Headline News: Unstaking and Profit Taking
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Bitcoin retreating 1.53% after hitting a new all-time high near the $124,500 level last week, pulling back coincided with the release of persistent wholesale inflation data in the US. In contrast, Ethereum showed relative strength, climbing 5.26% but ultimately falling short of its $4,868 peak. The staking withdrawal queue has surged to a record high of over 872,000 ETH, suggesting potential profit-taking from stakers. Additionally, wallets associated with the Ethereum Foundation sold approximately $33 million of ETH last week at an average price of $4,558.
Macro-Outlook: Mixed Inflation Reading
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President Trump extended the trade framework with China for another 90 days, into early November. Trump later told the media that more tariff details on semi-conductors and steel will be announced this week.
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The US inflation rate remained at 2.7% in July, below forecasts of 2.8%. Core inflation increased by 0.3% in July, in line with market expectations. While the latest CPI data revealed signs of tariff-driven inflation, the resulting impact was more subdued than market consensus. However, PPI in July rose by 0.9%, significantly higher than market forecasts of 0.2%, revealing significant impact of recent trade policies such as steel and aluminum, and rising labor costs on service components, which could be the result of shrinking labor supply.
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The US retail sales increased by 0.5% in July, in line with market expectations. Meanwhile, the preliminary Michigan consumer sentiment dropped to 58.6 in August, well below market forecasts of 62.
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The probability of 75bps rate-cut decreased by approximately 8 percentage-point to 38.8% by the end of 2025.
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Following the bilateral summit between President Trump and President Putin in Alaska, diplomatic talks between Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and key European leaders are scheduled with Trump this week.
Upcoming Economic Calendar including,
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Thursday, August 21, 2:00am: July FOMC Minutes
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Friday, August 22, 10:00pm: Fed Chair Powell Speech at Jackson Hole Symposium
Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: The Stablecoin Layer-1s War
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The US Federal Reserve announced sunseting its novel activities supervision program that treats cryptocurrencies as exotic risk to banking operations.
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The Japanese Financial Services Agency plans approving the issuance of yen-denominated stablecoins. JPYC is expected to be launched as early as in fall 2025.
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Thailand launched the “TouristDigiPay” sandbox scheme, allowing foreign visitors to convert cryptocurrencies to Thai baht with QR code payment.
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Gemini launched a self-custody Gemini Wallet with a web interface for token trading and dapps explorer.
Layer 1 and Layer 2s
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Circle introduced Arc, an EVM-compatible Layer-1 blockchain for USDC stablecoin payments, FX, and capital markets applications. The chain features FX engine, sub-second settlement finality, and opt-in privacy controls.
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Stripe is reportedly building a payment-focus Layer-1, Tempo, in collaboration with Paradigm.
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CMB International partnered with DigiFT and OnChain tokenised HK-Singapore mutual recognition USD money market fund on Solana.
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TON announced Coinbase Venture had acquired an undisclosed TON holding.
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Sonic launched Testnet 2.1, featuring compatibility with Ethereum Pectra upgrade.
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Qubic successfully executed 51% attack on Monero network, reorganising as deep as 6 blocks and demonstrating its “Useful Proof of Work” (UPoW) system, where mining power is purportedly used for meaningful computational tasks.
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Dinari, the tokenisation firm that partnered with Gemini to launch tokenised stocks, plans to launch a proprietary Layer-1 with Avalanche to serve as the compliant settlement layer for tokenised assets.
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Ronin announced to migrate back to Ethereum as Layer-2 by 2026, and introducing a new Proof of Distribution mechanism that redirects block rewards to the Governing Validators and Contributors.
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OKX burnt 75% of the OKB and fixed the total supply at 21 million tokens. The team also completed the PP upgrade on X Layer, increasing the throughput to 5000 transactions per second, and sunsetting OKTChain.
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Jason, the co-founder of Story Protocol, announced stepping down from the project. The decision has drawn criticism from the community, citing concerns that the protocol has consistently under-delivered to its high expectations, viewing the co-founder’s departure as further confirmation of the project’s issues.
Dapps
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Coinbase launched Bootstrap Fund to increase stablecoin liquidity with placements on protocols such as Aave, Morpho, Kamino and Jupiter.
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Chainlink partnered with Intercontinental Exchange, a global financial exchange and clearing house, bringing high-quality derived forex and precious metals data onchain.
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Drift integrated syrupUSDC as collateral for perpetual futures trading on the exchange.
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GMX launched RWA perpetual markets, including SPY, QQQ, AAPL and more, on Solana.
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Resolv launched maxiUSR, an incentivised leveraged USR vault, aiming to boost the USR demand with 20% target APY.
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Wormhole integrated Boundless ZKverifier and open source Ethereum consensus proofs with NTT token standard to minimize trust in native token transfers.
Upcoming Alpha and Governance
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The Brazilian parliament is expected to hold the first hearing on the National Strategic Bitcoin Reserve on August 20.
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Solana is expected to vote for the new Alpenglow Consensus Protocol next week, aiming to reduce block finality from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. Solana also proposed SIMD-204, upgrading the current social slashing to a trustless programmatic slashing. SIMD-204 is expected to launch on the mainnet in the coming months.
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Lido plans to implement NEST, a triggerable rails to buyback LDO with stETH, laying a foundation for potential future buyback mechanisms.
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World Liberty Finance is expected to launch WLFI soon and allocating 7% of token supply to Aave for licensed instance. The pre-markets for WLFI were traded in the range of $20 billion to $100 billion FDV.
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RISE, the high performance blockchain, is launching on Kaito’s Capital Launchpad with a valuation of $200 million. 50% of the token sold is subjected to vesting, which unlocks 6 months after TGE.
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UMA passed a proposal to allow only whitelisted members of the platform to effectively propose resolutions for Polymarket.
Token Unlock
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ZRO token unlocked on August 20, amount representing 22.2% of the token supply.
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KAITO token unlocked on August 20, amount representing 6.91% of the token supply.
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PLUME token unlocked on August 21, amount representing 3.25% of the token supply.
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INIT token unlocked on August 25, amount representing 1.55% of the token supply.
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NEWT token unlocked on August 25, amount representing 2.91% of the token supply.
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ALT token unlocked on August 26, amount representing 6.03% of the token supply.
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HUMA token unlocked on August 27, amount representing 7.28% of the token supply.
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RESOLV token unlocked on August 28, amount representing 9.14% of the token supply.
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OP token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 1.84% of the token supply.
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REZ token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 12% of the token supply.
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IO token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 6.09% of the token supply.
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KMNO token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 22% of the token supply.
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