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. Hugging Face, which has more than 18 million users, will retain its status as an open platform after the transaction. Nvidia plans to scale its infrastructure and broaden developers’ and companies’ access to AI technology.

Other developments

• The CFTC fined a former White House staff member more than $172,500 for trading on Kalshi.
• The NEAR blockchain switched to Confidential by Default mode.
• Crypto companies spent a record $640 million buying back their own tokens.
• A fund associated with Trump’s son plans to invest as much as $300 million in Polymarket.
• Ethena launched a neobank on Avalanche offering cashback and yield on savings.
• The issuance of catastrophe bonds on blockchain was scheduled for 2027.
• Revolut took an initial step toward obtaining a U.S. banking license.

New from Incrypted

Incrypted examined the sources of DeFi yields, including lending, liquidity-pool fees, vaults and complex strategies, as well as the risks behind high annual percentage yields and the importance of identifying who pays the yield.

The editorial team also prepared a guide to Anthropic’s free Claude Academy, covering its courses, practical applications, enrollment process and personalized badges.

A review of Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1 examined the flagship model’s coding and reasoning capabilities, benchmarks and pricing. The team also tested the model by using it to create a three-dimensional aircraft-engine model.

Incrypted reviewed Gemini 3.8 Flash, the third update to Google’s Flash range in six weeks, including its improvements, pricing and Flash Cyber variant. The team tested whether the model could build a three-dimensional game from a single prompt.

The editorial team summarized Arthur Hayes’ essay Atención, which addressed problems in Europe’s financial system, their potential effect on global liquidity and the crypto market, and Hayes’ trading strategy.

Other publications included a review of 001k.exchange for crypto and fiat transactions; a comparison of 15 AI tools for marketing and social media; an explanation of Order Flow in intraday futures trading; and a comparison of six antidetect browsers, including their use in crypto and the option to pay subscription fees with digital assets.

Incrypted also compiled the principal investments in blockchain and crypto assets during August 2026 and continued updating its crypto calendar with events and announcements.

Source: Incrypted