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Citi stated that it remains optimistic about the stock market performance and advises investors to consider increasing equity asset allocation if the market experiences a pullback before the U.S. midterm elections. It currently maintains an "overweight" view on U.S. stocks, believing that corporate earnings expectations are improving and the market liquidity environment is becoming more accommodative. Despite recent concerns related to artificial intelligence, there are no significant risk signals in the overall market.Citi continues to be optimistic about the U.S. stock market and believes that sector rotation may limit the market's downside potential. Historical data shows that the market often experiences a strong year-end performance following a weak phase before the U.S. midterm elections, suggesting that there may be opportunities to buy on dips currently.

On August 21, the GATE ZONE fireside chat event took place in the Summer Bay area of Coinfest Asia, where Gate Head of Global Partnerships Jason Fung shared insights on the theme "Predicting the Biggest Market Opportunities." He discussed the competitive landscape of prediction markets, user-created markets, the Builder ecosystem, and future market opportunities. Jason Fung stated that as on-chain prediction markets continue to develop, industry competition will no longer focus solely on liquidity and trading volume. Instead, lowering the barriers to market creation, diversifying market types, and enabling more users to participate in market building will become important directions for the future development of prediction markets.Regarding the recent launch of the event contract Builder by Gate DexBuilder, Jason Fung mentioned that enabling users to create markets independently is an important step towards the openness of prediction markets. By lowering the barriers to creating and launching event markets, users can quickly build markets around popular events and explore more niche themes and potential demands, thereby driving the evolution of prediction markets from a product form dominated by a few platforms to a more open market ecosystem.Jason Fung believes that there are still many opportunities in prediction markets that have not been fully explored, and their application scope is expected to continue extending from popular fields such as politics, sports, crypto, AI, and entertainment. As more developers and entrepreneurs enter this space, the Builder ecosystem, market diversity, and user experience will become important driving forces for industry development, and on-chain event markets are expected to further expand from early user groups to a broader user market.

Cryptocurrency analyst Darkfost stated that the apparent demand for Bitcoin in 2026 reached a record of 25,000 coins, indicating that the actual spot buying volume exceeds the newly mined coins, with market buying power stronger than supply.Apparent demand is calculated by subtracting the daily change in supply that has not been used for over a year from the daily block subsidy, used to measure whether structural accumulation can effectively absorb new supply.

On August 21, AI infrastructure investment is becoming a new variable in the U.S. bond market. Tech giants are expanding data centers, chip and computing power construction, and the demand for AI-related financing is rising, starting to compete with the U.S. government for funds from core buyers such as insurance companies, pensions, and long-term asset management institutions. As of August, the issuance scale of U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds has reached approximately $1.7 trillion, setting a historical high for the same period. According to Goldman Sachs, the four major U.S. tech companies have issued more than $170 billion in bonds this year, surpassing the total for the entire year of 2025. Broadcom is seeking to provide chip and infrastructure financing for AI companies like Anthropic, with potential debt size approaching $100 billion.Institutions point out that AI is driving an overall expansion of duration supply in the bond market. With the government and tech companies simultaneously increasing long-term financing demands and a limited long-term funding pool, the market may require higher yields. St. Louis Fed President Bullard stated that a capital competition is forming between the U.S. government's financing needs and AI infrastructure construction. Recently, the yield on 30-year U.S. Treasuries rose to 5.34%, a new high since 2007, while the 10-year yield rose to 4.7%. High interest rates may raise corporate financing costs and affect AI company valuations through discount rates.At the same time, there are signs of weakness in U.S. consumer data, with Walmart's stock price dropping about 9% in a single day, marking the largest decline since 2022. With economic growth slowing and inflation pressures persisting, the Federal Reserve's policy faces a dilemma. The U.S. Treasury has raised the single repurchase limit for 10-20 year and 20-30 year U.S. Treasuries from $2 billion to at least $4 billion. If long-end yields continue to rise, the market may revisit tools such as yield curve control or quantitative easing.

Jacob Creech, Vice President of Technology at the Solana Foundation, stated that Solana has officially shortened the slot time for the first time since its establishment, now entering a new phase of 350 milliseconds, with the next target being 300 milliseconds.Slot time is the time unit corresponding to each block in the Solana network, and shortening it helps improve transaction confirmation speed and network throughput. Previously, Solana's target slot time had long been maintained at around 400 milliseconds, and this adjustment marks an important update to the network's performance parameters.

In a research report released by the Bank of Italy in July 2026, a "mystery shopper" empirical investigation was conducted for the first time, tracking 200 USDC transfers across ten corridors between Italy and Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the UAE, and Japan. The results showed that the total cost of stablecoin remittances fluctuated greatly, with a minimum of only 0.3% and a maximum close to 9%. On-chain transfers accounted for an average of only 0.4%, with the bulk of costs concentrated in fiat withdrawal and deposit stages—traditional intermediary fees such as exchange buy-sell spreads, credit card fees, and withdrawal fees were the decisive factors. Compared to traditional channels like Wise, stablecoins have a cost advantage in some corridors like Brazil to Italy, but the costs are higher in corridors like UAE to Italy, showing a high degree of "corridor specificity."In terms of speed, blockchain transfers themselves take only a few minutes, but end-to-end efficiency entirely depends on the quality of the traditional payment infrastructure in the destination country. Countries with instant payment systems, such as Brazil (PIX), Italy (TIPS), and Argentina (Transferencias 3.0), can keep the entire process under 20 minutes; whereas countries like South Africa, which rely on traditional bank transfers, see the arrival time extended to 1 to 2 business days. The report pointed out that the efficiency of stablecoin remittances is jointly determined by their own infrastructure and the surrounding traditional payment infrastructure, with both being complementary rather than substitutive. The report also analyzed the impact of global regulatory fragmentation: the EU's MiCA and the US's GENIUS Act represent mature compliance frameworks; Japan's strict "safety first" access, while lowering nominal costs, complicates processes leading users to offshore platforms; countries like India and Turkey are in a transitional regulatory phase; while countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with prohibitive measures, have failed to suppress demand, instead pushing transactions into gray channels.

HertzFlow announced that its $4.44 million USD1 Genesis pre-deposit Vault has been fully filled. HertzFlow officials stated that this is an important milestone before the project's mainnet launch, and they are currently making final preparations for the official trading opening on August 24.According to reports, HertzFlow aims to create a permissionless leveraged trading market for oracle-backed assets and further activate on-chain liquidity on the BNB Chain through composable DeFi strategies, converting more on-chain funds into sustainable yield-generating liquidity assets.

According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Treasury announced that from September 9 to November 4, the limit for single long-term U.S. Treasury bond repurchases will be raised from $2 billion to at least $4 billion, using short-term debt financing instead of "printing money," which the market views as a liquidity management operation similar to "Operation Twist 2."Although officials emphasize that this measure is not quantitative easing (QE) or yield curve control (YCC), it is interpreted as a signal of policy concerns regarding rising financing costs against the backdrop of long-term yields reaching nearly a twenty-year high and high fiscal deficits. This has strengthened expectations for a more aggressive YCC in the future, driving Bitcoin to surge short-term, breaking through $78,000, with a weekly increase of 23%. Gold has also strengthened, while the dollar weakened, intensifying market volatility due to short covering.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a whale transferred 772,470 LINK (approximately $8.91 million) to Galaxy Digital and Cumberland for sale. Among them, 602,000 LINK ($6.94 million) were transferred to Galaxy Digital, and 170,470 LINK ($1.97 million) were transferred to Cumberland.

AI+ Prediction Market Project Fortune Protocol officially discloses the latest financing information. The project has previously completed multiple rounds of financing, including Seed and Pre-A rounds, with a total financing amount exceeding 4 million USD.It is reported that participating institutions include K24 Ventures, CGV FoF, MH Ventures, Mapleblock Capital, and others. Fortune Protocol states that this round of funding will primarily be used to promote the technological upgrades of Fortune AI Agent, the integration and expansion of prediction market liquidity, and ecological construction.With the TGE approaching, Fortune Protocol is committed to building intelligent infrastructure for the next generation of prediction markets, promoting the industry towards a more intelligent, efficient, and open direction.

UBS Global Wealth Management has raised its mid-2027 target price for the S&P 500 Index from 8,200 points to 8,400 points.

On August 21, the B.AI platform announced that Tencent's next-generation foundational model Hy3 is officially launched and is fully open for free on both Web Chat and API. As a hardcore model that adopts a fusion architecture of fast and slow thinking, Hy3 has achieved breakthrough advancements in dimensions such as agent engineering, complex code generation, long-range intent understanding, and resistance to hallucinations, specifically designed for real productivity scenarios. Starting today, all users can log in to the B.AI platform with zero barriers to freely use this top-tier model capability from Tencent, experiencing the strong empowerment that cutting-edge AI technology brings to development and creation at no cost.

The State Council Information Office held a series of themed press conferences titled "Starting Off the 14th Five-Year Plan." Officials from the Ministry of Finance introduced the role of this year's proactive fiscal policy and outlined the key focus areas for policy efforts in the second half of the year.Vice Minister of Finance Liao Min stated that since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Finance has firmly implemented a more proactive fiscal policy:This year's fiscal expenditure budget arrangement has exceeded 30 trillion yuan for the first time.The scale of new government bonds has reached 11.89 trillion yuan, the largest in history.Central government transfers to local governments have exceeded 10 trillion yuan for the fourth consecutive year, reaching 10.42 trillion yuan.In the second half of the year, fiscal policy will continue to focus on three areas for effective results: accelerating the use of funds, increasing efforts to expand domestic demand, and strengthening fiscal reform management.Regarding incremental policies, in the second half of the year, based on the macroeconomic operation situation, the Ministry of Finance will timely plan and introduce practical and effective incremental policies to provide strong support for achieving a qualitative improvement and reasonable growth in the economy.

On August 21, WEEX Exchange announced that in order to continuously promote the deflationary ecosystem construction of the platform token WEEX Token (WXT), it has completed the WXT burn for the second quarter of 2026 according to the "WXT Burn Model." The amount burned this time is 64,014,084 WXT, with a burn value of $1,096,100 (calculated at the market price on the day of the burn).WXT is the incentive token of the WEEX platform. Holding WXT allows participation in exclusive rights such as WE-Launch project airdrops and up to 70% fee rate discounts. According to previous reports, the sixth phase of WEEX's "Contract Mining" is currently ongoing, and users can receive real-time refunds of transaction fees in WXT by engaging in contract trading.

According to the case information page of Verita Global, the cryptocurrency mining pool operator Poolin Technology PTE. LTD and its affiliated entities Lonestar Taproot LLC and Lonestar Dream, Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code on July 22, 2026, in the Federal Bankruptcy Court of New Jersey, with the case presided over by Judge Eamonn J. O'Hagan, and the joint administration case number is 26-18325.In terms of important milestones, the creditors' meeting was held on August 28, the bidding deadline is September 8, and the asset sale hearing is scheduled for September 18. The debtor's legal representation is provided by Archer & Greiner, P.C., and creditors can submit proof of claim to the claims processing center located in El Segundo, California, KCC dba Verita Global by mail.

According to BeInCrypto, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra stated at a semiconductor manufacturing plant near the company's headquarters in Boise, Idaho, that memory has become a strategic infrastructure in the AI era, and the growth in AI-driven demand will permanently reset the economic logic of this cyclical industry. In terms of financial data, Micron's revenue for the third quarter reached $41.46 billion, a significant increase from $9.3 billion last year, with a gross margin rising to 84.6%, and it is expected that the gross margin for the fourth quarter will further increase to about 86%.On the supply side, the demand from data center customers is about 150% of the supply that Micron can commit to, indicating a significant gap. Mehrotra also listed autonomous vehicles, robotics, and AI consumer devices as sources of incremental demand in the future.

The Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index's negative premium has narrowed to -0.0221%, but it remains in a negative premium state. Data shows that from May 19 to August 21, this indicator has been in the negative premium range for 95 consecutive days, setting a record for the longest continuous negative premium since the indicator was launched. The previous longest record was 40 consecutive days from January 16 to February 24 of this year, which also exceeded the approximately 30 days of continuous negative premium during last year's "1011 crash."The Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index is used to measure the price difference of Bitcoin between Coinbase Pro and Binance. A continuous negative index usually indicates that Coinbase's quotes are relatively low, reflecting weak buying in the U.S. market or significant selling pressure, but it is not advisable to directly conclude that institutional funds are flowing out based solely on this indicator.

Bitwise CEO posted on the X platform that the Bitwise ETF's trading volume exceeded $300 million again today, the same as yesterday. The rankings of the top five trading amounts have slightly changed: Bitwise Bitcoin ETF BITB approximately $106 million, Bitwise XRP ETF XRP approximately $82 million, Bitwise Solana ETF BSOL approximately $45 million, Bitwise Ethereum ETF ETHW approximately $42 million, and Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF BHYP approximately $30 million.He stated that the price seems to have rekindled market interest.

According to Digital Asset, on August 20, members of the Korean National Power Party, including Yoon Tae-yong, proposed an amendment to the Specific Financial Information Act, which aims to grant the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) direct enforcement authority over unreported virtual asset service providers.According to the amendment, anyone can report illegal activities to the FIU. Upon receiving a report or discovering suspected violations, the FIU can initiate investigations and analyses, and refer the case to or notify investigative authorities. The proposal points out that while current laws impose reporting and anti-money laundering obligations on virtual asset service providers, there are no direct enforcement measures against unreported operators, posing risks of money laundering and illegal cross-border transfers, making it difficult to respond quickly relying solely on inter-agency coordination.

Trader Murphy (@Murphychen888) posted on the X platform, stating that despite multiple negative influences such as the pullback in U.S. stocks, Strategy selling BTC, and the rebound in oil prices, BTC has not shown a significant decline, which may be related to its chip structure. Data shows that over 2 million BTC have been concentrated in the trading range of $62,000 to $64,000, causing the cost for many holders to converge, resulting in a low willingness to sell in the short term.He indicated that BTC experienced nearly two months of low volatility sideways movement, and within three days, it quickly rose from $64,000 to $75,000. However, the chips around $63,000 have not significantly decreased, while the chips in the range of $68,000 to $74,000 remain relatively sparse, indicating that holders in the previously concentrated area have not taken large-scale profits. He expects that as the price continues to rise, the chips may gradually loosen and form a new chip concentration area; if a new effective support is not formed, BTC may test the support strength of the chip concentration area around $62,000 to $63,000 again.