BlackRock spent last week moving $311 billion of money-market funds onto Ethereum. Circle lined up BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard and the DTCC to run its blockchain. Mastercard closed a $1.8 billion purchase of a stablecoin-payments firm, and one of crypto's largest market makers registered as a US broker-dealer to trade stocks. None of it needed a rally. Prices sat where they have all summer, with Bitcoin near $65,000 on the lowest ETF volumes since 2024, while the institutions that will use this market kept wiring themselves into it. The plumbing is being built faster than the price is moving.
Welcome to a new week in crypto.
↓
Soft jobs, record-quiet volumes, and a $1.1 billion ETF week
Bitcoin held near $65,200 on Monday, up about 3.7% on the week and recovered from an early-August low near $62,000, while Ether traded around $1,920. The bid followed a Friday payrolls report showing US employment fell by 23,000 against forecasts for an 80,000 gain, after which traders priced out a September rate hike and Bitcoin touched an August high above $65,300.
The move came alongside the strongest ETF week since April. US spot bitcoin and ether funds drew a combined $1.1 billion last week, with bitcoin ETFs taking $853.5 million, led by more than $693 million into BlackRock's IBIT, and ether ETFs adding $244.9 million for a fifth straight positive week. It happened on some of the thinnest volume since 2024, with bitcoin ETF turnover down 9% to $8.19 billion, and Bloomberg's Eric Balchunas tied part of the bitcoin bid to the Coldcard hack. Both categories remain in net outflows for the year.
Under the quiet prices, positioning kept building. CryptoQuant flagged large wallets accumulating, with holders of 10,000 to 100,000 ETH lifting their balances to a record 19.6 million ETH. Attention now turns to US inflation data in the days ahead and the September 15 cloture vote on the Clarity Act.
BlackRock puts $311 billion of money-market funds onchain
On August 4, BlackRock introduced Ethereum-based tokenized share classes for a set of its Institutional Cash Series money-market funds holding a combined $311 billion in assets as of June 30, built in partnership with Kinexys by JPMorgan. The rollout covers 12 tokenized share classes across the firm's ICS Euro Government Liquidity, Sterling Government Liquidity, US Treasury, Euro Liquidity, Sterling Liquidity, and US Dollar Liquidity funds, available across 15 markets from Ireland and Luxembourg to Singapore and the UK.
Kinexys sits between onchain activity and the funds' transfer-agent registers, with each token representing an underlying ICS share while the official shareholder record stays with the transfer agent. The share classes allow 24/7 peer-to-peer transfers between approved investor wallets through smart contracts while paying money-market yield, aimed at corporate treasury, digital collateral, and bank-distribution use cases. It followed BlackRock's launch a day earlier of two tokenized funds, BRSRV and BSTBL, built to sit behind stablecoin reserves.
"Tokenised money market funds allow us to bring high-quality, short-duration investment exposures into digital formats," said Hannah Winter, the firm's head of digital cash. On BlackRock's second-quarter call last month, CFO Martin Small said the firm ultimately wants investors to access tokenized Treasury funds, iShares ETFs, and private-market investments through digital wallets alongside crypto assets and stablecoins.
Circle enlists Wall Street to validate its blockchain
On August 5, Circle named 11 founding validators for its Arc blockchain, enlisting BlackRock, the DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, and Visa alongside Circle itself. Arc is a Layer 1 network that uses USDC as its native gas token, with sub-second finality and EVM compatibility, and it remains on track for a public mainnet launch on September 16. The validator model routes network security through the institutions that depend on it rather than an open set of anonymous operators, a structure Circle argues lets Arc meet the standards demanded of financial-market infrastructure.
Several of those firms are building on Arc directly. BlackRock is expected to deploy BUIDL, its US Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, on the network, while Circle is working with the DTCC to allow tokenization of DTC-custodied assets on Arc beginning in the second half of 2027. "Stablecoins and tokenized assets are inextricably linked within the future of financial market infrastructure," said Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock's global head of digital assets.
The validator announcement landed with Circle's second-quarter results. Total revenue and reserve income reached $701 million, up 7% year-over-year, with net income of $48 million and adjusted EBITDA of $143 million. USDC in circulation ended the quarter at $73.3 billion, up 19% year-over-year, on onchain transaction volume of $14.8 trillion, though the reserve return rate fell to 3.5% in the softer rate environment. Circle also secured final approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank. Institutions using USDC, CEO Jeremy Allaire said, "aren't piloting, they are expanding."
Mastercard closes its $1.8 billion bet on stablecoin payments
Mastercard completed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK on August 3, a deal it had agreed in March for up to $1.8 billion. Founded in 2021, BVNK provides the rails that let businesses send and receive payments across major blockchains, and Mastercard said it will use that technology to help financial institutions, fintechs and enterprises scale stablecoin and tokenized-asset use cases across B2B payments, payouts, settlement, and treasury flows.
The purchase builds on a steady expansion. In June, Mastercard extended its settlement capabilities to regulated stablecoins including USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD across its network, and in March it launched a crypto partner program of more than 85 companies. "In a multi-money world where fiat, stablecoins and tokenized deposits and other forms of value coexist, the next payments paradigm will be defined by how effectively each rail, network or form of money connects and works together," said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard's chief product officer.
Tokenized real-world assets tripled while the rest of DeFi shrank
Deposits of tokenized real-world assets into lending platforms and DEXs more than tripled over the past year, from $2.3 billion in the second quarter of 2025 to $7.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026, according to a report from CoinShares and Token Terminal published August 6. Over the same period, total DeFi deposits fell by roughly 15%. The growth came almost entirely from conventional financial products, led by tokenized Treasury and multi-strategy funds such as JTRSY, BlackRock's BUIDL, and sUSDS, followed by private credit and delta-neutral strategies.
The pattern held in trading as well. Overall decentralized-exchange spot volumes fell about 70%, yet trading in tokenized real-world assets climbed roughly 220%, with gold tokens including XAUT and PAXG taking a significant share. Ethereum accounted for close to 70% of RWA deposits, with Plasma and Solana gaining ground.
CoinShares framed the data as confirmation of its "Hybrid Finance" thesis. "Look at what is actually being used on-chain: Treasuries, gold, the S&P 500, semiconductor stocks. Not one of them is a crypto asset," CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti said. "Investors are not leaving traditional finance behind. They are moving traditional assets onto infrastructure that settles in seconds and does not close at night. That is convergence, not disruption."
Wintermute becomes a US broker-dealer
Wintermute registered a New York subsidiary, Wintermute USA, as a broker-dealer with the SEC and FINRA on August 6, giving one of the largest crypto market makers a path into traditional equities and commodities. The registered firm can provide liquidity to US securities exchanges and over-the-counter counterparties, trade stocks and options from its proprietary account, self-clear digital-asset securities, and act as an Authorized Participant for exchange-traded products, including those tied to digital assets.
Wintermute facilitates more than $10 billion in average daily trading volume and provides liquidity across over 60 centralized and decentralized exchanges. The firm framed the move against the tokenization boom, noting that the SEC has said moving a security onchain does not exempt it from securities law. "Digital assets and traditional finance will continue to develop in parallel, intersect in new ways, and ultimately integrate more deeply," said founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy.
Onchain venues take a record share of spot trading
The ratio of decentralized to centralized spot trading closed the month at an all-time high of 24%, up from 17% a year earlier, according to The Block's Data and Insights research. Much of the shift came from softening centralized volume: as spot trading dried up, firms including Coinbase and Gemini cut staff while traders migrated to onchain venues such as Uniswap and Aerodrome.
The report tied the move to a steady improvement in onchain execution, as aggregators built deeper liquidity and faster cross-chain routing closed most of the gap that once made centralized exchanges the default for anything beyond a simple trade. Even in a shrinking spot market, liquidity is spreading further across venues rather than consolidating, a structure that keeps execution and routing at the center of how institutions reach it.
The market-structure bill gets a September date, not a passage
Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture early on August 8 on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, setting up a procedural vote at 2:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday, September 15, the day after the chamber returns from its August recess. Invoking cloture would limit debate on the motion; it would not pass the bill. It takes 60 votes, and with Republicans holding 53 seats, the measure would need at least seven Democrats or independents.
Filing cloture did not resolve the disputes that kept the bill off the floor. Senate Democrats remain focused on ethics provisions, illicit finance, and how Senate Agriculture Committee text is folded in, while an ethics compromise from Senators Ruben Gallego and Thom Tillis, which would require President Trump to divest from crypto-related businesses, remains unsigned. Republican Josh Hawley has said he will not back the bill until it addresses deposit flight. Galaxy Research last month cut its odds of the Clarity Act becoming law in 2026 from 50% to 30%, citing the shrinking calendar before the November midterms.
The Coldcard exploit becomes the year's costliest self-custody failure
Galaxy Research estimated on August 4 that losses from the Coldcard hardware-wallet vulnerability could reach 2,055 BTC, around $130 million, once a suspected fourth wave of attacks is confirmed. The firm has identified 1,596 BTC stolen from 7,300 addresses across three confirmed waves plus 14 smaller incidents. The flaw traces to seeds generated on Coinkite's Coldcard Mk3, Mk4, Mk5, and Q firmware, and first surfaced on July 30 in what appeared to be an automated, programmatic sweep with possible LLM assistance.
About 90% of the stolen coins have not moved. Coinkite shipped emergency firmware for every affected model and said it destroyed remaining vulnerable inventory, while Galaxy has been cooperating with US federal law enforcement. The theft rippled into the rest of the market: OKX said the exploit drove record inflows to centralized exchanges, and brokerage K33 measured about 890,000 BTC moving onchain over seven days, a 2026 high.
Strategy keeps selling Bitcoin to pay its dividends
In an August 3 filing, Strategy disclosed selling 1,638 BTC for about $104.7 million between July 27 and August 2 at an average price of $63,957, reducing its holdings to roughly 842,138 BTC worth around $52.6 billion, bought at an average of $75,419. The proceeds funded distributions on preferred stock and repurchases of its STRC instrument. The company also sold about 3.01 million MSTR shares for $290.6 million over the period.
The sales run through Strategy's new Digital Credit Capital Framework, which authorized up to $5 billion in bitcoin sales to fund its reserve, dividends, interest payments, and securities repurchases. The firm posted an $8.2 billion loss in the second quarter, driven almost entirely by unrealized markdowns, and its position now carries roughly $10.9 billion in paper losses at current prices. After the Q2 call, Benchmark cut its MSTR price target to $435 from $570 while TD Cowen held at $260, with both telling clients that returning the STRC preferred to par is now management's main goal.
This material is provided for informational purposes only and is not (i) an offer, or solicitation of an offer, to invest in, or to buy or sell, any digital assets or other financial instruments, or to participate in any investment or trading strategy, (ii) intended to provide accounting, legal, or tax advice, or investment recommendations, or (iii) an official statement of Finery Markets. Finery Markets, its affiliates, and its employees make no representation or warranty, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained herein, which is based on public sources believed to be reliable but has not been independently verified. Buying, selling, and trading digital assets involves risks, including the risk of losing the entire invested amount. Recipients should consult their own advisors before making any investment decision. Any use, review, retransmission, distribution, or reproduction of this material, in whole or in part, without the express written approval of Finery Markets is strictly prohibited.
LinkedIn
Youtube
Medium
Twitter
