Global markets rallied on Friday as US stocks surged, with the Dow Jones (+1.89%) hitting a record high and the S&P 500 (+1.52%) posting its strongest session since May, driven by Fed Chair Powell's Jackson Hole speech paving the way for September rate cuts. The dovish pivot triggered broad sector rotation as small-caps soared nearly 4%, bond yields tumbled with the 2-year falling 10 basis points to 3.69%, and the dollar weakened 1% in its steepest drop in weeks. Risk assets surged on rate cut optimism, with Bitcoin jumping 3.8% to $116,657 and Ether surging 14% to a four-year high of $4,835. Over the past 24 hours, the global crypto market cap decreased 1.9% to $3.91tn while the 24h volume increased 50% to $203bn.

  • A Bitcoin whale sold 24,000 BTC worth $2.7 billion on Sunday, triggering a flash crash that dropped Bitcoin to around $110,500, according to on-chain analyst Sani who posted on X that the whale liquidated their entire balance to Hyperunite, though the whale still holds over 152,000 BTC worth more than $17 billion.
  • In the past 24 hours, crypto liquidations increased by 362% and totaled over $684m. Long positions accounted for 76.5% of these liquidations.
Source: Coinglass
  • According to SoSo Value data, US Spot BTC ETFs recorded an outflow of $23.1m on August 22, resulting in a weekly net outflow from August 18 to 22 of $1.22bn, a stark contrast to the previous week's inflow of $519m. The top ETFs by assets under management (AUM) also reflected this trend, with IBIT seeing a daily outflow of -$199m, while FBTC and ARKB had modest inflows of $50m and $65m respectively.
US BTC Spot ETFs. Source: SoSo Value
  • According to data from SoSo Value, US Spot ETH ETF markets recorded an influx of funds on August 22, with a daily net inflow of $337.6m, marking a 17.4% increase compared to a day prior. The week still ended with a net total outflow of $237.73m, as this surge followed a couple of days of significant outflows, including $240m and $422m on August 20 and 19, respectively. The total assets under management now stand at $30.5bn, with a daily volume of $7bn.
US ETH Spot ETFs. Source: SoSo Value
  • Animoca Brands researchers said the tokenized real-world asset market, currently at an all-time high of $26.5 billion after growing 70% this year, represents just a small fraction of the $400 trillion addressable traditional finance market that could eventually be tokenized across multiple blockchain networks, with Ethereum currently leading with 55% market share.
  • Trish Turner resigned as head of the IRS digital assets division on Friday after just three months in the role, reportedly joining crypto tax firm Crypto Tax Girl as tax director according to Bloomberg Tax, marking another leadership change in the agency's crypto unit following previous departures of private-sector experts brought in to lead the division.
  • State Street, one of the world's top three asset managers, has begun offering custody services for blockchain-based debt securities to its institutional clients, marking a significant milestone in the adoption of blockchain technology in the financial sector.
  • LayerZero won a four-way bidding war to acquire cross-blockchain protocol Stargate for $110 million after the community voted 95% in favor on Sunday, despite competing bids from Wormhole ($120 million), Axelar, and Across Protocol, with the deal seeing all circulating STG tokens swapped for ZRO at a ratio of 1 STG to 0.08634 ZRO.