Good morning everybody.
It’s Wednesday, August 19th, 2026.
Bitcoin is still doing basically nothing.
We’re sitting around $64,800, Bitcoin has been trapped inside the same range for roughly six weeks, and apparently Malcolm the Earthling and Paul McNeal have both decided the bottom is already in.
They’re saying up only.
I’m still skeptical.
We’ll see who’s right.
Let’s get into the news.
Ripple Raises $275 Million
Ripple raised approximately $275 million through an upsized private placement of senior unsecured notes at Ripple Prime, its non-bank prime brokerage business.
The money is intended for working capital and expansion of Ripple’s U.S. clearing, prime brokerage, and broader financial-services operations.
This is another example of Ripple continuing to build the actual financial infrastructure around its business.
The company isn’t just sitting around waiting for XRP to go up.
It’s expanding clearing.
It’s expanding prime brokerage.
It’s building financial services.
And it’s raising hundreds of millions of dollars to do it.
Metaplanet Brings Its Bitcoin Treasury Strategy to the U.S.
Metaplanet plans to contribute approximately 2,100 Bitcoin, worth around $135 million, to Nasdaq-listed Super League Enterprise as part of a deal designed to establish a U.S. arm of its Bitcoin treasury strategy.
Under the proposal, Super League would be renamed Super Planet, with Metaplanet taking a controlling stake.
So basically, Metaplanet is bringing its Bitcoin treasury strategy to America.
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about Strategy and the increasingly complicated financial engineering surrounding corporate Bitcoin treasuries.
Now we’re seeing more companies trying different versions of the same basic model.
China’s Digital Yuan Network Keeps Expanding
China has tripled the number of banks participating in its digital yuan network this year.
The network started 2026 with approximately 10 participating banks and now has around 30.
The People’s Bank of China added eight new operators this week after adding another twelve in April.
New participants include Ping An Bank, Hengfeng Bank, Bank of Shanghai, and Bank of Hangzhou. These operators provide customer-facing services including wallets, exchanges between digital yuan and traditional bank money, payments, and anti-money-laundering checks.
China clearly isn’t abandoning the CBDC experiment.
It’s expanding the infrastructure underneath it.
Whether people actually want to use a government-controlled digital currency is another question.
But the banking network necessary to distribute it continues getting larger.
The SEC Finally Proposes Reg Crypto
The SEC finally proposed its long-awaited Reg Crypto framework after canceling a scheduled meeting just days earlier.
The proposal represents the first major crypto rulemaking initiative under the current SEC leadership and would create specific pathways for crypto companies to raise money while remaining inside U.S. securities laws.
The framework would reportedly include a one-time exemption allowing up to $5 million in token issuance over four years, along with another exemption permitting offerings of up to $75 million during a 12-month period.
Companies would still face disclosure requirements, financial-statement requirements, and ongoing reporting obligations.
Good.
This is what I’ve been asking for.
Give companies rules.
Tell them what they’re allowed to do.
Tell them what disclosures they need.
Tell them how they can legally raise money.
Then enforce those rules.
That’s considerably better than spending years making companies guess whether something is legal and then suing them afterward.
South Korea Blocks Polymarket
South Korean authorities ordered access to Polymarket blocked, arguing that the prediction-market platform creates an illegal gambling environment under Korean law.
Regulators pointed to Polymarket’s winner-take-all markets, cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals, settlement mechanisms, fees, and role in creating markets.
Polymarket argued that it doesn’t provide Korean-language services, doesn’t support won payments, and operates through non-custodial transactions and smart contracts rather than directly managing customer funds.
They tried.
Basically:
“We’re decentralized. We don’t use your currency. We’re just a website and some smart contracts.”
South Korea’s response was essentially:
“Yeah, you’re still gambling.”
And they blocked it.
It’s an important argument because decentralization doesn’t necessarily eliminate local law.
You can decentralize the infrastructure.
Governments can still decide that the activity itself is illegal.
Six Bugs Lead to a Maya Protocol Exploit
Maya Protocol halted MayaChain after an attacker reportedly chained together six separate software vulnerabilities to manipulate the network’s accounting.
The attacker drained approximately $1.7 million in Bitcoin and other assets.
But the total economic damage was substantially larger.
The exploit, arbitrage activity, and resulting selloff contributed to an estimated $10.9 million decline in the value of Maya’s liquidity pools.
That’s the part people sometimes miss with hacks.
The amount directly stolen isn’t necessarily the total damage.
You also have liquidity leaving.
Tokens selling off.
Arbitrage.
Loss of confidence.
And potentially users deciding they’re never putting money back into the protocol.
Bybit Says AI Helped Recover From Its Massive Hack
Bybit says artificial intelligence helped it save approximately $700 million following last year’s enormous $1.46 billion hack.
The details are still developing, but the broader security trend is worth watching.
AI is going to be used on both sides of this fight.
Attackers will use it.
Exchanges will use it.
Wallet companies will use it.
Blockchain analytics companies will use it.
The interesting question isn’t whether AI becomes part of crypto security.
It already is.
The question is whether defensive systems can improve faster than attackers can find new ways around them.
Stablecoins May Need Better Reserves to Get Cash Treatment
The Financial Accounting Standards Board is considering a framework that would distinguish between stablecoins backed by liquid, segregated reserves with direct redemption rights and tokens dependent on secondary-market liquidity or riskier reserve assets.
The basic idea makes sense.
If a stablecoin wants to be treated like cash, it should probably behave like cash.
That means strong reserves.
Clear redemption mechanisms.
And confidence that holders can actually exchange the token for the asset supposedly backing it.
Not every token with “USD” in its name should automatically receive the same accounting treatment.
TikTok Code Reportedly Points Toward Payments
CoinDesk highlighted Bloomberg reporting suggesting TikTok code contains references to peer-to-peer payments through messaging.
The details remain early, so there’s not much more to say yet.
But the direction is interesting.
Social platforms continue moving toward payments.
Payments are moving toward stablecoins.
Stablecoins are increasingly becoming part of mainstream financial infrastructure.
If major social-media platforms begin integrating payments directly into messaging, tokenized dollars could eventually become much more relevant to ordinary consumers.
You may not even know you’re using blockchain infrastructure.
You’ll just send somebody money.
Crypto Prices
Bitcoin: $64,794, up approximately 0.9%
Ethereum: $1,935, up approximately 2%
Tether: #3
BNB: $604, up approximately 0.6%
USDC: #5
XRP: $1.00, up approximately 1.3%
Solana: $78.35, up approximately 2.8%
TRON: $0.332, roughly even
Hyperliquid: $59.20, down approximately 0.3%
Dogecoin: $0.07, up approximately 0.8%
Total Crypto Market Cap: $2.21 trillion
Fear & Greed Index: 41, Neutral
My Take
The price of Bitcoin remains the least interesting part of crypto right now.
Ripple is raising hundreds of millions of dollars to expand institutional financial services.
Metaplanet is bringing its Bitcoin treasury strategy into the U.S.
China keeps expanding its digital yuan banking network.
The SEC is finally putting actual crypto fundraising rules on paper.
And stablecoins are getting closer to being treated as legitimate financial infrastructure, provided issuers can prove the assets actually function like cash.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin is still sitting inside the same six-week range.
Malcolm says $60,000 was the bottom.
Paul says the bottom is in.
I’m still saying no.
One of us is eventually going to be right.