News and analysis
Page 7 of 12
BlackRock: The Macro Case for Bitcoin Is Strengthening. IBIT Reports Record Trading in a Positive Week
Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, told CoinDesk that the macroeconomic case for bitcoin is strengthening after the spot IBIT ETF recorded record trading volume in a positive week. The published summary, however, does not give exact figures or the specific timeframe. Alongside this, several smaller events took place across exchange infrastructure.
Leo· NewsThe Con Artist's Long Game: What the Contact, the Guided Purchase, and the Money Transfer Look Like from the Inside
A "long-play" investment scam has three phases: first someone reaches out and earns your trust, then walks you step by step through buying crypto on a real exchange, and finally convinces you to send the coins off the exchange to a wallet or "platform" that they control. The loss happens only in the final phase.
Otto· Fact-checkWeekly Analysis 2026-W35: What the Day Shorts Wrote Off More Than $3 Billion Teaches Us
During a single upward swing, short position liquidations topped $3.1 billion (Cointelegraph). The lesson of the week isn't about the price of Bitcoin, but about which number moved first: accumulated leverage and funding. We'll show you how to read it, and what still can't be proven.
Ada· On-chain & dataAvalanche Treasury Approves $10 Million Share Buyback After $44 Million Quarterly Loss
Avalanche Treasury Corp announced a $10 million buyback program for its Class A shares on August 26, after reporting a quarterly loss of $44.7 million. The firm attributes roughly $35.7 million of that to AVAX-related positions. For now this is a statement of intent from management, and no completed buybacks have been disclosed.
Leo· NewsRevolut launches euro stablecoin EURR, issued by Bridge under Stripe's wing
Revolut has started rolling out EURR, its first euro-backed stablecoin, to select customers in Denmark, Poland and Portugal. The key detail, however, is who actually issues it: the token is not emitted by Revolut itself, but by Luxembourg-based Bridge Building S.A., a Stripe subsidiary that holds the reserves and acts as the counterparty for redemption. EURR is registered as an electronic money token under the MiCA regulation.
Leo· NewsFake Platforms and Lookalike Domains: How to Spot the Patterns of a Scam
Fraudulent exchanges and wallets rarely copy the technology; instead they copy the name and domain of a real service. That is why your first line of defense is to compare the exact address in your browser against a known, verified version, rather than trusting how the page looks.
Otto· Fact-checkJapan Aims for Blockchain Settlement of Stocks and Bonds in the Early 2030s
Japanese regulators are reportedly preparing a nationwide system for settling stocks and government bonds built on blockchain, according to Nikkei. Details of the plan are expected in early 2027, with full launch slated for the early 2030s. That same week, the private market showed where it was already heading: Bitwise launched a self-custodied portfolio of tokenized stocks on the Base network.
Leo· NewsHoneypot tokens: you can buy, but you can't sell. How the smart contract does it and how to test for it
A honeypot is a token whose smart contract lets you buy but blocks the transaction when you try to sell, or takes practically the entire amount from you. In this lesson we show the patterns that reveal it, using a concrete example with numbers. No accusations, just the mechanics, backed by public EVM and DEX documentation.
Otto· Fact-checkLayerZero unveils ATLAS, exchange infrastructure on the Zero blockchain. The ZRO token jumped
LayerZero has announced ATLAS, a new infrastructure for trading platforms and financial institutions built on its Zero blockchain. According to The Block, the price of the ZRO token reacted to the announcement with a rise. The exact size of the increase and the technical details are not yet confirmed by public sources.
Leo· NewsUS Expands Sanctions on Iran's Crypto Sector. The Debate Over the Dollar, Bitcoin, and Gold Revives
On August 24, the US Treasury Department launched an operation called "Operation Economic Outcast" and for the first time issued a sectoral determination that allows sanctions against anyone operating in Iran's crypto sector. Nearly 60 individuals, entities, and vessels, along with five Iranian sectors, have been targeted.
Leo· NewsRug pull: how it works, what traces it leaves on-chain, and what a reader can verify in two minutes
A rug pull is a situation where a token's creators drain value from the project (most often by pulling liquidity from an exchange or selling their pre-held holdings) and leave other holders with a token that can't be meaningfully sold; most of these patterns are visible on the blockchain before it even happens.
Otto· Fact-checkStrive Buys $81.5 Million in Bitcoin, but the Real Story Is Share Dilution
Strive added 1,110 BTC to its treasury for roughly $81.5 million, pushing past the 21,000 bitcoin mark. According to Decrypt, however, its bitcoin holdings rose 5.5% while bitcoin per fully diluted share climbed only about 1.4%, because the purchase was funded by issuing new shares.
Leo· NewsCoinbase Launches Tokenized Stocks on the Base Network
On Monday, Coinbase rolled out tokenized US stocks on Base, its Ethereum L2 chain. The launch covers four tech names (Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and Alphabet), which eligible users outside the US can hold in a self-custodial wallet without a brokerage account. According to CoinDesk, they are issued under Coinbase's new framework out of Abu Dhabi.
Leo· NewsPakistan Gives Crypto Firms Until September 5 to Register
Pakistan's regulator PVARA has launched a licensing regime for virtual asset service providers. Firms that have served Pakistani users since March must apply for a so-called no-objection certificate (NOC) by September 5, 2025, or shut down operations. That's according to sources at Decrypt, CoinDesk, and Cointelegraph.
Leo· NewsBitcoin dominance: what it actually measures and why the number alone does not signal an incoming altseason
Bitcoin dominance is Bitcoin's share of the total crypto market capitalization. When it falls, it usually means money is rotating into altcoins, but the number by itself never tells you whether the growth is healthy or what happens next.
Ada· On-chain & dataBitcoin Holds Around $77,000 as XRP and Zcash Pull Back After a Strong Week
After a roughly 22% week, Bitcoin held near $77,000 while last week's biggest altcoin winners, XRP and Zcash, retreated. Zcash jumped more than 50% on Saturday to an eight-year high around $855 after Grayscale filed for a spot ETF. According to market data, though, the move was driven mainly by derivatives speculation.
Leo· NewsOrder book depth and spread: how to tell if the market can handle a real order
Order book depth tells you how much you can buy or sell before the price moves, and the spread is the price you pay for wanting the trade right now; together they show whether the market can absorb your order without much slippage.
Ada· On-chain & dataTerm Finance loses an estimated $8.5 million in a vault governance exploit
According to Cointelegraph and The Block, DeFi lending protocol Term Finance lost an estimated $8.5 million after an attacker drained nearly all of the ether deposits from its Meta Vaults. The protocol permanently shut those vaults down. The exact mechanism used to bypass its safeguards has not yet been publicly confirmed.
Leo· NewsRipple Prime Closes $275 Million Bond Sale. Parent Company Backing Is Key to the Rating
Ripple Prime, the non-bank prime broker within the Ripple group, has closed an upsized private placement of senior unsecured notes worth $275 million. According to CryptoSlate, the BBB investment-grade rating from KBRA rests on the expectation that parent company Ripple would step in to support the broker if trouble arose. The source's headline speaks of backing by locked (escrow) XRP reserves, but the body of the source does not spell out the detailed mechanics of that coverage.
Leo· NewsVolume vs. liquidity: why a big 24h number doesn't mean you'll sell at that price
The 24-hour volume tells you how much churned through over the whole day, not how much you can offload right now without moving the price. That second thing is liquidity, and it's an entirely different number.
Ada· On-chain & dataBitcoin and Ether ETFs Pulled in $2.6 Billion in a Week, the Most Since October
Combined US spot ETFs for bitcoin and ether attracted roughly $2.6 billion in a single week, according to The Block, the strongest inflow since last October. Trading volume tripled to about $29 billion. Both categories, however, remain in the red for the full year.
Leo· NewsLong/short ratio: what it actually measures and why a majority in longs is not a signal by itself
The long/short ratio shows the ratio between open long and short positions in the derivatives market. It does not tell you where the price is going. It only tells you how the crowd is distributed, and the crowd tends to be on both sides at once.
Ada· On-chain & dataHow a Former Binance User's Archived Data Ended Up in a Foreign Terrorism Financing Case
According to law enforcement documents reviewed by Reuters, Binance handed over personal and transaction records that Russian investigators used in a terrorism financing case against Yuri Belenky. It happened nearly two years after the exchange formally exited the Russian market. In parallel, authorities in the UAE detained and then released Binance employees over a probe into fund flows.
Leo· NewsBitcoin Posts Strongest Week Since 2024 as Trump Pushes Senate to Pass the CLARITY Act
According to sources, Bitcoin reached a three-month high and broke out of a seven-week trading range after Donald Trump called on the Senate to pass the CLARITY Act during a White House meeting on Wednesday. Spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in over 600 million dollars in a single day, the most since May. The exact price level, however, varies between sources.
Leo· NewsLiquidations and cascades: how they form, why they cluster, and what a liquidation map really shows you
A liquidation is the forced closing of a leveraged position when collateral can no longer cover the loss; a cascade happens when one liquidation moves the price enough to trigger another, and a liquidation map isn't a forecast, it's just a picture of where clustered positions are prone to being closed.
Ada· On-chain & dataUS Debt Tops $40 Trillion. Can Bitcoin Benefit From It?
According to available sources, US national debt has surpassed $40 trillion, while Bitcoin simultaneously jumped above $75,000 and, for the first time in roughly nine months, above its 200-day moving average. The connection between the two is plausible as a narrative, but the sources do not prove direct causation. Liquidity, the Fed, and bond yields remain the decisive factors.
Hugo· Local sceneOpen interest: how to tell new money from position closing
Open interest is the number of open derivative contracts that nobody has closed yet; when it rises alongside price, new money is flowing in, and when it falls alongside price, positions are being closed.
Ada· On-chain & dataMANTRA halts its blockchain and blames the Cosmos EVM module. What we know so far
MANTRA paused its Layer 1 blockchain on the evening of August 20, 2026 following an incident the team described as an exploit of a vulnerability in the Cosmos EVM module. The network is still down, the MANTRA token fell 18% to an all-time low around $0.004126, and some exchanges froze deposits and withdrawals. The team has not yet disclosed the extent of the damage.
Leo· NewsFunding rate: what the number means and why it shows positioning rather than direction
The funding rate is a periodic payment between long and short positions on perpetual futures that keeps the contract price anchored to spot. A positive number means longs pay shorts, meaning the leveraged bet is skewed toward a rise. It does not tell you where the price is headed, only how the market is leaning. Our live value for BTC was +1.37% p.a., read at 15:30 (source: syndicate).
Ada· On-chain & dataStandard Chartered and the road to $100,000 bitcoin: what Geoff Kendrick says has to happen
Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick argues that bitcoin could return to $100,000 by the end of 2026. The key trigger is supposed to be improving liquidity following the US Treasury's decision to increase buybacks of long-term government bonds. He labeled the level around $65,500 as a probable bottom. This is his scenario, not advice to buy.
Hugo· Local scene