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Bitcoin recently rose to a monthly high, with Bitfinex analysts stating that this round of market activity is primarily driven by spot buying and short covering, rather than new leveraged funds, thus providing a longer duration compared to typical short squeeze scenarios. As investors who bought Bitcoin in the past five months are currently in a profit state, the main risk of the current upward trend comes from profit-taking chips flowing into trading platforms.Bitfinex believes that the U.S. Treasury's announcement on August 19 to expand the scale of long-term bond repurchases is an important factor driving the recent market activity. The initial phase of this rise was indeed driven by short liquidations. On the same day, the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF recorded an inflow of $297.6 million. However, the subsequent price increase mainly came from spot buying. From the position structure, while Bitcoin prices rose by 10% to 11%, open interest (OI) only increased by about 4%, indicating that spot demand and short covering played a major role, while the impact of leveraged funds was limited.Bitfinex pointed out that the $68,000 to $69,000 range is currently an important support level, close to the average cost of buyers over the past five months. If Bitcoin maintains above this level, it will keep these investors in a profitable state, reducing the pressure of previously trapped chips selling during rebounds. In terms of funds, the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF saw an inflow of $606.29 million on August 20, the largest single-day inflow since May 1, with BlackRock's IBIT contributing about 82%. Bitfinex stated that if fund inflows continue for a week, it will further strengthen the market demand structure.However, Bitfinex warns that the current biggest risk is a large amount of profitable Bitcoin flowing into trading platforms, which could trigger the largest profit-taking market since 2026. Analysts indicate that if real yields rise again to levels that previously suppressed Bitcoin from falling below $65,000, macro factors could still quickly impact the market.

Geoff Kendrick, the Global Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered Bank, stated that Bitcoin could approach its historical high of $126,000 by the end of the year, with a related recovery potentially accelerating after October 6. He remarked, "For the first time this year, there is a risk that my prediction of $100,000 by the end of the year may be too low."Kendrick pointed out that the recent rise has been primarily driven by short liquidations, but inflows into Bitcoin spot ETFs have also begun to recover. The current open interest is low, which may leave room for more investors to re-enter the market as prices rise.In February of this year, Kendrick had lowered Standard Chartered's Bitcoin year-end target from $150,000 to $100,000 and the Ethereum target from $7,500 to $4,000. At that time, he expected Bitcoin to drop to around $50,000 and Ethereum to around $1,400, before recovering over the remainder of the year.

The "whale" has set "10 big goals" and will continue to update its trading trajectory and insights on the X platform tonight. It stated that at the position of 72500, it had considered re-entering a long position and had placed a limit order between 70500 and 71500, but it did not get filled. "I wanted to re-enter the long position that I had previously closed. At that time, I placed a long order in advance between 70500 and 71500, while also placing a short order near 76000. My expectation was that if it first retraced to 70500–71500, I would re-enter the long position; if it did not retrace and quickly surged to around 76000, I would make a correction after a round of upward movement. In the end, the long orders below did not get filled, and after the short order at 76000 was filled, the price continued to rise to above 79000.So looking back, the real mistake in this segment was not the medium to long-term direction, but underestimating the strength of this upward trend and trying to bet on a correction too early."Despite the recent loss on a short position, this whale still stated, "Currently, there is still a profit of around 70 million."

The Bank of Montreal has initiated coverage on NVIDIA (NVDA.O) with an outperform rating and a target price of $340. It has also initiated coverage on Micron Technology (MU.O) with an outperform rating and a target price of $1,300.

According to the latest stock derivatives exchange ranking released by RootData, the Top 5 exchanges saw a decline in 24h trading volume across the board.Among them, Binance had a 24h trading volume of approximately $21.033 billion, down 31.04%; Hyperliquid had a 24h trading volume of approximately $3.681 billion, down 31.01%; Gate had a 24h trading volume of approximately $2.805 billion, down 43.16%; OKX had a 24h trading volume of approximately $4.7 billion, down 41.39%; and Bitget had a 24h trading volume of approximately $2.2 billion, down 26.92%.At the same time, the positions in the crypto native contract market have significantly increased. According to Coinglass data, the total open interest for Bitcoin contracts is approximately 734,900 BTC (about $54.967 billion), with a 24h increase of 5.65%; the total open interest for Ethereum contracts is approximately 13,140,700 ETH (about $30.917 billion), with a 24h increase of 5.17%.

Gate announces the official launch of its Japanese stock trading service, initially covering about 300 stocks listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), including popular targets such as Toyota Motor, Sony Group, SoftBank Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Nintendo, and Tokyo Electron. Users do not need to open a separate traditional Japanese brokerage account or exchange for yen; they can directly participate in Japanese stock trading on the Gate platform using USDT. Currently, Japanese stock trading has been launched on the Gate Web platform, with the App version set to go live soon.In terms of trading functionality, Japanese stocks share the same stock account and related trading capabilities with Gate's US, Hong Kong, and South Korean stocks, supporting features such as market viewing, buying, selling, position management, and transaction record inquiries. Japanese stocks support trading during Japanese time from 09:00 to 11:30 and 12:30 to 15:25, corresponding to UTC+8 time from 08:00 to 10:30 and 11:30 to 14:25.The launch of Japanese stocks further enriches Gate's global multi-asset trading scenario. Currently, the platform supports over 10,000 US stocks and ETFs, more than 1,500 Hong Kong stocks, over 1,000 South Korean stocks, and about 300 Japanese stocks, providing a total of over 12,800 stock and ETF trading options. In the future, Gate will continue to expand into global core markets and quality assets, promoting the integration of traditional finance and digital assets, and providing users with a more diverse one-stop asset allocation choice.

According to CryptoQuant monitoring, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) has increased its dollar reserves to $4.8 billion, which is enough to cover approximately 33 months of preferred stock dividends and debt interest expenses.This week's related operations show that the company raised $333.7 million through MSTR, added $149.1 million to its reserves, and used $132.2 million to repay $138.9 million of STRC debt. During this period, there were zero Bitcoin purchases and zero sales, and the dollar duration was extended by 41 days.

Nomura Securities has initiated coverage on Yushu Technology, assigning a valuation of 25 times the 2027 sales multiple, expecting revenue growth rates of 101% and 144% for the fiscal years 2027 and 2028, respectively, with a compound annual growth rate of approximately 122% from 2026 to 2028. The research report highlights two major investment theses: the full-stack mechanical design and self-developed hardware provide Yushu with structural cost advantages, with outsourced components accounting for only 10% to 20% of total costs, and gross margins increasing from 44% in the fiscal year 2022 to 60% in the fiscal year 2025; rapid product iteration allows Yushu to repeatedly lead the industry into new application scenarios, launching four humanoid product series within 26 months.The report also notes that on July 28, 2026, the U.S. FCC included it in the Covered List, and while authorized models can still be sold, new models under development will face restrictions, constituting structural entry constraints. Currently, 73.6% of humanoid robot revenue still comes from research institutions, and catalysts for growth in new terminal markets remain scarce. Nomura suggests paying attention to the progress of the "brain"—the commercialization of WVLA2.0 and the industrial deployment of UnifoLM-X1-0, which may be key to unlocking new application scenarios. The views expressed in this research report are those of Nomura Securities and do not constitute investment advice.

U.S. Trade Representative Tai stated that the agreement reached with Canada will include comprehensive market access for all U.S. goods, commitments to economic security, and digital trade integration.

According to Decrypt, Swiss hardware wallet manufacturer BitBox discovered two serious vulnerabilities and one bootloader issue in its firmware during an internal AI audit, and has released the Dixence security update. Exploiting the vulnerabilities requires a combination of phishing attacks and user unlocking of the tampered device, but BitBox stated that no user funds were stolen and the recovery phrases were not compromised.The bootloader vulnerability affects the older BitBox02 models, allowing attackers to load malicious firmware to steal assets; this issue has been partially fixed in the Oeschinen update from July. The second serious vulnerability affects the pre-initialization phase of Multi version devices, potentially allowing arbitrary code execution. The third issue involves the silent payment feature, which cannot directly steal coins but may lock funds. The new Nova version is not affected. BitBox warns that users with old firmware need to install the update as soon as possible, and currently, there are no reports of user fund losses.

Decred official X account (@decredproject) released a security notice, stating that a security vulnerability has been discovered in the Decred (DCR) network, and a patch will be released on August 18 at 10 AM Eastern Time.For security reasons, the official recommends that users suspend voting and mining operations until the upgrade is completed. An announcement will be synchronized on the official X account as soon as the patch is released.

Strategy CEO Phong Le shared his experience in a bear market, stating that he once believed everyone would view Bitcoin as an asset that increases by 30% annually and is completely liquid, thinking that holding as much Bitcoin as possible to support digital credit products was more important than holding dollars. However, the market shows that, apart from Bitcoin and DeFi participants, institutions will invest short-term funds for 6 months, as they value cash more, which is an important lesson.Currently, the company has 2.7 years of dividend coverage and $4.75 billion in cash. Phong Le indicated that he might prefer to hold Bitcoin, but making Stretch operate is essential for MSTR and Bitcoin to function. Some people only want dividend coverage, and the substantial cash indicates that the company is listening to these voices.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reviewing the rule change application submitted by Cboe BZX Exchange, involving six leveraged commodity ETFs that track the benchmark's daily performance by three times. The initial review period set by the SEC is 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.Volatility Shares LLC is the sponsor of the relevant funds, which include 3x Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crude Oil, and Natural Gas ETFs, all intended to operate under a commodity pool and not classified as investment companies. Among them, the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs will primarily invest in near-month and next-month futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), rather than directly holding Bitcoin or Ethereum, and will allocate cash and cash equivalents as collateral or margin.Before the relevant products are listed, the SEC must approve the exchange rule changes, and the trust's Form S-1 registration statement must also become effective. Each fund must have at least 100,000 shares at the time of listing, and authorized participants can subscribe or redeem cash at a rate of 1,000 shares per 10,000 shares.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that after two weeks of using cutting-edge AI to scan almost the entire Bitcoin open-source ecosystem for vulnerabilities, Bitcoin Red Team member @callebtc stated, "The easily discoverable vulnerabilities have been addressed," and maintainers are verifying "a large number" of serious and high-risk vulnerabilities.@callebtc indicated that the main findings include: decades of accumulated open-source technical debt are being exposed alongside AI capabilities that can discover vulnerabilities at speeds and scales unattainable by human researchers; Lightning seems particularly vulnerable, with its complexity meaning its security status is "worse than average"; unmaintained Bitcoin projects should be considered vulnerable until their security is confirmed.Projects that began building AI security and auditing processes months ago are now in a completely different position compared to those that have been waiting until now. The Bitcoin Red Team has now completed a foundational scan of almost the entire Bitcoin open-source ecosystem. Easily discoverable vulnerabilities have mostly been addressed, but as AI capabilities improve, external red team testing may need to continue indefinitely. Despite discovering and reporting "a large number" of real serious and high-risk vulnerabilities, @callebtc believes this process will ultimately make Bitcoin stronger. The same AI security review will soon expand to areas far beyond Bitcoin.

Bitget's latest data shows that approximately one out of every three contract trades on the platform comes from stock perpetual contract trading. As of now, Bitget supports a total of 271 stock perpetual contracts.Previous data indicated that Bitget's monthly trading volume for stock perpetual contracts in July reached $85.445 billion, with a single-day peak trading volume of $6.674 billion; during the same period, the monthly trading volume increased by 30.6% month-on-month, the number of traders increased by 31.4% month-on-month, and the number of trades increased by 130% month-on-month. Multiple trading indicators have shown steady growth.

According to a report by Decrypt, Israeli cybersecurity company ASecurity released a report stating that a researcher used publicly available AI models to discover multiple vulnerabilities in the Zoom annotation tool in less than 24 hours with fewer than 20 prompts, and constructed an exploitable attack chain. The vulnerabilities are numbered CVE-2026-53413, CVE-2026-53414, and CVE-2026-53415, allowing attackers to remotely execute code in meetings without any action from the victim, control their devices, steal data, and activate the microphone or camera.The attack was tested successfully on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS versions of Zoom. ASecurity claimed it reached a "national-level" standard, whereas previously constructing such exploitation tools required months of work and a substantial budget from professional teams. ASecurity reported the first vulnerability to Zoom on June 10, and Zoom released fixes between June 22 and July 20, but the server-side protections in end-to-end encrypted meetings could not filter malicious messages, requiring users to update manually. A Zoom spokesperson confirmed that the issue has been resolved and advised users to keep their versions up to date.

According to informed sources, AI startup Discovery Loop, founded by former Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, is in talks to raise $1 billion, corresponding to a valuation of approximately $10 billion, with specific financing terms still subject to change.Discovery Loop aims to accelerate discoveries in the fields of science and engineering through automated machine learning, science and engineering, and the parallel execution of thousands of experiments. Its initial funding is led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins, and Doerr Capital, while Alphabet serves as the founding investor and cloud services partner. The founding team of Discovery Loop also includes former core researchers from Google such as Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le, and Oriol Vinyals.

According to Fortune, Bank of America announced a $250 billion infrastructure investment plan on Wednesday, committing to invest in key infrastructure areas in the United States over the next year. The investment scope covers multiple fields including data centers and computing power, renewable energy generation, energy storage, natural gas, transmission networks, and critical minerals and mining, with the goal of supporting energy security, job growth, and economic competitiveness.

According to CoinDesk, the cross-border payment company MoneyGram announced the expansion of its cash and cryptocurrency exchange service MoneyGram Ramps to Solana, allowing wallets, exchanges, and developers within the Solana ecosystem to access its global cash network.The service supports two-way exchanges between cash and digital assets, with cash deposits covering over 25 countries and cash withdrawals covering over 170 countries and regions. MoneyGram had previously launched a cash deposit and withdrawal service based on USDC in partnership with Stellar and issued the dollar-backed stablecoin MGUSD, continuously expanding its stablecoin payment and remittance business.

The gold and silver markets remain high and volatile, with trading activity in the metals sector continuing to rise. According to market data from the Gate platform, gold (XAU) is currently priced at $4370.36, with a 24-hour increase of 0.26%; silver (XAG) is currently priced at $64.60, with a 24-hour increase of 0.56%. According to CoinGlass data, the open interest for Gate XAU (gold) contracts has reached $373 million, ranking second in CEX; the open interest for Gate XAG (silver) contracts has reached $80.61 million, ranking third in CEX.