Welcome to this week’s crypto news recap, covering the developments that mattered most across digital assets, blockchain technology and regulation. From faster Zcash transactions and Solana’s supply changes to institutional trading plans, stablecoin partnerships and major security incidents, this edition brings the week’s biggest stories together in one place. Read on for the full picture — so, let’s get started.
Zakura released an open-source cryptography suite that can reduce the creation time for some Zcash private transactions from more than three seconds to under 200 milliseconds. The August 29 release gives wallet and integration developers access to the performance improvements without requiring a change to Zcash’s network rules.
Zakura Common’s benchmark results showed mobile proof generation running more than 14 times faster and desktop generation more than five times faster. Zakura also reported Sinsemilla hashing improvements of more than 21 times and zk-SNARK verification gains ranging from four to eight times.
The figures apply to separate operations and test environments, while the sub-200-millisecond result covers certain cases rather than every private transaction. Even with that distinction, faster proof creation directly addresses a delay that can affect wallets and mobile Zcash use.
Zakura published the code under MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses. Adoption now depends on client-side integration rather than network-wide activation. The library will also form part of the planned Zakura 1.3.0 software release.
XRP climbed nearly 40% between August 17 and August 31, rising from about $0.99 to roughly $1.38, even as total futures open interest fell 16%. Outstanding positions declined from 2.77 billion XRP to around 2.34 billion XRP, showing that the price rally coincided with a contraction in overall futures exposure.
CME moved in the opposite direction. Its XRP futures open interest increased by roughly 36%, from 284 million to about 387 million tokens. CME’s share of outstanding XRP futures exposure consequently rose from 10% in mid-August to approximately 17% by the end of the month.
CFTC positioning data through August 25 showed leveraged funds holding 892 long contracts and 3,206 short contracts. Each contract represents 50,000 XRP. That left the category approximately 116 million XRP net short, more than double the roughly 57 million-XRP net-short position recorded one week earlier.
The short positions do not necessarily represent outright bearish wagers because leveraged funds may use futures to hedge other holdings. The figures nevertheless document a clear venue shift toward CME during XRP’s advance.
Cronos returned fully online after validators restored the blockchain to a state before an exploit involving the Tectonic lending protocol. Block production resumed at 23:49:01 UTC on August 30 from block 90,896,189, the network said on August 31.
Cronos first announced on August 30 that it had identified an exploit in Tectonic and stopped the network while investigating. Tectonic warned users two minutes later not to interact with the protocol as its team examined the incident. Validators subsequently rolled the chain back before restarting block production.
On-chain researcher Weilin Li estimated that roughly $75 million in assets were affected. The alleged attacker reportedly drove the price of TONIC up by around 100 times, used the token as collateral and borrowed other assets. About $6 million reportedly reached Ethereum before Cronos halted the network.
Li supplied the $75 million estimate and alleged manipulation mechanism. For users and DeFi applications, the immediate operational consequence was the restoration of the pre-exploit chain state and the resumption of transaction processing.
Addresses linked to the sanctioned Lazarus Group moved more than $30 million through Hyperliquid’s HyperUnit service, Arkham researcher Emmett Gallic reported on August 31. The transactions formed part of a broader series of conversions and cross-chain transfers rather than a single movement of funds.
The reported route began with Bitcoin entering Hyperliquid before conversion into Ether and Solana. The funds then moved across the Tron, Solana and Ethereum networks. Transfers later reached KuCoin, LBank and Kraken, along with unidentified services on Tron.
Four Lazarus-linked outflows between July 30 and August 28 totaled more than $52 million at reported valuations. That broader amount is separate from the more than $30 million specifically routed through Hyperliquid.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT had linked the relevant wallet cluster to Lazarus in 2024 and associated it with about $61 million in stolen funds. The U.S. Treasury designated Lazarus in September 2019 as a North Korean state-sponsored malicious cyber group. The activity concerned the routing of funds through HyperUnit rather than an exploit of Hyperliquid.
Solana validators passed SGP-0002 on August 28, approving a schedule that doubles the network’s annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%. The measure received 67.001% support, clearing the required 66.67% supermajority by just 0.331 percentage points.
The approved parameter change, set out in SIMD-0550, leaves Solana’s terminal inflation rate at 1.5% but reaches it faster. The proposal estimates the network will arrive at that level in around 2.8 years, compared with 5.7 years under the previous schedule.
Participation reached approximately 60.7%. About 67% of votes supported the proposal, 25.16% opposed it and 7.84% abstained, reflecting substantial resistance despite the final approval.
SIMD-0550 projects that Solana will emit approximately 18.9 million fewer SOL over six years than it would have under the former path. Issuance will continue, but it will decline more quickly toward the unchanged terminal rate. For SOL holders and validators, the decision materially alters the pace of new supply while preserving the network’s long-term inflation endpoint.
Charles Schwab plans to add Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink to Schwab Crypto accounts in the coming months. The additions will expand the broker’s direct cryptocurrency trading lineup beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Schwab announced the planned expansion on August 27. Once the rollout goes live, clients will be able to trade SOL, AVAX and LINK through the same crypto account service. The three assets are not yet available through that offering.
Bitcoin and Ethereum access began rolling out to Schwab Crypto clients in May 2026. Schwab said the next group of assets reflects its effort to offer established cryptocurrencies aligned with client demand.
The service charges 75 basis points on the dollar value of each transaction. That fee remains the relevant trading cost as Schwab prepares to broaden its supported assets from two cryptocurrencies to five.
For Schwab clients, the planned launch would create direct access to three additional major tokens without requiring a separate crypto platform. The timetable remains limited to the coming months.
Payward, Kraken’s parent company, plans to tokenize the 100 largest London-listed equities as 1:1-backed xStocks. Initial availability is expected within weeks through Kraken and other xStocks Alliance platforms, targeting investors in more than 110 countries while excluding UK-based investors.
The companies separated that rollout from a later London Stock Exchange plan. LSEG said the exchange intends to list and support xStocks on its proposed LSE 24 venue in 2027, subject to regulatory approval. The tokens will represent existing London-listed equities rather than new listings of the underlying shares.
LSE 24 is designed as a near-continuous, Monday-to-Friday market operating from 17:00 to 07:50 London time. A 30-minute end-of-day processing pause is planned, while client testing is scheduled for the end of 2026, subject to approvals.
The partnership also includes exploration of native on-chain equity issuance through London Stock Exchange infrastructure. The first stage is offshore distribution of tokenized shares, while trading on the exchange group’s new venue remains a conditional 2027 step.
California lawmakers unanimously approved AB 2409, a bill that would restrict public officials and certain public employees from issuing memecoins. The Senate passed the measure 40-0 on August 26, and the Assembly concurred with the Senate amendments by a 78-0 vote the same day.
The legislative action sent the bill to Governor Gavin Newsom after approval in both chambers. AB 2409 entered the engrossing and enrolling stage and now awaits the governor’s action. The proposal has not yet become law.
Under the bill, public officers and specified public employees would be prohibited from issuing qualifying memecoins. Digital-asset service providers would also be barred from listing certain politician-linked memecoins for California residents when those tokens were issued on or after January 1, 2027.
The listing restriction therefore would not automatically apply to every existing token associated with a politician. It targets qualifying coins issued from the stated date if the measure completes the legislative process.
For exchanges serving California users, the bill could create a specific listing restriction tied to an issuer’s public role and the token’s issuance date. Newsom’s decision is the next required step.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed its first substantive overhaul of transfer-agent rules since the framework was created in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Released on September 1, the proposal would recognize electronic communications, blockchain-based recordkeeping and uncertificated securities in share transfers and securities offerings.
The proposed modernization would place blockchain records within the rules governing registered transfer agents, which maintain ownership records and administer securities transfers. It is broader than a digital-asset measure and also addresses operating controls.
Additional proposed requirements cover processing turnaround times, risk management, inactive securityholders, compliance procedures and restrictive legends attached to securities. The full rule change runs 421 pages and has not been adopted.
The practical significance lies in formally accounting for technologies already used in tokenized-securities infrastructure within a regulatory framework written decades before blockchain systems existed. The proposal could still change during the rulemaking process.
Interested parties may submit comments for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. That consultation period is the next step before the SEC determines whether and in what form to adopt the revisions.
Applications on Robinhood Chain generated about $2.66 million in 24-hour revenue on August 30, more than double Ethereum’s roughly $1.27 million to $1.28 million over the same period. Only Solana ranked higher among the tracked networks, with $5.07 million.
The revenue surge coincided with a record 5.52 million daily transactions and approximately $875 million in decentralized-exchange volume. GMGN, Pons and Uniswap supplied around 88% of the network’s app revenue, making the result highly concentrated among three applications.
Uniswap recorded about $432 million through its newest version and another $357 million through the previous one. Pons, which lets users create and trade tokens from a wallet, hosted roughly 22,600 token launches in one day, up more than 40% from the preceding day.
The figures refer to revenue earned by applications, not income collected by Robinhood itself. They also show memecoin activity driving the network’s early usage, despite tokenized stocks serving as its flagship use case when the Ethereum-compatible chain launched on July 1, 2026. Memecoin trading supplied the immediate transaction and revenue momentum.
XRP briefly became the most-traded cryptocurrency by value on South Korea’s two largest exchanges, overtaking Bitcoin on both Upbit and Bithumb. The move highlighted a concentrated burst of activity in a market where retail trading can create local price and volume differences.
XRP trading volume on one exchange reportedly jumped about 273% in one day to approximately $1.84 billion. The amount represents the value of executed trades, not evidence that Korean investors own more XRP than Bitcoin.
Dr. Kamilah Stevenson also said some buying may have followed sales of South Korean semiconductor shares. That claim described a possible rotation of trading capital rather than a measured total. High turnover can reflect rapid buying and selling as well as longer-term accumulation.
The episode arrived alongside several Ripple-related initiatives in Korea. Stevenson cited a custody and wallet-infrastructure arrangement involving K Bank, a tokenized government-bond trial involving Kyobo Life Insurance and a planned Ripple Payments deployment for cross-border remittances by Shinbuk Bank.
The clearest immediate result was XRP’s temporary lead over Bitcoin by trading value on Upbit and Bithumb, supported by a sharp one-day increase in turnover.
Dunamu, the operator of South Korea’s Upbit exchange, and Visa signed a strategic partnership to explore stablecoin payments, cross-border remittances and financial services powered by artificial intelligence. The companies plan to combine Dunamu’s digital-asset infrastructure with Visa’s global payments network.
The partnership’s initial work will examine stablecoin-based payment, remittance and settlement services. Projects would proceed in stages and remain subject to local regulation, stability requirements, transparency standards and interoperability needs.
The two firms will also assess potential business models involving Open USD, or OUSD, a dollar-backed stablecoin initiative developed under the Open Standard. Visa is one of more than 140 global partners in that initiative. OUSD has not launched, and the agreement does not commit Dunamu to using it.
Another area of work is “agentic commerce,” where AI agents could search for products or services and complete purchases and payments for users.
Dunamu CEO Oh Kyung-seok said the collaboration aims to connect digital assets with traditional financial infrastructure as stablecoins, tokenization and AI reshape payments. The effort remains exploratory rather than a product launch.
JPMorgan Chase is considering whether to issue a stablecoin alongside its existing JPM Coin tokenized-deposit product. A bank spokesperson said JPMorgan has no current launch plan but would assess its options as customer demand and the regulatory environment develop.
The potential move comes as more than a dozen institutions, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Santander, advance a separate global stablecoin venture for corporate clients. That project is expected to begin with a dollar-denominated token before expanding to the euro and other G7 currencies.
Banks have traditionally favored tokenized deposits linked to bank accounts. Their stance is changing as Visa, BlackRock, Google and DoorDash enter a stablecoin market dominated by Tether and Circle.
Around two-thirds of U.S. bank executives surveyed in July said stablecoin rewards could cost banks deposits. JPMorgan Global Research has projected the market could reach $500 billion to $750 billion in the coming years.
At the infrastructure level, 39 U.S. state banking associations have formed the BankChain Alliance. The group represents hundreds of institutions and targets a 2027 launch for bank-owned infrastructure supporting stablecoins, tokenized deposits and programmable payments.
Strategy CEO Phong Le defended the company’s decision to sell 7,000 BTC near $60,000 and later resume purchases around $80,000. He said both transactions reflected capital-management needs rather than an effort to predict Bitcoin’s price cycle.
Le said the sale represented less than 1% of Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings and supplied funds for preferred dividends. Over roughly two months, Strategy reduced net debt from $7 billion to zero while building U.S. dollar reserves to $7 billion. Its cash reserves currently stand at $6.7 billion.
After strengthening the balance sheet, the company restarted Bitcoin purchases near $80,000. Le said capital raising, including share sales conducted at a premium, enabled the renewed accumulation. He added that Strategy may continue buying at $90,000, $100,000 or even $130,000 if conditions remain favorable.
Le also addressed Strategy’s dispute with MSCI over a proposal that could exclude companies holding substantial non-operating assets from global indexes. He and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor have formally opposed the proposal, arguing that accounting rules classify Bitcoin gains and losses as operating income. Strategy is participating in MSCI’s feedback process.
El Salvador’s national Bitcoin holdings surpassed $600 million after its latest daily purchase lifted the reserve to 7,762.37 BTC. The stockpile was valued at $602.84 million on September 2, placing the country fifth among national Bitcoin holders.
The government has continued buying one BTC per day throughout 2026 under President Nayib Bukele. It also acquired more than 1,000 BTC worth $98 million in a single day during a market decline in November 2025. The overall reserve carried an unrealized gain of $167.82 million.
El Salvador became the first country to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021. Bukele acknowledged in 2024 that adoption had not produced the results he had hoped for.
An International Monetary Fund funding agreement worth $1.4 billion required the country to halt public-sector Bitcoin purchases. El Salvador amended its Bitcoin law and made acceptance voluntary instead of mandatory, but the daily accumulation policy continued.
Bitcoin traded at $77,482.98, down 1.76% over 24 hours, when the reserve figures were reported. At that price, continued purchases added to a national holding already worth more than $602 million.
Ethereum rose 32.5% in August, recording its strongest monthly performance since July 2025 as U.S. spot Ether exchange-traded funds attracted $1.85 billion in net inflows. ETH traded around $2,463 on September 2 after gaining 1.79% over the preceding 24 hours.
The ETF total was the category’s largest monthly inflow in more than a year. Funds recorded 11 consecutive inflow sessions and only four days of net outflows during August.
Large wallets holding between 10,000 and 100,000 ETH accumulated 430,000 ETH during the month, with most purchases occurring late in August. Staking contracts received another 1.4 million ETH, their biggest monthly increase since February 2024. BitMine separately bought 53,501 ETH during the final week, lifting its reserves to around 5.9 million ETH.
ETH repeatedly failed to clear resistance around $2,550. Open interest increased to about 4.973 million as leveraged long positions accumulated. The cited market levels place support between $2,250 and $2,300, with the next resistance zone at $2,650 to $2,700 if ETH closes decisively above $2,550.
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