The Coldcard vulnerability losses are still expanding, affecting about 4,500 addresses with a total close to $89 million. But the most noteworthy issue is not the numbers, but that the problem lies in the moment the wallet generates the mnemonic. Many stolen wallets were never connected to the internet, and the devices were not taken. The old Coldcard firmware had insufficient randomness when generating seeds; some Mk3 firmware versions may have only about 40 bits of entropy left, while some older versions of other models have about 72 bits, whereas the target should be at least 128 bits. Attackers only need to know the pattern of seed generation in the old firmware, repeatedly calculate possible seeds and derive addresses, and when they find one with a balance, they directly obtain the private key. Therefore, upgrading the firmware does not save old wallets. The official fix released on July 31 only addresses new seeds going forward; the private key space was fixed at the moment the old mnemonic was created, and upgrading will not increase randomness. Many people understand cold wallet security as the private key not being online, which is correct, but that only solves how to store the key after generation, not how the private key is generated. If the random number generation phase is flawed, then even offline storage is just safeguarding a key that is easy to guess. All these on-chain transactions are legitimate; the blockchain cannot verify whether the key was computed. Not your keys not your coins addresses exchange risks; this time the warning is that risks do not disappear after self-custody, they just become trusting that the entire process has no vulnerabilities. How those 24 words are generated is as important as how they are protected. #Coldcard旧固件漏洞损失扩大

Last night, the nonfarm payrolls were much weaker than expected, with July employment decreasing by 23,000 instead of the anticipated increase of 80,000, and the previous two months were also revised downward. The probability of a rate hike in September dropped from 55% to 46%, US stocks rose, gold surged, but BTC remained stagnant around $65,000. The market did not interpret the nonfarm data as a signal of easing because the US is facing a combination of cooling employment and persistent inflation; June CPI was still at 3.5%, and PCE at 3.7%. Rate hikes can suppress inflation, but employment has turned negative; not hiking risks inflation rising again, so both options are difficult. The details were also weak: the unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, but 264,000 people left the labor force, and average hourly earnings rose only 0.1% month-over-month. Weak employment is not necessarily positive for BTC; it depends on whether inflation is falling simultaneously. The environment constrained on both fronts is the most challenging. Therefore, the CPI on August 12 is more critical than the nonfarm data. Last month, gasoline prices rose 26.7% year-over-year; how much energy impact remains will directly determine the direction in September. If CPI cools, BTC may have room to catch up instead of following gold's rise; if CPI rises, rate hike expectations will be pulled back. What the market is waiting for is not just an employment report, but whether the US will move toward easing after inflation cools, or remain stuck in a deadlock of weakening employment but still high inflation. #非农意外转负，CPI成加息关键

The CLARITY Act vote has been delayed again. The Senate is in recess in August, missing the original voting window, so the actual vote is pushed to September. The bill has actually progressed quite far, having passed the House 294 to 134 and advanced through the Senate Banking Committee 15 to 9, but now it’s stuck on the most difficult parts. The latest version is 616 pages long, with the biggest controversy around the ethics provisions, which restrict the president, members of Congress, and other senior officials from profiting from digital assets during their terms, but includes an expiration date of January 20, 2029. Supporters fear conflicts of interest, while opponents think the restrictions are insufficient and the expiration too soon. Stablecoins are also hard to negotiate; banks worry about losing deposits to yield, while the crypto industry fears restrictions will stifle innovation. The Senate needs 60 votes to advance, and any breakdown on ethics, stablecoins, or DeFi could cause failure. Returning in September means racing against the midterm elections, so time is tight. The impact on BTC is actually limited, as its position is already clear. The real changes affect gray-area tokens, exchanges, and DeFi participants. The bill’s enactment will bring a comprehensive federal digital asset framework, which is much more important for altcoins and domestic companies. The delay doesn’t equal bad news; reaching an agreement in September would have a far greater positive impact than the policy itself. Continued delays just mean more waiting. #CLARITY投票或延至9月，伦理分歧未解

#Western Union Stablecoin Card Launches, Visa Payment Scenarios Advance Again The real challenge for stablecoins to enter everyday payments has never been whether on-chain transfers are fast enough. USDT and USDC have long been available 24/7 with instant or near-instant transfers in minutes or even seconds. The real difficulty comes after the money arrives in the wallet—what does the average person do next? To buy something, they usually have to first sell the stablecoin, convert it to local fiat currency, withdraw it to a bank, and then use a bank card to pay. The on-chain part is fast, but the last mile still loops back to the traditional financial system. Western Union’s new Stablecard solves exactly this step. This card is based on Western Union’s own USD stablecoin USDPT and connects to the Visa payment network. After receiving USDPT, users can keep the dollar value in their wallet and pay directly by swiping the Visa card without manually converting stablecoins to a bank account each time. The initial rollout covers 37 markets, with about 175 million merchant points accepting Visa payments, and Western Union plans to expand further. These numbers together make this crypto card far more significant. Western Union itself has over 100 million customers, operates in more than 200 countries and regions, and has traditionally excelled in cross-border remittances and a vast offline network. Now USDPT brings on-chain dollars into the mix. USDPT is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, and runs on Solana. Western Union also announced the Digital Asset Network, connecting over 360,000 cash pickup points worldwide through this network. This changes the money flow path. The sender can still use traditional remittance, but the receiver can get USDPT. If they want to hold dollars, they keep it in the wallet; if they want to spend it directly, they swipe the Visa card; if they need cash, they can use Western Union’s existing offline network to exchange. Here, stablecoins are no longer just intermediate assets on exchanges but start to connect remittance, holding, spending, and cash withdrawal simultaneously. This is particularly interesting for Solana. Past discussions about a chain’s value often focus on TPS, fees, DEX volume, and MEME activity, but payment applications look at a different set of metrics: how much real money flows daily, how many users settle payments, whether funds need to flow 24/7, and if transactions can sustain. Western Union issuing USDPT on Solana effectively brings a portion of real-world cross-border payment demand directly onto this chain. Its relationship with Visa is also noteworthy. Visa has been promoting stablecoin settlement for years, already using USDC for some settlements on Solana and other networks. Now Stablecard puts stablecoins directly into consumers’ hands. Previously, Visa used stablecoins for backend settlement, invisible to ordinary consumers; now users hold stablecoins but can still spend like with a regular bank card. These two paths are converging. The chain handles asset movement and settlement, Visa continues to manage the global merchant acceptance network, and users don’t even need to know which chain processes their payment. For stablecoins, this model is likely more practical than requiring every merchant to integrate wallets and accept USDC or USDPT themselves. It’s very difficult to have hundreds of millions of merchants overhaul their payment systems, but integrating stablecoins into the existing Visa network lowers the barrier significantly. Western Union is not starting from scratch. It already processes massive cross-border funds annually; now it’s just moving part of the settlement layer on-chain and reconnecting stablecoins to its existing customers, agents, and cash network. Therefore, the immediate transaction volume Stablecard brings to SOL is less important than whether this model can be replicated. If more banks, remittance companies, and fintech platforms adopt similar structures—settling with stablecoins in the backend while continuing to accept Visa, Mastercard, and local payment networks in the frontend—stablecoin adoption might never happen by everyone starting to pay with crypto wallets. Instead, it could quietly embed itself into existing payment products. Users still swipe the familiar card, merchants receive normal settlements, but the layer responsible for cross-border fund movement gradually shifts to on-chain dollars.

#Polymarket洽谈10亿美元融资, with a valuation exceeding $20 billion Polymarket is preparing to raise funds again. This round of negotiations is quite significant, with market reports around $1 billion, and the target valuation aiming directly at over $20 billion. Looking at the timeline makes it clearer. Last October, its valuation was only about $9 billion; in April this year, it completed a round of financing of about $1 billion, pushing it up to around $15 billion. It's only been a few months, and if the new round goes through, the valuation will jump even higher. In less than a year, it jumped from $9 billion to $20 billion—more than doubling. Why is capital willing to give money like this? Simply put, it turns expectations that were only at the discussion level into tradable prices. Whether BTC will reach 100,000 by year-end, whether the Fed will raise interest rates next time, when a certain bill will pass—these views used to belong only to social platforms can now be turned into a probability of real money participating. Currently, mainstream coins haven't formed a clear major trend; BTC is still grinding around $64,000, ETH is around $1,900, and SOL has been in the $70 range. But the market hasn't lost its trading demand; people have simply swapped their trading partners for something else, considering the probability of something happening in the future. Polymarket happened to turn this demand into a business, and it keeps growing. More importantly, it no longer relies solely on financing to tell its story. Information disclosed this year shows its annualized revenue has exceeded $1 billion, roughly 20 times the current valuation of 20 billion yuan currently under negotiation. For a platform still rapidly expanding, with users and trading categories not yet fully established, capital is clearly betting on predicting the market will become a long-term financial category. This is directly related to BTC. BTC has always been one of the world's longest-traded and most liquid crypto assets, so naturally, there are many prediction markets around it. Besides spot, perpetual, and options, there's now another layer of event contracts. Interestingly, the probabilities calculated by predicting market prices and traditional derivatives do not always match. This year, a study compared several BTC markets that could match Polymarket and Binance and found that there is an average price difference of about 6.3 percentage points between their implied probabilities, and this difference does not disappear immediately. This indicates that in the prediction market, besides professional derivatives funds, there is also a large amount of money flowing in based on news, sentiment, and personal judgment. ETH and SOL are affected slightly differently. Polymarket itself hasn't added much direct value to ETH or SOL just because its valuation has risen; it mainly operates within the Polygon system, settles with USDC, and hasn't even issued its own token. But precisely this is the most convincing point: on-chain applications don't necessarily have to issue tokens to achieve valuations of tens or hundreds of billions or tens of billions of dollars. As long as users are truly willing to come, trading volume can continue, and the platform can generate revenue, it can still grow into a big business. This is a very realistic reference for smart contract platforms like ETH and SOL. In the past, the market always compared public chains with metrics like TPS, gas fees, and TVL, but what truly determines a chain's value is whether it can produce products users want to use every day. The prediction market is currently the fastest-moving type. And competition is already fierce. Polymarket's main competitor Kalshi is also seeing its valuation soar, and together it's already a significant figure. It's hard to treat the entire prediction market as just a small toy on the edge of crypto. So the most interesting thing about this round of financing isn't whether the final negotiations will reach 19 billion, 20 billion, or even higher. What's truly worth noting is that the crypto market is gradually expanding from trading BTC, ETH, and SOL to events that could affect these assets on exchanges. Coin price is one market, but probability is becoming another. In the future, when judging market sentiment, you'll likely look not just at candlesticks and capital flows, but also at a real-time probability table.

#伊朗阿曼通航协议遇阻, oil price risks are heating up again BTC has been hovering around $65,000 these past two days, ETH has climbed back above $1,900, and SOL is also around $74. But one factor shouldn't be just international news: can the Strait of Hormuz truly return to normal navigation? Iran and Oman are pushing a new navigation plan, and a few days ago, Brent crude oil was pushed down from its high level due to progress in negotiations. But the problem is that several core conditions in the talks have yet to be truly resolved. Iran wants to charge ships passing through the strait a fee of 5% to 7% of the value of their goods, Oman's proposal is about 3%, while the US demands no charges at all. It may seem like a few percentage points difference, but in practice, implementation is much more complicated. Because relevant Iranian institutions are still subject to US sanctions, once shipowners pay fees, not only do costs increase, but they may also face issues like sanctions and insurance lapses. Because of this, even though there are reports of agreements close to implementation, shipping companies have not returned on a large scale. The data says the best thing. From Monday to Thursday this week, only 33 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz, 50 in the same period last week, and just 4 ships passed through on Thursday. Before the conflict, the normal weekly passage through this strait was about 130 to 140 ships. In other words, the actual restored shipping volume is still far from normal levels. This is also why, although oil prices have retreated from previous highs, the risks have not completely disappeared. Brent crude oil remains near $82 today, having previously surged back above $83. What does this have to do with BTC? The most direct layer is actually inflation. If Hormuz continues to be blocked and energy prices rise again, it will be difficult for U.S. inflation to come down smoothly. Rising oil prices will eventually pass on to transportation, manufacturing, aviation, logistics, and consumer prices, pushing market expectations for Fed rate cuts or halting tightening accordingly. Currently, BTC, ETH, and SOL are all in a phase that is heavily liquidated. BTC is around $64,700 today, with little change in 24 hours, and the entire CoinDesk 20 index fell about 0.2% over the same period. On the surface, BTC seems quite resilient, but the derivatives market has become more cautious. The most active BTC options trades in the past 24 hours have been at $60,000 and $62,000 puts, while ETH's most popular call is actually at $2,000. This difference is quite interesting. BTC now bears more of the market's defensive and institutional funding, so even though oil prices, geopolitical risks, and Treasury yields are all weighing it down, the price hasn't clearly fallen below it for now. ETH is different. ETH is now around $1,930, just a few percentage points away from $2,000. If oil prices continue to fall and inflationary pressures ease, risk appetite returns. A breakthrough above $2,000 could easily signal the market to re-invest in high-beta assets. SOL is more sensitive. SOL is now around $74, which is already more volatile than BTC. Once the market enters risk-on, funds usually gradually spread from BTC to assets like ETH and SOL, but if crude oil surges rapidly again, US Treasury yields follow, and SOL often feels pressure before BTC when funds contract. So recently, BTC, ETH, and SOL seem to be trading sideways, but behind the scenes, they're waiting for several variables to give each other an answer. On one hand, employment has started to weaken, and the market hopes the Fed won't continue tightening; on the other hand, the situation in the Middle East and oil prices could push inflation up again. Right now, the two directions are actually moving in opposite directions. There's another detail worth noting. Gold has risen to around $4,300 today, rising about 1.5% in a single day, indicating that traditional funds still prefer gold as a safe haven when facing geopolitical uncertainty. BTC hasn't surged in sync so far, indicating the market hasn't yet traded it entirely according to gold's logic. But BTC hasn't dropped below $60,000 due to oil prices and war risks. This has created a rather special situation now: gold is responsible for safe havens, BTC has someone to take over, while ETH and SOL are waiting for risk appetite to determine direction. So what's more to watch next is the actual traffic volume in the Strait of Hormuz, rather than just seeing which side announces progress in negotiations. If weekly traffic gradually recovers from dozens to over 100, war risk premiums continue to exit oil prices, energy inflation pressures ease, and BTC, ETH, and SOL will all feel more comfortable. Conversely, if negotiations continue to stall on fees, sanctions, and insurance, shipping volumes fail to recover and oil prices break through again, then the market will trade more than just Middle East risk. It will revert to inflation risk, interest rate risk, and ultimately pass on to the valuations of BTC, ETH, and SOL. BTC around $65,000 now appears calm, but the oil price line may be more worth watching than the one or two small bearish candlesticks on the candlestick.

#Federal Reserve Hawkish Signals Heat Up, Can Weak Employment Outweigh Inflation? In the past two days, U.S. employment data has clearly cooled down, but BTC, ETH, and SOL have not surged upward simply based on the old logic of "poor employment equals rate cuts." The issue this time is that the Federal Reserve is not facing a decision about whether to cut rates, but rather whether it needs to continue raising rates given that inflation still cannot be suppressed. Let's first look at employment. U.S. July ADP private employment increased by only 44,000, significantly below market expectations, and June data was revised down to 95,000. Normally, after such data is released, the market should lower rate hike expectations, which would be positive for liquidity-sensitive assets like BTC. However, the signals the Fed is currently sending are not that simple. At the end of July's FOMC meeting, rates were kept at 3.50% to 3.75%, but 3 of the 12 voting members directly called for a 25 basis point hike. Subsequently, St. Louis Fed President Mouselm publicly stated that the last meeting should have raised rates, and that the earlier, smaller, and gradual hikes might result in lower costs. This is one of the reasons why mainstream coins have been moving somewhat awkwardly recently. BTC is currently around $64,300, with little movement over the week. From August 3 to 5, about $626 million flowed into U.S. spot BTC funds, which is not a small amount, yet BTC still hasn't broken through the $66,000 level. There are buyers, but the price isn't moving, which is worth noting. It indicates that there is indeed ETF money supporting BTC at the lower levels, but there are also concerns weighing on rates, inflation, and risk asset valuations. Funds are willing to buy around $63,000 to $64,000 but are not yet willing to chase a rally betting on the next round of liquidity easing. ETH and SOL's reactions are even more pronounced. ETH is currently around $1,897, slightly down over the week, and SOL is near $73, down more than 1% on the day and nearly 2% over the week. BTC at least has continuous support from spot ETF funds, while ETH and SOL rely more on the overall crypto market's risk appetite. When the market re-prices "high rates staying longer," funds tend to first shrink altcoins and high Beta assets, with BTC being affected last. Therefore, what will truly determine the direction of mainstream coins next is likely not a single employment report, but the combination of employment and inflation and whether the Fed can maintain its hawkish stance. The July CPI to be released next week is crucial, with the market currently expecting a 3.4% year-over-year increase and core CPI up 2.5% year-over-year. If employment continues to weaken and CPI also shows clear cooling, the Fed's rationale for rate hikes will be weakened. For the crypto market, this combination is truly comfortable: the economy is not strong enough to force the Fed to tighten, and inflation is not high enough to require further hikes. At that time, the repeated support for BTC around $63,000 to $64,000 has a better chance of turning into upward momentum. But if employment weakens while CPI remains above expectations, the situation becomes more complicated. This means the economy is cooling but inflation is not coming down accordingly. The Fed will find it difficult to ease while needing to consider the economy and employment. The market fears this kind of in-between state the most. BTC might still hold some losses thanks to ETF funds, but ETH and SOL usually face more direct pressure. Currently, the market pricing for a September rate hike is close to 60%. So when looking at BTC, ETH, and SOL, focusing only on employment data is insufficient. More important is to observe the sequence: can weak employment first lower rate hike expectations, and then can CPI confirm that inflation is truly cooling? If both happen, after BTC breaks through $66,000, ETH and SOL will more easily follow to revive risk appetite. Conversely, if next week's CPI again exceeds expectations, the recent easing hopes brought by employment data may quickly be withdrawn. What truly determines the next phase for mainstream coins this time is not who calls for rate cuts first, but whether the pace of employment cooling can ultimately outpace inflation.

#Circle财报后押注Arc, can USDC experience new growth? The most interesting thing about Circle's Q2 report isn't how much revenue increased, but rather the growth rate of USDC and Circle's upcoming bet on Arc—these two events are already starting to connect. Let's start with USDC. By the end of Q2, USDC had reached $73.3 billion in circulation, up 19% year-on-year, with on-chain trading volume for the quarter reaching $14.8 trillion, up 151% year-on-year. These two figures are interesting when viewed together. Circulating supply grew by 19%, but trading volume increased by 151%, indicating that USDC is increasing not only the money sitting in the pool but also a noticeably higher usage frequency. As long as payments and transactions, cross-border settlements, and institutional fund scheduling continue migrating on-chain, USDC of the same scale can support ever-increasing capital flows. Circle's own revenue also shows this change. Total and reserve revenue in Q2 was $701 million, up 7% year-over-year, with reserve income accounting for $668 million. Although reserve asset yields fell by 66 basis points year-over-year, USDC's average circulating supply grew by 25%, partially offsetting the impact of lower interest rates. Simply put, as long as USDC continues to expand, Circle can still earn considerable income from its massive reserve assets. But Circle clearly doesn't want to rely solely on this alone. The larger the stablecoin, the more reserve returns it has, but after all, it's affected by interest rate cycles. As rates fall, the returns from $10 billion in reserves naturally decrease. So Circle is now continuously expanding its payment network and institutional services, and bringing Arc to the forefront, which is actually building more infrastructure for USDC that can generate long-term usage demand. Arc currently has over 100 ecosystems and institutions involved in its development, with the official plan to launch on the public mainnet on September 16. The first batch of validators is also strong, including BlackRock, DTCC, Mastercard, Visa, Standard Chartered, ICE, Galaxy, and MoneyGram. BlackRock also plans to deploy the BUIDL fund to Arc, while DTCC plans to support the tokenization of custodial assets on Arc. If these things really take off, Arc's most important role may be to add an institutional-level financial network to USDC, moving from a stablecoin supported by many public blockchains. Payments is one direction. Circle Payments Network has now joined 175 financial institutions, with a 30-day annualized trading volume of $14.7 billion at the end of Q2, a 76% quarter-on-quarter increase. BNY has already supported direct minting and redemption of USDC on its digital asset custody platform, and Standard Chartered has also opened up integrated conversion between fiat and USDC. Asset tokenization is another direction. If funds, securities, collateral, and other RWAs gradually move to Arc, demand for USDC may naturally arise when these assets trade, settle, and manage funds. USDC is not just a dollar substitute for exchanges but will participate more in the settlement of financial assets themselves. There is another data point that is easily overlooked. Circle's Agent Stack launched this year already offers over 900 paid services, and currently, 99.3% of x402 proxy payments are settled using USDC. If AI Agents truly form a market where machines automatically purchase data, computing power, and services in the future, stablecoins are likely to be better suited than traditional bank cards for this kind of high-frequency, small-amount, round-the-clock automated payment. So now, looking at USDC's next stage of growth, we can no longer focus solely on the total market capitalization of stablecoins. Of course, $73.3 billion in circulating volume is important, but the $14.8 trillion quarterly on-chain trading volume, 175 financial institutions entering CPN, and over 100 Arc builders may better illustrate where Circle is headed. Previously, USDC's greatest strengths were compliance and liquidity. Now, Circle aims to focus on payments, RWA, institutional clearing, and AI payments all around USDC. Whether Arc can succeed still depends on real data after mainnet launch. But if these scenarios really start to scale up, the next growth driver for USDC may not just be more funds entering crypto after the bull market, but more and more dollars needed for settlement on the chain itself.