Crypto weekly is authored by maaria bajwa

PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Crypto Market Cap ($2.70T): -3% / -11%
- BTC ($77,283): -3% / -12%
- ETH ($2,504): +1% / -16%
- SOL ($101): -4% / -19%
- HYPE ($78): -10% / +208%
- COIN ($175): -5% / -22%
- Tether Mkt Cap ($183B): 0% / -2%
- USDC Mkt Cap ($74B): 0% / -2%
- BTC / ETH Dominance: 58% / 11%

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Bitcoin rose to almost $80k after August inflation came in largely as expected, doing little to change the Fed’s rate outlook. Link.

- Spot bitcoin ETFs reported almost $1 billion of net inflows, making it the third straight week of positive flows. Ethereum ETFs recorded $218 million in net inflows. Link.

- Senate Republicans released a revised version of the CLARITY Act ahead of a key vote next week. The new version includes rules for non-DeFi trading protocols registering with the CFTC, but does not include significant changes in its ethics portion which received pushback from Democrats. Link. Link.

- BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo and Tether investor Christopher Harborne donated £72 million to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, the largest single donation in British political history and more than the roughly £69 million all UK parties took in donations last year. Link. Link. Link.

- Monthly trading volumes of perpetual-futures on crypto exchanges rose to from $23 billion to $778 billion in August, making up almost 24% of trading volumes. Link.

- Hunter Biden’s memecoin $LAPTOP surged from around $3 to more than $300 in a matter of seconds, before giving back most of those gains minutes later. Link. Link.

- Researchers working with AI coding agents reduced the resources needed for a key step in a quantum attack on Bitcoin cryptography by 86%. Link. Link.

- Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam launched oil startup Primavera and signed production-sharing deals with Venezuela’s state oil company. Link.

- Consensys is splitting its consumer MetaMask self-custodial wallet from its institutional blockchain infrastructure business. Link.

- Coinbase is rebranding the Base App back to Coinbase Wallet, reversing the name change it made just over a year ago. Link.

- Bitwise is shutting down its Dogecoin ETF with $722,000 of AUM about 10 months after the fund went live. Link. Link.

- The Ethereum Foundation identified 2 must-ship items for its upcoming Hegota upgrade, which is the first step in making the network quantum resistant by 2029. One proposal strengthens censorship resistance by allowing a validator committee to force inclusion of valid public-mempool transactions. The other proposal makes account abstraction native to Ethereum to improve security and post-quantum readiness. Link.

- Fintech giant Revolut shared sensitive customer information of large Bitcoin holders to an unauthorized third party who was impersonating a legitimate government agency. Link.

- Visa stablecoin settlement passed a $20 billion annualized run rate, up more than 15x year-over-year. Link.

- Robinhood’s crypto trading volume rose 61% month over month to $17.5 billion in August. Link.

- India will push BRICS nations to expand the use of central bank-backed digital currencies for cross-border payments, while stopping short of supporting a unified payments network. Link.

- The first staked ETF tied to Tron, the eight-largest crypto, is set to launch next week. Link.

- Jack Dorsey’s Block applied to establish an uninsured national trust bank that would give the company a federal framework for custody of Bitcoin and other digital assets. Link.

- Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison joined nonprofit charity Manifund to develop its funding platform. Ellison pled guilty in 2022 to fraud charges tied to the collapse of FTX and was sentenced to 2 years in prison. Link.

- Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has filed a petition with the US Supreme Court to overturn his fraud conviction and $11 billion forfeiture. He is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence. Link.

- White hat hackers stole $320 million worth of Bitcoin from the Liquid Network, eventually returning $273 million after a network fix was issued. Link.

- Hyperliquid’s total open interest hit $14 billion as HYPE hit an all-time high. Link.

- Bitmine purchased $70 million ETH, bringing its total holdings to 5,067,309 ETH, roughly 5% of total Ethereum supply. Link.