📊 Bitcoin braces for August slump as AI stocks falter

⚠️ Bitcoin price fell below $63,000 on Friday as a short-lived rebound in Asian semiconductor stocks faded, adding pressure as the cryptocurrency entered its historically weak August trading period. Ethereum fell 2.8% to around $1,860, while Solana declined 2% to approximately $73. XRP traded near $1.06 as selling spread across large-cap cryptocurrencies.

⚡️ The pullback came one day after Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix rallied roughly 25%, helping South Korea’s KOSPI recover from a steep multiweek decline. That rebound initially suggested investors were returning to semiconductor stocks following heavy selling. Momentum failed to carry into Friday, however, raising concerns that Thursday’s advance was a temporary relief rally rather than the start of a sustained recovery.

✨ Crypto assets and AI-related equities have increasingly traded as part of the same risk-sensitive market. Both sectors rely heavily on speculative capital and tend to weaken when investors reduce exposure to high-valuation assets. Those concerns are not directly related to Bitcoin’s network or adoption. However, broad risk reduction can still affect crypto as institutional traders rebalance portfolios, reduce leverage and move funds into cash or defensive assets.

⚠️ Bitcoin BIP-110 fork could expose holders to replay attacks

➡️ Bitcoin developer Kevin Loaec warned holders against moving coins following a possible BIP-110 chain split, citing the risk of replay attacks. A split would create two transaction histories with the same balances at the point of separation. Anyone holding 10 BTC before the fork, for example, would initially control 10 coins on each resulting chain. This second balance may appear to offer free money if a buyer offers to purchase the BIP-110 coins. However, both networks could initially recognize the same signed transaction.

🔖 A buyer could copy the transaction used to transfer the forked coins and broadcast it on the main Bitcoin network. If accepted, the seller would transfer the same amount of real BTC to the buyer’s address. The attack would not give the buyer access to the holder’s entire wallet. Only the inputs included in the signed transaction would move, while transaction fees could be charged on both chains.

⚠️ Loaec said large holders may be targeted first because a successful replay involving their wallets would produce a larger return. Holders who do not know how to separate the balances can avoid that risk by leaving their coins unmoved, as there would be no signed transaction to replay.

🔔 South Korean lawmaker warns 22% crypto tax could drive capital overseas

🔖 South Korean lawmaker Park Soo-young has called for the government to withdraw its planned 22% tax on virtual asset gains before the levy takes effect on Jan. 1, 2027, arguing that the policy unfairly targets roughly 13 million crypto users while investment taxes on domestic stocks have been scrapped.

📊 According to Digital Asset, the People Power Party lawmaker criticized the tax plan on his YouTube channel, “Park Soo-young’s Economy TV,” on Aug. 13, describing it as a punitive policy that could push more Korean capital toward overseas cryptocurrency markets.

⭐️ The lawmaker compared the treatment of crypto investors with South Korea’s decision to abolish the financial investment income tax, which would have applied to investment income from financial products including stocks. Park argued that removing the investment tax while retaining a separate levy on virtual assets amounts to telling investors they could face a “tax bomb” if they choose not to invest in the domestic stock market.

🔔 Securitize says SEC pulled crypto exemption ahead of CLARITY Act vote

⭐️ The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has held back its planned crypto innovation exemption ahead of a Sept. 15 Senate vote on the CLARITY Act, with Securitize President Brett Redfearn expecting the rule to return as early as October.

➡️ Securitize President Brett Redfearn said the SEC pulled back the exemption last Friday because of concerns surrounding the progress of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, placing the regulator’s tokenization plan behind the next major congressional vote on crypto market structure.

🔖 Redfearn expects the SEC to introduce the rule after the Senate votes on Sept. 15, with early October emerging as a possible timeframe. His comments provide a more specific timeline for an initiative that has already faced delays as regulators and lawmakers work on separate rules covering digital assets and tokenized securities.

📊 SEC Chair Paul Atkins introduced the initiative in April as part of his regulatory program for digital assets. The framework would allow tokenized securities to operate on-chain under modified rules while keeping such products within the SEC’s securities oversight.

➡️ MEXC stock futures trading volume in Asia surges over 3,300% in Q2

🔖 MEXC’s average daily stock futures volume in Asia has jumped 3,308% quarter over quarter as crypto users increasingly trade equities, gold and other traditional assets through centralized exchanges. Trading activity accelerated further in Southeast Asia, where average daily stock futures volume climbed 6,648%, and the number of users rose 399%. East Asia recorded a 1,957% increase in volume and a 465% rise in traders during the same period.

⭐️ Momentum continued into the third quarter. Through August, MEXC’s average daily stock futures volume across Asia had risen another 102% from the second quarter, while the number of users increased 51%. East Asian volume climbed 186%, compared with a 50% increase in Southeast Asia.

🌐 The report combined Blockworks Research exchange data with a survey of MEXC users and the exchange’s Asian platform figures. MEXC Ventures commissioned the study, while Blockworks said its researchers retained editorial control over the finished report.

➡️ Ripple hires LME treasury chief for tokenization push

🌐 Ripple has hired London Metal Exchange treasury executive Joseph Thompson for its trading and markets team, according to an Aug. 28 report. Thompson will leave the LME on Aug. 31 after nearly a decade at the exchange. His work at Ripple will focus on tokenization strategy and delivery. Ripple has not disclosed his exact title, starting date or reporting structure.

🔗 Earlier LME documents identified Thompson as head of investment and liquidity and collateral risk management. Those responsibilities included areas relevant to clearing operations, such as liquidity, eligible collateral and financial risk. Before joining the LME, Thompson held liquidity management and funding responsibilities within Deutsche Bank’s group treasury division. He also worked in liquidity risk at ICAP and in collateral and liquidity management risk at London Clearing House.

📊 Moreover, Thompson has more than 15 years of financial-services experience and holds certification from the Association of Corporate Treasurers. His background gives Ripple experience spanning exchanges, clearing, collateral and institutional liquidity.

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📌 Corn launches private members club for digital asset holders after Bitcoin L2 pivot

🔖 Corn has launched a private members club for digital asset holders after closing its Bitcoin layer-2 network, as a third investment from Polychain Capital has taken its total funding to $19 million. Corn said in a statement shared with cryptonews that its new club combines a stablecoin payment card with a named concierge, private events and travel services for digital asset holders.

⭐️ The launch follows Corn’s decision to retire the Bitcoin layer-2 network on which the company was originally built. Although the network held around $1 billion in deposits at its peak, founder Chris Spadafora said much of the capital had arrived to collect incentives rather than use the network over time. “We built serious infrastructure and it worked. At peak the network held around a billion dollars in deposits. What it taught me is the difference between usage and demand,” Spadafora said.

‼️ According to the founder, much of the capital moved elsewhere once the incentives returned to normal. Watching the deposits leave changed how the team assessed product demand and eventually led it to reconsider Corn’s business. Step-by-step guides explained how users could bridge assets out of the network, close protocol positions, and claim locked tokens. Withdrawals remained available through Corn’s self-service bridge until the sequencer went offline.

❗️ House crypto tax bill offers $10 fee exemption, tightens wash sale rules

⚠️ The House Ways and Means Committee has released a 114-page crypto tax package that would exempt certain network fees under $10 from tax while extending wash-sale rules to digital assets ahead of a Sept. 16 committee markup. The package incorporates provisions developed through earlier Republican proposals and bipartisan legislation from Reps. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., and Max Miller, R-Ohio. It covers small crypto transactions, gain and loss calculations, transfers, wash sales, mining, staking and broker requirements.

📣 Committee documents show H.R. 10357 is scheduled for markup at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday. Lawmakers will consider it alongside several unrelated tax and health care measures before deciding whether to advance the legislation. One provision would remove tax on qualifying network and transaction fees worth less than $10, addressing small blockchain costs that can currently create tax reporting requirements.

📊 The exemption would not be available to every user. Anyone who completed more than 5,000 transfers during the previous year would be excluded, keeping the carve-out away from accounts with particularly high transaction activity. Current U.S. tax treatment generally treats digital assets as property, meaning disposals can produce taxable capital gains or deductible losses. Crypto-to-crypto swaps and payments using digital assets can count as disposals, while transaction costs paid in tokens can create their own tax calculations.

⚠️ Binance Wallet opens tokenized pre-IPO access

⭐️ Binance Wallet has launched access to PancakeSwap’s Pre-Access campaigns, allowing eligible users to subscribe to third-party tokens designed to provide indirect economic exposure to private companies before a possible public listing. A Pre-Access Token can “provide eligible users with indirect exposure” to a private company or related asset, according to Binance Wallet. The product does not place users directly on the private company’s shareholder register and does not give them ownership of the target company’s shares.

🌐 Participants receive no voting, dividend, information, governance or standard shareholder rights through the token. Binance says the exposure may instead take contractual, synthetic or other indirect forms, depending on the structure chosen by the third-party provider behind a particular campaign. Each PancakeSwap campaign is expected to set its own subscription price, implied valuation, eligibility conditions, timeline, allocation method and settlement rules. Binance warns that the stated subscription price may differ materially from a future IPO price, market value, redemption value or conversion value.

🔔 The implied valuation carries the same qualification. It may differ from the company’s most recent funding valuation, secondary-market price or eventual IPO valuation, and Binance Wallet says it does not independently verify or guarantee that figure.

📌 XRP could lose some payment flows to stablecoins, Ripple CEO says

🔖 Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has said XRP is not necessarily the best asset for every payment use case, acknowledging that stablecoins can solve some customer problems more effectively. Faena Rose’s January 22 program, titled The Transformative Power of Crypto Assets, featured Garlinghouse discussing cross-border payments, stablecoins, financial inclusion and digital financial infrastructure. Clips from the interview resurfaced on social media on September 24, more than eight months after the conversation originally took place.

📣 The timing matters because the remarks are not a new Ripple policy announcement made this week. They show how Garlinghouse described the roles of XRP and stablecoins earlier in 2026, while Ripple’s current product documents now show a payments platform built to use several settlement assets. During the discussion, Garlinghouse used cross-border transfers as an example of how the choice of asset can depend on the payment itself. He said “XRP is the best bridge asset” could be the answer for one transaction, while another could work better through a stablecoin.

➡️ His qualification was explicit. Garlinghouse said “a stablecoin is going to solve that problem better” in some cases, putting the customer’s payment requirement ahead of using one specific cryptocurrency. The statement was conditional and did not say stablecoins are universally better than XRP. Garlinghouse separately rejected the label of an XRP maximalist, saying he is bullish on several cryptocurrencies for different reasons. His comments framed utility as the test for choosing technology instead of loyalty to a single token.

⚠️ 30 Bitcoin miners detained in Malaysia electricity theft investigation

🔖 Malaysian police have detained two men and seized 30 Bitcoin mining machines after uncovering an operation in Seri Iskandar that allegedly used an illegal electricity connectionon. Investigators identified a premises in Seri Iskandar where electricity was allegedly being diverted through an unauthorized connection to power Bitcoin mining equipment. Police seized 30 mining machines along with an internet router, a desktop switch and a coil of electrical wire during the operation. Two local men were detained to assist with the investigation.

📊 The latest seizure follows several operations targeting Bitcoin miners accused of bypassing electricity meters in Malaysia. Investigators found Bitcoin mining equipment at all three locations, while technical inspections by TNB confirmed electricity theft at two abandoned houses. Police said the mining equipment had been connected to unauthorized electricity supply lines instead of legitimate metered connections. The two suspects, aged 40 and 52, were remanded for three days as investigators pursued the case under Section 427 of the Penal Code and Section 37(1) of the Electricity Supply Act 1990.

🌐 Police said the two properties, including a residential site in Bukit Perpat and a commercial premises in Wakaf Tapai, were suspected of having been modified to bypass electricity meters. TNB estimated the stolen electricity was costing the utility around RM36,000 per month, while equipment seized from the locations was valued at roughly RM225,000. Electricity costs are one of the main operating expenses for Bitcoin miners because specialized mining machines run continuously while competing to process transactions and earn block rewards.