August brought Citi into Bitcoin custody, Tether's first audited accounts, a $2.6bn ETF week, and the largest single-day short liquidation on record.

Regulation

  • The Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act before the 7 August recess. Polymarket odds for 2026 passage fell to 31%. Trump urged passage at a White House summit on 19 August, with a cloture vote expected in September.
  • The SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, creating a safe harbour for early-stage token sales and a path out of SEC oversight.
  • The SEC sent a crypto custody rule overhaul to the White House on 25 August, clarifying how investment advisers and funds may hold digital assets. The text is not yet public.
  • CFTC Chairman Michael Selig ordered staff to draft a crypto regime using existing authority if CLARITY stalls, extending to DeFi developers.
  • The US Treasury opened a 60-day comment period on GENIUS Act rules on 17 August. The law takes effect 18 January 2027; the OCC, FDIC and Fed all missed the July deadline to finalise.
  • The OCC granted World Liberty a conditional national trust charter to issue USD1, replacing BitGo as issuer and custodian.
  • MiCA's licensing deadline stranded over 1,700 providers, with only about 320 on ESMA's register. Austria fined Bitpanda €70,000 in the first published penalty, all three breaches procedural.
  • Brazil imposed a 24-hour hold on transfers above $10,000 to self-custody or foreign platforms, effective January 2027.

TradFi

  • Citi confirmed institutional Bitcoin custody before end-2026 under Custody+, holding digital assets on the same infrastructure as equities and bonds across 100 markets.
  • Charles Schwab will add SOL, AVAX and LINK to Schwab Crypto, extending beyond BTC and ETH for 39.9 million brokerage accounts and $13.04tn in client assets.
  • Goldman Sachs agreed to buy NEOS for up to $2.25bn, entering Bitcoin income ETFs rather than launching the product it had already filed. Post-close ETF assets exceed $130bn.
  • Wintermute acquired a registered broker-dealer licence, its first move into regulated US markets.
  • Fidelity filed to add staking and quarterly cash distributions to its $898m Ethereum ETF, retaining 85% of gross rewards.
  • NYSE President Lynn Martin said the exchange is developing an on-chain settlement platform for tokenised securities.
  • eToro agreed to buy TradeZero for up to $231m. Q2 crypto revenue fell 30% year on year to $1.34bn.

Payments

  • Tether completed its first full audit, with KPMG issuing an unqualified opinion and reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814bn. USDT supply passed $180bn.
  • Mastercard completed its acquisition of BVNK. Visa enabled stablecoin merchant prefunding and payouts for Visa Direct with Zerohash.
  • Anchorpoint, the Standard Chartered joint venture with Animoca and HKT, opened its HKDAP stablecoin to institutional distributors, with HashKey and OSL as first partners.
  • Samsung will add native stablecoin support to Galaxy Wallet across 61 markets, with USDC demonstrated at launch.
  • USDC and USDT now fund over 70% of crypto-linked card spending, at 50.8% and 20.3%. Euro-backed EURe fell from 88% of tracked volume in early 2024 to under 2%.
  • Circle named its founding validator cohort for Arc ahead of a 16 September mainnet launch.

Tokenisation and infrastructure

  • RWA deposits across lending platforms and DEXs tripled to $7.4bn while total DeFi deposits fell 15%, per CoinShares and Token Terminal. RWA spot volumes rose 220% as DEX volumes fell 70%.
  • Tokenised stock holders doubled to 1.31m and monthly volume rose 179% to $23.13bn.
  • Injective's affiliate became an SEC-registered transfer agent, the first layer-1 holding regulated ownership recordkeeping alongside issuance.
  • Dinari opened 724 tokenised US stocks, including the full S&P 500, to eligible US self-custody wallets, settled in USDC.
  • Ripple invested in Zilo and Licuido to make tokenised funds usable as collateral from issuance on the XRP Ledger.
  • Tether brought its Hadron platform to Saudi Arabia with First Data and BKN301, targeting tokenised real estate under Vision 2030.
  • BitGo made Chainlink CCIP the exclusive standard for WBTC, citing SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certification. Cumulative announced migrations reached $14.6bn.
  • Fairmint's CEO warned that fragmented ownership records across tokenised equity platforms risk repeating the 1960s paperwork crisis in digital form.

Derivatives

  • Ripple Prime launched a Delta One business offering total return swaps across US equities, indices and digital assets through a single counterparty, backed by over $1bn in regulatory net capital.
  • Hyperliquid recorded $213bn in RWA perpetual volume in Q2, 32.2% of platform trading against 1.8% in Q4 2025, and passed $1bn in cumulative protocol revenue.
  • The Hyperliquid Policy Center asked the SEC and CFTC to adopt a single perpetuals framework based on economic structure rather than underlying asset. HIP-3 markets have traded $480bn in 10 months.
  • Trump said the CFTC is working to bring Hyperliquid onshore under a compliant framework. HYPE has gained about 40% since.
  • Kalshi began streaming Level 1 and Level 2 order book data to institutions via DoubleZero, using the same multicast delivery as NYSE, Nasdaq and CME.
  • The CFTC sent a request for comment on AI compute futures to the White House, ahead of CME's planned 5 October launch.

Capital

  • Strategy raised $2.01bn selling MSTR shares between 17 and 23 August and bought no Bitcoin. Holdings remain 840,447 BTC.
  • It launched USD Cash, a $1.59bn unrestricted pool for Bitcoin purchases, dividends and buybacks. Its separate USD Reserve reached $5.1bn, taking total dollar liquidity to $6.69bn.
  • Strategy sold 6,948 BTC for roughly $432.5m between May and mid-August, then went two weeks without selling. Its position returned to profit, with about $2.4bn unrealised gain.
  • BitMine holds 5,815,164 ETH, 4.8% of supply, carrying $8.4bn in unrealised losses. Staking covers 87% of holdings.
  • Metaplanet acquired 96% of Nasdaq-listed Super League with 2,100 BTC, forming Superplanet to build a US Bitcoin financing arm.
  • H100 tripled its treasury to 3,506 BTC entirely in newly issued equity, at roughly 70% dilution and no cash.

Markets

  • Treasury Secretary Bessent announced at least a doubling of long-dated bond buybacks, from $2bn to $4bn per operation, running 9 September to 4 November.
  • Bitcoin rose 27% over the month, from $63,000 to an intraday $72,408 on 20 August and testing $80,000 by month-end.
  • $3.1bn of crypto shorts were liquidated across 19 and 20 August. The 19th was the largest single-day short liquidation in crypto history.
  • Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs drew $2.6bn in the week to 21 August, the strongest since October 2025. Bitcoin ETF net assets rose 25.4% to $96.1bn.
  • Both categories remain negative year to date, at roughly $2.9bn and $192m, with the combined shortfall narrowing from $5.7bn to $3.1bn.
  • Bernstein set a $150,000 base case for mid-2027 and $300,000 at a 2029 cycle peak, citing debasement. It cut its Strategy target to $350 from $450 while keeping Outperform.
  • A 2021 Coldcard firmware flaw drained between $114m and $130m in Bitcoin. Roughly 890,000 BTC moved on-chain in a week, the highest of 2026.
  • Cantor named Robinhood, Coinbase, BitGo, Bullish, eToro and Gemini as likely beneficiaries as holders shifted toward managed custody.

Three things stood out: banks moved from stablecoin distribution into custody, tokenised securities picked up the recordkeeping layer they lacked, and the Coldcard losses pushed self-custody holders toward regulated venues.

MidChains is a VARA-licensed regulated digital asset infrastructure provider headquartered in the UAE, serving institutional and corporate clients globally. Operating as a regulated entity since 2019, MidChains holds a VARA Broker-Dealer licence for institutional and qualified investors.

MidChains is backed by Mubadala Investment Company, Lunate, MIAX Exchange Group, Brevan Howard, GSR, Emurgo, Dhabi Holdings and Ava Labs. Services include institutional digital asset execution, OTC settlement, and stablecoin-enabled corporate treasury and cross-border payment solutions.

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